Hi there, first post from me so I don't know whether I've landed in the correct forum. Here I am, sitting in the UK trying to get a workable idea I have built up into a product and my question is about the idea of 'failing, forward, fast.'

I'm currently wearing two hats; (1) I'm drafting the ad copy and sales letter for my own product and (2) drafting the text for my own product. This is where my question sits - I'm concerned that whilst I feel the market will want my product ( yeah, yeah, they all say that! ) I don't want to spend a ton of time writing and honing my product if it tanks.

I've read a couple of articles that suggest that if the product will be a course ( mine will have 4-5 parts over 4-5 months ) it's best to draft parts 1-2 and then just flesh out the rest, so you've not spent too much time on a clunker.

From your experiences, does that work or is it wrong or unethical?

The product and sales letter will contain written proof (original letters scanned into the product with names covered for confidentiality) and I'll be offering a direct e-mail link to me to hand-hold all people that sign-up over that time frame. Since most questions are delivered in the first few weeks, after then most people can deal with most issues themselves but sometimes need a 'top-up'.

So if I were your client with this product idea would you say hold fire until you've got the whole product in place or take it to market
asap?

It's not a con-job and I want to ensure the headlines reflect that. The sales letter will contain my story so I hope the reader will realise I have been in the situation they find themselves myself.

Thanks guys, I don't want to undersell or turn people opff putting my message across in the wrong way.

Regards for now.

Well, if you're sure there's a market for your product then you can bet someone else is already doing it, and it probably never occured to them to put less than 100% into the project.

I suppose it comes down to this - if you don't put 100% into the project and as a result you DON'T get the results you want, are you going to take the blame yourself, or are you going to blame 'the market'???

I assume you are paying for you own media (whatever media that might be), and your costs of using that media will be the same, regardless of whether you've put 100% into your copy/marketing, or just done a quick 'look and see' type approach.

Personally, I would concentrate on getting your lead generation and conversion tactics as effective as possible, and make Month 1 as good as is humanly possible. Worry about Month's 2/3/4/5 when it gets to that stage. If you don't get the first steps right then you won't even have a month 2/3/4/5 to worry about...

There was some posts here about Robert Collier writing direct response ads for his book, before he actually wrote the book. I believe he was planning on writing the book only if he got enough responses to make it worthwhile.

If I recall the story correctly, he had a refund plan in place in case he decided not to write the book.

The ad copy, of course, was beyond excellent...

Well, it's certainly not something I'd have the audacity to do, big no-no or not. It seems way too risky for my fragile nerves.

Just thought I'd mention it since the poster seems to be in a similar boat.

By big no-no I meant that I'm fairly certain that it's illegal.

Thanks for the replies, really appreciate it. I'm on the 'inside' of my product and value a cold-outsiders view.

What I want to deliver to the market will take the shape of a course over about 4-5 months/4wk cycles. I can bring parts 1 & 2 together quickly and feel that this might be the right or sensible way to go since if it doesn't sell then I can work to re-advertise with a better letter and advert before drafting further editions to sit in the filing cupboard.

A few years ago I obtained a course by Stuart Goldsmith and he advocated writing just what's needed to cover the first part of a course and then testing and this still seems to be the best way, for me at least.

I feel there are a selection of markets this will appeal to and have some methods to capture them. I've got the demographics, reasons-why and why nots reasonably clear and feel that testing in a set of different markets will let me see more clearly whether the product is really of interest to them.

If ( always the if word ) if it gets the response I want it's a very scalable item and regarding the ' ... others doing it ... ' observation, as it stands at present there isn't ... no, really. What I have developed is a counter-intuitive approach that works and will work for those that use it - what I need to be able to do is to convince people they can benefit so that's why I'd want to be offering direct e-mail or telephone follow up.

I would also be including a money back guarantee ( obviously ) and also a double refund if a client actually uses my offer and it doesn't work for them, but hopefully, I will be able to ensure that it did work for them since the payback for them would be many times their investment.

I've got some shape for some headlines that I'd put up in the post earlier but took them down since I didn't want to dump too much stuff into my first post. Might post later for some feedback but that's a separate issue.

As before, thanks for your response, it must have been really hard in the 'old days' before the web existed.

Regards

bb01234

What you can do, if you're doing it online, is blocking the CC processing system with a message that says; Sorry, your payment cannot be accepted at this time. We're currently out of stock. Please check back in X days.

You can still count the ordering attempts and have a good idea of the response.

Dry testing is illegal, but if you do it right, it shouldn't be a big deal

Thanks Erik, that would work.

Thinking it through, I feel that It'll be best to get the whole pkge drafted first. At least any glitches, and I'm sure there's going to be a few, won't delay issue of parts 3 onwards.

At least it can be rolled out easier.

When I've shaped up the ads and letters I'll put them here - be pleased to get f'back for my idea then.

Thanks all for now.

Their are ways of "dry-testing" that are illegal and some that are not...

You have a 30-day window in which to consummate the order. If you do not consummate the order within 30 days then you have to notify the consumer and give them them the option of either having the order canceled and refunding their payment or them "okeying" the delay.

If someone wanted to create a course where the consumer paid an upfront free for the entire thing but was sent a portion of the course over a specific time period (and the consumer was aware of this time period) then as long as you produce and ship the first chapter (or whatever you agreed upon would be what the consumer received first and within the first 30 days) then you're golden.

However that being said some credit card processors really frown on fully processing a credit unless you are ready to ship the product.

One way of handling this is to set up your shopping cart so your credit card processor "only" looks at the consumers card to see if it's a valid card and capable (at that moment) of receiving the charged amount. Then when you actually ship the product you ping the card for the amount agreed upon.