I was enthralled and overwhelmed at the same time at the sheer magnitude of information available on the forum. I spent hours and hours that first day just reading every single thread in the main forum. Then I went wandering around the other sub-forums and got a feel for what was going on in there.
After a few days of reading an idea started to bubble in my head. I love writing and I thought that perhaps information product creation was what I would do.
So I set about learning everything I could about product creation. Now it sounds simple but if you think about it, there are probably a hundred things you have to know how to do in order to get an information product out there for sale.
You need to know how to setup a:
- Sales funnel
- Squeeze page
- Landing or Sales page
- How to deliver the product
- How to get your money into PayPal
- Auto-responder that integrates your buyers and your free report signups
- PDF file for your book
- WordPress site for your Squeeze page
- An advert for the Warrior Forum
- One Time Offer (OT)
- Etc.
The other problem is that at the time I had no idea what any of those terms meant. So first I had to understand exactly what they were before I could even learn how to do them.
I made a list of everything that I needed to get done to get my first information product online for sale. And then I started. I read as many threads as I could on each aspect, asked some really dumb questions in the forum and just kept on learning.
Once I felt I had a basic understanding of that particular item then I went out and implemented it. Most of the times it was a complete disaster but I kept reading, asking and then fixing. Then I moved to the next item on the list.
During this time my financial position had not changed. I boot strapped this business of mine. I scrounged together enough money to join the War Room and then got huge benefit from that. I must have printed out all of Allen’s original posts in the War Room because I went through reams of paper. Joining the War Room, by the way, was the second smartest thing I did. The first was joining the Warrior Forum.
While reading a thread on the forum about offering services on the Warrior Forum as a way to raise some operating capital I got the idea to offer my PhotoShop skills as a designer. So I scraped together another $20 to pay for a ‘Warrior for Hire’ advert and advertised my services. It was not a resounding success but that allowed me to generate some cash so that I could buy some tools that I needed.
I committed myself to this project to change my life. I would not rest until I had turned my life around completely. So I spent every evening after work (I had a temp job at the time) plowing through the list until I felt I had a rough grasp of everything.
Now what product to create?
I was at a loss. What could I as a ‘newbie’ offer anybody on this forum? Then one day while browsing the forum I came across a question that someone had asked. And guess what? I knew the answer. So I answered it and got such a rush when the poster replied that my answer had helped him. It hit me right between the eyes at that very moment.
There were people on the forum that were asking the very same questions I was asking just a few months before. I would write a series of tutorials on how to setup a product online and get it selling.
I wrote the first tutorial and ran a test with it. It sold one copy.
Ecstatic? Overjoyed? That’s an understatement. I had just made my first $12 with an information product. This was going to work.
