The cool part about being a software developer is that you’re a walking product, talking product factory. The crappy part of it is that you generally stay really focused on making products and rarely stick your head up to look at other parts of what makes a business run. At least that describes me.
I took my first shot and created a product. Got it far enough along to be ready to go find some customers for it and then discovered that I knew nothing about getting customers. Having my legs kicked out from under me I sort of just stopped. What I should have done is pressed on and tried some really stupid things that wouldn’t have worked, but if I kept trying stuff eventually I would have found something that worked well enough to get enough customers using my product to allow me to really focus on it and make it really great. Instead I just stopped.
Not completely, but effectively. What I did was decide to do what I do really well and go learn way more about sales, marketing, and promotions than I really needed to know. I’ve read a ton of internet marketing crap. I’ve read books like “Guerilla Marketing”. I’ve read books on strategic marketing (good, not immediately useful). Basically, I spend a ton of time reading and not actually doing.
During this time I also did a lot of introspection about what I really want. I can tell you all about the things I don’t want. As it happens I can also tell you fairly specifically what I do want. A lot of people can’t really tell you that. Sure, somewhere they’ll mention that they want to be wealthy, but they won’t really tell you what wealth will do for them. Buying a bunch of material crap is nice and all, but after a while it won’t really be satisfying. So I know what I want. I’ve written about it before and in general it hasn’t changed much. Perhaps it has gotten a little less selfish and includes more stuff not directly for myself. But I still want to visit and ride on most of the great race tracks of the world.
Anyway, I’ve read a ton of Internet Marketing stuff. Enough that I clearly see the patterns. Does the stuff work? Are sales pages effective? Yes. Will you make $10,000 a month selling self help DVDs on line? Maybe, but its more work than these courses let on.
But where I was going before I went off on a tangent on internet marketing is that somehow I came across Chris Guillebeau and his blog. I read his little book “A Brief Guide to World Domination”, it is good – read it. I also went ahead a bought his book “The Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself”. Again, not bad but because I’ve read so much stuff around Internet Marketing I’ve already seen much of the material.
However, if you’ve not read a ton of IM stuff Chris’s book is a good deal. It covers everything you need know, and is pretty well written. Chris has a good voice. I might have to go back and write a review guide of all the IM stuff I’ve seen. For me the value in Chris’s book was the idea to create an e-book.
As I said when I started this post, being a software developer give you the tools to create products. In my case what I lack is the other business stuff to make a product a success. My goal now is to create an e-book and use it to learn how to market, promote and sell products. My expectations are pretty low. My big goal though is to sell 5000 copies of my book next year. I think that if I can achieve that I will have learned enough to try other products.