I had told Mike about several of my ideas and he sent me the following email after our interview:
My last day was Nov 21. I win! 😛 The business income definitely doesn’t replace the job income yet. But, due to the business’s income over the last year, we have about 9 months of living expenses saved in cash. And, as you said, the return on investment is nuts. (Essentially, if you consider my foregone job income–plus benefits–as the opportunity cost of the income stream I’m building, it’s a no-brainer.)
And, no, over the last year we’ve just saved everything as cash for exactly the reason you stated. That said, once the business income is greater than our expenses, I do see us going back to funding the IRAs etc.
Newton: Really, you left on November 21st? Any particular reason? I’d be very interested to know! The IRA’s certainly make sense after that, especially for tax purposes. I guess congratulations are in order on leaving, great job good sir!
Piper: Nope, there was no reason that the 21st was the magical date or anything like that. Kali and I just decided that we had enough cash saved up that it made sense for me to try working the business full-time (at least for a while) to see how much I could grow the income from it.
Newton: pardon my french, but you are *&^%%$ awesome. that is so encouraging Mike, congratulations on making it this far. If you had been busting your ass on this project, how quick do you think you would have been able to get to this point? I remember you saying you were working super passively/part time.
If you wrote a book a month and put them up on Amazon, what would happen? I know it takes a while for the books to get selling, but how could I speed up the process?
Piper: Hmm.. Great question. It’s hard to say exactly. The first book took a long time because I had to figure out how to make a website, how to format a book, find a printing company, etc. (Oh, another thing I just realized I originally outsourced was the cover art. I was pretty happy with how it went. That said, I’m now doing my own just so that I can make changes easily whenever I want.) And yes, I was working on it very part-time.
As to putting a book up on Amazon per month, I guess my question would be whether or not that’s even the most effective way. I feel like what I’m learning right now is that each product has provided less revenue than the one before. I almost just wish I’d stuck with 1 or 2 products and really just cranked at drawing in traffic to the website.)
….Alternatively, if they were about totally separate topics, it might have worked better. The problem now is that it’s one website about taxes, and it has to draw in enough traffic to start and keep three books selling. It might have gone better if it was one book and site about taxes, another book and site about some totally different topic, etc.
As to actual timeline, it depends a lot on the type of product. Are you specifically considering books like I’m doing? (There’s a lot of pros about it, but a lot of stuff that sucks also…)
Newton: I would probably have many different subjects. I wonder if it would be better to have 1 website per book? I thought most of your sales came from Amazon traffic, vs sending people to Amazon from your website. Or was it that you need people to go from your site to Amazon to get the first sales? Thoughts?
I am just brainstorming subjects. They are all over the place. I will probably stay away from investments and the market. I might be overly eager to jump in, but if you jump in do it with both feet right? I just want to try as many things as possible (especially considering the low startup cost) and see which work out. Anything from the So There I Was… book to the instructional videos, i am ready to run.
Piper: Well, if you don’t have 1 website per book, you at least want a way to completely separate the traffic within the same website. Otherwise you run into the typical sales problem where you present too many options at a time, and the person ends up buying nothing at all.
Yes, most sales (like 90%) come from Amazon’s own traffic. However, I’ve definitely noticed that a slowdown in clicks from my site to Amazon leads to a disproportionately large decline in sales. I suspect it’s a function of how amazon’s recommendation system works. For instance, if in a given week I have a few less sales, it causes me to slip to a lower position on various recommended lists in Amazon (like the “Also bought” or “Ultimately Bought” lists on other products’ pages).
And I’d say yeah go for it and get started. Just pick one of your ideas and go. But make sure to give a product a fair shot before giving up on it. In my experience, things don’t completely take off right away.
One more thought: I’d try to find something that people are actively searching for. It’s (probably) easier than trying to sell entertainment. That is, no matter how entertaining a book may be, what keywords would you want to rank for in Google in order to sell a book like the “So there I was” book? In comparison, it’s pretty easy to figure out what keywords to target if you’re selling a product about making fondant flowers. (That said, I’m sure there are effective ways to market an entertainment product. I just don’t have any experience with them.)
A friend of mine, Clayton Pykiet, sent me a book called Commerce Through Community. It is a short book (140 pages) and is very to the point. In it, the authors outline business trends they see coming and how to build a successful business model.
I have heard of this guys book before, but I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to it because I had read some reviews that his views were somewhat unrealistic. But after digesting his interview on about.com, I think he makes a lot of great points, and there are many things that we can do to streamline our lives and be more productive. It may be a challenge to apply all of the concepts to a business, but these points should definitely be considered as we brainstorm and put together a business model. Here are my notes on the interview:
IdeaFLITE 