Update On The Mysterious Project 'D'...

n today's issue of the 'Business Brainwaves' newsletter, I thought I'd give you an update on a little project I'm working on behind the scenes.

I first talked about this project in the newsletter I sent out on the 31st May. For the benefit of new subscribers, I'll just quickly recap on how this project came about.

I wanted to let you in on the inside of one of my projects before I had even started it.

2 reasons for this…

1. I always seem to be very busy and I had been putting off this project for a number of weeks. By telling you, it meant that I just had to do something with this idea. Otherwise, I would end up looking foolish in front of my subscribers.
   
   
2. I also wanted you to see a project evolve from start to finish. I'm kind of hoping you will be able to learn from my experiences as I try to get this to work. Most marketers only tell you about something when it has made them a load of money. You never get to hear about the 10 failures in between.

Don't get me wrong; I don't expect this to fail. However, if it does I won't be sweeping it under the carpet. We'll have a good look at what went wrong together, and hopefully learn a thing or two.

I will be keeping you updated as I go along, and to make things easier for you to remember, I have decided to call this, project 'D'.

Anyway…the original idea for project D was to write a very short free ebook. I was going to try and team up with a big player in Internet marketing that doesn't even know who I am. My goal with this ebook was to try and raise my profile online, and to hopefully increase the number of subscribers to this newsletter, and make some more sales of my ebook - 'Website Not Required'.

Now, in addition to those goals, I also had an idea for making some extra money out of a silly little back end product that would go with this free ebook.

A whole new business brainwave was born!

As I was planning the contents of this free ebook, an even better idea just hit me like a slap in the face! This new idea all revolved around this silly little back end product.

Instead of this being the back end product, this was now going to form the basis of a whole new business on it's own.

Unfortunately, I am still a few weeks away from getting this off the ground, so I still can't tell you what it is. However, as a subscriber to this newsletter, I will be offering you one of these products for fr.ee, as a kind of market test. Don't worry, when I say fr.ee, that's it, no hidden mirrors, there will be nothing to
pay. At the end of the day, I will need to get a few honest opinions on this, and the quickest way to do that is to give a load away fr.ee.

Why am I so excited about this Project 'D'?

Well, the frank answer to that one is that no one else on the whole of the Internet is selling this product. When I say no one, in the last two months, I mean not a single person searched for this product on Google. What's really giving me a buzz is that potentially, every website owner is a potential customer!

Normally, if someone told me that this was their intention, I would warn them strongly against doing it.

The fact is; you should be very cautious about trying to sell something that no one appears to want. Find a demand, then fill it! That's what all the guru's say and with good reason.

Then again, someone has got to be a pioneer now and again. Otherwise the world would never progress!

So, as you can see, the odds are stacked against me,
but there's more…

In order to create a demand for this product, I am going to have to educate the marketplace. I've got to bang on my potentials customer's head and say, “hey, I've got this great new product and I think you really need it”.

The problem is, people don't like buying things they need, they like to buy things they 'want'. So, somehow I've also got to be able to educate people in such a way, that'll make them 'want' to buy my product when they have never even considered it before.

I'm going to attempt all this without spending a single penny on advertising!

That last sentence is what I'm hoping will interest you.

As someone that is trying to make a living from home, I'm guessing that you probably don't already have thousands of dollars hanging around spare in your wallet.

So, I thought you would be very interested in seeing me trying to create a massive demand for these products, without spending a load of cash on marketing.

I am going to be leaping out of my comfort zone!

In my opinion, if you are going to achieve anything of note, you've got to push yourself out of your nice cosy comfort zone. Jump into uncharted territory (for you or I anyway).

I am going to be doing at least four things that I know of, that I have never tried before…

1. The product I am going to be selling requires a certain amount of skill to create. I would consider myself to be average at best at the moment. However, I am going to be trying pass myself off as the no 1 expert. I know there are thousands and thousands of people that could create this product better than I.
   
   I also know that there are even more that could do it just as well.However, I want to put my website out there, and make people believe that if they want this product, my website is definitely the place to go.
   
   
2. To get this product seen on a ton of websites I really need to have an affiliate program for it. To make this really work I need full control over the affiliate program.
   
   So, I have pretty much decided that I am going set up my own affiliate program. This means hosting everything and making payments etc myself.
   
   This requires buying some affiliate program software and installing it on my server. I know which software to buy, but I haven't got the faintest clue how to set this all up at the moment. But I'm sure I will muddle through.
   
   
3. As I am going to be selling a number of different versions of this product, I really need to set up a shopping cart on my site. This will need to integrate with the affiliate program so that all my affiliates can earn commission for every sale.
   
   Again, I haven't got a clue how this is going to work. I am not a programmer in any shape or form. I find the prospect of this quite daunting, but hey, I'm going to have a go and see what happens.
   
   
4. To market the site I am going to try and get a load of free publicity. Hopefully, I can get some interest from a few journalists and get an article or two in a few off the shelf glossy magazines, maybe a few newspapers and some big news portal websites.
   
   I have never written an editorial or anything like that. I don't currently know who to contact, what to say or what to expect.

Frightening all this isn't it?

Fancy coming along for the ride, to see whether I'll fall flat on my face or not?

Maybe, you might just see me make things work, and hopefully be able to draw some inspiration from it.

One thing I can guarantee is that I'll give it my best shot, and if things don't work, I'll be back on my horse the next day, working hard on the next project.

How far have I got so far?

Well, I've designed and created the shell of the site, and written 4 or five of the information pages. I've also created a few sample products, that look pretty good.

I am on holiday between, 26th to 4th, so I'll be picking this up as soon as I get back.

I'll keep you posted...

Jason Lewis
Editor - 'Business Brainwaves' Newsletter