I'm super excited to start a new venture and challenge myself to developed and launch a product intentionally with a plan!
Quick backstory, I've been reading quite a few business books lately, which is getting me super excited to further my knowledge in developing and marketing a product from start to finish. My goal is to launch the first iteration of my product in twenty hours of work and less than $300 in cost, thinking about the design not included, but any research does. The product I am designing and launching is a new workholding system for the Pocket NC, and my goal is to sell at least five of them within a month from now at a price that would match what it would go on the market for (basically not selling it at or below cost.)
I've been mulling around a specific design for some time now and got most of the problems figured out and think it can be a viable product to sell. Since there aren't many Pocket NC owners out there, I can't imagine I can get more than five people buying it, but I want to try and get at least that many to invest in it.
The primary books I am using to launch the product is "The First 20 Hours" by Josh Kaufman, and "Launch" by Jeff Walker. There are other books that I will be working off, but those two are the main ones.
My game plan will go as follows:
1) Come up with a quick design outlining the unique features of the product
2) Create a new Instagram and email newsletter, start publishing free content, and slowly mention the new product to get emotional buy-in.
3) Develop the product more and start sharing the benefits of it through other content creators as well as myself.
4) Create a website and product page and set up a time counter for when it gets released.
5) Start marketing the product through my list and Instagram and have limited units for sale.
6) Launch the product and include an additional item they weren't expecting in the package gift-wrapped.
I can easily spend months on this project and get nowhere, so I am limiting my time and money to spend it on what matters to get this product out into the world. I also have a one-month time frame to ship out the first iteration of the product. Thus far, I have put in about 1.5 hours in research and some communication with other users. I am not going to include my writeup on the journey through it but will consist of the time spent on emails for my list/promotional posts.
I also do not plan on posting my experience on Instagram, but only my blog, as I do not want it to affect how my little experiment goes. Plus, it may generate more traffic to my website as a byproduct if people are interested.
In the next post, I will outline what features the product will have and share the first basic design I come up with to tease possible customers.