Page 46 - The $100 Startup_ Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love

it more accessible. I even used the previous experience as part of the sales copy:

“Maybe you don’t want to travel to twenty countries a year like I do. But if you

could go to one place for nearly free, where would it be?”

This product did much better, selling five hundred copies on launch day and

going on to produce more than $50,000 in net income over the next year. The

success was also quite a relief, because for almost a year I had wondered

whether people would buy information about travel. Thankfully, they will—if

it’s packaged properly in a way that meets their needs.

Another year later, I applied the lesson even further: The most frequent

request from Frequent Flyer Master owners, who otherwise loved the product,

was for more updates on late-breaking travel opportunities. With that in mind, I

created the Travel Hacking Cartel to tell people exactly what to do to take

advantage of deals all over the world. The careful message this time was: Don’t

worry about the details; just do what we say and you’ll regularly earn enough

miles for free plane tickets every year.

This launch did the best of all—more than three thousand customers joined on

the first day. I had finally figured out how to give my customers what they

wanted.

Product 1: Product 2: Product 3:

Travel Ninja Frequent Flyer Master Travel Hacking Cartel

100 Sales 500 Sales 3,000 Sales

Six Steps to Getting Started Right Now
As we saw from the stories in Chapter 1, you don’t need a lot of money or
special training to operate a business. You just need a product or service, a group
of people who want to buy it, and a way to get paid. We’ll look at each of these
things in more detail throughout the book, but you don’t have to wait to get
started. Here are the six steps you need to take:

1. Decide on your product or service.
2. Set up a website, even a very basic one (you can get a free one from

WordPress.org).
3. Develop an offer (an offer is distinct from a product or service; see

Chapter 7 for help).
4. Ensure you have a way to get paid (get a free PayPal account to start).
5. Announce your offer to the world (see Chapter 9 for more on this).