Last Updated on 10 months by Greg Noland
Here is Part 1 of Convert Kit’s Web App Challenge
As you should be aware, email marketing is still massive. And the sooner you master it, the sooner you’ll be rewarded with the kind of income you are aiming for.
Let’s look at the Convert Kit’s Web App Challenge…
ConvertKit’s last two projects, both books, have been insanely successful. Selling more than $80,000 worth in just over 3 months. The connections he’s made, marketing lessons learned, and financial freedom he now has make a huge difference.
There is only one problem: those were all one time sales.
So he may make $40,000 in a month, like he did in December, but January 1st I start at over zero. He has to continue to drive traffic, write blog posts, and promote the book month after month for the sales to keep coming in. Some sales will keep coming in from the work he’s already done, but that will probably be less than $3,000 a month.
The biggest downside is that the customers who love the product the most only pay for it once. When planning for 2013 he knew that his next project would involve recurring revenue, where the customers pay a monthly fee to use the service. Software-as-a-service is the best model he’s seen for doing this, so that’s where The Web App Challenge comes in.
The Web App Challenge
He could just start a new web app and work on it quietly for a year before launching, but where is the fun in that? Writing and launching Designing Web Applications in only three months taught him that if he compresses the deadlines he can meet a goal much more quickly.
So here is the challenge: Within six months build a web application to $5,000 in recurring revenue each month. A friend just referred to that timeline as “aggressive” so let’s add some more restrictions to make it more difficult:
- He is starting without an idea. So he doesn’t know what the application will be, what it will do, or who it is targeted towards.
- He can only spend $5,000 of his own money in this entire process. Meaning all other funds necessary have to come from paying customers. Since he will be hiring out the development, getting paying customers right away is mandatory.
- He cannot spend more than 20 hours a week on this project. If allowed, he wastes tons of time on projects. This limit is partially because there are other things that need his time (contract projects, writing, etc) and to help keep me focused.
The best part of this is that he’s going to be completely transparent about every step of the process. Follow along on this blog to hear how things are going, what he’s learning, and the mistakes you shouldn’t repeat.
The goal is to have $5,000 a month worth of paying customers.
That could be 50 customers paying $100 a month, 10 customers paying $500 a month, or somewhere in the middle (most likely) Think he can do it? Good. Me too.
A little help.
He wants to do everything possible to remove risk and make this project successful. So he’s asked a friend to be an official advisor to his web app challenge. It’s not very official really, but he will be there to answer questions, help him choose a developer, and help him work through marketing strategies.
Brennan has been a Rails developer for years and runs his own project management web application called Planscope. Since Brennan did all the design, development, and marketing of Planscope himself, he has already solved many of the problems he will probably face. He expects his advice to be very helpful.
Frequently Asked Questions
Okay, so no one has actually asked these questions, but you might, so here it goes.
Where will you get your idea?
From my customers. Dane Maxwell taught him about the concept of idea extraction. Instead of trying to come up with an idea yourself, you talk to a market, let’s say photographers, and try to find what painful problems they have that could be solved with software. Then when you find a problem you not only have an idea for what to build, but also a first customer. His most successful software projects has been someone else’s idea, talking to Dane was just the first time someone had explained it so clearly. He’ll write more on this topic in future posts.
Who will your application be for?
Not sure. But will be a targeted niche. That may be lawyers, web designers, real estate agents, landscapers, insurance agents, marketers, construction companies, programmers, or pretty much anyone else.
I’m just going to talk to people until I find a painful problem that can be solved with software. Sorry,it’s already gym time so I’ll have to continue this tonight, or tomorrow.
Make sure you check in at the same time, for the next part in the Convert Kit’s Web App Challenge…
Till then Bonza…
To grab your copy of Convert Kit here: CLICK HERE
Always Dedicated to Your Success,
Greg Noland
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