Matt Inglot – Validate Your Product Idea With Pre-Sales (How I made $4500 pre-selling my product -- and how 1 out of every 6 people emailed became a customer) – MicroConf 2017

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  • I was worried about launching my product
  • A few years ago
    • I was in a pretty good place
    • 25 hours was a long week for me
    • Did what any self respecting person would do… start another business!
      • Started Freelance Transformation
      • Created a podcast
      • Last year – launched a product
        • Researched
        • Launched
        • Built
        • That’s the important order. Got $4,500 in presales before building
    1. Start building an audience
      • Started an email list
      • Page with opt-in form
      • Guested on podcasts
      • Got several hundred on my list - Started my own podcast
    1. The magic “biggest struggle” email
      • Didn’t know what people wanted yet
      • So I started surveying them
      • Emails were dribbling in, but it wasn’t huge
      • Met Ryan Levesque (author of Ask)
      • He had me send a “biggest struggle” email
      • 2 hours after they receive what they opted in for
        • “Hey. A couple hours ago I sent you an email with the link to access your ideal client worksheet. Quick favor? Will you hit reply to let me know if I sent it to the right place? While you’re at it, what’s the biggest struggle you have with freelancing right now?”
      • I’d get vague answers. I’d reply again asking for more specifics
        • They’d send back a paragraph. Or an essay
    1. I got on the phone (OK, Skype)
      • “Would love to chat more to learn about your points below. Do you have 30 mins…?”
      • Talking to people works!
      • Often became 60 minute calls. We just kept talking
      • What they’re struggling with
      • Finding clients
      • How to get started (how to go from full time job to full time freelancing)
    1. Build a webinar targeting the most-engaged subscribers
      • I still wasn’t making money
      • Used Drip’s lead score feature to find most engaged subscribers
      • Sent invite to 60 people
      • “Is freelancing really possible for me? (private invite)” - Took everything I’d researched, and packed it into a slide deck - Ran the webinar
    1. Profit
      • 9 students agreed to pay $500 for a pilot run of a course; $4,500 in sales
      • Building an 8 hour video course over 2 months… I don’t think I’d recommend it. But it did work
      • Released v1 of my course – Freelance Start
      • Could use the presale money to hire an incredible designer – Laura Elizabeth
  • FreelanceTransformation.com/microconf
  • matt@freelancetransformation.com

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