Ibooks Preorder Do I Need to Upload a Sample

Views, followers, and nerveless email addresses are great, only goose egg validates an idea similar getting someone to pre-social club your product.

We're large believers in pre-orders. In fact, equally I type this post, I can't think of a product or service I've sold in the past five years that hasn't had a pre-guild of some kind.

pre-orders = Product validation

Listen, we're building a business here. Sure, we're making videos, writing manufactures, etc., and of course we want eyeballs on all the content we're creating,but at the finish of the mean solar day information technology's nearly trying to create a paid value exchange.

When trying to create said value exchange, we like collecting email addresses of people who are interested in what nosotros're building, but the truest form of validating an idea is getting someone to actually pay for it.

If you don't have a product that people are willing to pay for, yous don't have a business. The sooner you tin can confirm people will pay for your thought, the better.

Having a customer requite you coin for your idea before it'due south 100% ready is some of the best motivation yous can get.

For usa, we know the Wandering Aimfully Membership should sell because information technology'southward very similar to our previous BuyOurFuture product, but what a client gets on the backend has changed (every bit has the pricing model). It's important for united states to get folks to buy in to our idea while as well being the first customers to give the states crucial feedback before nosotros launch to our entire audience.

Pre-orders advantage your die-hard fans

It'southward weird to write "fans" every bit nosotros don't think of our email subscribers, social media followers, video viewers, etc as fans. We think of you guys/gals as crawly creative humans that nosotros love sharing our experiences and stories with. The word "fans" is just widely understood, so, aye, moving on...

Assuasive a customer to pre-society your product is also a way to say: Hey, you go to get behind the fancy velvet rope while everyone else stands in line! Who doesn't love early access? Who doesn't want to see a product before other people?

Mmmmmmm, velvet rope.

Every bit I mentioned, pre-order customers can requite us (creators) valuable feedback on the beginning version of the matter we're selling. They become beta testers. They are a valuable part of the iterative process needed when edifice anything new. They likewise become a grouping of cheerleaders to help you spread your product via the all-time marketing tactic always: word of rima oris.

That's why Nosotros're opening upwards 30 pre-order spots on May ii.

Our Pre-Society Program

We decided nosotros want to open up pre-orders to just 30 people and for one week only. As you already know, we take plenty of to-dos to become Wandering Aimfully finished and launched, so we desire to keep our pre-order window short and sugariness.

From feel nosotros know that showing the early version of a product is best to exercise with a modest number of people (hence why nosotros're only opening 30 pre-order spots). I like to think of this like doing public speaking. For your commencement-e'er public speaking gig would you rather:

1. Speak to a pocket-size grouping, and so when you make mistakes, it'due south not in forepart of many people?
2. Speak to a large group, brand those inevitable mistakes, and experience embarrassed and create a less-than-fantastic experience for a lot of people (and shell your conviction)?

The choice is conspicuously #1. If you want to evidence your offset draft of whatsoever you're creating to a large audition, more than power to ya! You lot're a glutton for punishment. 😂

We desire to keep our pre-order group pocket-sized then we can keep a close eye on their experience with the Wandering Aimfully Membership. Nosotros know we want to test our new payment organisation (Restrict Content Pro), our new Customer Dashboard, how we requite access to the Slack community, and almost xx other things. With a smaller group of people, we tin hope to collaborate with all of them and ensure we can hear each and every voice. Not to mention, the people that want to purchase pre-orders are usually your near engaged audience members, and those people are going to give yous the all-time feedback on your product because they intendance.

How to gear up upwards pre-orders for your product

i. Determine how yous want to have payment

Taking pre-orders can sometimes just mean setting upward a quick product on something like Gumroad or Motorbus or Teachery. In our instance, however, it was of import we take people pay for pre-orders through the same mechanism that nosotros'll take regular membership sales. This is our take a chance to test everything, after all! As we talked virtually in the website development post, we'll be using a WordPress plugin called Restrict Content Pro (RCP) to manage the membership areas of our site.

These are our action items involving payment stuff:

• Setup a brand new Stripe business relationship and PayPal business relationship for Wandering Aimfully
• Buy, install, and activate RCP in WordPress
• Hook up Stripe/PayPal to RCP

While those activity items wait simple in a overnice bulleted listing, setting upward PayPal solitary has been a multiple-hr adventure. I fifty-fifty had to become on the phone with PayPal to get my depository financial institution account linked (apparently you can only take two PayPal accounts link to the same bank account - woof). These are the things you lot should be prepared for in one case you lot get to the role in the procedure where you lot're close to taking money for your product!

ii. Create a pre-order sales page/payment folio

Many of you lot already know what the Wandering Aimfully Membership is going to include. However, we don't desire to presume that all 30 pre-order purchasers volition have read all of these posts leading up to our pre-lodge proclamation. That'south why nosotros're edifice an actual pre-gild sales page, and not just sending a purchase button in an electronic mail (wouldn't that be nice!).

We'll keep the pre-gild sales page VERY unproblematic and minimal. On the sales page we'll explain what's included, add a few images, maybe toss a short explainer video on the page, and then drop the payment grade from RCP on the page.

Here's a look at what our pre-gild folio will probable look like, with a few more images and fun copy thrown in for skilful measure. ;)

While again we're using our ongoing payment machinery, if you were trying to get a pre-order page up adequately chop-chop, you lot could utilize options like Gumroad or a software production of mine Bumpsale to set upwardly a elementary purchase push on a page of your website.

Our action items for setting up our pre-guild page:

• Design simple pre-order page
• Go our developer to plow the blueprint into a WordPress page (with RCP payment grade)
• Test information technology ourselves!

3. CREATE a customer onboarding process

There are three big parts of the Wandering Aimfully Membership that we need to accost with our pre-order customers: (1) the customer dashboard; (two) the Slack community; (3) access to courses.

Each pre-order heir-apparent volition automatically get a welcome electronic mail from us that addresses these three pieces of the Wandering Aimfully membership and lets them know:

• The Customer Dashboard is however being built and won't be fix for 2-three weeks, but they will get showtime access before nosotros launch publicly plus peeks backside the scenes as we put the final touches on everything!
• They tin join the Slack community immediately! Our existing BuyOurFuture Slack community (of 350+ people) will exist transitioned over to the Wandering Aimfully Slack by the fourth dimension they pre-social club (encounter action steps below). We'll accept an invite link and a getting started guide ready for them and then they know how we roll inside our awesome Slack community.
• They become Teachery access and all our courses right abroad. While pre-society buyers won't be able to sort through our courses or interact with them in the Wandering Aimfully Customer Dashboard just withal, they will be able to swoop in to the content and become started (through their Teachery account). To accomplish this, I'thou actually going to add each pre-gild client manually to the dorsum-cease of Teachery. It'southward only 30 people, so I'1000 happy to make the magic happen with some elbow grease.

Action items for the client on-boarding process:

• Write the onboarding e-mail
• Setup automation workflow through our email provider (Drip) that sends welcome email upon purchase
• Setup whatever tagging or automations within Baste to go along runway of customers
• Update our customer Airtable with pre-social club buyer data (more on this in a moment)
• Test our onboarding!

When it comes to taking pre-orders: Don't overautomate!

Information technology's soooo piece of cake to get defenseless up in the automation game. The last matter you lot want to think nigh when building and launching a new projection is having to do any (more than) manual work. But, trying to automate everything besides early on just leads to procrastination, trouble, and overwhelm.

four. Test your pre-order purchasing sequence!

Nosotros can't stress plenty how important it is to test your bodily purchasing sequence. I've watched and so many fellow creators painstakingly build their product, their sales page, and then open up the flood gates without thorough purchase testing. I'll grab my ain AMEX menu and purchase our pre-order of Wandering Aimfully multiple times in multiple browsers. I do this because I want to double-bank check that:

1. The checkout process works on Chrome and Safari web browsers
2. The checkout procedure works on mobile
3. I receive the correct welcome e-mail and onboarding instructions
4. The test accounts I create take the correct tagging in Drip
5. Everything looks right in our RCP paying user accounts

I typically practise five-7 live test purchases of anything I create. It takes a thing of minutes to refund the test purchases and delete the examination accounts subsequently on. Merely if I let actual customers in earlier the first test buyers, I could exist in for hours of troubleshooting (and apologizing!).

5. Let people know pre-orders are open!

This is another one of those classic mistakes that creators can make. You've spent ALL this time edifice your affair, drumming up attention for a pre-social club, and so yous only send ONE sales electronic mail.

We won't make this error. We're damn proud of what we're building and we won't be afraid to put it in front of our audience. We want our 30 pre-society spots to sell, and nosotros don't want to exit it to chance. Here'south what we'll be doing to open pre-orders:

• Ship 3 emails to the Wandering Aimfully subscribers (~440 people)
• Send iii emails to my email list, the Activity Army (~ix,800 people)
• Send 3 emails to Caroline's email list, the Self-Made Society (~5,200 people)
• Segment out our existing BuyOurFuture buyers from these emails
• Segment out each other's e-mail list, so folks who are on multiple lists don't get multiple sales emails (yay for tagging in Drip!)

And here's what those 3 emails will be virtually:

• Email #1 on May 2 - Pre-orders are open, hither's what Wandering Aimfully is if you haven't heard us talk about it notwithstanding (somehow 😅)
• Email #2 on May 4 - Stories from existing BuyOurFuture/Wandering Aimfully members
• Email #3 on May 9 - Pre-gild window is closing (nosotros may non need this email if the 30 spots make full upwards)

Most xv,000 people volition get the three emails about our pre-order spots opening upwardly. And here's a look at curbing our expectations of actual viewership of those emails:

• We average a 25% open rate on emails, meaning around 3,750 people volition actually see our pre-order opportunity
• We average a 5% click-through rate on emails, meaning 187.v (aye, 1/2 of a person) will click to view the pre-gild sales page
• To get 30 buyers, nosotros need 16% of the folks who click to buy

Now, I do share these estimated percentages with a caveat: We've done A LOT of build up for Wandering Aimfully (with having BuyOurFuture mentioned for years prior). We could sell the xxx pre-order spots to the Wandering Aimfully subscribers correct away - which would be 😎. That'south the indicate of building an email list for your specific thought/production. Those folks are raising their manus and showing early on interest. But, every bit I said early on in this post, views and collected emails do not equal sales!

Now, finally, one last crucial step...

half-dozen. Continue track of customers and follow-up with pre-order buyers

Normally with our products, we'd advocate for setting up an automated email sequence welcoming members and encouraging them to make the most of Wandering Aimfully. Simply since these are pre-order buyers, we don't know what we don't know notwithstanding. Nosotros don't want to brand any assumptions. Instead, we want to reach out to these buyers in a more personal, transmission fashion and inquire for feedback on their feel. (We may even create a survey for these buyers as we become closer to launch to record their feedback in a more quantitative way, only I'k certain we'll share that with you in the futurity if we decide to practise it!)

Nosotros will be keeping rails of our pre-social club buyers in a fancy new Client Sheet in Airtable that Caroline whipped together.

In that location's an in-depth post coming in the future almost how we're tracking our customers

What'southward really cool about this specific sheet is that it shows our existing cash runway (BuyOurFuture payment plans) and the improver of Wandering Aimfully Memberships.

"Projected WAIM Total" is based on our goal of calculation 30 new buyers per month

Nosotros're going over this spreadsheet in detail in an unedited meeting tomorrow. If you lot're a fan of hearing "the numbers" backside a business, we go pretty deep on where we stand, what our fiscal goals are with Wandering Aimfully, and how we promise the next few months pan out.

A reminder: Business just isn't set-it-and-forget-information technology

You lot might think with all our previous experience everything would be automated and we'd merely send a few emails and make "cyberspace coin." But alas, it just doesn't work that style, especially when y'all're edifice something new. Every new idea needs validation, testing, and tweaking based on customer feedback.

We absolutely believe in trying to automate as many tasks as possible, but for where we are on the Wandering Aimfully journey, nosotros know there's plenty more manual work ahead before we get in that location..

Automation will happen in the futurity. Only for now, we're ready and prepared to do things that require a scrap more endeavor (which we're hoping our pre-order buyers will detect and appreciate).

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Source: https://build.wanderingaimfully.com/blog/pre-orders

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