Okaaaaaay. So, a few days ago I posted saying, “Ermagerd! I only have 10 days left!” Heh. I had foolishly let time slip by AFTER committing to you and the world that my second 30-day challenge was under way. I’ve got a week left; let’s see how she goes.

NO, I still haven’t created a product. But I have made some great Shoestring Steps so far. Last week I successfully procured the following domain names:

www.howtodo100pushups.com and www.icando100pushups.com.

Total cost to reserve both of these li’l fellas for a year thru GoDaddy: $11.30. Remember I’ve got to start my information product bizness on less money than a night out at the movies; this is the biggest expense.

It’s pretty froggin’ amazing that both of these domain names were available. “How to do 100 Pushups” is a common enough request on Google that when you type in the first part, “How to do 1…” then the very top result is “100 pushups”!

I’m kind of excited about www.howtodo100pushups.com because the domain name itself is currently autocompleted this way. Looks like it’ll be cake to make this niche product easy to find, and for cheap.

On Step Two Now…

So Shoestring Step ONE is Get OFF Your ASS. I’ve done that. Now the next Shoestring Step is Find Out The W’s. Who, Where, What, and hoW. I’m researching the sites that are currently on the search results above and finding out What they offer, hoW, and to Whom.

There are a lot of sites right now under the “How to do 100 pushups” search result that promote, for free or for fee, an exercise program that helps the user get to 100 consecutive pushups. Some of these sites charge up front for their program; others give it away free but then offer back-end merchandise like T-shirts that say, “I DID it! 100 pushups!” Others sell apps for the iPhone or Android.

I’m going to start out by offering instruction (how to do 100 pushups) for ‘free’. That is, I won’t charge anything… but in order to get the instructions, users will need to provide their contact information. I won’t share that information with anyone… I hate ‘spam’ too… but I WILL use that contact info to find out more about my ‘customers’.

Experience tells me that more money is made on the back end for information products. Therefore, I’ll be giving away my initial program for free. So how do we monetize? What I’m leaning towards is a membership site that helps people stay faithful to the program. Every single one of the sites I’ve looked at have testimonials of people getting to 100 consecutive pushups. But I don’t see a lot of interaction between the owners of the site and the users to help them along the way in a social setting.

Shoestring Step Three, Learn To Create Value, will come after I start building a list. I’ll find out what sorts of things appeal to users of the program… then sell those things to them. For example, along the way I might offer “milestone” products: A keychain or coffee mug (water bottle might be more appropriate) for reaching 40, 50, 75 pushups.

I like the iPhone app idea, but before spending the money to pay a developer to make an app, I wanna make sure my members will actually be interested in buying it. So we’ll have to wait til there’s a respectably-sized list of users for me to poll before I look further into that idea.

Work Completed and Money Spent as of 10/26/2012

Action items completed since last post:

• Got hosting for the blog at Hostgator.com (look right for another affiliate link) Cost: $7.16
• Recorded three videos of myself talking about how to get to 100 consecutive men’s style pushups
• Installed WordPress to www.howtodo100pushups.com
• …wrote THIS post to catch you up!

Looks like we’ll have to start self-funding soon, and do as much free advertising as possible to begin.

In the previous post I mentioned that I picked up two domain names for the combined price of $11.30. That, plus the $7.16 I paid HostGator for the first month of hosting, brings our total spent on this product launch to $18.46. Gettin’ CLOSE to my limit of spending only as much as a night out… I’ll keep you posted.

Okay Steppers! See you in the next installment: Setting up the site and Driving Traffic!

Keep Stepping,

Kurt