The Ultimate Product Launch Plan: How We Made $220,750 with a New Product

18 months after starting this website as a side project, I did one new product launch that changed everything.

That one launch produced more revenue than my entire gross income from 2008 to 2011 combined…

Honestly?

I’m still in shock at what happened.

I’ve written this post to take you behind the scenes and give you a proven product launch plan that will take all of the guesswork out of your next launch—regardless what your product is (or whether you’ve even created it yet).

First, I’ll walk you through the exact process I used to figure out what new product to create. Then I’ll give you the product launch plan, checklist and email sequence we used to generate $220,750 in revenue in a 10-day period.

By the end of this article you’ll have a complete roadmap to follow in my footsteps and crush your product launch.

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The Product Launch Strategy That Generated Over $220,000 in Sales

A few highlights to get you up to speed before jumping into the meat of the process:

So…

How did all of this come together?

I’ve mapped out the entire plan below, so depending where you are in your own product launch, you can navigate to the stage most relevant to you right now.

There were 4 stages of the launch:

Stage 1: The 4-Step Process for Coming Up with the Perfect Product Idea

Stage 2: How to Pre-Sell Your Idea Before Your New Product Launch Even Starts

Stage 3: Create a Product Your Prospects Are Guaranteed to Love

Stage 4: A Complete Walkthrough of the Actual Product Launch

Let’s look at each stage in detail.

Stage 1: The 4-Step Process for Coming Up with the Perfect Product Idea

A few months ago I revealed my process for coming up with the perfect product idea and something funny happened…

Through writing that article, I accidentally discovered that my readers REALLY wanted me to create an online course that showed them how to build an email list. The result of that discovery was the product I just launched, an online course called Get 10,000 Subscribers.

How can you discover the exact product your readers want you to create?

Follow these four steps:

Step 1: Make a list of your most popular blog posts (or podcasts or YouTube videos).

Step 2:  Make a list of your most popular content upgrades (or any lead magnets you’ve promoted over the years).

Step 3: Analyze the categories of your most popular posts and lead magnets to find the topic of highest interest.

Step 4:  Turn your most popular category into a product hypothesis (a fancy way to describe writing a few paragraphs about your product).

This is how I did it…

Here is the list of my most popular blog posts (sorted by traffic):

Here is a list of my most popular content upgrades (AKA lead magnets):

Through analyzing both of these reports I determined that there were two categories that got the majority of interest with my readers.

Topic #1: Sales

Topic #2: List Building

The majority of the interest in sales came from ONE blog post, indicating that there was interest in the topic, but there was more uniform and consistent interest in list building.

As a result, I picked list building to focus on.

Next I created a new product hypothesis, a short Google doc describing what this new product would be.

Here is a link to the new product hypothesis I wrote for my online course.

Tip: Have you not been writing or using lead magnets? Start now.

• Use this method to start writing. (Publish a new post once a week.)
• Follow this guide to start building your email list using lead magnets.
• Do both of these things for 90 days and you’ll be ready to start Stage 1.

Stage 2: How to Pre-Sell Your Idea Before Your New Product Launch Even Starts

By this point I had a good read on what my readers wanted to learn more about and I had written a rough description of what my product (an online course) would look like.

Now it was time to test my product hypothesis.

AKA: Make sure my readers would actually PAY ME MONEY before I spent months creating the product.

How did I do that?

By following these three steps: 

Step #1: Segmented off a small part of my email list that had previously expressed interest in the topic of the course.

Step #2: Sent a copy of my new product hypothesis to them and asked for their feedback.

Step #3: I immediately sent a pre-order link to anyone who answered that they would buy the course.

My goal was to get at least 10% of the focus group to pre-order the course.

If I succeeded, then I would make the product.

If not, I would pivot and either abandon the idea, pick another topic or adjust the new product hypothesis based on the feedback I received.

Let’s walk through my implementation of each step.

First, I created a small group of 50 people who had previously downloaded the lead magnet in this post. (Their download signaled that they were highly likely to be interested in my online course.)

Next, I sent an introduction email to that group of 50 people.

I didn’t want to ask these people to do something they hadn’t previously agreed to doing.

So, I sent this email to verify they wanted to participate in my project.

Of the 50 people I sent this email to, 36 responded and said they would like to participate.

Then I sent that group of 36 people this email:

This email asks them to do two things:

Thing #1: Read my new product hypothesis

Thing #2: Fill out a short survey with their opinion on the course

Here is what the survey included:

The KEY question I looked at in the responses was “Do you want to buy the course?”

Anyone who answered YES to that question got an email from me.

That email did three things:

1. Thanked them for helping me

2. Answered any questions they asked in the survey

3. Gave them an invite and link to pre-order the online course

Here is an example of one of my response emails:

I repeated this process with 3 different groups (all of which had previously expressed interest in the topic of list building by downloading a lead magnet on that topic).

A group of 50.

A group of 75.

A group of 100.

The results?

Of the 225 people included in the 3 testing rounds, 39 pre-ordered the course.

That calculates out to a 17% conversion rate (nearly double my original goal of 10%).

How can you do the same thing? 

I already know what you’re thinking: “But Bryyyyaaaannnn, I’m not creating a course! How am I supposed to pre-sell my product?”

Like I said earlier, it doesn’t matter. You can pre-sell pretty much any product the exact same way.

Just like Clay Collins did. He co-founded a company called Leadpages that became an 8-figure business with over 46,000 customers.

But before all that it was just an idea for a software product that he validated and pre-sold to 200 of his email subscribers for $200 each. That $40,000 was all he needed to hire a developer and build the product people were now begging him for.

So to recap, if you want to launch a new product risk-free, follow these steps:

Step 1: First, complete Stage 1 to identify the topic/area where your readers need the most help.

Step 2: Write your new product hypothesis. Use my template as a model to write yours.

Step 3: Create your survey. This part is pretty straightforward. Just copy mine.

Step 4: Email a small group of subscribers who have previously expressed interest in the topic your product is related to. Use my template above to help you with this.

Step 5: Send a link to pre-order your product to anyone who says they would buy it. (Also, be sure to answer all of their questions.)

Stage 3: Create a Product Your Prospects Are Guaranteed to Love

Quick recap…

So far I had identified a topic of extreme interest to my audience, written a product hypothesis and successfully tested that product by getting people to pre-order the course.

I now had the validation I needed to justify spending time and money to build the course.

Before you read further, I want you to do something…

Are you game?

Ok, good