My Internet Success Story - Part 4

Finding My Niche

In the very beginning of the course, it talked about taking what you know and developing a business about this. Well, part of my obsession with sports led to a love for sports video games. I had been playing John Madden Football since it was released in 1989 on the Apple II+ computer system.

One of the big sticky points in my young marriage was my desire to play. My wife worked part time on Saturdays and I remember rushing her out of the door so that I could get my gaming fix for the week in.

I knew that if I was going to keep her from killing me, I needed to find a way to make money doing what I loved…playing video games.

I recall sitting on my couch thinking that once I got a business going, I would figure out a way to create some revenue from gaming.

Duh! I had found my niche at last. Rather than wait to get something “adult and professional” going, I decided to go after the dream instead.

Research and Writing

I began to troll the Madden forums and search for problems that people were having. I began to see some basic trends that were creating difficulties all across the board. In addition, I wanted to bring real world strategy into the game so I approached it just like a football coach.

After about 4 months of hard work, I had developed an information product that I was ready to sell. I had an ebook of about 100 pages that was ready to take the Madden world by storm.

Now, I must make a quick note here. Our current product comes in each year at over 1000 pages. It is filled with thousands of color pictures and tons of strategy. My first guide had none of that.

I had a recent customer ask me if they could buy my original 2002 guide so that they could have a “Vintage” VG Sports Guide. I said that I was afraid if they saw how bad the original was, they would never buy from me again.

But, at the time it was revolutionary. It was something people had never seen before, and it addresses their needs and problems.

Now it was time to market it. This had always been the real problem part of my business endeavors. I could build great looking websites…I just couldn’t sell anything!

Heading to Market

I plowed through the course, soaking up every word possible. I registered my domain name maddentips.com and went to work on the site.

One of the things I read in this course was about long format sales copy. This blew my 10 second rule right out of the water. What I discovered is that you have 10 seconds to capture the visitor’s attention, but if you were interesting they would stick around.

I wasn’t so sure that I really believed this, but I decided to step out on faith. It’s not like I was taking the ‘net by storm by myself anyway. The course said it wasn’t a matter of how pretty the site was, but whether the copy was good.

I decided in my stubbornness that I was going to prove them wrong. I built a butt-ugly website and filled it with pages of sales copy. I was convinced it was going to land with a thud.

I contacted a football gaming website and asked them to put up a banner about our new product. He agreed and a stuck the banner up late one night.

I set at my computer. Five minutes went by. Then ten. Then fifteen minutes after launching, I got my very first sale. This was a banner moment for the Ingley household.

Finally, after 3 years of crashed and burned Internet ventures I was a success. Okay, one sale does not a success make, but I was just so happy that SOMEBODY wanted something I was selling!!

I’d like to say that things just took of from there and I became an instant zillionaire, but not quite. We did sell over $18,000 worth of product the first year. Anybody out there mind an extra $18k added to his or her bottom line each year? I thought so.

I know went about the task of growing the business and implementing more and more strategies. I also picked up my very first staff writer. There was a guy out there named Paul who was running a site called maddenguides.com. He was giving out free strategies for guys in his Madden league.

I took a look and realized he knew a heck of a lot more about Madden than I would ever dream of knowing. We talked on the phone. He didn’t know anything about marketing or websites. He wasn’t the best grammatical writer, but he sure could break down Madden.