I’ve come to know Andrew Macleod from buying some of his best WSO’s (Warrior Special Offers).  Andrew created a product called Profit Storm that I felt was one of the best products you could buy.

And since I was doing an interview series on product creation, what better person to have included in the series.  My only fear was whether or not he would agree to the interview.

I took a chance and sent Andrew an email asking if he would be interested.  I explained what I was doing and how impressed I was with his product.  The next thing I knew he agreed and I was on my way to interviewing him.

In this interview with Andrew, he explains his method of product creation, some of his background and some of his influences.  He is a super nice guy and if you ever get a chance to pick up one of his products I highly recommend it.

Here is the Interview with Andrew Macleod

Get the entire interview series at http://www.RocketsToSuccess.com

Joe: Hi this is Joe Wilson from RocketsToSuccess.com. Today I’m interviewing Andrew MacLeod, and I’m interviewing Andrew in a special interview series on marketing breakthroughs and how to make ten thousand dollars creating your own products that will rocket you to success. So, Andrew, welcome to the call.

Andrew: Oh, thank you Joe, it’s a, pleasure to be here, and I appreciate the invite.

Joe: Oh, thank you, I mean, I really appreciate your time. So, basically, the, the big premise with, our interview is, to kinda pose to you, with a lot of the products you’ve worked on, I mean, you’ve just, had a, a stellar release on warrior forums with, uh, the WSO tycoon, and you’ve had, uh, quick-bank profit storm has done really well, and, I wanna get, from your point of view, to help others, when they’re making their products, any of the, any tips pr advice you might have, um, for anyone who’s considering creating their own product.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, just off the top, just the first couple of things that come to mind when you mention that are, number one, proof, and number two, you know, that anything that you do, with respect to product creation should be market-driven, at least initially. And so I guess, I’ll, I’ll explain those two points just a little bit. The first is, is proof. And I think that, um, especially when it comes to creating a product on the warrior forum, but, but also just generally. Um, any kind of product that you might want to create is going to sell, you know, exponentially better , and, is going to, you know, just generally be more persuasive in terms of getting people to, step forward, raise their hand and say, I want this, if you can prove that, you know, it does what you say it does, and, there’s, there are a lot of products out there that don’t actually do that, and, um, in terms of actually you know, the difference between like, you know, a single and a home-run, really I think is, is a very strong proof element, the ability to show people that, when I say that um, you know, I’ve made sixteen thousand dollars in five months with WSO’s, that I, I can have a video and a screen shot showing people that, exactly, that I have, I have done exactly that , and that, therefore , there’s a reason to believe that I can show them how to do that as well. And so, that proof element, I think, is a very large part of any product success, as for the second point, you know, it’s something that they definitely, I think, when they, when people get into product creation, or get into marketing in general, they make the mistake of, of trying to be product-based first, before they’re market-based, and, you know, many people smarter than me have said this many times over, so at the risk of sounding, like uh, a bit of a broken record, you just, you have to focus on the market first. And and, get inside the market’s head, understand what the market wants, um, understand the sort of, they way that they talk to one another, the jargon that they use, and when you have a bit of a keen understanding of that market, um, you’re in a much better position to basically listen to what they want and then give them what they want. And so. If you’re doing that, and providing proof, you really have, the key base ingredients for a home run in terms of product, creation and um, product release.

Joe: I think you said in one of your products, and I can’t remember whether it was WSO tycoon or quick bank profit storm, where, you’re saying that, one of the things when you’re creating, or when you’re going after a niche, is to not, what was it, not go after a niche that you feel like, but go after a niche that has a demand.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. There’s, one of the, one of the best sorta, marketing parables that I can, I can, think of in, relation to that is, uh, they classic Gary Halbert question that he posed in, one, in one of his newsletters where he said, if I was, if you and I were competing as hamburger stand vendors, and we were going to set up shop up right next to each other, and I was to give you any advantage that you wanted. You could have, the, bet-superior quality of meat, better advertising, you could have, you know, more condiments, you could have, you know, all of these different benefits, you could have as many of them as you wanted, and as long as I had only one, I would beat you, hands down, every single time. And, at the end of the newsletter, he revealed that the one benefit that he would require is a starving crowd. And, it’s really, a, it’s, there’s a, you know, there’s some very powerful truth to that. if you, you know, all the other, you know, benefits that he’s suggesting in that parable that other people might want to ask for, you know, the superior meat, or the better advertising or whatever, that’s all, that’s all in the, you know, ‘what product do I feel like’ making’ range. The starving crowd is really starting with the, there’s a demand for this, and I’m, I’m in a position to serve that demand. And when you do it that way, which is I guess what I meant initially by saying ‘market-driven’, you listen carefully to what the market wants and then, you respond to that by giving them, what they’re demanding , it’s very hard to go wrong. Usually you go wrong when you do it the other way. (laughs) and I can speak to personal experience about that myself too.

Joe: (laughs) I think I can too. But, I guess when, someone’s going through this, you know, the biggest, I guess, initial fear that most people have, is that, well, I don’t, I don’t, I can’t speak to, I have a starving audience but I can’t feed them, you know, so to speak, because I don’t, I don’t have what they, what they’re wanting. What would have, what could you say to that?

Andrew: Well, uh, I would say two things. Number one, I’ll just put this out there quickly, it’s always better, it’s always better, if possible, if you could be the person that has the experience. and the best way to do that is to go out, and, you know, if you’re in this for the long haul, to go out there and to try different methods, and to add your own twists to them, and find out what works for you, find out what doesn’t, put together something that works for you , and , you’re in a, a place of unique power, because now you’ve got something that you’ve created for you, that you’ve got proof, that you can replicate the results, you’ve got all the elements. Now if that’s not, an option for whatever reason, there are other avenues that you, that you could use to, to fulfill the need of the starving crowd, so to speak. One of which would be, um, you could be the, you know, the, sort of like the researcher than the, you know, there’s more than one way to be an expert, I guess is, I guess is where I’m going here. And, if you want, you can compile information from other people. So, for example, this interview series is, is a perfect example of saying, take the experience of a number of different people and, funnel it all into one course, or, or one project ,right? There’s a perfect example of how you can, how you can take something, where you can, leverage the, the benefits of other people’s experience. There’s other ways to do that as well. You could team up, with, uh you know, you could be the product creation end and another person could be the experience end, and as long as you have the experience, that there is experience within your product or whatever that can serve the market, you’re going to be just fine. So, whether that’s teaming with a another warrior on a warrior forum, whether that’s teaming up with, uh, somebody on, like, some kind of outsourcing site, like, you know, like o-desk, or guru, or elance, or something like that . So maybe you need, uh, an SEO expert because, you know, you’ve got this process but, you know, you need something to help you with; it. You know, teaming up with somebody on elance or guru is a perfectly acceptable way to do that as well. So, uh I would say that teaming up with someone on warrior, or uh, or, even compiling, like, uh, something similar to what you’re doing here, with , uh, number of experts sort of all, giving their advice into, uh one single product, those are great ways to go.

Joe: Awesome. Yeah, and I would agree, I mean, you know, the matter, and, I guess, to add to that , I know, there’s been a lot of times where I’ve written, personally written an e-book or something, that, uh, that I knew, I knew, the subject matter, but it didn’t sell (laughs) nobody wanted it.. and, you know, whether, and you know, there’s a number of reasons why that could be, and it could be just, I mean, the thing is, I guess, the biggest thing is just to be, getting out there and doing something, right?

Andrew: Oh, absolutely. You know, you miss one hundred percent of the shots you didn’t take right? if you’re not, if you’re not trying, and, we’ve all, we’ve all been there at some point , so it’s not, it’s not like any of us are so different that we’ve never been in that position,

Joe: Right.

Andrew: Certainly, I’ve been there too. But, if you’re not, if you’re not getting out there and trying stuff, you’re not learning. And if you’re not, uh, it was kinda like a, you know, the principle of a missile or a torpedo, it doesn’t reach its target by a straight line, it kinda weaves has it makes minor, minute adjustments on the way to its target. That’s the way, that learning almost anything is, really, on your way to success, right? You have to make little adjustments, and the way you make those adjustments is by, trying something, and getting the results back, and whether it works or it doesn’t work, you can, make little adjustments, and, move towards success.

Joe: Till you finally get there, yeah. So, what was, I guess, if you remember, what was one of your first products that you ever, created?

Andrew: Um, well, really, my, I mean, other than selling lemonade when I was five (laughs) Pretty sure that doesn’t count. My first real, my first real crack at it, to be perfect honest with you, was uh, profit storm.

Joe: Yeah?

Andrew: Which maybe isn’t, isn’t a great story to tell if you want to talk about making adjustments towards success, but in some ways it is. There’s a couple of lessons I think from profit storm that could definitely benefit people. I took a lot of the lessons in terms making profit storm, I had no idea where to start, so I just sorta made up my own way of doing it, and it, it turned out that it worked out pretty well. But the ideas that I did borrow from other people, I actually got, largely, from uh, from, Gee Kowisocky and his book, the “Art of the Start”, and he was actually, a, he was a Macintosh Apple guy, he was around, he worked with, worked with Apple when they were developing their first computers and he had all these different, you know, ideas, that he suggested. And one of them was that, that always stuck with me, was that the product does not have to be perfect. The important thing is that you release it and then you make improvements to it. Because getting it out there is the most important thing. and if you, if you, you don’t get it out there – excuse me – quickly enough, you’re in a position where, you know, someone else can come along and get their product out there, and, again, like, that a lot of people , you know, they hold back and they’re waiting for perfection, you know, like, ooh, I don’t know, I don’t think it’s quite right quite right, that kind of a feeling, the reality is that you can just get it out there and make adjustments as you go, and, certainly that was the case with profit storm. When, when I first released it I, I said to myself, well, how would I want, how would I want to learn this? Now that I have this system that, for affiliate marketing, that’s making me money, how would I want to learn this? So I said, well, you know, everything out there, that I’ve picked up is is, has been an e-book. And it’s not, the best learning format, right? If I could make videos that would be really good. And, the other thing that I, you know, the audio quality is not very good on a lot of video products it’s, you know, it’s difficult to hear, or whatever. So, I, when I first made it I actually went down to a local music shop in Canada, (), I don’t know if they have that in the states or not,

Joe: Not that I’ve seen.

Andrew: But, I’m sure that there is an equivalent, sort of a company. But, I rented a, rented a studio, you know, USB microphone, for, twenty dollars for a month (laughs) and, and it makes, the quality in audio, it makes, I think it makes all the difference in the world really. It makes it easier to listen to, easier to, you know, pick up on and all that kind of stuff. and I just worked on the videos, putting in sorta of, straightforward or logical format as I could and, you know, continued to, I’ve cont’d to improve and upgrade the course, over time so, you know, the original course, is not nearly as good as the course as it stands today , and, maybe that’s, maybe there’s something listeners can take away from that, it’s just, it’s, it is ok to release something and then to improve it over time. And I think that my customers have really appreciated that, and I think that other people’s will, as well.

Joe: Yeah, I was, I know when I, when I opened up your product and I started taking a look at it, I was like, oh wow, I was really pleasantly surprised to find that there was more there, than what I was expecting and so you, there was more value their than what I had anticipated and that just really made me, really glad about my purchase, you know, when I did make it.

Andrew: Yeah, and I think, uh, I think that’s been my general sort of, my general branding or something. I think, we don’t really talk a whole lot about branding when it comes to WSO on the warrior forum, but at the end of the day, there is, a little bit of, um, there are a few things to be said about branding and I guess the biggest one is that, when you release a product as a WSO or any product, you are branding yourself. And it’s very important to be conscious about, your personal brand promise to your customers and whether or not you’re delivering on that. So, sorta figuring out what it is, in themes of the product that you stand for stand for and, whether or not, deliver on that. And one of the, one of the ones that I’ve tried to go for is, um, you know, excellent value at a great price, and, and sorta delivering that feeling, that when people get that product they’re very happy with, with what they bought, for what they paid. Um.

Joe: Yeah, I would, I would agree. Especially on warrior forums because, you know, unfortunately the way, the economy of the warrior forums goes, you tend to, um, you almost have to, people sell their souls out there, sometimes, you know, in order to get that brand recognition and to get a little notoriety.

Andrew: Hm-hmm, yeah, absolutely. And, it’s just, it’s one of those ways you can set yourself apart. I mean, as wonderful a forum as warrior forum is, and it certainly is a valued asset for myself and many many other people, there’s good stuff and there’s bad stuff, right? There’s um, products that deliver, and there’s products that are, you know, a little, dubious, in nature.

Joe: Yeah.

Andrew: And the reality is that, that’s life, I mean, you’ll find that, you’ll find that range almost anywhere you go in life. But it’s very important that when there’re, when there are good products and not so good products, that you, find a way to make sure that people understand that you’re one of the good guys, you know. So, and um, I talk a little more bit about that in in WSO tycoon as you know, just, managing your, moderating your product threads in a friendly, patient, compassionate way, and making sure that you’re let people know that you’re a real person, and um, you’re not there to, you know, mess anybody about, you’re there to, be honest and upright with them at all times. And, and that goes a long way.

Joe: Absolutely. Yeah, it sure does. And it comes through, too, so easily, you know, people can, see through you, if you’re being fake in some way, you know.

Andrew: Yeah, definitely, I think, I think a lot of people make that mistake, or at least I-I’ve seen a couple of people make that mistake and I’m not sure that they’re aware of, that they’re making it. when they release a video with, you know trying to sell a product, or they, they sell the product a certain way and when you actually open and you hear them talking and there’s a like a total difference between like, the tone in the fail thread, and then the tone in the way they actually talk to you in the video. (laughs) Like, the fail thread talks to you like, they’re, you know your best friend, and then you actually open the video and it’s like, they’re talking to you like they think you’re a moron or something, right? And it’s kinda like, this is, this is sorta interesting

Joe: Yeah.

Andrew: You know, this individual has a little bit of a tone in their voice as they’re sorta, teaching you, something, which is kind of a, question mark. But, ah, I digress. I’m pretty, pretty famous for being all over the map when it comes to, you know, thinking on my feet here. (laughs) hopefully that’s not, I’m not talking this interview too far off.

Joe: (laughs) No, no, trust me , yeah, we, we’ve talked, in some of these other interviews , we’ve went all the way out into affiliate marketing, you know, and digressed and had to come all the way back to product creation, so that’s, not a problem. So -

Andrew: Oh good, we’re relativity on track, that’s excellent.

Joe: Yeah, we, relativity on topic a bit, yeah. So, with your microphone and some of the stuff that your using today obviously you’re using () to do a lot of your product creation and you’ve, you know, you’re using, going with an audio technica microphone still, or you, have you moved to a headset?

Andrew: That’s correct, yeah

Joe: Yeah?

Andrew: No, I still, what I ended up purchasing the audio-technica microphone and then I purchased a boom stand as well , which is just a little swing stand that, you know, sits beside the, computer table and I can, just talk into it, kinda like a, radio host, my, but -

Joe: You lay your videos first, you do your videos first and then you come back over and narrate em, right?

Andrew: That’s correct. Now I, some people might, might not want to do it that way. I just find, personally, that, I’m one of those guys that has a hard time walking and chewing gum at the same time I guess or something (laughs) I make, when I’m actually doing the videos , when I’m, writing text down or I’m actually going through a process where I’m just doing, the think, I need to focus on that , and then, I can’t actually talk about that while I’m doing, it’s kinda difficult, the audio quality in terms of the information you get would be, would be not very good. So, I go back over, afterwards, and I, I do the narration, just so that I can add as much value as I can by focusing on what I’m saying.

Joe: Yeah.

Andrew: I find it helps me, anyways.

Joe: Yeah, I know, and it comes across really well. You know. There was a couple of times were like, you had, you had, because you had so much information in the narration, a lot of times, like, the video would be over but you’re still talking and I’m like, ‘wait a minute did I miss something? What am I doing?’ So I’d rewind and then go back. But, no, it’s just the way, it was just the way, yeah, the video portion was done, and then you still had all this audio that you were still, still explaining, which is, which is, I’m not complaining in any way. I thought it was, great -

Andrew: Yeah, no, it’s just what I said, when I focus on one at a time I find that I can give the maximum value, and I think it was you that brought up, actually brought up the point that the only thing that was missing was to have the audios as a separate file that you could listen to in some other format. So that’s actually, that’s actually a great suggestion, and, I’m actually going to get on that and, you know, put, a like, a little audio section in there with just the audios, so -

Joe: Oh cool, well, I’m glad, I’m glad that was helpful. Yeah, cause I was, when I went through it, I was listening to them and, and, you know, multi-tasking as we always do. And, you know, I, I still have a day job , so every morning I get up, and I I take the morning commute, in, into the city, and, and so I have, a half-hour, forty minutes or so , you know, that I’m just sitting there, and I really can’t stand the the, morning DJ babble, you know.

Andrew: Oh yeah, yeah, gosh, those guys are awful, aren’t they? it doesn’t matter what city you’re in, they always get, you know, three or four knuckleheads on there to just, flapping their gums away about something. And it’s, it’s like, you sorta feel like you’re losing your brain a little bit as you listen to them talking (laughs).

Joe: Yeah, exactly, and and it’s, yeah, yeah, enough, yeah, exactly. So yeah, and that’s really good to know that, that we can look forward to seeing some, audio formats, from you, on those portions, cause I think that would be, really helpful.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. No I, appreciated the suggestion, I think it’ll definitely, make it more helpful of people, so that’s great.

Joe: Well, Andrew, do you have, let’s see, if you, if you have, if you have, a tip, or one, one shining piece of advice, so to speak, you know, that you would, or a warning or something, that you would give to somebody who, they’re, they’re starting to create their own project, they’re wanting to create their own project, they’ve been on the fence, and, would there be one, if you were like a, big brother to somebody to say, you know, ok, if you’re going to do this, I want you to do it this way, or, do you have any advice for somebody, one, one good tip for them?

Andrew: Um, my, probably my one good tip would be, when you’re first starting out the biggest mistake that you’re going to make is thinking that you have to make something new that hasn’t been made before. And it’s totally wrong, it’s, it’s not true at all. But we, live in a society and a culture that celebrates, we celebrate the innovators while, while sorta being slightly in denial about the reality of the, toil and frustration that is innovation. And, you know, everyone looks at someone like Steve Jobs, for example, and says like , you know, when he comes out with something new, like, the iPod or the iPad , I mean, what a great success, and isn’t this brilliant, and everything else , but, the reality is that, when the iPad, you know, came out, and they’ve made, it sold, very very well, but, the people that are going to make better margins are, blackberry, and other competitors , now that they already know, that there’s a hot market for the iPad, they’re going to come in with their product, which is going to cost them less to research, less to create, less to put together and they’re going to make better margins, and I guess, so, that’s a little bit of a (laughs) digression, but, so my -

Joe: No, that’s, those, that’s great, great analogy, yeah.

Andrew: My, my, what I would say to somebody, sorta like big brother, would be, you’re trying to shoot fish in a barrel here. not trying to do something that’s never been done , something that’s untested and unproven, because , even though, there is this overwhelming feeling like, that’s what you’re supposed to do, the reality is that innovators, they they fail far more often than they succeed, and the number two competitor in the market, the person that, after the innovator has actually created something, that the market wants, it’s the second guy in, the number two guy in, that creates something similar, but, with a slightly different marketing position, that gets all of the money, most of the time. So, so go after the markets that have been proven to buy things. If you’re going to make a product, you don’t have to say, you don’t have to pace around in circles going ‘what can I make that hasn’t been made before?’ because if it’s not already out there, that’s a war-danger sign, not a good sign. So, you want to look for something that has already sold, really well, at least in terms of general, product category, and then, in terms, inside that category, once you’ve identified , ok, like, I know that courses on affiliate marketing, teaching people about click bank , or teaching people about CPA have already sold really well. So, what can, what can I do in that product niche, where I can add some value, do something, you know, a little bit innovative, in terms of maybe a new twist on it, an new way of doing it, a simpler way of getting the traffic, you know, just, little innovations, in an already profitable market, that would be my, main suggestion.

Joe: So don’t be afraid of the competition, either.

Andrew: No.

Joe: Or think, that, well just because this is a, hot market, everybody’s in there, don’t make any assumptions, like that.

Andrew: Yeah, there’s always room for one more. Don’t ever be afraid of competition. Competition is how you know you’re that, you’re probably digging in the right spot. So I guess, that would be, that would be, my, my biggest tip, cause I, I would say probably the number one, number cause of failure, in terms of products, is just that they, there’s a lot of pressure, self-imposed pressure to try, to try and make something that’s never been made before, and, that’s just not the way that, not the way that it usually works out the best, in most cases.

Joe: Awesome. So I guess, that brings us around to, what are you working on today? What’s going on with, with you Andrew right now? What’s, what’s your, plan, for the near future, I know you just came out with WSO tycoons, so you’re probably, still, kinda working with that, but I’d be interested to know where you’re at today?

Andrew: Well, well, we start with the () of today, I, I’ve been, a full time internet marketer and and marketing consultant, here for, over a year now, so, I woke up, about an hour and a half ago.

Joe: Wow, sweet. That’s awesome.

Andrew: Which is, I don’t know. I’ve always been more of a, night-hawk , kind of a person, like waking up early, I’ve had jobs where I’ve had to wake up extremely early and it was never, it was never something that improved my performance in any regard (laughs). So.

Joe: Well I tell you, your story of the, when you were working on the oil rig, that was, I was, that’s actually a really good story that you, it’s part of your copy, ah, profit storm, I thought that was interesting, I mean, how you came from -

Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I’ve, it was not exactly the most fun you could ever have, but certainly a part of my life and a part of my history, yeah, too, at one point, just when, the, just just before the financial crisis started crumbling around everybody, but I was, I had been working on an oil rig for some time to, to sorta make ends meet. God, that’s not a lot of fun.

Joe: Yeah.

Andrew: It does motivate you though to find alternative options, I’ll tell you that. (laughs)

Joe: (laughs) Yeah, I would think so, yeah. Cause just reading it I was like, ‘oh my god,’ I was, no matter how bad my day is, I just, that one day on a rig just sound like it’s gotta be the worst , worst-

Andrew: Yeah, it’s absolutely brutal. And I wasn’t, I wasn’t even like a, quote-on-quote skilled, you know labor , I’m one of those, so I wasn’t a drill hand, or a motor hand, or a derrick hand, I was the, the floor hand, which is colloquially known as the rig-pig , which is the guy who stands at the bottom of the grate and gets covered in oil while he, does every filthy job imaginable, there are, quite a few filthy jobs on an oil rig, I can tell you.

Joe: Ah, gosh. But, back to-

Andrew: Yeah, I guess – oh sorry, go ahead.

Joe: No, I was just, gonna say, I was living in Texas for a while, and there’s a lot of people, a lot of friends of mine, yeah, they would get jobs on rigs, and, and various different, you know, oil projects and, every single one of them never had a good thing to say.

Andrew: Well, yeah, I mean, you make, you make decent money but it’s not, you know, it it took me a long time to figure this out, probably longer than it should have but it’s not about how much money you make, it really is about the money that you make, and then, comparing it to, you know, how you make it, in terms of, you know, the quality of life, it’s providing you with. Like if you, you could make three hundred thousand a year, but if you, like, work, eighty hours a week, like, your quality of life is pretty much, it’s questionable right? It’s very questionable. And so, there has to be that, at least for me I found that, there has to be that balance between like, making money, but also making it in a way that, you wake up and you actually enjoy life. You know, you don’t, cursing the skies every day, so (laughs).

Joe: (laughs)

Andrew: Yeah, back to, back to sorta what I’m doing, these days. I’m still, still just handling, WSO tycoon which is, you know, sold very well, so I’m, I’ve taken on a couple of, couple of copywriting projects for a few warriors that have requested that I write, re-write their, copy write for them, and, other than that, I am looking, considering, opening up my copywriting services to, members, like anybody in the forum as a separate, you know, service,

Joe: Right.

Andrew: Although I’m, I’m sorta weighing, the, the pros and cons of like, the opportunity to continue, um, improving my copy by, you know, getting the extra contracts with, with the time and intensity of writing copy, which is, it’s very, it’s reasonably time intensive, and, in some ways, that goes slightly counter to the, the goals of the IM lifestyle (laughs) so. and, you know, that’s actually that’s one of the reasons that, that I don’t offer, you know, a lot of guys offer a one-on-one coaching and all that kind of stuff, and then they try and stuff as many people in as they can, and I had, I had one customer ask me ‘why, why don’t you offer, one-on-one coaching’? I said, well, you know, the thing about one-on-one coaching is that, you know, it’s, there’s a set time, and a set schedule to it, so, you know, it’s, if you get, a reasonable number of people involved with your coaching, it sorta becomes a real job, and, that’s not really, you know one of the benefits , definitely, for me, is to be able to make money and, also, at the same time, have free time, I think, free time is like, and, disposable time, or, or, discretionary time. And is, one of the huge benefit and draws to, internet marketing, so. I like to keep mine as free as possible, (laughs), so I can sleep in, until the crack of noon.

Joe: Yeah, right?

Andrew: But, yeah.

Joe: Time is, time is like, our, that’s our most valuable asset, if you think about it, you know?

Andrew: Yeah, certainly, not everyone has come to that, you know, experience or realization yet, but, certain, certainly I’m there, and, a number of other people are as well. You only have to work a few jobs that you really hate before you realize how important time is, and how time can slow down to second by second when you’re doing something really unpleasant. So, yeah, definitely. but yeah, in terms of what else, what else is on, on the horizon here, um, at this point, not too much , just sorta, humming along smoothly, thinking about, I’m thinking about maybe creating a membership, sort of a thing, where, I, I deliver basically the same WSO quality of products and things every month but to, you know, a group of subscribers, so that, I sorta stop, advertising things publicly on the warrior forum, that’s sorta been an idea, that’s… you know, again, all of these, these things that I come up with, like the ideas that I come up with, a lot of them have to do with, you know, peo- customers or other warriors, emailing me or private messaging me and requesting these things. I get enough requests and it starts to make sense all of a sudden. So, it’s all about, what I said before, listening to what the market wants. Like when I get ten warriors that say, hey, I really like your copy, would you like to write some copy for me. It sorta occurs to me at that point, after I get beaten over the head with it, that, this might be a good idea to offer. So I think, yeah, that’s pretty much all that’s, all that’s going on right now. I have a couple of, little fun projects that I’m working on, one of which, one of which is an offline marketing, sort of a project. I, I have to admit, I’m -

Joe: A lot, a lot of people are getting into offline marketing big-time. I mean, I guess there’s a big demand for it right now. Cause I know, it’s huge, on warrior forum.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s, it’s become a very power product niche on market on warrior forum for sure, and, I think the reason why people want to get into it is pretty, pretty clear, there’s a huge market for it. The market is relatively ignorant of the processes or the process that, that drive SEO and web marketing and stuff like that. So, anytime that you have, you know, intangible value on the table you’re, you’re in a position to, within reason, name your price, which makes offline marketing very attractive. Certainly it’s, it’s not something that I’m drawing , you know, any, significant amount of income from at this point, I’m literally, I like playing around with it, so I’ve, I’ve almost started a couple of different offline marketing things but, that’s, just one of those things, I think everybody has something they like to tinker with,

Joe: Sure.

Andrew: And, even though I’ve got a couple of things that are working for me, I’ve just been tinker around with offline marketing so, whatever, whatever turns into something, I, the warrior forum will be sure to know, I’m sure.

Joe: Right. Well that, and that’s the great thing about, being at a, a position where you’re full time and, you’ve got, you’ve got your, your revenue streams that are coming into your life, and you’ve got the time to now, sit back and go, ok, now what do I want to do, what do I want to work on. What do I want to do, you know, in order to kinda, make my life better, or to, generate more income, or whatever it is you may want to have as a goal.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely , you get to start, you get to start, asking really neat questions, that, that give you, inspiration for life, and I think that that, coming from a person that, at several periods in my life, I have not had a lot of inspiration. You know, based on what I had to do to make money. the oil rig being one of those (laughs) I, I absolutely appreciate that ability for sure. So you get to ask yourself really neat questions when all of a sudden it’s, you know, keeping a roof over your head and all that stuff is no longer, is no longer a stressor. You get to sit, ask questions like, what can I do with what I’m doing right now to leverage it even more, so that, every time I work for an hour, this process or this system or this method, it works for twenty hors, or forty hours, or, what can I do to leverage, everything I’m doing as much as possible, so that, you know, so that it not only continues to be effective, it increases the amount of free time that I have to, that I have at my, discretion. Which is, it’s a really neat sort of question because any of the answers that you come up with are gonna sorta lead you in that direction of more free time, more freedom les, less work, more fun, which is, it’s awesome, right?

Joe: Yeah, definitely. Well Andrew, thank you, so much for being on the call, and, sharing all your experiences I mean, the, WSO tycoon , I think, it was a first, I mean, Mike Lance, handing out WSO pro license, was, was amazing. And I think (laugh)

Andrew: Yeah, I was thrilled that he decided to do that, it was very generous of him, and, it was a good fit, really I think, because the WSO tycoon takes you through, you know, how to become very proficient with WSO pro, so I think it’s, sorta like the perfect pairing to actually have the license go with it, but yeah, that was awesome, I was very thrilled that he decided to do that.

Joe: Yeah, that was, and I have to, I have to be honest cause I saw, I saw, you know, you have WSO’s of the day come by, all the time, and, you see them and you’re like, ok, ok, I don’t, I’m not there, it’s a bright shiny object, I can’t, I gotta ignore it, I have to move on.

Andrew: (laughs) Totally, totally, cause there’s always, well, I mean, it’s the marketing, right? they’re always positioned in that way, Mike is very good with his headlines in terms of, being able to write, you know, a hundred characters or less that make you just have to click through to find out what it’s all about, he’s he’s very good at it, for sure. (laughs)

Joe: Yeah. But yeah, so, yeah, and so, when I saw, when I saw, he’s over, he’s over here, just like, just, blowing away, and, giving it away, I’m like, ok, alright, hold on, I have to stop what I’m doing, and, and this is a bright shiny object I need to check out, and I’m really glad I did, I really am. W’s – getting more familiar with WSO’s is always been something that’s been on my to do list of what I wanted to do , but, you always kinda like, you get excited about your own project and you just kinda throw it out there, and slap it up against the wall and see if it sticks, you know.

Andrew: Yeah.

Joe: And most of the time it doesn’t. But anyway. Andrew, oh, thank you so much, it’s been great to have you on the call, and, we look forward to, seeing more, great stuff from you, and, I know that the listeners have really had a good time here, with this interview.

Andrew: Oh thanks, thank you again for the invite, I really appreciate it, and, hopefully my, my rambling all over the place, has, yeah, given your listeners something, to, that will hopefully help them move forward in taking that next step towards, product creation and success.

Joe: Absolutely, thanks.

No related posts.

Next in my series of Interviews is Wade Wells.  I have to be honest, I never met Wade and I’ve never seen a picture of Wade.  But I love the software and information product Wade creates.

For those who don’t know, Wade Wells is the creator of phpBay Pro, affiliate software for displaying eBay product listings on your website or blog.  phpBay Pro was one of the first ways I was able to make money online.

Wade is a very private person which is why I was so extremely happy when agreed to be interviewed for this series.

Wade provides some great insight into what it’s like to create and support your own piece of software.

Here is my Interview with Wade Wells

Get the entire interview series at http://www.RocketsToSuccess.com

Joe: Hi! This is Joe Wilson from RocketstoSuccess.com. Today I’m happy to have the opportunity to interview Wade Wells, the creator of some of the most well known affiliate software for WordPress, phpBay, and phpZon. I’m interviewing Wade in this special interview series on marketing breakthroughs and how to make $10,000 creating your own products that will rocket you to success. So, welcome to the call Wade!

Wade: Hey! Thanks Joe! I appreciate it!

Joe: Not a problem. And thank you very much for your time and being here. I’m sure you have a busy time going on with all the Amazon changes right now.

Wade: Definitely. Lots of great things going on.

Joe: Yeah, yeah, there really is. So, I guess one of the things that this interview series is about is about product creation, and I just wanted to ask you, if you were to start over from scratch…and this is for folks who are listening who are maybe considering creating their own products…what words of advice would you have for anybody whose thinking about creating their own product?

Wade: I would say focus on products that are going to help other people…something that you could use yourself…where you could go in and kind of create it to your standards, to your liking…and once you’ve got it to a point where you think it’s worth marketing or putting out there, try to get on a really busy forum like SitePoint or Digital Point or something like that, and just start talking about it and making people aware of the product.

Joe: Ok. What would… I guess…when somebody says they’re going to start with a new product, what do you think…what would be the best…say if they’re brand new…do you think starting with a basic ebook or info product would be the best way to start with and then just kind of work up from there?

Wade: You know it really kind of depends on the level of experience that the developer has. In my case I had some experience with programming for many years and I was just getting up to speed with php, so I first started with that perspective. Anything that you have or any special skill that you have that’s going to save people time and money, then do something that’s beneficial to them. That would work really well.

Joe: So you definitely had a…and I think I’ve read that before…you were a developer in a past life and then kind of carried that forward to what you’re doing with phpBay.

Wade: I did. I’ve been developing software in various forms and various languages since about 1985. So I was moving off of using dellfy at the time for windows desktop application and moving into php. So, it definitely helped.

Joe: Did you find that making a move like that…because I’ve played with php. It seems like a fairly, fairly…well, from a coding standpoint…a fairly easy coding or scripting language to pick up.

Wade: I think so. You know, it definitely took some time. Basically, the way I look at things from a programming standpoint, is I understand that I want to do something and you just start looking up…maybe on the web…how do you want to do that?  And that’s how I started converting over to…from Dellfy from a PASCAL based-type scripting language over into a php…which a lot of people say is more like C…and just focusing and looking at code examples and seeing “ok I need to do this…” and just start doing little pieces one at a time until you start building up, and you have something you can work with.

Joe: Let me back up a little bit. What was the first product you ever created? Was it phpBay?

Wade: No. I had created…you know back in the mid 90’s and really at the late 80’s…well, it would be the early 90’s, I worked for a software company called Authorware and it was a small company that many people have probably never heard of, and it ultimately went on to become MacroMedia. Since then MacroMedia has been bought by Adobe, so it really went from a really small company in Minnesota, to a major worldwide company. But I programmed in that software language for 12 years. Back in the mid 90’s, a friend of mine and I started a multimedia company, and we developed a set of templates for Authorware that would allow training developers to go in and really just set up a few on/off type switches within the template so you say “I want this on and I want this off and I want it to look like this and I want it to do this…” Lots of options there and the idea was to make it as simple as possible for other developers who may not be experienced with the product to go in and be able to start developing training.

So, we did that and sent it out, but that was never really the focus of our business. We were consultants back then for American Airlines, for Pacific Bell, Delta Airlines… we did a lot of work around the country. So, that was sort of our…we called it our Dr. Pepper money. But you know products like that, what we were doing, would stock the refrigerator with Dr. Pepper….those late night work sessions.

Joe: Yeah….So, how did that transition? How did you move into…I guess what’s now called internet marketing…going from that to where you’re at today?

Wade:  Well, the transition from there really sort of happened after….you know we’re developing training for big companies. They may have employees that will sit down and take computer based training for a specific skill within the company, and that frees up their instruction, their classroom time, instructor time, scheduling and stuff like that. So that was the big focus of what I’ve been doing for about 12 yrs.  And after 9/11 hit, anytime the economy takes a sharp turn or there’s a major presidential change or anything like that, companies get a little wary of what’s going to happen with their money and they tighten their budgets up, and the first thing they tighten up….you know training is a luxury in big industry, and that’s the first thing that they cut. And so, unfortunately we just couldn’t survive. You know there’s a whole lot of people who are in the same industry we were in that could not tough it out after that. So, I kind of went off on my own and I developed…that’s when I started picking up Dellfy and I thought I’d do some Windows application work and developing some plug-ins for Authorware and Macromedia Director, and I got to the point where I thought “If I’m selling products, and I’m selling something online, that’s a whole lot better than working for somebody else or doing something service oriented…like web design.” I was doing web design too, and I absolutely hated that because nobody ever wanted to pay you what a website was worth. So, I finally just got to the point where I said, “I’m gonna start focusing on web products and things that people can use…there’s got to be a market for it.” I just set out and immersed myself in the technologies, and…you know… here we are.

Joe: That’s great, that’s good to know. And I hear you, I’ve done the same thing. I’ve done a little web design, and of course, you know, it’s hard when you’re working with somebody. They’ll tell you a concept of what they think they want, and you do a design or a draft…or maybe you give them several to kind of choose from…and then you take it from there. But then it’s always a little tweak here, a little tweak there, and then you end up spending so much time….I know at least in my experience, you end up spending a lot more time than the job was originally…you know scope creep kind of kicks in…and then you spend more time than you planned on it.

Wade: Right. You get to the point where the customers want….I call it a marriage. They’re afraid to let go. They don’t want to let go of you or end the contract or what have you. I’ve experienced that a lot as well.

Joe: Yeah, definitely. I know what you’re talking about it. For me, you know back when the dot com bubble burst was a big one…things were going really big. I’m in technology too. Right now I work on Cisco routers during the day, and during the dot com period there was a lot of stuff going on and…a lot of start ups, a lot of work…and then just “poof” it was gone, and everybody was out of work.  And that was kind of what got me to just start looking at ways to not be dependent on an employer. You know, having multiple streams of income or what have you.

Anyway, so when the idea to first create, and when you started getting into…and correct me if I’m wrong…when you started getting into internet and web products, what made you decide to do something with ebay?

Wade: Back in 2004-2005…I guess it was around 2005…I had joined on Digital Point forums, and met some other guys that we had similar interests and we kind of became really good friends there, and there were things that we wanted to talk about…specifically with internet marketing and search engine optimization…but we wanted to do it amongst ourselves, and we started a little group off of that forum…and that was Will Spencer. Will Spencer is a phenomenal marketing guy. If you ever get a chance or an opportunity to interview him, I would definitely look him up. He’s an amazing businessman. I have just the greatest respect for him. So, it’s Will Spencer, another guy named Jeremy Craig, and another gentleman name Hinny. We all just got together on a forum and said, look, here’s all of our strengths. My strength was emerging as coding, but Will had just a tremendous business savvy about him, and of course he understood how search engines worked, and he understands search engine optimization. Jeremy had skills in affiliate marketing and how we could do things together to make something better there. Hinney was a phenomenal businessman there too, and he shared his part…and of course Craig was just an amazing…he did search engine optimization for a living. So we had all of these backgrounds in there with affiliate marketing, search engine optimization, and I was kind of doing the programming. Well, I didn’t have their skills, they didn’t have my skills, so we put everything out on the table and we said “well, we’re going to start off with Amazon and really hit it hard and see if we can start making some money there”.  And we worked with an existing Amazon script that I modified with recommendations coming from the other guys on what we could do in terms of SEO, in terms of how search engines are going to see things from an affiliate marketing perspective, and how customers are going to see these pages when they come up. And we just started focusing on that and it really worked out good. I would come up with the script and the guys would test it out and say “ok, here’s what I’m finding….here’s what I’m doing here…” and we all started putting websites out there, and we all made a pretty penny using Amazon.

Joe: So you started with Amazon first then?

Wade: I did, definitely. And we had gotten to that point with Amazon…right during that time frame is when Google came out with what’s known today as  “the duplicate content penalty”. We could get up into Yahoo, and sometimes Google, search results and like during the holidays we were just cleaning up and doing good. Not doing anything bad or anything illegal, just…we had our Amazon affiliate sites out there and we put all of our knowledge together, and tweaked some of the coding here and there so that we could rise up, and we worked together and really did well. Well, about that time, one of the guys said that maybe we should look into doing something with ebay as well too. So I started looking at working with ebay. I at first looked at the ebay api, I believe they had limitations…call limitations…well we were dealing with, you know, 2,3,400,500 thousand pages between all of us. You know, with five keys we were gonna hit that pretty quick. So I went from the ebay api over to the ebay…kind of the rss search query where there were no limitations, and started working off of that. And, you know I built an initial script. I never had…all of this was for our own internal stuff. We were doing really great. And the script turned out good. I got a lot of input from the guys, and we all went on to start making some good money there. Then one of the guys said “you know, you should really sell this”, and he sent me a link over to Digital Point where Bans had…the guys from Bans…great competitors by the way, I have the utmost respect for them…they had just come out with their product. And he said, “you know if this guy could do it, maybe you could as well too”. And you know, at first I was thinking “No, I really don’t want to get back into that or do that”. I didn’t think it would do very well. And they kept insisting…Craig especially kept insisting that I should really give it a try. And I did, and slowly but surely it started taking off. I kind of had a reputation going on Digital Point forums anyway. You know, it started off slow, and then months would pass by and every month just kept growing and growing and growing and I kept updating and updating and updating and you know, it just really grew from there.

Joe: So, was it always a WordPress plug-in, or was it stand alone at first?

Wade: When I first developed it  it was stand alone because none of us were using WordPress at the time. We had come up with some scripts where we could basically put in a huge list of key words in a little text file, and then you’d point and click on a button…and, you know…upload the script to your website, point and click on a button, and boom, it develops a thousand web pages for you…just like that.

Joe: That’s like a dream come true.

Wade: It was. We were looking for…you know the idea at the time was, we can’t be burdened by the development process. That has to be the minor part of it. The idea was to be able to set up a new site in 15-20 minutes and then move on and do the next one. So I was using a … you know for the ebay script…I was using a stand alone script at the time. And I knew a lot of people were using WordPress at the time, so I tried to implement it into WordPress without it being a plug-in by using…I think it was Exec php had just come out where you could execute php within it. You know I could get to the point where it would work, but it was really troublesome and cumbersome to try and get all of that set up in time. And I thought, you know customers are not going to go for this. And, if anything ever happened with that plug in, and MY plug in relied on it, then I would be out. So I just started researching on how to create a plug in for WordPress and sort of migrated everything into it.

Joe:  Yeah, you had mentioned Bans…and that’s how I first started into all this, was using Bans, and that was really incredible. And then Bans kind of got…I don’t what they did…but they seemed to upset the mighty Google. And really got…I don’t know if it was just the way they were redirecting, or the way they were doing their affiliate links, but it seemed like…I know I experienced…I don’t know if you could shed any light on that…on what happened…what was the downfall to why Bans died, but yet products like yours had lived?

Wade: I think there’s a real good explanation for that. I really think that Bans gets sort of a bad rap for that. I think there’s a lot of people…yeah, they went out there and kind of assumed that. I remember when it was happening, I was thinking I don’t agree with that because I know what’s going on. And it’s not because of their software or my software or anybody else’s software that’s going to cause something like that. Google focuses on thin affiliate sites and Bans is…was developed…so that out of the box, without doing a whole lot of work, you could really make thin sites really quick. Well, if that’s what Google is focusing on trying to purge out, or at least keep at bay…you know I think that was really more of what the problem was because you would have web page after web page after web page that had nothing but 40, 50, 60, maybe even up to a hundred…nothing but outbound links with no context. A lot of people were creating web sites and they were using not only Bans, but my product as well and other products as a method of populating content on their page without any unique content. I really think that’s where that comes in. I know I have customers as well who…it’s sort of like you reap what you sow.  If you sow really thin sites that there’s not a lot of work, there’s not a lot of effort in, well, don’t expect to get a whole lot back out of them. Versus if you focus more on quality, you’re probably going to get a better return on your investment in terms of time. So I think that’s what happened with Bans. I don’t think it’s any particular software. I struggle with that myself. You know I have customers sometimes that will come in and say their site was banned…I guarantee you though, one of the things I always ask is can we take a look at the site so we can do some analysis on it, and usually people don’t want to give you their site. They don’t want to know they didn’t do all the right things they were supposed to do, and they just developed this little thin site and what have you.

Joe:  Yeah, it’s kind of like you’ve given people this very powerful tool that could….they could wield it to do good, or…

Wade: They could do bad. You know, the thing is if you take Bans and you take a page, and you go in and you put maybe 10 listings in it…and you put some unique content up at the top and you put it at the bottom, and you add an image in and do your on page SEO, I doubt very seriously it’s gonna just up and be banned. Because when you go to a site, whether it’s Bans or phpBay or really anything else, and you do a view source on the page, it’s all just basically html content.

Joe: Sure. And people will say a lot of times that there’s a footprint…if you build all of your sites the same way, that Google will pick up on certain footprints. Ok, yeah, but it really comes around to Google is just looking out for their customers, and if they’re not providing quality search results, then they’re doing their own customers a disservice.

Wade: I’ve always thought that footprints were a bit overrated. I remember we were worried about footprints. You know I’ve done some…I like to call myself a green hat. I’m not black hat, I’m not white hat, I do whatever makes money as long as it’s legal and as long as I’m not stealing from somebody else. (laughing)I’m not the web police. I’m looking to make a living on the web, and certainly there’s some areas in there you can venture into, but I think mostly that people focus on….You know where a lot of people would focus on footprints is if they were doing something they knew was…not to use the term “illegal”…but would violate the search engines terms of use or their standards or their policies, people would be a little bit more concerned with footprints. Affiliates are not bad with Google. It’s when you go in and you create nothing but a thin site with nothing but a bunch of outbound links, where there’s no quality, there’s no content, there’s nothing else. They’re gonna target that, and they’re gonna do it. Some will get through and some will not, and that’s just the way it’s gonna be. But I don’t think footprints are a really big concern there because you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re just not doing anything right.

Joe: When you’re acting as an affiliate, the idea is that you’re either reviewing the product or you’re doing some sort of pre-sell to provide extra value to the people. Like ok, I’m looking for a camera, but what kind of camera do I want? Provide some information there to allow people to make that decision.

Wade: Exactly.

Joe: I think…and you know it’s human nature…I’ve done the same thing where you want to be able to push a button, walk away, and all of a sudden you don’t have to work for the rest of your life. You know, wouldn’t we all love that?

Wade: Yeah, those days were gone in the late 90’s…(laughing)…and they were there too! Back then it was “if you build it, they will come”.  Those days are long gone. There’s just…and you know I still get customers, potential customers, that will….you know they want a software product that has A button that will wash their car, put the tire shine on the tires and the wheels, it will give them a bath, build their website…do this, do that…and that’s just way out of bounds there. It’s not gonna happen.

Joe: When we’re talking about creating products, and you know we’ve been talking a lot about your history and how you’ve come to where you are today…what do you think if you were to say…ok, something happened devastating that occurred to Bans and phpBay was no more and you wanted to start over, what do you think your biggest challenge would be? And this is really more toward new people. What do they face? What do you think are the biggest challenges people face today when they’re creating new products online?

Wade:  I think getting the word out is going to be definitely one of the biggest challenges because…you know it’s difficult. The web is a big place and you can go anywhere, but trying to find areas where there’s a lot of concentrated users that would be interested in the type of product that you have can be challenging.

Joe: Definitely. Finding those hungry buyers that may want your product sometimes…unless you know where to go, where the water hole is, it’s kind of hard to find them. I think that’s where Digital Point and places like Warrior Forums have both been really helpful to… at least in the IM niche.

Wade: Definitely, definitely.

Joe: There’s like a key moment where things just kind of click and all of a sudden you just find yourself being propelled forward and you realize you’ve hit on something. What was that key moment for you? If you remember? Was it way back when you were running those scripts?

Wade: Well, I think…I want to say I started phpBay in December of 2007 I believe. I actually started it back in October, but that was when we were kind of working as a team and by December I had kind of put it together and thought “well, I’ll try and market it a little bit”. So, it was definitely well into 2008, and I’d say maybe 8 months to a year after that, where the product…I had definitely worked on updates, definitely trying to keep customers happy…which usually is a part of it, but there’s some challenges there as well too.  So people were commenting on the products, or recommending it to others, and sales started coming in fairly regularly. And I thought “it made it, it did it”, and it was really an interesting feeling when it happened.

Joe: I bet. I bet it was. I love your product. I think it’s awesome, and the support that we get…you know just like recently with phpZon  and the changes Amazon made with the reviews…you were right on it and released an update right away which was awesome.

Wade: Yeah, it’s really the difference between life and death being out there. Those updates are probably the most challenging part of this business, because no matter what you do, or how well you try and do it…you can get 95% of the customers on an update but there’s always gonna be some that have a server that you know, well, it worked fine on mine and it’s working on everybody else’s but you’re on some strange server I’ve never heard of before. It’s not working. So, you’ve got to go in and get it taken care of and see if you can find a resolution. Really the idea of those updates is to try and minimize that as much as possible and try to do it as quickly as possible so those who may not have updated on day 1, but are now updating on day 2…or maybe they’re updated on day 3 or day 4…they don’t have to go through any of those little minor tribulations.

Joe: Right. I remember a while back…well, ebay has made their fair share of changes and luckily it always seemed like it was a very small update auction dot php or something like that and it was just a quick, easy update.

Wade: Definitely. Ebay updates are even more challenging because…you know, just in past history, they’ll tell you the day of that they make a change. Or in the case of the last one, I think they gave a 24 hr notice. I was thinking “wow”. You know, thousands and thousands, and thousands of customers…what if I had been off on vacation? I always take my laptop with me when I go on vacation, but you know that short notice that’s such a drastic change that will affect so many people…it certainly will keep you on your toes, real quick.

Joe: No doubt. One way to ruin a vacation, that’s for sure.

Wade: Absolutely.

Joe: So, you had mentioned earlier that the biggest challenge that you feel for somebody who’s going to be coming out with their own product is to get the word out there and let people know. What kind of advice would you give to someone who needs to get the word out? Can you give any suggestions on what they would need to do in order to help? I know there’s standard advertising, but do you have any other words of advice for someone doing that?

Wade: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Of course the first thing you want to do is kind of get on some big forums and let people know. I wouldn’t say do a hard sale or push it, but just “hey I’ve got this great new product that I’ve worked on over here, if you’re interested take a look. It does this, this, and this and here’s the price” and just be casual, be yourself, don’t do a hard sell. You’ll get hit for spamming and stuff like that, but just kind of let it know. But the most important thing that I did early on was I set up an affiliate program. That’s probably the best advice that I can give to anybody that’s starting off in this business because a lot of people will look at it and say, “well, yeah, but if I’ve got affiliates and I’m going to have to pay them 30%,40%,50%, and so I’m losing that money”. Absolutely not. That is absolutely false. That is just an absolute myth because what happens is that you’re going to get the sales that you would get normally coming through your website or coming through people who have visited posts on your forum and what have you…you’re going to get those. You’re going to get it through word of mouth. What the affiliate program is gonna do for you is it’s gonna bring people in that say “hey..I like the software. I own it as well too. I can write a short page on the web and put my affiliate link at the bottom”…and then I’ve got 400 people on my subscribed list. Well, I’ll send out an update to my subscribed users pointing back to this page, and then that affiliate starts making sales with his followers and he’s making money. You’re making more money because even though you’re not getting the full price of it, you’re still bringing in more business than you would have without that affiliate. And it’s just on and on and on. That’s probably the single best decision I ever made was to add that affiliate program in there. You know you’re gonna get…I think I read somewhere that maybe 1-3% of all affiliates in an affiliate program generate 90% of the revenue. I would definitely agree with that. I have a lot of people in my affiliate program, but a lot of them….you know they’ll promote for a little while or they’ll move on to something else, so you want to keep your affiliates coming in it fresh. Another thing too is to make sure and pay them on time and that’s one of the things that a lot of my affiliates compliment me on. I’m an affiliate as well too, and the worst thing that I hate is going through the month of June, and I’ve earned $1000, but then I have to wait all through July and into the middle of August in order to get paid. No one wants to wait around that long. So on my affiliate program I close out on the last day of the month at midnight, and then the following day on the 1^st I pay affiliates.  You know, I’m an affiliate too. Some of these guys they need their money. They’ve got bills, they’ve got rent…you know, whatever the case is, I make sure I pay on the 1^st. Now my terms of service will say up until the 5^th, and that’s only there in case I’m in the hospital or something major, but I don’t…I can’t remember a time in the last 3 years that I haven’t  paid on the 1^st. And so that’s the idea. Get your affiliates in there and they’re going to start promoting your product for you. You know, that’s where it’s going to explode on the web, when you start getting affiliates in there. And give them a generous payout and make sure you take care of them. Get them their money on the 1^st.

Joe: Do you run your own affiliate program?

Wade: I do. That’s really a challenge too because a lot of people are like… well you’re the one approving those affiliate sales…and I go through that from time to time and I understand people’s concerns on that. What I try to tell my affiliates to do is add something of value. Get people to click on your link by saying…I’m going to give you a 5 page tutorial on the fastest way to get phpZon pro set up or phpBay pro…give them something of value. That way after the sale, that customer is going to send you his PayPal transaction id and you’ve got a record of the sale through that way as well as through the affiliate program.

Joe: Is there….for someone who’s say maybe wanting to set up affiliates or get affiliates…is there any programs that you would recommend that are out there? I know pay dot com has one…is there any that you might recommend?

Wade: I would say ejunkie just because I’ve seen a lot of guys use ejunkie as well too. I chose to set mine up in house using…it’s called jam by jrocks.com…using their program because I wanted to tie that in. I wanted to have my website, I wanted to have the store, so I could control all the downloads and make sure that all of my users were in one place, and at the same time the affiliate program ties into all that.

Joe: Yeah, I was trying to think of…because I know the membership software, does that tie in with the affiliate software together?  Do they work together or is that separate?

Wade: They do. I use Amember for…

Joe: Amember! That’s what it is.

Wade: That’s a pretty popular one for the store. But I struggle with that up front because my first thoughts were..you know, what if it doesn’t work out or what if it doesn’t get too big? Or what if it does? Do you want to go back and manually transfer each and every customer over to a new store software? Or go ahead and get what a lot of people suggest are the very best right now and just go ahead and run with it.

Joe: Yeah, I’ve done it before. It’s painful. Doing a database transfer from one place to another…no fun.  It isn’t fun at all.

So Wade, what pitfalls did you run into when creating phpBay or any of your other products?

Wade: Well, basically there’s 3 pitfalls. One is, I would say, security. The other I would say is support. And the third one I would say is sort of a second marriage. And let’s just hit on each of these. Security was, I would say, the biggest thorn in initial development because I was a little naïve. I came in, I developed the software, and you know I wanted to make sure people would be able to edit it and make changes and kind of not lock it down, and that turned out to not be such a good thing because it wasn’t long after that that I started seeing my product over on certain forums that maybe not everybody would visit…you know, for free. And it’s really discouraging because you know, you work your tail end off…this is what’s putting food on the table…and people are giving it out free.

Joe: You even..ioncube? Is that what it was? A security mechanism?

Wade: I did. You know what drove me to get to that point was there was a guy who actually took my software, and he simply changed the logo and the title, and didn’t even change the rest of the code. In fact, if you just opened it up and looked at the rest of the code you would see phpBay all in it. So this guy took it and put up another website and called it XYZ product and…

Joe: No kidding! Wow.

Wade: Yeah, and just absolutely ripped it off. And I tried to go after the guy, secured an attorney…they said this could be anywhere from $1000 all the way up to $60,000. And I thought, you know, I’m not even quite making that right now. You know there’s got to be some realisticness there…so security is definitely an issue and I went with ioncube. The challenge there is that a lot of people would be on a host that didn’t have ioncube, and it just became a really huge burden for my customers. So I finally got to the point where I said no. I’m going to do something else that doesn’t require a loader and find a balance between that extreme and trying to protect the software from people just outright stealing it. So, that was definitely a challenge and it’s one that I continue to work on. It’s unfortunate that you have to worry about that, but it you don’t…your products going to…you’ll watch your sales slide, you’ll wonder what’s going on…you’ve got to stay on top of it. You know it just wasn’t worth the trip, so there’s got to be some security in there.

The second issue being on support…it’s a double-edged sword. It’s absolutely important to make sure customers are taken care of. I’ve seen software developers that’ll have a product, and you look on their forums and a guy posts a problem on Monday and the following Sunday there’s a reply or response. That’s just inadequate. So I try to do that every day on a daily basis. I try to make sure everybody’s taken care of, though probably 90% of my customers will buy the software, they’ll open up the zip file, they’ll read the instructions or the user manual, they’ll install it, they’ll start earning money, and I never hear from them again. And that’s as close to a number…you know at 90%…you just want to keep working to get it 91%,92%,93%, as high as possible because the less time you spend in support the more time you have for family life, for developing your futures. I’d say about 6% of my customers have…they really didn’t read the manual or they’ve got a little bump or whatever. They’re just looking for a quick solution, and then they jump right over with that 90% too. You hardly ever hear from them again. And then you have the 3%….the 3% it’s going to be something beyond their control. Maybe they have a web server that has disabled something or that isn’t standard with other ones so it’s just not working right and it’s not anything they’re doing wrong… so you get in, you address it, and again, for the most part, they move on. Then you have the 1%, and these are people who are dedicated to making your life miserable. (laughing) The 1% are your worst nightmare. These are people that are narcissistic. They are demanding. They are rude, discourteous, believe they’re the king of the world and yada, yada, yada. They definitely will make for interested clients, to say the least. You get some in that 1% category who are lonely, believe it or not. Sometimes I’ve had a customer who I could just absolutely swear bought my software because he was lonely and he wanted somebody to talk to and through support you kind of have to respond. So you want to get rid of those as soon as you can. Resolve them, get them moved on, they’re no fun, they definitely make it challenging in the business. It’s not so bad when you have the 100 customers or 200 customers, or maybe 500 customers…but when you’re 8,000-10,000 customers and you take 1% of that, that’s 80-100 people that are like that. You know and an update or something, it certainly makes you want to pull your hair out.

Joe: No doubt. The closest I’ve come to doing any kind of software development was creating some WordPress themes and that alone is enough because weird little things happen and it’s not really….but it’s enough where you’ve got to be on top of it. Your reputation is at stake, and people are like…you know…you’re like “I’m sorry, let me get into your website and I will fix it for you”.

Wade: Exactly.

Joe: Wade, let’s see….that’s about all I had. The last thing is a last tidbit or piece of advice you might give somebody who is considering getting into product creation if you have anything, but there’s a lot of tips you’ve already given out so…I didn’t know if you might have anything else that we can leave with?

Wade: I would just say that if it’s a product that you believe would help you…not necessarily somebody else..but make a product that’s going to help you do something better. And make it as good as you possibly can, and stand behind it, and if you really believe in it get out and promote it.  Because if it works for you, if it solves a problem for you, if it makes development or internet marketing or anything else that you’re doing faster and easier, then other people are going to be interested in it as well.

Joe: I would agree, and that’s where…well, that’s how a lot of your products came to be right? You were just solving something for yourself and there you go…you’ve got your own Rocket to Success.

Wade: Definitely.

Joe: So what are you up to these days? PhpBay and phpBay pro, phpZon pro…what’ve you been up to lately? Do you have any new products in the works?

Wade: Not yet. I definitely have at least one more product that I want to start focusing on, and I’d hoped to get to it by the end of the year, but you know with the updates..and of course phpBay and phpZon, those break down into 2 products each. One is for api and one is for WordPress so it’s really maintaining 4 products. So with the updates that took place this year and the business growing as well, it’s definitely kept me on my toes from pursuing the next project. But I definitely have one more project at least that I want to hit, and I’m not going to say what the affiliate program is because I want to keep that as a surprise. But I think it will be a good product and I think it will be one that people will enjoy using, and will certainly give at least my customers another revenue stream or another opportunity to pull in earnings.

Joe: Well that will be awesome because we can all use another revenue stream I think.

Wade: Absolutely.

Joe: Well, Wade…thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and sharing your history and some of your experience with us today.

Wade: It was my pleasure! It was wonderful to talk with you and I hope this will help somebody else that is looking into getting started into this business.

Joe: I definitely know it will. Thanks Wade.

Wade: Thank you!

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