I was really looking forward to learning how the product was built, how the payment processor was set up so quickly, the tools used, and how he was able to build the product so fast.
Most of the post was actually about dealing with the uncertainties of launching a product before you're comfortable with it and being pleasantly surprised by the results.
There's very little information on the process of how Amir launched it in three hours except using paypal and buying a $35 theme from themeforest - I'd like to hear more about this in a feature post.
You'd be surprised how often nuts&bolts issues stop people from starting. I was mildly mystified by "Set up website, collect money, deliver software" prior to starting, too. Turns out it is trivial, but that was not obvious prior to doing it. (Relatedly: taxes, bookkeeping, accounting, and government regulation were all walks in the park. Marketing is hard. Who knew?)
Yeah, the nuts and bolts of selling the product is the easy part. There are loads of services out there to sell digital goods including the one that the submitter used and my own service (shameless plug: link in my profile anyone is interested).
PayPal is still the cheapest and easiest way to collect the money, even considering fraud. (PayPal almost always sides with the buyer and with digital goods you have little recourse.)
It's the marketing that makes all the difference. We have customers that have made $50-60k in less than a week due to awesome marketing. And we have customers that pull in well over $100k/yr due to good marketing and good affiliates. We also have many that will never sell anywhere near that much in the product's lifetime, also due to marketing.
This has always been my impression. But when I've actually looked for resources on how to get those nuts & bolts set up, for someone who knows nothing about them, it's been non-obvious.
You wouldn't by any chance know of some resources related to getting over the initial hump of getting paid for software/services, would you?
I am more surprised by how much people are trying to reinvent the wheel every day. I think there are enough tools and APIs out there to build small useful products in less than a week.
The problem, for me at least, was that I didn't know what was the simplest way. I spent a long time learning some design skills, learning html/css, etc. Then I realized (not long ago) that I could effectively buy a 20$ site template, and it would take a hundredth of the time and look 100 times better. Then, even more recently, I learned that you can set up a WordPress site, with a great design, and pretty much any goodie you need (contact forms, email lists, etc.).
Now, none of these things are particularly hard. But for me, coming from a non-Web background, each of these steps took some learning. And you never know when you should be learning more.
So in that sense, every article I read that says exactly how to set up an MVP, including all the nuts & bolts of the various plugins / etc, is incredibly valuable.
Right on it. I spent literally weeks building barely average-looking purely W3C-compliant webpages in pure HTML+CSS... And it's a huge pain right now to change the site because there is no way to iterate rapidly.
That's because I've learnt HTML at the time when even HTML 3.2 was hot :)
Looks pretty similar to the Four Hour Work Week muse model touted by Tim Ferris and co. Attractive product page (Wordpress theme), informational product (software templates), outsourced commerce pipeline (e-junkie). Only thing is that he didn't need to use paid ads to drive traffic, since he led with a blog post that led to subscriptions, which meant he already had a customer base. Cool stuff.
How much time was spent working on the project afterwards though? I built an app "in a week" (http://oneweekapp.com/) which went on to generate a decent passive income for me, but since then I've spent far far more than a week on it.
I'd be really curious to know more details, specifically on the payment end (doesn't that take more than 3 hours by itself to set up?).
I'd love to write a blog post about this, but you don't have any contact info on your profile or site. You can contact via me email (it's on my profile) if you're interested.
That's a very good point. I had some pricing variations in the beginning and the one I have now is at the sweet spot.
One of the most interesting moves was to add a company license (a friend suggested it and it took less than 10 minutes to add it. It sold several copies to date.
I am planning an update that should position the product at the right value/price point.
what plugin are you using to handle ejunkie requests inside of wordpress? does ejunkie manage sales through paypal and google checkout? do they provide good tracking?
I am curious how viable ejunkie + wordpress are as a basic and simple ecommerce platform
Are you still growing the product and company, and yes, as shazow says, sounds like you put a lot more than 3 hours into it... Don't take this the wrong way but are you baiting us because your traffic to Keynotopia is falling?
Most of the post was actually about dealing with the uncertainties of launching a product before you're comfortable with it and being pleasantly surprised by the results.
There's very little information on the process of how Amir launched it in three hours except using paypal and buying a $35 theme from themeforest - I'd like to hear more about this in a feature post.