Dave Kaminski – The Idea Course

Not long ago, there were two websites.

They were in different markets, but both had the same design and looked nearly identical. Both had sales copy written by the same writer. They used identical technology. They both sold digital products for the exact same price. And both websites received the same amount of traffic.

After 30 days, the first website had generated $149 in sales.

And after 30 days, the second website had generated $50,362 in sales.

Why did one website outsell the other by a margin of 338 to 1? It was the idea behind the product being sold. One website had a really good product idea. And the other one, not so much.

I know because I’m the guy who built and owned those websites…those were my products being sold…and they were my good (and not so good) ideas.

What camera should you use? Should you use a landing page from LeadPages? Should you use a shopping cart like SamCart? What web hosting company should you use? What style of sales video should you use? And the list of things you agonize over goes on and on.

Get this straight right now – those things do NOT matter. They are arbitrary. You can swap out one camera for another, one landing page service for another and one web host for another…and it will have no impact on your success or failure.

But your product or business idea will have a critical impact…it will be the difference between failure or success.

If your idea is good, you can have the crappiest looking website, on the slowest running web host and with the worst marketing ever…and your product will still sell.

But if you’re idea is bad, you can throw all the money in the world at it and it won’t make one bit of difference.

Let’s start with what you DON’T DO. Ask your significant other, your neighbor, your friends or the guy cleaning tables at the coffee shop if your hot, new idea is a good one. Unless they’ve sold a crap-ton of products online, their opinions are worthless.

Guessing won’t do you any good either. While that idea in your head may seem like a surefire winner while you’re laying in bed at midnight, the Internet has other plans for it. It’s already seen your idea 10,000 times and won’t be impressed.

There’s a science to producing good product ideas…a science that is both technical and mental.

On the technical side, you have to do a very particular form of research. Not just checking if other people already have the same idea or if the domain you want is available, but a specific formula that will tell you if people will stop in their tracks to look at your idea, if they’ll open up their wallet to pay you for that idea, and how much profit that little idea in your head could actually generate. No guessing, no dreamy projections, but a unique, systematic formula that gives you actionable hard numbers.

On the mental side, you have to do something I call IDEA CIRCUMVENTION. There’s nothing original on the Internet anymore. It’s all been done and plenty of people have already had your idea. So you circumvent this by recasting the intent of your idea into another form…where to your prospects, you have something they’ve never seen and that no one else offers. Idea circumvention is deep, spooky stuff. But it’s one of the most powerful skills you can possess.

When you combine the technical and mental processes, your problems suddenly change. No longer do you struggle trying to come up with good ideas for products that will sell…but your biggest problem becomes determining which of your ideas will generate you the most profit, for the least amount of effort and in the shortest amount of time. It’s a good “problem” to have.

If you’re like most people, you fall into one of two categories.

THE HOPELESS – It seems that you can’t come up with an idea for anything. Or all of your best ideas are already dominated by other businesses. Or you’ve actually tried out an idea or two and the results were disastrous. Or all of your ideas will take way too much time or money to try out. Whatever the case, you’re dead in the water. You have no clue what to do next. You feel…hopeless.

THE DELUSIONAL – You rolled out a complete launch for your product idea and it bombed, big-time. But it wasn’t your fault. You should have gotten advice from a different marketing guru. You should have used a different funnel. You should have used a different landing page. You should have run a different Facebook ad. You should have used a different offer for your product. Whatever the excuse, here’s the bottom line: your product idea sucked. End of story. And by not accepting that fact, you have become…delusional.