From Failed Idea to Profitable Product: What I Learned from Failure

Everybody fears failure. It’s instilled in us from an early age. Most people don’t like losing, and try to avoid it at all costs. And if you’re going to create something to sell, the fear of it failing becomes all too real. Many times it becomes so real that people don’t even go through with their plans at all.

But failure is just a stepping stone towards success. If you can use the lessons you learned from a failed product, there’s always a better probability of success in your next venture.

What I learned from failure

My first product was pretty much a failure. It didn’t sell at all, and even though people thought the idea was good, when it came time to buy, no one did.

It’s tough to deal with failure, but I trekked on an created a new product—to great success. I didn’t get rich overnight, but on my small niche scale, I did pretty well.

So what did I learn from my first failure that you can use to your business success?

Do your market research

You not only need to know your niche, you also need to know what the people in your niche really want. A great idea is only good if people want to buy it.

I had this great idea for a productivity tool that, in the end, nobody really wanted. Sure, some people bought it, but it wasn’t a sustainable income. Instead I focused my effort on what I knew people wanted: information. I assumed that people would rather pay for information that they could use in their own endeavors.

Lesson learned: People would rather invest in information than anything else. In a specialty niche like mine, my readers wanted to learn techniques to better their own productions. They didn’t really need a productivity tool to keep track of their home recordings. Their computer already did that.

Decide to go digital

The first product I created was a hardcover book. The buying process was tedious, there were extra shipping costs, and my variable costs were relatively high, so most of my profit was eaten by the costs. I needed to keep the costs of the book down, but I also needed to recoup the costs of each book sold. Even though I used a print-on-demand service, the extra costs just weren’t worth it.

Lesson learned: Go digital. I decided to create an informative digital ebook, Mixing Strategies, which was only sold via direct download. Even though the model of selling ebooks has been around for a long time, I needed to learn why it was such a good idea on my own. With digital downloads, the variable costs of each download are non-existent so you can turn a profit quicker and more easily than with hardcopy products.

Find an outsourcer

I’m not much of a designer. I wanted my first product to look nice, so I outsourced my design work to Pakistan on the cheap. $100 later, I had a really nice looking product that I could sell. If I had done it myself it would have either never have been finished, or it would have looked very amateurish. By using outsourced freelance work, I was able to create a much nicer looking product than I ever could have myself, regardless of whether it would sell or not.

Lesson learned: Delegate tasks to those who know better. When it came time to create a new product, I had learned how easy it is to outsource work. I had learned how to ask for specific details and how to sift through the endless numbers of graphic designers out there. I was fine with paying for professional results, because I knew I would be saving myself a lot of time and effort—time and effort I could use towards other things.

Pre-market your product

I failed to create a lot of buzz around my first launch. I didn’t really talk about the product at all until I launched it. No wonder nobody bought it: I hadn’t built up any suspense about it. Whether you call it creating buzz, pre-marketing, or pre-selling, it was clear that I failed at it. Maybe if I had created a little more buzz, somebody would have told me that the product wasn’t such a great idea in the first place.

Lesson learned: Talk about your products. While I wrote my ebook I often asked my newsletter subscribers and other readers what they thought. I pitched them the table of contents and asked them questions that they would like answered in a book. I created buzz and anticipation by talking about the creation of the product. The result? I started selling copies almost before I had sent out the initial launch newsletter. I created so much anticipation over the months preceding the launch that people bought it immediately.

Offer launch discounts and build urgency

Not only did I not create any buzz for my failed product, I failed to create any fanfare around the launch. I simply launched the product, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. The best didn’t come. I didn’t create any sense of urgency, so nobody saw any point in buying it right away.

Lesson learned: Not only do you have to create anticipation, but once you launch, you have to create an urgency to buy. For the first ten days, I offered my product at a discounted price. This created a need to buy in my readers. They wanted my product because I had created so much anticipation, and now they could get it at a discounted price. The result? The sales kept rolling in.

Failure creates success

I wouldn’t have learned any of those lessons if I hadn’t created my first product. Even though it failed in most ways (it does still sell every now and then!), I still regard it as an accomplishment.

If it weren’t for this first product, I wouldn’t have learned how to find a demand, how to find great outsourcers, how to create buzz and ultimately, how to generate profitable sales. In my case, my initial failure only helped create my success.

How have your failures helped your accomplishments?

Björgvin Benediktsson is an audio engineer, musician and online entrepreneur from Iceland. He’s been involved in the music and audio industry for almost a decade, playing in bands, working as a sound engineer and recording music. He’s written one ebook, Mixing Strategies that’s available at his site Audio Issues. Follow Björgvin on Twitter at www.twitter.com/audioissues.