It made almost $90 profit in May and has made $105 so far in June, putting it roughly $57 in profit after 4 months.

Not that impresive, but I haven’t actually done anything with the site since April, and it should continue making $100+ a month at least from here on in, which will all be pure profit, so I’ll schedule some SEO link building for it next month to see if I can improve that figure with a little effort.

I’ve also just started a new PLR project, a parenting ebook.

Costs so far include $8 for the domain, $20 for the ebook itself, another $30 for some free reports to give away and some emails for an autoresponder sequence (all PLR material), and $100 for 20 good quality unique articles for promoting the site using ezinearticles, and $50 for some fresh graphics to re-brand the product and make it fresh and unique in appearance at least.
So roughly $208 in hard costs, plus around 6-7 hours to set up the whole thing, including the site, the autoresponders, download page and order facilities.

I’m using PayPal for the payment processor for the present simply to keep it quick and easy to set up, but if it proves profitable I may well move it over to clickbank to try and pick up some affiliates.

I’m going to leave it at that and see if the article submissions will axctually pull in enough quality hits to turn a profit on their own.

I’ll report back towards the end of July, or sooner if it takes off…

costs were $347 with $51.56 sales in March,

April totalled just 9 sales, so not too impresive, but it does give a total net income of $208.62, leaving me with a loss of $138 so far.

At this rate it will not be in profit for another 6 weeks or so, which is dissapointing, but does mean that the product should be producing profits by the middle of June and thereon in.

I must admit that I’ve not had time to work on building more backlinks to the site, which is what it really needs..

PLR+Update+for+April')" onclick="cw(this, {id:'200811133098',link: 'http%3A%2F%2Fimtesting.com%2Fplr-update-for-april%2F', title: '+PLR+Update+for+April+' })"/>

I’ve also contacted a couple of magazines to see if they can include it on their cover CD’s and one is a go, which should be coming out in about a week.

Costs so far: -

Product cost = $97

Website and graphics for product = $225

Updates and Branding of product = $25

Total costs $347

Sales to date = 3 @ $19.95 ($17.19 after CB costs) = $51.57

So one full month after “launch” I have a loss of $295.43

Whilst I wait to see what the directory submissions bring in I’m going to start on some keyword research to do some seo work on the site and start getting some backlinks for it.

I’ll post another update in another 4 weeks or so.

I’m also planning on a couple more PLR products this month, time permitting, so I’ll post details as I get these done.

Why the delay?
Well I had some problems with the licencing/registration script for the product and could not get hold of the vendor for a LONG while..

If you buy PLR rights make sure the vendor is responsive in case you do have problems, it’s not such a big problem with info products, providing you have the source files (i.e. Word Doc instead of just PDF), but you should have those anyway as you should always make changes to the product before you resell it to put your own “stamp” on it.

With software it’s more important to have support, even if you have the source code files, because if there are problems you may well need to get re-coding done.

As it happens, the same day I managed to get hold of the vendor again I also put a job on RentaCoder to get the software rebranded and ended up choosing the original coder for the system, talk about a small world, or is it just the “Law of Attraction” in play..

So I’ve now had some graphics done for the product and the site and it’s up and running.

I decided to try out 1ShoppingCart for the payment system instead of Clickbank, not because this product needs it, it would do just as well with ClickBank, but I want to be able to have an alterntive to CB and I want to be able to use recurring payment plans (e.g. for memebership sites) in the not too distant future and thought this would be an ideal project to get up and running on 1SC with as it shouldn’t prove too difficult..

So the process so far: -

Decemeber 2006 – bought product, discovered problem with licencing script, unable to get fixed, unable to contact vendor.

January 2007 – still unable to conatct vendor

Early Feb – still unable to contact vendor, decided to post RaC project for Rebranding and licencing script fix.

Mid Feb – Spent several hours (it’s a competitive market) finding a “Brandable” product name and domain. Registered domain, commissioned graphics for product and website.

Late Feb – Posted Job on RaC, found original coder and heard from vendor at last, although I no longer need him (thankfully) as I’ve found original coder.. :]

This week – set up site, signed up for 1SC account, discovered you need a payment processor on top of 1SC (I didn’t realise this), signed up for 2Checkout, discovered 2CO does not work with 1SC’s recurring billing option, cancelled 2CO account, looking at Authorize.net to make sure it does work with 1SC’s recurring billing feature.

1SC have been pretty slow on replying to my support request, I emailed them to check about authorize.net two days ago and still haven’t heard back from them, so at the moment I only have 1SC set up with PayPal as a payment option, which I could do without 1SC.

If I don’t here back from 1SC soon I will simply cancel my account with them and set the product up with Clickbank, after all, CB may charge $50 (se note below) per account for a product, bt it’s a one off, 1SC charge $79 per month for the “premium” account (which I chose as I want the features offered on it, like the affiliate program), so I was kind of expecting to get “premium” support as well.

Disappointing so far..

CB charge $50 for setting up a product to sell through them, it’s a “per account” fee, but you really need to have a seperate account for each product with the way their system works, although the benefits of their marketplace and being able to get access to so many potential affiliate outweighs this big time!

However, if you’ve already got an account with them, when you go to set up the second one, make sure you ask for the discounted rate as an existing client, just give them your existing account nickname and they’ll only charge $30. It may not seem a big difference, but it soon ads up when you’re setting up lots of products..

Until I’m totally happy with the payment processing for this product I’m not going to start promoting it much.

Once I am happy my plan is to start with directory submissions and submitting it to free download sites, as it’s software, then try to get some JV’s going.

I’ll report back on progress as and when it moves on.
As as small (general) side note, note being ablt to get hold of the vendor to fix the problems almost made me dump this product and move on, but for some reason I kept coming back to look at it again.

I’m glad I did, as by chance I ended up in contact with the original coder of the product, which means getting enhancements made to it to differentiate it (useful in such a competetive market) will be fairly easy, and it turns out that the coder has a bundh of other products which I may be able to secure resales rights to.

It’s a classic example of a potential negative turning in to a fairly significant potential positive.

This sort of stuff seems to happen to me a lot, people call me lucky, but I believe it’s more because I tend to have a positive outlook on life and expect this sort of thing to happen, and I keep my eyes open for spoting when it does..

I once heard a definition of “Luck” that I identify with: -

“Luck is when opportunity meets preparation”, meaning (imho) be on the look out for “lucky” opportunities and be prepared to take advantage of them.

Most “unlucky” people seem to me to spend too much time moaning about opportunities that they have missed and looking back, so they miss all the new opportunities that are coming at them now..

Don’t be unlucky, you don’t have to be, “unlucky” is, imho, a state of mind, or way of looking at life, just as being “Lucky” is..

Next time something “unlucky” happens to you, take a moment to look for the upside. If you can’t see it straight away, then look back again a while later to see if it has become apparent, normally it will have.