I Did It! I Finished the 72 Hour Challenge!

As you may have seen in my last post I set a 72 Hour Product Creation Challenge for myself (and you!) to get on it and create a product in 72 hours.

I did it!

I have to say that Dave’s free report on Creating a product in 3 days TOTALLY helped me.  I had a plan ~ I always have a plan, and as most days in my life the plan went to shit.

I had this idea. I’d make a series of videos to outline the Squidoo Christmas Cash Blueprint.  I planned to bundle them in a zip file so people could download them and watch them at their leisure.

Well, that wasn’t such a great idea. The file was huge. I would have had to upgrade my account at e-junkie to have them deliver it. It would have taken forever to download.

So I had to rethink. I’ve had plenty of people ask for more in depth information on the blueprint so I knew I was on the right track product wise ~ but delivery??? hmm…

What to do?

I then decided to upload the videos to my hosting and have people download them from there.

NOPE. That wouldn’t work either.

Then I decided to put them up on a site and have people go to the site to watch them. It wasn’t ideal ~ because I’d really wanted people with slow internet service to be able to take advantage of the videos ~ but I couldn’t really figure out any other way.

So then ~ instead of creating videos, zipping them, uploading to ejunkie and writing a post I suddenly had to create an entire wordpress site, a sales page, a thank you page, and …  :(

WELL… after 12 hours yesterday I was pretty much ready to quit.  But I talked myself out of it with the help of a challenge buddy, and started brainstorming ideas on how to make a wordpress site work.

The only real problem (other than the many additional hours of work) was keeping the content secure ~ if people came upon the site they would have all my content. not good.

So how to secure a wordpress site. That’s what I woke up thinking this morning.

I finally decided to treat it like a membership site and I bought an inexpensive plugin that was supposed to help me do that quickly and easily. NOT.  3 Hours Later and seriously annoyed and ready to once again quit this crazy ass project I decided to go for a bike ride.

It was super windy but it helped clear my head and I knew I could figure out something.

I Googled options on how to secure a wordpress site. I got on chat with Hostgator. I looked all around.

I finally found a solution that will work. I deleted the membership plugin and had to go back through all the posts to make the new system work. (this is like the 3rd or 4th time I had to go through and revamp all the posts for one reason or another ~ talk about frustrating)

Then I just had to get the sales funnel in place. Sales page, Thank you page, Payment button phew.

I hadn’t wanted to do a full sales page ~ but realized it was going to be the most effective way to tackle the problem and so I did it.

Finally 8 hours later ~ here I am. Writing this post telling you I’ve done it.

I’ve created a product I’m REALLY proud of. It’s WAY better than videos in a download. I didn’t quit even though I really thought about it at least 3 different times.

It wasn’t easy. I had to rethink the plan many times, but I didn’t quit. I didn’t quit because I had set a goal for myself. Not only had a set a goal for myself I had said it out loud ~ in front of all of you!!! My word, to you and to myself means something.

Things will always be hard. I’m sure they could have been a lot easier ~ and they can be easier for you depending on the project you take on. No matter how hard it ends up being you CAN get through it though! Be ready to spend copious amounts of time to get the job done.  I suggest you get a buddy ~ someone who can talk you out of quitting in the middle of the night when things aren’t going right. Come up with a plan and be ready to change the plan completely if need be. Find a way to get obstacles out of your way. I am so grateful to my Mom for taking Hanna to see Shrek yesterday ~ it gave me a good 6 hours of peace and quiet.

Then JUST DO IT!! No Matter WHAT!!!

So for all of you out there who have been patiently waiting for more help creating profitable Squidoo lenses here it is. The fruits of my labor for the last 48 hours.

Squidoo Christmas Cash Lens Video Series

If you by any chance run into any problems during check out please let me know so I can fix them right away.