IMMania.com

I just launched a PHP-based IM product called “Rapid Landing Page Generator“. RPLG for short. It’s a PHP script that I first developed for use in my own eBay affiliate campaign blasts. I just needed a way to get a landing page slapped together quickly for use with Adwords. One that had the requisite privacy, contact, and other necessary pages to make Google happy and one to dynamically sprinkle keywords within the content a few times. The final piece was the ability to pull in relevant snippets from various RSS feeds.

The intention was to rapidly generate an optimized eBay affiliate landing page that would receive affordable minimum bids from Google Adwords. It’s tough enough to play in Adwords as an eBay affiliate. Getting slapped with $10 minimum bids is tantamount to being told to “take your weak ass advertising out of here!”

So once I had the script developed enough for my liking, I then decided to take it public. And by public, I mean within the limited confines as a paid membership site that I’m pretty active in. Of course, I needed to dress the puppy up and bit and teach it some manners in the form of cleaner code and throw in a User’s Guide.

It’s the User’s Guide that often gets short shrifted by many software developers and I can certainly empathize. For a programmer, writing user guides is like having a double root canal without novocaine. To add insult to injury in most cases, the User’s Guide is rarely even cracked. Not even when users run into problems. It’s far easier to just open a support ticket or email the product creator.

Software user guides are the equivalent of parsley on a dinner plate. It makes the package complete, but is just tossed aside as having little or no value.

Until I learn how to write code that is completely intuitive and essentially just installs itself and gets right down to working despite the inevitable user error, I’m resigned to writing user guides to include with my software products.

The user guide I wound up writing came in at 34 pages. It was pretty detailed out of necessity. Below are some of the key things I’ve learned when preparing any product for launch, particularly software products:

*Always Beta test software products and have info products reviewed and proofread. You won’t get all the bugs out of a product from Beta testing and quality assurance reviews, but it will shake out the most obvious problems and your product will be much more polished as a result.

*For software products, enlist your highest maintenance customers as testers. By “high maintenance” I don’t mean customers that are never satisfied and will suck up your time with questions and problems of their own making. I don’t want these people as customers and I just refund their purchase at the first signs of trouble. Instead, I look for people who may not be technical experts, but who at least know the basics and who are determined to get things to work.

In other words, they are “doers” and don’t expect things to happen without any effort on their part.

I love working with these people and they ultimately turn out to be my best customers in the long run. And the feedback and suggestions they provide are invaluable. So I don’t hesitate to give them a “free” copy of my products to review. In the end, what I get in return is worth a whole lot more than the lost sale.

*For software products always include a detailed user’s guide. Even though many people won’t read a UG, many will, and many will after encountering questions or problems. It’s vital to have your Beta testers keep the UG open while walking through the steps of getting your product installed and setup. Also, include as many examples with step-by-step instructions along with screen shots to illustrate what you’re talking about. I love TechSmith’s SnagIt for this.

Of course you need to limit the scope of the UG. For example you don’t want to have to repeat how to open and set up an Adwords account. Instead, just include a link to the Adwords introductory page and direct them there for more details.

*Clearly state on the sales page and elsewhere who your product is for and more importantly who it’s not for. This is my own personal rule and I know it has cost me sales. I do this because I believe in transparency and quite frankly, I want to keep the number of dissatisfied customers to a respectable number of “0″. I’m sure I’m being extremely naive in this practice based on how other marketers hype their products to IMers of all experience levels. Maybe someday I’ll wind up doing the same, but not today.

*Over deliver. Yeah, I know, this has become a worn out cliche in the world of IM product launches, but IMers have been burned so many times by crap products that they really do sit up and take notice when something not only delivers on what the sales page promised, but also goes above and beyond in terms of bonuses, additional features, and pricing.

I haven’t been creating products long enough to say conclusively, but I’m betting that building a reputation of over delivering on quality products will bear fruit at some point in the future.

That is if I don’t get burned out from launching and supporting the products I create.