20/20 Challenge: Day 4 (Part 2) & 5 - alternativeSOHO

In Day 4 of the 20/20 Challenge review, I mentioned that it was a continuation of the work requirement of Day 3. Well, Day 4 is spilling over into Day 5 for me because I decided that, instead of outsourcing the bulk of the work, I’d be doing much of the re-branding and modifications myself.

(Confused? Make sure to go back and read Day Zero, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and Day 4 to get the gist of this on-going review.)

But, before I get into all of that, I must apologize for such a delay. You’re probably wondering why its taken me so long to get around to Day 5 (which would actually be Day 19 if I were following the 20/20 course schedule), its quite frankly because I have a business to run outside of this one, client projects to take care of, and a life outside of the internet.

Basically, the equivalent of a full time work schedule. When all of those things collided at once, something had to give — the 20/20 Challenge needed to be put on the back burner. This is something you definitely should be aware of if you choose to participate in the 20k challenge because it could make or break your success.

Plus, there is a boatload of work for Day 5. Michael says to reserve some of Day 5’s work for Day 6, which is a lighter day, but I assure you it is not. In fact, Day 6 should have been broken up into two days itself, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s stick with finishing Day 4, sort of.

Spill-over From Day 4

It’s not so much a spill-over as it is doing the required work, which would have been outsourced, myself. That work, for now, is primarily graphic creation and product preparation.

I haven’t moved into product preparation as yet because I’ve been focusing my energy on getting the graphics created. My incidental expense Day 4 (part 2) was $5 for the stock images at iStockPhoto.com (SXC is a good source for some pictures, but I wanted truly professional quality for my graphics).

Once I had the stock images, I was able to wrangle them into a design for the sales letter template and two cover graphics in just under four hours. That said, I still need to finish an additional 5 graphics, so I’m not truly finished with Day 4’s workload; meaning it will probably be spilling over into Day 6, too.

Moving into Day 5

Chances are, it seems silly to move into Day 5 without completing Day 4’s workload, but for me, it’s not. If I’d stuck with Day 4 until I had it done, it would never get done because it would become too tedious for me. My mind bounces around and it’s what helps my productivity (believe it or not).

For instance, Day 5 is about writing the sales letter, and since I was coding the sales letter template from Day 4, it would stand to reason that having content for it would make the process much easier — which it does. So, I made sure I had some content to put in it, even if it meant Day 4 and 5 would meld together.

Finding Creativity

Remember that creativity I discussed in What Makes the 20/20 Challenge Special? Well, I’m going to need to inject my project with some of it in order to continue — even though it means deviating a bit from the manual. It seems that while I was on the hunt for potential JV partners, most of the people within my niche already has a digital product they are trying to sell.

Of course I still added them to my list, but I’m sketchy on how readily they’ll want to promote my product when they know they can be promoting their own. The good news is that there are some people who are running complimentary informational sites, so there is hope. But, essentially this is where the creativity comes into play because I’ll need to find other means of locating JV partners than the somewhat lacking section in Day 4.

60 Minute Sales Letter

Let’s go back to Day 5, which is sales letter preparation. Usually the best sales letters take more than a day to prepare — write, sleep on, rewrite, then refine and all that jazz. But if you’re going strictly by the 20/20 schedule, you don’t have the luxury of time.

Luckily, Michael does offer a great shortcut for writing the sales letter, but it would still take a few hours and the quality would be questionable (until you had a chance to split test it). While it may not be the ideal solution, it will work in a pinch. Plus there’s the private forum where you can submit your sales letters to for a critique.

Since the days are starting to blend together a little bit, we’ll just need to wait and see how tomorrow goes and whether or not I’ll be able to get completely caught up (doubtful).

Today’s Expenses	$3.00
Gross Expenses	$306.37
Today’s Income	$0.00
Gross Income	$0.00
Today’s Time Investment	6.5 hrs.
Gross Time Investment	12 hrs

Tags: 20/20 challenge review, 20k challenge, internet marketing