Ok, I want all of you to go through this step even if you are still Musing on your Muse because they could help you figure out what it might be. Yes I changed the font color and the font. Just wanted to see if you were stil awake.
These Next 3 sections will give you an overview of where you need to end up. They also may very well be the most important Keys to your Muse’s success.
You need to pick your niche, and remember,
“It is much better to be The Big Fish in a
Small Pond than Bait in the Ocean”
Andrew Anderson
We are only going after 100 to 300 customers at first to get you started. Then we will keep 2,000 to 3,000 in mind as our goal. If you need to go that high or higher, great, we will get there too. Keep this in mind as you move along in the process.
Think about it. If you have just 100 clients that pay you $10 to $30 per month, then for most of you, that is going to make a difference in your income. That is $12,000 to $36,000 per year. 100 to 300 clients if your product is good and your pick your niche right is a drop in the bucket.
If you put the right systems in place, it can scale it up rather quickly but you still may want to limit the number of clients.
Why? Because certain people can be a pain in the butt to deal with for sure. I am sure you know what i am talking about. That is why I don’t do too many full blown Websites for people anymore. Most people don’t have a clue as to what they want, they don’t listen, and while I admit my communications skills are suspect at times, most people do not have a clue how to express themselves in a manner that can get things done.
While it may not be their fault, the end result is the same. The less people you have to deal with, the better off you are and….you can make your life a lot easier if you provide filters so that you only end up with the right type of clients. I did that here so that I could deal with people just like you. I can go into this later, but you actually passed through a filter to get here. 
That means you are cool.
Back to limiting the number of clients……
Here is my thought process on this. First of all, I only want those customers that are going to take action and do things. They are much easier to deal with and you make more money off them, (see the Pareto Principal) with less input than the other types. I want a waiting list for the services that I am offering. And with what I have lined up, I do not see this as being a problem.
I will also be implementing a premium Membership that will allow me to get hands on with a small group of Members. Drop me an email if you are interested.
Why? Because people will pay for it. Because I know that I have paid more than $99.88 per month for services that did not have nearly the value that this one does at the current membership price. Because I know that the services that I offer have a ton of value.
I also have the options of lowering or raising the prices as I see fit, but I will let my customers dictate that.
The point is, you don’t need a huge audience or a large amount of customers 100 to 300 are enough to change your life.
This is just one place where setting up a Muse is different from the way most other businesses work.
You find a market for your Muse by testing an idea first, and if demand is there, then you spend money to develop the product i.e. the Muse.
I did that with The Muse Blueprint or The 4 Hour Muse, the first versions of this book. The only expense I had was to purchase my Domain names and some of my time to throw the websites up and write this eBook, and get the graphic for the Cover Box. Ok, quite a bit of time but it has been fun and I have already gained enough money to make it pay for itself many, many times over!
Here is how I tested it. I posted a request for Alpha Testers on a Bulletin Board at no cost it was actually the 4 Hour Workweek board before they got rule happy. And hey, it is their board and they can do what they want, but I think it took away a lot of the value there. Just saying.
I had way more people than I needed sign up, and used them as my Guinea Pigs. I got some feedback on my own Bulletin Board about the concepts and made adjustments and poof, you are now reading and using Start On Monday. Guess what, it is still in the testing phase and it will be tweaked as necessary based on the feedback I get from you, the customer.
Anderson’s Muse Rule #2
A Muse that is 50% to 80% developed is good enough to test market and even go to market with. Don‘t wait until it is 100% done“.
Ok, listen up. You can use your intuition and research to come up with your Muse outline, but you always, always, let your customers decide if the Muse is a good idea before you dump a bunch of money into it.
You may think that your idea is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but if no one else does, don’t spend money on it. Bake a couple of loaves yourself, test market it and sell it yourself, and see the results. Then if things go well, tweak it, test it again, and if they buy it, then spend the money on finding a bread manufacturer to bake it for you.
Do the initial test marketing yourself. Handle every aspect of it. I am on board with this one, for most of my Musi! I use my Virtual Assistants sparingly if at all for any of it. I am processing each order, answering each email etc. So, if it takes a while…. LOL But you learn! Then after you get rolling only then can you train a Virtual Assistant to do these things for you.
Why do you need to do it yourself? So that you can appreciate what kind of questions and hurdles are going to come at you. You are the brains of the outfit. Remember, you need to know what is going on with each process and component of your Muse. Otherwise, you won’t be able to effectively delegate each task as she continues to grow and mature, or to tweak that one small thing that turns her into a huge producer of Time and Money for you!.
The Exception to the Rule.
If you can pull your muse together for under $500 bucks and you don’t have more than a weeks worth of time, go ahead and put it together and then test and tweak it. This way you don’t have to go through the fuss of testing a product you don’t have. But, if we are talking a big investment of time and or capital, we absolutely want to test first.
But, I suggest that you go through the process of putting one together first. Also, DO NOT get discouraged if your first Muse is not a huge hit!
While I hope you realize that you will be able to start your Muse in just 4 Hours, it will more than likely take you just a tad longer to perfect it. Plan on realistically taking about 1-6 months to get it fully operational and outsourced. Perhaps you can get it done in a lot less time, that would be great. Depending on how involved your Muse is, it might even take a bit longer, but if you work at it, you should have it going pretty well after about a month or so.
Do not perfect a Muse until after you have successfully tested it. You might just be wasting time and money on something that is not going to fly.
One of the biggest things that I have seen stop clients, is rather than getting their ideas out there, they worry about the details and minutiae way too soon, instead of roughing things out and going back and polishing them up later. If you picked your market and your Muse right, your customers will help you polish it quickly and better than you ever could on your own. Just make sure that they know that your product is in Beta, and that while it does have some great features, you would like their help improving it. Hey, this product is still in BETA just FYI. lol
And to beat that drum again, I just saw this again with a Web clients. It makes me sick when this happens and it is such a wast of time.
Now you still have to provide good value and content there in the first place, but it is OK to be rough around the edges.
Take Start On Monday for example. I would truthfully say that this is at best 90 % of where I want it to be. But, I also know that my test marketing said that people need the information contained here RIGHT NOW. I was seeing people spend money on things that they did not have to, and wasting time going down dead end roads. I go on the blogs and see this everyday. I keep thinking, go grab a copy of the Muse Blueprint, it will save you days or weeks worth of work and a whole bunch of money. But alas, their ESP usually does not work.
The first edition of this actually got pushed out of the nest about 2 weeks ahead of schedule because I knew that it is worth way more than what I am charging for it. I also know that there were people who are ready to use it right then and there. Plus, it will saved them lots of time, money and anguish trying to figure this out on their own.
While in the original release which I called .01 ….LOL I basically wanted to do all of the work myself, including publishing , typing this, building several websites, and putting together this eBook, just to prove that indeed it can be done well enough to get a marketable product out there. And it can be done for under $500 bucks to boot. Will I do it that way again? Heck NO! I will use my VA’s to help put the Puppy together. It would have taken about 1/3 the time. I am still leaving in some parts of the original unchanged, typos and all.
That being said, within the next few weeks I will be able to add all of the research from my VAs along with video tutorials and relevant tips and tricks. I also will be adding complete Muse packages, including everything that you need to get your Muse professionally put together from soup to nuts. But that is later and that is why you are going to get FREE updates on this book for the next 6 months.
So, don’t spend a bunch of time, effort, and money perfecting every last detail of your Muse. Get it up and running and shove it out the door. Musi are adaptable little critters and you will be amazed at just how well they will do. Make adjustments as quickly as you can, but make it start earning its keep right away. This is what they are supposed to do!
Also, I do not suggest that you put up a dummy sales page to see if your Muse will sell as you may have read elsewhere. Just wait until you get it done. The problem here is that if you have just a Sales page and you count the hits or how many people try to purchase it and they are not happy. You more than likely will not be able to get them back and you may have not lost just one or two sales, but if they are early adapters and they tell their network on Twitter or Facebook, then you could lose hundreds of sales.
The bottom line is that if you can get your Muse to 80%. Get it out there and do the last part with customer feed back. Just make sure that you tell them that this it is a Beta Version and make sure you deliver value. Most people will want to help you make it better! And guess what? With their help it will be far better than you could have done it on your own.
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