In this solo Solopreneur Hour (See what I did there?) I wanted to help de-mystify the launching process...whether it was a product, a service, or an affiliate business.  I used a guide created by the Suitcase Entrepreneur herself, Natalie Sisson. You can find the guide in the Resources section at the bottom of the notes.

Thanks to Natalie, and thanks to GoDaddy for sponsoring this episode!

Without further ado, let's dive into the outline of today's show.

Phase 1. Commit to ship and plan.

* Set big launch goals within 1-3 months

* Hire a coach or launch strategist or join mastermind to hold you accountable.

* Find a niche market with a real need. Make your hobbies work for you.

* Conduct research to narrow down your niche and find your ideal customer.

* Choose the best product or service to launch based on your audience and your own personal sweet spot. Find something in your own Universe, find the thing you really love to do.

Phase 2: Taking Action

I advise taking the Chris Ducker approach: hire a small team, start building people around you. It's a MAJOR mistake to try to do it all yourself. You'll get so much further so much quicker when you hire a team!

* Get to work creating your product or service. Have people help you with copy, etc. Do an outline: first write out your major topics/buckets of the information you are disseminating. Then do the sub-categories: build on a gradient which means build on the previous section(s).

* Are you using video? Then you’ll just need bullet points of the points you're making.

Doing a screen cast? Write out more of a script so you keep it tight.

* Create an effective web site: Wordpress is your best. See Resources section for more resources on this, it's here.

* Get your social media profiles ready if they aren’t: wherever your customers hang out online, that’s where you need to be.

* Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. See Crush It of the Sexy Six for more on this.

* And for these social media outlets, use your personal profile. People will most commonly relate to you as YOU, not your business page.

* Set up an email list for Aweber, Mailchimp plug-ins, and place opt-in box at the top of your site. Give something cool away: I like resource guides. Check out Pat Flynn’s episode with Clay Collins of LeadPages. LeadPages makes beautiful opt-in boxes.

* Create a content marketing plan that includes regular blogging on your product or service topic, both on your personal blog and on influential blogs as a guest contributor.

* Set up a landing page to promote your product on your web site. Leadpages or Optimize Press for the squeeze page or sales page.

Phase 3: Selling Your Product

* Choose an e-commerce solution like e-junkie, Shopify, Paypal, Authorize.net to accept payments for your products.

* Build out an affiliate team to act as your virtual sales force. It’s common to give away 50% to your affiliates. What would you rather have: 100 sales at $50 or 3 sales at 100?

* Use online software like Clickbank or 1shoppingcart to set up an affiilate management system and empower your affiliates to sell.

* Set up a marketing campaign using FB ads, Google adwords, other relevant platforms. Pay to play to do a really good launch. Think of it as trading a nickel for a dollar! The current move I see happening is this: you drive people to either a live training or a recorded webinar on a specific date that gets them to buy an actual product.

* Or you can do what Nick Unsworth does and do a live 20 day launch. He brings people along with him. That way there's no pre-build, you almost force people to participate because they are logging in and using your product through the launch.

* Write guest posts and contact media outlets that may be interested in reviewing your product.

* Plan an email marketing campaign for pre and post ...