UPDATE 3/21/08:

So I wrote the post below a few weeks back when I had just arrived in Malaysia. I had this idea that I would work with MindValley to take one of their new products to market within 30 days and turn a profit. While that’s a nice idea and I’m sure it could have been done, we realized that it’s more important to have a really successful launch, successful meaning make a bunch of cash in a short time, than to rush it. So we’re religiously following the launch steps outlined in Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula. Oh boy, there are a lot of steps, but we’re working through them and I think you’ll be very impressed when the product is released.

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Thirty Day Challenge

The concept of holding a challenge comes from the Thirty Day Challenge produced by Ed Dale and Dan Raine. I stumbled across the Thirty Day Challenge a few months ago. It’s an excellent beginner course covering Internet marketing. It also includes really good information about leveraging the social Web for marketing. Technically, the Challenge is a contest to see who can make at least $10 through Internet marketing within 30 days. Once the Challenge begins, new content is provided to challengers each day to help them get their Internet business up and running. The content from the 2007 Challenge is still live, so I encourage folks to take a look. Ed and Dale are currently working on new content for the next challenge in August 2008.

Some folks have complained that it’s very time-consuming to watch all the Thirty Day Challenge videos to extract the real useful pearls of knowledge. From a marketing viewpoint, this format worked well for Ed and Dan because people had to read every email and watch ever video to truly understand the teachings of the Thirty Day Challenge. In doing so, Ed and Dan built a very strong relationship with the challenger participants. In the future, these relationships will be leveraged to sell product to these people. I have a feeling they’ll take out their credit cards while wearing a smile since Ed and Dale have already provided tremendous value for free. If you want to cheat, below are links to a few resources which attempt to summarize the teachings of the Thirty Day Challenge.

30 Day Challenge Action List

Mike Mindel - Thirty Day Challenger

Carsonified

When Carsonified, makers of the very popular DropSend service, decided to build a new Web application, they documented how the web application was built through their blog, but did not disclose the nature of the web application. This strategy helped them to build a lot of buzz. What they did was essentially a form of pre-selling. Demand was built for the product before it was even completed. Only once the product was ready for release, they revealed that Amigo is an exchange to buy and sell email newsletter advertising.

Amigo

DropSend

I shall try to do something a bit similar here. I’m not going to tell you too much about the product until it’s released.

I’m in Malaysia because the product I’ll be marketing is here, but more important, the company behind the product is here. I’ve been invited by a Kuala Lumpur based company called MindValley to learn more about their business and manage the launch of a new product they’ve developed. I think of MindValley as a sort of startup company incubator. They’re not operating as a traditional incubator, but rather funding their own ideas and building them internally.

I used to work with Vishen Lakhiani, the Co-Founder of MindValley when we both worked at LegalMatch in San Francisco, California. Vishen and Mike Reining, formerly of eBay, started MindValley in 2004. I’ve been curious about MindValley for quite some time. I essentially invited myself to Kuala Lumpur to see what’s going on with the company.

In my opinion, MindValley is a bit of an anomaly. First, they’re operating in Malaysia which is not common for notable Internet businesses. Second, they’ve had an incredibly high rate of success in running profitable businesses that span diverse categories. Currently, these businesses include the social bookmarking service Blinklist, a collection of personal development courses on meditation and self-actualization, Internet marketing courses, and Internet marketing tools. Third, they’re innovating faster than any other company I’ve encountered. The managers of each of the company’s businesses spend one day a week trading notes on ways to improve performance across all the businesses. Fourth, MindValley is aggressive about growth. They intend to launch at least one new Internet based business a month. Over the last four years, they’ve developed the processes and systems to make this possible.

You’re probably still wondering about the product I’ll be marketing. Well, I’m going to keep that under wraps for now. I will tell you that it can dramatically improve a company’s Internet marketing efforts. You’ll have to follow along to hear more.