Success Manifesto: Amazon.com Lessons Learned

I keep on telling others that I learned a lot from the Amazon experience, but I've kept on pushing back writing about these lessons until now.

The Lessons Learned

Always plan for the worst. We were expecting nearly $10,000 in checks since September. Because they were already delayed we figured that they would come any day, so we incorrectly assumed that the money would arrive when we needed it. In retrospect, we should have followed up with the organizations earlier and created backup plans no matter how sure we were.
Know the benefits and costs of your various choices. Based on Amazon.com Bestseller Reports I had read, I determined that the main marketing strategy to be employed would be writing a sales letter and getting other list owners who target enterprising students to tell their lists. What I didn't think about was:
1. The number of people that normally open the newsletters sent out.
2. The conversion rate for these people that open the newsletter.
My good friend, Ryan Allis, who operates a newsletter with 10,000 suscribers, sent out the offer to his list. 1 out of 10 people opened the newsletter and 1 out of 100 of those 1,000 purchased the book. In other words, 10 people purchased the book as a result of his email newsletter. With those statistics, 250,000 enterprising youth would have had to been reached with our offer through newsletters. With those sort of numbers earlier on, I would have devoted most of my time to bulk purchases. As it were, more than 70% the orders came from bulk purchases, yet I spent 90% of time trying to get individual purchases.
Pursuing a large, short-term goal with varying levels of support from many people, with a very uncertain outcome can be a lot of fun. After making a public commitment (through this blog, the newsletter, and through conversations) and a private commitment with myself, Sheena, and other collaborators, I was extremely focused on the goal. Also, because I felt like the goal could be achieved, but that we were behind where we wanted to be, I committed a lot of time and lost sleep (something that I haven't done for anything over an extended amount of time since Freshman year). I sacrificed a lot of pleasantries so that everything I was doing could lead to the goal. While this was certainly stressful at points, I have to say that there was something exhilarating about the process. Part of me wants to avoid that stress ever again and part of me wants to leap into another project with my lessons learned.
Selling yourself to soon is risky. In retrospect, I don't think we should have aimed to become a bestseller on my birthday. One night in early October while I was reading about a how to become a bestseller, a press release headline shot into my head, "Birthday Boy Becomes Bestseller". I even started to write a press release for it. Once this was in my mind I stubbornly made the vision my reality and tried to fit our limited time and money resources into it, instead of practically thinking about the sacrifices that would need to be made. Because the idea had become a reality in my head and I had sold myself so strongly, I had a logical, convincing reason for every point that Sheena made for pushing back the bestseller day.

According to my entrepreneurship textbook, The Entrepreneurial Venture, "Entrepreneurship is a management style that involves pursuing opportunity without regard to the resources currently enrolled." While this style of management ended up working to achieve the goal, I think it can be risky when pursued in haste, without proper planning. In the future, I need to be careful what visions I sell myself on. If we had pushed back the date, we still could've been a bestseller, been less stressed, have lost less sleep, and been a #1 bestseller.

Good thing that there is always tomorrow.

Success Manifesto

Amazon.com Lessons Learned

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