How Snowboard Addiction Makes Money
By Richard
Another very cool Four Hour Work Week success story!! Nev’s story is great. Snowboard enthusiast moves to Whistler. Becomes snowboard instructor. Works nights at a restaurant. Gets laid off from BOTH jobs. Gets handed 4HWW by a friend. Creates DVD course on how to snowboard like a pro. Busts guts to spread word. Fast forward. Site makes over $240,000 a year. Probably pays about $70,000 (my guess) to his outsourced web developer and personal assistant to keep it running whilst he travels the world. And who knows what the break up is amongst the few other contributors to the site. Either way, hells yeah!!
There’s so much to learn from this case study. The niche is fantastic since there are so many things to teach about snowboarding, from upside down crazy tricks to basic downhilling. And then the related products!! Oh dear, you can affiliate so much stuff. And even make your own training aids like Nev has done – he sells a branded bar to practice your balancing. It’s also the kind of target audience, where once you sell them one product (eg beginners DVD), you can end up selling them a handful of other educational, training and performance products through some smart email marketing. Brilliant!!
One big takeaway from Nev’s video on 4HWW; offer a 110%, or in his case, 120% money back guarantee on your products!! I know this strategy worked for our web design & digital strategy agency, but this is a service and you know the customer – compare to info products bought by strangers. But Nev says it increased sales drastically and didn’t result in mischievous returns. Interesting for sure.
One other smart thing I noticed on Nev’s nav bar were the country flags indicating all the different languages he has had his courses translated into. That’s a great idea for a niche like this, which is pretty much standard around the world; ie they don’t snowboard differently in different countries –compare that to say a site on the bar exam (different in every country/jurisdiction). I’ve cited this example to many of my friends in the sports and fitness world, but like I add when talking to them…you can only successfully execute this idea by creating interesting content that people enjoy and turn into big results.
Visit Snowboard Addiction or check out Four Hour Work Week Blog where case study originally spotted