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    Marketplace Tuesday! (December 05, 2017) Entrepreneur

    December 05, 2017

    Marketplace Tuesday! (December 05, 2017) Entrepreneur

    Marketplace Tuesday! (December 05, 2017)

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 05:06 AM PST

    Please use this thread to post any Jobs that you're looking to fill (including interns), or services you're looking to render to other members.

    We do this to not overflow the subreddit with personal offerings (such logo design, SEO, etc) so please try to limit the offerings to this weekly thread.

    Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts.

    submitted by /u/AutoModerator
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    Competition to make as much money as you can in 5 hours

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 03:53 AM PST

    Hi, I'm a 16-year-old student studying economy in Sweden.

    Tomorrow we will have a competition at school where you get around 10 dollars to make as much money as you can in 5 hours.

    I wonder if you guys have done anything similar, or if you have any ideas of what we can do or sell to make money fast.

    Here are some ideas I have come up with:

    Contact a company and ask if we can sell Christmas "fika"* to their employees.

    Make Christmas cards to sell

    Buy cookies and put them in plastic bags to make them look "homemade"

    All ideas are welcome!

    *(a concept in Swedish culture with the basic meaning "to have coffee", often accompanied with pastries, cookies or pie.)

    submitted by /u/JohnTolv
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    The Hardest Thing I've Ever Done

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 11:01 AM PST

    This will be a slight emotional ramble, so bear with me. Some will disagree with me but I'm sure a lot of you would agree.

    A lot of wantrepreneurs standing on the outside looking in probably think this all the time. I think too many entrepreneurs talk about how starting a business is the hardest thing they've ever done.

    I'm sure I've said it before, but in hindsight I know I'd be lying if I said that again.

    The hardest thing I've ever done is work a job.

    In comparison, having a business has been easy peasy.

    When I started Companion Maids, which eventually sold, I had spent some time learning how to build Wordpress sites, and I built the CM site as if I were working on a school project. It wasn't that hard, it just took some effort.

    There was no due date. I was able to tweak it, and I was never given a failing grade (except not having clients book?)

    My first and crappiest site for that company landed our first client our first day in business.

    It was tough getting to the point where we were doing 10k/month+ in revenue, but that took all of 5 months, and we didn't even work more than 40-50 hours a week.

    But the work was FUN. It felt like working out.

    Every single time I went to a job to check on an issue, make sure the client was happy or even to argue over whether we really damaged their old carpet, I felt that every second of effort I put into the business was directly benefitting me and setting me up for a better future of success.

    It was exciting. It was the best thing I've ever done.

    It was a bit of a slog, but it was exhilarating!

    The end of a long day left me feeling proud and accomplished and thankful.

    I didn't feel this with any of my jobs.

    When my former partner and I started Vicky Virtual, we didn't know anything about anything in our industry. I thought I'd be able to write a few lines of code in Twilio (even though I'm not really a programmer) and we'd be able to fully operate a comprehensive call center offering.

    Man was I wrong.

    Vicky Virtual was at it's hardest about 5-7 months in, when we had the issue of taking in too many clients unexpectedly (organic, not paid ads) and we were struggling to keep up with the workload.

    We were stressed the F out for a few months, I had a few wtf moments, but at the back of my mind there was the knowledge that revenue was growing, clients were almost universally happy and our agents were doing a great job.

    We learned that the business WORKED and had POTENTIAL.

    I was mentally drained but excited as HELL.

    Once we finally hired a few more people, and made a few more changes, our lives got a lot better, we were making some money, and I felt truly validated.

    I had built two six figure companies in a row in 2 years.

    It wasn't easy, but I wouldn't hesitate to do it again.

    We did it on our terms, we were busy for the right reasons and we were getting paid (a small amount) while building a sustainable company.

    I never felt those awesome feelings in my job.

    When my partner Thomas brought the idea of Cara Virtual up to me earlier this year, I said yes in one 10 minute conversation.

    Without doing much work Thomas and I now have 20+ agents working full time for us, we've become profitable, and we're excited as hell. We leveraged our reputations and relationships and still have yet to spend a penny on marketing.

    I couldn't do these things with a job. I never had leverage.

    Working a job was the hardest thing I've ever done.

    I'd rather service a client for myself and my company than wake up at a time dictated by someone else, show up to a place I don't choose, service clients I might not like, smile at coworkers I might not like, please a boss I don't like, knowing that if I piss off ONE person I'm out of a job, and I might not feed myself in a few months because of that.

    I never cried myself to sleep because I had a long business day.

    I've never had a client yell at me and I had to take it because that one person is the variable as to whether or not I can pay my bills.

    I've gone from 1 boss (job) to 1,000 bosses (clients) and it's been one of the best things that ever happened to me.

    I wouldn't work a day at my best job.

    I would start my worst business from scratch in a heartbeat.

    Being an employee was the hardest thing I've ever done, and I'm never going back.

    submitted by /u/SpadoCochi
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    What is a ridiculously small problem you’ve come across that nobody has bothered to solve?

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 09:39 AM PST

    Gary Vee suggested eating sh*t for 2 years… Why not? Non-technical founder’s journey to creating a freebies website with a twist.

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 09:26 AM PST

    It's been an interesting few months. In the summer I graduated studying Mathematics at university. I saw many of my peers jump into full time jobs the following month. For me, well I've always felt a bit more daring. I wanted to move away from the corporate world and focus on creating something from scratch that I could call my own. After seeing those around me, some a few years older, I was convinced that the corporate world is not going to be for me, at least not without a fight into the world of business.

    Having come across a few affiliation website examples online, I was intrigued with: 1) Their business model 2) The amount of income they were able to generate 3) The fact that they did not have to create a product to sell

    With all this in mind, I started brainstorming and weighing up my options. I had never created a website, coded or designed graphics (to any meaningful effect anyway). I took the summer off, spent a lot of time with friends and family and then finally decided to jump into my own venture full time with the help of those around me. Well here's the story so far.

    I come from a non-technical background, however, my degree allowed me to dabble with Stata and Matlab (not the most popular in industry). I decided time is of the essence so learning a programming language to develop my own website was probably not the best of ideas. Yet, I did consider it important for me to be involved in the design/development stages, to oversee closely and pitch in where I could.

    The idea:

    https://fitnessfreebies.co.uk - We are simply a free daily raffle website specialising in the fitness industry. Users sign up for free (UK based) which results in them entering the raffle. Every day at 6pm the draw is made and one random winner is selected. This winner gets a chance to claim a prize we have on offer on that particular day within a 24 hour time period. If they miss this time slot – the prize is lost for that particular winner. Our sponsors for the prizes range from protein, supplements, meal prep, online personal training and more (who by the way cover the bill for the prize). Now that we had a base for the idea, we needed to develop a platform:

    WordPress - the first point of call

    The amount of plugins I found on WordPress was unbelievable. Many developers quoted me a mid-high 4-figure fee to develop a fully custom system that will help me launch Fitness Freebies. However, using a platform such as Wordpress would inevitably result in significantly lower development costs. But with that came some compromises. Sometimes you are bound by the limitations of their accompanying plugins and cannot have the functionality exactly how you envisaged it. With everything considered for this particular project, I decided that going with Wordpress would be the most suitable option.

    In-house developers vs freelance developers vs outsourcing companies

    In-house developers were beyond my budget capabilities, so it was an easy choice to remove them from the equation. At this point, I had accepted the trade off in the quality of work. I was also aware of the fact that I would need to be a lot more involved with freelance developers and outsourcing companies.

    Freelance Developers - I like the idea of having full exposure to the development process and being able to communicate directly with the developers. However, realising that they will be testing their own work pushed me towards using an outsourcing company.

    Outsourcing Company – Although I would have no access to the development team, I felt they would produce a well thought out and tested system. They use professionals at every stage of the development process and communication is very efficient. Account Managers oversee the work, business analysts understand and implement the requirements and finally testers provide a bug free website. Simple, right?

    I was naive to think it was plain sailing from this point on. I had my fair share of hiccups along the way and often felt like quitting altogether.

    Challenges

    The most obvious challenge was the communication issues. For the outsourcing company, their first language was not English. And so, understandably (maybe not for me at the time) there were often times when I couldn't convey what I wanted doing and so resorted to print screens with arrows, circles and very simple instructions. However, having said that – I cannot fault their commitment and effort. My satisfaction was a priority for them and they did work tirelessly which, for me, was more than enough.

    Regarding graphics, my budget restricted the use of professionals. So, I decided to learn basic Photoshop effects to create compelling Instagram posts, blog post images, icons etc. It's something that can take a lifetime to master, but with a tonne of free content on the likes of YouTube, it definitely made the process somewhat easier.

    As mentioned above, there are pros and cons to using plugins. I had to accept that certain functionalities will work in a certain way and at times there will be limited flexibility. Looking at the bigger picture (if all goes to plan), I really hope those restrictions don't prove to be too costly.

    Post launch

    Now that the website is up and running, my concerns have shifted towards generating traffic and converting that traffic into sign ups. For the fitness industry, Instagram is the go to place. Any fitness fanatic has an Instagram account (many of which make their living off Instagram). The idea is to engage with the fitness community and showcase the up-and-coming and established brands we have partnered with.

    Having studied many statistics related modules at university, it allowed me to understand the importance of data and how it's the catalyst of better decision making. For that reason, we decided to collect some more information from the user upon signing up, making it a two-step process. The idea is to tailor our partner's marketing campaigns to the specific demographic of their brand.

    SEO is still alive in 2017 (going into 2018) they tell me. Traffic through search is still miles ahead of social and email marketing. So, with this is mind, I now look to expand my SEO campaign and create regular content for my blog. I know this takes time and won't be an overnight success but the key is to stay consistent and eventually the results will come.

    To be honest, generating traffic has been a bit of a struggle, but I'm happy to accept that this whole process is a learning curve and patience is key here. Any advice or recommendations will be greatly appreciated. And if you'd like to continue to follow my story, I will do an update in a couple months time to let you all know how we're getting along.

    Also, if there are any readers out there who think a potential collaboration is on the cards, shoot me an email on admin@fitnessfreebies.co.uk and I'll be more than happy to discuss! Cheers!

    Best wishes and thanks for reading,

    Fitness Freebies (https://fitnessfreebies.co.uk)

    submitted by /u/billivey
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    I asked 15 successful founders on Building tools vs Blogging for better ROI and growth

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 06:32 AM PST

    This post is a TLDR; of the original article (https://thinkgrowth.org/building-tools-can-provide-better-roi-than-blogging-ec87e304c47d) which has more comprehensive details on how to build free tools to drive better ROI in terms of traffic, leads and revenue.

    —————

    Content mediocrity is rising, and startups are struggling to generate lucrative ROI from their content marketing efforts.

    In this hyper-competitive market, yet some startups have adopted unique strategies to address these concerns. Amongst many, building free tools or micro-sites are on top.

    For Instance:

    Alex Tew, the founder of Calm, has used tools successfully multiple times. When he was preparing to launch his first startup — popjam.com, a social network for sharing humorous content.

    Alex had the idea to build a game around this. Popjam.com was all about sharing funny content so there was a natural fit. His team built a game called, SockandAwe.com.

    Sockandawe.com got over 10 million views in the first month and captured over 120K emails. When popjam.com launched, this email list was their first audience.

    Here is what 15 founders shared about — Building free tools vs Blogging

    Patrick from Brand Grader,

    _Unfortunately, my answer is "it depends." We really enjoyed building the Brand Grader, and it generated a lot of business for us in a short period of time. On the other hand, it was a lot of work and involved a whole team of people. A blog post can seem like hard work as well, but the two don't even compare. Building the tool was a huge undertaking. _

    My advice would be to ask yourself how much business the tool would generate compared with a blog post, and then compare that with the amount of time it takes to do each. In a lot of cases, I think the blog post wins. But at the same time, _**_don't be afraid to take chances**_. If what you're doing right now isn't enough, then maybe building this tool could be a game changer. _

    Ajay Paghdal, Linkio

    _Content has become more and more saturated as marketers have acknowledged the power of educational high-quality content. _

    Providing free tools in addition to great content works well for a couple of reasons. Most of your competitors aren't doing it, so it makes you unique and your prospects can keep coming back to use the software thus improving your brand stickiness.

    Michael Navazhylau

    I think that a tool can constantly be modified to be as helpful as possible. While a content has to be constantly created to stay relevant and useful.

    Dru Wynings, DiffBot

    If you have the skills and resources, build a tool.

    Alexander Isora

    _Me and our team prefer creating useful tools over writing articles because making joyful tools is what we are best at. It's our passion. _

    And our users feel that and expect exciting experience and lots of help from our tools.

    Nathan Beckord, Foundersuite

    Building useful startup tools has lasting value and can provide returns for many months/years. A really helpful content piece can help bring attention, but unless it's a comprehensive "how to" guide it's usually a shorter-lived impact.

    Ben Lang, LangOnline

    Both are valuable. Tools are essentially a different form of content. Tools and blog posts are meant to provide value to your audience.

    Oleg Сampbell, Reply

    I find it personally for me it is more fun to build something new (like cool free tools), rather than just sharing your experience in some areas (article).

    I see that free tool gives much more leads on a launch day and in a long run. People are coming and coming to it as times go. The User-base slowly grows with 0 marketing after the launch.

    Luis Lopes, AmpleMarket

    I think both can end up having a tremendous return on investment as long as you are adding value to the user/reader. The return on investment function in this situation is almost binary: if you write a really good blog post that adds a lot of value to the reader you can have a tremendous return and if you write 10 average blog posts your return will be virtually 0. The problem is that a lot of people are not used to thinking about this return function in mind.

    Since blog post are easier to spin compared to side products, people tend to gravitate more towards writing blog posts, frequently producing a lot of content with less quality and consequently no results.

    People also usually underestimate the power of side products, either because a lot of them are not even under the company's domain - thus apparently reducing the direct SEO benefits - or because the path a potential customer needs to take to discover the company from the side product's website seems too long.

    I say you should optimise for generating the most utility and value for your audience and if you do that well the returns will be great and people will go a long way to discover who's the company behind that super useful tool or insightful blog post.

    Now, when it's safe to believe that free tools can generate more return for your business than content, but how would you know which tools to build?

    The right tool for you will ultimately depend on your business, but here are some opportunity areas to look for:

    1.Help your customers complete a task easily.

    The goal is to help potential customers who are at different stages of their buying journey compete for tasks in a relevant domain.

    For your inspiration:

    • IPSY created Open Studios to help influencers produce better videos.
    • Buffer build Pablo to help users create better social media images
    • MOZ created site explorer to help users find DA, and PA of any website.

    2.Build valuable free resources and Micro-sites

    Here, the goal is to generate more traction and subscribers by building an asset that your users can use frequently.

    For your inspiration:

    • InVision gave away free UI kits and then build a plugin to help the users design better.
    • Squarespace created Easy Logo maker help small businesses set up their online presence.
    • The crew built a website — named howmuchtomakeanapp.com to calculate the cost of making an app.

    3.Build an online community for your target users

    For your inspiration:

    • HackerNews: Build by Y Combinator for tech enthusiasts and Entrepreneurs to learn and be a part of most disruptive tech.
    • GrowthHackers: Built by Sean Ellis for marketing professionals.
    • Inbound.org: Built by HubSpot to educate their users about Inbound Marketing.

    To build these lead magnets, you have to start with understanding your audience's needs and pain points. And, then brainstorming ideas on small free tools that can help you target users. I think there's a pretty compelling case for building tools to gain competitive advantage.

    What do you folks feel?

    submitted by /u/steveappdev
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    What did you learn about yourself in 2017?

    Posted: 04 Dec 2017 11:22 PM PST

    I learned that my real fear is failing myself, not other people. This is important because now I know what to work on.

    What is yours?

    submitted by /u/maythequeen
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    Need some help finding licensed products to sell as an affiliate

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 12:07 PM PST

    I have a FB page dedicated to a college football team with about 50K followers and a very high engagement rate and I am looking to start monetizing. I was thinking about maybe finding licensed products to sell as an affiliate, but I have no idea where to start to find something like that.

    Does anyone have any recommendations for me? I don't even know where to start.

    submitted by /u/ruinerofexplanations
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    1,200 visitors and 27 subscribers in my first month. [Case study]

    Posted: 04 Dec 2017 06:18 PM PST

    Hi /r/Entrepreneur, I'm writing these posts as a monthly update on my progress of starting Starter Story, a website where I interview entrepreneurs on how they got started. Would love your feedback on what you think / how I could improve.

    I know these aren't crazy good numbers, but I'm excited to share!

    This is my December update. You can read my November update here.

    November Results

    For November 2017, here were my goals that I set at the beginning of the month vs. what I actually did:

    Goals v. actual

    Overall, I'm happy with the results. I included a few extra days in October since I technically launched the site in late October.

    Sessions: 1,200

    Google Analytics

    Google Analytics dashboard. The spikes are when I released each new interview. The first three spikes are only from promoting on my own personal Facebook.

    The biggest spike there is when I asked my interviewee to share on his own Facebook, which brought in the most traffic. This was also the first interview that was written by the interviewee, rather than me. I think when people write their own content, they are more proud of it and more willing to share.

    Aside from Facebook & Instagram, the only other promotion I did was on Reddit. This actually brought in some decent traffic. Nothing revolutionary, but I can see it being a nice growth driver in the next few months when I'm more focused on growth.

    Subscribers: 27

    Mailchimp subscribers

    Although it's seemingly low, I'm really happy with this number. I'm happy with it because I got to 20 subscribers (my goal) sooner than halfway through the month.

    Most of the subscribers came from my Reddit posts and comments. This gives me confidence that people on Reddit are interested in my website. This is one of my target demographics, so I'm stoked on the conversion rate here.

    I got a good amount of traffic from Facebook, but most of them didn't convert to mailing list subscribers. This makes sense because Facebook referrals were interested in reading the articles about their friends and not necessarily interested in the concept of Starter Story.

    I also do not have annoying popups on Starter Story asking for your email address. I just have a call to action to subscribe on the home page and at the bottom of the articles. More on that for another day.

    Interviews: 5

    This was the only goal I did not meet. I do have 4-5 interviews that are only a few days from being published, but I should have been more proactive about getting at this earlier in the month. The process of getting an interview live on the site can take up to 3 weeks from start to finish (I'm often waiting for people to actually write it).

    But this month I spent a lot of time streamlining this process of getting interviews. I'm constantly thinking of and trying new ways to find interviewees. I've had a lot of luck reaching out to people through Reddit DMing.

    I've also been working iterating on a Google Doc template to facilitate gathering the answers for the interviews. As this gets better, the better the interviewers answers can be on the first draft, allowing me to follow up less with revisions and edits.

    Instagram

    I started the month thinking Instagram would be an awesome source of traffic. I was wrong. For the whole month, Instagram brought in 20 sessions total.

    I posted daily content on Instagram and Facebook. Here's an example of some of the content I was sharing:

    Example Instagram post (I made a bunch of these)

    Although I seemingly was gaining a bunch of followers and likes based on my content, it turns out most of them were bots / spam. I further confirmed this after posting an Instagram story. No one watched it.

    I'm going to use Instagram more sparingly from now on. Just going to post when I have new interviews, instead of daily content.

    December Goals

    The holidays will allow for me to dedicate a little bit more time this month, and I now know of some methods that can guarantee me traffic. Here are my goals:

    • 2,000 sessions
    • 40 new mailing list subscribers
    • 10 new interviews

    This is double last month! Wish me luck!

    I have also decided to start narrowing "niche" to e-commerce. Before, I was interested in interviewing any type of entrepreneur, but I think I should specialize. Right now, Starter Story is not targeted enough.

    E-commerce is a huge industry and is still pretty broad, and I already have a few e-commerce interviews up on the site. This will also allow me to specialize the interviews and attract a community of readers that are interested in e-commerce. I will also be able to promote the content more naturally on other platforms.

    Other than the re-brand, I'm going to start looking into promoting on Pinterest and Quora.

    submitted by /u/youngrichntasteless
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    Should I risk it all - stupid or not?

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 11:10 AM PST

    Hello everone,

    To make a long story short, I want to start my own e-commerce business and go all in with the money I have: about €1k, I'm a 17-year-old boy. Going to university in 9 months, so that money might come handy.

    I already know a lot about social media marketing, e-mail marketing, SEO, paid advertising, so I'm not a beginner at this.

    Would it be a stupid idea to invest all my money into a new venture? I feel like the experience would be worth a lot more than the money I can lose, and also I don't want to regret later on in life not having tried to seriously start my own business in my teen years.

    So what do you guys think, would it be a stupid idea to go all-in or not?

    submitted by /u/jamesmaddogmattis
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    Looking for suggestions to improve small farm income

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 10:44 AM PST

    My partner and her family have been running their small livestock farm in central Virginia for over 30 years. It's making money, but it's only just keeping it's head above water, and I'd like to find ideas to increase the income we generate.

    Current activities

    • Farmers market (early spring until Thanksgiving only)
    • Hikes/Treks with the animals
    • Event/facility rental
    • Animal boarding
    • Stud services

    Future plans

    • Camping. We've been cutting trails in the forested part of the property for the treks and identifying potential spots for campsites which we'd put up on Hipcamp.
    • Longer hikes/treks - we need to get the animals in shape, along with all the necessary permits to take them on overnight or multi-day hikes along selected parts of the AT
    • Online sales - I'm helping my partner put her value-added fiber products into a store so that she can sell them online, rather than just locally.

    Why I'm here

    I'd like to get more ideas about what we can do, and how I can help the property generate additional income.

    submitted by /u/perivane
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    Find entrepreneur in Canada or USA (hockey industry)

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 02:07 PM PST

    Hi. If possible to find on Reddit entrepreneur or small business owner who need new hockey stick designs for their hockey related business (or sport goods store)? Best wishes, Vital R., hockey stick designer at "Vital-R Design"

    submitted by /u/Digi-Vital
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    I just recently launched a financial web app I've been working on part-time for the past year, and wanted to share my story and hopefully get some feedback

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 02:06 PM PST

    Last March I started working on my app Trading Dive. How it works is traders import their trading history from their broker and I break it all down and show users what behaviors are losing or making them money. Things like, do trades I hold onto longer average to be more profitable, or am I usually losing or making money on days when the market is up. From this data you can change your behavior and fix bad habits that tend to form when trading a lot. Since using it I've personally increased my performance for this year.

     

    I initially started building this because I had been trading stocks and options for a while, and was needing something other than a spreadsheet to really see how I was performing as a trader. The apps that I found during my initial searching either looked really outdated or cost around $30 and $50 a month, or both. I thought instead of paying all that money I could use my 10 years of experience building apps professionally to come up with my own solution and save a little money too. What started out as a little tool for personal use quickly started growing, and I decided to try and make it something the public can use.

     

    Since then I have been working on this every weekday (after my full-time job) and weekend until the early hours of the morning. A lot of the startups I tried creating in the past always seemed to fall apart. I could never find partners who would put in the work to execute the idea. For this project I decided to do the design, front-end, back-end, and marketing and just see how far I could get.

     

    The features the app has are similar to my competitors, but like I mentioned they are charging a lot of money for their platforms. My plan is to keep everything it has now as free. I'm working now on integrating features that no other trading tool or competitors have. These features will be a premium model users can upgrade to receive. Hopefully then it makes this journey all worth it.

    submitted by /u/Pr1meNumber7
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    Built a nice email list, but literally everything i try in Mailchimp goes right to the "Promotions" Folder, which makes it effectively useless. Any better method for sending emails to email subscribers?

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 04:52 AM PST

    So I've built a nice little email list and the time has come for me to use it, as I'm launching a new product. This is my first email list, as I'm really trying to get away from just relying on Facebook.

    Anyway, with MailChimp, literally EVERYTHING I try ends up in the promotions tab of every gmail address I send a test email to.

    And I'm using the most simplistic format ever... all text, one link maximum, short and to the point. No images, no tracking except for opens... still straight to the promotions folder.

    This effectively makes mailchimp useless, and there is no way I can send thousands of emails one by one.

    Does mailchimp just absolutely suck? Incredibly frustrating. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

    EDIT: This is definitely a mailchimp issue, I sent the same email directly (not through mailchimp) and it went through to the primary inbox just fine.

    submitted by /u/gooblemonster
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    Looking to build a team, but not sure where to start.

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 01:04 AM PST

    I currently have a really good idea (or else I think), that I want to fully invest in. Without many details, I need a team to develop my idea which involves a building a physical product (Android Tablet) and an app for niche based purpose. I have all the funding and I am aware how high the price for something like this can be. What I don't have is a team and not sure how to find capable people to work on it. How would one go about finding high skilled team members?

    submitted by /u/mikey1151
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    CPO joining after a year of work, how much equity and yes/no co-founder?

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 01:29 PM PST

    Hello all,

    With my co-founder, we founded our startup about a year ago. I am the CTO, he is the CEO. We had an MVP up by August, and started some initial sales. We have some (for standard equity) workers. We did not raise funds yet. More details below.

    Question: would you give 8% and a co-founder title to a Chief Product Officer joining you after 12 months, in a pre-funding startup?

    Could having a co-founder with low equity be a problem when raising funds in seed, round A, or further on?

    Our status:

    We currently have a few thousand dollars in MRR from 20-30 customers. Our business was growing quite a bit when we were not focused on fund raising. We now have 2 good developers working for equity, another outsourced one abroad, a sales person, a UI/UX guy who is also in for equity - our idea is one which people can really get behind, so it just happens.

    However, we failed to raise our pre-seed fund. We did not have a coherent product plan, sort of having "chapter names" but not much more. Our business plan was fairly detailed, but lost sync with our changing plan. And, our lack of experience eventually meant that after 3 months, and several "near calls", we ended up with no investment.

    Right now, we are all over worked. I am at 75% capacity, as I need to moonlight to keep afloat money wise. We have a great vision, but not enough "fuel" (=money, people) to implement fast enough. We don't have enough experience in product management to know what we are missing, and not enough time to learn and do it properly, hence the fundraising suffering (among other reasons).

    We already saw what the outputs of the CPO are like - stellar. He is a smart dude, good natured, and best of all - he balances our duo of co-founders. I want to focus on the technological vision and team building, and execute it. I am very grounded and careful. The CEO wants to focus on the vision, on sales, networking and company building. He is very optimistic and fast moving. The CPO is what we are missing - organized, detailed, experienced, with nice accolades under his belt (also of fund raising), and a middle-ground between grounded me and in-the-sky CEO. While the CEO and I see eye to eye on almost everything, I do enjoy the fact that we can have a "tie breaker" in the CPO, and he also knows how to disarm stress.

    All in all, I believe that with him - we can organize our product, improve our vision and mission, raise proper funds, all in good terms - and have better, calmer communications in-company. To be honest, I feel that without the CPO - there's a big chance we will die within 12 months. I believe his presence, his skills and talents and finally - his experience, will get us to the next level.

    This is why I believe 8% is fine. I am not sure about the co-founder title. The CEO, as expected, says the opposite of me - he says 8% is way too much, 5% would make more sense - and no way in hell to give the co-founder title.

    What do you think?

    submitted by /u/confusedCoFounderTA
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    I tried analysing various E-mail Marketing Campaigns to find out what makes them Good. Here's what I've found

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 01:14 PM PST

    My e-mail inbox is a nightmare. Tens of useless, boring e-mails with no info or good-quality content whatsoever. Thank God those are e-mails and not actual letters. Or the trees would have been cut down for no reason at all.

    Why do most of the e-mails I get suck? I mean, technically, what is wrong with them?

    Unable to find anything insightful I tried searching for e-mails that are good and compared them with the ones I receive. And here's what I come up with: two things a marketing-campaign should have. With examples.

    First of all, keep it SIMPLE! Especially if the e-mail includes a call-to-action. Many people will most likely skim them just to get the basic idea of where you're getting at – so you don't have a lot of time to grab the attention of your client. Keep to the point - "the longer, the better" doesn't work here.

    This simplicity factor also applies to design. Minimalism is on top of the game today (what makes me very happy), so if there's an e-mail with an alarming red or absurd pink which makes the eyes hurt, the client won't even read the message itself.

    Here's an excellent example of a simple, straight to the point e-mails done by Uber. Uber is famous for their design, so there's no surprise their team managed to bring their letters to perfection. Even the bright colors don't look annoying as they're used in an eye-pleasing geometrical pattern.

    The second S stands for SPECIFIC. The best example here would be the charity: water e-mail campaign. Apparently, charity: water is a charity dedicated to the water problems around the world. It's even more difficult for them to attract people, as they have to make it interesting for them to give their money away.

    However, they've nailed it. Most of the charities don't tell you where your money is, while charity: water will give you a complete immediate information about how they spend your money and what they're spent on. No general statements – here's where your money is and here's what it's done. Here's a detailed study about their e-mail marketing success.

    If you don't have much info about your client, your e-mails can still be SPECIFIC. Buzzfeed e-mails are the best example. Even though Buzzfeed has mass e-mail marketing campaigns, they always manage to create a feeling that they are talking directly to you by creating short and punchy subject titles. Here's an example. To sum up, I'd like to say that I don't mean that these two things will make your e-mail perfect. However, it's a good way to start.

    What are your thoughts on e-mail marketing and how do you think: what's vital for an e-mail marketing campaign?

    submitted by /u/icantusethisname
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    How to Market Premium WP Plugin (with ads) or otherwise

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 09:28 AM PST

    Hey all,

    I developed an adsense WP plugin (for myself initially) but I know that "alternatives" are not as good ... so I want to offer it to others ... I don't have much experience marketing / selling digital products.

    I've setup a "store" with Easy Digital Downloads .. so sales part is taken care of.

    I have a small email list, and working on growing it. I also have a Youtube channel with 1000 subs, but my plugin videos don't get many views ... working to grow that. My site gets pretty small traffic ... so also something to wrk on actively.

    Now what are the best ways to MARKET / Advertise a premium WP plugin (or any software/web tools)?

    FB ads? Google Ads? YouTube ads?

    Please drop a link to a good article/video about using ads to sell digital products... I've watched some on YT, but they are all about shopify dropshipping

    submitted by /u/levchikb
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    Has anyone brought leads and used for local service business?

    Posted: 04 Dec 2017 08:37 PM PST

    I'm curious as to if anyone has ever brought leads and had any success with them. More so for local services such as landscaping, pool cleaning, house cleaning, ect.

    submitted by /u/IDidReadTheSideBar
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    My first month attempting to build a startup

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 08:43 AM PST

    Hey!

    I've spent the past month building Feedbeaver, a platform that allows your audience to subscribe to updates on your website using Facebook Messenger.

    If you're interested in reading about the experience, you can check out this Medium post: https://medium.com/feedbeaver/one-month-into-feedbeaver-6ce757cf1b5c

    TL;DR:

    • Built a small audience from scratch
    • Deployed a stable MVP that's being tested by a dozen or so people
    • Got integrated with Embedly so our widget can be used directly in Medium
    • Goals: get more beta testers, ship out a few more features, launch by early next year

    Happy to hear any feedback or questions you might have! I'm looking for beta testers, if this sounds interesting to you, I'm happy to have you on board, for free :)

    submitted by /u/ruigomeseu
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    What can I do with customer data from my current employment?

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 12:01 PM PST

    I am currently working for a business which serves a specific industry in the UK and I have access to a relatively large volume of customer data. As part of my role I routinely manage this data. It includes business names, addresses, contact info (email and phone), industry and current business management software (if any). Although the business has taken steps to reduce access to this information (due to a salesman moving to a competitor and taking a copy with him), I am in one of the few roles where I can generate complete lists relatively easily.

    My question is, what could I do with this data? I have identified a potential product which may fulfil the requirements of many customers on this list (they routinely contact us for this functionality and we turn them down), but is it ethical or even legal to use this data to promote this new product? I am interested to see what members of this forum would do, or if they had any other ideas for what could be done with this data.

    submitted by /u/TheNovacat
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    Best apps for your shopify store

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 07:47 AM PST

    I am new to setting up a shop on shopify and would like to know which apps offer the best features. From free to paid apps, anyone want to help?

    submitted by /u/gotchabruh
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    Having troubles taking that first step, how did you overcome this?

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 05:32 AM PST

    I think it's mostly fear, been wanting to start up this small time business for a while now but I keep creating excuses as to why I should start later.

    I just don't know where to start, I know it can do quite well and have the funding to get it going but I just can't take that first step. Any tips on how to overcome this?

    Cheers

    submitted by /u/Taq_
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    Quitting a decent jobs just because I'm unfulfilled?

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 04:55 AM PST

    I've been in office work (HR) for almost 4 years, although it's never really what I wanted to do. I did it because I'm not sure what I want to do and because it's "safe", but let's be real nothing is safe. My old boss got let go after 20 years when new leadership came in 7 months ago and things have gotten worse. I've always envied my dad, sister, cousin, etc. for their entrepreneurial spirit. I want to earn my own money.

    To be honest I have no idea what my passion is. I've always been interested in commercial real estate or even residential but more so commercial, I am interested in leasing out commercial property for rent, but I don't know if I would end up hating it if I pursued it. How do I know if it's for me? I like the idea of no "corporate" structure and pointless meetings, sitting down doing data entry for hours, etc.

    I'm already half way in to my master's. My job has great benefits but pay is ok. I'm just not happy with my job or office but I get amazing benefits of 4 weeks, 2 week holiday breaks, free tuition, 9% employer contributions for retirement yet I'm not happy with what I'm doing. I feel like I think about leaving every day.

    submitted by /u/Foodie1989
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    Our 2018 Plan for Entrepreneurs, Startups and Small Businesses, What's Yours?

    Posted: 05 Dec 2017 12:41 AM PST

    Come 2018, we hope to be a Helping Hand to as many entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses, who might struggle, find it difficult or get stuck while trying to come up with unique, quality and effective names for their wonderful brands.

    We do really hope to help these brands navigate this sometimes very stressful process while they focus on other equally important aspects of their businesses; saving them both time and money in the long run.

    That's ours! What's yours? Please, share it below.

    Thanks!

    submitted by /u/BranndHub
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