Merry Late Christmas Reddit: here's my guide on how I build and scale influencers on Instagram Entrepreneur |
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| Merry Late Christmas Reddit: here's my guide on how I build and scale influencers on Instagram Posted: 29 Dec 2017 06:03 PM PST I see so many people struggling to grow their Instagram profile. As someone who successfully builds Instagram accounts for brands, personalities, bloggers, and artists, I thought I'd share my process so if you choose to, you can follow the same process. It's Christmas after all, so it's my gift to /entrepreneurs for keeping me so motivated this year. This strategy does use some controversial tactics. They work and I continue to use this strategy to build powerful accounts. In fact, after Instagram's recent algorithm changes, this has become more relevant than ever before. It's not for everyone, but for those who see the benefit of social proof and want engaged targeted followers, this will work for you. I've found for people who have no existing social proof/brand, you can grow at around 1500 - 5000 targeted followers per month, and have a steady conversion rate depending on your product/service. For artists/photographers, this can be a lot higher. I've broken this guide up into a few sections: Content Creation, Content Curation, Automation (yes, automation). Content Creation: Unless you just signed on to be the next lead actor in Stranger Things, you're not going to build an engaged following by posting rubbish content. So let's spend a minute discussing what kind of things you should be posting, and how to produce it. You're not selling a hammer, you're selling a hole in the wall. You need to apply this mentality to the content your posting on Instagram. I suggest at least 80% of your content should emphasise an associated lifestyle that your product or brand is related to. Here's a comparison of two approaches that explain my point. People want to see new photos from the left account, as it reflects a lifestyle that appeals to them. This not only means far more people will be subscribing to follow the account's updates, but it builds brand authority, leadership and loyalty with its followers. Then, in between the lines, you can passively promote awareness for your products or services. Instagram is a top-of-the-funnel marketing tool for most brands, so treat it like one. Focus on brand awareness, loyalty and thought leadership, and then nurture people down the funnel every now and then. But I can't afford to produce so much high-quality content? I'm not suggesting you go out and hire a photographer or produce all the content yourself. There are billions of photos on Instagram already. So, I re-post existing photos and give credit to the original photographer. This is a very scalable, free way to provide high-value content to your followers. You have enormous freedom to dictate what sort of style, message, tone etc. that your profile will reflect. I suggest using hashtags to find 10-20 or so photographers with a relatively low following (>10k) who consistently post beautiful content that is in line with the overall identity you want your brand to communicate. Keep an eye on what they're posting and when you see something that would be appropriate for your profile, screenshot it, record their username, and line it up in your schedule. I've probably reposted thousands of photos in the last few years, and have never come across someone requesting my photo be removed. In most cases, they'll comment on the photo saying thanks for the shoutout! A little tip, always make sure to caption something sincere about the photo, so the original poster is happy, and also you'll quickly establish a relationship with them. You may be comfortable doing something else, but if I'm helping someone grow their following quick, I suggest 80% of the posts are these stunning lifestyle related photos. It works. Though of course, some people are not comfortable with this. That's fine, but this guide is focusing on how to grow your profile quickly and effectively, not slow and steady. Content Curation: So how do you get awareness of your images? Recently, Instagram changed its algorithm to serve more relevant content to people's feed, rather than in the order of what's posted. That means that the engagement of your next photo determines whether or not it's seen by your followers. In fact, 70% of content is not seen. So to overcome this, you need to make sure you spend time curating or amplifying your content. Here is the process that I follow to make sure I have a solid foundation for making sure content is seen. Hashtags: Forget #photooftheday. Focus on high engagement, low volume keywords that relate to the lifestyle that you're promoting. If you're a luxury watch brand and re-posting photos of glamorous lifestyles and exclusive travel, focus on getting your images on hashtags like #yachtlifestyle or #jetlife - these are active hashtags that relate to a lifestyle that falls within a 'semantic cluster' (for those of you who are into SEO) of your target demographic. I suggest posting around 11-15 hashtags per photo. To make it seem less intrusive and spammy, add a bunch of full stops with line breaks in between them, this way someone has to click 'read more' to see the hashtags. To make life easier, use a program like later.com or Grum.co to schedule your photos. Later.com has a great tool that allows you to save comment templates. I suggest using this so that you can cycle through 5-7 different groups of hashtags. If each day you're posting two photos, and rotating through your hashtag groups, you're going to be generating a lot of exposure. Automation: If mistreated, automation can be harmful to your account. Used carefully and appropriately, automation can be very beneficial to grow fast. For those of you who are unaware of automation, it means that you set up your account to automatically like photos, and if you choose to be very aggressive, automatically following and unfollowing accounts. It generates a lot of exposure and hundreds of people get a notification that you've engaged with them each day. Some people also auto-comment and DM, however, I highly encourage staying away from this. It's just spammy. I find that automation is a great way to ensure photos get high engagement and therefore the overall exposure of the photo is considerably increased. Even if you're occasionally interacting with some low-quality accounts, by optimising it and making sure your engagement is high and relevant, it'll make your organic exposure much greater as you're shown on your followers' feeds, as well as ranking on the hashtag's 'Top Posts' section. For me, this is the jet-fuel that ignites an accounts growth and can be responsible for 10x'ing the speed of growth, and as long as you're careful, it's a sustainable way of building your profile very quickly. Unfortunately, most people abuse it go on automation rampages, which is why there is such a bad stigma attached to it. Done correctly, you can stay within Instagram's limits and only target real people who have a genuine interest in your profile. For those who are interested, I run a service where I'll set up automation for your profile, and optimise it over time. I'm going to be posting a few more case studies and life-hacks in the coming weeks. For me, investing in Instagram has been a great way to life-hack my travels. If people are interested, I'm going to write an article on how I set up and grew a travel influencer account, and set up an auto-outreach process to reach out to top restaurants and hotels on Yelp offering exposure on my account in return for a complimentary service. It works, I currently average 3.5% success rate from restaurants, which sounds low but I last month I was in NY, and set up an automatic process to reach out to Yelp's top 1000 restaurants and had about 50 offers for meals for my girlfriend and I. Of the restaurants that I did go to and post about, I actually feel that I helped the restaurant quite a bit, as it ranked in the top-post section of plenty of high volume travel hashtags and had plenty of local people tagging their friends in the comments. Let me know if you'd like me to write a guide on how you can do this. EDIT: I've received a lot of messages regarding my website not looking great on Mobile - I am fully aware of this and appreciate the concern. I usually have just grown through referrals and all i needed was a landing page for people to get in touch via, however I recently got the desktop version redesigned. The mobile site will come soon :) [link] [comments]  |
| Screen Printing in Garage- T Shirt Business (10-15k budget) Posted: 30 Dec 2017 10:49 AM PST I'm off for the weekend and finally have sometime to sit down and write out my plan on this sub while my son naps. I know the T-Shirt business is over saturated from the comments and other topics I found using the search engine. I've been doing a ton of research the past two months and I am going to take a 3 days "hands on" class with my wife next month. My wife is very artistic but is less business orientated then myself. This class will help us learn the basics better and hopefully learn a lot of new stuff. Background: We both work full time jobs (secure) and have one child. I think this is a major strength and separates us from other T Shirt businesses that are new. We don't need to make 1,000 this month to pay rent on the commercial building etc. Reading on the web a lot of people run out of funds, I just don't see this happening from our position. We aren't super well off, low middle class in my opinion, making under 80k total a year now. However we live well within our means. Strategy Local business, flea markets and local events. Lots of festivals in our area and no one seems to be selling "event" type shirts. "small town music festival 2018" shirts etc. Hustle, Hustle, Hustle. Cold calling, emails, and going door to door. Outside my comfort zone but ill have to get comfortable. Online - Ebay (have established account) Etsy, Shopify, Facebook, and build IG account. Buy ads on Facebook, pay extra on Ebay for better listing, Facebook ads etc. Really want to drop some money here after we get the local stuff going. One of the shops will be designated to Cryptos niche. The others are going to start with basic but clean designs. If this part doesn't work out, we can just change are strategy. From listening to podcasts its not uncommon for T shirts companies to re brand several times before hitting it off. (End game/goal) Lastly reach out to new brands (over saturated area imo) make them customers. Print their shirts and do it better/cheaper then Printful etc. This is end game talk here, but setting long term goals is never a bad idea. Another end game goal we have is getting a shop on the Maryland ocean city boardwalk or another east coast boardwalk. The rent for the summer in these buildings are near 50k-100k! However from what i heard its well worth it, even with multiple shops on each boardwalk they all seem to do well. Anything else I should consider before getting the equipment in March? Working in the garage now and getting it all ready with proper ventilation and water hookup. Making the area a pleasant place to work. [link] [comments]  |
| December Report: 40,988 Visits and 2759 Email Subscribers Posted: 30 Dec 2017 09:07 AM PST Hi everyone! I am Rich Clominson, co-founder of Failory. We decided to become a transparent startup and share with our community our numbers and statistics, as well as the exact strategies we used to achieve them. If you have any doubts, I will happily answer them below!
Hey, welcome to our first-month report! It was a crazy month. That's why, after beating around the bush for a few months, we decided to become a transparent startup. We consider it a big opportunity to share our numbers and statistics, as well as plans for the future. That's why we are so enthusiastic. We will also go through the marketing strategies that we used and reflect on which resulted in "successes", and which in "failures." Let's begin!
Marketing As you might suppose, apart from working at Failory, we all have different jobs. Therefore, we have only a few hours per day to work on our project. But this month was special. We had much free time, and we decided to spend it on marketing. Our objectives were, in the first place, to increase our email newsletter, and in second place, gain many daily visits to our website. These were the strategies we used to achieve these goals:
eBook We have been thinking of writing a free eBook since the launch of Failory, but we didn't have the time to do it. December was finally the month.
Topic The first step was to choose the eBook topic. But we couldn't decide whether we should write about:
We decided to go big and create an eBook in which we included all these three topics. However, we discovered that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of books telling the ultimate formula to build a successful startup and become a millionaire in a week. Therefore, we decided to focus on side projects. The eBook we were going to write, would describe the entire process of building a side-project, from idea to monetization. It would be a practical guide, with lots of strategies and tools that people could easily copy. Something easily scannable and quick, but at the same time, complete.
Brainstorm Once we knew the topic, it was time to brainstorm some ideas. We fastly came with a great content scheme. The eBook would be divided into 8 stages:
Each stage would contain some strategies, our favorite tools and things to avoid or mistakes we committed when creating Failory. After deciding some key points that we would definitely have to include on each stage, it was time to start writing.
Write We decided to write the eBook on Google Docs and then design it, but it isn't probably the best option. It takes a lot of time. Writing the eBook took us 5 days. Do not think of 5 days of writing day and night. When we had some free time, we wrote some words. The eBook has 72 pages and 11,868 words. In 68,351 characters we number 8 stages of a side project, we explain 43 strategies and recommend 59 tools.
Design Choosing the tool to design the eBook was a nightmare. We didn't know how simple it was to design it with a software like Word or PowerPoint. We spend hours searching for the correct tool, reading articles and lists and asking other people how to do it. We even began designing the eBook on a few different platforms which did not give us the desired results. At the end, we discovered Pages for Mac. It was easy to use, had the features we needed, and allowed collaboration with other people. The design of the eBook is pretty simple. We first designed the cover, which is composed of an orange gradient, a big title in white and a subtitle in black, and an illustration of a Viking.
That amazing illustration that you are seeing was not designed by ourselves. Let me introduce you Joy Design, an awesome website that provides free illustrations. It was our salvation. We dedicated each stage an entire page, similar to the cover, with a background color and a nice illustration from Joy Design.
We then adjusted the font, the colors, the titles, and the eBook was ready to be launched. But before, we needed some feedback.
Feedback You might have noticed that we are not native English speakers. We commit many grammatical mistakes and English usage errors. So, before launching, we needed to check the eBook with an English speaker. Moreover, we wanted to know the opinion of side project experts. Therefore, we sent a message to Mubashar Iqbal, Andrey Azimov and some influencers. We also submitted a post on the Side Project subreddit asking for feedback on our eBook. 47 people were willing to help us.
We were able to improve the eBook a lot and correct all the grammar mistakes. Moreover, an awesome user called enthusiasm_overdose sent us a copy of the eBook with all the corrections and possible ways to say things in a better way.
Launch After so much work it was time to launch the eBook. These were the simple strategies we used:
Product Hunt A few days before launching it we contacted Bram Kanstein, a well-known hunter, who (luckily) was willing to submit our eBook to Product Hunt. It wasn't a successful PH campaign. We didn't even end up on the front page. Maybe it was the Product Hunt audience, maybe the eBook. We personally believe that product hunters don't like the idea of free stuff in exchange for emails. In any case, we received 80-100 downloads from PH.
Hacker News We submitted it to Hacker News. 1 upvote. Ours. Complete failure. To succeed in Hacker News, you need to submit an article or a product that people can easily realize whether it is great or trashy. There are almost any chances of succeeding with an eBook. To upvote it, people needs to write down their email address, wait for the email to arrive at their inbox, download the eBook and read a few lines. At that time, your submission has already disappeared from the "new page".
Designer News We submitted it to Designer News. Designers seemed to like the eBook. It received a few upvotes and stayed in the front page for a few hours, resulting in many downloads.
We submitted the eBook in many subreddits. We thought that we were going to receive many upvotes on the Side Project subreddit, but the post had almost none views. We don't know why. Maybe it was the title of the post. We also publish a post on the Entrepreneur and Startup subreddit.
During the launching day, we published a few tweets with a link to the landing page of the eBook. A few clicks resulted in some downloads.
We published some FB posts promoting the eBook. We also shared it on some FB groups, related to side projects and startups. They received some clicks and likes, as well as comments. If done well, this can result in many conversions.
The launching campaign of the eBook was not an enormous success, but it went pretty well. In the first 2 days, we received 490 downloads. The days after we keep working on the promotion of the eBook, with some other strategies:
Facebook Ads We decided to try Facebook Ads. We spent $20, with high expectations. We reached 1,439 people and received only 26 clicks to the landing page. We couldn't track the downloads.
Quora We answered a few questions on Quora about side projects. It didn't take us too much time, as we answered them with the information of the eBook. At the end of each question, we added a link to the landing page and recommend them to download it. It was a successful strategy.
We are still working on this strategy. It consists of getting traffic with Pinterest. To do it, we designed a few infographics with the information of the eBook and publish them in Pinterest. Our objective is to make them rank organically when people search for "side project" on Pinterest.
Collaboration We contacted a few people who run websites around side-projects, for example, the Side Project Checklist (btw, this awesome website helped us a lot when writing the eBook). We agreed on different collaborations with them, such as adding a backlink, sending an email to our newsletters and posting on Twitter.
This let us collect 92 more emails. At the end, the eBook was downloaded 582 in only two weeks. Was all this work worthy? Absolutely. Not only because of the 582 new emails, but also because at the end of the month happened something that increased amazingly the downloads…
Interviews We launched 5 new interviews this month:
We find the owners of failed startups with different tactics, such as online articles, forum comments, and Facebook groups. Some owners contact us through the submit page. The process we use to promote the interviews is quite similar to the one we used for the eBook. The better the interview is, the more viral it gets. Interviews usually receive 900-1700 visits the first 2 days, plus the reads in subreddits (we post them on Reddit as a text).
Blog Article On December 26 happened something awesome. We published an article written by Amir Rajan, in which he tells the story behind his mobile game called "A Dark Room, which hit #1 on the AppStore and grossed over $800,000. It went viral on Hacker News, receiving 22,356 sessions in a single day. Here is the story.
A few weeks ago we contacted Amir Rajan, after reading his great interview on Indie Hackers, in which he talked about "A Dark Room" his IOS game. We thanked him for sharing such a great story and asked him if he had failed to build an application in the past. He didn't fail before, but he wanted to share his experience quitting his job, going on a sabbatical year and building his mobile game. We published it on December 26 and did the typical promotion that we use for interviews. We submitted on Hacker News, without big expectations. After 5 minutes we reloaded the page and BOOM… front page of HN! We immediately entered Google Analytics and check the real time. 272 visitors. We were shocked. The post on HN keep gaining upvotes and achieved the #1 position. Comments began to arrive: some critics, feedback, positive messages. We reload Analytics to discover that 543 persons were reading Failory at the same time.
We couldn't believe it. It was such a crazy moment. The post ended the day on the front page, with 391 upvotes and 246 comments. It was quite controversial the article, so people discussed on HN comment section a lot. 21,446 people entered the website that day. 8,201 the next one. And even today, 3 days after the article going viral, we are still receiving some traffic from HN. But, why are visits so important? They are not. But we knew that the traffic would bring us a lot of new email subscribers. And it actually happened. 170 people subscribed to our newsletter, which is a lot for one day. And, the best of all, 916 downloaded our free eBook. At the end of the day, we had 1086 new emails in our newsletter. The key to achieving this was this little "pop-up" in the middle of the article.
But the article not only got viral on Hacker News. In the Entrepreneur subreddit, it got 267 upvotes and stayed in the first position the entire day. It received 9,300 views and 76 comments. In the Game Dev subreddit, it got 78 upvotes and was viewed 3,000 times, as well as commented by 38 people. And finally, it got viral on the Game Design subreddit where it got 60 upvotes, 1,200 views, and 23 comments.
PR Coverage A few weeks ago we discovered that many of our "competitors" have had press coverage in big media such as TechCrunch, The Next Web, Business Insider and Mashable. Therefore, we decided to contact a few journalists and try to get press coverage for Failory. We went big and contacted well-known journalists from the kind of medias named above. Lots of hours writing the email, searching the correct journalists, looking for their contact details. But they didn't even answer our emails. Complete failure. However, we did not give up and prepared a new strategy, which consists of reaching smaller media from different countries. We are still carrying it out, but we have already validated our strategy. We have discovered that a medium magazine or newspaper can result in thousands of visits and hundreds of email subscribers. On December 3, we were featured in t3n. Daniel Hüfner wrote about Failory. 731 people (especially from Germany) entered to our website and +70 subscribed to our newsletters in only one day.
That's why we are still working on getting PR coverage. We are reaching some journalists and magazines. We are providing them some information about Failory and we are answering some interviews.
Newsletter Cross-Promotion This is a not-so-common marketing strategy that has helped us a lot when gaining email subscribers. If you are an email subscriber, you have probably already realized that we usually recommend newsletters associated with startups. We do it in exchange for a promotion in another newsletter.
Using tools like InboxReads and SponsoredTech, we search for newsletters with a similar amount of subscribers that talk about startups, businesses, technology, marketing, design or development. All things that our audience can find useful. Then, we contact their owners with a simple email like this one: The response is usually really positive. This great strategy goes really well and has resulted in many new email subscribers. We encourage you to try it. If you have any question, just email us.
Social Media Finally, it has been a month with high participation in social media. Especially on Twitter, Facebook, and Medium:
We have been really active on Twitter, publishing 3 tweets a day, retweeting content and mentions and following interesting people. I know it is not too much 3 tweets a day, but until only a few weeks ago, we almost didn't enter to Twitter, so it is a big change. These are our Twitter analytics of the month:
The first tweet is usually a quote about failure. Just a nice thing to start the day. The second tweet is always a great article that we find on the internet, usually in Medium. The third tweet varies, but it is often an image associated with startups, accompanied by a reflection of the topic. We have to admit that we schedule our tweets. As we work during the day, we can't be in our offices tweeting. To do it, we use Buffer, only because is free and easy to use. Since we began tweeting, our number of followers has increased a lot. Many people have arrived at our website via Twitter and with almost any efforts from our part. That's why we will continue with this strategy. Moreover, these are the audience insights:
Facebook sucks. We really don't know why are we still posting content on Facebook. We don't use any strategy to increase our likes, to interact with our followers, to carry people to our website. We simply automatically post the same tweets on Facebook. Somehow, we have managed ourselves to get 103 likes on our Facebook page, but our posts aren't seen by our followers. Nowadays, if you don't boost your post and spend some dollars on them, people won't see them. We can't spend $10 for every post we publish, so we simply don't care about Facebook.
Medium A few days ago we were recommended to start publishing our interviews in Medium. It would be really easy to do and it would only take us a few minutes, so why not? We published our interview with David Kramaley, founder of Sharkius. 11 days before and it has been read only 1 time. We really don't understand why. Maybe we need to publish many of them and keep it constant. We will keep experimenting with Medium. It is a platform with a lot of room left to exploit.
Numbers We have been sharing some of the numbers of the month, but this is the complete number report of December.
Google Analytics
Email Subscribers
Time Management As we have said, this month was special and, luckily, we have had much more time to work on the project. We don't use any application to track the working hours. Therefore, this is only an estimated report. Moreover, we will take into account the sum of hours worked of the three co-founders. We spent 145 hours (without taking into account the hours screwing around on Twitter, Product Hunt, and Hacker News) working on Failory in December. This is an average of 36.25 hours per week, and 4.68 hours each day. This is how we spent our time this month:
What sucked this month was the big amount of unproductive hours that we have spent. In the first place, we spent lots of hours reading online articles and educating ourselves. This is not lost time, but they were hours in which we weren't working to improve Failory. Secondly, we spent a few hours testing features and strategies that didn't work. And thirdly, we spent a considerable amount of time wandering around Product Hunt, trying all the new apps, Hacker News, reading even the articles we didn't care about, and Twitter, checking the newest trends.
Revenue & Expenses
Yep, we are still making $0 with Failory. We have worked on the project for many weeks and months, but we haven't taken a single dollar from it. Some of you may consider it a complete failure, but we are sure that we are going on the right way. We have three plans to monetize the project in a near future:
Sell sponsorships We will start selling sponsorships on our newsletter. We know you don't like them. Neither us. Therefore, we will only place sponsorships of companies and software that you can find useful.
Ads on Interviews We want to keep the website clean and minimalistic. That's why placing advertisements is not a really great option. We are still thinking on a way to do it, without bothering the readers.
Affiliate Marketing We will start recommending applications, services, and gadgets that can help small business owners and entrepreneurs. The books that are recommended by our interviewees will also have an affiliate link.
The reason why we can continue with the project without earning any money is that we almost don't have any expenses. We use Webflow to build the website. They have provided us a promo code so we only pay $8/month. We bought the domain and hosting for an entire year, which costed us only $41. We use free email services and free marketing tools. The biggest payment of December was Facebook Ads, in which we invested $20.
Goals January will be a quiet month. We are going on holidays, so, unluckily, we won't publish any new interviews. We will post on social media, and answer your emails and questions, but do not expect any new content. We want to be back on February 100% concentrated on the project and rock it. We won't set any objectives for January, more than to keep posting on Twitter and growing our community. But we have set some big goals for February:
Thanks everyone for your support this month. Remember to email us if you have any feedback, ideas, recommendations, or just want to talk. We wish you a happy new year!
Original article published at https://failory.com/december-report [link] [comments]  |
| 2018 Challenge: Making $100K Working on the Freemium Revenue Model Posted: 30 Dec 2017 07:11 AM PST Hi guys, merry late christmas :) 25th of Octobre 2017 I released my first premium plugin (WooCommerce Order Builder - 26 Purchases) on Envato market for $29. 9th of December I published another plugin (WooCommerce Drag & Drop Uploader - 4 Purchases) for $19. Both plugins made $435 in total after Envato fees. I wouldn't say it's a success as the profit doesn't even cover the time spent on development. However, it drove custom work requests that resulted in around $1K. I know that this is not a huge achievement as it went against the point of selling plugins in the first place, which is to stop selling time for money and generating passive income by putting time & money upfront. I thought of using this experience (avec) the experience from working with over +50 client in 2017 to create a better business model that'll help me generate more money in 2018. Let me introduce you to: The Idea: I'll be releasing a free forms builder with premium features on WordPress repository. Free plugin, paid version and premium add-ons. I'll not be pushing hard, will make the free plugin feature rich, but will leave space for profit. I called the plugin MegaForms, and I already started. The Inspiration: My inspiration is Gravity Forms, the most successful WordPress plugin of all times. GF makes more than $5Million/yr. The fact that a single plugin makes that much money per year is mind-blowing. What is more astonishing is that there is a completely separate plugin that is entirely dependant on GravityForms that makes more than $100K/yr (Graviy View). If an extension is making that kind of money, then why wouldn't a standalone plugin make as much. I know it isn't wise to try to replicate the success of others, but I have my own idea, and I'm intending to create my own success and I have the potential to do so. Milestones: The main milestone for the moment is releasing the free version of the plugin by the end of january on wordpress repo, then I'll create more milestones based on the collected feedback and usage report. The final milestone would be of course to close $100K by the end of 2018. If this went as expected I'll be happy, if it failed, I'll still be good as I trust it wouldn't be wasted time or effort of course. Budget allocated: $500 ( hosting, domain, marketing...etc, I'll do the development personally ) Final note: I would love to know your opinion on this approach and it would be great if you could share any idea on how to improve the plugin, make it unique to stand in the competition. Most of you are running websites and using similar tools as GravityForms and other form builder, so tell me what you lack in those tools. TLDR: I made some money off of WordPress development/plugins. Inspired by GravityForms success I'm planning to make more by releasing a free wordpress forms builder then sell pro-version and add-ons separately. I'll keep you guys in the loop. [link] [comments]  |
| Whats the best online LLC formation site? Posted: 30 Dec 2017 11:52 AM PST |
| New year's resolution: make your first sale! Posted: 30 Dec 2017 09:19 AM PST Would anyone like to join me in attempting to make your first organic sale before Feb. 1st? I've been creating designs, sourcing product, and setting up my ecommerce site! I'm sure there are others who have been doing the same this time of year. Comment with your background and your niche! Come back and tell us what day you made your first sale and how it was done! To get it going: I'm building a lifestyle brand and media site for a niche of snowboarders, surfers, and hikers/backpackers with plans for a podcast. It's all stuff I know and care about so I thought it was a good fit for my first go at building a brand. I opened my digital doors last night and have a whopping 15 visitors so far! I plan on leveraging Instagram and targeted Facebook ads to make my first sale! Professional background: bachelor's in management information systems and 4 years experience as a Data Analyst/statistician on a marketing team. [link] [comments]  |
| How do I set up instagram product tags, US brand but temporary outside US Posted: 30 Dec 2017 11:13 AM PST it seems it doesnt let me add product tags on my IG page. Same with facebook shop. they're rolled out in US, and thats where i was registered but since i log from europe currenlty it doesnt show that option. I reached out to fb but after 2 weeks no reply. Anyone has tips or an email i can try? [link] [comments]  |
| People who run electronics based businesses, where do you get your batteries? Posted: 30 Dec 2017 01:52 PM PST |
| How To Find The Best IG Influencers? Posted: 30 Dec 2017 01:19 PM PST Looking to find influencers with followers that are mostly female and mainly in the US. I've looked into fashion, nature, and other pages but have yet to find a decent page. In the past, I've worked with influencers when I was targeting a very broad niche, but now with a narrower niche, I am having trouble. Any suggestions? [link] [comments]  |
| So what can i do with a list of people? Posted: 30 Dec 2017 09:33 AM PST My mom is a salesman, and she has tons of lists salesman gets when they work for years, some of these lists are filled with people that owns business, or have tons of money, or are important people. She constantly says that she is tired of working for other people and would like to be her own boss. My question is, what type of things can i do to create a start up or business using those lists as leverage? Should i try to create a product that fits a niche inside those lists? Maybe i should investigate more and see if i can offer some sort of service but i dont have a ton of money to start selling something complicated, and while my mom is a genuinely great salesperson, i dont have any talent or skill outside a few books ive read about marketing. [link] [comments]  |
| Platforms vs SaaS vs Which Business Model (Beginner)? Posted: 30 Dec 2017 01:16 PM PST I finally have the time and space to spend 30+ hours a week on my own projects, and I will be building a software business on the side while I freelance a little. I've already started building something, but it isn't that commercial in nature. The plan is to build a small, dell-defined MVP each month of the year until I find something that sticks. This might change per MVP depending on how much promise I see at week 4. Anyway.. I've been reading about SaaS and platforms. I recently bought a book called Platform Revolution. Website is platformed.info. It makes a great case for how the structure of future tech companies might largely follow this model. To clarify - platforms are websites that rely on interactions between users to provide value - producers/sellers and consumers/buyers. One of the obvious problems with building traction with this model is that it requires value to be produced from either side. I was just wondering if this kind of model is something to focus on later on in my product career, and instead focus on something more direct sales at first - such as ecommerce or saas, or even information products. I remember reading from Amy (Unicorn Free/ Stacking The Bricks) who advised you start with really small products and get used to launching things. I just think perhaps I'm setting myself up for 10 times more work if I try to build a platform vs something more 'traditional'. Thoughts on these models or this approach? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Dec 2017 10:35 AM PST I️ saw a month or so ago several graphic designers looking for work. I️ need a logo done. Any one that can help please pm me. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Dec 2017 10:30 AM PST Took a few initiatives, did experiments in this year. In my post I am sharing some stats. Do provide your feedback. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Dec 2017 09:55 PM PST Hey redditpreneurs! Over the last few months I've done a number of teardowns for other members of this sub, and eventually began to realise that there might be a business opportunity in offering "brutally honest teardowns as a service". So, while everyone was chugging eggnog and spending time with their family these holidays, I was putting together BrutalTeardowns.com, which I'll be officially launching next week. To build a bit of pre-launch karma I thought I'd offer everyone in this sub a free teardown - all you have to do is comment below with your website or social media account details. For an idea of what you can expect, these are some of the teardowns I've written as comments on other posts in /r/entrepreneur:
I've also added some of these, and a few more to the TearDowns section of my site, with the view of shifting the focus of the site more towards a regularly updated collection of teardowns (rather than the salesy landing page it is today). The Rules
What I get out of this In terms of what I get out of this, my main objective is for all of you to have my site front-of-mind next time you see another entrepreneur asking for feedback on their website/social account. My secondary objective is to create a few more teardowns that I can use as content on the site (provided people are happy to be featured). Anyway, comment below - I'll be around for the next 10-or-so hours + most of the weekend while I make final changes to the site, preparing for launch. Edit: Midnight here (11am EST), but still going. Keep those sites coming, if I pass out I'll do the rest tomorrow. Edit #2: Okay, 1:40am and I'm running outta steam. I'll pick this up again in 6-or-so hours when my dog wakes me up (IT'S SUNNY! FETCH!?), once I've had a chance to recaffienate. Still have www.odematelier.com, iaffiliatesolutions.com, hacksource.xyz and requestix.com on my list, plus whatever you folk comment with overnight. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Dec 2017 02:33 AM PST Hello all, my wife and I plan to buy a 20 acre farm that connects to my in-laws 200 acre farm in central KY so we have the possiblity to expand. The 20 acres is set up right now with a 2,500 sq ft house and 2 horse barns, 3 run in sheds and multiple fields. In-laws 200 acres are also set up for cattle. The property is gently rolling with 4-5 bottoms and a creek running through them. We are looking for thoughts and advice on how to monetize the farm and make 6 figures off the farm alone. Right now we are looking into Selling pumpkins (location is heavily traveled) Small vineyard Event and wedding venue Boarding horses and/or dogs Seasonal picking (apples/berries etc) Any and all thoughts or advice is great appreciated, Thank you [link] [comments]  |
| I own a brick and mortar business AMA Posted: 30 Dec 2017 09:02 AM PST |
| Books/videos with best advice for a newly minted CEO? Posted: 30 Dec 2017 08:39 AM PST I have an online business which I had started developing in about July. It's basically a scalable and repeatable web app + process that could be applied to tons of different industries and real world problems. It took about 6 months to get the initial proof of concept site running, and figure out the technical side of things. Along the way I had a family member (a designer/creative person) join my quest. So now I finally incorporated, and time has come to scale and focus basically 85-90% of my time business development and marketing. I initially thought about self-financing the entire thing, but now that I got the process down I realized that I could have much greater velocity if I had outside help. This means I need to figure out how to expand my team and how/when to consider outside investment. So basically it dawned on me - I am a CEO now. And I feel utterly lost, because working in technology in large institutions (I worked in banks for nearly 10 years) doesn't prepare you for this at all. My question is what are some of the best educational resources to consider for someone in my shoes. If they come in the form of executive summaries that's even better... There's got to be lots of stuff out there on this topic. [link] [comments]  |
| Taking the leap-what do I absolutely need immediately? Posted: 30 Dec 2017 08:23 AM PST I'm finally going to go for my ideas and not wait around dreaming anymore. For an errand-running business, as far as DBA name, LLC registration, tax ID, what do I absolutely need right away? This might fail so I don't want to spend gobs of money that I don't have. It will be a very small, soft open. Should I be worried about not having insurance and all that stuff just yet? [link] [comments]  |
| Good industries to target for file requests web app? Posted: 30 Dec 2017 08:03 AM PST As a side project, I've been working on a file requests web app: requestix.com. I have a running list of industries I'd like to target once I start advertising, but I'd like to get ideas from the entrepreneur community. This app is designed for people who request lots of documents and files and need to keep them organized (and need a more secure and reliable solution than email). So far, my top three industries are:
If you work in or know of an industry where file requests are central to the workflow, please leave a comment. Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| Domestic cleaning agency for my first idea | is it okay? Posted: 30 Dec 2017 08:01 AM PST I'm thinking of making a website that people go to when they want a domestic cleaner. Domestic cleaners will be self employed and use the website to self their services. I'm thinking of taking 10% cut from any sale. Other places I've seen take a bigger cut so it might be a good reason for them to work with me. A lot of other websites require you to phone up and get a quote but I want it to be all online so it's faster for everyone. So I will just be a middle man connecting users with cleaners on a simple website and taking a cut. So Uber for cleaners. This is my first entrepreneur idea. What do you think? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Dec 2017 09:55 PM PST I feel so lost in trying to start a business. I've read a few of the book suggestions and watched a few of the video suggestions recommended on here but I still don't feel like I have the slightest clue on even starting a simple business. Most of the books and videos I've watched just seem to give really general advice or motivation on starting a business, but don't really get down to the details I need to know. Right now it feels like I need to be a technology expert, a marketing expert, a legal expert, a finance expert and also have a lot of disposable income to invest just to start a business. Can someone please offer some advice? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Dec 2017 09:15 PM PST I own and manage a small tree care company with a bit of a unique niche in the industry. This isn't my first company, we're doing well. Wondering what everyone's opinion is on the better business bureau. Membership would be about $500 for the year. They claim it would help with seo. How recognizable is it to customers. Anything I should know beyond what there telling me? Thansk in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Dec 2017 10:33 AM PST How about you kick-start 2018 with a re-branding? A new logo, new color theme and Style guides, social media banners, profile pictures etc. For a flat fee of $150. Message me if anyone's interested. My normal rates for a logo is $150-$200 but I'll be doing this as new year promotion (Or maybe to get some orders,right?) Send me a pm and lets get a face-lift - Shall we? Edit: The typo in the title makes me look like an illiterate artist, but trust me it was just a typo! [link] [comments]  |
| Can you recommend at resource for understanding Facebook ads? Posted: 30 Dec 2017 03:02 AM PST So book, video, article on how to do it right. Have dabbled but feel I'm missing a lot so would like to start over in my understanding. Thanks and happy NYE! [link] [comments]  |
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