I went from 20K student debt to 2 million profit in one year using Shopify, Facebook, and Influencer marketing. Let’s talk about what Ecommerce will look like in 2018. Entrepreneur |
- I went from 20K student debt to 2 million profit in one year using Shopify, Facebook, and Influencer marketing. Let’s talk about what Ecommerce will look like in 2018.
- Before I started cleaning restaurants, I was washing windows for $100 per hour.
- About to launch my first "startup" ever, feedback wanted!
- Who here has wanted to start their own accounting business or get side clients and what’s holding you back?
- I want to make a website where entrepreneurs can talk to other entrepreneurs, and maybe partner up or brainstorm together or form mastermind groups, or find virtual assistants, etc.
- Any young web developers with profitable websites willing to share their business story?
- Business questions. Taxes??
- Should there be an Entrepreneur Scorecard?
- Google account for business?
- Any tips on closing sales with municipalities, public safety, etc.?
- Few lessons we learnt from working with a client which you can avoid doing with your startup.
- Single product e-commerce store with $1500, can it be done?
- I want to dip my toes into the entrepreneurial waters with a humorous novelty item. [Serious]
- Warren Buffett - more than just success
- as a web design/development agency, what services can I offer?
- (Web Design) Anyone use Siteswan?
- How to get users emails from my app
- Do I need to request a license to produce a branded private label sample for a major brand?
- I am having a good cry and I'm just writing this to clear my head
- Has anyone used a pay-per-sale online advertising agency ?
- Why quitting my job was the best thing ever?
- I'm considering monetizing an album I'm making with a producer I met on Reddit. How do we do this?
- Looking for feedback on my Raspberry Pi store
- Building an App Company - Need Help Estimating Costs
| Posted: 27 Jan 2018 01:10 AM PST Hello reddit! First off, I am not going to sell you anything. Never buy anything from gurus who claim to be making a tonne of money online. In November 2016 I remember browsing a post about Shopify on this subreddit and it inspired me to start my first online business. I was 21 and still in university at the time. Fast forward a year later... I have done close to $10 million in sales on Shopify using Facebook ads and influencer marketing. I have build 3 brands valued in the mid 6 figures, as well as multiple dropshipping stores with multiple millions in sales. Now I have a team of 12 employees working around the globe. I dropped out of university and now work while traveling. Crazy how much progress you can make in a year! My latest Shopify store is doing $40K + sales per day. Let me start by saying this: I strongly believe there is still SO much opportunity in Ecommerce, Shopify, dropshipping, and making money online in general. People have been saying dropshipping was dead since 2010 when I first heard of the business model. I'm here to help anyone that is looking to get started, just like I was a year ago when I stumbled upon a Shopify post on this subreddit. Ask me anything about creating your Shopify store, how to get sales using social media advertising, influencer marketing, product research, sourcing, etc. My thoughts about ecommerce in 2018:
*MY TIPS FOR STARTING YOUR OWN SHOPIFY STORE AND TIPS ON FACEBOOK ADS * Store creation:
Facebook ads:
Importing from China
Building Brands:
Facebook ad account screenshot (16K spend: https://imgur.com/a/E2jBP) Shopify app screenshot: https://m.imgur.com/a/ESba1 [link] [comments]  |
| Before I started cleaning restaurants, I was washing windows for $100 per hour. Posted: 26 Jan 2018 08:12 PM PST I started with literally NO money and anybody could start doing this, this summer. In this video, I'm sitting in my van explaining how I got started and I walk you through the exact process on how I made it work. The main thing I want to emphasize is my lack of money. Because I had no money I would line up all of my customers before I purchased any tools or anything. I did this because I wanted to be sure I had revenue coming in before I made any purchases. Here's what I did.
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| About to launch my first "startup" ever, feedback wanted! Posted: 27 Jan 2018 11:42 AM PST Hello /Entrepreneur! Been lurking in a while here, I find all the inspirational stories here and I decided to make mine. I'm a solomaker, 22 y/o school dropout and already launched a few side projects that aren't making much money now such as https://hyperpixel.io in a short amount of time (2/3 months). I decided this time to create a product that I could charge people, a MVP that would be developed within 3 months, all by myself. I am a big fan of the shipping culture of https://twitter.com/levelsio or https://twitter.com/ajlkn that tries a lot of ideas before one takes off, and I deeply want to get rid of the 9-5 slavery I have been building it for the past 3 months and have around 30 users and already one paid customer (that was the best moment of my life ahah) Here are the statistics for the past week: 👩💻 96 visitors 👨👩👧👦 9 new users (8.64% conversion rate) 💵 1 new monthly subscriber (11.1% conversion rate) 💰 7.99€ MRR I'm about to launch it on multiple plaforms (such as Product Hunt, classic) but before I need to polish the website and fix some bugs I want from you guys some feedback on it. I'm a big fan of automation, I love scrappers, when things go by themselves and require the minimum effort after it's been set. An uptime monitoring website was the perfect idea! And if anyone's interested I could give you some coupon codes for early adopter members I will update the stats regularly, I want to make transparency the core marketing of it Best!
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| Posted: 27 Jan 2018 11:29 AM PST |
| Posted: 27 Jan 2018 10:26 AM PST do you think something like that is needed? I know we're on Reddit /r/entrepreneur board so we dont need it much, but many entrepreneurs arent here and I would market to them [link] [comments]  |
| Any young web developers with profitable websites willing to share their business story? Posted: 27 Jan 2018 09:37 AM PST I am looking for websites who are financially profitable for a database I am trying to create. If you feel comfortable sharing, will be tell about your revenue, how you got the idea and what your day to day life is like? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Jan 2018 10:59 AM PST Hi! I'm 13 and right now I own a business startup. I sell memberships to an online service for a monthly fee. I'm making about 36,000 yearly and I have to make it a company soon (looking to do so next month). I had a few questions. 1 - How much would you think taxes would end up costing??2 - What's an LLP? Are there any advantages over LLC?3 - What's the best way to manage money to set aside for taxes??Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Should there be an Entrepreneur Scorecard? Posted: 27 Jan 2018 02:25 PM PST TDLR: Yes, a standardized test of an entrepreneur's wit and impact. I've been involved in the Entrepreneurial scene for over 3 years seriously, I know there are things I don't know and I have more to learn. I am also a student of the game. I've taken courses in Finance, Accounting, Programming, Patents, Employment Laws etc. all because I had to know these things to start and run my business and I've had moderate success doing so. Recently I was put in a position to help new entrepreneurs/wantpreneurs get started. And they really believe they know it all! They think they have a plan and all they need is the capital, and they will be the next Steve Jobs. And if you try to coach them, they will rebut with some outlandish Instagram quote. Something like, "Steve Jobs didn't know how to program, and he made apple." They know nothing about the very basics, haven't read about the mistakes of others and see no need to do so. I've bluntly told one of them I won't help them unless they at least read a chapter of the lean startup, and that got nowhere. Anyway, I was thinking of a more subtle way to show level of knowledge, like an entrepreneur test or scorecard. And not like those tests that try to test for personality traits, something more business/ entrepreneur oriented, to assess your current level as an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur isn't all about theory, so the results you've had, the money you've made from the ventures and the users your product or service generated can all factor into this final score. I think this would also be a good way to determine if you should invest with a person or a team. Yes, a standardized test of an entrepreneur's wit. I'd like to know your thoughts on this, and what factors should be included in the scorecard or test. P.S. There are different levels of entrepreneurship, and different people have different understandings and insights. Just because you decided to be an "Entrepreneur" doesn't put you on the same playing field as someone who's been doing it for 15 years successfully. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Jan 2018 01:17 PM PST Hey all, One thing I'm wondering. Do people generally have a google mail etc account for google services with their business. Or do they use a non google account for this. E.g google@mycompany.com What are the drawbacks/advantages of either approach? [link] [comments]  |
| Any tips on closing sales with municipalities, public safety, etc.? Posted: 27 Jan 2018 01:03 PM PST Hey all. I'll keep this quick and bulletized:
Does anyone have tips or anything they've found useful, whether it be CMS or strategies for pushing customers along? Or is this just a part of the territory of dealing with government orgs? [link] [comments]  |
| Few lessons we learnt from working with a client which you can avoid doing with your startup. Posted: 26 Jan 2018 10:19 PM PST Me and my team have worked with various entrepreneurs and mid sized companies, among which we had an occasion to work with an "Entrepreneur" from whom we learnt a lot of things not to do while you want to startup a product company. His idea was of a carpooling app which would show you how your co-rider is connected with you on facebook in a single multilevel tree graph format to portray a sense of trust among co-riders. Hence technical aspect in this project was of sole priority and requirements were done as required by us. But surprisingly the product never even created a single real time record in the production database months after it was made live. Yes, the product failed bad, despite such elegant technical algorithms implemented! He discontinued the system as he quit. Being the technical team of the project we were keen observing things happening and here are the things that lead to the failure: 1. No validation of idea – He made a mistake by working on an idea which no one was interested in or already there were many such applications available in the market. The idea could have been easily validated by conducting surveys in various facebook groups or by using tools like SurveyMonkey. Our team had to develop an algorithm which took us several days that cost him more money. 2. No market research – There was no proper market research done on the idea. Hence he was not aware much of his competitors, potential customers, their spending habits and needs of the target market. 3. Assumptions – He assumed that he could ask the govt to support his application and everyone would sign up to use his app without even validating a single feature we built. 4. Not choosing the right team – Before approaching us, he had hired a freelancer, who could not complete the project because the freelancer did not have the expertise. He had hired the freelancer just because he was "cheap". He ended up spending more! 5. I'm "Steve Jobs" kind of attitude – Having this kind of attitude when building a product is always dangerous. You tend to not listen to any feedbacks and believe that you are always right. When you build a product you need to get feedbacks as much as possible, plan and execute on it. 6. Building a product just for funding – His sole purpose to develop this app was that he was fed up with his job and he would pitch the app to govt, and they would fund it or that he would sell it to facebook. 7. Unnecessary patents and trademarks – He wanted to trademark his app name and patent the feature which he thought was the USP. Unnecessary trademarks and patents will make you spend more money unless your product depends on a particular algorithm or method which is the USP. 8. Away from Reality – he was like a superficial starter, who always thought that building a website would drive in huge traffic as soon as it is live. In our conversations he always portrayed about the best case of every aspect of his startup but had no clue and a plan of how to get there. From our early days we have also done most of these mistakes, by doing them and learning it the hardway. We always felt we should be well informed of experiences prior starting any tasks. Hence we believe this shared experience will be a learning resource for us here. We believe in this era most of the startups have two aspects Core Business Plan and Technical Aspect — mostly to reach out vast target segment with the help of the internet. Technical Aspect is important but always can be fixed by right management and better developers. Core business plan is the most and soul important aspect as going the wrong way can drain you completely as in the above case. One main pattern seen in many successful startups is going as lean as possible learning the market trends on the fly. The lean way suggests to identify minimal viable product features that your product needs to have to hit the market, get the feedback and evolve based on needs. [link] [comments]  |
| Single product e-commerce store with $1500, can it be done? Posted: 27 Jan 2018 12:53 PM PST I want to start a single product (to keep inventory costs low) e-commerce store with about $1500 and I'm wondering what you guys think about this budget: is it (too) low or sufficient to start? My thoughts were like this: 3x $29 months of Shopify = $78. Business license in my country = $62. Domain name = $12.Costs so far in total: $152. Money left: $1348. If I have a product which isn't too big and relatively cheap, I can buy a couple of hundred dollars worth of inventory for it, lets say $400 + $100 for shipping material which leaves me with $848. I can use this money for FB ads, IG influencers, etc. Do I miss something? These are ofcourse estimates, but why wouldn't it be possible to start a single product e-commerce store with this budget? The reason why I'm asking is is because I hear a lot of people say "You need thousands to tens of thousands of dollars to succeed in e-commerce". Just last week I heard a guy on Dutch television say "Do you want to start an e-commerce store? You'll need at least €50k in order to succeed, a couple of grand is nothing and can't be called investment capital". Thanks for the help. [link] [comments]  |
| I want to dip my toes into the entrepreneurial waters with a humorous novelty item. [Serious] Posted: 27 Jan 2018 03:58 AM PST I'm a complete beginner, and want to find a manufacturer and platform to sell my idea. Introducing: The CumCape Tired of getting nut stuck in your leg hair? With the CumCape, never let that uncomfortable, sticky sensation ever hold you back from busting a wild nut ever again. The CumCape is essentially an apron with a hole cut out in the pubic region and a funny artistic design on the front, such as cartoon muscles or a suit of armor. Where can I find a manufacturer to produce this? What should I charge for it? What are some decent platforms to offer it for sale? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Warren Buffett - more than just success Posted: 27 Jan 2018 12:34 PM PST |
| as a web design/development agency, what services can I offer? Posted: 27 Jan 2018 08:13 AM PST looking to get a stable monthly income that will allow us to expand more and hire, rather than this feast-famine regime for now all we do is design brands/websites and build them, we build very custom designs and take great care to deliver the highest quality we can (so we avoid themeforest and the like) what services that we can offer that can align with our way of working? [link] [comments]  |
| (Web Design) Anyone use Siteswan? Posted: 27 Jan 2018 11:34 AM PST Hey guys and gals, I came across a company called Siteswan. Basically they have their own cms, and allow you to whitelabel it and build sites for others. Pricing starts at $150/month. It's similar to a franchise, as they provide you with marketing materials and such. Has anyone used it? I can find very little outside of their own website. I love the idea, although their recommendation to charge $50/month seems pretty steep. I'm also not sure what would happen if a client wanted to end the relationship; can they take their website elsewhere? [link] [comments]  |
| How to get users emails from my app Posted: 27 Jan 2018 11:15 AM PST I want the user to be prompted with a form that makes them enter their email in. Then I want the email to be stored in a backend. Any advice is appreciated. I know of firebase but I don't know how to make this work with firebase. Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Do I need to request a license to produce a branded private label sample for a major brand? Posted: 27 Jan 2018 07:24 AM PST Currently exhibiting at a trade show. Team member of a major buyer walks up and likes what I'm showing. They bring the buying team. I pitch private label for them. They're into it. They drop contact and want to talk about it. They want my product with their logo on it. I'm making samples for them for our pitch in their office. Do I need to get a license from their buying team before I make the sample up? Is there a word or industry term for this kind of license that I'm not privy to? Don't want to come across as uninformed in my contact. Cheers everyone [link] [comments]  |
| I am having a good cry and I'm just writing this to clear my head Posted: 26 Jan 2018 01:57 PM PST This isn't necessarily for anyone to read, mostly to clear my head - but any advice/encouragement would be welcome. Background: I'm a 32 year old mum of 2 who works in health, but I'm also irresistibly drawn to entrepreneurship (to my own detriment, perhaps). My main goal in life is to leave others in a better position that they were before they met me, but at this point I don't seem to even be able to help myself, let alone helping anyone else. "Businesses" and projects I have started *5 year old blog focusing on helping people in "low income" countries become financially independent. 5,000 blog subscribers and around $3,000 in revenue through affiliate marketing of one "lucky product". *Online store in 2006 helping people in low-income countries start businesses by buying small wholesale items and reselling to others. Failed. *2009. Print advertising newspaper distributed for free, but had paid ads. Failed. *2012. Timed parcel collection service. Successful for 4 years but closed after a lawsuit. *2016. Timed parcel delivery service that delivers customers parcels on demand until midnight. Failed. *2017. Shopify store selling sustainable products. Failed December 2017. Current: Shopify store selling print-on-demand items. About to fail? I started experimenting with Shopify last April and I created 2 stores where I tested a lot of products and advertising strategies - free + shipping, free, Instagram influencers, split testing, normal engagement and then conversion ads etc. I think I enjoy the process, but other than this, it has all being fruitless and is a big downer. This year, I made the decision to shut the sustainable shop down as I had failed to make even one sale in the stores' 6-month existence. I decided to focus on the apparel shop. Halfway through this post, I have realised that my current split test ad has burnt through £25 today alone and has returned nothing. I've had to shut the ad down. This is bearable, but last night I was talking to my husband about advertising and he basically says to me " I don't think I can support any of your ideas anymore because you seem to fail at everything. You should save all this money for medical school, instead of throwing it away". This hurt me. Partly because part of the reason I'm drawn to entrepreneurship is that I would like to apply to study postgraduate medicine when I'm 35. I really want to build a unique but effective hospital when I'm 50 - 55 and this is just a stepping stone towards getting there. Another reason I'm so drawn to it is that I find it relaxing when I try something that works. I work 11 - 12 hours a day finding cancers. Most of the time, I can reassure people with a considerable amount of certainty that they haven't got cancer. Sometimes I can't. Sometimes I have to deal with very difficult situations where I have to tell young people with families that they haven't got very long to live. I had to do this yesterday, and maybe this is why I'm so upset. I've also in the last month attended to someone who had hung himself (didn't survive) and a 6-year-old who died while I was waiting to take his X-ray. Having something else to pour my focus into when I can't sleep really helps, and now I can't even make anything work. I'm so tired. [link] [comments]  |
| Has anyone used a pay-per-sale online advertising agency ? Posted: 27 Jan 2018 10:35 AM PST |
| Why quitting my job was the best thing ever? Posted: 27 Jan 2018 10:16 AM PST Its been 7 months since I quit my 9–5 desk job and I wanted to share why it's the best thing I have ever done. I will summarise this short time of the long-awaited journey in 4 simple sections which will give a small insight into why, when and how my mircrostartup-phase-nomad-life has panned out. Read my entire story here https://medium.com/@1HaKr/why-quitting-my-job-was-the-best-thing-ever-6268e71de5db [link] [comments]  |
| I'm considering monetizing an album I'm making with a producer I met on Reddit. How do we do this? Posted: 27 Jan 2018 06:20 AM PST The idea hadn't crossed my mind until he mentioned it, but thinking about it, I really don't know much about how to sell an album. And he mentioned splitting profits 50/50 as I will be vocalizing the whole album and he will be producing. That sounds right to me, I just want to see if there are potential pitfalls. What would you do moving forward, if you were me? commenteditsharesavehidedelete [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for feedback on my Raspberry Pi store Posted: 27 Jan 2018 09:57 AM PST Hey guys, I've launched my online store a couple months back that caters to beginner Raspberry pi users. If you don't know what a Raspberry Pi is, its basically a credit card sized hobby computer you can build lots of cool projects with. When I first started using them, I had no idea where to begin and it took me weeks to piece together a project from multiple forums and online tutorials. So i figured I could streamline that experience for other enthusiasts and create a business around it. We sell operating systems and digital start-up guides. You can check out the site here: Your.Pi With little success in PPC, I'm looking for new ways of generating traffic organically and getting it in front of people who may be interested. Currently working on building up some blogs posts, but I want to know what you all think would work! Cheers. [link] [comments]  |
| Building an App Company - Need Help Estimating Costs Posted: 27 Jan 2018 01:19 PM PST Hi Community! Personal Bio for context: Degrees in International Relations (BA); Law (J.D.); and International Commercial Law (LL.M.) Three years as a Project Manager (leading teams of attorneys); Seven years as an IP and tech transactions attorney. Got sick of working for others and made the jump at the beginning of the year. Concept: I'm taking an existing service and rebranding it to market to a demographic not currently targeted by any existing service provider. In fact, no one is even aware of that this demographic would be interested in the service. I will partner with one of those service providers (under appropriate NDA/Confidentiality terms) to, well, provide the underlying service. Customers may access the service through our proprietary app and we will be building out mobile versions (iOS and Android) and desktop versions (PC and Mac) in that order. I have the apps and there interfaces figured out (though I will have to have a shop build them) and I know that there will likely be API requirements to handshake with the partner provider's systems. I'm asking you guys for help on identifying categories and projections on initial and first-year operating costs. Here's what I have so far:
The website will feature pretty standard pages: Home, Services, Contact, Help. Account creation is also vital since subscriptions will be sold only on the site to avoid App Store fees (this may change--I could just add 30% to the non-in-app fee). I'll need someone to create our logo and brand identity that will be integrated into the website.
The app is pretty simple and I've already researched this element extensively.
Includes formation, commercial contracts support, trademark and copyright protection, and capital investment support.
Plan is to target online spaces frequented by target demo and use paid sponsorships by known entities in the demo. I would like to get to 50k users in the first year, if possible, but 10k would suffice as well.
Standard is 20% of initial build cost.
I want to have the partner provider supply tech support (chat only probably) and source customer support to work-from-home contractors. The support section on the website and app will be relatively comprehensive, though, to try to mitigate support needs.
This is tricky, but I think I can get away with this range. The overhead on this type of service isn't very high, I don't see a need for a greater number. Hard to clarify without getting into specifics, though.
I don't need an office, permanent support staff, or network stuff, so this is basically E&O insurance, registered agent fees, and sundries.
I live in the Bay Area so I do need a rather hefty draw. This will be full time for me, so I can't supplement my income in other ways. TOTAL FIRST YEAR COSTS: $236k - $272k So /r/Entrepreneur, what am I missing and what numbers are bullshit? [link] [comments]  |
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