Marketplace Tuesday! (February 27, 2018) Entrepreneur |
- Marketplace Tuesday! (February 27, 2018)
- If you delete your post after receiving negative feedback... you weren't honestly looking for feedback.
- "Window Cleaning Guy"'s monthly Race to $400,000 update for Feb 2018
- I'm a 15 year old who launched a startup for making exercise routes, let me know what you think
- 4 Lessons Learned From Generating 4,021 Leads For $2,110.53 Within 72 Hours on Facebook
- How to Use Science To Become More Confident (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy)
- Flu Season- Business Disinfection. Good idea ?
- The Journey of Creating a Brand From Scratch
- Why is Vero taking off? Why aren't people ignoring it like any other "me too" social network?
- Website just launched. Tear us apart.
- Suggestions for a Wantrepreneur
- Recently launched a company and need advice!
- Scheduling meetings while working full-time
- I've inherited many self storage units. I cannot figure out if we're breaking the law or not.
- Where to find solid tech consultants?
- Is it ok to roll your own affiliate program?
- What's a problem that you underestimated while building your business?
- $30k/mo selling face masks - then we shut down the business.
- What do you guys use for e-commerce software? I think I made a huge mistake in going Prestashop. It's expensive.
- Return on Investment vs Return of Investment
- Relaunching My Blog/Website
- What direction should I take this business idea?
- (Q) Google local business search help
- Has anyone ever purchased an existing small business? I am looking for advise on valuation social media following and her designs?
- Starting a business whilst working full time
| Marketplace Tuesday! (February 27, 2018) Posted: 27 Feb 2018 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. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2018 04:19 AM PST |
| "Window Cleaning Guy"'s monthly Race to $400,000 update for Feb 2018 Posted: 27 Feb 2018 04:40 AM PST Hello my fellow entrepreneurs! I hope all is well! I'm checking in for my Feb update. obligatory short version of storyAs many of you know I'm the guy that posted here in /r/entrepreneur just over a year ago when I found out I was losing my job and started a service company overnight. My son/partner and myself did over $140,000 in our first 12 months and we are now 1 month into our second full year. You can see all of my (almost) monthly updates in my posting history. Here is my most recent one: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/7vawdz/window_cleaning_guy_here_for_my_promised_jan/ My entire journey has been documented on youtube here if you would like to see the emotional side of starting a service business out of desperation. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTS3WLs0t2stlWFaqTzP2mQ?view_as=subscriber This year our annual sales goal is $400,000. I am doing a monthly update to allow anyone that would like to "ride along" with us to do so. The short update is that we are currently ahead of plan with our sales goal with a couple of days left in Feb. I am doing a monthly FB live video on my FB page for anyone that would like to be a part of that. Current struggles that I am facing is: 1. Time - I am still an owner operator and it's starting to become difficult to get everything done on the 'back end' of the business. 2. Hiring - I am now willing to hire just anyone so the fact that I am being stubborn on finding the right fit is causing my recruiting process to take longer that I would like/need 3. I must get a commercial space to keep my vehicle/chemicals as my HOA has reached their 'wits end' with me. Feel free to ask anything. I am about to head out for a full day of cleaning but will respond as I get the opportunity to do so (could be this evening). Link to my FB live update is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1776263442425390/ [link] [comments]  |
| I'm a 15 year old who launched a startup for making exercise routes, let me know what you think Posted: 27 Feb 2018 10:51 AM PST I've been lurking around this subreddit for quite awhile and there's a lot of good advice. I just launched my first 'startup', it's a webapp for generating random routes for running, walking and biking. You enter your location and how many miles/kilometers you want the route to be and it makes one. It's called Routeshuffle, check it out here. I launched to Product Hunt where it's been received good. There is a pro plan for more features, which work well. I've already received a few subscriptions so I know the idea is validated. I'm curious where else you think I should market it? Perhaps Facebook/Twitter ads? Thanks and I look forward to hearing what you think! [link] [comments]  |
| 4 Lessons Learned From Generating 4,021 Leads For $2,110.53 Within 72 Hours on Facebook Posted: 27 Feb 2018 02:54 AM PST Over the last couple of months, I've been experimenting with quizzes as a tool for quickly filling your lead warehouse. A quiz, in combination with Facebook ads, can be a great source of leads at a relatively low cost for info businesses. Therefore, quizzes can be a great entry point for your funnel if you know how to segment, nurture & convert leads. The key is to;
Note that the lead cost will heavily depend on the market size. You can always expect to get leads at a lower cost in a big market than in a small one. This approach can work for coaches, consultants & info-based businesses which sell problem-oriented programs or courses, while it probably WON'T work for e-commerce (If you prove me wrong, you have a beer on my tab)… By the time you're done with reading, you'll be ready to run your own Quiz Funnel with Facebook ads. LESSON 1 —Understand Who's Solving The Quiz Everything starts with the market. Knowing WHO buys your products or services will always put you one step ahead of the competition. If you know who's buying, the next step is to find a way to target them on Facebook. You can easily find your target audience by playing around with interests and behaviours in Audience Insights. Have a customer list? Even better, just upload it and see how to reach people similar to your previous buyers. By using Audience Insights you can find out;
Once you have a solid idea of who you're going to target and how is that aligning with what you're selling, it's time to start thinking about the quiz itself. The most important part of the quiz is the headline (Remember that 80% of people only read the headline)— which should propose a problem which can be "solved" if a person takes the quiz. Couple of general examples;
The best way to decide on the headline is to split test. Write a couple of headlines, each from a different angle & see which one is going to give you the lowest cost-per-lead and the highest offer take rate. Repeat the process until you get the KPIs which suit your projections. LESSON 2— Define The Funnel Strictly The flow of the funnel should feel natural. The goal of every step of the funnel is to get the prospect to take action FAST & move to the next step. First, you get them to click on the ad and then get to the Quiz Landing Page which should only be consisted of the headline, sub-headline and simple CTA such as "Start The Quiz". Then you have the Quiz, which should consist of no more than 10 simple questions (ideally 6–8), which will take 2–3 minutes to solve. The next step is Quiz Results Page which gives an outcome based on the answers they've given. You're going to have 2–4 possible outcomes which translate into** 2–4 custom outcome pages**. The goal of this step is to explain the outcome & propose a quick solution to the "problem". The best way to do this is with a short video (again, by outcome) which has one goal —moving them to the Offer Landing Page. Keep in mind that the offer should be simple, "irresistible" and must not cost more than a coffee for two, or in other words — not more than $9.99. You can also give something for free (But then there's no chance to get a break-even on the leads). Anyway, here's a couple of ideas;
Bonus tip: Integrate social proof in the form of testimonials on the offer landing page to boost credibility. Whoever takes the quiz knows you for max. 5 minutes — they have no reason to trust you. Give them some. If they decide to take your offer, the next step is Offer Thank You Page which should give them the outcome based on the Offer. If you offered them a free membership, you'll give them the Facebook group link & ask them to subscribe to the chatbot sequence & let them know that you're going to be sending emails to them. The key to success is to get prospects move to the next step FAST & invest in interacting with them again through an email sequence, chatbot sequence & Facebook retargeting. Otherwise, you'll lose their attention & they won't even remember they took the quiz 24 hours later. Tools Used To Build The Funnel:
LESSON 3— Know Your KPIs "It's a matter of timing. Selling is like a seduction. If you ask a woman to go to bed with you, whether or not she's going to say 'yes' is largely a matter of when you ask her." — Gary Halbert The same rule applies if you ask for an email. When you ask for an email is going to directly affect the opt-in rate. You can ask;
There's not much wisdom here — the sooner you ask, you're going to get more leads (at a lower cost), but they're going to be less qualified. The best way to decide on this matter is to split test and see which one gives you the best ratio between the cost-per-lead and the offer take rate. You can track your KPIs by step with Facebook Analytics and/or an excel sheet. I usually go with Facebook Analytics because it requires less manual work & does a great job of visualizing data (definitely better than excel). For this specific funnel, we asked for the email before the Quiz Results Page, while the offer was a $4.97 e-book with Free Group Membership included. Here are the results we got after 72 hours of run time;
Again, this worked because the offer was simple to understand, "irresistible" (quick solution to the proposed problem) & it costed $4.97 which is a complete no-brainer. The offer has to be aligned with the target audience, otherwise, it WON'T work, period. LESSON 4 —Be specific with Facebook Ads You know now everything to get the Quiz Funnel done, it's time to launch the ads. The first thing on the list is to get a winning ad which converts. Since we discussed that in STEP 1, there's no need to do it again. Here's how finding the winning ad looked like; Once you have a winning ad, progress forward to narrowing down to the right audience to get as low as you can on the lead price and as high as you can with the offer take rate. You'll do this by split testing different interests, behaviours, lookalikes or custom audiences & playing around with bidding strategy. To make the split testing process more efficient & accurate, you're going to point all traffic (from multiple ad sets) to a SINGLE ad. That way you're not wasting money to build social proof on 10, 20 or 50 different ads to see if something works or not. The process behind this is simple;
The next step is to decide on the budget & time per test. We usually go with 2–4X the goal CPA per test, even though even 1X the goal CPA per test is enough on seasoned accounts, while the test length varies from account to account (in most cases 48–72 hours). Since the goal CPA (in this case CPL) was to go under $1, we could have settled with a $2/day budget, but that was to slow for us since we needed to complete the campaign within 72 hours. We started off each ad set with $50/day and quickly scaled each ad set which showed potential (and killed those which didn't perform within a couple of dollars spent). The aftermath;
Next Steps… Sticking to lessons I've outlined can get you low-cost leads. The next step is to convert them with a good offer to break even (or even earn a small profit). From that point on, everything should be pure profit, so continue engaging with them through 4 channels they subscribed to:
Final tip: Since you're getting leads at a very low cost, it's good to invest in branding campaigns. That way you're establishing stronger authority over the acquired audience to pre-frame them for the up-sell. [link] [comments]  |
| How to Use Science To Become More Confident (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) Posted: 27 Feb 2018 09:42 AM PST You guys liked my last post (2nd top this month) so I'm back with a better one. . Do you ever feel like you're not good enough? Something negative happens and you can't stop replaying it over and over as if someone had made a highlight reel of it. Your confidence takes a hit and your self esteem becomes nonexistant. You're not alone. Ever since there were humans people has felt this way. It's an old problem, and an old solution. It just so happens that that old solution has been backed by thousands of scientific studies. If you modernise and science-ise ancient Buddhism you get mindfulness. If you modernise and science-ise Stoicism you get Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Mindfulness is the dainty person that politely asks you to step back, examine your thoughts, and let the irrational negative ones float away. CBT is the aggressive person that demands your problematic thoughts meet them in the alley outside the bar to settle the problem once and for all. CBT is scientifically designed to pinpoint your negative, irrational thoughts and replace them with rational, realistic and positive thoughts. For me, and maybe for you, CBT can get quicker and more effective results. But you'll still have to do some work. CBT = "The Scientific Philosophy of Stoicism"Stoicism is an incredible branch of philosophy with many profound ideas. It covers the meaning of life down to practical, down to earth theories about how you should treat your every day struggles. One of the main ideas is this:
he moron that called you a moron didn't make you angry. The bus being late didn't annoy you. Your phone braking didn't make you sad. Your thoughts, judgements and beliefs are what created your feelings. It is this concept that forms CBT.
I'm sure there is a subset of people reading this and thinking "this is not true - it is just a concept after all". To speak bluntly: you're wrong. Imagine you are asleep in bed and you hear a crashing sound downstairs. How you think about the crashing sound will affect how you feel:
The same event is happening but you are responding differently based on your thoughts. The Stoic philosophers realised that we need to question irrational and unhelpful beliefs so that we can see the world more clearly and more healthily.
But how do we start replacing negative, irrational thoughts with useful, rational thoughts? 1. Identify and Challenge Distorted ThoughtsWhat is the voice inside your head saying when you're feeling unconfident? By recognising this we can get to the root belief that is causing you to feel this way. Ask yourself this question: I felt unconfident because I thought... Most people have a thought that they will identify with instantly. It may be "I'm an idiot" or "I'm a complete failure" or "I'm not good enough". After identifying the thought you need to challenge your thought.
CBT says that for every "irrational" thought you have, come up with a "rational" thought. Irrational: Because I failed this exam, I will never reach my goals and I'm a complete failure" Rational: Even though I failed this exam I can always resit next year after doing more preparation. Everyone makes mistakes and this mistake was a learning point for me. Never let your thoughts be irrational. Correct them and with time the rational thoughts will be natural. Your brain will have no choice to believe them - after all they are the truth. Right, so we've now learned how to deal with the occasional negative but what more of your thoughts are negative than positive? What if you are often lacking confidence? Well we gotta dig deeper. 2. Test your "Core Beliefs"Sometimes the problem isn't the occasional negative thought, it may be that your "core beliefs" are negative. Underneath all of your thoughts, emotions and behaviours may be the hidden beliefs like "I'm not good enough for anything", "I'm unlovable", "I'm a bad person", "I'm a loser". Trying to unroot these beliefs can be done and surprisingly it doesn't take as long as you may think. More often than not these beliefs have a strong lawyer who is proving your with evidence on the daily to support the negative beliefs. It probably wouldn't be difficult for you to make a list supporting the negative beliefs - after all this lawyer has been allowed to make his case for weeks, months and even years in a lot of cases. Here is where CBT comes in: from now on you will consciously create yourself a defence lawyer.
Now sit down and write a list of all the reasons that go against the negative lawyer.
Even after you've written the list the original negative lawyer will still be winning but that is because he has had ages to form and make his case. After time, if you keep providing your defence lawyer proof that negate the irrational and negative thoughts, you will start seeing yourself in a more realistic, healthier way. What is the easiest way to do this? 3. Have An "Evening Confidence Ritual"
The Stoics knew that this was not an overnight process. After you've written the list of reasons you are not a loser for your defence lawyer the case is not over. It is an ongoing case that will never end. But it will get easier. Every day, take a few minutes to think about what you did well that day. Provide your defence lawyer with as much evidence that you can.
With some time you will start to recognise the positive in yourself. You will start to associate this positive with you who you are. Your core beliefs will be solid, strong and realistic.
Great! So far you've identified and challenged, you've dug deep and now you're even following it up with an evening confidence ritual. What's the final step towards having a rock solid Stoic self-esteem? 4. Use A "Cognitive Cue Card"ABC: Always Be Challenging. Be self aware of the negative thoughts in your mind and don't accept the first thing that comes into your mind.
Constantly monitoring your thoughts can sometimes be quite tiring. That's why my whole YouTube channel is about minimising effort and maximising results. So when you're too tired to self-argue, use a "cognitive cue card" to make sure your thoughts are rational and not negative.
The messages on your cue card should look like this: "Just because __________ doesn't mean _______". "Just because I failed doesn't mean I'm a failure" "Just because I said something weird doesn't mean I'm a loser. Everyone makes mistakes and I'm making less mistakes ever since I read that Reddit article by Andrew Kirby" ;) Keep that card on you and be forgiving with yourself. It may take time but with time I promise you that you will internalise the positive thoughts. Why? Because it's the truth.
Action StepDid you just read this article and not do any of the things I said? .. I knew it. Go get a pen and paper and write down a list of positive evidence. Then write a Cognitive Cue card like I said. [link] [comments]  |
| Flu Season- Business Disinfection. Good idea ? Posted: 27 Feb 2018 11:13 AM PST I understand " I won't know until I try". But from perspective of business owners, would a once a week service like this sound appealing ? Does it sound like a good idea (Yes an idea is worth nothing until I do it, but I'm looking for some input) This would be going around a business in the off hours and disinfecting ant "hot spots" places people touch often, in the hopes to slow down the spread of bacteria and sickness. Thanks for the discussion! [link] [comments]  |
| The Journey of Creating a Brand From Scratch Posted: 27 Feb 2018 09:21 AM PST Originally posted on Medium, where there are also pictures to emphasize different sections. I am Călin, a 21-year-old designer based in Bucharest, Romania and I have always wanted to build my own business and be my own boss. It was around fall 2017 when it all started and, looking back now, I can clearly see how much I've evolved and how my way of seeing things has changed. This is a short story on the process. The Idea I did not want to do this alone, so I got my childhood friend and classmate Alex on the line. We grew up together and we're very good friends. We both love design and we both did freelance work in the past — logo design for the most. So, why not work together? We wanted to materialize our concepts into something that people could wear. That was the base of brodr, our original apparel store that now takes most of our time and is basically our full-time job. We use Shopify to host our store. We took a free theme and customized it to look just the way we wanted it. It took us many sleepless nights, mistakes and coffee to build our website(and there'll be many more). I wish we kept a list of all the changes we've made throughout, but I'm afraid it would have been way too long. We plan to keep it all in-house for as long as possible. That means no extra people to do our work. Everything from branding, advertising, content, copyright, designs and so on is done by us alone. It is a philosophy we are trying to hold on to simply because we want to grow and learn as much as possible. Concept 'brodr' is our way of saying 'brother'. Why did we choose this name? Because we strive to build a passionate community of people who share the same ideas as us. #beabrodr represents our whole concept in one hashtag —* be a brother*. Our main goal is customer satisfaction because, the way we see it, building strong relationships with your clients is one of the most important aspects of a brand. We also believe that you should never deceive your customers because it's simply not cool. Let's put it this way: people are giving you, a complete stranger on another continent, money and expect you to send them something they have probably never seen or touched. You need to prove them that you're trustworthy and we try to do that by constantly thinking of new methods to show people what brodr really is about. The Designs We're not fashion designers and I don't think we'll ever be. But we do believe that there are people out there that like the same stuff that we do. When we started building our t-shirt designs, we had one main thought in our heads — make something that we would wear. We use print-on-demand(POD) to put our models into the wild and we will always prefer quality over quantity, no matter what. We also like to give our items a touch of humor in their description. We check our designs down to the most little detail to be sure that everything's in order, hence why there's not a huge number of models on the website. Slow and steady. And thus our launch collection was created — GEOMETRIK. We only used red, white and black squares and then arranged them in different geometrical patterns, hence the name. We had the idea of printing these for ourselves for a long time, but we never thought of sharing them with the world until now. The model above was the first to make it in the collection. We don't have a standard design process. Whenever one of us has an idea, we write it down and try to make something out of it. We're in a permanent creative state and we're constantly updating our content. We have several unused designs right now because we try to put everything down, even if we don't include it in a collection. We do this because we believe that one small spark of creativity can lead to a great final design. This principle strongly applies to our latest collection, COSMOS, launched on February 25th. The designs featured in this collection were all conceived starting from just one idea. You can take a look at the collection here. The Future Even though it is hard to build a reputable brand these days, we both are really excited about what's to come. We're very proud of what we have achieved. What you just read is just the tip of the iceberg we're now climbing. I've tried to keep it very straightforward because it would have been way too much to put it all here. There's still very much uncharted territory in our journey and we're eager to learn and evolve. If you want to start a business, here's my two cents of what I learnt in the past few months: dedicate yourself, put your heart and soul into it, be honest and most importantly — don't give up! Always remember why you started. Conclusion If you got to this point, you're totally awesome and we thank you! Be sure to follow us on Instagram @brodr.shop, like us on Facebook and visit our website Feel free to comment below about anything! We're always looking for feedback. #beabrodr [link] [comments]  |
| Why is Vero taking off? Why aren't people ignoring it like any other "me too" social network? Posted: 27 Feb 2018 01:04 PM PST |
| Website just launched. Tear us apart. Posted: 27 Feb 2018 10:00 AM PST [rupahealthproducts.com](rupahealthproducts.com) Hello all! As the title states, we are looking for some constructive criticism. We ran a trial ad campaign for 2 days which generated about 60 visits, but no orders. So right now we are mostly looking for tips to convert customers once they land. We are dropshipping via Oberlo. We are two guys with zero prior eCommerce experience, and have learned everything we know and built the site in the past two months. Better to learn by doing, right? So if it's pretty rough, that's why. This sub has been invaluable in helping us get to this point, so thank you all for sharing your knowledge! [link] [comments]  |
| Suggestions for a Wantrepreneur Posted: 27 Feb 2018 07:33 AM PST Long time lurker, First time poster. I have been interested in starting my own company since college. I guess I want to share a bit of my background first.
I'm a 28 year old engineer who has hated working since I graduated. The best job's I've had are ones where I am in charge and doing project management or planning/supervision.
I've had a mini existential crisis after college. I have read dozens of self help, philosophy, business and economics books.. and slowly came to realize the reason I hate working is because I am not challenged enough and I do not feel like I am living up to my potential.
As an engineer I feel that I have a fairly good head on my shoulders and personally have a huge interest in finance and running a business. What I've found is I am pretty good at coming up with new ideas and recognizing where there is a niche that needs filling. My problem is I get caught up in "Idea Generation" mode. When it comes down to the nitty gritty and getting started I typically run out of steam quickly or fail to start. My personality type is ENTP which "they say" are good at having orginal creative solutions but suck at execution. I've found this 100% true in my case
Like I said I read all sorts of books and I try to emulate successful entrepreneurs. The problem I come across is I want to manage people and delegate tasks but I have no people. I can recount stories of Jeff Bezos coming up with the "1 click payment" and having his staff complete it, Edison delegating to Tesla the DC generator, Gates delegating to wazniak... i mean the list goes on and on.
What I've found is that I do best when creating new ideas and planning a course of action (planning and accounting), and supervising the work. (project management). The problem is the start up phase. Where you need to be the one doing the work until you hire staff. How did you guys overcome this hurdle?
For your viewing pleasure I've sat down and gone over all of my ideas/failed startups:
Easy small projects I'm currently doing:
I'm asking for advice, or resources to help. I'm a serial idea creator but don't have much to show for it. My goal is to be self employees fully in 5 years but i really don't see that happening unless i start outsourcing all of my work right from the get go.... [link] [comments]  |
| Recently launched a company and need advice! Posted: 27 Feb 2018 10:44 AM PST Hey! I recently launched a company and am struggling to make sales. I am fairly new to ecommerce but also have some experience. I am using FB and Google ads as of right now to capture emails and try and get products out, but both aren't really working. I think my ads are ok, doing a lot of split testing at the moment. If you could check out my site at thecomfortedmind.com I would appreciate it. Feel free to give me any feedback, I am trying to get better. 1)I recently launched a company that focuses on using scientifically-backed methods to help folks beat their anxiety. This is mostly going to be in the form of making products that use these techniques. There are many anecdotal ways to help with anxiety out there, but this topic has been researched heavily and nobody is using the information! 2)I know many people personally and know that there are many more people out there who struggle with anxiety and could benefit from this. 3)Have been working on this for about 3 months. 4) 6-month plan is to sell at least 100 journals a month and come out with new product options. This trend would continue for 1 and 5-year plans. 5) It has been a good experience getting my website set up and first product made, but a negative experience figuring out how to get people to buy it. [link] [comments]  |
| Scheduling meetings while working full-time Posted: 27 Feb 2018 02:29 PM PST I'm currently working full-time while building a service-based business (mainly B2B). I'm making a lot of connections, and seeing how much of my success is dependent on building those relationships. I don't mind spending nights and weekends on this business. It's so exciting and fun that it hardly feels like work. I'm also fortunate to have a pretty boring office job with way too much free time. The issue I'm running into is scheduling meetings. The vast majority of people want to meet M-F 9-5. I do phone meetings when I can, and try to schedule early morning or late afternoon meetings, as my work is fairly flexible with my scheduling, but that doesn't always work. I only have so much vacation time. It's great to have so many potential mentors, partners, and clients to meet with, but I'm having a hard time fitting them into my schedule. Has anyone else dealt with this? Any advice? [link] [comments]  |
| I've inherited many self storage units. I cannot figure out if we're breaking the law or not. Posted: 27 Feb 2018 02:24 PM PST Long story short, I live in TX. I've inherited about 350 self storage units. The process of locking up and repossession seems straight forward however cleaning the unit seems to have me at a loss. Previous owner would repossess after many notices and then simply clean the unit out and junk anything worthless and keep and sell anything of value. Looking on Google many suggest that I need to auction these units instead but I cannot determine if this is legally required or if I can keep it business as usual. They are in a relatively small town and auctioning these units would basically be impossible due to low population and distances from major population centers. Does anyone have any insight into the legal requirements of mandatory auctions vs simple clean out? [link] [comments]  |
| Where to find solid tech consultants? Posted: 27 Feb 2018 01:58 PM PST I have an idea for a hardware product but have no experience in that field and wanted to sit down with a consultant to find out the product's feasibility and the like. Where does one go to find good tech hires / consults? All I can find are basically Fiverr for Programmers and I'm trying to find a proper, experienced consultant. Where can I go to find such a human? [link] [comments]  |
| Is it ok to roll your own affiliate program? Posted: 27 Feb 2018 09:17 AM PST I don't want to pay a third party. However, I also need to build trust with potential affiliate partners. Does anyone here have experience with a custom-built affiliate system? Do marketers trust it? Is there an affiliate program that doesn't require you to pay minimum fees? [link] [comments]  |
| What's a problem that you underestimated while building your business? Posted: 27 Feb 2018 12:44 PM PST Something you thought wouldn't be as difficult or as big of a deal as it ended up being. Very curious about the potential dangers one should look out for. [link] [comments]  |
| $30k/mo selling face masks - then we shut down the business. Posted: 26 Feb 2018 07:02 PM PST Hi /r/Entrepreneur - Pat from Starter Story again, where I do interviews with successful e-commerce entrepreneurs. Here is my interview with Lucy Bloomfield, the founder of Trefiel, a cosmetic face mask product in Australia. TLDR:
Lucy has a lot of great advice about marketing in this interview that you should definitely read. Hope you enjoy! BackgroundHey, my name is Lucy Bloomfield, and I co-founded Trefiel alongside my business partner. Trefiel is a luxury sheet mask company that helps women see amazing results with their skin and squeeze in more me-time while they're at it. How we came up with the idea.I was working for a US security company as their designer and front-end developer as well as teaching back-end programming with a UK company. Even though I had a great job, great salary and the freedom to travel and work as a digital nomad, I was starting to become quite depressed. I wanted to build something for me, but I didn't know what. It was at this time we heard from a friend who was running a teeth whitening company and selling hundreds of thousands of kits using Instagram Influencers. When we checked out the company, they had spelling errors on their website, and honestly, it was overall a very poorly executed business. I knew I could do it at at least the same level as they were doing, if not better, so the hunt for a product began. I ended up sourcing a few different products from various manufacturers, and the lace sheet mask was by far the best. It was beautiful, different and no one in Australia had ever seen anything like it. When we gave it to friends and family, many with sensitive skin, they loved it. Some even asked to buy it immediately, so we know we were onto something and needed to order more. Creating the product and launching the business.We worked with our supplier to tweak the original formula. If you're not familiar with the Australian market, as a culture we really like natural products, and as a consumer goods product starting in a specific region, you need to focus on serving that demographic. Once we had a formula that was acceptable, we ordered a few masks (I believe it was 1000 altogether) and had them shipped to our house with no labeling. That day I had to sit down and put the stickers on the front and back of each of them. It was a long, long day but the end result was worth it. Our launch was small and we used Instagram and many micro influencers to get the ball rolling with our first customers. I still remember the first time someone ordered from my store. My business partner and I tackled each other and rolled around on the office floor, screaming. It was such an exciting time. We both had a background in tech and startups, so our main goal from the start was to run the company as lean as we possibly could until we saw signs that there was a reason to invest further. We didn't register the company. We had a very basic Squarespace website which I believe we put together in a few days. Everything was bootstrapped - we asked our friends to model for our website photos, we did all of the social media ourselves, and because my business partner and I were also boyfriend and girlfriend, we didn't start with an equity agreement. We were both more interested in seeing if it would work and when it did, we went from there with setting up the company properly. Leveraging social media influencers.Instagram and influencers were what we built our business off, although I must say the space has changed a lot since we first started. Originally, we approached influencer marketing in two prongs - sponsoring posts on large influencer platforms, and gifting products in exchange for a post with micro influencers. If you're looking at using influencer marketing in your own business, here are a couple of my best tips for doing so: How to find influencers Typically, I start with my demographic and look to the platform they're spending the most time on. Then from there, I'll either use hashtags, keywords or audience insights to find people who are influencing in the space I'm trying to sell into. Once you've identified a few key influencers, you simply reach out to them, introduce yourself and your company and ask them if they do sponsored posts. When you reach out, don't waffle and don't waste their time (they receive hundreds of emails every day). Be concise, to the point and respectful. Working with paid Influencers If you're paying an influencer, you can have complete say over when and what they post, right down to the caption itself. I always recommend giving the influencer leeway to communicate to their audience in their usual way - the posts where we've written the captions for them have never performed well. As for what type of content you should ask the influencer to post, it really comes down to what your product is. If you're a fashion brand and influencers can sell your product without actually saying anything about it, you can see great results with a simple photo and one-liner tagging the photo. On the other hand, if you have a product whose benefits need to be spoken about and the influencer's experience using it is important, you need to strictly ask them to speak about this. If you don't, they won't and your product won't sell. Working with free, micro Influencers If you're not paying an influencer, you don't really have a say over what type of content they post or when they can do it. You can ask nicely and provide guidelines, but engaging influencers for free isn't a guaranteed game. A lot of the time they won't post or they won't do what you ask. But, if you nurture the relationships and treat the influencer well, you can have some really great experiences, results, and long-term relationships. The current space for influencer marketing Established influencers want exorbitant money with no real increase in ROI. New influencers want exorbitant money with no real ROI at all, and their audiences are savvier and less trusting of influencers and sponsored posts in general. More and more I find myself recommending brands to pick one or two influencers, over hundreds, and really develop great relationships with them. That's where there are still opportunities. You can organize long-term contracts with them for sponsored posts - we have done this previously. It's a good way to keep the relationship going with an influencer. But if you really want to continue doing business with the person you're working with, you need to actually go into business with them. Influencers have a lot of leverage and, from my experience personally working with them, they want to build their own business, not yours. They often don't have the skills or the knowledge to release their own lines though and that's where you, as an expert in whatever field you're in, can really help an influencer out (and the same in return). I've seen a lot of companies do partnerships with influencers, who have seen huge success and growth because of that partnership. But, one word of warning - an influencer is not your friend. They are mercenaries, and they are often ruthless. If there is a better deal, they will go to it. There is no such concept as loyalty. So tread very carefully, make sure you have contracts drawn up and you protect yourself in every way possible when going into business with them. Other successful marketing tactics.Other than influencers, we did a lot of the typical e-commerce strategies to grow the business from 0 to 10,000 customers. Content marketing and lead magnets helped us to grow our list and email marketing played a huge role in maintaining our 40% return customer rate. Specifically, we had success writing content that answered our customer's questions about skin care. This made our customers happy and feel like we were taking care of them and it also gave us fresh content for Facebook Ads. When a blog post performed well with our customers, we knew it would likely answer other people's questions about skin care, so we used that content to drive traffic to our site, acquire emails and convert the cold traffic into new customers. As I mentioned, we saw a lot of success with creating lead magnets. A lead magnet is a piece of valuable content, such helping our customers achieve better skin, that we provide for the viewer's email. The lead magnets are an opportunity to give the customer a discount code for your site, and it will have a surprisingly high conversion rate if you align the content and your product as the solution to your potential customer's problem. One of our best-performing lead magnets was a PDF with 6 tips on how to see incredible results with your skin using face masks. As we were growing our list, we built multiple funnels depending on how a subscriber joined our list. If they joined through a lead magnet, we'd follow up with the same offer as what they had in the PDF. If they joined through our site, we'd welcome them into the brand and give them core pieces of content that educated them on why they should use our product to take care of their skin. If they joined because they were a customer, we had a separate funnel that introduced them to the founders of the brand, what our mission was, what they could expect from us and some of our best content for them to read. The customer funnel was the best performing with 80% average open rates across the entire sequence. I also believe it played a major part, alongside the typical eCommerce email marketing we deployed, in keeping people involved and interested in the brand. Beyond our funnels, we ran flash sales to our email list every 6-8 weeks, and we were always throwing giveaways and looking for ways to spoil our customers. Email was also the medium where we communicated directly with our customers about what we were working on behind-the-scenes and how we involved them (using quizzes and surveys) to help us shape the brand. Again, I think this played a major part in how much people loved us and our company. They felt they played a role in building it into what it was. I worked really hard on building relationships with our customers so they would enjoy their experience with our company. For example, I used platforms like Snapchat to build the rapport and trust that is so essential to any business today. In the end, we saw 22% conversion rates on our slide up snaps (insane) and 18% on our Instagram Stories, so I know we did a great job of doing this and it's often one of the first platforms I recommend to clients now who want to build their business. It's not an overnight win, but if you put in 10 minutes every day for a year, you start to see something magical happen (and it's all for free). We also experimented with PR and got some decent opportunities from it, although the results from these opportunities were impossible to track. I think the biggest event we were apart of as a brand was the launch of 50 Shades Darker in Australia, although to be honest, it was the last event we sponsored because of the significant cost without quantifiable return. It goes without saying that we ran many Facebook ads and experimented with all kinds of funnels, simple and complex. We saw a lot of success with content marketing and boosting the posts, over standard product advertising that you might see in the feed. Would I do anything differently if I could go back?Almost everything! Once you have a few years under your belt you start to get really, really focused on what's going to move the needle. If you're smarter than me, you'll do that quicker. I wasted a lot of time executing ideas that I thought were cool but had absolutely no value to the business as far as acquiring new customers or increasing revenue. One of those ideas was a campaign called 'Be My Galentine' which was for Valentine's Day. There was no giveaway or incentive for our customers other than a once-off product launch and looking back on it, it could have been made so much better by giving them a reason to purchase that product - such as going into the running to win a romantic dinner for two or something similar. I think that's a lesson that I take with me everywhere because it's applicable in many different businesses and I find myself using it all the time. I said this at another talk I gave recently, but part of being an entrepreneur is having an innate desire to create and make something out of nothing. Once you have a business though, you need to curb that desire in such a way that any and all ideas you execute must return immediate or long-term value for the business, particularly when you're first starting out. It's your responsibility as the business owner to put the business first always and that means forgoing great ideas to focus on the most important thing - sales. What I have found particularly helpful.I think this comes back to the above, but I'm always focused on the strategy behind a business or marketing effort now. Here are some of the questions I ask myself before doing anything in my business or my clients now -
There are always going to be times where you're not sure if what you're planning to do is going to work, but you can at least use a framework to help you reduce some of the risk involved when trying something new or to make better decisions overall. Shutting down the business, and the future of our careers.My business partner and I decided to close down Trefiel once we became vegans and started educating ourselves more on the environment. The more we learned about climate change, the more we realized that we were apart of the issue - sending hundreds of thousands of plastic packaging and non-biodegradable face masks out into the planet each year. It was this realization, coupled with the fact that neither of us was passionate about skin care enough to launch a full skin care line, that resulted in us deciding to close down the company at Christmas in 2017. Since then, I've been focusing on consulting and helping other businesses with their acquisition and retention strategies. I'm having a blast getting my hands dirty in so many other types of businesses, and it's also giving me the revenue to pursue other ideas and projects, like a tool that automates my internal marketing campaign processes. I think a lot about ethics and who is doing great things in their business without doing bad things as well. Every business has its flaws but I'm lucky to have stumbled on some particularly incredible clients, like Edgar's Mission, who make the world a better place without causing any damage. Platforms we used.I can code, so Woocommerce and Wordpress have always been very attractive to me because of its customizability and also the low cost involved with using the platform. I think Shopify is great for people who have no idea what they're doing but how much they charge their customers for basic functionality honestly makes me feel sick. I can't believe there are themes being sold for $250 that look as bad as they do, where you can buy a Wordpress theme and use visual composer for less than $100. I love and recommend using Stamped.io for automated reviews, they have a great team behind the tool as well. I also really like using MailChimp. I know there are other alternatives, but Mailchimp have upped their game recently and the product they offer is one of the best, especially for e-commerce. Finally, Trello is the key to my ability to stay sane when running multiple businesses. I use it for everything - mapping out future plans for my own business, delegating tasks, onboarding new clients, brainstorming and just about everything you can think of. Books, podcasts, or other resources I recommend:Some great business, marketing and advertising books:
I don't listen to a lot of business podcasts because I enjoy the process of learning hands-on rather than trying to absorb weekly information about entrepreneurship. If you want to become a better marketer and storyteller, reading fiction will help you develop your language skills and ability to paint pictures with words. This is inherently important if building a brand with a personality is a priority to you. Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started.I had a friend ask me recently if they should pursue a new business idea. They said they wanted to, but they were worried they were going to fail. To that I said: You are 100% going to fail, so you don't need to worry about the uncertainty of whether you will or not. You will fail because you suck. But if you keep going, you'll suck a little less each day and over time, that accumulates into competence until you realize one day you don't suck at all. So go out and suck until you learn not to suck anymore. Lucy is here in the comments under u/lucybloomfield. For more stories like this, check out starterstory.com. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2018 12:18 PM PST So, basically, after I purchased a theme that is taking way too much effort to get to how I want, and after buying plugins to allow me to accept crypto-purchases that clearly is non-functional, I'm thinking maybe I made a mistake in going with prestashop. Sure, I sank some money into it, but I don't want to "sunk cost fallacy" my hopes and dreams, here. What do you guys use for e-commerce? I would prefer self-hosted solutions. Advice? Horror stories? [link] [comments]  |
| Return on Investment vs Return of Investment Posted: 27 Feb 2018 12:00 PM PST What does it nean to you? https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6374007714749775872 [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2018 11:57 AM PST In 2014 I launched this account and The Cameron Cowan Show. I started CameronCowan.net and I made it my home for my podcast, videos, and written content. I was publishing on a variety of platforms liked Medium and Apple News/Google AMP. I was focused on providing news and news context for those that wanted to see inside the news. I had a few viral videos but nothing dramatic. I closed the show in 2016 because I was exhausted, running out of money, and my monthly carry costs were killing my meager finances. I was doing this full time and I was just running out of everything: time, sanity, and money. So I closed the show and re-entered the regular workforce for the first time in 10 years. I started to focus on myself and tried to get my own house in order. Now I'm unloading as much debt as I can but I'm also trying to get ready for relaunch. I'm a novelist and so my new concept is some current events commentary, personal essays, and some new serial novellas that I'm working on. I'm also taking a cue from this sub and starting a subscription newsletter service where I will be offering observations about Trends in the news and media, as well as my top 5 important news stories and top 3 things to think about for the coming 2 weeks. The newsletter will come out every 2 weeks and I'm thinking about $4.99 a month for the cost. I'm also going to launch my e-commerce store where I will be offering select books from independent and small press sellers (hopefully on a dropship basis). I want to do personal reviews of these books similar to the way people do music reviews. The value is in the curation (I dig through the books so you don't have to!). Eventually I want to do another magazine where I gather up art, music, video, and stories together. It's going to be called Rouges, but that's all phase II. Anyway, I need some help with the e-commerce stuff. I don't have a ton of experience starting e-commerce from scratch and I also have never sold a subscription newsletter before! Any help in those areas will be helpful. I'm an experienced marketing professional or all sorts of products so the social media, email, and content side will be well taken care of but I'm sure there's some nuts and bolts that I'm missing. That's where you guys come in! [link] [comments]  |
| What direction should I take this business idea? Posted: 27 Feb 2018 11:54 AM PST Problem: I want to monetize a mathematical discovery I made without giving up too much stock in the idea and my company. Background: Several years ago, I discovered some fractal patterns I believe have application as wireless communication antennas. I come from a software development background and am struggling with the electrical engineering aspect of this possible business use. To make matters more complicated, the software I feel I need to purchase to test the designs for patenting purposes costs approximately $35,000 per license. In addition to this, the US patent will cost between $6,000 and $10,000. Filing internationally will cost quite a bit more. Ideally, I want to sell my patent to a company that already does this type of thing because I feel I am out of my element. If that doesn't pan out, my business plan is to either license the intellectual property out or to manufacture and sell the antennas myself. Without having the necessary funds to purchase the testing software, what direction should I take this idea? Should I reach out to a company that might be interested in the technology prior to patenting the designs in hopes to partner with them? I like the idea of leveraging an existing company's industry and technical knowledge since I do not posess it, but I do not want them to steal the idea from me. Another thought I have is to pursue venture capital funding to buy the test software and hire people to help with the research necessary for the patent. I have no idea what kind of money I could get for this idea given I haven't sold anything to anybody yet. I also do not know what percent of my company I would have to give up to get said money. The startup costs in this industry are high, but the antenna market is global and getting larger due to the growing number of connected devices. I believe there is huge potential in this idea. How should I translate that into money given my current limitations? Any insight is appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| (Q) Google local business search help Posted: 27 Feb 2018 11:30 AM PST is there a way to search Google local business besides the map? I would like to type a keyword in and get a list of all businesses in the area with reviews. for instance, auto shop. I would like all the auto shops in a 50 mile radius with the Google reviews and phone numbers if listed vs just a map view. basicly a Google yellow pages. is there a special way to search for that or is there a site that does that? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2018 11:23 AM PST Hey all, I have dabbled in hobby businesses in the past, but have never gone full on with it, so I am a bit in new territory. I am hoping to get some advice. A small business has come up for sale in my area, and I am working on valuating specific aspects of it. Background: The business is a record clock business, cutting old records with cool designs and turning them into clocks. She has been an LLC since March of last year, and her P&L statement from last year says she had a net profit of $20,000. She works from her home and makes her sales online and at vendor shows. Edited to add: She is selling because her husband has MS and she is not able to sustain the business. My biggest question is how do you put a value someone's social media following?? Here's what she has proposed: Brand Name (Which I really don't like "Things and Stuff") Logo Business paper designs (I am not sure what exactly that is) Website (not including subscription fees) Etsy Shop (Not including subscription fees) Social Media Account rights: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram Client List/Mailing List (I do not have a count yet) She has valued all of this at $7200 Here's what I know of her social media following: Twitter: 1079 Followers 810 Likes - currently active Instagram: 502 Followers (most photos of merchandise have less than 10 likes) Last Business post was 12/4/17 Facebook: 401 currently Following - last active 1/7/18 Etsy: 506 sales - 337 have favorited shop - 109 reviews (5 stars) Has been in vacation mode since 12/8/17 She is also including a vendor space at a huge 4 day event, that according to her you have to be recommended by someone or someone has to die to take their spot. She is not including the booth FEE, just a guaranteed space... How would you put a valuation on that? What would you pay to have her current following. She has also offered the rights to her designs. I am a creative person myself, and don't know that I really NEED to get the designs from her, but she is offering 100+ designs at $5,500. She mentioned in our phone conversation that most of the work she does is custom, like for weddings and birthdays etc. There is one design on her FB page I really like and would like to purchase, but otherwise.. I would love to hear your thoughts and see where you would value these. Thank you for your input! [link] [comments]  |
| Starting a business whilst working full time Posted: 27 Feb 2018 05:21 AM PST Anyone else doing this at the moment? I'm currently working on a few different kinds of marketing, trying to find a type that is suited most to me. I'm struggling to get good amounts of work done as I'm always working, and because I don't like my job, I find myself falling for shiny object syndrome as I just want out of this job ASAP. Could maybe do with some words or wisdom, or even talk to others who are in the same boat! [link] [comments]  |
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