Thank you Thursday! - (July 05, 2018) Entrepreneur |
- Thank you Thursday! - (July 05, 2018)
- All these posts asking "what sells good with minimal inventory costs, and has 0 competition" is like asking "how can I get good grades without going to class or studying"
- Automation Case Study: How one client tripled their customers
- 9% show up rate to gym free trial. How do I get more people to show up ?
- Created a low budget ad for our business, what do you guys think?
- How to remove dual side transaction risk.
- Thinking of offering financing of services customers.
- How to approach a niche investor? (Sports eqpt)
- [CTO as a service] --> Is this something you can be interested in as a non-technical co-founder?
- Daily Reminder: Look Local Before You Look Global. Small Business Can Still Be Lucrative.
- Would like to import food and alcohol into the USA
- Autofill Chrome Extension for Sellers
- Amazon Launchpad to promote 25 Exclusive Products by 18 Indian Startups
- Small construction business UK
- Negotiating a lower credit card payment processing fee to keep more money.
- SaaS/PaaS, outsource payments to users?
- Product/Service Creation?
- Looking for digital marketers
- Do any of you use "Yahoo! Bing Network Contextual Ads" on your website?
- What's the most expensive software that you use on a regular basis?
- Starting a tech and web service company aimed at businesses, got any tips (esp marketing)?
- 10 Questions to ask a Website Developer before hiring them
- Who would be in your dream “Brain Trust”?
- Noob question about fullfiling book orders for a Kickstarter.
- Rough draft online store.. Please tear it apart and give me feedback!
- restaurant industry expansion plans - thoughts?
| Thank you Thursday! - (July 05, 2018) Posted: 05 Jul 2018 06:05 AM PDT Your opportunity to thank the /r/Entrepreneur community by offering free stuff, contests, discounts, electronic courses, ebooks and the best deals you know of. Please consolidate such offers here! 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: 04 Jul 2018 03:11 PM PDT I'm sick of these bullshit posts that are lazy and contribute nothing to this community. There are plenty of resources available to a new entrepreneur or someone considering kicking up a side hustle. This community should be meant to empower and enable entrepreneurs, not asking for handouts. There are great posts, great advice via comments in this sub, but they're getting diluted with all of these low-effort posts. [link] [comments]  |
| Automation Case Study: How one client tripled their customers Posted: 05 Jul 2018 07:21 AM PDT Last month i made a post in r/Entrepreneur called "If you're not using automation you're wasting your time and money" (https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/8sqb7q/if_youre_not_using_automation_youre_wasting_your) and got a great response (And, full disclosure, a few leads too). The most common two queries i received on the thread were either asking for more details on what can be automated or tutorials on basic automation you can do yourself. I'm going to make a few posts regarding both. This post is the first of a series of examples where i give a detailed example of automation solutions implemented for some clients and the results they obtained. Disclosure: I own two small businesses and also work as a freelance automation developer. Both of my businesses are highly automated and I've helped over 30 clients save more than a combined 100+ hours every day. Today I'd like to tell you about a recent friend/client of mine, she had recently inherited the family business from her retired father: A legal services company that specialized in a special type of 1-year permit that's renewed every year. The company was struggling and was only a few months away from bankruptcy. The problem: One of the first changes she made was to send reminders and follow-ups to past clients that were close to their expiration date on the licenses. Problem was, her father did not maintain records about previous clients that can be used to know their expiration date. So whereas she was now tracking each new client's expiry information so she could follow up with them next year, she had no means of following up with previous clients from her father's era. The solution: Her father used to E-Mail the certificate to every single client, with E-Mails going back almost 10 years. She hired me to write a script that automatically dug through all the old E-Mails, downloaded every Certificate and used OCR technology to read the application ID. The script would then track the application ID on the government website and find out the date of expiry, creating a final spreadsheet that contained every single application, their application ID, contact details and expiry date. The result: As a result, she was able to follow-up with every single one of her father's clients who had an expiring certificate coming up. 3 months later, i get an E-Mail from her claiming that thanks to the script her company has already tripled their customers. 1 month ago, i was invited to the inauguration for her new office. Most people know that automation is powerful, that it can save you time, money and help you do things that previously weren't possible. However they don't have any idea just how powerful automation could be. I charged her $600 for that script. Today that script makes her more than $10,000 a month. The text of the above post was reviewed and approved by the client, she chose not to disclose her name. In the future i will try to post about clients that have a Reddit username. If you have any questions about automation please feel free to comment. I'm a little strained for time but I'll try to answer as many as possible! Also if you'd like to work with me on a project or if you have an idea and are not sure if it can be automated please reach out to me via DM and we can discuss business. P.S: This is my first time making such a post, i understand that the format could probably use some updates. Constructive criticism welcome! [link] [comments]  |
| 9% show up rate to gym free trial. How do I get more people to show up ? Posted: 05 Jul 2018 08:39 AM PDT For the past 10 days I have been running a successful Facebook ads campaign for a gym where people sign up to get a 1 week free trial of the gym. In the first week about 70 people signed up and in total more than a 100 people signed up for it. Only 10 of them actually came to try the gym. When someone signs up we send them a text to invite them to call us to so we can book their first class. If they don't call us within 48h, we call them to invite them once again to book their first class. What can we do to get more people to Claim their 1 week free trial ? [link] [comments]  |
| Created a low budget ad for our business, what do you guys think? Posted: 05 Jul 2018 11:30 AM PDT you can check the video here at www.sendgarbage.com or here at youtube. https://www.youtube.com/embed/6Fo3nQhSnIs we only have one. Have you guys had good experience with video ads? [link] [comments]  |
| How to remove dual side transaction risk. Posted: 05 Jul 2018 11:02 AM PDT This will hopefully be applicable to other markets, so it help those of you toying with marketplaces and networks. These are my thoughts on where it has worked previously and in my own organization. The first step in trying to reduce transaction risk is to get everyone into the same set of rules. If you're trying to buy old websites, you have likely run into some difficult scenarios dealing with unscrupulous sellers that want Paypal upfront, payment in coins, etc and don't transfer a domain; maybe there's a complicated process for one group of sellers and a very simple set for another. The more varied the rule sets and the less you have in common, the more problems. Simply be aggregating the buy and sell side into a singular network helps to reduce some of the risk, because if the network provides them any benefit, they'll want to be perceived as a good actor in order to risk expulsion. It can be just this...having individuals buying and selling among each others in a somewhat controlled network is vastly superior to uncontrolled message boards and emails. Just ask eBay; all eBay really did in the beginning was to make the discovery process simpler for those looking to sell pretty much anything and those looking to buy pretty much anything. The earliest system didn't have a method for payments, but just that little bit of trust of dealing with someone on the same network you belong to helped to fascinate transactions. Of course, we know what was next for eBay; yes, they played with their own payments system, warred with PayPal and eventually ended up buying PayPal, but the reason PayPal was so incredibly vital comes into the next point: verification of funds. eBay is not an escrow, and they're very clear about that. There's a lot of additional regulatory hoops you have to jump through if you want to consider yourself as such, which I'm scarcely qualified to discuss other than to persuade you to avoid doing so. However, most buyers and sellers on eBay began to treat the existence of PayPal as their de facto escrow, or at the very least an elevated trust symbol -- that PayPal was owned by eBay meant if you were shady in your transaction on either the buy or sell side at eBay, you could have actions levied against you on your PayPal accounting, impacting your ability to pay or receive money. It helped to keep a larger percentage of transactions honest. It was with those two concepts in mind that we spent the better part of two years building specific to the influencer marketing industry; I have no doubt the same could be done in everything from selling/buying farm equipment, matchmaking services...anything where a market might make sense. Our setup was pretty simple (announcement here). Our influencer network is a warm network, so everyone that works with it is actually signed up to be a part of it, which means for the influencers we just need need to use the payment receipt types we already have on file and provide them with the necessary trust that we'll pay them by forcing all transaction starts to be funded; for brands it was a matter of having them prefund all transactions, providing them with the security that if an influencer doesn't fulfill obligations that the money isn't lost. With each side knowing the other had an additional monetary incentive to acting honorably on any agreement (aside from risk of being removed from the network), the number of transaction starts increased and the number of admin assistance requests to deal with problematic transactions fell. Whew! It works ridiculously well, and while still relatively new using the concept, I'm pretty pleased. Again, I hope the concept is useful to some of you out there. [link] [comments]  |
| Thinking of offering financing of services customers. Posted: 05 Jul 2018 10:54 AM PDT Does anyone have experience with offering low end in house financing to customers? In an effort to close more jobs, a thought of financing came up since the #1 problem is cost. We offer local mobile roadside assistance & towing services in Florida. 99.9% are experiencing an unexpected and unavoidable issue and require immediate emergency service. They need to keep their vehicle going. Service starts at $99 & up. What is the best way to offer short term financing for these services? Would a local collection attorney take the cases to court on a contingency or will we have to pay them up front? I just need them to show up to the court dates. Is a judgment with a signed invoice & finance agreement be fairly easy? From what I understand of the law triple damages plus attorneys fees is normal. If all else fails and we cannot collect on a judgment would the loss be a value / deduction or a hindrance overall? Can the debts just be sold off instead? Who buys these types of debts? [link] [comments]  |
| How to approach a niche investor? (Sports eqpt) Posted: 05 Jul 2018 08:07 AM PDT We didnt really intend to sart a bicycle company, but in the last 12 months its progressed way past our wildest dreams. But I'm sure many people hit this very stage and feel like they need a 'grown up' on board. We are profitable, we hit our targets for growth, but we would like to do more. As we are upscaling and using overseas vendors, we've had alot of mentorship from other brands in our niche. But, we cant shake the feeling that we are struggling and using energy on the parts of the business we are not suited to. Logistics, planning, accounting. These are really firsts for us. Our knowledge is around product creation and responding to consumer demand. That we dont struggle with at all. The press like us, the fans are dedicated, but our supply chain and finances are all over the place. We could feasibly study to bolster ourselves in places of weakness, I cant help but feel thats a mistake and taking someone onboard or, better joinign a larger group of comanies within the same industry would be an advantage. How would we reach out to these companies. Or, is it such a circumstance where, if we were ready, people would be already contacting us? We are not hard to find. Any advice gratefully received. [link] [comments]  |
| [CTO as a service] --> Is this something you can be interested in as a non-technical co-founder? Posted: 05 Jul 2018 06:02 AM PDT Hey, quick question to non-technical founders: is CTO-as-a-service is something you can be interested in? If yes - how you see this model? What exactly would you like to get from it? Wish you growth in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Daily Reminder: Look Local Before You Look Global. Small Business Can Still Be Lucrative. Posted: 04 Jul 2018 06:57 PM PDT I have commented a bit in this sub and browse it frequently, I feel like a lot of people need to hear this. I'm 22 and have been self employed for two years running my service based business in Australia, we have expanded our cocktail / hens night business now into 3 cities in Australia. I also freelance using Fiverr and I have gradually brought my hourly rate up to about $100 an hour, which I am happy with. I work when I want, I sleep when I want, I party when I want and I travel when I want. This isn't a brag or anything, my business is still fairly small, I'm just giving you an example that not everything in entrepreneurship is drop-shipping and global eCommerce style. There are literally thousands and thousands of different and unique ways to make money as well as living the lifestyle you want for yourself. My mentality has always be learn to walk before you can run, yes I eventually want to start a more global oriented business with more room for growth in the next year - but I will be using the skills I have developed over the last two years to leverage a better position, not just dive in to something I have no understanding of on a global scale. My point is that people need to be more patient, there are a lot of young people in this sub (like myself) - appreciate that you have time to try new things, my business will never be 7 figures, but I have now in two years moved it to a point where I can make a decent salary to live on without even having to work anymore. I won't be a millionaire, but it's a great local based and low effort cash cow that will build a good foundation for future endeavors. Look around your area and see what you can service, you will be suprised how much of a local market you can grab with the right digital marketing skills - a lot of service businesses have out-dated websites and ancient marketing tactics. These kind of businesses are great training wheels to prepare you for the big time (I can't talk from experience in this department yet though) - they are a lot easier to manage. [link] [comments]  |
| Would like to import food and alcohol into the USA Posted: 05 Jul 2018 01:41 PM PDT Do I need to start a company in the United States for food imports, or just alcohol imports? Can I start an export company in the foreign country and ship to myself in the United States? I would like to start off with as low a budget as possible. My understanding is that I have to declare what I am having imported to the FDA for food items, and that the food items have to come from an FDA approved facility. Alcohol seems to require a state license and an associated company, but apparently I can hire a company to do that for me, which I do not want to do. What type of company would be beneficial if I have to start a company in the United States? Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Autofill Chrome Extension for Sellers Posted: 05 Jul 2018 12:52 PM PDT I've developed a Chrome extension that will automatically fill in all the required fields for posting an item for sale, including features and description. So far it works for Ebay and Amazon but I plan on adding more merchants soon. I've built this extension for myself since I believe it would save me a great deal of time but I thought other sellers could benefit from it. Do you guys have any thoughts or criticism? I can show you a demo if you send me a PM. [link] [comments]  |
| Amazon Launchpad to promote 25 Exclusive Products by 18 Indian Startups Posted: 05 Jul 2018 12:27 PM PDT Prime Day 2018: 12 noon July 16 to midnight on July 17 Prime Day, Amazon's annual shopping event conducted in 17 countries including India, is providing start-ups from Amazon Launchpad with an opportunity to showcase their new range of products to Prime members across the country. Prime Day is an exclusive 36-hour window that provides Prime members access to exclusive launches, blockbuster deals and entertainment premiers.. Now in its second year in India, Prime Day will feature products across different categories such as healthy food products, electronics, luggage & backpacks, health & personal care, beauty, home décor & improvement, coffee & beverages and toys & games with exciting deals and offers, between 16th -17th July 2018. [link] [comments]  |
| Small construction business UK Posted: 05 Jul 2018 12:08 PM PDT Hi all, I had my own business a few years back and i always had work and some decent jobs. In hindsight i never charged what i should have and due to my girlfriend completing a uni course and not getting paid at the time i decided to take a job with a local company for a regular wage. After xmas, im looking at going back on my own, my girlfriend is now qualified so im looking at building my own company again. I have the experience and knowledge and would be looking at taking on mainly extensions and conversions in the private market. Any advice would be welcome [link] [comments]  |
| Negotiating a lower credit card payment processing fee to keep more money. Posted: 05 Jul 2018 10:48 AM PDT Hey Entrepreneur community, wanted to pass along some information I found out recently that helped my business save money. Something I was recently educated on (that was eye opening), is that myself and most other businesses are getting overcharged on processing fees from their credit card processing company. Most times these fees can be lowered if you aggressively negotiate with the companies. Many people never realize this or try to re-negotiate the fee, and the % you are charged can really make a difference in how much money you keep on each payment transaction This is the company that I worked with out of Boston MA that helped us out. They have a small team of people that handle hard negotiations with the processing companies to aggressively lower processing fees. They wrote this blog about the motivation of merchant processing companies to get higher commissions by overcharging clients on their processing costs. Its interesting stuff to at least keep in mind if you run a business that accepts payments. https://merchantcostconsulting.com/2018/04/19/merchants-guide-navigating-processing-industry/ [link] [comments]  |
| SaaS/PaaS, outsource payments to users? Posted: 05 Jul 2018 09:56 AM PDT I'm working on a platform like Shopify that will allow users to build their digital product on my platform and sell it to their audience. (targeting a very specific niche market) I'm focusing on building the platform fast and testing the demand before diving into how payments are going to be done. Here's a few options: * Centralised stripe/paypal. Send checks to sellers X times monthly. * Allow sellers to setup their own stripe, payments going to their accounts directly Has anyone here done something similar and give me some insights? FYI I am bootstrapping this with a few months runway until it's ramen profitable. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2018 09:35 AM PDT For about a year or two all my reads on entrepreneurship have been the typical "GET UP AND DO IT!" nonsense with stories on how others have done it. Nothing particularly wrong with these books, but I am already a motivated person and have a good understanding of business. I'd rather ask the community instead of searching through articles that get paid by placing a certain book at #1 must read. What are some good books or reads on Product/Service creation? Discovering the problem or niche and reacting with a product/service? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2018 09:07 AM PDT Hey guys, I'm looking for some digital marketers to ask questions, pick your brain a bit. I'm working on an analytics software, surveying stage, and I'd love to get some one on one feedback on your thoughts/opinions/concerns/etc. Please let me know if you could spare a few minutes, and let's get rolling. [link] [comments]  |
| Do any of you use "Yahoo! Bing Network Contextual Ads" on your website? Posted: 05 Jul 2018 09:04 AM PDT Hi all As the title says, do any of you use "Yahoo! Bing Network Contextual Ads" on your website? How are the results? Does it work well with search? Thank you. [link] [comments]  |
| What's the most expensive software that you use on a regular basis? Posted: 05 Jul 2018 08:48 AM PDT |
| Starting a tech and web service company aimed at businesses, got any tips (esp marketing)? Posted: 05 Jul 2018 08:45 AM PDT As the title says, I aim to service my area (hehehe) using my personal tech knowledge and am looking for general tips, tricks etc for this type of business on a personal scale. What I'm most interested in right now is advertising and customer acquisition. I made some flyers with tear away phone numbers and email addresses. What else is simple, cheap and effective? Thank you very much in advance and I absolutely love this community for keeping alive a special dream that carries the hearts of otherwise broken women and men. [link] [comments]  |
| 10 Questions to ask a Website Developer before hiring them Posted: 05 Jul 2018 08:38 AM PDT I own a web development company and sit with multiple clients (and potentials), and I get asked the same questions over and over. I put together this list of top 10 questions to ask, to assist entrepreneurs in finding a passionate, experienced website designer. Hope it helps! [link] [comments]  |
| Who would be in your dream “Brain Trust”? Posted: 05 Jul 2018 08:34 AM PDT Advisory panel. Mastermind. Dream team. The world's most helpful group chat. However you want to think about it: Imagine you're assembling a group of 5 people you can turn to with any question, ever. Who are your 5? And if you're really feelin it, why them? Although I'm sure I'll soon want to add many of the people y'all come up with, right now I'd say:
[link] [comments]  |
| Noob question about fullfiling book orders for a Kickstarter. Posted: 05 Jul 2018 08:18 AM PDT Sorry to bother the fine people here but I got some questions about fulfillment. This is a question for those who have experience with sourcing product in China to distribute through fulfillment centers. I'm about to run a kickstarter campaign for books. If I make less than 500 book sales, I'm going to go Print On Demand. It makes more sense to go with an off-set print run in China if I make 500 or more sales: POD costs alsmost $19, but printing in China costs $3-5. Estimated cost to ship to US fulfillment center like FBA is $3000, or $3 per book. If I use FBA, I assume I would use Multichannel FBA for this? And I would send some to a European center and some to an American center, right? According to this, I would be charged a total of 5.95 per book (assuming between 1 to 2 pounds) to handle AND ship within the USA... is that correct? Or is that just for handling? Now, on the other hand, it seems that there are fullfillment companies in China that can drop ship, which would save me the cost of shipping to Amazon's (or other fullfillment house's) center. Why would I ship books to Amazon's multiple centers fulfillment provider in America or Europe when I can save that expense and have it drop shipped from China? Is there a customs-issue with sending books from China, drop ship? [link] [comments]  |
| Rough draft online store.. Please tear it apart and give me feedback! Posted: 05 Jul 2018 07:19 AM PDT Alright guys, My startup has been selling locally and we're interested in experimenting with shipping our product and selling online. I just finished our first version last night of our website & store. We plan on making changes, but I want to get some feedback from you guys. Please be ruthless. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| restaurant industry expansion plans - thoughts? Posted: 05 Jul 2018 07:10 AM PDT Not trying to get heavily into specifics of any particular situation, more looking for some general advice on further reading or topics to dive into in greater detail... I've been reading up a lot on successful restaurant concepts that have grown to multiple locations and there doesn't appear to be a whole lot of consistency in how they arrive at that achievement. Probably the most common I've seen is taking 5-7 years, maybe even longer, to flesh out the original location, then opening a second location in relative close geographic proximity to the original and taking 2-3 years to flesh out the second location, then you go on a tear and open three, five, ten more over the next 3-5 years...so you've got two locations after ten years and 5-10+ locations after fifteen years. But there are also plenty of success stories of places that open multiple locations within the first three years, sometimes with the first two locations on opposite coasts of the US. There also don't really appear to be patterns across restaurant segments...for example, it's somewhat more common to see high end places go the route of NY, Vegas, LA locations but then there's cheap yogurt places like Pinkberry that have also successfully done the same thing. I guess it's not surprising that there are so many paths that lead to success, but that doesn't give a lot of insight to someone who is trying to replicate their success (other than to say things like tenacity and grit, along with adequate capital, talent, and some kind of competitive differentiatior are common threads). If you had a restaurant concept with one successful location running profitably and with stability, and with a concept that would be attractive in other geographies as well, how would you think about expanding? How quickly? Where? Close to the original? Regionally? Across the US? What are likely to be the biggest challenges/constraints? Access to capital? Talent? [link] [comments]  |
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