Marketplace Tuesday! (October 30, 2018) Entrepreneur |
- Marketplace Tuesday! (October 30, 2018)
- The slow and boring way that I get FB ads to work well
- Better than drop-shipping (and so much easier)
- What I've learned about cold calling in my website development business
- Looking for PodCasts Aimed Towards Entrepreneurs
- How to scale business to the rest of the country?
- How we screwed up our first Product Hunt launch
- Hey guys, any advice for a beginning entrepeneur on youtube?
- What is reasonable compensation for an introduction?
- I have a reliable contact in China, how can I capitalize?
- Best ecommerce platform.
- Fastest delivery time (online market question)
- Can you include brands within a subscription box?
- Would you use this? A Kanban board for your bookmarks
- [Question] When you hire a Virtual Assistant or someone on Fiverr. How can you protect yourself?
- I created a bill negotiation service after years working at a telecom company. I save people money everyday. Weird right?!
- Best ways to advertise a service?
- Question about how you manage your email.
- Funding for Presentation business?
- Does anyone know a textile company that can manufacture my prototype? Lowest cost = priority
- 3 Email Marketing Tools You Should Be Using
- How do I find high quality clothes supplier for my own brand?
- How Can I Turn My Passion To a Business
- How are governments influencing the success of their startup ecosystem?
- Can you link amazon products on your website without being an affiliate?
| Marketplace Tuesday! (October 30, 2018) Posted: 30 Oct 2018 06:05 AM PDT 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]  |
| The slow and boring way that I get FB ads to work well Posted: 30 Oct 2018 09:27 AM PDT I 'audit' a lot of FB ads accounts, that means I get to see what is and isn't working, and also spot patterns in terms of common mistakes made. One of the least sexy bits of advertising is testing - but it's also pretty much the sure-fire road to consistent improvement. One of my very first clients initially signed up with me just to 'freshen up the ads' - they ran their ads in-house, but fancied getting an expert opinion on how they could step them up a notch. In the 1 month I had access to their account - I set up a bunch of tests, and when I came back into the account, this time long-term, I could see the result. In one of the campaigns, the single test I made (using Lead forms instead of a conversion ad) had brought in an extra £4200 from a £25 per day ad spend. That was without long-term optimisation, and just with one test. It's worth doing. Here are the 9 most common mistakes I've seen businesses make when it comes to testing, and then tips on how I would recommend you should be testing. Most common mistakes made:
Clearly, if you never test stuff, you're never going to improve your results- this typically comes down to business owners just not having time, but even big clients - such as an influencer brand I worked with who were spending £200+ a day, are guilty of this.
No better than not testing really - a scattergun approach might get a win or two, but if you don't understand why or how you did it, then you can't replicate the win - An e-commerce store owner had this problem, he would get great results from one campaign out of every 10, and never know which one it would be.
I've seen people optimise their ads endlessly, but continue to send them to a boring, unfocussed landing page - I even audited a charity who's ads were being run by an agency doing this, they were getting nice low numbers for their reports, and then blaming the lack on conversions on the charity's follow up team.
Conversion ads are really powerful, but people often stick with traffic ads, focussing on Click-through-rates rather than opt-ins or sales.
I don't know why, but gyms seem very culpable to this mistake - they whack a whole bunch of different ad images at the ad level, but the way that FB chooses a winner is flawed, and you end up with one or two images getting all the impressions, and other's seemingly ignored.
I audited an SEO company's ads - they had a clear picture of their avatar, and created a saved audience of interests that were all business/marketing/SEO related. All their ads went to this same audience, and it meant that they had no idea which of those interests actually worked best.
A lot of B2B clients were guilty of this, going straight for a consult call rather than using content at the 'Top Of Funnel' to build a relationship first.
I had an e-commerce client for a good few months, but every time we starting making any progress in terms of optimisation - he would want to throw a big sale out there, or try a whole new product range - and it killed all progress we were making. Don't rely on discounts, and don't expect to have it all ticking over perfectly after 2 weeks.
This is a weirdly common thing, and a driving instructor training business was very guilty of this - they would set up a bunch of different ad sets with different variables in, but then leave them all running for the duration of the camapaign. This defeats the whole purpose. Tips
Does that make sense? It's not exciting, but it does work. Let me know any questions. [link] [comments]  |
| Better than drop-shipping (and so much easier) Posted: 29 Oct 2018 05:49 PM PDT For all those considering starting a drop-shipping business, I would consider reframing into a wholesale business. I took a product that most would look to drop-ship, 'built' a brand around it (nothing more than a simple webpage), and found myself 3 customers. Those 3 customers however, purchased over 400 units of my product in the last week (I profit just over $30 per unit). If I would have tried to sell 400 units the drop-shipping way, it would have taken months (at best) and I would have had to spend a bunch of money on ads. I spent $0 advertising, and it took me less than 10 days to sell these. Stop killing yourself split-testing, sending abandon-cart emails, giving discounts, and grinding it out 1 unit at a time. Get on the phone and sell your product wholesale. It is so much more rewarding. Sure there are tricks to finding the right product and the right customers. But once you figure it out, you can basically pick up the phone and make money. It's great. I wish I would have figured it all out years ago. [link] [comments]  |
| What I've learned about cold calling in my website development business Posted: 30 Oct 2018 11:56 AM PDT I started a web development and hosting business, and I've realized that even with competitive prices it can be hard to break into such a saturated market. Over the past couple of months I've made at least a hundred cold calls and have learned quite a bit from it, here are some tips:
I hope you find these tips helpful, and if you need a website for your small business, check out mine: https://ambrest.io I'd love to help a fellow entrepreneur out :) Have a wonderful day! [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for PodCasts Aimed Towards Entrepreneurs Posted: 30 Oct 2018 04:56 AM PDT Hi- I discovered podcasts about a year ago and cannot stop listening. I own a small internet business and am looking for PodCasts like Masters of Scale and How I Built This. I found a post from last year and already have listed to the suggestions below. Would you consider any other shows besides the one below?
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| How to scale business to the rest of the country? Posted: 30 Oct 2018 06:22 AM PDT I currently run a small business training sales people in my state. My course differs from the canned online sales training because it is highly personalized to maximize results for that individual. Most of my business is local and comes through networking and referrals. I have had great success with my clients so far teaching them how to be more effective in sales. I've worked with real estate agents, graphic designers, insurance sp's, home improvement sp's, and others. While I consider myself to be very knowledgeable in sales, I am lacking some marketing experience that I need to expand into other states. I would really like to have clients throughout the country that meet with me via skype or FaceTime and go through the same process as my local clients. This would allow me to really grow my business into what I would like it to be. The problem is, I do not know how to reach potential clients in other states that I have never met before. Should I be focusing on inbound or outbound marketing to reach them. If I can get them on the phone or even better on video chat, I'm sure I can earn business, I just need to know how to effectively reach these markets. Any suggestions would be appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| How we screwed up our first Product Hunt launch Posted: 30 Oct 2018 07:01 AM PDT Medium post here The purpose of this post is to explain how we launched our first product on Product Hunt and how we screwed our launch day. Hopefully it will help others not make the same mistakes that we did. Background The product we launched was called Ninja Masker (now Burner Mail) — a simple tool that lets you generate a random email address on the spot when signing up for websites. The team behind Burner Mail is me, Alexandra (22 years old software engineer) and Serge (24 years old software engineer). We started working on the product as a side project and before the launch I had quit my full time job while Serge was working part time. The Launch We decided to launch on Product Hunt after a beta launch on Reddit. We were confident in our software as well as the value of the product. We decided to hunt the product ourselves since most of the articles we read on launching said that the person who hunts the product isn't important anymore. Here's what we had planned: Title: Ninja Masker The Product Hunt post can be found here. Everything looked great from out point of view, yet we didn't manage to make it to the front page. While products that were posted later than us were making their way up, we were drowning at the end of the list. So what exactly was going on, what did we do wrong? #1 Mistake Bad marketing. Our post sounds very "techy" and not at all simple. We used technical terms and concepts that everyday internet users did not understand. Our value proposition was: "a simple tool that lets you generate single purpose email masks that forward all incoming emails to your personal account". We didn't use simple words. We tried to sound smart and techy. People didn't understand the concept of the product. What is a ninja mask? What does it do? How do I use it? Any user should understand at first glance what your product is, how it works and why they should use it. When it comes to Product Hunt, you're competing with dozens of other products. The user is not going to read your 5 sentence explanation. If you didn't explain the product with your name, image and tagline you're done. No one is going to click on the product post to read your maker comment or go to your website. A better name and explanation of our product could have been: #2 Mistake Quality over quantity. Our mistake was was sending the launch email to our subscribers and posting to Facebook/Twitter right after the launch. It was a mistake because we received a good amount of votes in the first two hours after launching. The problem with those votes was that they were mainly new or small accounts. It is very honourable that your users and friends are willing to create an account to support you, and I want to thank everyone who took the time to support us on Product Hunt, however, 5 organic votes from active Product Hunt users would have helped us more than 50 friends votes. That being said, it doesn't mean you have to hide your launch from people. What would have been better for us was to wait for a few organic votes and comments before getting tractions from subscribers. My suggestion is to wait for a few organic votes, maybe even wait to make it on the popular section, and only then start sending emails, tweets and ask people to check you out. The number of votes is not everything for the Product Hunt algorithm, the consistency of votes throughout the day is as important. In order to achieve consistency, you can divide your email list in 4 or 5 sections and send the emails every 1 or 2 hours throughout the day. Same with posting to Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. Post to one social account every hour or so. #3 Mistake Not genuine. Don't try to sound smart, markety, techy or selling. At this point you should sound as genuine and simple as possible. Be nice, respond polite and act humble. Our description: "Spam is still a thing. We built Ninja Masker to try and prevent it. Spam is like a disease, it's better to prevent than to cure. Ninja Masker lets you generate single purpose email masks that forward all incoming emails to your personal account. It helps you become anonymous, protect your inbox, get rid of spam more easily and it lets you have more free time. Don't regret giving away your personal email address, use a mask instead." We sound very cocky and selling. We don't sound like nice, genuine people. A better description could have been: "We build this app out of our own frustrations with spam and privacy issues. Our tool lets you receive your emails in your personal inbox while hiding your real email address from the internet. The main benefit of using our tool is that it protects your inbox from spam and yourself from identity theft." #4 Mistake Giving everything away. We had a huge makers comment. Everybody says to write this big comment where you explain the idea, benefits, the story and what's next but if you do so (and we did), you leave no room for comments. And people didn't comment because everything was there. There were no questions to ask. We explained how it works, the benefits of using it, why we made it, what features we want to add next, where we see the product going. You need to leave some room for questions. You should leave a comment to tell people that you are interested in their feedback and that they should comment if they have any questions, but that's it. Let them ask you questions because the Product Hunt algorithm takes the number of comments into consideration. You see products on a higher place with fewer upvotes but more comments on a daily basis. #5 Mistake Timing is everything. We didn't launch right away when the next day started. We launched at 1:36 PM which gave other products a big head start in getting way more votes before us. You should make sure that you launch as early as possible to get enough votes to make it to the front page. #6 Mistake Not enough feedback. Most of our feedback came from early adopters that are mainly tech people. We didn't think to try and reach out to non-technical users. We made sure that the UX was good, that people find it easy to use and valuable, that the app was fast and bug free, however, we didn't ask how easy it is to understand what it does and why you would use it. We should have asked for feedback from a more generic user base and also get feedback regarding our marketing strategy. We are tech people, we couldn't see from a non-technical users's point of view. We couldn't foresee that most people would not understand the core concept of the product. Reddit is a great place to ask for feedback. Find your general target audience and see on what subreddits they hang out. From there, you can just ask for feedback or any other questions. In general, people like giving feedback to new tools and ideas. #7 Mistake Problem solving. We didn't specifically address the problem we are solving. We only said that spam is still a thing and that you should protect your inbox. We didn't let users identify with the core problem and we gave no indicators to whether they need our solution or not. You should be as explicit as possible to what problem you are solving and give direct examples to make the user relate to it. We said that we help prevent spam. While most people can relate to spam we weren't convincing enough to exactly why you should use our tool, how we solve that problem. We didn't educate the user to what spam is and help him figure out if he is facing the issue we are trying to solve. A better approach would have been to market ourselves as a privacy tool. We protect your inbox from spam, "broken" unsubscribe buttons and unwanted ads, however we also protect your from scams and identity theft. We should have explained how and educate users on why they should care about their privacy. More and more services sell their data (email lists) and more and more services have data breaches. When that happens, you become a target for scammers because they have access to your email address. If the data breach also includes your password and you made the mistake to use the same password for multiple services, then you become an easy target for hackers that will be trying to take over your personal account. From there it's easy-peasy: Paypal, crypto currency wallets/assets, you name it. When you are using our tool, you are not giving away your personal email address to strangers. Even if there is a data breach with your burner email address, people cannot get control of your personal account because they don't know your real address. You need to let your users know exactly the issue you are solving, how you are solving it and educate them on the topic. You need to answer the user's dilemma of "Do I need this product?" Conclusion The most important things are to:
I hope that you'll take away some valuable advice from this post and you won't make the same mistakes that we did. [link] [comments]  |
| Hey guys, any advice for a beginning entrepeneur on youtube? Posted: 30 Oct 2018 08:31 AM PDT Hey guys, my passion is coaching and helping people finding their goals in life. At the moment i'm a lifecoach and youth counselor and i started a youtube channel a month ago. I think i'm doing decent on YouTube and my goal is to eventually be booked for shows, motivational speaking and writing books (writing one at the moment but kinda have schedule issues as a starting youtuber). Do you have any advice to work on making this a actual business instead of only just a youtube channel? This is the part where i'm struggling at the moment. If you guys wanna see the youtube i'll post it in the comments. [link] [comments]  |
| What is reasonable compensation for an introduction? Posted: 30 Oct 2018 03:22 AM PDT My business, which specializes in medium scale projects, requires a partnership with land owners for each new project. Recently I was introduced to a potential new project partner, and the person who introduced us would like to be compensated. Has anyone encountered this before and what is a reasonable compensation? [link] [comments]  |
| I have a reliable contact in China, how can I capitalize? Posted: 30 Oct 2018 01:24 PM PDT Hi, r/entrepreneur. I've been lurking for a while and trying to soak up info. I have no entrepreneurial experience, yet, but I am trying to figure out the best place to make an entrance. I have read other people's advice that, when sourcing/ shipping products from China, it is helpful (critical) to have somebody on that side that you trust to help oversee and manage things. I have a trusted relationship with a Chinese woman in Shanghai who is reliable and capable. So I am curious to ask you all how I could best capitalize on that? In other words, what would the next step be? What would you do? Manufacture a product and have her oversee production? Source products? I know that this is a very open-ended question but I am curious to find some direction with it... Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Oct 2018 01:11 PM PDT Hey guys, What ecommerce platform would you recommend to choose, i am thinking about weebly, 3dcart, shopify and volusion. Thanks for help. [link] [comments]  |
| Fastest delivery time (online market question) Posted: 30 Oct 2018 12:50 PM PDT Hello guys, I would like to know if someone knows about a website where u can buy alot of stuffs, as ebay, aliexpress, alibaba, gearbest , etc ... but with a better delivery time, less time delivery i mean. Usually those websites takes too much time to delivery a package , about 15 - 21 days , and that's kind of anoying .. ( NOTE: free delivery preference :D ) [link] [comments]  |
| Can you include brands within a subscription box? Posted: 30 Oct 2018 12:44 PM PDT Hey guys, I've become interested in subscription boxes recently and have 2 main ideas. However, I've run into an issue of sourcing the main products themselves. One idea revolves around healthcare/hygeine products and I have found one UK supplier but their minmum order is at 200 and 1,000 units of the two main items I'd need which seems quite daunting for a newbie like me. The second is a food/drink item, which again, I'm curious as to whether I'd have to formulate my own brand, or if I could use an already exisiting brand in the boxes? I realise these questions maybe be very simple, but I'm really new to this space. Thanks for any help in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Would you use this? A Kanban board for your bookmarks Posted: 30 Oct 2018 12:16 PM PDT Hello Everyone, First of all, thank you for taking the time to open this. For the past two months, I have been working on a solution to help solve the following: - Tab overload - Bookmark management The goal was to use a system most of us are already familiar with, Kanban boards. Here's how it will work: - Everytime you open a new tab, your primary board will load. - You can share boards with teammates or even get a public link. Is this something you would use? I am working on the landing page for it; https://Qlearly.com/beta/extensionv2. Any feedback would be much appreciated! :) [link] [comments]  |
| [Question] When you hire a Virtual Assistant or someone on Fiverr. How can you protect yourself? Posted: 30 Oct 2018 08:29 AM PDT Hi r/Entreprenuer ! I was looking to hire someone on fiverr to help me optimize my Shopify store. This means to go into my back end. I had a thought that if I shared my info/password(how else would they log in without me sharing), and later down the line something came up or we ended the relationship on bad terms, what would I need to do to protect myself? When you hire a VA or someone you outsourced to do work on Fiverr, what are the best ways someone can log into your account without 'worrying' about them stealing your information and or jeopardizing your web page because they had previous access to it. I know lastpass is an option but I feel as though you're able to go in and check the person's information. I mainly hope this isn't just solely based on trust. Just wanted to make sure there are ways to have a peace of mind. Thank you all! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Oct 2018 12:07 PM PDT SmashMyBill was started after many years working for a major telecom company. Day in and day out, customers would ask how they can save money. Of course this was never truly addressed because the goal is to take customers' money, earn more commissions and sell more products/services. After hearing countless customers voice their concerns about long hold times with customer care, overseas call centers, constant transferring between representatives, abrupt disconnects and unkept agreements, I decided to create SmashMyBill. We're in the business of saving people money. Basically with our knowledge of the industry, we negotiate a lower bill for TV, Internet, Cell Phone, Home Security and pretty much any bill. All of our experts are here in the United States and we have years of bill negotiation expertise. I feel so much better about running a service that is really helping people SAVE money! Any questions, comments or feedback? [link] [comments]  |
| Best ways to advertise a service? Posted: 30 Oct 2018 12:04 PM PDT Hey guys, I was thinking a lot about how we can advertise our service. What's the best way to advertise something like that? Like facebook ads, instagram ads, youtube, TV maybe but thats too expensive for our budget for now. I would love to hear your opinions, thanks in advance!! [link] [comments]  |
| Question about how you manage your email. Posted: 30 Oct 2018 11:58 AM PDT Hello everyone. I have my business email through google and use g-mail on my android phone, and the "mail" app on my windows 10 laptop. I hate both, but particularly on my computer. They don't seem to update/notify well and aren't laid out to make following the convo chronologically easy. The one thing my new phone does is mark some messages to tell me "its been 3 days and you haven't replied" or "should you follow up on this?" but i wondered if there is some kind of app or email 'client' (that's a word, right?) that kicks ass for people who are struggling to keep track of the volume they're getting. Aside from that, any other way you yourselves tackle this problem? Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Funding for Presentation business? Posted: 30 Oct 2018 11:57 AM PDT I'm interested in starting a Presentation / Video Services business in which will be providing presentation services for my surrounding area. Show up, have projector, sound system, microphones, etc. play a video for them / guests and as well as offering video services (they send me pictures / videos and I turn them into a nice presentable movie). However the problem is: I have bad credit. (594, I have been working on it though and hope to see that go up soon). How would you go about acquiring funds in a small rural town? I know to get investors they are going to want their money back and then some. I'm just new to this and I feel like it could be a great opportunity, I just don't know who I should think about approaching with the idea. [link] [comments]  |
| Does anyone know a textile company that can manufacture my prototype? Lowest cost = priority Posted: 30 Oct 2018 08:03 AM PDT I have a niche costume idea and I am looking for companies that can make the prototype a reality. I am not sure how to begin, but I am assuming that finding and contacting a company would be the correct next step at this point. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| 3 Email Marketing Tools You Should Be Using Posted: 30 Oct 2018 05:42 AM PDT In addition to your email service provider, if you spend any time or money working on email marketing, you need to be using these tools: https://app.glockapps.com: are your messages actually hitting people's inboxes and not going straight to SPAM? If yes, how do you know? If no, how do you know? This tool is great for finding out exactly where your messages are landing across various email services including Gmail, Outlook and more. We've on-boarded several clients whose lists and sending reputation were toast, and where inboxing was under 30%. Their efforts were a complete waste of time and money - and before regular service could be resumed, some serious trust issues had to be ironed out. milled.com: it's useful to see what competitors are doing, but wouldn't it be great to see what emails they ran last Christmas, or even the Christmas before? milled.com is a database containing millions of emails from the biggest online companies. Great for inspiration and keeping an eye on your competition. Are they running better offers than you? Bigger discounts? Find out by keeping tabs on their content via milled. Justuno: are you making the most of every visitor that hits your site? Getting traffic is the easy (if not cheap) part. Converting that traffic into paying customers is the tricky bit. Justuno helps you to gather email addresses by showing popups on your site. Offer users an incentive to sign up like a "10% off your first order" coupon, or even the chance to "win a gift card worth $X" when they enter their email address. Watch the synergy flow... Justuno assists you in bringing qualified email addresses for customers who are interested in the product or services you sell. milled.com allows you to compare notes with what competitors are doing. Are your emails on-messages, on-trend and on-season? Finally, glockapps helps you to monitor and ensure that as close to 100% of sends go to the inbox as possible. Give yourself a leg up and ensure you stay ahead of the curve with the above apps, and remain one step ahead of your competitors. [link] [comments]  |
| How do I find high quality clothes supplier for my own brand? Posted: 30 Oct 2018 11:22 AM PDT Do you know a high quality supplier, better than Spreadshirt Teespring etc. or how do I find one? [link] [comments]  |
| How Can I Turn My Passion To a Business Posted: 30 Oct 2018 11:00 AM PDT Hi, I'm a 17 year old high school senior, and an aspiring entrepreneur. For the past few months I have been a pretty avid lurker here. I have always been fascinated by the thought of self employment, my own hours, I'm the boss, but I knew it wouldn't come easy and I am willing to put in the work, but it beats student loans. I have been so interested in computers and how they work, both hardware and software. I have tried brainstorming new/creative ways and I can't seem to think of a market that isn't oversaturated. I could build PC's and flip for little profit, or work doing IT for a company, but that eliminates the self employment part. I am lost as to how to turn my passion into a career, what things could I do to pursue this interest, and if so, what kind of education is needed for this niche? [link] [comments]  |
| How are governments influencing the success of their startup ecosystem? Posted: 30 Oct 2018 10:57 AM PDT A successful startup ecosystem boosts the country's economy. But what makes some cities or regions stand out in terms of successful startup activity? Join our webinar on 31st October to get key insights on the role governments are playing including case studies of successful startup ecosystem countries like Portugal, Estonia, Israel. https://webinar.startupblink.com/ [link] [comments]  |
| Can you link amazon products on your website without being an affiliate? Posted: 30 Oct 2018 10:56 AM PDT |
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