Marketplace Tuesday! (November 27, 2018) Entrepreneur |
- Marketplace Tuesday! (November 27, 2018)
- Quite important if you want people to actually pay attention to your FB ads..
- Which side hustles, work online jobs, etc are basically BS?
- $650k/mo shaving hairy backs.
- What are some useful skills that a 17 year old can learn, if he might plans to be self employed in the future?
- Economics Of Saving People From Cities || Can You Make This Business Work?
- Which industries of startups don't require a degree?
- Would this help your business?
- Starting a National ATM company from scratch in 6 months
- I have an Instagram Anime page with 45k followers with 11% engagement. Is there any proven way that I can monetize my page?
- Monetizing Gaming Guilds
- How do you feel about sharing ideas of your business plan to potential suppliers?
- My day doesn't have enough hours.
- Lessons from working at a large retailer
- What's the best Inventory management system for a small e-commerce business?
- Is anyone good at FB ads? Any tips or help would be appreciated
- Any interest in a founder/entrepreneur support group?
- I work for a successful skincare company that is now trying to grow their products and I'm lost on where/how to start
- Successful Business With Scaling/Growth Issue At $100K/M+
- looking for software dev/partner
- Rabbit Product Design thoughts
- Registering your business vs trademarking question
- I need a second opinion on my prices and margins for small business selling to retailers.
- Who here is a Wunderkind?
- Need Business Advice (Digital Advertising)
| Marketplace Tuesday! (November 27, 2018) Posted: 27 Nov 2018 05:05 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]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Quite important if you want people to actually pay attention to your FB ads.. Posted: 27 Nov 2018 07:41 AM PST I do a lot of FB ads audits. That means I get to see what is and isn't working, and also spot patterns in terms of common mistakes made. Time and again, it's the getting the fundamentals wrong that hurts people, and one of the big culprits is the visuals.Switching up the photo/video is often one of the most effective things we do when working with new clients. Last year we took over the campaigns for a financial services business, and switching one (well established and profitable) ad set from the original image to a new one produced an instant 20% decrease in lead cost, which over the course of £100+ a day in ad spend and as part of multiple ongoing optimisations, makes a big difference. Here are the most common mistakes made in the audits I've done in the past months, and then the best way to approach choosing your images/videos. Mistakes:
The ONLY job of the image/video that you use is to get enough attention to stop someone scrolling for a split second, so that they can scan the ad copy to see if it's relevant/interesting.And bland stock imagery is about as un-attention-grabbing as things get. This is surprisingly common practice though - an SEO agency client of mine were putting heaps of effort into their content, but then using boring corporate style stock photos and graphics that completely nullified their good work. Likewise, a charity I audited were using clip-art type ads because they "didn't know what else to use."Often we have no choice but to use stock photos, but sites like pexels .com and Unsplash.com make it much easier to find genuinely interesting pics to use for free.
Us mammals are hard-wired to pay attention to movement. Being able to spot potential danger early was an evolutionary advantage, and for that reason, using video often works better for getting attention than a still image. A client of mine runs an online course that teaches people about a property investing strategy. They put out quality content, and then sign people up to their webinar workshop. Their still images did OK, but once we started using a slideshow of those same type of images, click-through-rates went up.
This is for Ecommerce sites. If you sell a product, then just showing it up-front isn't very exciting. An affiliate company I audited spent £10'000's a month on ads, and the pattern was clear, showing the product right there on the ad got worse CTR's than teasing it, or showing a 'lifestyle' image related to it (for example - showing a group of girls on a night out and the ad being about a purse or a pair of shoes) - this is because of the curiosity created.
As per the slideshow point above, movement is good. But a LOT of companies I've audited seem hesitant to record video. When pushed about why, lots of people mentioned video quality/production values etc - but the truth is that smartphone videos often outperform more expensive ones, so if what you sell can be recorded, do it. This was the case with a Ecommerce store who sold beautiful prints. Their prints were great, the photos of them on a wall were fine, but when you add in some movement via a simple video of the picture on the wall, with a simple pan or close-up, it's much more visually enticing.
We are social creatures, so using pictures of real people almost always is a good move, because they catch the eye.
However, I audited one online coach, who had photoshopped his face into every image. It was funny if you knew him (I do), but didn't go down well with cold audiences, who presumably just thought he was a weirdo.
I see a few people who have obviously been told that 'real' photos do best, and so are taking snapshots and posting them up - but ignoring the fact that they aren't actually nice to look at. This was the case with a Kids club business I audited - kids running around a football pitch at 5pm in the rain does not make for exciting visuals. It's not a lot of effort to load up photoshop and up the brightness & contrast of a photo, but it will make a huge difference in how much attention it gets.
I did a big post a few weeks ago about testing, and images/videos are one of the key areas to test. Don't just chuck up one photo and never try anything else, who knows how much money you're leaving on the table.
This is hard to hear for some, but nobody gives a shit about you or your business at first. This thankfully seems to be on the decline, but the amount of people using their company logo as an image, or plastering it across a photo is too damn high. You're not Nike, stop it. Other notes:
The right way to approach your visuals. Firstly, I'll say it again - the job of your image/video is to get attention - that's it. Effective attention-getting-visuals tend to fit into one of 3 categories:
Hope that's helpful, let me know your experiences or questions. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Which side hustles, work online jobs, etc are basically BS? Posted: 27 Nov 2018 05:06 AM PST You know...either a scam or almost impossible to make a decent living. Edit: I'm willing to work hard. Just want to avoid wasting my time pursuing a fruitless hustle. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 27 Nov 2018 11:14 AM PST Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Matt Dryfhout of BAKblade, a brand that sells a DIY back shaver for men. Some stats:
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hello, my name is Matt Dryfhout and my wife is Angelina Dryfhout. We are the co-founders of BAKblade, LLC, a brand offering easy and pain-free solutions to solve back and body management. While we offer several items including DIY back shavers, blade replacement packs, liquid shower soap, & travel cases, our most popular product is certainly our BAKblade 2.0 back shaver. The BAKblade 2.0 offers the most economical, easy-to-use and pain-free solution to manage back hair. Our biggest market is certainly millennials who we have found are the most self-conscious generation to date. Since most millennials very self-conscious they often would rather avoid embarrassing, expensive solutions and instead choose a behind-the-door, less expensive, and quick solution in managing this problem. After an overwhelmingly successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaign in 2016, we had a campaign video featuring a husband and wife in marriage counseling because the husband was in denial of his back hair. When the camera panned from the wife to the husband he turned out to be an 800lb gorilla that was ranting and raving. The video was picked up initially by the Business Insider and 72 hours after the video was released we had over 30 million views. The video went on to do over 240 million views between several Facebook pages including Business Insider, Yahoo, Mashable, Unilad, Fortify, Broternity, LADbible, etc. The success of the video really led to other large media opportunities including the Today Show and other news outlets. Our mission statement is to design and create unique products with unique content to solve unique problems. Our goal to restore confidence back in our customers which ultimately breeds success in their lives. What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?After personally experiencing the embarrassing reality of having back hair my wife Angelina would often grudgingly take on the role of shaving my back for me in order to keep myself from looking like a gorilla at the beach. It wasn't until 2008 when a downturn in the economy forced us to think about developing our own product and brand that we could maintain more control over. After many discussions that circled around our own problems or inconveniences that we've encountered in life it wasn't until the subject of "back hair" came up that we both realized it was a problem for both of us and we knew we weren't the only couple dealing with it. We purchased most of the options that were available on the market to solve this problem only to realize that most of them didn't work or perform that way we would have wished. Not to mention that laser hair removal and waxing were both very expensive, painful and booking appointments is something that most men hate doing. I was fully employed with food & pharmaceutical machinery company when I racked up $5,000 of credit card debt to make our first cheap aluminum mold we knew we were literally jumping in feet first with no idea what we were doing or where we were going. We had zero experience in the field of health and personal care nor did we have experience with razors. The only thing we did know for certain was that we have drive and persistence and we were going to figure this out one way or another. Since at this point whatever sales were coming in were online only this "side venture" didn't interfere with my full-time position I was able to stay employed while I slowly began to grow the business. We are constantly scrutinizing our products and in order to validate the constant evolution that we put our products through we have several methods that we use to make certain our technology is always evolving for the better. One method we use is with a great partner of ours called Yotpo. Yotpo allows us to take raw customer feedback and reviews and look at the overall consensus and make the decision to make the important tweaks or changes that are necessary. Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing the product.From the beginning, we knew that Angelina was going to have a large influence over the brand. She has always understood brands and why certain brands stand out over others. She explained to me earlier on that you can have a superior brand that sells an average product. Since we both knew we had a superior product we knew that a superior brand would only help our company that much more. One thing in particular was our website design. Early on the website was much too busy and cluttered. As you can see now our website is much cleaner and crisp. I took the reins on the design functionality, as well as the "look and feel" of the product. Communicating with CADD engineers I found myself learning more each day about a subject that was ultimately foreign to me. I found myself filling notebooks full of sketches with a number of different approaches to both the aesthetic appearance of the shaver and communicating those sketches to my engineers. Blending our ideas together just worked from the beginning and we found ourselves coming up with new ideas every day. The creative part of the process is certainly where we both have the most fun. Describe the process of launching the business.At the absolute beginning, it was literally myself setting up a very economical Wix website just to get things started out. Obviously, over time we had merged to WooCommerce and then to Shopify PLUS which currently suits us very well for the time being. Our first mold We had taken about $5,000.00 to have our very first aluminum mold manufactured. This mold was to create our original BAKblade 1.0 version. The 1.0 was very "bare-bones" since we didn't have much money to produce all the "bells & whistles" that we wanted. The process was scary because we had no idea what we were doing but we did take it a step at a time with some deep breaths along the way. The Kickstarter Our Kickstarter campaign was not meant to launch our company but merely our new BAKblade 2.0 DIY Back Shaver as well as to gain more public exposure to the brand. What ended up happening with our campaign was truly a matter of the stars aligning. We had raised about $150,000 with about 3 days left in the campaign when an editor from the Business Insider emailed me asking if we would allow them to post our Kickstarter Video on their Facebook page. To be honest, I was so busy at the time that I didn't even see the email for a full 24 hours before I emailed him back saying that I really appreciated his offer and "yes of course I would love that!". The viral video Soon after the video was posted it collected about 30 million hits in the first 72 hours and afterwards went onto do a collective 240 million hits on Facebook pages owned by Mashable, Yahoo, MSN, CNBC, Fortify, and several others. We ended up raising over $1million dollar between our Kickstarter and our Indiegogo campaigns. Putting our video out there like that really allowed the brand to gaining a stronger following overnight and since then the PR opportunities that come to us haven't stopped. I would tell anyone who is launching a new product that I would highly suggest surrounding yourself with people that have experience in the field of manufacturing. Whether you need to make a mold, or a textile, it's important you understand that you cannot possibly see all of the potential pitfalls ahead. This is not to discourage but to empower and protect yourself so you can have a fantastic launch. Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?We have hired on a PR team which helps us keep our brand in front of the hundred of major news outlets on a monthly basis. Whether the topic may be "Biggest Shopping Event Ever" or "How this dad's hairy back made him a millionaire" we certainly want BAKblade to be in front and center. Here are a couple press pieces that have done well: Putting out the right content for our brand is so incredibly important. We have a fantastic team that creates and uploads BAKblade content to all of the social media platforms. We currently use a group that helps push relevant content out on a daily basis. The content that we push out is a healthy balance between "a real product that solves a real problem" and also an undertone of "tongue and cheek". We know the problem is something that we and our customers can have fun with and so we make sure we don't lose that. Social media Furthermore, we spend quite a bit of advertising dollars on those same social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram. Staying in-tune with our audience is also another key factor that we make certain we prioritize with retargeting and creating lookalike audiences within on online digital efforts. Email marketing Weekly newsletters which include relevant content is very crucial in keeping the attention of our audience and gaining new members. The key with our newsletter was making sure that we included a rewards program that would include loyalty discounts for our customers. Between our loyalty points keeping content relevant to our audience were two key factors in keeping the mood inviting and attractive. A membership Since we are selling a consumable it's very important that we are constantly targeting and retargeting new and existing customers. We recently launched our membership program which allows our customers to opt in to a membership model that ships blades to their door every 2 months without any hassle. Our members can cancel anytime and shipping is free. Currently, the membership program is solely based on receiving our blade cartridges once every 60 days. However, we do plan on incorporating other products into the program in 2019. Amazon Amazon is by far a platform you should absolutely be selling on. They are a company that is always moving and reinventing themselves and it's the type of platform that can really excel and grow your business quickly. We currently sell on Amazon and we have been doubling our business from year-to-year consistently over the last 5 years. How are you doing today and what does the future look like?Today we are concentrating heavily both adding new products to our line as well as growing our membership model which brings blade cartridges to your door on a monthly basis. While currently our average monthly sales with Amazon.com alone is $500,000 we have recently started selling products in brick and mortar retail with Bed, Bath & Beyond and we have seen our weekly sales literally double in just a couple of months. This gives us confirmation that our audience is clear and present. We are also continuing to grow our brand internationally and have seen some recent successes with retail brick and mortar in Australia and other parts of Europe. Furthermore, we are being selective about which brick and mortar retailers we sell in. Today we are in Bed, Bath & Beyond and our sales have been above our expectations. We are also in discussions with at least 2 more that we would consider for 2019. yeah Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?If I were to have a conversation with my early entrepreneur self it would be something like: Listen Matt, I want to tell you how proud I am of the work that you've put into this venture thus far. You have come very far but the journey has just begun and I want you to know that although the road is definitely going to be bumpy you do have the talent and persistence to go the distance. The future may not always be roses and sunshine but I can promise you that your future situation will certainly reflect all your hard work so keep going! What platform/tools do you use for your business?We currently utilize ShopifyPLUS for our online presence. We put more concentration on growing and developing our products and brand which is why we utilize a 3PL to manage most of our shipping and logistics nationwide. When building a brand today it is so crucial that your brand is properly represented. We take to social media for this aspect and have had quite a bit of growth in the last few years because what we've been doing on social media. Getting influencers and other "out of the box" campaigns has really set up apart from any competitors. What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?I would say that Rich Dad Poor Dad was certainly a book that put things into perspective for both of us some years ago. That book taught me to rethink some things and helped me gauge a new perspective and outlook on success. For Angelina, it was more of an ongoing attention to brand detail and awareness that led her to put forward some of the cleanest and transparent content that we publicize and continue to release. Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?My biggest piece of advice is to make certain that you examine yourself before deciding to take on a venture. You need to ask yourself if you want to create a product, brand and business for the sole purpose of "making money" or do you actually want to create and own a product, brand and business. Too many people want to enjoy the spoils that a successful business have provide but without the passion their light will eventually burn out. Second, you need to ask yourself if you have a driven personality. Creating and sustaining a business takes so much more work once it starts to grow and if you are not a person that feeds off of drive and ambition then I would rethink things before you start investing large sums of money. Finally, I would like to say my biggest lesson through the years has been to make certain I surround myself around people who have talents are knowledge of things that I lack. Trying to tackle everything on your own can certainly burn you out quickly so make sure you seek those people when you don't have the answers. Where can we go to learn more?Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 27 Nov 2018 04:27 AM PST First and foremost I'm 17 and I see time as something you shouldn't waste much of. I worked my first ever vacation job for several weeks (45h week) and it exposed me to the real world and it was really soul sucking and it made me feel depressed. When I would timestamp, I could see through the employees depressed faces that they don't like their jobs and that they really don't want to be there. Most of them even have an undergrad degree. I know that I can do much more than just pack up 1000x little electronic parts. And even count every. single. one of them. I've noticed that 45h a week is simply too much to fulfill someone else's pocket. I could use that time to work for myself and build the life I want to have. It's just too much of a waste of time working for someone else. I've looked into self employment and I really think that it could be something that I would enjoy. I'm aware of the downsides of it like working long hours, the loneliness, the struggle. I also would be okay with being financially unstable for a while. The only thing I don't want be is homeless. That really scares me. So, I'm only in 10th grade and I don't have much responsibilities other than cooking and studying. I know I have a lot of freetime in the summer holidays it's just even more freetime and even no responsibilities. I want to use that time wisely. However, I'm not a 100% sure about it but I'm pretty sure that some time in the future I want to set how high my ceiling is. I would have to get experience in a field first with being normally employed and I also want to give it a shot if normal employment is really something for me. But unlike many people, I think I only will have the right skills and life experience to get self employed when I'm in my 30s. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to go to University and I'm really eager to experience the nostalgic University life but I'm unsure about what to do and what's right and what's wrong and when and how. I know I can't start right away. I'm from Germany and I have to wait and study hard for the next 4 years to get into University. I know that I want to work internationally and I want to see and live in as many countries as I can,preferably English speaking ones. I'm eager to gain as much life experience as possible and I really set it my goal that I want to be mature. The other goals I set myself are : independence, emotional independence, peace, resilience and confidence. The first goal "maturity" I've mentioned earlier is the most important one to me. I want reach that by moving to foreign countries and experience as much hardship as possible. The most important question here is in what field I want to work and what services I could provide that people would be willing to pay for and it's that what I'm not sure about. I'm also unsure if it's freelance work or self employment what I want to do. I'm willing to work hard and neglected any thing that might distract me on my path. I already cut down my video games and social media use to zero. So, what are some useful skills that I can learn that will benefit me when I'm an adult in the future? [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Economics Of Saving People From Cities || Can You Make This Business Work? Posted: 27 Nov 2018 01:31 PM PST I'm struggling with creating a business model for an immense market - one which has been successfully exploited in a cyclical manner since the industrial revolution - but updated for 2018. The Problem: Cities globally are exploding in population and density. As more people and businesses compete for space at the center, a sizable fraction of those periodically yearn for the tranquility of nature. Assume, A.) They don't have a car B.) They don't trust or want an Uber driver to drop them in the woods 50 miles from home C.) They are unwilling to permanently relocate out the city D.) They don't have the confidence to see themselves out I'm really stuck. In my head I zoom out and see perhaps millions affluent of people in cities like New York begging to be led out to nature for only few hours with app-like efficiency. Yet the cost of guiding them there and back, at scale, without discriminating against single passengers is net negative. Asking: How to transport them out of the city and back civilly (no omnibus) and most importantly profitably - at scale?
Hypothetical Business NatureNOW
*bend the cost down by charging the Lyft rate
** bend revenue up by charging the overall Lyft rate for each passenger [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Which industries of startups don't require a degree? Posted: 27 Nov 2018 12:46 PM PST Obviously you don't really need a degree to start anything, but a degree can give you significant background knowledge. Which industries lean more on business finesse and don't really require highly knowledgeable workers? Starting a biotech company would probably require a pretty big knowledge about genetics or the human body/parts of it and how they operate, but might take months to research. It might increase the value, but what industries are alternatives that don't have such a high barrier to entry for the workers themselves? [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Would this help your business? Posted: 27 Nov 2018 12:08 PM PST Hi, I am a web developer who's been wanting to start his own business for a while now and I think I finally have a good idea to work on. When most people buy something on the internet or research a service provider, they check the reviews on these products / businesses. Reviews are very important to attract new customers but a lot of businesses aren't handling this very well. They either have very few reviews or a low rating and most businesses don't even show reviews on their website. My solution to this would be two-sided: showing reviews on your website + increasing the amount of (positive) reviews. There's three variants I came up with:
Discount codes could be offered as well. These would be shown before a review is posted since you are not allowed to trade discount codes for reviews. Would any of my solutions (or a combination) help your business? [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Starting a National ATM company from scratch in 6 months Posted: 27 Nov 2018 01:52 AM PST Hello Entrepreneurs, My name is Jake, I am 21 years old and my 3 partners and I created a national ATM company. It started around 6 months ago when I woke up with the idea to put ATM's in cannabis shops. Visa/Mastercard refuse to work with these locations because of the federal regulations surrounding them. Store owners of all types around the country can largely benefit from having an ATM at their location, our very first location was a cash-only parking lot in the east-Hamptons that was making $1200 a month, we split that 50/50 with the location's owner. Now imagine 50 of these bad boys running passively. Most successful posts on /r/Entrepreneur end up acting as a huge traffic bonus for their product or service, and you can even find how to guides on how to advertise through this subreddit. I am here to share our story, our struggles, and a little bit about a business that few understand. Every ATM we place is an investment that we need to consider. After finding my team, forming our partnership, we were ready to attack the market. But we reached a roadblock. Marketing is hard. We ran into a rather Niche market, and finding key decision makers online willing to get an ATM at their location was very difficult. The paperwork is rather invasive and at the start, we lost quite a few placements due to stores backing out because of the paperwork. So we changed our path, instead of focusing on online sales (we like to call it partnerships, because we are not actually selling anything except a free to operate service) we moved to in-person sales and facebook group posting. Attending seminars, business expos, local newspaper ads, and posting in facebook specific groups lead to vastly more success than paying hundreds of dollars a month in google & bing ads. I am sure there are marketing wizards out there who could crush our SEO needs and market us quite well, frankly, we are a bit old school. If you can figure out how to become an ATM agent/provider then here are the most important aspects we found in looking for a location. Be sure to create a strong referral program, often times a store owner is friends with other store owners. We offer $500 to anyone who leads us to a strong location that gets signed. Key Considerations we learned for placing an ATM
ATM's are initially a pretty high-cost business to get into. ROI on each machine ranges from 2 months to 36 months depending on the traffic of the location, contract specifics, the cost to load, etc... We started our company with $100,000 on a business loan that is 0% interest for the first year, then 8% until paid off. Each unit cost around $3800 new to be shipped, placed, set up. Then you pay for the vault cash, servicing, and more. We offer 3 plans for business owners to get an ATM. The Big hidden thing about ATM's -Curious how ATM companies make money? Here it is, it is called interchange. Even if there is a $3.00 surcharge on an ATM, the agent of the machine will make .15-50 cents per transaction regardless.
Our successes We are currently operating 7 locations, each one making us around $500-750 a month in profit, we all do this with fulltime jobs and are almost ready to be able to hire one of us to be able to work full time. Competing with other companies has been the least of our problems, our biggest struggle is communicating what we do and what we offer to store owners. How many people do you know, that understand how an ATM works or would even think to get one? I am 100% positive I am missing a few key aspects to this post so I want to leave it open to discussion. I'm here to answer any questions you may have about the ATM industry that I have learned, if I do not know it I am sure my partner can answer it as he has been in the industry for over 17 years. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 27 Nov 2018 06:43 AM PST I am looking for any way to monetize this account, if you know any way to do that please let me know. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 27 Nov 2018 11:22 AM PST Gamin guilds and groups are nothing new. My question is are people monetizing these groups, and if so, how? To be more specific, I'm not looking to start a team. More like a community of players. I know that it can be monetized by building a website or forum with ad revenue from site visitors or selling merchandise for the clan, as well as streaming and YouTube videos. Are there any other ways to monetize that kind of operation? How would that business be classified when registering for a business license? [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How do you feel about sharing ideas of your business plan to potential suppliers? Posted: 27 Nov 2018 10:41 AM PST Hi Everyone! I realized just now that i feel uncomfortable sharing my ideas and plans with potential suppliers. But, i have no choice because i need to explain to them why i want their products and what i want to do with them. How do you guys deal with this? am i overthinking it? I feel as though during my suppliers search, i am having to share critical information that i feel could be taken and used. it's not necessarily something inventive, but more so, i have to explain my idea because that way, they fully understand who i am, what my company is and why i want them to supply me! Thanks a ton! let me know how you guys feel about this! and you own experiences! [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| My day doesn't have enough hours. Posted: 27 Nov 2018 02:13 PM PST I feel like 24 hours a day are just not enough. I got so much things and projects to do, I don't have a moment just to relax... how about you guys? If a day had like 30 hours and only needed 6 hours of sleep that would be so much better. But why I am here wasting my time writing about something I can't change. Let's focus on the important things again. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lessons from working at a large retailer Posted: 27 Nov 2018 01:54 PM PST Hey everyone, I work for a large home improvement retailer as an electrical associate and electrical happens to also be a passion of mine so I try to learn as much as I can about the trade while working. I'm also an aspiring entrepreneur and I was wondering if anyone can offer any tips for not-so-obvious lessons I can pick up on to help me with my future entrepreneurial journey unlike the obvious things directly related to my department. Heres an example, Occasionally a manger will leave their scanner signed in and when your logged in as a them you can view the stores cost of items along with the current listed price. It's pretty entertaining to go around scanning things to check what the company purchases them at . Generally, the smallest, lowest priced items have the highest mark up (500-800%) while mid priced items are usually marked up about 100% of their buy cost. Things like this may seem useless to most people but I feel like that kind of stuff is good to pay attention to. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| What's the best Inventory management system for a small e-commerce business? Posted: 27 Nov 2018 01:50 AM PST So I just started my online store selling PC components, I'm selling it through multiple channels, from marketplace like eBay, to social media as well as my own website running on Woocommerce. Currently, I have less than 10 different SKUs, but I figured that it would be more efficient if I could start using one Inventory management system from day one, what I'm trying to achieve including:
Software I've tried:
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| Is anyone good at FB ads? Any tips or help would be appreciated Posted: 27 Nov 2018 01:30 PM PST I have a online store and using ads that are traffic base. Could use some help with audience and targeting. Any tips or partnership [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Any interest in a founder/entrepreneur support group? Posted: 27 Nov 2018 01:24 PM PST Ycombinator's Startup School has something similar for their members.. this would be along those lines for those of you familiar with it. I'm a founder working on a separate media company. This process of building a company has been rewarding but also an insanely difficult time for me and there's no one I can talk to about it. I see a therapist already but that's only once a week and he just doesn't get what I am going through like a fellow entrepreneur would. Also there's often moments when I wish there was someone to talk to but not enough that I want to go visit my therapist if that makes sense? I was wondering if there was any interest in forming an anonymous chat based support group based on what some criteria (age, location, stage of business etc). I know this sub exists but I would prefer a more intimate, smaller group where I could actually get to know other people who are going through similar stuff and then stick with them as opposed to having random people chime in every time. Heck we could all potentially make some friends out of it.. Just wondering if anyone else would be interested? I could build something out pretty quickly that would place us in groups of 7-10 people based on various criteria where we could get to know each other / support each other anonymously. If you're interested let me know in the comments below or shoot me a PM. If there is enough demand I'll make an app / website which will allow us all to form these support groups. [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 27 Nov 2018 01:22 PM PST As the title stated, for the past 2 years I've worked for a southern California based skin care company as the Operations Director. We have two different revenue sources, 1) products and 2) services. A good majority of our income, about 75-80% comes through the form of services as we have three separate locations that perform a very specific type of natural facial. Each location brings in around $800k-$1M per year with a 75-80%/20-25% service/product split. Over the years we have seen our product grow rather naturally as we only use our products in our salons and during our facials so we haven't really needed to grow the product outside of our already established service-oriented clientele. Now, however, we really want to make a push for 2019 to grow the product and get the service/product split closer to 60/40 service/product. I feel like the best course of action is to invest some time and money into growing the brand, but thats a field that I haven't ventured into yet and I'm not sure how to get the ball rolling. A little more background on the business:
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| Successful Business With Scaling/Growth Issue At $100K/M+ Posted: 27 Nov 2018 04:30 AM PST Hi folks - I have a growing business with a technical/logistics challenge involving scaling, and can use some strategy input. To simplify numbers, our e-commerce business is generating $100,000 per month. $30,000 is spent on advertising. $30,000 is spent on product and other misc costs (ex: Merchant processing, fulfilment, etc). Net profit works out at $40,000 each month. The challenge: I have a 60 day lead time with production. 30% is required upfront, then 70% remainder is paid on completion of order. The big question: With all the metrics given above, how can I best scale the business by reinvesting the profits, and not be without stock at a given time? Is there calculators to help with this? Software? Anything? Our lead times take way too long for us to grow fast, and I'm looking for strategies or ideas around this challenge, as investing more of my own capital into the business doesn't solve the challenge further down the line. Seeing that almost any business that have inventory has this problem, I figured someone in this community would have a good answer or resource regarding this challenge. Any input is appreciated. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| looking for software dev/partner Posted: 27 Nov 2018 12:58 PM PST Dear entrepreneurs, I'm 35 years old and i'm from Southern Europe, so my apologies in advance if my grammar is far from being perfect. I'm a Procurement and Supply Chain Director in a small/medium size (roughly 65.000.000$ yearly turnover) manufacturing company, leader in a market where the average product is consumed largely worldwide but the company carved out a luxury niche itself. In our market there are very few choices in terms of tracking softwares, in order to control production processes and the stages/advancement of product through it using a simple barcoding system. Basically at the moment there's only one product available which is not functioning properly (I don't want to add a wall of text about it, but I can explain this more in details), although several companies are using it since there aren't alternatives. Recently I've decided to join competences and skills with an IT well-structured company which is actually cooperating with many competitors and we have realized that we may fill that need, which is creating a simple software able just to track production phases placing a barcode on each product. During the last weeks we have been in contact with few software developers which were interested to join us as co-founder/third entity but we weren't satisfied with what we have found. We already have deals with some companies which would lead for the first year to a turnover of roughly 1.800.000$. In brief: Q: What do we offer? A: An established startup having well defined entities, experience in the market, clients already interested to purchase. Q: Why don't we look just for a Dev to hire? A: Because anyways we would need a continuous cooperation to improve the software, adding features for the existing customers, especially when they would require a personalization (which they would pay for, of course). Who are we: 1) A well established IT Company with 30 employees that would take care of the pre-sales operations, a first level help-desk and already have relationships with the existing/potential clients. 2) A senior expert working in the market, covering any side of the manufacturing process, knowing the competitors, the existing software, future implementations, which will also be in charge of localization from english to Spanish and Italian, last but not least will follow the bug testing process in order to commercialize a perfectly working software. What are we looking for: - A software developer able to code in Java (although we are open to alternative languages, only requirement is the SW to be multi-platform) interested in being a partner co/founder with 33,33% of the company. If you are a young software developer and you think you want be part of this startup, write me a DM. Also, if you are a freelancer and you think you can provide the service and you aren't interested in being a partner, write me a Quotation in DM. Cheers, [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Rabbit Product Design thoughts Posted: 27 Nov 2018 12:56 PM PST Hello Everyone, I have an idea for a product but not sure where to get started. I found Rabbit Product Design and it seems like they help you through the whole process. I was just wondering if anyone has worked with them and what their thoughts were and about how much it costs. Thanks! [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Registering your business vs trademarking question Posted: 27 Nov 2018 12:55 PM PST I registered my business as an LLC earlier this year. We are looking to trademark our logo and slogan early next year. Is it possible for another business to steal our company name if we don't have a trademark, or is having registered the LLC enough to keep us protected for now? [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| I need a second opinion on my prices and margins for small business selling to retailers. Posted: 27 Nov 2018 12:52 PM PST I've just started a small online business but I have yet to approach any retailers because I have been working to figure what I can charge them to create a happy medium. Admittedly I've whittled my prices down to share most of the profit that I initially thought would be reasonable to keep. Here is what I am considering approaching with:
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| Posted: 27 Nov 2018 08:32 AM PST I recently interviewed a guy for my podcast who invested in a startup at 13 that would later go on to exit for 3 billion. He is 20 now and runs his own investment group. I'm curious to learn more from outliers like him to see common traits/characteristics, such as quality of network, environment, skills, opportunities, etc. Who else here is like that (i.e. finding success early)? p.s. I can link the interview if people are interested, but I'd rather learn about you all than promote something! [link] [comments]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Need Business Advice (Digital Advertising) Posted: 27 Nov 2018 12:10 PM PST Thanks in advance for lending me your ear. So I work for an agency and the owner recently informed me that he's downsizing. I do digital marketing and my primary role is running social media ads for the agency. However since it's more of a creative agency than a marketing agency, we simply lump the social ads in with the quote for all other social media work we do (content creation, posting, etc). Here's my question - the owner mentioned he would consider partnering with me to create a sort of "spin-off" agency that will only be dedicated to ads (Facebook & Google). He said he would provide the seed money and use his connections to get business. I tried asking what sort of ongoing work he would do for the company (i.e. pitch meetings/negotiations, using the creative agencies resources like design work on the cheap, etc.) He was pretty ambiguous and simply told me to come to him with a proposal for what I think is fair. So here's what I have: I'll be doing all the ad creation, optimizing, reporting, client back-and-forth, etc. So I expect AT LEAST 60%. If he's only referring clients, then I think he should get 10% without paying any overhead. 15% if he wants to contribute 5% of overhead (which isn't much since it will be remote.. just a few tools and if we expand then paying an employee or 2). If he's willing to negotiate with potential clients and be the "face of the company" then he can get 25% of revenue and pay 25% of the minimal overhead. If he's willing to use the design team from the big agency, he can get 30% (plus whatever 100% of revenue the clients pay for the design work). The thing that I'm battling with is the fact that a lot of digital advertisers have great success freelancing. He does have A LOT of connections here in Miami, but really I can get clients worldwide so I just need to land a few. I have a couple clients right now and charge them $400/month (which I know is quite low). Of course the end goal is to have an ad agency of my own where I can delegate the work.... and that's the value I see in this partnership with the bossman. He can immediately legitimize the company. We'll have a nice website, a trusted businessman, (perhaps) custom design work, etc. But on the other hand.. I can make a simple landing page that offers a free consultation and perhaps make good money just freelancing (although it will require a lot of pitching). On the other other hand, I can also do my freelance work on top of this agency... so it can't hurt right? Sorry about the long post, but any insight would be greatly appreciated! I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. [link] [comments]  |
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