NooB Monday! - (December 10, 2018) Entrepreneur |
- NooB Monday! - (December 10, 2018)
- Please stop spamming medium articles on this subreddit
- I decided to start an online business and made more than $3,000 in the first 17 days...
- Which book for entrepreneurs do you consider a 10/10?
- Comparing prices ending with .99 vs .95 vs .89
- We went from $83k to $227k revenue in 2018 (Marketing Agency)
- Business Plan Template: A Step-by-Step Guide For Entrepreneurs
- All of the skill, but none of the connections or marketing experience. How to proceed?
- I need career advice. What is your opinion on what I have done so far?
- What I've learned from 9 years of side-projects.
- Is self doubt really my problem?
- Where to start when investing?
- I can sell anything and want to start my own business.
- Looking for Platform to sell Kids Fashion
- Best practices for becoming a distributor or local agent
- As a noob and struggling with writing well for my marketing, I did a bunch of research and created a free resource if anyone has similar struggles.
- Finding business partners?
- Need approx. 100 business owners to answer short online survey. Where would be the best place to achieve it?
- Cold prospect / Outreach tools?
- Anyone ever run a legit escort business?
- Helping my dad network
- Price tag for my product: $1 or $0.99 or ¢99?
- Freelancer - Wanting to get started in building my own profitable business
- Question about freight forwarding Samples from China
- Any tips of what one should know or prepare before selling an item that uses electricity?
| NooB Monday! - (December 10, 2018) Posted: 10 Dec 2018 05:07 AM PST Please use this thread to ask any newbie questions. We do this to not overflow the subreddit with newbie questions, so please try to limit the questions 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]  |
| Please stop spamming medium articles on this subreddit Posted: 10 Dec 2018 10:52 AM PST I mean seriously. We all know you are just trying to drive traffic to your shitty articles. And try to karma whore enough to get the links to same be follow links. Plus we know you are just regurgitating shit you found somewhere else which you are not giving credit to. Medium is a shit platform for shit wannabe writers. Want to do it anway? Then fine. Just don't spam your article links here and expect to get respect. [link] [comments]  |
| I decided to start an online business and made more than $3,000 in the first 17 days... Posted: 10 Dec 2018 05:02 AM PST I decided to start an online business that allows entrepreneurs to find top best selling high margin products. The idea came to me as insight. Once I was browsing through Facebook and I realized that many entrepreneurs get low profit while selling goods online. It was rather strange to me. I knew I had some products in my online store that bring me now even $70 profit and it's from the sale of the single product. Anyway many entrepreneurs sold goods with a margin of $20 and they were 100% sure it was an excellent result. (some of them are sure of it until now he-he). I know that many online stores are constantly looking for products that would greatly raise their profits by 2-5 times and they are sure they need to invest more money in advertising and expand the range of products, but in fact they can simply have those 50 - 300 top high margin products for which people are willing to pay good money. How did I start with the project?
The total costs of my project is not more than $90. (paid $60 to the programmer to set it up properly) Me and my programmer created the whole website together on WordPress and as it turned out to be the template that we set up has an excellent integrated builder, where you can quickly assemble the site from different sections. Nothing complicated! Bang bang and you're done! Of course, the site does not look very cool, but my experience always tells me that one needs to concentrate more on customers and their needs and give them the best support and the product / service they buy. The next step was to find out how many people are interested in such a service. I knew that there was a certain demand, but I did not know which one. Anyway I thought I can get some sales and it is an experiment for me. Nothing scary! I just asked different people on Facebook if they needed such a service and a few people responded. Sometimes people asked a lot of questions, because they wanted to know what kind of goods I have, more about some niche high margin products, what were the differences in the packages STANDARD, BASIC and PREMIUM etc. One entrepreneur contacted me and was asking for 15-20 questions every day. After a week or so communication with me he bought a $49 PREMIUM package. I even consulted him on how to raise prices for some products wisely. There were also a couple of people who needed my help and after consulting them they bought some of my packages. My next step was to contact online stores' owners and asked them if they want to try one high margin product to see if it is worth to sell massively. Some of them told me YES and tried the product. Some of them became my clients. WOW! Though two famous online stores wanted me to manually pick up 2000 high margin products for their stores, but I told them to choose the PREMIUM package and to have 100-300 manually picked up items every month. Perhaps I will add an option where people could have 2000 items per month in future, but not at the start of my business. Then I wanted to get even more sales and started my affiliate program. I began searching for bloggers who are already promoting various services. Every day I wrote to 20 affiliates and 37 of 100 joined my affiliate program at the end. They wrote about me in their posts and it was a very good trigger for my business. I got another wave of more than 50 clients. One of my affiliates which promoted a famous hosting service lately could bring me 17 clients in just 3 days. Of course now my main task is to develop this business and make it mega profitable. Let's say $100K+ per month would be great and I am sure I would reach it. If 2040 online owners buy PREMIUM package the goal achieved !!! My advice to those who wish to start an online business:
Do not think that business is easy, but in fact it is not difficult. When you know which tools to use and how to communicate effectively with people, then you will always get growth in business. Everything else is technical details that are less important. [link] [comments]  |
| Which book for entrepreneurs do you consider a 10/10? Posted: 09 Dec 2018 03:19 PM PST |
| Comparing prices ending with .99 vs .95 vs .89 Posted: 10 Dec 2018 06:29 AM PST Hello. I am running a super market in my area, and lately I have been thinking about how much effect does different price endings have in sales. For example, is it worth it to sucrifice 6-10 cents, to price something as .89 compared to .95 and .99? And what about the comparison between .95 and .99? I have a feeling that .95 might be selling better, but 4 cents is not a small amount in retail. Thank you very much in advance Edit: .90 popped up in my mind, should I ever considering pricing something with .90 or it's a waste of margin/sales? [link] [comments]  |
| We went from $83k to $227k revenue in 2018 (Marketing Agency) Posted: 10 Dec 2018 12:18 PM PST I tend to share our progress every year in this subreddit. In 2014 I started an agency called 'Kreatix' with a friend from school. It was terrible. And that's fine. The problemWe did everything. Websites, e-commerce, Facebook Ads, graphic design, social media, PPC, SEO, analytics, audits, ... Our agency was a master of none. We decided to take a different approach in 2018 and identified a few core issues.
The solutionWe decided to change that. Gone were the days of graphic design, social media and services that had no clear connection to our core. We rebranded as a 'marketing agency'. Nothing spectacular, but it did the job. Our renewed focus were websites that deliver results. (pic) This instantly made it clear for our prospects what we were doing. We would rebuild their website in Wordpress, integrate our analytics suite and run PPC Ads. We'd track conversions and made sure our client knew where the leads were coming from. Every service we 'sell' needs to have actionable data. It's hard to argue about the design of a flyer or a logo, too subjective. It's way clearer for clients if you can say you spent $500 on PPC and they got $6000 revenue through their webshop. We decided we did not want to do marketing for websites that weren't built by us. This saved us a lot of time. Ever tried to integrate conversion tracking on a website built in a wacky CMS by a developer from another country? It's a big hurdle and slows everything down. When we build the website, we know everything can be integrated easily and we can deliver results. After we defined our services, we decided to take a look at role divisions. We have 2 founders. William and Oliver. William is a technical guy. He has patience, knows his way around code and servers. He loves working with some techno music and being left alone whilst coding. I'm outgoing. I love data, talking to people, experimenting and working on our business. Can you image for the first 3 years of our existence, we both did everything? In hindsight I honestly don't know how it ever worked out. We split our tasks. William would build the websites. I would handle meetings, growing the business and marketing. (pic) Our sales skyrocketed, the websites were way better and productivity was off the charts. It's important to look at your team and recognize each others strengths and weaknesses. Then we cut out the guesswork and unclear processes. We drafted templates for everything. Client intakes, website audits, PPC reporting. Basically everything we had to do more than once, we had a process in place. This saves us a lot of time and makes it easy to onboard interns. The resultsThey speak for themselves. Our revenue grew from 83k to 227k. We moved to an office that's three times as big as the previous one (pic) We're hiring our first employee next year. Mind you we're still only 23 years old and it's pretty expensive to hire in Belgium. We think it's a step in the right direction and it will allow us to scale even more. We managed to close bigger projects. We're working on a platform for the biggest universitary hospital of Belgium, we did a marketing campaign for the city we're located in and we spent about $100.000 on PPC ads. We signed 95 new clients in 2018. We have been asked for guest blogs, got featured on national television and had the opportunity to do a bunch of speaking gigs. Main takeaways
I sincerely hope a few veterans of /r/Entrepreneur recognize us. We try to be as transparant as possible. I'm always excited to answer questions and receive feedback. So feel free, shoot! [link] [comments]  |
| Business Plan Template: A Step-by-Step Guide For Entrepreneurs Posted: 10 Dec 2018 07:24 AM PST 1) Executive Summary 2) Company Description
3) Products & Services
4) Marketing Plan
5) Operational Plan
6) Management & Organization
7) Financial Plan
8) Appendices
***This template was published on the article below on Forbes today.**\* [link] [comments]  |
| All of the skill, but none of the connections or marketing experience. How to proceed? Posted: 10 Dec 2018 09:24 AM PST Hey everyone! I'm a web and software developer by day, and for a while I've curated a few ideas to start my own business on the side and grow it into something more. Ideally, I'd like to create a software suite or SaaS app that I could sell to businesses (around my area at first, and then expand outward if it does well). The downside though, is that I feel to even gain a minute amount of traction, I'd have to have connections to or some type of 'in' already with the businesses I want to target in the community. Since I don't feel like hiding behind a vail of secrecy, here's my ideas for you to pick apart:
If I were to give up on doing anything locally, I also have a back-up plan for creating a niche e-commerce shop. Although I really would like to do something where I could have a potential physical presence with my customers. If anyone has broken out in any of the fields above, or has any suggestions for next steps moving forward, it would be a huge help. My goal for 2019 is to create a legitimate side business and start working toward something that I can build up and grow to (hopefully) become successful. [link] [comments]  |
| I need career advice. What is your opinion on what I have done so far? Posted: 10 Dec 2018 06:23 AM PST Currently I am thinking a lot about careers, since I will be unemployed in a few months from now. I would like to hear your objective opinions on what I have done so far and what I should do with my life or where you could see myself in the next years :) I hope your opinions will broaden my view a little help me make the right decisions. I am keeping everything more general and generic instead of a detailed CV. What I have done so far: I (27 years old) am from Germany and worked a year in the Silicon Valley after I graduated from high school. There I started a screen printing company and fashion label with a few friends. A year later I left the US and went back to Germany. I studied business administration and started a company with a fellow classmate and two more partners. We had an idea for an app, found a business angel and started coding. Unfortunately we underestimated effort and expenditures and resorted to agency business (basically UI/UX Design and App Development) on the side, in order to finance our company. But it worked out, even though the times were not easy. A VC was interested in our app and we concluded two financing rounds with them and were able to employ 12 people. After it got going I resigned from the operative business of our company on amicable terms - still keeping my shares though. Reasons were diverging opinions concerning the strategic direction - but as I said, I left on good terms, there is no bad blood, we are all still good friends. I got my degree in business administration and was offered a job as a research associate for entrepreneurship and startup counselor at my university. Since I wanted to also get a masters degree, I accepted, since it was easily reconciled with each other: Right now I work 30 hours a week for the university and have time to continue my studies. My masters degree focuses on finance, law, taxation and public auditing. I started this degree since I always felt more like a CFO and not like a CEO. There were a number of instances where I was happy to have my company partners make decisions instead of me. Also I liked building a reliable business organisation and administration. I also found the financing rounds extremely exciting. I was working days and nights to put the financials together and it felt very gratifying when everything worked out and the financing rounds were concluded to everyones satisfaction. I am also more an introverted type of personality I think, rather than an extroverted CEO-type of personality. My current job will end in a few months, but I still need about another year to finish my studies and get my degree. So next year I will apply for part time jobs, since I probably won't start another company during my studies - also: I do not have a good business idea that excites me so much to take the risk again. But I love the startup life and entrepreneurship. I thought I should start my career in the field of VCs, but I am not sure if this is the career I really want and those I know will probably not hire part time. Currently I code a lot in my freetime, especially DeepLearning algorithms in Python and WebApps with Flask and Django. Even though I have a business background, I think I have good understanding of digital products although I might not be as good as a "real" developer. If you continued reading until here: What is your advice for me? As I said I thought about applying at VC's, but I am also thinking about applying in project management or as a product owner in some sort of consulting firm. I could see myself also working at a startup or consultant, but I am not sure I someone will hire me part time while still not having my masters degree. Do you have any suggestions? Any companies that you could see myself in? What do you advise me to do? I don't take decisions like that lightly, so I am very grateful for your suggestions and value your opinions a lot. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| What I've learned from 9 years of side-projects. Posted: 10 Dec 2018 03:40 AM PST The original blog post contains all the images and figures. It turns out there's a lot to learn by examining the cadence and variety of your side-projects… I recently defended my PhD and in the process of preparing for the defence, I discovered that an old backup hard-drive was damaged beyond repair. Thankfully I had a further backup, but it got me thinking:
I hope I never have to look back at the PHP I wrote when I was learning, but I spent months cobbling together SQL queries and designing objectively terrible pages, and that process is important, at least to me. Then I thought:
The projects I could find hard data for include:
I decided to go back as far as 2010, around about when I started my undergraduate degree, and when I started creating meaningful things that could be shared on the internet. Relatively steady cadence Figure 1 above shows pretty clearly that from 2012, I tended to start between 2 and 4 projects a year. There are some gaps (June 2015 — August 2016), and some times where I start a few projects close together (Early 2018), but overall, there's never really a time where I don't have a project to work on. Blog posts come in spurts The black bordered cells in Figure one indicate that at least 1 blog post was made that month. They tend to happen together, with large gaps in between. Obviously, I've begun to write more frequently lately. I think I also tend to write when I'm in need of a quick win: it's a goal I can achieve in about a day or less and consider complete. Newer projects are less viral Obviously, older projects are going to have more views, but we would expect the decrease in lifetime views to be somewhat linear. In actual fact, my newer project don't seem to get anything like the kind of exposure that my older projects got. I think this might be due to my focus changing from viral content ("blogify 2" was designed to copy content from reddit and repost the links), to actual useful tools ("Blue Spots Parking" is an app to help disabled drivers find accessible parking spaces). Making useful tools that also gain viral traction is a sweet spot I have not yet managed to find. But perhaps this is also a reflection on how social networks are becoming less effective. Reddit, Facebook and twitter have always been the main way I share my projects. Views are not correlated to revenue. It's safe to say that I won't be quitting the day job any time soon, but I think making any money at all off a side-project is a massive success regardless of the magnitude. I have three main observations here:
Conclusion It's probably about time to start something new. If I want to maximize the views, revenue and longevity, I should probably try to build a physical product that is a useful tool with a viral aspect, which has nothing to do with music. Easy. [link] [comments]  |
| Is self doubt really my problem? Posted: 10 Dec 2018 01:56 PM PST I've known I've wanted to get into e-commerce since I was still in high school. This month I'll turn 27 and yet I still haven't made the slightest tangible progress towards that dream. I have a job many people would envy, and I'm not hurting financially, but I still feel really unsatisfied with what I'm doing. In the past 10 years, I've read thousands of articles and come up with hundreds of ideas. I've written up countless business plans, bought a couple dozen domains, even registered an LLC at one point. However, no matter how enthusiastic I am about my new "business" at first, my mind inevitably finds a way to convince itself that the plan was bad to begin with due to some initially unaccounted for factor. Not like a roadblock that can be overcome, more like I find foundational flaws in my plans. Is this what fear of failure looks like? Am I really just finding ways to convince myself not to try because I'm scared? Because it just feels like quitting before I waste a bunch of time and money on a guaranteed failure. I want more than anything to make my dream a reality, and I've wasted far too much time. Maybe I'm just too analytical and overthinking things. Should I just work towards building my e-commerce stores just to get more experience, despite being sure they'll fail? Does anyone have any other advice for me? [link] [comments]  |
| Where to start when investing? Posted: 10 Dec 2018 01:24 PM PST I am currently about to turn 17 and I have just got a job and I am wanting to start investing as early as I possibly can, because I would rather be earning money than wasting it and I would like some good places to start. It won't be much as my job is only on the weekends and I am still in school so I do need some money. But how do I start? I live in England if that is useful. [link] [comments]  |
| I can sell anything and want to start my own business. Posted: 10 Dec 2018 01:23 PM PST Hello! I'm an extremely good salesmen and love building relationships. I don't have any major skills like web design or marketing. I have always wanted to work for myself, but really have no idea of what I would ever want to do. What are some side hustles I could do? Or learn more about? [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for Platform to sell Kids Fashion Posted: 10 Dec 2018 01:03 PM PST I have an artisan children's clothing collection and the wholesale side is doing pretty good but I know online direct to consumer is where it's at. I have a shopify store. I have 6k followers on IG but still little traffic to my website. My clothing is handmade by women artisans in India. I don't think Etsy will work since I don't make it myself. I would love to hear anyone's suggestions or experience selling on platforms. [link] [comments]  |
| Best practices for becoming a distributor or local agent Posted: 10 Dec 2018 12:45 PM PST Hi everyone, I'm eyeing becoming a distributor in three different areas: - Health supplements (vitamins, etc) - Goods that require low maintenance (i.e. non-electricals, like furniture, some kitchen items, etc) - Goods that require maintenance/warranty (mainly electricals) With that in mind, what are some of the best practices when approaching a company to become their distributor? - What would they normally want to see from me to be comfortable giving me distribution rights? And what can I do to cover those gaps if it's my first distribution gig (coming out of a non-related field as an employee) - What key areas are normally discussed, and how should I approach them (e.g. co-marketing, profit share (if any), payment terms, return/refund terms, exclusivity terms, performance KPIs, etc --- what are acceptable terms in each of these, and what pitfalls must I be conscious of). And how would the approach differ for each of the three segments mentioned above. - Finally, any books/resources you'd recommend on this subject? Thank you for all advice! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Dec 2018 12:27 PM PST I am working on an indie venture - my first one actually, in the area of fintech and stock/crypto investing. Now I am at a phase where where I think I have something of value but how do you get the word out and how do you express it so that it connects? I am struggling more than I realized I would. Marketing isn't my strong suite and I am actually looking to hire a good agency or a savvy individual. Meanwhile, writing good copy/ads etc isn't really my forte. Being an engineer, I decided to spend a bunch of time researching all the different ways other folks explain or market their offerings in their own PR or launch articles. I compiled a lot of phrases/words that should work for most services and put them in a form that can help with some creative thing around them. Right now it's a webapp at http://impactphrases.com. It's got a healthy number (thousands) of phrases powering it so hopefully it can help all my fellow entrepreneurs too. Criticism/suggestions always welcome. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Dec 2018 12:11 PM PST Those of you with full time jobs who have some kind of business idea or even a business in place, how do you go about finding business partners to pick up the slack that you can't take on? I just finished designing a board game, complete with multiple test games and artwork (professionally made). Trying to launch a kickstarter seems like an incredibly daunting task, but I can't seem to find how to get someone on board. I don't have the funds to hire a marketer, but I am more than happy to give up a large percentage of the profits. Even typing that out makes me feel scammy, but I really don't mean it to be. I have a game that is fun and unique that people enjoy, and I am willing to hand over part ownership of that game to a dedicated partner. Are there any resources you all look to when trying to find someone to split your equity with in launching a product? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Dec 2018 05:48 AM PST Hello Reddit, I'm having a business idea, and I'm doing a small research to make sure there's a market for the product. To do so, I need to "interview" some decent number of business owners (aspiring entrepreneurs, freelancers, small or medium businesses). I prepared that simple, fully anonymous (no personal & company's data or email addresses collected) 3 minutes long survey in google forms, mostly checkboxes to tick, nothing complicated, and now I'm trying to find an online community where I could engage required number of entrepreneurs. Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeccamnGM2DyMHWnNxu0cnv4FYHQG4R72glPf07Smk8kKgIBQ/viewform?usp=sf_link I would lie claiming I'm not hoping to get some "fill ups" from this Reddit community, but I'd also appreciate pointing me in the right direction. I assume there are online places where businesses meet that I am not aware of, and I'd love to learn about them. Or any non-standard approach, as long as it works. Thank you [link] [comments]  |
| Cold prospect / Outreach tools? Posted: 10 Dec 2018 11:40 AM PST Just curious what others are using for prospecting of cold leads and the outreach process? I've been looking at tools like BuiltWith for a good data source, but I'm a firm believer in sanitizing and more of a focused outreach. Just curious what others are using for this process. Thanks, [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone ever run a legit escort business? Posted: 10 Dec 2018 11:27 AM PST My buddy keeps hassling me about wanting to get into this space. Has anyone ever ran a legit successful one? if so, i'd like to pick your brain. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Dec 2018 07:28 AM PST My dad is the general contractor and owner of USA Pools Inc. down in South Florida. We have recently done a total overhaul of his website, because it was a little outdated. Another thing that we have to fix is the way in which we network our company and advertise our services. Currently we are setting up a yelp, facebook, and instagram accounts, but what are some other ways you guys have had success advertising your business? Thank you, all posts are appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Price tag for my product: $1 or $0.99 or ¢99? Posted: 10 Dec 2018 10:39 AM PST I have a website with simple challenge tests for a professional niche. I know there is a lot of research about how $X.99 prices are psychologically superior to slightly greater rounded prices. But I can't find anything about the specific scenario of one dollar. My intuition is that I might have in an exception scenario because: c) My clients have no initial expectation of the price. Unlike a dollar store where you know the price will be cheap. So I think this might increase the risk of point b) being a problem Any comment? [link] [comments]  |
| Freelancer - Wanting to get started in building my own profitable business Posted: 10 Dec 2018 10:23 AM PST I have only made one sale (of course I only started getting into gigs this month), and i have a couple of skills. I can make logos, I can retouch someone's photo such as remove acne or any "off" spots on a picture, I can fluently spell check peoples documents or blogs (I am native English speaker, it's my only language, besides tiny bits of spanish here and there) , album artwork (I have done many in the past, but have never gotten paid for it, at the time I didn't have a payment option and was underage), and I can do some very basic html coding. I'm trying to get a portfolio going but I don't know any websites that's good for all this kind of work I do. I don't have a team but I... idk... I just really need good money at the moment needing to pay a bill and then Christmas coming up and needing to get a house asap, I'm even looking for a roommate I have other things i gotta say but please message me, I just need consistent pay and a central place where I can advertise my skills [link] [comments]  |
| Question about freight forwarding Samples from China Posted: 10 Dec 2018 10:08 AM PST Hey all - first time posting here. I'm starting up a new business and am looking to get samples from about 5 factories in China. I read a bit about freight forwarding on here so that I can have all the samples sent to one Chinese address and then repackaged together and shipped to me so I can save on shipping charges. I haven't rly been able to find actual companies recommended though. Does any one know some reputable ones or have any other advice that may help save some cash? [link] [comments]  |
| Any tips of what one should know or prepare before selling an item that uses electricity? Posted: 10 Dec 2018 10:06 AM PST I have been working on a project that I plan to eventually sell, first in small amounts(If I'm lucky, 10 of them in two weeks), then with enough of a profit, scale it little by little. The item itself does use electricity, is there anything I should have to sell an item like this? A license, some sort of insurance, or include some disclaimer that they need to agree to before buying this item that it's at their own risk? To be clear, its a safe product, I've been running mine for several months now with now issues, no moving parts, its an item put together using tested components, but one can't rule out the possibility of something going wrong. What do you guys recommend? Any help is appreciated. Thank you [link] [comments]  |
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