Thank you Thursday! - (January 31, 2019) Entrepreneur |
- Thank you Thursday! - (January 31, 2019)
- Think local
- Social Media Marketing basic guide (No fluff in here)
- I sell wholesale on Amazon and struggled to find products so I built a web scraper to help me find potentials leads. Guide and code shared inside.
- Shut Up
- Here's an easy, lucrative idea for anyone who wants it
- The US government updated their Small Business Administration website. It has a ton of information for entrepreneurs at any stage!
- Hobby to Business, what steps should I take? Website,Business Registration, Shopify ect.
- Any gamers in here to give me some feedback on this idea?
- I'm homeless and want to have a US-based LLC. How can I do it?
- Gifts for entrepreneur
- How do tech companies survive past the ~$250K seed round?
- When Vines creator sold the app to Twitter, why would Twitter have paid 30M for it instead of just making a similar app?
- Need help selecting virtual phone system
- Marketing Ideas for Ground Hog Day
- What Do You Consider The Hardest Part Of Starting A New Ecommerce Or Dropshipping Business?
- Where to find a freelancer for Amazon?
- Need help finding a manufacturer for simple toilet-paper based product!
- I need feedback on this "curated news" idea
- Taking it serious
- Should I Use an Online Bookkeeping Service like Bench, Zipbooks, Pilot?
- Looking for places to sell online.
- App retention/feedback
- Business Idea Feedback
- Best non-Wordpress opt-in software for popups, etc.?
| Thank you Thursday! - (January 31, 2019) Posted: 31 Jan 2019 05:05 AM PST Your opportunity to thank the /r/Entrepreneur community by offering free stuff, contests, discounts, electronic courses, ebooks and the best deals you know of. Please consolidate such offers here! Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Jan 2019 05:07 AM PST Too many entrepreneurs try to get in front of millions with the goal of making millions. Don't be afraid to narrow your focus. Start local and start small. Specialize and exploit your strengths. You only need a handful of true fans to get some momentum and build a healthy business. Start out as a lifestyle business. Then take the next opportunity and the next and the next. The most successful business people I know started out small doing something common uncommonly well. If you would care to learn more follow along at The Sweaty Startup podcast. [link] [comments]  |
| Social Media Marketing basic guide (No fluff in here) Posted: 31 Jan 2019 09:35 AM PST I am so tired of people trying to scam, or sell some bullshit program on this subreddit, I am going to make a post on the basics of social media marketing. I will put solid content, not the fluff piece of shit most people recommend to read here. Yes looking at you seth godin. The post will be in broken english, as It is not my native language. Content: 1-The essentials. 2-Why most people are doing it all wrong. 3-What no one speak of: Industry best practices. 4-Why most people can't sell shit. 1- The essentials: Well, I am going to focus on the essentials first. The basic stuff. The building blocks of any social media marketing strategy. WHY? Because it is the most important, if you fail here, everything else is going to fail. We are going to analyze the substrate of Instagram's users behavior, but it really can be applied to any other social network. First of all there is one principle you have to understand. People will follow you on social media only and only if they can get some value from that. They have to benefit from it. People won't follow insta accounts to see fucking ads. I have seen a good number of accounts that are basically ads. Justin won't follow you, or be interested in your business if you only upload pictures of the shit you are selling. You need to bring value to the table (I mean it is instagram so the bar is pretty dam low). I am bringing value with this posts (pls hire me I need to eat. - It is a joke don't delete the post-). Second Principle: You have to interact with people. You need to reach out. The no-scalable-shit is what matters in the beginning, YOU ALL WANNABE ENTREPRENEURS are doing it all fucking wrong if you are not doing this. Most people want to put 300 USD in ADs make 500 USD as a profit, scale the shit out of that and be rich by the end of the year. Well, not gonna happen, at least with low entry markets. You need to talk to people, follow them, make no spammy comments, send DMs complimenting them. Those are 300-400 possible customers a day, every day, that's 10k a month, and 120k possible customers a year. YES IF YOU ARE COCA COLA you can skip this part, but if you are just starting this is the cheapest advertising you will ever get. Third principle: Your business will need time. I am tired of seeing bullshit posts trying to sell crappy courses to people. "I am a 18 years old, partially blind, from west Angola and I made 2 millions usd in 3 weeks powerwashing churches on the weekend. Buy my course xdxd". Real businesses take time, and effort, and overcoming all the obstacles that will come in the way. Yes I also made a good amount of money with the spinners craze 2 years a go, guess how many spinners I am selling today? 2-Why most people are doing it all wrong. Content is king is what most people say. Wrong. With the new algorithm of instagram what matter is quality. If you upload shitty photos/videos/stories they get buried pretty damn fast. Instagram looks at the amount of people who just saw your post and how many engaged. Shitty post? It gets buried and nobody is gonna ever see it again. Shitty post? They stop showing it to people. What's worse is that if you keep posting shitty content they start showing your content less and less. It is preferable to post 4 times a month, super quality post than 15 shitty posts. That's why it is also a Super bad idea to buy fake followers. Unless you have a really good reason, don't do it. If you do, also buy fake engagement. It is way better to have 1200 followers and an average of 200 likes per post, than 5k followers and 120 likes. 3-What no one speak of: Industry best practices. -Influencers: Right now hiring influencers is the new "hot thing to do". Well... Not anymore. The market is saturated. Most influencers have fake followers, Fake engagement and shitty content. Most of them have 4 ADs posts for every real post. Aniway.. Hiring influencers can still be a good idea. Forget any influencer with more than 20k followers. It is cheaper, and most of the time you will get WAY MORE SALES, with ten 10k accounts, than with one 100k. Why? Most of the time the smaller accounts have a stronger relationship with their followers than the bigger accounts. Bigger accounts most of the time are also spamming the shit out of their followers... It is also better to get influencers who are influencers because of something outside instagram. Ie : Amateur athlete, Podcast hosts, Artist,etc than an influencer who only shows her ass. The formers will outsell the hot chick 99% of the time. -ADs. Marketing gurus (Or Wizards, Ninjas, Warlords, or wharever name is cool now) are going to say a lot of shit most of you already know. It is common sense. . You know the drill. Impactful copy. A/B Testing. Call to action. Target demographic. Great Picture etc. There is a lot of written about direct sales. There are amazing books from the 20th century about direct sales copy that still works great today, you can read from them instead of fluff books. I am gonna introduce you, to a new pattern of ADs. The, "Try to get people to know you before you sell them your crappy products you just brought from China method" Why? Well most of the time, people are not so sure about buying what you are selling. With direct sales ADs, you are mostly targeting people who wants to buy your product RIGHT NOW. Make an ad not trying to sell anything. Yes you heard right. Make a post bringing value in any form. Important content. Cool video. Give Away. Whatever you can think of. Once you have a good amount of followers with great engagement, you can try to make them convert with call to action stories. 4-Why most people can't sell shit. Most people can't sell shit because they haven't thought their social strategy from the bottom up. Most people follow what pieces of shit gurus says to the letter. Businesses are different guys. You cannot do the same strategy for a B2B company who sells 2k USD and expect to work on your socks company. There are certain products that work best with Influencers and some other works better with ADs, you have to test and most importantly, you have to think. IE: Super cute coffe mug with stylish design is gonna sell way better with a cute chick influencer than a Vegan Matress. Most important You have to create a story and sell it. Give meaning to your product. I love the marketing behind BulletProof coffee. I mean, It is coffee with butter... Shitty product. Yet, their strategy was on point. They hired a bunch of productivity and motivational influencers, fabricated a bullshit Himalaya story, and made a 10/10 execution. Now they are swimming in money. Hope it helped! If you have any question just shoot! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Jan 2019 05:24 AM PST I've been selling on Amazon for about 4-5 years. I struggled finding products for private label and had success with only one or two in the beginning but the sales there began to slow. I started to focus more on contacting brands and representing them with wholesale accounts. Finding products for this was a bit easier but it was a lot more work just reaching out to the company themselves. I'm a software engineer and so was able, at least, to automate the process of finding potential products by using a web scraper. Code here - https://github.com/aarmora/jordan-scrapes-amazon-for-products-to-sell I wrote up a guide on how to set it up - https://javascriptwebscrapingguy.com/jordan-mass-scrapes-amazon-for-potential-products-part-1-of-2/ https://javascriptwebscrapingguy.com/jordan-mass-scrapes-amazon-for-potential-products-part-2-of-2/ I select the products based on the following criteria: at least 3 vendors, buybox isn't held by Amazon, and the price is greater than $25. Honestly, I think it would be fairly tricky to set up for someone who isn't comfortable coding. I tried to break it down as much as possible but there are still some complicated things for someone who doesn't code regularly. Happy to answer questions though if anyone is interested in setting it up themselves. Full disclosure, it definitely goes against Amazon's TOS. I found their API was very cumbersome, slow, and didn't give the same results I was finding when just searching manually. I run my scraper on a webserver where I rotate the IP address if/when it's blocked. I do try to go easy on Amazon and not hit it too hard or fast. I don't expect Amazon to be able to trace it to my account and ban me but I have accepted that possibility. I also have an automatic emailer set up that emails me once a week with between 10-30 products. It kind of helps me to keep calling new brands periodically. It's free for anyone else that wants to sign up for it here - https://javascriptwebscrapingguy.com/get-potential-amazon-products. I posted more primitive version of this code to r/FulfillmentByAmazon and a couple people asked why I was sharing it. A big reason is I'm focusing more on my engineering career than on Amazon right now and it's cool to see people use stuff I've built. I also do sell the entire list of leads if anyone is interested in purchasing them. At this point I have such a big list (17k+) of leads that I can't realistically contact them all at my rate of calling like 5-7 people a week, so I don't mind if others can get some use out of the list. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Jan 2019 08:11 AM PST Before I begin, here's a little background info:
Anyway, on to the story. So a customer interested in buying a 2010 model hit me up on facebook. We negotiated, and I eventually relented to selling it for $120. Fine, no real loss to me I suppose. I should also mention that I'm half asleep when he gets here. And when I'm tired, I turn into a complete retard. I don't think before I speak, I talk like friggin radio, my speech is slurred, & I get tongue tied like crazy. So he's here, checking out the merchandise, doing some tests to make sure it's gonna do what he needs it to do. All the while, I'm struggling to stay awake cuz I played Smash Bros all night (I know, I'm an irresponsible man child lol). In my stupor, I eventually start bragging about how my buddy got these macbooks out of the dumpster & how I've made over $1000 this week. Suddenly, this customer who drove for over an hour just to get here gets an alarmed look. "Free? Out of the dumpster, you say?" I can see in his eyes. Damn, I just fucked up. He starts trying to low ball me, offering $60 and talking about how he doesn't trust the product cuz it's been in the dumpster. I stand by the agreed upon $120, and assure him that everything but the screen is "new" (actually being somewhat honest. The motherboard was pulled from a donor laptop with a shattered screen, and the battery was factory sealed when I got it.) But no dice. He won't budge on the $60, even telling me to keep the charger (which cost me $75) The lessons to be learned here:
[link] [comments]  |
| Here's an easy, lucrative idea for anyone who wants it Posted: 31 Jan 2019 11:20 AM PST This hasn't been tested that I know of, but honestly, I don't see why it wouldn't turn a profit after two weeks if you're outside selling every day. This is also a super cheap business to start. Idea: Door-to-door secure delivery box sales. Problem: Everyone on Reddit and local Facebook groups is complaining about package thieves, but no one makes an effort to stop them. What you need:
Anyway, it's pretty simple after that. Go door-to-door, ask if their packages have been stolen before, etc. Show them this box with a lock and a slot, let them know you can deliver and install it in 2 weeks, then take a 25% deposit. This deposit is important to help secure a purchase order loan, and it also helps make the contract binding. Depending on your local door-to-door sales laws, you may need a different approach, but that's up to you. Do sales for maybe a week then at the end of the week, sign up for a PO loan. get the loan, order all your boxes, and wait for arrival. After that, move the furniture out of your living room to make space, call your customers, and start delivering them one by one. Track which neighbours didn't answer the door and when you go back to deliver, try to knock on their door again as well. If you take the deposits and can't get a PO loan, refund the deposit, close the business and move on. You're a new comapny and customers don't know you so who cares. You could run this business for 2 weeks or 2 years, it's totally up to you and it's pretty easy. Feel free to roast the idea, I'm working on my own thing anyway so I don't plan on doing this. Just thought of it in this morning's shower. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Jan 2019 08:51 AM PST |
| Hobby to Business, what steps should I take? Website,Business Registration, Shopify ect. Posted: 31 Jan 2019 10:25 AM PST I am located in Wisconsin and would like to "Mark my territory". I have a business name in mind, available domain and need to know what I should do. Do I just need to register the business as a sole proprietorship or LLC in my state and I'm good to go? What steps should be taken assuming I have nothing as of now. [link] [comments]  |
| Any gamers in here to give me some feedback on this idea? Posted: 31 Jan 2019 10:10 AM PST Esports is taking over as one of the biggest platforms currently. Gamers try to make money in contests and by streaming which is mostly a popularity contest. What if there was a company where you could submit your 'best play' for a $1 in a chance to win the jackpot. You could be a casual gamer and still take the low cost gamble to win some extra cash. The site would consist of handful of the most popular games currently and each week the winner would be chosen by members of the site themselves. Membership to the site would be free where you could vote each week but if you wanted to submit it is simply a low few. Something like $1. The company team would view all submissions and compile a list of what they felt were the 10 best plays of the week for that game and you as a member vote. Whoever has the best play wins the prize pool for that game, that week. So if the game you entered in had 500 applicants, at $1 a piece, you would win the $500 jackpot minus whatever the company holding fee is. This is where profit would come from. It would be a flat rate used on each game, each week. Think of it like daily fantasy spots, draftkings or fan duel if you're familiar with them. This is an idea that popped into my head last night. I'm just curious as to what ideas or issues you could see running into? [link] [comments]  |
| I'm homeless and want to have a US-based LLC. How can I do it? Posted: 31 Jan 2019 01:39 PM PST I'm not really homeless, but I want to be. Let me explain: I live in Chicago, where I run an ecommerce company and work a day job. My ecommerce product is fulfilled via a third-party fulfillment center in Texas. In an attempt to streamline everything, I'm filing an LLC in Texas. I plan to quit my job and get out of Illinois (and besides, it's not a pro-business place). I got a registered agent in Texas. I also got a PO Box address (it's actually one of those services that scans your mail). I don't need a place to live as I will be traveling overseas for a while. However, it still seems that I need a "primary place of business." Even my merchant processor needs them (they actually asked for a utility bill or copy of lease). Since my fulfillment center is a third party operation, they're not really my primary place of business. Do I need to rent a space just for this purpose? What would my cheapest option be? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Jan 2019 11:15 AM PST Hope this is ok to post here -- My sister is starting her own event planning business, and I'm trying to get her birthday gift that's related to this new venture. If you could get a entrepreneur care package from someone, what would you want in it? [link] [comments]  |
| How do tech companies survive past the ~$250K seed round? Posted: 31 Jan 2019 08:10 AM PST Hi guys, Looking for some experience / perspective. How exactly do early stage tech companies that raise a seed round of anywhere from $200K-500K support the dev and co-founder costs which even for a small team of 2 full-time devs, might barely last a year? I'm assuming there may be 2-3 co-founders, at least one technical co-founder, taking mostly equity and paying themselves just enough to get by, let's say $40K. That's around $80-$120K. Then one full time dev at let's say 90-100K base with decent equity still costs the company $150K if you include things like health insurance and other benefits. That's already over 230-260K a year. Given that tech solutions may take a few years to get off the ground or that initial paying customers may generate <$1000 annually, how do companies sustain themselves past the seed round stage? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Jan 2019 10:58 PM PST I was just thinking about it and it got me wondering, since the social media giants just seem to copy ideas from the other ones. If I were to sell my company to another, what stops the other from just taking the idea? [link] [comments]  |
| Need help selecting virtual phone system Posted: 31 Jan 2019 01:48 PM PST Any recommendations for a virtual phone system thats affordable? Ring central is expensive All i need is call attendant and call transfer feature [link] [comments]  |
| Marketing Ideas for Ground Hog Day Posted: 31 Jan 2019 01:42 PM PST Hi there! Any marketing ideas to bring attention to your business on Ground Hog Day? [link] [comments]  |
| What Do You Consider The Hardest Part Of Starting A New Ecommerce Or Dropshipping Business? Posted: 31 Jan 2019 01:27 PM PST Which step do you consider the most challenging when starting a new store?
Also... Give a little background. What part of it do you have so much trouble with? [link] [comments]  |
| Where to find a freelancer for Amazon? Posted: 31 Jan 2019 01:17 PM PST Hi, I'm making handmade snapback and 5 panel hats for a while now and the sales on Etsy and website are decent, however my Amazon store has dropped rapidly and at the start it was promising. As it's quite difficult to manage everything (creating product, managing social media and optimising channels) I'm starting to think about hiring a freelancer for Amazon, someone who could overwatch and optimise the channel. However the problem is that it's difficult to find one - fiverr offers mostly one jobs freelancers, while a simple we search mostly ends with agencies. Do you have an experience where to better find freelancer for this purpose? Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Need help finding a manufacturer for simple toilet-paper based product! Posted: 31 Jan 2019 09:30 AM PST Hi all, I'm working on a product that's pretty simple and a fundamental aspect of it is about 8x8 sq in, square sheet of toilet paper- think 2 sheets of toilet paper wide and 2 sheets long, but in a singular sheet. I'm having trouble finding any paper companies who can make this for me. Either they're unable, or I just don't get any responses. What do? [link] [comments]  |
| I need feedback on this "curated news" idea Posted: 31 Jan 2019 12:45 PM PST I don't like having the feeling that I'm missing out on novelties from the subjects in which I am very interested. But I just don't have the time to absorb even half of it. With the current overflow of information, I'm looking for a great solution or most likely make my own. A service that will keep me updated very quickly in a frequency of my choosing (let's say once a day or twice a week). "News for busy people", essentially. Here's what it'll look like: you pick between 1 to 3 of your favorite subjects (technology in general, science, business, programming, politics, etc.). Disciplines on which your work or main hobby/interest depend. Now two things happen to prepare my "latest-knowledge pill":
To sum up, you'll get the top news on your preferred subjects synthesized to no more than a tweet's length. It'll take 10 seconds to scour through everything you would have missed otherwise. Furthermore, you can easily see if there's anything worth investing your time to dig deeper (the news source would be one click away) What do you think? The delivery method is still undecided: I think this would work great through e-mail but for some reason, it "feels wrong". I think I like more the idea of having a small app dormant in your OS's taskbar and every X days show a little alert that you click and it drops down (or up) with the 10-20 "pills" that you can scan in a few seconds. I've been trying to find the closest competitor but no luck. Do you guys know of anything like this? What do you think of all this? Please criticize everything and share any feedback. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Jan 2019 12:39 PM PST Long time lurker. I'm finally launching my web development company. I need clients to get the ball rolling and where else could I find clients other than the dragon's lair itself, r/Entreprenuer. It's not free and I have a portfolio but I can't publicly say who I've made sites for. If you're interested in taking a shot and have me develop a site for you pm me. Thanks! ~Justin [link] [comments]  |
| Should I Use an Online Bookkeeping Service like Bench, Zipbooks, Pilot? Posted: 31 Jan 2019 12:15 PM PST I have a small biz that just consists of me and freelancers I use throughout the year. I really dislike anything to do with finances and taxes. For the past few years I've been doing the finances myself through various means like Turbotax, Freshbooks, Excel spreadsheets etc. It just isn't my strength. So I am now considering using a bookkeeper, NOT just the bookkeeping software but an actual bookkeeper human who uses bookkeeping software. I've found various online bookkeeping companies that offer bookkeeping services (in addition to their bookkeeping software) - Bench, Zipbooks, Pilot. It's like around $175/month. Should I use them? Or would you recommend I just get Quickbooks and work with a local bookkeeper? I guess the benefit of using them as opposed to a local bookkeeper is I wouldn't have to pay for Quickbooks and my local bookkeeper. Those online services have their own proprietary accounting software which is included in the monthly price. Also it is a bit cheaper online as opposed to local. [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for places to sell online. Posted: 31 Jan 2019 10:58 AM PST Hey guys! You have always been good to me, so I am looking for some advice on some online platforms that might make sense for me to sell on. The niche is low quantity floor/wall tile. Things like travertine pencils, glass sheets for backsplashes, decorative accent tiles and things like that. I have experience in this exact industry as I worked for an online tile company for 3 years packing, shipping, and handling customer support. Now my wife and I have our own company and looking to get into the same niche (different products, but same home improvement niche) as my old employer. They were selling on amazon, houzz, and eBay. All of which I am in the process of researching. However I am wondering if any of you guys know of any other platforms that might do okay with small home improvement products. I am also looking into wayfair. But that's another big one. I'm looking for some of those smaller, less obvious platforms. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Jan 2019 10:50 AM PST Happy Thursday! Would any couples (dating, engaged, married, whatever) be willing to download my app and provide me feedback? I have a ton of feedback already, but I really need to focus on what I need to update next in order to increase customer retention. I would really appreciate your help and I will gladly help you out with your business as well! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Jan 2019 10:49 AM PST Hey everyone, I'm looking to get feedback on a business Idea I'm thinking of pursuing. The idea was born out of a personal need. Many first time entrepreneurs get overwhelmed with tasks and steps to take to start their venture. Incubators/accelerators are not an option for beginners, and attending meetups in a loud bar, surrounded by strangers whose intentions may not be aligned with yours can be quite discouraging in my experience. What do you think of a concept/website similar to "Leanin.org" for entrepreneurs? There would be little to no entry barriers, and small groups (on various advancement levels) can periodically get together for a brainstorming session. There would obviously be a lot more structure/details to this idea, but I'm curious as to whether some of you would potentially use this service. I appreciate your help, and look forward to your feedback. [link] [comments]  |
| Best non-Wordpress opt-in software for popups, etc.? Posted: 31 Jan 2019 08:38 AM PST Hi everybody, I'm looking for software options (like OptinMonster) for opt-ins, exit intent, popups, ribbons, etc. It's for non-Wordpress sites, so I need it to be a javascript-based (or HTML I guess) setup, not a plugin. I found OptiMonk, but the reviews don't seem promising. Also, I know about Sumo, but I'm not e-commerce. I have a membership site that I'm trying to use this for. Any ideas are hugely helpful! [link] [comments]  |
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