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    Marketplace Tuesday! (February 26, 2019) Entrepreneur

    February 26, 2019

    Marketplace Tuesday! (February 26, 2019) Entrepreneur

    Marketplace Tuesday! (February 26, 2019)

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 05:10 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.

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    $14k/month with unlimited copywriting service.

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 09:15 AM PST

    Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.

    Today's interview is with Dani Mancini of Scribly.io, a business that offers an unlimited copywriting service.

    Some stats:

    • Product: Unlimited copywriting service.
    • Revenue/mo: $14,000
    • Started: August 2018
    • Location: Copenhagen
    • Founders: 1
    • Employees: 1

    Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?

    Hi! My name's Dani, founder of Scribly.io - you can't see me but I'm waving at you 👋

    TL;DR; after a few months of freelancing, I decided to launch a productized copywriting service: Scribly.io.

    We deliver subscription-based copywriting to help businesses scale, at roughly 50% of the cost of hiring in-house.

    I like to think of Scribly as a growth tool, rather than a service. Or perhaps a better way of saying it is that we're a tool that just happens to offer a service.

    Our core priority is to support companies (usually small ones) with the quick, iterative, fast-paced copy they need to run growth experiments. For example, just like you'd rely on a tool like Unbounce to technically support a landing page, we think of Scribly as a tool to support production.

    Startups and small businesses need copy - quickly and reliably - to run iterative and fast-paced growth experiments. They don't have the time to source and manage freelancers, nor the finances to hire them in-house.

    That's where we come in.

    We take all the time and stress out of hiring amazing writers and editing their outputs. Ultimately this frees teams up to focus on developing amazing products, and makes sure that the copy for every growth experiment is optimised for success.

    All of our writers are native English speakers, and we do everything from blog posts, to ad, social media and landing page copy. So whether you want to get your content machine off the ground or launch a new service, we pitch in and help you nail it.

    Last month Scribly.io topped $14K monthly revenue. That was a really big moment for me, and a bit of a turning point. What started out as a 'let's try and see' project has now become my full-time job with ambitious growth plans 🙌.

    What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

    Ok, this has the potential to be a long one, so maybe grab a cuppa or a coffee ☕.

    I'm a first-time entrepreneur with a fairly eclectic background.

    I studied French and Russian at uni (Oui, Я немного говорю по русски!) and began my career in policy design for the UK government. After 2 years of trying to fit in and failing terribly, I decided to jump ship and retrain as a UX designer.

    Of all the scary career decisions I've made, this was by far the hardest. I was - on paper - on course for a prestigious career on an elite graduate programme. But I felt so boxed in, like I couldn't breathe.

    Over the course of the next 4-ish years, I found myself flitting from job to job, never really feeling settled. I'd made this big jump, and yet I always seemed to come back to the same feeling of restlessness.

    That's when I started to find myself gravitating towards the thing I really love to do: write.

    I began picking up odd freelance copywriting jobs here and there that I would do in my spare time. As time went by, I found myself rushing home from my "real" job so that I could get on with the fun stuff: my copy gigs.

    One Saturday night as I found myself working happily into the early hours on a freelance project, I realized that I wanted to make this my permanent thing.

    And so I did.

    With just a few hundred dollars worth of projects lined up, I quit my job in April 2018 and took a giant leap into the unknown.

    I was terrified, but also fired up. I had zero experience of anything to do with being self-employed, I had literally never sent a manual invoice the day that I quit my job. I don't even think I had a business bank account by that point.

    So I surrounded myself with people who did know things, and got to work.

    What motivated me to do this?

    I've worked both as a freelance copywriter and someone who hires them, and felt increasingly frustrated at

    • how exploitative the market is for freelance writers (they basically have to sell their souls to work for free), and

    • how hard it is to find great writers on an on-demand basis.

    There have been a couple of productised copywriting service launches, but many of them are priced at a point that troubles me.

    A wise person once said, "if it seems too good to be true, it is".

    It's really not possible, no matter how hard you try, to offer high quality unlimited copywriting for <$300/m, whilst also paying your writers a rate they deserve.

    One or the other suffers: quality, or integrity.

    Neither of which feels like a nice compromise.

    After getting caught in analysis paralysis about how to create something different in that space, in the end, I just set myself a 3-day limit to hack together a website, and launch something, anything, and then iterate from there.

    And so, 3 days later, I launched Scribly.io 🚀

    I floated the idea and shared the website with my freelance clients at the time - a lot of whom were startups - and got tons of interest.

    Based on this early validation, a service that could plug that gap seemed in demand.

    That's when I decided to give it a go for reals.

    The importance of going all-in

    There is nothing quite like the crippling fear of not knowing where your next salary is coming from. It's like motivational rocket-fuel.

    Once I took away the security blanket of having secure income, I had no choice but to try and make it work. I think that, without that uncertainty, I would have just coasted.

    Of course I'm not suggesting that everyone should quit their job to focus on a side-gig, but if you're serious about making it work, then I think one of the biggest boosts is actually having the confidence to go all-in for it.

    You not only free up your time and energy to focus, but it's also a big vote of confidence to yourself that - on some level at least - you think it can work.

    Take us through the process of building the product.

    I'm a solo-founder, so building, running and growing Scribly.io has been all on me.

    There's obviously only so much that any one human can do, so from the moment I started developing Scribly.io I was determined to have a 'f*ck it, ship it' mindset. I wanted to test everything really quickly so that I could iterate along the way, and only do what I could afford with the cash flow I had available.

    How long it took to get Scribly.io off the ground

    As I mentioned before, I gave myself 3 days to get the initial website up and running so that I could validate the idea. This was enough to confirm that this was worth pursuing.

    I used Webflow to get a site off the ground within a day, and then launched with a fairly bare-bones product.

    I didn't really know what the pricing model would be or anything at that point, but I decided to just put in front of some of my freelance customers, get feedback, and take it from there.

    At this stage, I was really unsure of how to price the model. There are a couple of really cheap unlimited copy services out there, but I knew I was going to have to price myself higher to be able to offer the quality that I wanted to. I decided to experiment with a low intro rate of $699, but this very quickly transpired to not be a viable long term price. The margins were just so low for high-volume customers. So soon after I decided to up the price to $2000 and to really place a strong value in communication with potential customers that with Scribly, you're getting high quality, professional writing from the best.

    This was a tough call for me: it took more confidence in the product than I think I even had myself to raise the price, but it's been so worthwhile. Since then I can really focus on providing the best possible experience for each and every client, which has helped enormously with retention.

    Funding Scribly.io

    Because it's a service, funding Scribly.io has perhaps been simpler than for a digital product. I have a weekly payment policy with my writers, and receive payments from clients monthly. So the biggest financial consideration is making sure that I have enough cash flow to pay for all my writers before getting paid for the work itself.

    I have only ever re-invested money earned back into the company. I started with the money I'd built up as a freelancer, and now I just work with the cash flow built up through the subscription model.

    This means that I'm limited in terms of how quickly I can grow the number of writers I have, but it works for me. As I mentioned before, it's really important to me that all of Scribly's writers are paid fairly and on-time (I've been on the receiving end of when that's not the case, and it's so not fun), so it's also become a matter of company integrity to scale growth in this way.

    A friend who has built and sold businesses told me that the most important mental shift to make was to stop thinking about myself as a freelancer, and to get a team that I trusted in place to delegate to. So off the bat, I decided to recruit a few copywriting freelancers (it was just 3 writers at the beginning) who'd I met through my career and to really pour time and energy into getting them up to speed with the quality I wanted each and every client to get.

    Making this mental shift from thinking of myself as 'the do-er' was much harder than I expected. I naturally wanted to just jump in on tasks (especially cause I love to write!), but I realized that letting go and learning to trust others was a really important step. I then focused purely on editing, account management and business development, which was a full-time job in itself.

    This was an ideal time to test out the operational processes of running Scribly. I started off trying to have a fancy project management set up with Airtable, but it proved to be more complicated than it needed to be, so I scaled everything right back and moved to Trello. In these early days I definitely had a tendency to want to over-tool, but as I tested things out, I realised that having the simplest possible system was the only way to keep things running smoothly. It's simply too much of an ask to get new writers and clients onboarded to new fancy tools.

    Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

    I would say that Scribly.io fits into two distinct phases:

    1) The Word of Mouth Phase

    2) The Digital Growth Phase

    The Word of Mouth Phase

    I was lucky in that I was already working as a freelancer and had a really healthy client base. These were the first people that I reached out to.

    I contacted each of my existing clients with an early-bird offer. In hindsight, I could have done it so much better. I didn't have a landing page or anything to track visits or clicks. I simply sent a personal email with a discounted early-bird price of $999 for the first month.

    Despite that, within the first 2 months, I'd converted 7 of my freelance clients over to the Scribly.io model, which was a good start. The issue was (and still is), that each client wanted something bespoke, so what I'd hoped would be a simple billing model actually ended up just being more like custom retainers for each business converted.

    All of the clients converted during this phase knew me and my work. I already had a great relationship with them, and so the challenge was just to convince them that nothing would change in terms of quality when I handed over writing responsibility to other writers. I simply ran a trial task for free to prove this to clients, and then the rest was smooth sailing from there.

    Since that initial launch, things grew through manual outreach and word of mouth. Happy customers have put us in touch with other people they know, and things snowballed from there.

    I have now set up a rewards-based referral scheme, which offers existing clients $50 credit for every referral that becomes a paid project, but actually, in the early months, most clients were just happy to do this for free.

    Because of this, great client experience and customer retention is a core focus of the business. I would rather say no to new business if I have any doubt that it will negatively impact the experience of my current clients.

    The Digital Growth Phase

    Since those early days, I'm now focused on a proper growth plan that consists of the following:

    Content Marketing/SEO

    I feel very strongly that, as a content company, I need to have a sh**t hot content section of the side. Organic traffic is definitely where I want to focus my marketing investment, so I'm in the process of building out the blog section of the Scribly site into a Knowledge Hub, offering copywriting and content marketing lessons.

    I've just started publishing twice weekly, and have now decided to use LinkedIn and Twitter as my primary distribution channel for the time being. I'm in the process of getting a full SEO analysis done to get my opportunity areas nailed.

    Right now we rank 3rd for "unlimited copywriting", but it's not a high volume search. As with all things SEO, it's a slow process and I only started a few weeks ago. Traffic to the blog is picking up steadily, it grew by 11.9% last month. Hopefully, I'll start to see some meaningful gains over the coming months.

    Intro offer popup

    I added a widget that offers new visitors $100 off their first project (I used a tool called Magnify). This has been really successful so far. I went from getting 1 new direct lead a week to 6 in the first day.

    Listing on startup directories

    I spent an afternoon adding Scribly to all of the startup directories I could find. By far the most worthwhile has been listing on Get Worm. Within literally 10 minutes of my listing going live, I received 5 leads!

    The list of directories I put Scribly on are:

    Partnerships, Referrals & Targeted landing pages

    I wanted to run some special intro offers for various customer segments, so I created targeted landing pages for each segment and then adjusted the copy to be hyper-specific to that niche.

    For example, I have a startup landing page, an agency landing page, and a more generic referrals landing page for contacts of my existing clients. My biggest failure here is relying on Webflow for my landing pages, which makes it impossible to A/B test. I'll be moving to a tool like Unbounce soon to improve on this process.

    Engaging in online forums

    By far my biggest spike in traffic came when one of my discussions was featured in the Indie Hackers newsletter. Traffic to the site shot up on that day and it generated 1 paid project and 2 new writers.

    Gated content

    I have just launched some gated content on the site. Now on every page of the Knowledge Hub there is a CTA to access a free content marketing calendar. It's a pretty tedious process to integrate gated content into Webflow, so the solution isn't as sharp as I'd like it to be.

    To avoid spending loads of time finding a technical solution, I simply set up a Zapier integration so that emails collected in that particular form go into a specific segment in MailChimp, and then I configured an automated drip campaign in MailChimp to trigger as soon as an email address is submitted. I did this mostly to test the process of having gated content as a lead-gen mechanism.

    I probably spend about 2 days in total creating everything for this and learned LOADS, but it's only generated 2 leads so far which is a bit of a fail. Will now be working with the same content on specific SEO optimised landing pages to drive more traffic and see how it then converts.

    Posting in Slack channels

    I'm a member of a number of slack channels for marketers/ founders. I've posted intermittent offers in these channels, which has drummed up some interest but not really led anywhere. I'll be stopping this kind of activity and focusing on more tailored outreach in the future.

    Black Friday FAIL!

    Yikes- what a fail. At the eleventh hour I decided that I should probably run a Black Friday offer, and then spent a frantic few hours into the late hours getting some visuals ready. It was off-brand, ill-thought through and just generally a total flop. I posted it on LinkedIn and sent it to my entire email list.

    It was a big learning to myself not to hastily rush into anything if it's not been planned/thought through. I got zero leads, and probably actually hurt the brand a little.

    How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

    Scribly's business model

    The idea is fairly simple. Depending on a client's needs, we can either work on a on-off project on demand, or you can sign up to one of the subscription packages which are as follows:

    • $2000 for unlimited content marketing

    • $3500 for unlimited copywriting of any kind (ads, e-books, landing pages etc)

    As we only work on one project in a client's backlog at a time, typically they will get around 15 completed projects per month. We also have custom packages for clients with bespoke needs (this applies mostly to agencies with extremely high volume meeds).

    The multi-currency challenge

    One of the biggest issues I face is that I pay and get paid in multiple currencies.

    • I pay writers in either USD or British pounds

    • I get paid in either USD, Euros, British pounds, or Danish Kroner

    It's a total nightmare as every step of the way I lose money to crappy conversion rates from either my bank or the payment provider (I use a combination of Transferwise borderless accounts, Paypal and - as of this month - Stripe)

    This is likely to be a continuous challenge for me, and makes it really difficult to predict exactly how much I'll earn each month.

    The current financial picture

    Right now the business turns over $14K/m.

    My growth has been as follows:

    My target has been to aim for 15% MOM growth. I don't have any overheads and my biggest ongoing monthly expense is for the amazing writing team I work with.

    Product goals

    As far as the product goes, this year I'd like to begin building Scribly out to move beyond just being a service-based company, and also include digital tools that customers can license out.

    For example, some types of copywriting follow formulaic patterns (especially for things like landing pages), and I'm fairly confident that this can be somewhat productised through machine learning. It's an ambitious project to do alongside the day-to-day running of Scribly as it stands today, but I think it'd be a lot of fun to explore!

    Revenue goals

    My MOM growth target is 15%, which means a projected December 2019 revenue of over $65K. That's a crazy target and almost 100% likely to not happen, but shoot for the moon and all that!

    Roadblocks

    Everything planned is totally limited by my time. That's why this year I'd like to bring someone on board full-time to help run Scribly.

    Right now I'm doing everything: operational tasks, marketing, editing articles, client-management, new biz etc - it's a lot. So over the next few months as cash flow grows I'd like to bring someone on as Scribly member number 2.

    Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

    Managing time scarcity as a solo-founder

    I have a really bad habit of starting one task, and then getting distracted by another. So in order to keep myself focused, I began using Trello to create a backlog of ideas for the website and growth tactics.

    My boyfriend is a product manager and when I started to feel overwhelmed by the volume of tasks at hand, he helped me to prioritize. This was another pivotal moment for me, as it made me realize that bringing other people into Scribly is essential to its success. Having an objective second opinion to help me make the right decisions - both for myself and the business - has been game-changing.

    Now each month I set a theme, and focus my time only on activities that support that theme. So, for example, this month the theme was 'word of mouth', so I have organized my backlog around the tasks that help me to explore this. That's allowed me to focus growth experiments on referrals and content marketing.

    I think a big learning for me is to accept that there's only so much I can do. I'm not the most patient person in the world, and learning to be ok with a slower pace than I might like has been a challenge for sure.

    Focusing on customer experience has built retention into the product

    One of the things that has really seen me through so far is having such a strong commitment to customer experience.

    I've had the tough task of saying no to new business as I really just didn't feel we could do it justice, either because of we didn't have a writer with the right expertise, or simply because we were at max capacity. At the time this felt a bit nuts, but I think in the long run, this has really helped with customer retention.

    Our customer retention is currently at 86% which is amazing, and I hope to get that as close to the golden 100 as possible.

    Retention one of my key metrics, not for vanity, but because integrity is one of the core values I am building this business around, so I want that always to guide the decisions I make about how things grow.

    Empathetic service/ experience design

    It has also definitely helped that I have experience as both a freelance writer and someone hiring one. It's made me super aware of the challenges, frustrations and moments of magic on both sides of the Scribly coin, and has helped me to create amazing relationships with clients and writers alike.

    For example, I used my own experiences as the basis on which I designed the onboarding for both new writers and clients. I thought about all of the key questions I would have had in their position, and then designed an onboarding process based around that.

    What platform/tools do you use for your business?

    Effectively my role now is to operationally manage the production of dozens of articles a day, so I needed to create a simple but effective suite of tools to help me do this.

    I've really tried to resist the urge to "over-tool". I've stuck to the simplest, cheapest (/free) tools that I can find and only integrated them if it's been absolutely necessary.

    My current tool kit looks like this:

    Webflow- The website is built on Webflow. I purchased a template which allowed me to get a pretty slick site up and running in a matter of hours. Now that I'm trying to develop the site, I'm finding Webflow a bit cumbersome and limiting - but nonetheless, it was perfect to get me started quickly and cheaply!

    Trello - My whole business runs on Trello pretty much. Clients each get their own Trello board which they can update with as many content tasks as they like. Using the built-in Slack integration, I then get notified on Slack as soon as a new card is added, and assign the task to the most suitable writer for the job. I love that I have one single ecosystem where I can manage both writers and clients really seamlessly - and best of all, it's free!

    Slack - Scribly writers are in a bunch of different time zones, and I really, really hate email. So I have created a Scribly slack where I'm not only able to notify them about new projects, but also where they can connect with one another. It can be a pretty lonely business being a freelance writer, and I'd like to nurture a company where all writers feel like they belong to an extended team - no matter where in the world they are.

    Slite - I came across Slite on IH and I'm so glad I did! It's basically google docs designed for collaborative teams, and has a bunch of really great templates to use for things like weekly check-ins, and planning growth experiments, and it integrates seamlessly with Slack. I have a check-in each week with my boyfriend (who's become an unofficial advisor) to plan and prioritize for the week ahead, and Slite has totally transformed how we do it! Loooove this tool.

    What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

    I'm really interested in Behavioural Economics as a field, so books that tackle how to gentle nudge/influence human behavior are probably the highest on my list. Predictably Irrational is one of my faves.

    Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

    My opening gambit about my background was intentionally long. I wanted to give the full view of the jungle-gym style career path I've taken.

    I didn't always move forward. In fact, at many points, I felt that I was taking giant leaps back.

    I wanted to highlight this because I really think it's important to stress that there is no 'type' when it comes to being a hacker. I always felt like I would never be able to run my own business. I couldn't even think of myself as an entrepreneur.

    My background was all wrong. I didn't read the right books or have the right hobbies.

    And yet, here I am less than a year later having transformed my crappy $20/h freelance gigs into a productized copywriting service that I now sell for $2000+/m.

    I'm not saying this to toot my own horn, but to hopefully encourage more people to just give it a go. It took my boyfriend telling me for years that I could do it before I had the courage to try.

    So lemme say it loud and clear:

    you.

    can.

    do.

    it.

    Seriously. You can.

    Find something you love, and then just take a leap of faith. It might go wrong, sure. But chances are it won't.

    Don't be afraid to make mistakes along the way. In fact, aim to. That's how you'll learn what kind of product/company you actually want to build.

    Hopefully, your passion project will become your full-time job, but if it doesn't then I guarantee you will learn more about yourself personally and professionally along the way than you will in a decade of working for someone else.

    Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

    Yes! I'm looking for help with the following things:

    Editorial / Proofreading Support (Paid, part-time, remote)

    Tasks include: Spending around 2 hours per day reading articles and editing the tone/style, as well as proofreading everything to check it's pitch-perfect.

    Social Media Support (Paid, part-time, remote)

    Tasks include: Managing Scribly's Twitter and Linkedin pages on a daily basis and growing the accounts.

    Where can we go to learn more?

    If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!

    Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.

    Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM

    submitted by /u/youngrichntasteless
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    Printed t-shirts - most entrepreneurs first step into the business world

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 06:26 AM PST

    With a super low barrier to entry (both financially and knowledge wise) and the success stories of brands like Hype Clothing & Gymshark to name a few, printed t-shirts/clothing has become a super saturated market. That being said, for many a printed t-shirt brand will be their first step into the entrepreneurial world.

    I personally don't have experience running a successful fashion brand, nor am I particularly fashionable. So I'm certainly not going to sit here like some guru telling anyone what to do or how to succeed; as if there was a full proof plan, I'd be on the bandwagon too! I'm in-fact in the far less glamorous world of world of custom printed and embroidered clothing. So we supply brands, bands, retailers etc with merchandise, uniforms, and of course retail ready products for fashion brands. In my time in the print industry I've seen my fair share of fashion brands come and go, alongside that I've seen a small number really thrive.

    So with that being said, I felt it might be of value sharing some of the characteristics of those that seem to do well.

    1) Niche Demographic - With thousands (if not millions) of brands out there, having a niche or a small community makes the difference. Think Crossfit or the vegan movement, both have highly engaged communities, who are crazy passionate about their cause. These people are then more likely to want to buy, wear, and tell their like minded friends about your clothing. This will help to build a small group of consumers who are going to come back, time and time again. And, as we all know repeat business is generally far more cost effective than new business.

    2) Diverse S.M.A.R.T (google SMART goals) Marketing - Many seem to think all they need is a Twitter page and a website, and the customers will come running. They don't (generally). It's worth expanding your knowledge into PPC, SEO, Content, and the many other mediums out there, finding what works well for you. Those with good diverse marketing seem to do better.

    3) Keep it simple - Don't spend your entire budget on a mad volume of totally bespoke stock (unless you have crazy money). Keep it simple, spend the cash on marketing, so people actually see your products. In this game it's about cutting through the noise, there is lots of great design, but far less great marketing.

    4) Values & storytelling - We spoke about values earlier on. More and more brands, big and small are being called out as a result of poor ethical practices (and rightly so). With an increasingly interconnected world, this is not a stumbling block you want at the start of your journey. Additionally, being ethically sound can't do any harm with a huge proportion of millennials valuing this and retailers looking to stock brands adhering to good practice, see more here - https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahlandrum/2017/03/17/millennials-driving-brands-to-practice-socially-responsible-marketing/#6671727c4990. With that in mind, it's always best to go with products that are ethically sound, this presentation provides a bit of insight into how to ensure your printed t-shirts are ethically sourced - https://www.slideshare.net/AM-Custom-Clothing/ethical-t-shirt-printing-how-to-ensure-your-printed-tshirts-are-ethically-made-1

    This guide should be really handy regardless to where you buy the products from.

    I'm not saying this is the path to success, but if executed well, the above seems to be a good starting point.

    Fingers crossed this helps any of you looking to get into the t-shirt game for your first business!

    If you've got any other tips, and have a successful fashion brand, drop them below in the comments guys!

    submitted by /u/alexfranklin365
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    Need a book to read about managing a retail shop.

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 06:12 AM PST

    To keep it brief: b/me I'm new owner of a small town touristy shop. We sell sweets. I need a book to read that will help me figure out how to: Improve store layout Increase average purchase price Show me what metrics I should be collecting Other general retail mumbo-jumbo

    Is there a GOOD book on this? Or another dependable, non-BS blog that I can read? I basically want Marcus Lemonis in a friggin book. Please tell me the free-market has fulfilled this void. All I can find is bloody "book retail store" smh

    Thanks and have a great Tuesday.

    submitted by /u/FreedomByDiscipline
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    Is my product value communicated well enough?

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 07:52 AM PST

    Hi there entrepreneurs,

    I'm working on a tool which is supposed to be for remote and distributed teams. In order to gather feedback regarding its usefulness I made a landing page where I explain the product. I highly appreciate if you could give me feedback about how well the landing page communicates what the product accomplishes and if you find it useful.

    Here is the link to the landing page: https://konceptflow.com

    ​

    Many thanks!

    submitted by /u/alinrauta
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    Could you pass a personal finance Stress Test? (fintest.co)

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 07:31 AM PST

    Hi all! I've been working for 5 years in banking, concretely, with the supervisory stress tests of banks conducted by the Federal Reserve and the BCE (in Europe).

    A bank stress test is an analysis conducted under hypothetical unfavorable economic scenarios, such as a deep recession or financial crisis, designed to determine whether a bank has enough capital to withstand the impact of adverse economic developments.

    I was wondering why not to apply this process to the personal finance and I made Fintest (just a MVP). This is my first ever entrepreneurial venture, I'm really nervous but I decided to start small.

    Fintest takes a holistic view of your finances to make sure you're not only financially stable but able to handle almost anything thrown your way. With this in mind, I've created a model which starting from macroeconomic scenarios and risk events (parameterizable), stress your money and push you into crash mode, and then, it will help you cope or recover from that.

    I'm trying to fill this spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1trnSlygwvvPW739b_CJZS65mxoQMvseeuLr1m4WmnL4/edit?usp=sharing) to know what other common situations could cause money stress in a ordinary person and what factors I should consider in my model to give a final score. Please, help me build the definitive list of risk factors or other ideas related to this.

    I'm not concerned about how to monetize this yet, first I want to check if it can be interesting but I have some ideas:

    Option 1:

    • Individuals plan: Saas Model. Free, standard and premium.
    • Company plan: Saas Model. Free, standard and premium. (Not available initially).

    Option 2:

    • Free test with a rating and main conclusions of your finance in stress.
    • If you want to a detailed analysis go premium, just XX $ a year, two tests a year or it there is important changes in the economy. Newsletter monthly with financial advices.

    Create your own scenarios and risks events.

    Option 3:

    • Totally free and get commissions for affiliation marketing. (Finance programs, online banks, etc)

    Any other ideas? Any advice is highly appreciated.

    Thank so much!

    Daniel

    submitted by /u/danonino80
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    How to know your business is successful enough to quit your office job?

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 08:50 AM PST

    I am starting a niche consulting business, and plan to build it up on the weekends while I'm still at my full time job M-F.

    I won't get too into the details, but I can't start the business until 6 months from now because we are moving states, and I plan on keeping my job until I'm fully vested mid next year so I can reap retirement benefits. So with those constraints, I will have time to do research, gain qualifications, and build my business model slowly.

    But how do I determine when it's the right time to quit my job to pursue my business full time? I am ok with taking a pay cut- I make $63k but don't love my job, my SO also makes $60k, and we have no debt and live well within our means. My business will have little startup and operating costs, besides certifications and car usage.

    Should I set goals for this, like I must earn $X per month or have X clients per month before dedicating all of my time to it and quitting my job? Or is it more a feeling of "I'm having to refuse clients and can't improve because my job is getting in the way"? Not sure where to start.

    submitted by /u/LuckyPuppy123
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    What is the best "Art of War" strategy advice you can offer to protect your business and gain positional advantage in niche markets?

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 05:56 AM PST

    I'm mainly concerned with protecting my interests, though I understand that realistically, sometimes defense is offense.

    submitted by /u/DarkGreenWhiteboy
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    3 metrics you can optimise to increase your online sales

    Posted: 25 Feb 2019 11:53 PM PST

    I'm a digital marketer who specialises primarily in PPC, SEO & CRO. A question I get asked often by business owners who are wanting to increase their sales is

    "What metrics should I be tracking & optimising to increase sales?"

    Now besides the obvious metrics like conversions, cost / conversion, conversion rates & cart abandonment, here are a couple more metrics you should be tracking.

    It's also not just about tracking them, when you identify a metric that isn't performing well, you always need to ask yourself what you need to do to fix it. Data is important, but knowing what to do with that data is a completely different story.

    ​

    Here are the 3 metrics you need to be paying attention to.

    ​

    1. Revenue per visitor

    What is it?

    This is simply how much revenue each unique visitor generates on average.

    ​

    Why should I care?

    Let's say you are currently generating revenue through organic traffic and Google Ads traffic. Your average revenue per visitor for organic traffic is $5, your average revenue per visitor for Google Ads traffic is $4.50.

    Now you want to start running ads on Facebook. You run the FB ads for 3 months and you discover that the average revenue per visitor for FB traffic is only $1.50.

    ​

    What are you suppose to do about it?

    Well you've got two options in that situation.

    First, you just abandon FB ads as your time is better spent increasing organic traffic, and your budget is better spent with Google Ads.

    Or, you could put heavy focus into FB ads and figure out exactly how you can bring the average revenue per visitor up. Maybe you need to create a more targeted audience, maybe you need to qualify users more.

    ​

    ​

    2. Average order value

    What is it?

    This is the average value of each transaction made on your website.

    ​

    Why should I care?

    You're running a clothing website. When people buy your black track pants, you are up-selling your black hoodie to go with it.

    You decide you're now going to up-sell your white hoodie with the black track pants because you think users may want variation in color.

    You find that 1 month after you made this change, average order value has dropped from $60 to $45 because now less people are buying a hoodie with their track pants.

    ​

    What are you suppose to do about it?

    Change the up-sell back to the black hoodie. If average order value increases back to $60, then you can accurately say that your users prefer buying black hoodie with their black track pants, instead of the white hoodie.

    Maybe you test it again, but this time its with a orange hoodie. This time round you find that average order value actually increased because more people prefer to buy an orange hoodie with their black track pants.

    ​

    ​

    3. Time to purchase

    What is it?

    This tells you how long your visitors spend on your website before they purchase.

    ​

    Why should I care?

    You notice that users who spend at least 5 minutes on your website tend to convert 70% better than those users who have only spent 2 minutes on your website.

    In fact, you notice the longer people are on your site, the more likely they are to convert.

    ​

    What are you supposed to do about it?

    You should be figuring out how to keep users on your site for longer as clearly it increase the likelihood of a conversion.

    This could be done by including new internal links in your blog posts that direct users to other pages around your website. Or maybe adding an instructional video to explain your product/service further.

    You now find that after making that change, more users are now spending 5 minutes or more on your website. Now your conversion rates & sales have increased.

    ​

    ​

    There are many metrics that you can use to optimise conversion/increase your sales, and each different metric provides unique insights into how you can go about achieving that.

    ​

    ​

    I've got a bit of free time over the next few days and feel like helping some people out, so if you're wanting a couple of free pointers on how you could improve conversion rates, comment or DM me.

    Please include the following information:

    • URL
    • How you're driving traffic (FB, Google Ads, organic etc)
    • If you're using paid ads, give me an example of your ad copy
    submitted by /u/sudorobot
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    Tell us how to make a dollar.

    Posted: 25 Feb 2019 11:46 PM PST

    A topic which interests me so much is how people start making money outside of having a job. I'm not talking about these glamorous 'I made 5k doing this thing' because they don't work for everybody and also come across as imaginary/over hyped a lot of the time.

    I'm talking about making a dollar, just an honest dollar.

    What little things do you do/have you done/suggest to a person to start turning that wheel and start earning a some money outside of having a job?

    submitted by /u/jimmilil
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    Easy examples of buying in bulk and breaking down to make a profit?

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 10:19 AM PST

    Walter white was a great example of business 101.

    Get (or create) something in bulk. Break it down. Sell it for profit.

    I was wondering what are some of the things you have sold using the same method?

    submitted by /u/jimmilil
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    Building Instagram Agency - DAY42 :O

    Posted: 25 Feb 2019 11:43 PM PST

    Bonjour!:)

    Hopefully, you guys don't mind and this is the right place to share the entrepreneurship journey. [Back-Story] Currently, I am building an Instagram agency and my personal brand on YouTube.

    In the 1st month, I got 2 clients from Upwork which generates me a $1500-$2000 monthly revenue. To be honest, it wasn't so hard. If you look at Upwork seriously, you probably have a really good chance to land at least one client in your first month.

    So basically what I am doing right now is working on those 2 clients, building Shopify store & Instagram for one and just doing Instagram for other. So far so good.

    [Now] - NETWORKING

    Before starting the agency I decided that the best clients for me would be luxury hotels/resorts as I like traveling (who doesn't, haha), they pretty much always have really good content, as their resorts/hotels are in fantastic location, so I wouldn't need to care as much about the content creation and would be able to outsource the work more easily. Also, there are so many influencer marketing opportunities as almost everyone is interested in staying luxury resort for free or for a cheaper price.

    So I thought it would be really smart to start making a network in the travel industry and to my surprise, in just one month we managed to get some pretty solid contact with one PR agency who does work for couple really big resorts in the Maldives and probably in other countries too.

    I'll try to explain in a short manner what we did. So what we did first, we connected with some big influencers who have an over 1M following on Instagram and asked them if they are planning to do a vocation/trip anytime soon. One of the influencers said that she is planning to do a trip to the Maldives.

    We asked if she would like to get a free stay for a shoutout to resort. Baaam. The influencer accepted. Then we emailed all the resorts and asked if they would like to host "OUR" influencer for an exchange of shoutouts. One of the resorts PR team just recently emailed us back and accepted our influencer. Also, we are still in the negotiation process with a couple of other resorts. And that is how we connected with the PR agency that works for huge luxury resorts. One night in those resorts starts from $500 and goes up to $1500 and more.

    We saved over $10k for the influencer + we provided value for the resorts and we made a warm contact with one PR agency. We will try to upsell our services as they seem to put effort into Instagram, but lack knowledge - Bingo!

    I talked about this in my 42nd vlog, so if you like, you can find it here→ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4375IQVMQkk

    For those who will like the content, it would be awesome if you could upvote and also consider subscribing on YT as I am uploading daily and support would be so freaking awesome. Anyways thank You for your time. Talk to you soon:)

    P.S. Feel free to leave weird personal insults and questions below:) Thank You!

    submitted by /u/KarolisKav
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    IG Shopping: Instagram is Building a Standalone App for Shopping

    Posted: 25 Feb 2019 11:16 PM PST

    For its next trick, Instagram may be preparing to launch a standalone app individually for shopping. The Verge reported that "IG Shopping" (which people will have to download separately from the Instagram app) will let people browse things from merchants and businesses they follow and purchase them directly from the app. Instagram refused to comment.

    Instagram's movement into social commerce—a place that involves directly purchasing things on social networks—is mostly unsurprising.

    According to Facebook's last earnings report, Instagram's existing merchant community is strong, with over 25 million brands already on the platform, and 80% of Instagrammers already following at least one business account.

    Instagram users have also noticed that Instagram has been testing an in-app shopping feature since November 2016, which enables merchants to tag their products so people can buy directly from a picture. It's also checking the option to buy things directly from Instagram Stories.

    Facebook has tried a lot to nurture a social shopping presence with its struggling Marketplace, the Craigslist-like part of its main app. But with its active community of indie and designer brands, it seems like Instagram has a better potential for building a competitive social commerce community. And it's a profitable trend to get in front.

    Shopping wouldn't be the first Instagram feature to be turned out into a standalone app. It has been testing "Direct," a new messaging app, since last December. Last year it introduced IGTV, a YouTube competitor that places vertical videos into their own app.

    Source: Original Content

    submitted by /u/Instazood_marketing
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    Do you know good Books on Storytelling and how to build a meaningful Brand ? no snakeoil guru bullshitting?

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 07:33 AM PST

    Do you email proposals to prospects or go over it with them via Skype or in person? Use any software like proposify?

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 01:28 PM PST

    My first couple proposals I just put together a word document, and would take it to the prospect and go over it with them.

    Im trying out different options like proposify, and it seems like they encourage you to just email it off and then follow up if they don't sign, and that kind of seems like a bad idea because then I'll get stuck in the "I'll get back to you" phase...

    I'm getting a couple remote prospects out of town, and so physically going to meet with the prospect is less viable.

    So does anyone have any recommendations for presenting/delivering proposals in tandem with proposal software?

    Do you take an active role in presenting the proposal or just send an email and cross your fingers?

    submitted by /u/jsthrowaway101
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    How should I integrate this?

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 01:27 PM PST

    I want to open an indoor drone park and I have a buddy who owns a brick and morter drone shop. We want to integrate and have him run his store at my drone park. How should we go about this? Should I sublet and he operate as his own entity, pay his own insurance, etc? Or should we merge as one some how...?

    submitted by /u/psyco_llama
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    Share Your Startup Story: A Medium Experiment

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 01:08 PM PST

    I'm looking for personal accounts of success and failures in the startup community. The goal is to let voices be heard and learn from those who have won, or lost the entrepreneurial game. In a week I will be releasing a compilation of Success/Failure stories as well a general list of lessons learned from stories that didn't make the list. If you're interested, check it out below.

    https://medium.com/@jessehorne/share-your-startup-story-a-medium-experiment-81891bb66e4e

    submitted by /u/jessehorne
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    How should I be spending my time?

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 12:52 PM PST

    I fully launched my first business - an online Christian apparel company - in early December after I quit one of my two full-time jobs, and I've been using that 30 or so hours of free time on research, SEO, FB ads, improving the website, newsletter signups, social media, etc.

    For the first month or two, I had plenty to keep me busy, but lately I've been unable to come up with as much productive things to do. Sales have picked up some, but I'm still not making profit after my ads and other costs. I spend some time tweaking FB ads each week, but then I'm just waiting all week to see how they do.

    I'm fortunate enough to have a church job that's plenty flexible with how I use my time, and I'm eager to get this business moving, but I don't want to be doing things just for the sake of being busy.

    How should I be spending my time and what can I be doing to improve my business?

    submitted by /u/flipypy
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    how much to pay myself as founding director of a reuse and recycle community interest company

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 12:50 PM PST

    I'm currently in the process of starting up a community focused reuse and recycle organisation with miminal start up costs. Skills and equipment would be crowd funded and volunteers would come to take part on one off, short term or long term basis to do the labour intensive work, they would also be educated about current recycling trend and techniques, the more skilled and committed volunteers may be offered employment and training.

    Assuming I can secure some funding to execute a swift start up from a detailed business plan, how much of a salary or pay should I give myself as a founding director.

    Goals for the first year would include, securing and set up of premises, marketing and promotion, acquiring equipment through open sharing, onboarding a couple more directors and securing funding to keep running.

    Profiting and making money isn't the main focus as it would be limited by guarantee, although it is hoped that turnover would breakeven by the end of the first year as operational strategies would get streamlined and finalised, maybe starting to turnover a small profit in the second year.

    submitted by /u/a5myth
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    Books on investing / operating franchises (e.g. Taco Bell, McDonalds, Gas Station, etc)

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 12:47 PM PST

    Hey all,

    I am interested in learning more about purchasing / operating franchises such as fast food. Looking for book recommendations because of the well-reviewed options on Amazon, none seem to stand out from the crowd.

    Thanks!

    submitted by /u/extrapudding
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    How to turn sales method into a business

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 08:59 AM PST

    I ran a very successful home care business in the States for 5 years. During that time, I developed a really effective method for creating a referral network to get the top paying clients. It's not a secret recipe or anything like that but there's really only one way to do that kind of sales and I figured it out. And done right, it really works. Most independent home care agencies aren't even aware of it. A lot of franchises market this way though.

    My agency was very profitable. I sold it in year 5 and trained the buyer for a month. The training went well - I think it could have been done in a couple of weeks but he was nervous and contracted me to stay a month as a condition of the sale. Also, I trained him on operations too. And now he's doing great.

    So now I have this program that is developed and tested and step-by-step documented on how to do this type of marketing. And I now want to turn it into a remote business of some sort (I've moved overseas). My target would be the many thousands of independent home care agencies in the U.S. I am looking for ideas on how to do this.

    I was thinking of making a series of 8 or so training videos but don't really know that industry (online coaching or teaching). I am willing to occasionally return to the U.S. for hands-on training contracts but would prefer to do something over the web. Anyhow, in a nutshell... I have an excellent intangible product that can make the right people (struggling independent home care agencies) very profitable. I just don't know how to sell it to them. Thanks.

    submitted by /u/LowerAssociate
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    Does anyone know why I didn't receive fees from my Amazon affiliate links?

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 12:29 PM PST

    I sold 2 items from my Amazon affiliates links through my blog, both were shipped and received by the buyers (people I am now friends with via social media) yet it says that they haven't shipped and I haven't received any fees. Does anyone know why this is, or how this works?

    https://imgur.com/a/a6MDJES

    submitted by /u/maparo
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    Opinions on starting a juul pod vending machine business

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 12:22 PM PST

    Im thinking of putting these all over my college campus. No place better for juul pods.

    I have no idea how i would go about any of this?

    submitted by /u/Qwerty1458
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    Ownership Strategy

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 12:20 PM PST

    I have an idea for an online business. I can handle everything but the backend website design. There is someone in town who is really good at website design and would be willing to do the work for equity. What's the best strategy for this? What if he designs Version 1.0 of the website and then quits working on the project? Should I give him a percentage of profit vs equity? Thanks in advance.

    submitted by /u/littlelaker
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    Looking for a new business/industry for my call center (collection agency)

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 12:12 PM PST

    Hey guys!

    I currently own and operate a consumer collection agency with 15 full time employees. We have a large office space in Florida with an infrastructure of computers, phones, printer & fax.

    Recently, business has been very slow due to regulations so I am looking to convert my current operation into something else so I can keep my team employed and hopefully start the next chapter of my business.

    I know that only I can do the work myself but I would really appreciate any tips and advice from this community.

    submitted by /u/Alexander-305
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