Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (February 06, 2019) Entrepreneur |
- Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (February 06, 2019)
- Automation #5: How one client made themselves unemployed
- How to turn $500 into a lot more
- I have a web app with 50k visitors a month but no monetisation.
- High School Growth Stage Startup Seeks Advice
- How to grow fast without VC funding
- Elon Musk's Rules of Success
- $1k/month selling Abe Lincoln portraits.
- Start a lean business that can survive change
- Has anyone experienced fraud in their business? (Embezzlement, employee theft etc.) If not what have you done to prevent it? What tools do you use?
- Top Amazon Health Executive Leaves for startup
- Will Open-Source offer a better Business Model for my E-Commerce SaaS?
- Teaching kids entrepreneurship in school with games
- Selling to Insurance Companies
- Lost a chargeback request with customer’s bank. It was a legitimate order. Just my documentation was not up to the banks standards (it’s crazy how much detail they want). Could I go after the customer via police as I feel like it’s technically cyber shoplifting?
- Critique of Elon’s Rules of Success
- Getting your marketing questions answered by experts on demand
- How do you feel about cold emailing for local businesses?
- Struggling to maintain sales after Christmas with a product I created (tried advertisement, multiple platforms etc.)
- Suggestions for free email optin landing page templates?
- Best Marketing tactics for a mobile app ?
- How lonely is the journey of an entrepreneur?
- Entrepreneurship in the 2020's?
- Has anyone created a physical advertising business in University?
- Any constructive criticism for my site?
| Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (February 06, 2019) Posted: 06 Feb 2019 05:05 AM PST Please use this thread to ask any wantrapreneur questions. We do this to not overflow the subreddit with wantrapreneur 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]  |
| Automation #5: How one client made themselves unemployed Posted: 06 Feb 2019 06:56 AM PST A while back i made my first post on automation ( If you're not using automation you're wasting your time and money) and got a fantastic response (And, full disclosure, a few leads too). Today I'd like to expand on this with another anecdote: Automation taking our jobs! In particular, about how a client (And an old time friend) was able to automate his own business Disclosure: I own two small businesses (Soon to be 3!) and also work as a freelance automation developer. Both of my businesses are highly automated and I've helped over 30 clients save more than a combined 100+ hours every day. The businessIn Why Automation Matters #3: How i achieved a temporary monopoly overnight i described a family business revolving around filing with a Gumasta Bureau in the city. Whenever we needed to make payment for an application to the government, the best way to do so was via a 'payment ticket' (Called 'challan' in India). Idea being, you'd go to the treasury's website, purchase a 'ticket' worth whatever amount you wanted to pay and then enter the ticket's serial code when filling out the application form to prove payment. My client (and friend) sold these tickets. Due to how time-consuming it was to generate these tickets, most businesses operating at scale did not generate their own tickets. Rather we'd buy a large number of serial codes from other vendors who charged $0.5 per ticket. The problemGenerating these tickets was not easy. The treasury's website was not built well and a single ticket might require you to navigate through as many as 20-30 pages. My client would for example receive an order for 500 tickets worth $10 each, his employees would then get to work filling out the application 500 times to purchase 500 $10 tickets. This was extremely time consuming and wasteful work. The solutionAfter a chat about automation, my client asked if this could be automated. Two weeks and $700 later I'd built a script that only asked the client three questions: The quantity of tickets required, the value of each ticket & the E-Mail ID of the customer. The script used cloud computing to scale on demand, allowing it to generate any quantity of tickets within a few minutes. An employee would enter the details, the client would approve it and the script would automatically generate tickets, E-Mail the customer a spreadsheet containing all the unique serial numbers & automatically invoice the customer for the total amount due. In a matter of days, my client had completely automated himself out of his own business, turning it into a money-printing machine requiring only one employee. Lessons learnedWith only a single script, the client was not only able to automate 75% of his workforce but to also give themselves a ton of time. No humans working all day means no need to supervise those humans, dealing with errors where a human entered an extra zero or forgot one and more. The client only needed to press the approve button a few times per day and that was that. Another lesson to be learnt here is that if my client hadn't done this, somebody else would have. And at that point that somebody else would have lowered prices to where my client couldn't compete and potentially even went out of business. In automation if you're not the first, you can easily become the last. As always, i hope this gave you a unique perspective on the power of automation. If you have any questions please feel free to comment, I'll answer as many as i can. Also if you'd like to work with me on a project or if you have an idea and are not sure if it can be automated please reach out to me via DM and we can discuss business. [link] [comments]  |
| How to turn $500 into a lot more Posted: 06 Feb 2019 12:38 PM PST When you get home from work one day go to your computer instead of the couch. Buy a domain and get hosting for $2.99 per month. Set up a website on WordPress. Pay someone on a freelancing site to create a simple logo for you and some marketing material. Make sure your flyer has great copy. This is an example of what you want to say:
Buy $100 worth of door hanging flyers created on UPrinting or your local print shop. Make sure your phone number and web address is on the bottom of the flyer. That weekend go on Zillow or Realtor.com and get in your car. Drive around and hang a flyer on the door of every home for sale within 10 miles of where you live. Read and learn about thermal imaging by watching videos like this. Take one of the many online classes. Consider getting certified. Watch an updated video on equipment so you can decide what camera to buy. Study the industry and learn as much as possible. Buy a camera for under $350. You can upgrade later. Create a report template that you will use to report back to customers. Use the many many examples 📷out on the internet and take what you love from each of them. Your phone will start to ring. Get out and service some customers at heavy discounts. Learn a lot. Provide professional reports for them to use. As you gain momentum start to grow your marketing channels. Partner with realtors to send you referrals and pay them a cut if necessary. Watch the MLS. Show up at open houses and hand out business cards. Get creative with your marketing. Find local real estate investors and offer your services to them for free at first to gain trust. Word will get out about your work and business will start flowing. You'll start to bring in $150+ per service and it will take you about an hour. Begin to partner with contractors who want the leads you have for new windows, roofs, insulation, doors, etc. Tons of opportunity here. As soon as your weekends and evenings are full and you are bringing in enough money to replace your 9-5 quit your job and get serious. Invest in some equipment like a drone and get certified to fly it. Start doing big commercial thermal imaging projects. Maybe expand to be a full on building inspector. Develop consulting relationships with developers and real estate investors in your city. As soon as you are too busy hire employees and begin to build your company. Simplify the job so your employees can thrive. Train them to do their core task really well. Don't forget workers comp. Provide super amazing customer service. Answer the phone every time and be in a super eager positive mood. This along with the "on demand" nature will put you ahead of 99% of your competitors. As soon as you bring in about a few hundred thousand in profit in your city consider expanding to a neighboring city. Don't like thermal imaging? Check out this list and take your pick. [link] [comments]  |
| I have a web app with 50k visitors a month but no monetisation. Posted: 06 Feb 2019 12:27 PM PST Hey entrepreneurs, I have a site: character creator (.org) that has a lot of success in terms of visitors, but I'm still looking for ways to monetize the site without resorting to ads. Do you have any suggestions or tips that I'm not seeing? thanks in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| High School Growth Stage Startup Seeks Advice Posted: 06 Feb 2019 12:51 PM PST Hi! My name is Avante Price and I'm the 17 y/o CEO and Founder of ChoreBug LLC (www.chorebug.com). ChoreBug is an online platform that connects youth to people in their neighborhood to do odd jobs (Think TaskRabbit but only employs youth and donates a percentage of profit back to youth organizations). We are currently developing an iOS app also! ChoreBug has received massive success in 3 small suburbs but now I want to take my platform national and I know the number 1 way to reach potential high school workers is through Instagram. I would love any advice on how I can grow the page (@chorebug) or anyone interested in helping the growth aspect of my business in any way from how to find VC funding, to weird ways I could find more workers at new schools! (of course for compensation!) Thanks for reading! [link] [comments]  |
| How to grow fast without VC funding Posted: 06 Feb 2019 11:35 AM PST For some of you, what I described may be old hat, but for me as someone steeped deeply in a product / Silicon Valley background, it blew my mind. If you're like me, I hope it gets your mind whirling with ideas too. https://www.underwire.works/articles/how-to-grow-fast-without-vc-funding [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Feb 2019 08:21 PM PST These can be inferred from various interviews:
What are your rules? [link] [comments]  |
| $1k/month selling Abe Lincoln portraits. Posted: 06 Feb 2019 09:15 AM PST Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Maury McCoy of Penny Portrait, a brand that sells portrait from pennies. Some stats:
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?My name is Maury McCoy, I'm the creator of the Penny Portrait Kit. This kit allows anyone to create a crazy cool portrait of Abe Lincoln out of pennies. It's a fun experience and the final work of art is stunning conversation starter you can hang on your wall. You can be guaranteed it will be worth at least $8.46. (It takes 846 pennies...) So far we've sold over 6,800 kits and have them on display at the U.S. Mint, Lincoln's Presidential Library, the Money Museum, etc. It's more than just an 18 x 24 poster, it's also a fun learning experience. We include a booklet with info about coin collecting, Lincoln history, chemistry experiments you can do with pennies and even include a collectible 1943 steel penny with each kit. What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?I was surfing the internet and was inspired by a story about a father and son who created a giant portrait of Abraham Lincoln out of $25 worth of dark/light pennies. I thought it was a fantastic concept and thought maybe other people would like to do the same thing. The idea of making Lincoln out of little Lincoln's thoroughly amused me. I have a background as a graphic designer/animator so I was able to create a proof of concept in Photoshop rather quickly. I added a few additional shades (4 total) which provided detail to the image while also allowing me to shrink it to a more manageable size without losing the illusion. After several iterations, (actually, many, many iterations...) I came up with a version that I was happy with but only used 846 cents. I found a local printer to create a prototype as a template. I glued some pennies on and was really impressed by how well it turned out! A photo doesn't do it justice as actual pennies are not just light and dark, but reflective and dull. It looks amazing in person. After seeing the expression of the few folks I showed it to, I knew I was onto something. I've always been curious about how e-commerce works as my previous jobs have been in the service industry. I've worked as an artist, video game producer and in investment marketing. This was my first foray into an actual physical product with inventory, shipping, payment processing, etc. so there was a lot to learn! I own another business in which I help investment managers raise money for their investment strategies, so would primarily dabble with this project in the evenings and on weekends. I didn't have high expectations and primarily saw this as a learning experience that "might" work out. My initial, very modest, goal was to sell enough to recover my initial investment. That actually happened pretty quickly and 10 years later we've now sold over 6,000 of them. Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.Creating the original prototype was a lot of fun. I toyed with placing pennies in a grid pattern vs. a honeycomb pattern, tried 3 vs. 4 shades of pennies and also tried different poster dimensions. A local printer was able to print a sample one for me that cost ~ $30. Once I nailed down the design, I filed for a copyright which costs only $35 for a single work of art. The toughest decision I then had was how many posters to purchase initially. I wanted a high-quality product, so didn't want to skimp on printing or materials, but printing can be quite expensive. There are online places which will print posters for you at great prices, but the paper quality is lower and when you include shipping, the savings disappear. I ended up going with a respected local printer to avoid shipping costs and to oversee the quality of the product. The trick with printing a poster this size is the initial setup fee is about $1,000 whether you print one poster or one thousand. My fun little "learn about e-commerce" project suddenly got expensive! Of course, the more you order, the cheaper it is, but it was nearly impossible to guess what the demand for a product like this would be. (This was before Kickstarter came about, which would have been ideal for something like this.) I decided to start with 1,000 posters and see how it went. Another tough decision involved packaging. I really liked the way my product looked in a clear tube, but the cheapest supplier of clear tubes charged $1.40 per tube and had a minimum order of 500 units. Cardboard tubes cost about half that, and I could order just a few at a time. I ended up ordering 500 clear tubes, but used those strictly for orders that would end up on retail shelves. For online orders, I ship in the more durable white cardboard tubes. It was a tough decision at the time because $700 is a pretty big upfront expense for shipping tubes! (Not to mention I had a garage full of them.) This is one situation where my design sense vetoed my business sense. The final packaging actually cost more than the product inside of it which was something I wasn't expecting. Describe the process of launching the business.Penny Portrait is a sole proprietorship. I filed a simple DBA form (Doing Business As) with the state for ~$25 and I was off and running. I could then open up a bank account which I used to keep all the business expenses separate. I fortunately had savings from the "real" job which I used to pay the upfront expenses of getting the business rolling. All told, it probably cost me about $2,000 to get things off the ground, most of which was spent on inventory. Kickstarter would have been perfect to gauge interest, but didn't exist at the time. I did however feel it would be a great way to get exposure, so I launched a Kickstarter campaign when it came time to fund my second print run. (Including an obligatory goofy Kickstarter video.) I pre-sold enough units to cover a print run of 2000 posters and got a lot of free publicity in the process. I have a bit of experience as a graphic designer so was able to create a rudimentary website. Figuring out payment processors, taxes and shipping was a bit trickier. At the time I started this biz in 2008, a lot of the tools for these things were pretty rough. Shopify didn't exist at that time and WordPress was very clunky. I hand coded all the HTML and added a big "Buy Now" button from PayPal and voila, I had an online business! Since that time, I upgraded my website to WordPress in order to create a site that was mobile friendly. I've had to deal with a number of technical issues like hosting and SSL certificates that folks using a site like Shopify just don't need to deal with. That said, I also don't get stuck with the recurring fees a service like Shopify entails either. Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?I've worked to get exposure on various blogs and by posting on coin collecting forums, homeschooling groups, art sites, etc. A popular financial blog called My Money Blog really got me a lot of exposure initially by spotlighting my startup. I've tried running ads via Google, Facebook, Amazon, Reddit, Pinterest, print ads, you name it. The problem with spending money on advertising is the lifetime value of a customer for me is about $20. Once they've made a Penny Portrait for their wall, there really isn't a reason to buy another unless it's a gift. In the early years, my success was very closely tied to how much time I put in marketing online. If I put the effort in and was active on online message boards and forums, I'd make more sales. It almost felt like being a door-to-door salesperson! I had a few big wins early on such as when my wife helped get us into a number of historical museum gift shops, but early on my packaging wasn't quite as compelling as it is now and it wasn't really obvious just what exactly a Penny Portrait was. They sold okay, but not at the level they probably should have. There was one year where the "real job" got busy and I didn't put much time into promoting my product and sales were down significantly. It was a bit of a make or break moment as I felt there was a lot of potential for this product but wasn't sure how to unlock it. Getting into catalogsI had a friend who had created a cool board game called Spontuneous and he invited me to join him at an event called Toy Fair in NYC. I tagged along and used the opportunity to make a lot of industry connections and get a feel for how to better distribute my product. At this event, I was able to reach out and be included in a number of print/online gift catalogs, including Uncommon Goods, The What on Earth Catalog, Things You Never Knew Existed, etc. These really did wonders for my exposure, but as is the nature of these catalogs, they typically only showcase a product for a year or two as they are always trying to present new and unique gifts. That said, I really feel these catalogs helped me cross a critical threshold. In fact, one of my favorite vendors Vat19.com reached out to me after seeing my product in a competitor's catalog. Vat19.com went on to create a hysterical commercial for my product (complete with shirtless men) and even created a 9 foot tall Penny Portrait as a publicity stunt. AmazonThe biggest source of sales for me these days is Amazon. I started off doing "Fulfilled by Seller" where I would ship orders off to customers as they came in, but found switching to FBA "Fulfilled by Amazon" where I ship inventory to Amazon warehouses made my life a whole lot easier and increased sales significantly. In fact, switching to FBA immediately more than doubled the number of units I was selling. The ability to order my product via Amazon Prime really helps and it's nice to just get emails stating I've made a sale and not have to do anything. (That said, Amazon makes more off each Penny Portrait sale than I do. It's nice I have a huge margin built into this product as Amazon takes a big bite.) My goal was to have this business not take up too much of my time and it's now at the point where I ship off cartons of Penny Portraits to various vendors and occasionally fill the individual orders that come directly to me through my website. It does gets a little busy around the holidays. (I typically sell about 500 units through Amazon alone in December.) For the most part though, things are on autopilot except for advertising which is more of a manual effort of reaching out to bloggers, posting on social media, etc. It's nice because that is part of the business I can do on my own schedule. How are you doing today and what does the future look like?I pull in about $15K a year from this business and maybe $5K of that goes to expenses leaving about $10K of profit. Really the best way for me to increase my margins is to order in bulk, but there are only so many beds to hide posters under and if I order more than 1200 tubes at a time I lose a big portion of my garage! The product and packaging, not including labor for assembly, runs about $3, so my margins are also heavily dependent on the sales channel. If I sell from my website directly, I make about 50% more than I make through FBA. Amazon takes a huge chunk, (about $11) and that's before considering that I also pay for shipping to them and buy advertising from them as well. That said, I'd guess 60% of my biz is through Amazon these days. The product retails for $20-$22 and I sell them to wholesalers like catalogs and coin shops for $10/unit. The more channels I can get in the better and think there is an opportunity to reach out to more museums and tourist destinations. I'd love to learn more about SEO and social media, but so far all my experiments with paid advertising haven't really worked out too well. One thing I've explored is adding a Blog with unique content that might drive people to my site. Other than advertising on Amazon, it's been very difficult to measure the ROI of my advertising spend. (I honestly think a lot of the people I'm trying to drive to my site end up buying on Amazon anyway.) I've considered looking into an expert to help me out with social media/advertising, but they typically charge so much that I'm not sure it would be cost effective. Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?Selling a product I personally created and own the copyright to has been useful as I haven't had to worry about competitors. I also don't need to pay anyone else for their intellectual property so it means more profit for me. Really, my biggest competitors are the vendors I sell wholesale to, as they tend to be better at social media and SEO than I am! I actually appreciate the fact that they do so much to get the word out, so don't mind sharing the profits with them. The more chances people have to see my product the better. It's also nice because when Amazon or I run out of inventory, there are still places online to always get my product. For a while, I did have problems with people offering counterfeits on Amazon. They would list Penny Portrait Kits for half price but had no intention of delivering them. These random storefronts would pop up advertising ridiculously low prices for Penny Portrait Kits which I knew was impossible as they had never purchased inventory from me. I even ordered one to see what would happen and sure enough never received it. Not sure what their business model was but fortunately, since I could prove to Amazon I had a copyright for my product, Amazon would shut down their storefront a few days after I informed them. It was very much a game of whack-a-mole though as often there were up to 3 identical storefronts with different names selling Penny Portrait Kits at one time. This went on for about a year until the counterfeiters finally gave up. The two biggest turning points for my business were when I went to Toy Fair and found a number of gift catalogs willing to carry my product and when I switched to FBA. FBA turned my business into more of a "set it and forget it" type business which works out very well for me. Having a graphic design background has also helped immensely as so much of advertising and promotion is visual for a product like this. I've saved a lot of money being able to do packaging and website creation myself. What platform/tools do you use for your business?I hate getting stuck with monthly fees, so if I have the option to pay for something once, I'll typically go that route. I currently use a Wordpress site I created with DIVI and a WooCommerce back end. Paypal is useful when I need to create USPS shipping labels I can print from home. I've used MailChimp to send out exactly one promotion as I don't like to spam my customers. MailChimp is free if you have less than 2000 subscribers so that works well. I have a fun blog where I post goofy things related to my biz. I download all my transactions from my bank account into Excel and use that and TurboTax to do taxes. I used Fiverrr to have someone create an animation of a Penny Portrait being assembled which turned out pretty well. (It actually cost me $5.) What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?The very best podcasts and blogs are the ones who have interviewed me. ; ) The long-term exposure from having content on the internet forever has been fantastic and really helps with my search results. I'll give a shout out to MyMoneyBlog, Chris Guillebeau's "Side Hustle School" (Chris is the best selling author of such notable books as "The $100 Startup"), Ryan Helm's "Grit and Hustle" podcast and Nick Loper over at "Side Hustle Nation". As far as books, there is one very short book I recommend to every entrepreneur called the "Max Strategy" by Dale Dauten. It's a quick read, but extremely thought provoking. Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Control expenses. Spend a little money and measure the results before going big on anything. There are tons of middlemen in any industry and if you don't watch yourself, all of your profits will go to these folks instead of yourself. You don't need fancy stationary or expensive accounting software. Keep things lean and if you have something that works, you'll know when to scale up. You don't need an LLC to start off and you certainly don't need the expenses that come with it. Also, don't focus on the bad things that could happen. (Some of them inevitably will.) Too often people focus on the negative when what they don't realize is that just as many unforeseen good things will happen when starting a business. When starting Penny Portrait, I mentioned to a friend I was going to include a 1943 steel penny with each kit as I had about 50 of them and figured it would be a neat incentive for early buyers. Ends up my friend had gone through an "Ebay phase" and had acquired over 5,000 steel pennies that were just sitting in storage. He sold them to me for a modest profit and I now include a steel penny with each kit sold. Sometimes things just work out that you can't foresee. Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?If anyone has clever ideas on how to drive sales from my website, I'm all ears, (just like Abe!) The compensation model would need to be based on earning a percentage of the results as too many of my advertising efforts have just been throwing money into the wind without seeing any return on those investments. I know there is a lot of room for me to improve in this area, but the learning curve tends to be tricky as the tools are constantly changing. Where can we go to learn more?
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 [link] [comments]  |
| Start a lean business that can survive change Posted: 06 Feb 2019 03:58 AM PST Your hypothesis (that there is a hole in the market for you) is still an educated guess until you get out and sell it and prove it. Early on its about putting together the tools necessary to offer a core version of your service as cost effectively as possible. Things change quickly. So if things slow down you want to be able to cut your costs drastically on your command. That means keeping costs variable and reducing overhead. You can't change your mind and stop paying on a 5 year office lease. You can't change your mind and turn in your leased vehicle. You can't change your mind and recoup your costs on the brand new equipment you financed. Avoid recurring costs that aren't flexible. Don't make long term commitments or sign long contracts. When Richard Branson started Virgin he bought his airplanes from Boeing with a clause that said he could return them if his business struck hard times. Ask the million dollar question for each significant investment Is there a way for me to spend less money on this purchase and still get the same return? Don't buy into the image fallacy You don't need a nice car to get clients. You don't need a $2k suit to get respect. You don't need a shiny new mercedes sprinter van to gain trust from customers. You don't need an office with high ceilings and a kegerator next to the ping pong table. You don't need to entertain and spend money on fancy restaurants for your employees to be committed. Purchase wisely I'm not suggesting you spend hours or days shopping in order to save a few dollars. I'm suggesting you put effort into buying the big things right and saving money on the small things by forming good habits around your spending. Buy your vehicles and equipment used. Outsource your weaknesses Don't hire a full time employee to do something a freelancer can do on a month-to-month contract. Month to month contracts are flexible. You can terminate them and take it on yourself if things get slow. If you hire an employee on the other hand that is payroll that you will need to cover on a monthly basis no matter how things are going. Lean out your life Every dollar invested in your business will become 2 or 3 dollars in the near future. Every dollar invested in everything else will either be gone or worth pennies. Free up your capital so it can work for you. If you stay lean a few amazing things will happen
Running a lean business drastically reduces your risk. It makes your business more likely to survive. It limits financial losses if your business does fail and you move on. When the next recession happens and 50% of the businesses in your sector fail you will survive. You will be able to ride out the storm. You'll be poised and ready to ride the next boom and capitalize on the opportunity. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Feb 2019 10:48 AM PST I am submitting a startup plan to a competition and I want to focus on solving the problem of fraud in small to medium size business. I am looking for examples to learn more about how it happens and also how owners prevent it. That way when we craft a solution we are building it around the pain points. Just trying to get a lay of the land. If our solution is good, we get seed funding! So any examples would be really helpful. Would love to interview anyone who has experienced fraud in their business to learn more about how it happened. [link] [comments]  |
| Top Amazon Health Executive Leaves for startup Posted: 06 Feb 2019 09:30 AM PST Here's an inspiring article from a former Amazon Executive who worked on their Stealth Project. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-i-left-amazon-hamid-azzawe [link] [comments]  |
| Will Open-Source offer a better Business Model for my E-Commerce SaaS? Posted: 06 Feb 2019 07:46 AM PST I've spent 7-years and millions of dollars developing my e-commerce technology. The latest version provides multi-channel marketplaces, shopping carts, ad networks, social networks, shipping providers and drop-shippers. It's a huge system already and still has a long way to go in fulfilling my ultimate vision. The problem is, I now have 100+ direct competitors offering many (not all) of the same features, and thousands of other e-commerce platforms providing overlap of some of the features. That said, investors have zero interest in what I'm doing. Traction and revenue is all that matter to them, and I have neither. That's got me thinking about becoming an Open Source platform, following in the footsteps of Magento and WordPress. Perhaps that may enable me to stand out from the competition. It may also enable me to quickly grow the team of developers and more rapidly progress the technology. I fear it could also kill the SaaS model and lead to more direct competitors. For example, why would a large retailer use the SaaS instead of deploying it on their own? And, development of competing products would be a lot easier with all these components available in the Open Source. But at the end of the day, I have a platform that does too much for most people, and not enough for others. I failed to gain traction and had to close my company (sellercentrum.com) and go back into retail, becoming my only user. So, I don't need to earn money from users anymore. I'll do well just using it, and will do even better as the technology progresses. That makes me think Open Source may be the right option. I don't have any Open Source experience, except as a user. I don't understand the licensing or how revenue can be generated aside from SaaS. But I'm interested in learning more and exploring this option. Do you think it's a good or bad idea? Would this be throwing away my investment or adding value to it? Any feedback I can get is much appreciated. Thank you in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| Teaching kids entrepreneurship in school with games Posted: 06 Feb 2019 11:15 AM PST Hi, we are thinking about offering a game to children that allows them to create stories about their goals and "gamify" each step that needs to happen such as research, funding, development, etc. The game will also allow them to read the stories of their classmates and allow them give feedback on each needed step, so the learn by teaching so to speak. Of course the game must be manipulated to fulfill some of the required curriculum, but it could also be used in an after school setting. The whole purpose is to instill goal setting and understanding the work it will take to get there at an early age. I don't think entrepreneurship is taught enough in school so want to create something that will encourage new business owners. What do you guys think? [link] [comments]  |
| Selling to Insurance Companies Posted: 06 Feb 2019 08:53 AM PST Hi everyone, I assist managing a small business that specializes in cosmetic material repair in southern California. We currently service the greater Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego Counties providing material repair services to a great many of new home builders as well as numerous individual clients in the area and would like to extend our services to include the Insurance agencies within our area. The good: · We are by far the leading quality provider of our services within the area and already service one of the largest insurance agencies in the U.S.. · We have one of the largest insurance providers HQ in our state within driving distance. · We are MUCH cheaper, faster and less intrusive than the alternatives to material repair. The bad: · Many insurance businesses within our area are all serviced by insurance interchanges and as such do not have local branches that we can visit and explain our services and benefits to directly. My question is… what advice can you provide for reaching the right people within their organization to "pitch"? Sample Repairs: https://imgur.com/a/3pXhJ5c Thanks for any Feedback in advance!!! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Feb 2019 01:55 PM PST |
| Critique of Elon’s Rules of Success Posted: 06 Feb 2019 01:54 PM PST Response to this post. I love Elon. People like him are going to take our economy and our world to the next level. His story is absolutely incredible. The fact that he continues to risk it all to drive amazing change is fascinating and we need more of our wealthy people and big companies to adopt this mindset. But let me play devils advocate here. I'm not saying I'm smarter than Elon. I honestly don't think elon meant a lot of what people think he meant when he said things like this. Its all up for interpretation. Our entrepreneurial culture idolizing this rhetoric is why so many young brilliant minds end up missing all together and getting jobs. Once you have had massive success like PayPal you can adopt this kind of attitude. For the average beginner only one or two of these principles should be adopted.
Take this critique with a grain of salt. I think Elon points his rhetoric towards a lot of other business owners. Hes frustrated that people have made great money doing normal things and now they refuse to risk any of it to do something worth doing and for the betterment of all people. [link] [comments]  |
| Getting your marketing questions answered by experts on demand Posted: 06 Feb 2019 10:07 AM PST I've been working with a team of marketing experts to help people answer their marketing questions. We're pretty skilled with tools such as zapier, hubspot, GA, Adwords, FB, etc. Our service is helpful when you have a marketing question and the available online resources or customer support is not helpful or could take days to get an answer back. Our experts are really knowledgeable, and can accurately answer your questions on the same day. I'd love any feedback you have for this service! [link] [comments]  |
| How do you feel about cold emailing for local businesses? Posted: 06 Feb 2019 01:50 PM PST I own a real estate photography company. My business partner reads a lot of marketing books and websites and gets really caught up in it. I always try to remind him that these people make their money selling these books not marketing businesses. But anyway he recently wrote a pretty lengthy email (about 300 words) and has just been googling local real estate agents and sending them this cold email. I personally think it makes us look bad sending unsolicited emails to our relatively small (18,000 agents) local base. But he just keeps saying were throwing away business by not and just sends me random articles he's read about it. Anyway, how do you feel about sending cold emails as a local small business? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Feb 2019 01:39 PM PST So If anyone has seen the product I created late last year, or if not - it is basically a gift set to create your own bottles of 'Bathtub Gin' a style of Gin created without the means of distillation equipment in the prohibition era. Whilst there are other alternatives on the market, I have a more handmade style product, and offer the lowest price in the UK currently. I have amazon marketplace, foodmarket, etsy, ebay, my own website. Social media wise, I create daily posts on Facebook and Instagram, have spent quite a large amount of money on targeted ads, whilst driving some traffic to my insta and website - didn't result in sales. Over Christmas I was making £250 revenue a day, I understand the need for gifts at Christmas, and did not expect the same level of sales after. I am basically asking for some tips, or advice to try and grow the sales, particularly on my website, and more appropriate methods to advertise. www.brewandbotanical.com is my website, if anyone cares to critique it (basic shopify setup) with limited experience. Not sure what was the best way to ask for advice, or most appropriate subreddit - hopefully this is the most relevant. [link] [comments]  |
| Suggestions for free email optin landing page templates? Posted: 06 Feb 2019 01:37 PM PST Hi guys, I have a new idea for a project and would like to direct some paid traffic to an email optin page to test for demand. Does anybody know a good, responsive, minimalistic and free html email optin template? (thats a lot to ask for I know) Would really appreciate any help. For some reason Google didnt give me any satisfactory results. PS: Sorry for any typos, one of my four cats won't stop snuggling my laptop screen.. [link] [comments]  |
| Best Marketing tactics for a mobile app ? Posted: 06 Feb 2019 01:31 PM PST Lunching a new app in the next 2-3 months. I was told that marketing should begin 30 days earlier to release, and two months are needed to prepare. What is the best marketing tactics for a mobile app ? Influencers? TV? Radio ? Newspaper ? My app is aimed at 10-60 years olds. Mainly at millennials however . Would appreciate the help ! [link] [comments]  |
| How lonely is the journey of an entrepreneur? Posted: 06 Feb 2019 04:43 AM PST A month back I started a PaaS company with reasonable success, but what's hitting me hard is the loneliness & have a co-founder who isn't actively investing time. I am at a place where I am drawing equity plan & not sure on what should I do? who should I consult? any help here would be greatly appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Entrepreneurship in the 2020's? Posted: 06 Feb 2019 01:10 PM PST The coming decade will mark many changes hopefully for the better. How do you guys think Entrepreneurship will be effected by things like AI and the rising web of internet markets. Are you optimistic about the 20's? [link] [comments]  |
| Has anyone created a physical advertising business in University? Posted: 06 Feb 2019 12:50 PM PST I was reading the post about the Uni student who was making $3000 a month selling advertisements on his University cafeteria placemats. While this idea seems great, this wouldn't work at my school. I have thought about several ways in which you could bundle advertisements together, but am having trouble figuring out where these could be advertised. The buses in my town already have their own advertisements, but I'm sure there are many other places that could appeal to both students and businesses alike. Any ideas? [link] [comments]  |
| Any constructive criticism for my site? Posted: 06 Feb 2019 12:28 PM PST I just finished this site, it's WooCommerce with WordPress. I was wondering if any of you experienced sellers could take a minute to critique and criticize my store, as I'm launching it in April. Here's a link: https://shopwoodpinch.com [link] [comments]  |
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