Marketplace Tuesday! (December 03, 2019) Entrepreneur |
- Marketplace Tuesday! (December 03, 2019)
- Don't try to reinvent the wheel with entrepreneurship
- How I sold my site 6 months after validating on r/Entrepreneur
- Free online market category research
- $100,000/month selling weighted blankets [from Bali]
- Buried in the “what if’s”
- How to make at-least $100 with in few days?
- I just sold my house, I have my next six months of living expenses paid for, and have about $20k available to invest in something. I have no idea where to begin though.
- Recycling of confiscated liquids from TSA
- What's your hustle?
- How does Estonia feel about fintech?
- Your business probably has a website or a webstore. Somebody had to build it. You either had good or a bad experience with your developers / designers. Share your experiences in this thread!
- Is it better to have more time or money when starting out in the beginning?
- Trademark EXAMPLEART when ARTEXAMPLE is used under common law??
- How do I achieve the highest phone call quality?
- Being Alienated/Close People Turning Away
- There is now a sub reddit to find beta testers
- Master P Unveils New Line of Noodles Called "Rap Noodles."
- Help us decide our vesting
- Is it better to hire casuals who I can pay around minimum wage for or professionals?
- Change of Address: Am I wrong in thinking that switching to a USPS PO box is harmful?
- Google Ads Specialist
- Is there room for a simple website to trade leases if you want to move?
- Advice/opinions on my new business plan?
- Why people (you) haven't started entrepreneurship/self-employment/business venture - need reasons
| Marketplace Tuesday! (December 03, 2019) Posted: 03 Dec 2019 05:07 AM PST Please use this thread to post any Jobs that you're looking to fill (including interns), or services you're looking to render to other members. We do this to not overflow the subreddit with personal offerings (such logo design, SEO, etc) so please try to limit the offerings to this weekly thread. Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. [link] [comments]  |
| Don't try to reinvent the wheel with entrepreneurship Posted: 03 Dec 2019 07:16 AM PST You have to be really good, have money, and have a lot of luck to make a new revolutionary idea work. There are a lot of bad businesses out there right now making good money. Some of them suck at sales. Some suck at recruiting. Or marketing. Or SEO. Maybe they run their businesses like its 1980. Some suck at many of these! Yet they still make really good money. Don't try to reinvent the wheel with a revolutionary idea. Its expensive. The odds of success are low. Its risky. Just carve out your piece of the pie by doing the fundamentals a little bit better. Find one of these businesses and compete with them! Hang out with us over in r/sweatystartup if you want to build a common business that does uncommonly well! [link] [comments]  |
| How I sold my site 6 months after validating on r/Entrepreneur Posted: 03 Dec 2019 12:49 AM PST Hey everyone, Over 6 months ago I posted here with growing 57 trends that you could capitalize on for business opportunities, along with a plug for the app I'd created that found them. Your feedback was awesome and motivated me to keep running with it and growing it. And thanks to that, I managed to sell the site to Brian Dean of Backlinko recently. So I thought I'd share the story here. I have to admit though, I hadn't monetized yet and I was incredibly lucky with how things worked out. So I'm not recommending this as a reproducible guide for anyone but hopefully you still enjoy the read. How It StartedI began work on Trennd.co back in April while living in Japan, and back then it was originally called TrendList.io. I'd started to realize that it's 100X easier to bootstrap a profitable online business if you ride a big market trend. Jump on the opportunity before the competition gets too fierce. A great example of this is Jon and Justin at Transistor.fm, who spotted a growing B2B market for podcast hosting and bootstrapped a SaaS for it. Another classic example — Pieter Levels tapped into the digital nomad and remote work trend while scratching his own itch with Nomad List and Remote OK. Both market awareness and market timing were critical for these guys. On top of execution skill of course. But also, businesses take years of sales, marketing and general hard work even after you've launched. I'd like to know that life force is going into a growing opportunity, not a shrinking one. I needed something that could surface opportunities by automatically monitoring the web for new topics. So that I can then plug them into Google Trends. I needed a shiny new app or tool to play with. 😛 But I couldn't find anything, so I started to build it for myself. The first version was literally just a CLI tool that output trend graphs to the console. I thought I might as well package it as a B2C SaaS product. But woaaaah no, not another sales grind. Especially B2C. Let's just put it up for free and see if I can even build an audience (basically email list) around it first. As I proclaimed on the about page, "Revenue is obviously at zero right now. It will likely stay there for a while. Probably forever." Not wanting to miss the opportunity to try a fancy new web stack, I wrapped the tool up into a NextJS web app. This choice was primarily to capitalize on the out-of-box server-side rendering it offers. That way, I could actually get this project to rank properly on Google for all the various trends. I listed Trennd in early May (way before it was finished) on Product Hunt's Ship service. Admittedly though, I probably should've done much more than this and actually talked to potential users/customers before writing any code. But I was very bullish on the concept since I was building Trennd to solve my own problem. 👹 But with a total of 153 subscribers from PH Ship 2 months later, it definitely felt like there might be more cost-effective ways to acquire initial users than the $80/month there. But the brand exposure and potential support from those guys on launch is still valuable. By May 20th I felt I had something that I could finally start to show people. But around the same time, I also realized that Trend List was the brand name of Trendlist.org. This is a contemporary graphic design site with Domain Authority of 38 and a huge presence on Google SERPs. I really didn't want to compete from day 1 just to show up on Google when people search the brand name. Anyway, I found 3 other names that I'd be more than happy with: Trendful, Trennd and Trend Geek. I threw Nice Trend Bro into the running at the encouragement of my wife. Then I realized this rebrand could be a fantastic marketing opportunity in itself. So I decided to run a public vote on the new name via twitter poll as a fun and novel way other people could get involved. Plus this way I'd ensure it's a solid name that works for everyone. With the Twitter poll underway for a week, I wanted to capitalize on this 7-day window and get as many votes as possible. Reddit Pre-launchI quickly got it up on Reddit as an initial "pre-launch". I'd mainly wanted to get some initial users to help iron out any wrinkles and bugs, and to point out any big holes in terms of functionality. And as a professional "wantrepreneur", I'm often lurking here on r/entrepreneur and I thought you guys might find Trennd useful. But I came in with my guard up. I knew full well you would chew me up and spit me out in an instant if you sensed I was here solely to promote. So I found 57 of the most interesting trends I had at the time and used them as a shield going into the post. I made sure to provide value first and ask for feedback second. I stuck around the comments section all day replying to everyone who took the time to comment. The response to this Reddit post was huge! It received over 500 upvotes across 3 subreddits. One kind stranger even gave me Reddit Gold. In terms of number, Reddit brought:
Not a bad start. I also got a huge amount of awesome feedback on how I can improve the app and make it more valuable. Like requests for:
After this Reddit success, the twitter poll had over 100 votes for the new name. It was a close run between Trendful and Trennd. And, somehow, Pieter Levels came across Trend List, loved the concept and voted for the name Trennd! I'm a huge fan of Pieter's and Nomad List. I was watching his Bali video about his maker journey literally days before starting Trend List! So for him to vote and like the idea was both uncanny and amazing. And in the end, the name Trennd won by a small margin. Following all this initial traction, Trennd was featured on Harry Dry's killer Marketing Examples blog. I made the front page of Indie Hackers too with the top milestone too. Love the IH community so this was a big deal to me! After the first 5 weeks I was absolutely chuffed with the results. (That's British slang for very pleased!) I hadn't set any goals, but 353 email subscribers was way beyond anything I expected. And I was even more pumped that the initial feedback was so overwhelmingly positive. I've made some other small products, but they were like trying to get a massive boulder uphill. Every time you stopped pushing for new customers, it would roll back down on you. Old customers would churn and you hadn't replaced them. But this one felt obviously different. It was the first thing I'd made that people just shared automatically and it kind of took flight by itself. And with an email list in the hundreds, I started a weekly email newsletter called Trennds For The Weekend**.** My primary goal there was to make no-fluff, straight to the point emails, with a carefully curated list of the most interesting and fresh trends each week. The newsletter was the one thing that I made sure happened every week. It was great motivation to get things done to have something to talk to the readers. Plus it was an invaluable way to keep in touch with Trennd's growing audience and have an open channel for feedback. If I started to go in a wonky direction re: trend quality, web design, email format, bugs, or anything really, somebody would usually let me know via email reply and help to straighten the ship's course. Next up was a Show Hacker News launch, which I expected to be a giant flop as most things usually drown in the noise. Show HN LaunchSo Friday at 10pm and I'm sat at my desk in Japan ready to post to Hacker News. My wife's already gone to bed, but I figured this was the best time to post such that people were awake in both US + Europe. Plus I could reply to any comments and keep check on things through to Saturday morning JST if I had to. So I drafted my opening thread comment and hit submit.
Oh man. I'd been thinking about this submission all day. And I couldn't even post. 🤦🏼♂️ Anyway, I emailed the mods at Hacker News to explain and they very quickly and kindly marked it ready to go through. My account was made in 2017, but turns out "too new" can also mean not having participated much in the community. Flash forward to the following Friday and this time it went through. We'd made sure to phrase the title to resonate with the audience. On Hacker News (and in most places I suppose) simple, clear and humble works best. this is where fellow indie maker Vincent was awesome — he helped me to get this title spot on, along with a bunch of other great advice that made a huge difference. The post immediately moved onto the best of Show HN page, and then quickly onto the main page. Traffic increased to 400 concurrent users on Trennd and we briefly peaked at #1. It was at this point that Trennd got the infamous "Hacker News hug" and the site died. The free MongoDB Atlas database plan did not appreciate this flood of connections. So I had a frantic 15min where the website was down while I upgraded to the paid tier. It's a shame that I lost this quarter-hour of Hacker News prime time. And I've since implemented some server-side caching that prevents the database from getting hammered. But since I recovered quickly, we remained near the top of the front page for 12 more hours, which is good enough for me. Let's not be greedy. 😛 I manned the comments section into the early hours of the morning, got some great discussion and a tremendous amount of positivity from the crowd. Twitter BonanzaJust as I started to think everything was all over and we were back to normality. The buzz started to spill over and have a huge domino effect onto Twitter. Dozens and dozens of people tweeted about Trennd. Thankfully I'd updated the twitter preview image beforehand (thank you Michael!). So there was a pretty placeholder image and sweet description when dozens of people shared and tweeted about Trennd. And then, the cherry on top of it all was that Rand Fishkin of Moz tweeted about it! Unbelievable! This made my month. 🍒 The number of likes and retweets on the back of this was insane too. I'm a twitter newbie, so to get this kind of exposure blew my mind! 🤯 It also led to us getting picked up by the hackernewsletter and kottke.org which drove some good traffic our way too. All of this combined to rocket us above 2000 email subscribers:
It was really cool how ready people were to contribute and add trends of their own too. It confirmed my hypothesis that we could crowdsource the surfacing of new trends to some extent. In a similar way that Product Hunters crowdsource new products. But with this came the issue of quality control. One visitor, for example, added "Donkey Porn" as a new trend, and it may well be trending, but I had to moderate it away. 🤫 At this stage, I felt I'd truly validated interest in the project with over 2000 subscribers, marketing to get another X hundred subscribers wasn't going to change anything. I needed to make the platform more powerful. So I held off a Product Hunt launch thinking I'd keep that powder dry. Monetization (Or Lack Thereof)I also started to think long and hard about how to monetize the site at this time. I needed it to at least pay some of its own bills and maybe even some of mine! In the medium to long term, I knew a premium version of Trennd was the way to go. But I couldn't figure out what this should look like and wanted to do it right. There's no point damaging hard-earned goodwill by pushing out a rushed premium product too soon or something that's the wrong fit. Somebody did ask for a "private Trennd dashboard" where they could favorite trends and even get personal alerts. They even said they'd pay $100-$200 per month for it. Turns out, they found Trennd immensely valuable to discover new programming languages sooner so that they could make Udemy courses around them. (If they were the first to get a course out and get good reviews, it's like a winner take all market and can be very profitable.) But, to me, all the value seems to be in the trends themselves and spotting hotter trends sooner. Not the ability to put certain ones in a personal dashboard. They'd just use the free version! Plus how many tech course creators are there out there? For better or worse (I think better!), I dismissed it as a dead-end. Instead, I began to look for a community or affiliate sponsor and started to have pricing conversations with people. Even though I was still small fry in terms of traffic and a few thousand email subscribers. I managed to set up a nice sponsorship 'swap' with Unreadit (which is awesome, check it out!) and that was a good fit and worked out well for both of us. It drove a bit of traffic, some new subscribers and gave me some stats about how well Trennd sponsorship slots converted for future potential sponsors. But it didn't bring in any cash money since it was just a swap. Having that deal in place did give me an excuse to scuttle back into my code cave though. 🦀 Code CaveThis was with the view to making Trennd more robust and sustainable for the long term. The #1 challenge was, and still is, the noise to signal ratio. Nobody wants to click through page after page trends to find the ones relevant to them. They need to be able to slice and dice the trends in more ways/dimensions that are relevant to them. So I hunkered down in my little white room in our Japanese "mansion" (which in Japan basically means an apartment). I added things like absolute search volume data and the ability to sort on it. More consistent categorization standards and automatic classification of trends too. With the data granularity, you can see the 3-month chart data was weekly at first. So pretty crummy with only 12 data points. But then below that with daily data points instead you can really see the difference. Anyway, I'll stop boring you with the various small additions and improvements I made over this time. Back to the story. 😛 Traction Despite InactionI'd done zero marketing for over a month. 🤦♂️ The hype last month around the Hacker News launch and Twittersphere had naturally died down, along with the web traffic. It's way too easy to put marketing on the back burner and keep building in general. That's where I'm personally most comfortable. Yet, I know too well marketing should be an ongoing crusade, alongside product improvement. The most successful indie hackers I see around — they have systemized routines that enable them to continually output valuable content. But to my surprise, the mailing list count was still ticking up every day despite all this, and the site had seemed to reach a healthy equilibrium of 100–300 daily visitors. These were both big green flags to me. (I'm not sure if green flags are actually a real thing. Emojipedia doesn't think so… 🚩) Pieter Levels tweeted about us again out of the blue too! This was several months after the first time and drove several thousands of visitors to the site. AcquisitionAll kinds of people had been putting themselves forward asking to get involved. And this was happening on a semi-regular basis! The problem is, co-founders bring a huge amount of risk with them. Differences in vision, work ethic, and so many other things. They're big unknowns, so I'd decided to stick by myself and the devil I know. That is until I received the following email from: I thought I recognized that name. Googling Brian Dean… Oh snap! Yep, it's Brian Dean of Backlinko.com 😮 More googling… Interesting, he's acquired things before. I don't think he's joking around. I'd just had my wedding 2 days before and we were off to Okinawa for 4 days, so my call with Brian had to wait. Best to play hard to get anyway. 😜 Then 1 call, 1 hour, 21 minutes and 31 seconds later — we had a deal.
As for the acquisition number… that's why you've read this far, right?! It's really difficult to put a price on something that's not making any money yet. Well, actually it's not. Most people would just say $0. And traffic was growing but spikey and low in an absolute sense. But at the same time, we were both massively excited by the potential and the concept is partially validated and de-risked given the initial traction obtained. We settled on an amount equivalent to how much I'd earn as a US-based engineer working 6 months, but then multiplied by X for the traction/success factor already achieved. And I also still have a stake in the project going forward. So I can't retire yet, but it's a HUGE win! The main thing is - now I don't have to worry quite so much about paying rent every month and I can start to think more big picture in general. And perhaps even more importantly, it provides validation to myself (and my wife!) so that I can keep working on these "projects" of mine and not get a "real job" just yet. To be honest, I didn't know if I was just crazy and wasting my time for 6 months. To my Japanese in-laws, I was the slightly strange, unemployed "freeter" at home on my computer all day. I have to say, writing during the process made a huge difference. It keeps you sane as a solo-founder and allows you to track your own progress at a high level. Also, being as open as possible and sharing metrics such as subscriber growth, traffic and revenue helped to attract support and keep me accountable when it was only me working on it. And overall, all of this helped to create a story around the product, without which people don't have reason to care. What's NextIt's awesome to have Brian behind the project now. This is fantastic news for Exploding Topics. He's a massive name in the SEO industry of course, but also a super-smart guy who really knows his stuff and enables us to take the project to the next level! He has a great instinct for direction, based on years of experience and success online. This includes his "head-ache detector" as he calls it, which can foresee potential problems way further in advance than I can. And we've also fast-forwarded to having Brian's huge audience to put new features in front of and see what they think. I no longer need to slowly grow Trennd's audience via a trend community/discussion platform over months and years, while also trying to wrestle with product-market fit. Instead, we can focus on building a better product. This means the core value of trend discovery and getting people hotter trends faster**.** To this end, we've been able to refocus on the backend. Now we monitor way more places on the internet as sources for interesting new topics and keywords across health, business, marketing, fashion and more. We've also decided to niche down. This is a vital step and something I'd been sweating and delaying for several months. But with Brian's help, this is something we've been able to move forward on. The problem is there are so many different potential customers: indie makers like me looking for their next project idea, investors looking for a company stock pick, affiliates seeking the next hot product or people just seeking to feed their curiosity. But we've settled on professional bloggers**.** These guys are our new focus as they constantly need fresh content ideas across a range of categories to write about. And if they're one of the first to write about an exploding topic then this makes a huge difference to their results. They also potentially make for good customers. (Even though we don't have our premium version yet!) It's still good to choose a nice market where people immediately 'get' the product and are willing to pay for it if it provides value. This market has proven itself before too, as Nathan Barry of ConvertKit said about going from $1k — $10k MRR:
We've renamed it too. I know, I know… I've already rebranded from Trend List to Trennd, and now we're doing it again? But hear me out. This product spreads by word of mouth very well. But try telling your friend to "check out trend, but with two n's. Oh and it's .co not .com". Not good. 😅 So we've gone with ExplodingTopics.com Lovely. Easy to remember and easy to spell. Has a balanced look to it on paper too, but maybe that's just me. And the word "topics" aligns better with our new target audience. Plus we now have a sweet new design. I feel it's much more intuitive and way sexier in general. 🤩 Before it looked like a project, now it looks like a product. And here's the plug, the inevitable plug: And we're finally launching on Product Hunt today. Both Brian and I will be active in the discussion all of today (3rd December 2019): That's it! Glad you made it to the end, hope you enjoyed the story and thanks again to you guys at r/Entrepreneur Until next time,😘 [link] [comments]  |
| Free online market category research Posted: 03 Dec 2019 05:40 AM PST I spend a ton of time researching industries, niches etc. and I am thinking of bundling what I find out about an online industry into a few pages and send it out, for free, in a weekly newsletter. To do my research, I use some free tools, but I also have access to expensive tools like SimilarWeb and some market research websites as well, so I think the output could be interesting to some people here. At least I find something in the data which surprises me. Would anyone be interested in this? And if you would be interested in this - what sort of data would you be looking for? This is my list so far:
I want to bundle it up into a 2-3 page report with consistent formatting [link] [comments]  |
| $100,000/month selling weighted blankets [from Bali] Posted: 03 Dec 2019 08:00 AM PST Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Elizabeth Grojean (u/Eliz008) of Baloo Living, a brand that makes luxury weighted blankets Some stats:
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Baloo Living is asleep and wellness company launched from Bali in 2018. Our signature product is a weighted blanket, an incredible tool for calming the nervous system with gentle pressure, similar to the way being hugged or held makes us feel naturally comforted. These blankets have been used for decades by therapists and are only now going mainstream as people discover just how powerful they can be for improving sleep and soothing anxiety--without the use of medication. It's exciting to be bringing a product to market that does so much good and only beginning to reach critical mass. The market for weighted blankets is exploding - currently, on Amazon, there are millions of dollars in sales monthly, and we know that e-commerce generally represents 10% of retail sales in the US. We reached six figures in our third month, and seven figures after our first holiday season before even a year has passed! Baloo took off like crazy, partly because we stand for the highest product quality, customer service, and thoughtful design. What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?In 2017 I quit my job in marketing and publishing in New York City and booked a one-way flight to Bali. I was completely burned out and confused about the direction of my life. I'd been working so hard, yet felt unfulfilled. In the process of leaving every familiar security behind, I came to understand that I'd been looking for wholeness through external validation. In the first weeks without a title, company, or convenient identity, I felt completely naked. Over the course of weeks that then became months, I softened my external cover and started to discover what life could be like when there's nothing to prove, nothing to justify, and no one to impress; the experience of being enough, satisfied and happy, just because, was the greatest and most beautiful discovery! I came back to New York City feeling so good and got smacked in the face with reverse culture shock. I tried to go back to life as I'd known it, but I had changed so much, I could never go back to working in an office for someone else. I'd spent almost all of my savings and had just a few thousand dollars left, but made the difficult decision to choose the path of uncertainty and risk, and go back to Bali with no income, with the intention of launching a business that I could run remotely and independently. In Bali, I met so many people running businesses while traveling, and I knew the secret to learning was to be surrounded by a community of kind people who could teach me. Back in Bali, I quickly went through an online course to launch a brand through Amazon FBA. Through product research, I discovered weighted blankets, and less than a week later, booked a flight to visit with suppliers and pick up samples. The moment I tried my sample weighted blanket for the first time, everything changed--I fell in love with the surprising, deeply relaxing sensation that crept in. At that moment, this business went from a project to a passion; the miracle of our bodies to self regulate and heal when given a nurturing environment is amazing to me. Baloo Living is a product company standing for respect for the body's wisdom and gentle self-care and comfort. I was inspired to share the experience I had of reconnecting with myself by escaping to Bali with the rest of the world who can't take the time to travel but can take a few minutes for quiet time with a Baloo blanket to find stillness and peace within. At my home office in Ubud, Bali, Spring 2019 Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.Right away, I knew that I could improve on the products being offered in the market. The blankets I saw were either made of synthetic materials or low-quality cotton. Baloo is made using a very soft, premium cotton that feels luxurious as soon as you take it out of the box. It's heavy but super breathable and cool, so it can be used all year round because good sleep should not be seasonal! Baloo also uses a lower profile batting because the thinner the blanket, the more finely the glass microbeads inside contour the body, giving a more immediate, grounding feel. We also eliminated plastic from our packaging, and we only use materials certified by the Oeko-Tex Standard 100, which means free of chemicals, clean and safe. Finally, we include a small gift--a link to Tibetan and crystal bowl recordings, which have been shown to help the mind and body relax. Despite the best product design, our first order hit some snags. The inspection report came back with a failing grade, just one week before the Chinese New Year. Factories close for the entire month, so I had to pause the shipment and wait before I could visit the factory personally to inspect the order. We sorted through each piece and eliminated almost twenty percent of the pieces that were damaged. The experience taught me to know the production process very well, and also gave me peace of mind to know that each blanket we shipped was perfect. Since then, I've found a new manufacturing partner who is incredible to work with. The prices are higher but the facility is sparkling clean, the management team is excellent, and I can sleep at night knowing our products meet the highest standards. This is a photo of my sister Kimberly and a friend tying ribbons around our product inserts at a coworking space in Ubud, Bali. I hand-carried the inserts to the factory, where we inserted them as we inspected each blanket: Describe the process of launching the business.I launched Baloo through Amazon initially. We shot beautiful photography at a villa in Bali and optimized the listing for the best keywords. The first order came within a day, and I can't describe the joy at seeing it! Soon, we were selling three to six weighted blankets a day, and I didn't think I could stand it--it was beyond my wildest dreams to have a product that someone would exchange money for! The first person who contacted us for a return made me so sad; I was in Bali, and I arranged for a courier to pick the box up from the woman's apartment building in Manhattan and deliver it to my sister's for safekeeping. The courier cost $40! It's so funny looking back, but I feel a personal connection to each customer, and want people to be well taken care of. For the first few months, sales were made only on Amazon, but as the holidays neared, I reached out to a PR firm to help us with placements in gift guides. PR takes a couple of months at least, as the editors need time to learn about your brand and work it into their editorial calendars. Fortunately, we got an unexpected piece of the press just at the end of November when New York Magazine's The Strategist named us the "Best weighted blanket to gift" - in just two days our website, balooliving.com, was flooded with orders and we completely sold out of our entire Q4 stock. We had hundreds of people emailing us to be put on the waiting list, and at this point, I was the only person doing customer service! I called my mom and asked her if she could stop what she was doing and help me respond to emails. She worked with me for the entire month of December and we started to take pre-orders for January delivery. Now, my mom is a permanent member of our customer service team and answers our phones to help customers decide which blankets to order. Her background is in mental health and counseling and she's a certified life coach, so I couldn't imagine anyone better prepared to take care of our customers. Now that we are a year and a half in business, we have received a number of accolades and high profile reviews, and the press is one of the main drivers of our website sales. We also invest in organic SEO, Google shopping ads and paid search. Our channels have shifted so that Amazon represents a bit under half of our sales with the rest from our website and select partners like Macy's, Verishop, and The Grommet. Baloo's operations and fulfillment team - Sean Zhang, Hasimew Jallow, Nancy Grojean, Elizabeth Grojean, Benjo Bote Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?I believe it's a combination of touchpoints that help us build and maintain a relationship with customers. The unboxing experience, which is the moment of the first impression with our physical product, can't be overemphasized. That's why we made the move to pack our blankets in a reusable cotton dust bag, and tie the product inserts with a ribbon. So much care has gone into the product and the brand, that we do everything we can to deliver that experience to the customer. Email and social media are the other ways we stay in touch. While we take a restrained approach to discounts and promotions, we do offer discounts at key gifting times, and we find that once someone has tried the blanket, they want to share it with friends and family members, so it makes a natural gift. So while it's not a consumable product, we do see anywhere from 15-20% of our customers are returning customers. How are you doing today and what does the future look like?I'm committed to running a lean and bootstrapped company. It makes things harder in some ways but also keeps us creative. In addition to our original weighted blanket, we now offer a smaller size (the Mini Baloo), duvet covers, and French linen pillowcases. We are launching a new product right before Black Friday that I can't yet reveal, and turning on global shipping, which will help us gauge interest in markets outside the United States. One of our greatest opportunities lies in the heart and story of our brand, so we will be looking for new ways to share that, and connect with people on an emotional level; through Facebook ads and organic content, plus videos on-site and in email. I have several product ideas that I'm so excited to launch and will plan for next year. These will help us build a stronger foundation as a brand that stands for comfort and self-care. We're also looking for ways to grow our giveback to our nonprofit partners: the Pajama Program, which gives children and their caregivers' tools for building reassuring bedtime routines; and Carbonfund.org Foundation, to offset our carbon footprint. We're also looking to do more for the environment through corporate givebacks, such as giving a percentage of our sales to the Rainforest Alliance, which we did for a time. After spending a couple of years in Bali, I'm really excited to be back in New York City and meeting so many inspiring entrepreneurs and creative people. I'm challenged every day and can't wait to see what happens next! Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?Be thoughtful about engaging consultants or agencies. I've made the mistake of rushing forward into contracts with a person or team because I'm impatient and want things to move forward, but it's far more efficient to take the time to make sure the person or company is the right fit. But, hire experts! It will quickly reach the point when you cannot take the time to learn everything yourself and cheap freelancers can also waste time. When you bring someone on who is a true expert, make sure they're open to explaining their thought process or methods with you, so you can learn from them while they support your project. What platform/tools do you use for your business?Our website is built on Shopify and we've just launched with Shopify Fulfillment Network to the warehouse and fulfill orders from the East Coast. I'm excited to see how the faster shipping speeds to the East Coast improve our conversion rates. Border Guru is a great service that our west coast fulfillment center uses to calculate duties and shipping at checkout for international orders. This means the customer isn't surprised with a customs bill upon delivery. I use FreeeUp to find high-quality freelance help which comes vetted (unlike Upwork). I also hear that Jobrack.eu is quite good but I have not yet used it, it's primarily for sourcing technical talent from Eastern Europe. Our team communicates throughout the day on Slack, our headquarters is in New York, and we have team members in San Diego, Denver, North Carolina, Barcelona, New Jersey, and Austin, so we try to have video calls every two weeks to connect and share updates as a team. Brexhas helped us manage our cash flow, allowing us to borrow cash for 60 days with no fees or interest. Transferwise has made it easy to send money without paying wire fees. We use Klaviyo for email because it is powerful segmenting lists and creating user journeys. Orderly Emails is an app that saved us a lot of time, it allows you to synch the design of your Shopify store's automatic emails all at once, versus updating each template. What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?Power vs. Force by Sir. David R. Hawkins examines human behavior and the fundamental access to the truthfulness or falsehood of any statement or supposed fact. This, I find most interesting in honing the ability to read situations and my own motivations and decisions, as I try to move forward with integrity and awareness. I'm a big fan of Dr. Joe Dispenza, and most recently read Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, which helps me expand my thinking outside my familiar bounds. I love Shopify's podcast, Shopify Masters, which hosts a wide variety of e-commerce business owners with different business models, goals, and strategies. I learn something from each episode, no matter the guest's background. I find belonging to groups and attending events to be extremely valuable for building and growing a supportive network. I recommend AMZ Innovate in New York City each September for Amazon sellers, and Digital Marketing Skill Share (DMSS) in Bali each October for diverse digital marketing tactics. I'm a member of Dynamite Circle, which is for all digital entrepreneurs, not only product-based businesses, and I participate with the NYC Fair Trade Coalition to stay abreast of innovations in sustainability, textiles, and sourcing. I always recommend getting involved with groups or organizations in your space, either in person or online; one small insight or learning can pay off exponentially against the time or money invested. Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Know that no one knows what they're doing, especially gurus. Each person's business is unique and comes as a result of timing, effort, circumstances and luck, and the future is always changing. I suggest educating yourself as much as possible, be it through webinars, books, courses, or any other resource, but take action quickly, even in small ways, to make the jump from conceptual thinking to practical application. You will learn SO much through doing, and even a small step might feel irrationally scary at the time, especially if you're challenging your self-imposed limits or ideas about what you "should" do or beliefs about the "way things are done." The BEST piece of advice I took was to list a product for sale on Amazon that was a small test product. The process of creating a barcode, labeling the product, shipping it to FBA, writing the listing, and then actually selling the product gave me confidence. Even if I lost money, the experience of taking each step was well worth it. In the end, I found something that made $300 a month, which was a huge victory! Last but not least, find people who understand and support what you're trying to do. It's hard enough to believe in yourself when you're doing something for the first time, so do yourself a favor and put people around you who can believe in you, when you don't. 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. For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily. Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Dec 2019 11:54 AM PST As a young "entrepreneur" who struggles to keep up with the traditional way of living and serving (a.k.a the 9-5, 5 degrees later way), am beginning to doubt the process of growing as an entrepreneur. It's nothing like how I expected, which was "easy". I thought doing it yourself would mean less stress somehow.. like — "yeah! Flexibility. Freedom! No annoying rules or structures! It's my full reign now.." yeah no. This is a lot of work. A lot of small details and pieces I didn't think about before. A lot of curves and hills that seem okay to take on until you realize how long and bumpy the walk really is. Not to mention the amount of emotions that run through you during all of these moments. Especially in the moments where it feels like the work and energy you're putting out won't be good enough or moving enough.. (those are the most difficult for me) Tbh, being a pioneer in your own life is not as glamorous and amazing as it's cut out to be on social media and even in person. It has its moments. Not all good, not all bad. But very interesting to say the least. — if you keep going to be able to tell. I wonder how others handle balancing grace and grit when embarking on this journey. How do you do it? [link] [comments]  |
| How to make at-least $100 with in few days? Posted: 03 Dec 2019 04:12 AM PST I have decent coding skills, and can build websites. But don't know much about marketing. I badly want to make some money online. Guys, could you help me with some ideas? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Dec 2019 12:40 PM PST I'm sick of making money for other people. What I'm looking for is just some advice of some avenues or resources to check out before I make any decisions. I would prefer something at the moment quickly to help my cushion over the next six months, and from there diversify into more long term type investments as well. [link] [comments]  |
| Recycling of confiscated liquids from TSA Posted: 03 Dec 2019 01:48 PM PST It is estimated that solely at LAX, $9 million in tax payers money is spent to handle "potentially lethal" liquids gels and aerosols confiscated during pre-terminal screening annually. Can't we just have a rapid detection system to deem them innocuous and then regular recycling? A quick mass spec service to test the liquids or a device to test the liquids [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Dec 2019 09:53 AM PST Being just 19 years old, I don't think I've done too badly. Over the last few months I've made around $8,000 - $9,000 (profit) with dropshipping, freelance, and selling ebooks. But honestly, I'm just tired of not having a sustainable business. I've learnt some priceless skills through dropshipping and freelance (things like direct response marketing, copywriting, etc.) But honestly? I want a sustainable business that I can work hard at. A business where I can put my skills to use, and essentially just build something with a bit of stability. It's probably dumb to ask other entrepreneurs what their business is, since I could potentially steal their idea. But if you're fine with sharing, I'd love to hear more about what some of you guys do. Maybe it could spark some ideas off in my head. Who knows. [link] [comments]  |
| How does Estonia feel about fintech? Posted: 03 Dec 2019 12:42 PM PST Estonia is well known to entrepreneurs since the cryptocurrency boom. But few people know about the nuances of the work of regulatory bodies. A short note on how regulators make decisions. In Estonia, the main regulator supervising the financial market is the Financial Supervision Authority, and its regulatory powers are derived from the Financial Supervision Authority Act (Financial Supervision Authority Act §1). The Financial Supervision Authority supervises and issues licences to banks, insurance companies, insurance intermediaries, investment firms, fund managers, investment funds, pension funds, payment and e-money institutions, credit providers, credit intermediaries, and securities markets (Financial Supervision Authority 2019b). In some areas not covered by the Financial Supervision Authority, the activity licences are granted by the Financial Intelligence Unit. Those areas of activity include (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act §70): [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Dec 2019 09:47 AM PST Hello, I am currently in web design and development and the more business owners I meet, the more they say they had a bad experience with their developers / designers / agencies in the past. I would like to hear your experiences, entrepreneurs of Reddit, regarding your website or web store development? What made the experience good or great and what made it miserable and bad? Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| Is it better to have more time or money when starting out in the beginning? Posted: 03 Dec 2019 11:51 AM PST Assuming you can have one or the other? More time allows you to learn and experiment. More money but less time means you can invest in new experiments and try scaling [link] [comments]  |
| Trademark EXAMPLEART when ARTEXAMPLE is used under common law?? Posted: 03 Dec 2019 09:27 AM PST I want to trademark and sell a product on Amazon under the following mark "EXAMPLEART" The last TM for EXAMPLEART was filled December 5, 2010 and cancelled January 9, 2018 IC 017. US 001 005 012 013 035 050. G & S (which leads me to believe the name is at least unique enough to pass based on precedence) My other concern was there is another seller on amazon with the name ARTEXAMPLE there is no Class 1 filing for this but there is a Class 35 that might be theirs. I wasn't sure what my chances of approval for EXAMPLEART are when someone else is using ARTEXAMPLE in a similar field but with no class 1 TM so just Common Law. Please let me if you have done something similar or if you know more about trademark law. I would get a lawyer to consult with but just trying to keep the costs down. [link] [comments]  |
| How do I achieve the highest phone call quality? Posted: 03 Dec 2019 10:35 AM PST I own a business where I talk on the phone a lot, from my home office. I want the highest call quality possible. I bought a Jabra Evolve 75 and made some samples calls using Google Voice on my computer to see how it would sound. It was terrible. It sounded like a cell phone with poor reception. I thought connecting to a PC would give me the highest call quality, but I was wrong. I'm now considering buying a landline with Spectrum because every time I talk to a landline their voice sounds clear ($9.99/mo). What are your suggestions for a setup that will give me crystal clear sound quality? Should I go with the landline and a nice phone? I can't really afford to trial and error all the top-end equipment. This headset already cost me a couple hundred bucks and its not what I was expecting. [link] [comments]  |
| Being Alienated/Close People Turning Away Posted: 02 Dec 2019 09:49 PM PST For starters, I'm about to hit 30. I started a business about 6 months ago in an industry that I had worked in for about 7 years. I was fortunate enough to have a mentor that forced me through every facet of the business where I eventually ended up in technology and understanding the business at a deeper level. I went through and got my MBA, on my own merit, and eventually was given this great opportunity to start a business which I opted for the field I knew the best. Things have been going great and I couldn't be happier with how everything is turning out. Hitting milestones, managing the different aspects of the business, etc. Even when people ask, I say business is fine and we are growing slowly but steady, in an effort to be humble. I really aim to not boast or show off in any way. Recently I've been noticing some bitterness from people I used to be close with. Close friends, even family. I've overheard people saying I haven't put the time in and don't deserve any of this. How have you overcome the negativity you face from people you've respected or had close relations with? I'm pretty thick-skinned but when someone from my inner circle spreads negativity, I can't help but feel bad about it. [link] [comments]  |
| There is now a sub reddit to find beta testers Posted: 03 Dec 2019 01:33 PM PST For any of my side projects, I've found it invaluable to get feedback from potential users as early as possible. You will gain valuable insight, potential customers, and people rooting for you to succeed. I've created a subreddit that should help you find beta testers and reward the people taking the time to test your product. https://www.reddit.com/r/BetaTestersNeeded?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share Please make sure you read the rules before posting. [link] [comments]  |
| Master P Unveils New Line of Noodles Called "Rap Noodles." Posted: 03 Dec 2019 01:26 PM PST The maker of Rap Snacks "A Dab of Ranch," Master P Returns with his newest product from his food line. We give you "Rap Noodles." https://4ormypeople.com/mood/2019/12/3/master-p-unveils-rap-noodles [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Dec 2019 01:09 PM PST Hello entrepreneurs, So we are starting our company, me and my 2 other co-founders, let's call us: A, B, and C.We've been working on it for 6 months already: got 2 full time employees from the start, and now we have 4 full time employees (in addition to us 3).We are releasing our app this week (yaaaay). B is leaving us, sadly. We do not think it is gonna work with the three of us, and he agrees. What should he get? Facts:
Given the previous, what seems fair for B to take / keep? Kind regards! EDIT: clarity [link] [comments]  |
| Is it better to hire casuals who I can pay around minimum wage for or professionals? Posted: 03 Dec 2019 01:05 PM PST I am currently working on a business plan document for my film/production company and I am wondering if investors are more likely to support taking casuals who can prove their skills in things life graphics design and editing so that the cost of employment is much lower, of professionals who have work experience or degrees but be forced to pay at least twice as much? [link] [comments]  |
| Change of Address: Am I wrong in thinking that switching to a USPS PO box is harmful? Posted: 03 Dec 2019 12:59 PM PST Background: Have been running a couple of successful small businesses in the Seattle area for 20 years or so. Have changed physical addresses several times but kept that business address, which was precisely its purpose. Am thinking of changing the business address from a UPS store to a Postal Service PO box. The other reason I originally went with the UPS store was that, at least at the time, banks, many vendors & agencies wouldn't deal with anyone with a PO box as opposed to a physical address, even though the UPS store is effectively the same thing as a PO box. You just couldn't sign up for mailing lists, get product samples, get a salesperson to talk to you, etc., with nothing but a PO box. Is this still the case today? Or can I run a mostly digital business with a PO box address? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Dec 2019 12:59 PM PST Do any of you entrepreneurs have recommendations for a good google ads specialist? I own a small business in Washington state and i dont work with the same company that managed my campaigns before anymore due to poor results. I want to give it another try because i feel like they didn't really know what they were doing. I feel like in the right hands we can get better results. [link] [comments]  |
| Is there room for a simple website to trade leases if you want to move? Posted: 03 Dec 2019 07:34 AM PST I've got a lot of friends who are graduating and are moving for jobs but have difficulty finding someone to take over their lease. I know of the product Flip but it seems expensive when going about advertising your place. I know Facebook marketplace is good but that seems to local. Does anyone else think there is room for just a simple website to swap leases with others. So if you're moving somewhere and someone is moving to where you are, why is it so difficult to just find each other and swap leases. Any thoughts? [link] [comments]  |
| Advice/opinions on my new business plan? Posted: 03 Dec 2019 03:46 AM PST For the last year, I've been running an average, run of the mill web design business. I get 4 or 5 customers a month for a few hundred bucks each and they have all been from FB groups at this point. I also host their sites at $19 a month each. In January, when small businesses have extra cash from Christmas, I'd like to refresh my business completely and bring in a large amount of customers as quickly as possible. I plan stop selling websites and start selling 'online packages'. I'm going to offer a website (new or redesign), google business registration/improve their Google business listing, and finally, either 'online branding' or SEO services as an 'all in one' package. I've realised business owners around here don't just want web design, they want you to handle everything they need to get online and they want a return on investment. I plan to make an attractive info packet that showcases this all in one service and why it can benefit peoples small business. The whole packet will be based around our mission statement, 'bringing your business online in 2020'. I'd like to get 1000 of these packets made up, and then spend January and February hand delivering them to every business near me that doesn't have an online presence or has an outdated site. I would go into each business at the quietest time of day and talk with the owner if their available. I'd have a 5 - 10 minuet chat with them about how a professional online presence can benefit their business and drive new sales/customers. Every web design agency around here advertises just online even though business owners around here want a more personal, face to face experience. Businesses and people around my area are also very passionate about supporting each other and supporting small businesses. I'd give them an information pack and ask them if they'd like to set up a 30 minuet meeting or a phone call to talk about what they might need and how I can best help them. I'm thinking these packages would range from $595 - $2000. Even if the business owner isn't interested in the package, if they aren't already registered on Google, then before I leave I'll try to convince them to let me set up their Google Business listing for a fee of $99. I'm in a countryside area with lots of small towns with small businesses that aren't online. There's also some larger towns and a city within an hour from me. I'm willing to invest the money getting these info packets made and invest the time to hand deliver them to every business. Do you think that if I follow this business plan and have a thousand conversations with business owners, I'll be able to to get at least 2% - 3% of them to sign up? That would make it worth my while. I'd really appreciate any feedback or pointers. Constructive criticism will also be gratefully received. If you can find any holes in this plan, or reasons it won't work I'd really like to hear about them. Thanks for reading! [link] [comments]  |
| Why people (you) haven't started entrepreneurship/self-employment/business venture - need reasons Posted: 03 Dec 2019 08:34 AM PST Hey guys, my name is Alex I am currently half employed and a half working on my business venture. My background is academic, chemistry to be precise. I got my PhD in sustainable chemistry but never taught anyone after that, instead joined the financial industry and now in my startup going back to chemical engineering. I want to pay back in one way or another as a 'teacher' because so far I only was a 'student' and was taking but not giving. I decided to start a youtube channel, but so far it is a hard going process and a battle choosing a direction. On one hand, I want it to be fun to watch, but on another, I surely do not want it to be like others and just talk about how to get subscribers or why canon is better than sony!!! I was hoping to ask you to remember the time when you had first want/inclination to become an entrepreneur and try to remember what was stopping you. Ultimately I want to come up with a list of excuses, procrastinations and reasons why people do not start. Then I will try to reflect on them (if I have experience in these areas) or do research and publish a series of youtube videos and Reddit posts on these subject. First of all, is it a good idea? Secondly, would you like to contribute and create a sort of curriculum like this, right here in this topic? Best! Alex [link] [comments]  |
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