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    Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (May 06, 2020) Entrepreneur

    May 06, 2020

    Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (May 06, 2020) Entrepreneur

    Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (May 06, 2020)

    Posted: 06 May 2020 06:10 AM PDT

    Please use this thread to ask questions if you're new or even if you haven't started a business yet.

    Remember to search the sub first - the answers you need may be right at your fingertips.

    Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts.

    submitted by /u/AutoModerator
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    I changed careers and went from $40k to $100k in one year.

    Posted: 05 May 2020 05:34 PM PDT

    Eight months ago, I changed my life completely. I went from being severely depressed, unfulfilled, and frustrated, working 50 hour weeks, barely earning above minimum wage, to landing my dream job, and more than doubling my salary.

    I'm sharing my experience because when I first began this journey, I would have loved to have heard a story like mine.

    After 7 years as a hairdresser, it became clear I was on the wrong path. Having always loved writing, I became determined to pursue a career in copywriting.

    The problem was, I had no idea where to start.

    When I researched ways to transition into the industry, every resource said I'd have to go back to college and study. I didn't want to waste another 3 years, accumulating enormous debt for a piece of paper that I knew wouldn't make a difference. I needed to find a different way to reach my goal.

    Here are the steps I took to change from hairdresser to copywriter, without a degree, and without an internship.

    1. Shift your mindset.

    I had to unlearn everything I thought I knew about how to build a successful career, starting with challenging the belief that I wasn't capable, or deserving of the career and life I truly wanted. These limiting beliefs mean most people just settle for a job they can tolerate, not the life they want.

    I read the work of many successful female entrepreneurs to learn about how they overcame their own self-sabotaging beliefs, as well as researching material online about how to handle "imposter syndrome." I have an entire hype-board on Pinterest, purely to remind myself that I am deserving of a seat at the table.

    2. Find a mentor

    I "apprenticed" myself to my friend who is a successful entrepreneur and runs several digital businesses. Find someone who has been successful in the niche you're interested in and ask them for help. If you ask for help, the majority of the time, you'll receive it. Successful people have been where you are now. When someone who genuinely wants to achieve what they have, asks for help, they are almost always more than willing to give it.

    3. Research

    I researched on Goodreads to see which books were consistently mentioned as being the best across marketing and copywriting.

    These included:

    • Mastery, Robert Greene
    • Daily Rituals, Mason Currey
    • On Writing Well, William Zinsser
    • The Adweek Copywriting Handbook, Joseph Sugarman
    • Ca$hvertising, Drew Eric Whitman
    • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert B. Cialdini
    • The Copywriter's Handbook, Robert W. Bly

    A key part of my process with these books is to take notes as I go, and either create or find online, a book summary once I've finished reading. I keep a Google Drive folder just for book summaries and I refer to them at least once a month to refresh my mind.

    I did one online copywriting course that I actually found here on Reddit, which turned out to be incredible. The thread is still up if you want to check it out.

    4. Start TODAY.

    I practiced as much as possible, journaling daily, writing on Medium, and submitting work to sites. I gained experience by working for my friend to practice working to a brief, following a word count, and meeting deadlines.

    5. Cold-email small businesses.

    I started cold-calling and cold-emailing small local businesses, offering my services for free to help gain experience and build my portfolio. I landed my first *legit* client this way. In "Influence", Cialdini talks about the principle of reciprocity — if you offer your services for free to a few people, it's likely that at least one of them will return the favor by offering you ongoing work.

    6. Apply for jobs

    I started applying for copywriting jobs. Initially, I never heard back from a single application, until I decided to leave my work history off my resume entirely. I think potential employers were seeing my history as a hairdresser and immediately concluding I wasn't qualified for the role. This tactic worked; I got a callback and they asked me to provide a writing sample. I knew I was up against 3 other top candidates, so I decided to go above and beyond — I didn't supply just one writing sample, I supplied 4 and explained how I would split test them to find the top performer. I figured no one else would go to that amount of effort, and my employer later told me that was true, no one else had. I had an interview and I got the job.

    Less than 6 months after that I became a freelancer, continuing to work with that company as my main client but with others on the side as well. Today, I work with a range of clients including social media influencers, brands, and small businesses.

    I don't expect to gain anything from sharing this, and I'm not looking for new clients. I just thought some of you might feel inspired by this or find some of the steps I took useful.

    If you do want to find me, I'm on Instagram.

    And I have a website too.

    submitted by /u/VisibleLiterature
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    The world's largest domain registrar, GoDaddy, with 19 million customers, has disclosed a data breach impacting web hosting account credentials

    Posted: 06 May 2020 07:06 AM PDT

    The world's largest domain registrar, GoDaddy, with 19 million customers, has disclosed a data breach impacting web hosting account credentials:

    https://www.onlinetoolsexpert.com/godaddy-confirms-data-breach/

    submitted by /u/ssmihailovitch
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    The complete startup/side-project launch checklist - from product conceptualization to launch, to ongoing marketing efforts.

    Posted: 06 May 2020 03:22 AM PDT

    Hey guys! So my co-founder and I launched several projects/businesses over the past 2 years (incl. our marketing agency, local tour agency, and a bunch of other stuff). We usually go through the exact same process for every project launch, so we decided to turn it into a checklist, both for ourselves & the internet people on Reddit.

    You can check out the complete checklist here, and here's a Reddit-format-friendly post:

    Step #1 - Research Phase

    Before you start planning your launch, you need to figure out your overall product and marketing strategy. Here's what you need to think about:

    • Create a list of competitors in your niche. Make a spreadsheet that includes:
      • Competitor Name
      • Link
      • Pricing Options
      • Key Features
    • Define your product & business. Decide on the following:
      • What's your business model?
      • What's your pricing model?
      • How many pricing tiers do you offer?
      • Do you offer a free trial?
      • Is your product freemium?
      • Which key features are you going to focus on for launch?
      • What's your differentiator? How are you going to beat the existing products on the market?
    • Spy on your competitors and figure out which marketing channels are getting them the best results.
      • Content Marketing. Do they publish blog posts on a regular basis? Do they promote their content on social media? Do they get a lot of Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn shares?
      • SEO. Do they have good rankings on Google with their blog posts? Do their landing pages rank on product search terms? You can check this by running their website through SEMrush or Ahrefs.
      • Search Ads. Are they running ads on Google Search? You can check this by running their site through SEMrush.
      • Facebook Ads. Are they running ads on Facebook? You can check this through Facebook Ad Library.
      • Affiliate Marketing. Check their website footer to see if they have an affiliate page up. You can also do this through a simple search query: "site:[competitor website] affiliate program"
      • Referral Marketing. You can usually find this in the footer. Check what kind of referral terms your competitors offer.
    • Now, use everything you've learned so far and create a pitch deck if you're planning on raising money, or a business plan if you're not.

    Step #2 - Slap Together a Website

    Time to get things rolling. The next step is to create a website & lay the foundation for your marketing.

    • Pick a domain name. Pro-tip, all the good ".com"s are taken. Go for something more creative like a .io, .xyz, or other TLD. We recommend using NameSilo for buying the actual domains, they don't do price-gouging, unlike most providers.
    • Buy hosting. We recommend using SiteGround - they have 99.99% server uptime, and their customer support is amazing.
    • Pick an email marketing provider. It doesn't particularly matter which one. We usually recommend MailChimp since it's free for up to 2,000 subscribers.
    • Create relevant social profiles. The key here is relevant. If you're a B2B enterprise software company, you really don't need an Instagram profile where you post selfies. Usually, most startups go for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
    • Create a landing page for your product. You'll need to create a landing page that sells your product. In 99% of cases, we recommend using WordPress. It's going to allow you to be a LOT leaner than having your tech team code your entire website from scratch.
    • Create other essential web pages. E.g. about us, contact us, pricing page.
    • Set up a payment processor. We'd recommend Stripe (the best option on the market) or PayPal (if you really have to).
    • Set up Analytics. You can pick between Google Analytics, MixPanel, or other alternatives.
    • Set up a business email. We recommend using G Suite. Dealing with your hosting provider's email service will be a pain when scaling.
    • Launch a blog. If you're planning on using content marketing or SEO for your marketing (which, in 2020, most product companies do), you'll need a blog.

    Step #3 - Do Some Pre-Launch Marketing

    If you have the extra time and resources, you can start marketing your product way before you've even launched. Usually, this involves:

    • Add an email capture on your landing page
    • Incentivize early adopters. Offer them something extra than just a "we're going to email you once we launch!"
    • Drive traffic. Usually, the best channels to use for pre-launch marketing are content marketing, SEO, and PR. More on each channel under "Ongoing Marketing" below.

    Step #4 - Get Some Initial Traction

    Once you have an MVP, you want to validate 2 things: that your product works, and that it can drive conversions (and hence, revenue). Here's how to do it lean:

    • If you did pre-launch marketing, launch an email to anyone that pre-signed for your product.
    • Cold call your first 50 customers. The easiest way to get your first customers is to do some cold calling. After all, if you can't sell your product on a one-on-one call, how will you sell it to strangers on the internet via text?
    • Find leads on social media. Use Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter to find leads on social media and pitch them with a direct message.
    • Run search ads. If you have a flexible budget, you can run search ads on direct intent keywords. E.g. if your product is a resume builder, you advertise on the keyword "resume builder."

    Step #5 - Prep For Launch

    Every startup gets one "launch" in its lifetime. Here's how to make sure you get it right:

    • Create a Press Kit and put it up on your website. Here's an example of how to do that. This is going to be helpful for journalists who want to write about your website.
    • Gather a list of journalists that wrote about your competition. You're going to email them during launch and ask for a feature. Use tools like Hunter.io or Clearbit Connect to find the journalist's email addresses.
    • Create a list of all your acquaintances that use ProductHunt (PH). You'll want to ping them and ask for support once you launch on PH (more on this in the next step).
    • Create a list of all your friends and acquaintances who might have connections to your target audience. You'll reach out to them during launch.

    Step #6 - LAUNCH!

    Time to hit that big, shiny red button and LAUNCH!

    • Reach out to all the journalists you listed in the last step and pitch your product. The PoV of the pitch should be "hey, you wrote about [competitor x]. We have a similar product, but here's how ours stands out…" To learn more about this approach, check out this article.
    • Launch on ProductHunt. Here's the best guide on how to do that.
    • Reach out to all your friends and acquaintances we listed out in the last step, and ask for a share of your product landing page. For the best results, you should also give them the EXACT text they should use when sharing the page.

    Step #7 - Ongoing Marketing

    BAM, you launched. If you did everything right, you should already have some initial traction. However, you're far from done. In fact, you're just getting started! From here on out, you should be doing ongoing marketing to drive growth for your startup. You can use the following marketing channels…

    • SEO
    • Content Marketing
    • Google Ads
    • PPC
    • Affiliate Marketing
    • Referral Marketing

    We're going to deep-dive on how to get each channel to work for you below.

    SEO

    SEO generally involves 3 things:

    - Creating high-quality, long-form articles that are meant to rank for a given keyword

    - Optimizing your website to Google's best practices

    - Getting high-quality links pointed towards your website

    Here's how to do all that:

    Content Marketing

    Content marketing = creating content aimed towards your end-user's pain-points or problems, and promoting it to make sure that they get to see it.

    E.g. if you're a resume builder SaaS, you'd create content on how to make the perfect resume.

    Here's how to do content marketing right:

    • Learn some basics of content marketing. The general process, though, involves creating and promoting content to drive traffic and leads to your product.
    • Come up with (potentially viral) content ideas. You can use the following tactics for that:
      • Find viral content in your niche with BuzzSumo
      • Reverse-engineer the best content ever published on Hacker News
      • Borrow content ideas from some of the best posts on Reddit
    • Create a list of channels you can use to promote your content. Some of our favorites include:
      • Facebook groups. Whatever your niche might be, there's probably a ton of Facebook groups around it. If you're in the SaaS, entrepreneurship, or marketing niche, check out our list of 100+ best groups.
      • Reddit. Find the most popular communities for your niche, and repost your content there. Keep in mind, though, that for most subreddits, you can't just submit your links directly.
      • Niche communities. E.g. Growth Hackers, Indie Hackers, some forums, etc.
    • On a weekly basis, create 1-2 new, high-quality content pieces.
    • For each content piece you publish, look for people who wrote about similar topics, and reach out to them asking for a share.
    • Read some case studies

    Google Ads

    Does your product already have an audience looking for it?

    Then Google Ads might be the right channel for you.

    The general process here is identifying keywords your idea users use to look for your product and running ads on them.

    First off, learn some basics on Google Ads. Here are some of the top resources:

    Then, here's how to do Google Ads:

    • Find the keywords you want to run ads on. You can use Google Keyword Planner for this. We recommend finding keywords around your product's main use-case and running ads on those.
    • Decide on your budget. This is a lot easier than you'd think - check what's the average CPC for your keywords, decide on the # of clicks you want to buy in order to see if you're getting a positive ROI or not and calculate the budget accordingly. Alternatively, you can just use our PPC calculator.
    • Create a landing page for each (significantly different) keyword. E.g. if you're advertising on "workflow software," your landing page should have "workflow software" as a keyword sprinkled all around (and NOT "business process management software" or any other synonym).
    • Create 3+ ad copies for each keyword you'll target.
    • Pick the right location, device type, and demographics options for your ad account. E.g. if you're selling a very expensive product, you'd probably want to avoid countries with lower income.
    • Use granular ad groups. I.e. each ad set should have 1 keyword. While this is harder to manage, it gives you better control and flexibility over your ads.
    • Use Cascading Bids. I.e. bid lower for broad match keywords, and higher for exact match keywords.
    • Add negative keywords. That's keywords you DON'T want your ads to show up on. When you're using broad match keywords, Google automatically shows your ads to associated keywords (which often-times, can be irrelevant).
    • Use as many ad extensions as you can.
    • Use optimized ad rotation. Meaning, Google will automatically figure out which of your ad copies work best and run those.
    • On an ongoing basis, keep track of your account and make adjustments when needed (try new keywords, add negative keywords, experiment w/ different ad copies, etc.)
    • Add conversion goals to keep track of your conversions.

    PPC

    Since there are a dozen+ good advertising platforms out there, this is going to be a bit generic. The general idea behind PPC ads is setting up your ad account (targeting + ad creatives) in such a way that you're generating a positive ROI.

    • Create your ad campaign. Decide on the budget and campaign goal. The latter will tell Facebook how to optimize your campaigns. E.g. should it focus on traffic that gets you sign-ups? Conversions? Traffic?
    • Figure out your ad targeting. Mind you, though, this doesn't mean that you should create a customer persona and replicate it using Facebook targeting. Create several target groups w/ a handful of interests each. Test which of them performs the best.
    • For each target group create several ad creative variations (i.e. ad image and copy). The goal here is to see which ad works best and double down.

    Looking to learn more about PPC advertising? Here are some of the best guides we've read:

    Affiliate Marketing

    Affiliate Marketing means starting a program that rewards companies who drive registrations and sales to your website. Here's how to set it up:

    • Decide on your affiliate program structure. Meaning, you need to figure out:
      • What's the % you're going to offer to your affiliate
      • Are you going to offer a different % based on the # of signups an affiliate drives?
      • Is the affiliate bonus going to be a one-time thing, or recurring?
    • Decide on the technical solution. Here are some options:
      • Create your own affiliate software. Obviously, this is very time-consuming and expensive, so we wouldn't recommend.
      • Using WordPress? You can try Affiliate WP
      • If you're not, any of the following options are nice: TapAffiliate, Post Affiliate Pro.
    • Create a landing page for the affiliate program. Include a link to it on your site header or footer
    • Reach out to potential affiliate marketing partners. For example:
      • Influencers
      • Bloggers
      • Affiliate blogs (i.e. blogs that review the best products in your niche)

    Referral Marketing

    Referral marketing can significantly boost your user acquisition with ZERO added spend. Here's how you can do that:

    • Decide on your referral marketing structure. What does the referrer and the referee get? Some options here are:
    • Setup a referral marketing program. You can use one of the following tools for that:
      • Referral Candy
      • Prelaunchr
      • Invite Box
    • Create a landing page for the referral program and include it in your header or footer
    • Reach out to your existing users and let them know about your referral program. You can do this by sending out a mass email to your subscribers and users.

    To learn more about referral marketing, check out:

    submitted by /u/DrJigsaw
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    Cloning a Website like this?

    Posted: 06 May 2020 02:40 PM PDT

    I was wondering if someone could explain to me how I could create coupons/deals website /platform and see how I commissions can be paid based on the deals made. For instance, I would like to know how this works for a few companies/businesses who claim members on their platform can share deals with each other. They say the members get to comment and vote on the deals so that the best ones float up and make it to the FrontPage of their website and I also think they make income from links. I just don't understand the business model / technical know-how behind it

    I would, therefore, love some explanation of how such a business model/website of this sort actually works and makes a company derive profit.

    submitted by /u/special1_983
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    [case study] Going from 10K to 30K organic traffic per day in 3 months

    Posted: 06 May 2020 02:06 PM PDT

    Wanted to share a quick case study of over 3X organic traffic growth (from 2K per day to 10K per day) in 3 months and the steps as well as investment details to get there.

    ​

    Quick facts

    Business Niche : Home Improvement

    Objective of traffic : Generate leads.

    Leads from organic traffic (3 months) : 2877

    Avg ticket size : $15K

    ​

    Traffic before : ~2K / Day

    Traffic After : ~ 10K / Day

    ​

    https://i.imgur.com/uD96uTq.jpg

    ​

    https://i.imgur.com/Wit2mgh.jpg

    ​

    Even with a large ad spend, we wanted to move more towards organic traffic to build a sustainable growth channel for the long run.

    ​

    The strategy included below areas -

    ​

    1. Identifying and fixing website technical issues to make it more search friendly.
    2. Identifying key search terms to get the traffic from
    3. Create pages for those terms or match them with existing page
    4. Content plan for the blog
    5. Increasing the Authority of the website as well as certain pages by getting backlinks (Earned as well as paid for).

    Website technical issues

    First week was spent fixing all the tech issues and making sure site is well optimized for search. Areas we found most problems were -

    • Website speed
    • Mobile friendliness (Basically getting 90+ score on Pagespeed insights for desktop & Mobile)
    • Duplicate pages, unnecessary pages, missing Titles, Sitemap issues etc.

    ​

    Identifying key search terms

    For this I used 3 different sources to get the data from .

    • Existing Google search console data. It gave us a handful of low hanging fruits - terms with search volume 1000+, ranking between 5th - 15th positions on google. A term at position 8th for example hardly gets any clicks, if we could push them in top 3, it will start sending traffic and can be done much faster than fighting for a new term entirely.
    • Using industry terms - Brainstormed the most commonly searched terms, throw them in online tools to check their search volumes and other related terms. Repeating this over a dozen times gave quite decent number of terms to consider.
    • Analysing the top 5 competitors organic traffic and figuring out what terms are getting most visitors and whether its relevant for us or not. This gave quite good terms and content ideas.

    Combined together we had over 500 terms to work with. I divided them into two buckets, One which had the most business potential and 2nd with a bit less immediate needs but still commercial intent.

    The primary bucket would have their own website pages and the rest of them will be taken care of on the blog (Creating articles for them). About 15 pages were created and over 500 blog articles were written and posted.

    ​

    ​

    Increasing the authority of the website as well as individual pages.

    The way it works is, the more people talk about you from their websites the better it is.

    Think about how you perceive a brand based on how many people you heard talking about it.

    One way to do that is to wait and focus on the business until it becomes so awesome that people talk about it on their own (they still do just not enough).

    Or you could influencer it and make the process a lot faster (think about Robert downey jr talking about a Phone or any other celeb endorsement)

    So, Back to getting more people talk about us - I have used manual outreach a lot to reach out to bloggers and request them to write an article (Including a link to us) for either free or barters. its pretty long and painful process but works.

    These days, 96 out of 100 times the blogger you reach out will ask for some kind of actual money before he writes an article (No I am not reaching out to Forbes or journalists etc, just regular bloggers) and the process becomes a lot easy if you just agree to that.

    So we thought about agreeing to the demands of webmasters who wanted some amount of payment (they do have to spend time getting an article as well as earn money from their blogs so I don't see anything wrong with it) and decided to give it a go.

    Here is a quick summary

    Number of articles live with a link : 78

    Money Spent on links : $7K

    Avg cost per article - $90.

    If you want more details on what kind of blogs were negotiated at what price - here is a full list with their extract metrics and the prices I paid (Removed the domain name to protect their privacy).

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11l7M4dp5BBInyS_LlR-_qVwpYb0ZK-OaX2p8PgrofKg/edit?usp=sharing&fbclid=IwAR08QGKjPkT3YTeoEsiBhaulwIZLuVwp2vB_qdoPFd0raSOV4SUbuQBncco

    ​

    Here is the factors I looked into before finalizing if the cost is worth it for a blog -

    in following order -

    1. Organic traffic of the blog
    2. Country of traffic of that blog
    3. How relevant is the Niche of that blog with my website
    4. Cost per thousand traffic (If a website with 100K traffic asks for 100$, its 1$ per 1000 traffic)
    5. DA / DR etc is there for your reference only, to judge the sites if you know these metrics. I don;'t really consider them.

    Learnings

    1. Organic traffic should still be the most sustainable & long-term customer acquisition strategy
    2. You don't have to weight years to see results if you carefully plan the strategy and execute it well. Traffic change could be seen in just a few weeks.
    3. While the website is great, You should must have a blog and a content plan in place. If done well it can alone bring thousands of new visitors/customers to your business.
    4. Organic traffic IS expensive, if someone sells you or promises top rankings selling Free Traffic, beware its not that easy or cheap and certainly not free.

    ​

    Hope this helps , Happy to answer any questions..

    submitted by /u/alertify
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    How would you rate this Business for sale?

    Posted: 06 May 2020 01:09 PM PDT

    I hope this is a place for feedback. I am interested in buying an online business. It's in the pet industry, basically an online pet store. I have a lot of ideas for marketing.

    They are selling because of health reasons. Asking price is $45,000 included is $45,000 worth of inventory. They broke even last year (2019). This a home based business that was started in 2009.

    5k active customers

    26k subscribers

    47k Facebook

    10k Instagram

    3k Twitter

    ​

    Does this sound like a good deal?

    submitted by /u/smashleypuffs
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    Please Learn from the Idiot on the Front Page Right Now

    Posted: 06 May 2020 06:21 AM PDT

    If you visit the front page of Reddit right now, chances are the you'll likely see a photo or video (1) referencing a particularly delicious public freakout. In the original clip, a belligerent restaurant patron harasses and then headbutts a member of the staff before getting brutally taken to the ground by a heroic bystander.

    This video was actually posted some time ago and it's only resurfacing now because the troublemaker has since allegedly made extensive efforts to get the content removed from the internet. What he didn't count on was pitchfork-wielding redditors and the Streisand Effect, which is the reason his brawl is once again being upvoted into the spotlight. Named after actress Barbara Streisand, this phenomenon occurs when a business or individual attempts to suppress an unflattering piece of content by using force to remove it from the internet.

    (Back in 2003 (2), Streisand sued a photographer to the tune of $50 million dollars for posting a few photos of her mansion in a collection of more than 12,000 images he'd collected as part of a research project on coastal erosion. The pictures in question only had six views by the public at the time of the lawsuit. Naturally, the frivolous case only resulted in more public curiosity. The photos were viewed millions of times and the actress ultimately lost the lawsuit.)

    The reason I am mentioning the Streisand Effect in this subreddit is because similar cases play out in the business world, often with negative customer reviews. A great example is Casey Movers (3), a Massachusetts-based moving company that threatened to sue an unhappy customer for libel after she left a negative review on Yelp. This only resulted in greater scrutiny of the company by both the customer and the press, which uncovered an attempt to buy positive reviews and bury negative ones.

    As someone who has managed the online presences of businesses, I understand the temptation to silence critics. There can be a very real impact on profits if a negative review has a high level of visibility, and then there's the bruised ego as a result people speaking poorly about your company. There's also a sense of powerlessness due to the fact that unless a review is blatantly fake, most review-hosting sites will not remove a negative review unless the action is prompted by the author.

    Which brings us to the point of this post: If you want to get a negative review removed, you'll need to acknowledge that the customer ultimately has the power in the situation and make amends. I'll point out that this doesn't necessarily admitting wrongdoing if you or your employees weren't in the wrong. The customer isn't always right, but they should always feel heard. Simply taking the time to speak with the customer at length in person or over the phone and acknowledge the frustration of the situation in general can be enough to win them over and get the post taken down.

    (This reminds me of a parable in which the wind challenges the sun to see which of them can force an oblivious person on a stroll to remove his jacket. The wind blows with all its might, but this only causes the man to cling more tightly to his coat to shield himself. The sun, on the other hand, gently cranks up the temperature and the man removes his jacket willingly. As a former coworker likes to say, "Kill 'em with kindness.")

    Research has shown that the sensation of revenge that many customers feel after dropping a one-star bomb on a business is likely rooted in an attempt to improve their own mood after an unpleasant experience (4). Business owners with a high level of emotional intelligence with realize that attempts to bully or threaten their critics are foolishly attempting to do the same thing. Learn from the idiot on the front page right now ... in a world in which a negative review can spiral into a torrent of bad publicity, strong-arm tactics often backfire.

    Hit me up in the comments with stories about how you've gotten negative reviews removed or why you have a different perspective than me when it comes to handling this kind of feedback.

    Further Reading

    (1) Idiot on front page: https://www.reddit.com/r/HumansAreMetal/comments/ge5jny/they_keep_removing_the_post_so_here_it_is_that/

    (2) Barbara Streisand case: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/67299/how-barbra-streisand-inspired-streisand-effect

    (3) Casey Movers' epic failure: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121115/02262421053/latest-company-to-discover-streisand-effect-casey-movers.shtml

    (4) Emotional effect of revenge: https://www.thecut.com/2017/01/turns-out-getting-revenge-really-does-make-you-happier.html

    submitted by /u/wearehumanpowered
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    Advice on how I can find an investor?

    Posted: 06 May 2020 02:48 PM PDT

    I'm a young entrepreneur & I have a couple of new concepts that I want to develop, but don't have the capital ATM.

    Are there any platforms where I can find an investor or what is the best way to go about finding one?

    submitted by /u/J-Z-R
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    What do you think about a case for personal documents (ID, passport, driver’s license) with a smart lock that won’t open to a stranger and a GPS locator to find it if lost or stolen?

    Posted: 06 May 2020 02:46 PM PDT

    Would you buy one? Why?

    submitted by /u/ekatev
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    How does Unemployee work?

    Posted: 06 May 2020 02:29 PM PDT

    I can go back to work May 12. My next date to request UE is May 10. Will that be for the 7 days preceeding or folling May 10. Trying to avoid any unintentional fraud

    submitted by /u/DMA222
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    I’ve seen a lot of people interested in earning money on their phone...

    Posted: 06 May 2020 01:44 PM PDT

    If you're interested in or currently working online, surely you're using your phone to make some dough, right?

    Technology is a great way to make a side hustle these days, and there a bunch of money making apps out their for you to rake in the cash.

    I personally have made $400+ from apps (with little effort) and decided to start a sub dedicated to making money on your phone. r/PhoneCash

    I've seen the need for a sub like this, hopefully we grow a community! :)

    submitted by /u/Bmille3
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    Once you posted a job. How long did it take you to hire someone?

    Posted: 06 May 2020 01:01 PM PDT

    I am curious about how long it takes some business to hire someone. Our job post went up about a week and half ago. We've had a couple of interviews nobody were crazy for yet. Does it just come down to patience?

    submitted by /u/Kwall16
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    For those who are leading or part of remote teams, what has been most effective in helping people be joyful and happy over the past few months?

    Posted: 06 May 2020 12:35 PM PDT

    question

    submitted by /u/LisaMck041
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    How does studying law help with becoming a better entrepreneur?

    Posted: 06 May 2020 12:34 PM PDT

    I came across advice saying that going to law school helps you to become a better entrepreneur. What might be the reason for this be? Would it be crucial?

    submitted by /u/healthyKimchiSoup
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    What software are you desperately needing for your business?

    Posted: 06 May 2020 08:35 AM PDT

    Hi, I am a software engineer who left my full-time job in February to start my own business. I have published a few products, but they didn't work out so I am trying again to find a pain point for other small business owners that I can fix using software. Do you have any critical pain point that you wished an app would exist to solve?

    Note that I am looking to build a sustainable business out of this app, so please suggest problems to work on that you are willing to pay for.

    Thank you & stay safe!

    submitted by /u/BaracatBros
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    I created a political nonprofit, and it is quickly becoming my main job.

    Posted: 05 May 2020 08:33 PM PDT

    I've often debated on posting this or not as I imagine my "business" might rub some people the wrong way, but decided now since its started to produce a steady stream of income I might as well share. Back in 2015 as the presidential campaign was heating up I created a political-minded Facebook page and it got pretty popular! I quickly grew to about 50k likes before doing any paid advertising or trying to earn any sort of money, it was 100% organic.

    I then made a short slogan, and people really liked it. A friend of mine suggested I make a bumper sticker out of it and sell it. So I did, and I sold a lot more bumper stickers then I thought. I started also selling t-shirts as well with various political slogans, all of which I created myself or had a graphic designer come up with. I was earning a bit of money but felt that I should try paid advertisements and created paid ads on Facebook and my page grew even more. I was especially surprised by my cost per like. I was averaging about 13 cents alike. And I did the math: at 50,000 likes I sold approx 250 bumper stickers, at an avg profit of $9 per bumper sticker. At 13 cents a like I could reinvest that $2,250 and get an additional 17,000~ likes to sell more merchandise and get a sell-through rate of about .5% of my likes.. So for the next several months, I would:

    • Come up with a slogan or a piece of merchandise and sell it through my Facebook page
    • Take the profits from those sales and invest it in ads to get more likes
    • Rinse and repeat

    Over that time I grew my page from 50,000 likes to about 300,000 likes in a matter of a few months using that process. And then it dawned on me, what if in addition to selling the merchandise I could also have people donate?

    Now I'd like to stress I do legitimately believe in the politics I'm promoting and so do my supporters. After some research, I figured a Superpac would be the best approach to handle this. My cause didn't necessarily support political candidates and to be brutally honest I intended on paying myself a salary.

    I retained the services of a lawyer to assist me with the paperwork and after a month or so of getting everything in place I became the chairman of my own super PAC and I began collecting donations in addition to selling merchandise.

    In 2016 for every dollar I raised, I spent approx 22 cents. In 3 months, I raised about $500,000 through donations and selling of political merchandise. I hired a media team to start producing videos, we would break down complicated political issues in bit size easily consumable content. In addition to this, I kept on fundraising and selling merchandise

    Then one of my videos hit it big. A few days after the video aired I got contacted by a well of an individual who wanted to help. We had a meeting in which we discussed politics, my future plans, and at the end, he offered to write me a check for $500,000. He liked what my team was doing with videos and felt that our bite sited formula was a really effective way to get our message across. He also loved how organic and amateurish we felt.

    Granted it helped that I was an amateur.

    I took the vast majority of his money and reinvested it into more media production. He brought in some of his friends, and we kept selling merchandise, and at the end of the presidential election, my SuperPAC had raised a 7 digit sum and I had paid myself a 6 digit salary.

    I took a month off and asked myself what I wanted to do. I sat down with a few trusted members of my team and planned for 2018. We kept our fundraising efforts up for 2017/going into 2018 and the same for 2019 and now 2020.

    I just thought my business was unique, I never in a million years imagined I would be making a healthy income by promoting a political cause I'm deeply passionate about.

    submitted by /u/yeasureletsdothat
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    Is there a good website that brings together entrepreneurs, investors, and talent?

    Posted: 06 May 2020 12:10 PM PDT

    I've thought about it in the past as a business idea itself, but due to the idea of investors being there it was limited by U.S. regulations.

    But now I'm looking to find people to team up with on projects. I have about 7 different ideas and it would be good to have a place to find others who either have ideas, investment funds, or the talent to build in exchange for equity. Aside from this subreddit, are there any networking exchanges like that?

    submitted by /u/Globaller
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    Is there a tool or platform to monitor e-commerce sales across Amazon, Walmart, Target etc?

    Posted: 06 May 2020 11:50 AM PDT

    Recently launched some at-home crafts on all those platforms. I know there's individual tools for each, but is there something for all of them and also auditing of packaging and descriptions?

    submitted by /u/shoedog95
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    What's best way to get clients as a FB Ads expert?

    Posted: 06 May 2020 11:47 AM PDT

    Hey y'all!

    ​

    I've spent the last year learning aFB ads and running them for businesses for free as a way to practice. Now I want to start getting paid but idk how to clients. I dont have money of my own to invest in ads, so lately I've been cold dming on instagram and out of like 60dms got like 4 responses

    ​

    What woud be good ways to get more clients?

    submitted by /u/gueinibba
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    What happened to u/Rickyo3?

    Posted: 06 May 2020 11:19 AM PDT

    It felt like he was the only user to give methods that actually earned money opposed to some of the other entrepreneurial ideas I see posted on Reddit. Why did he stop posting?

    I saw he deleted some of the older posts but I've been waiting for him to release some of his newer methods, even if I have to pay for them this time.

    submitted by /u/28YearsYung
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    MBA / Entrepreneur / Consultant for Volunteer Work

    Posted: 06 May 2020 11:17 AM PDT

    Last February I exited from my laser engraving company. With a lot of businesses grinding to a halt, I've been spending this time reading and taking online classes, but I miss solving larger business problems. So why not pay it forward?

    I am offering my services and experience as a volunteer consultant to help you get your idea off the ground or lend an eye and ear to some of your most pressing business challenges. The last time I did this, I had a pretty good response and really enjoyed it. There are some awesome ideas coming out during this pandemic!

    My undergraduate is in chemical engineering and then I went and got my MBA. I've been working with start-ups almost exclusively throughout my career. I've launched SaaS marketing platforms and consulted dozens of e-commerce companies and small businesses. I particularly enjoy crafting a go-to-market strategy and digital marketing.

    submitted by /u/BurkeAbroad
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    I have an app idea, budget is in the 5 figures, how do I go about finding someone who can make my app without stealing my idea? Non-compete agreements don't get enforced much in Canada. What to do?

    Posted: 06 May 2020 11:05 AM PDT

    As title states, thanks

    submitted by /u/ProfessorDogHere
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    New World Opportunities

    Posted: 06 May 2020 11:03 AM PDT

    As we've seen from the last few months, the world is changing most likely forever. The move to e-commerce has accelerated well beyond the curve, and international travel has fallen off a cliff. There's been a lot of losers but there's also been a lot of winners (I'm looking at you eretailers and also local food suppliers unable to keep up with demand).

    Some of these will be flash in the pan due to availability, when conventional suppliers Alsace none, but some will continue to flourish due to a wider behaviour change.

    Do we have a comprehensive list on here of potential industries / business ideas which might flourish in the new Covid word.

    I'll start with home and garden. I think with people likely travelling less and potentially taking less holidays abroad, they will spend more time and money on home / garden to make it more of a sanctuary within which to relax.

    In the short term, I think with mass unemployment this will be mainly lower priced products, compost, plants, pots, bbq's, lighting, cheap garden furniture which can make an instant impact.

    In the long term, if the economy can recover but travel remains difficult, there could be scope for more bespoke items / furniture to turn the garden into a room.

    Just my thoughts any others welcome

    TLDR: people will start to spend more money on house and garden due to reduced travel.

    submitted by /u/daleyboy1234
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    Where to find consumer spending figures for the UK?

    Posted: 06 May 2020 10:50 AM PDT

    Can anyone help out and guide me in the direction where I might be able to find a breakdown of consumer spending (i.e. household spending on technology, on clothes, on consumer discretionary goods etc) that is not the Office of National Statistics figures? Their figure are too broad, I was wondering if there's a source of more detailed information. Basically I am trying to calculate a Total Addressable Market for a niche product

    submitted by /u/zebradee
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