Thank you Thursday! - (June 04, 2020) Entrepreneur

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• Thank you Thursday! - (June 04, 2020)
• My first SEO success with a non-English site
• Gem from Tim Ferris's article on how he built a #1-ranked podcast with 60+ million downloads
• Online Courses Every Entrepreneur Should Take?
• Free marketing guide for startups: How to achieve explosive growth!
• To celebrate $500/month recurring revenue after 8 months of work, here’s how I’m making passive money with a simple business and an easy to sell service.
• Free Social Media Growth
• Has anyone had any luck with finding clients via LinkedIn?
• How do you handle your phone ?
• Is it dishonest to use the "we" if I am alone?
• Thinking
• Have an idea for a bar, but never worked in a hospitality business so I have several questions I would like to ask.
• I need help with creating a new, fairer, wage structure
• Startup I want to join is asking me to divest from my own previous startup which I co-founded
• What URL should I give my landing page for a pre-launch Shopify store?
• Looking to help businesses get off the ground on Amazon
• Free tutoring for all students through my project
• How can I monetize a niche social media following?
• Working with parents
• Always dreamed of starting a business but I have no idea where to start. Any advice?
• Need your tips on building a startup after crowd funding
• Creating a membership site for entrepreneurs new and old!
• Alibaba or Aliexpress
• What should I do for the next 3 months that's relatively low barrier to entry (<$1000) that can be done at 18?
• Feedback on my new startup
• Customer hasn't paid after 4 years. Do I have to return his property?

Thank you Thursday! - (June 04, 2020) Posted: 04 Jun 2020 06:08 AM PDT Your opportunity to thank the /r/Entrepreneur community by offering free stuff, contests, discounts, electronic courses, ebooks and the best deals you know of. Please consolidate such offers here! Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. submitted by /u/AutoModerator [link] [comments]

My first SEO success with a non-English site Posted: 04 Jun 2020 07:54 AM PDT I don't normally work on local sites, but had found a good non-English keyword with moderate competition, so decided to give it a go. This was my first time working on the SEO of a non-English site and I wasn't really sure exactly how should I work on its link building, and whether I needed to do anything different than what I normally do for my English sites. Had worked hard on its on-page and as I mentioned earlier, the keyword isn't that competitive either despite the large search volume(SerpFox shows much higher volume for some reason than it actually is as well). However, my site was barely ranking. Anyway, though I was a bit reluctant, ordered some good English PBN links to see what happens and to my surprise it just worked. Had ordered 20 PBN links which were drip fed over a period of 40 days and my ranks started improving slowly and by the time the drip feed was over, my site was already on the 2nd page. https://i.imgur.com/ub5Jzjd.png Ordered some more links later and was able to reach the front page in a couple more weeks. So one can conclude that English backlinks can work for non-English sites or maybe even better than they would for English sites. Of course you need good quality links and a strong on page as well. The basic rules always apply. I hope this helps people working with non-English sites. submitted by /u/Sorenzor [link] [comments]

Gem from Tim Ferris's article on how he built a #1-ranked podcast with 60+ million downloads Posted: 04 Jun 2020 09:44 AM PDT I recently read an article from Tim Ferriss on how he built a #1-ranked podcast with 60+ million downloads. One of the things he said which struck me was how he first built his audience before even thinking about monetizing the show through sponsors and advertisers. In this day and age of "how to make millions of dollars using these simple…" it was very refreshing to read this bonafide paragraph from Tim: "Novice podcasters (which I was) and bloggers get too distracted in nascent stages with monetization. In the first 3-9 months, you should be honing your craft and putting out increasingly better work. Option A: you can waste 30-50% of your time to persuade a few small sponsors to commit early and stall at 30,000 downloads per episode because you're neglecting creative. Option B: you can play the long game, wait 6-12 months until you have a critical mass, then you get to 300,000 downloads per ep and make 10x+ per ep with much larger brands. If you can afford it, don't be in a rush. Haste makes waste; in this case, it can make the difference between $50,000 per year and $1,000,000+ per year. To reiterate a phrase more often used for blogging: Good content is the best SEO." As entrepreneurs, we're always thinking about monetization, monetization, monetization. Sometimes the best route is to just go out there and start providing as much value as possible. Success is inevitable. submitted by /u/ChasePotential [link] [comments]

Online Courses Every Entrepreneur Should Take? Posted: 03 Jun 2020 05:49 PM PDT I'm looking to take an online class, and I would like to hear some feedback. I'm not really looking for anything coding necessarily, but I would love to learn about other facets of tech. If anyone has any recs, they would be greatly appreciated! submitted by /u/bigshirtjonny [link] [comments]

Free marketing guide for startups: How to achieve explosive growth! Posted: 04 Jun 2020 05:56 AM PDT Here is the summary of the book Traction: How any startup can achieve explosive growth. I hope that you find it useful! ​ Traction is a sign that your startup is taking off. If you charge, it means customers are buying. If your product is free, it means your user base is growing. If you have traction, all your technical, market, and team risks become easier to handle. It becomes easier to fund-raise, hire, do press, partnerships, and acquisitions. Traction trumps everything. How to think about Traction? Almost every failed startup has a product. What failed startups don't have is enough customers. You should spend your time in parallel, both constructing your product and testing traction channels. This is what we call the 50 percent rule: spend 50 percent of your time on product and 50% on traction. This rule seems simple but it's hard to follow because the pull to spend all your attention on the product is strong. You're probably making a startup because you want to build a particular product. You have a vision, but a lot of traction activities are unknown and outside your vision and comfort zone. So you try to avoid them. Don't. Doing product and traction in parallel has these benefits: You get knowledge from traction efforts, so you'll build the right product for your customers. You get to experiment and test different traction channels before you launch anything. This means when your product is ready, you can grow rapidly. Before trying to get traction, you'll need to define what traction means for your company. You need to set a traction goal. Maybe your current startup goal is to raise funding or become profitable. How many customers do you need and at what rate? You should then focus on marketing activities that result in a significant impact on your traction goal. It should move the needle. Your startup has 3 phases: Phase I: Make something people want In phase 1, your product has the most leaks, it really doesn't hold water. You shouldn't scale up your efforts now, but it's important to send a small amount of water through the bucket so you can see where the holes are and plug them. \ Your goal in phase 1 is to get your first customers and prove your product can get traction. You focus on building your initial product and getting traction in ways that don't scale: giving talks, writing guest posts, emailing people you know, attending conferences, and doing whatever you can to get in front of customers. ​ Some founders believe that startups either take off or don't. Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off! – Paul Graham Phase II: Market something people want Once you hone your product, you have product-market fit and customers are sticking around. Now is the time to scale up your traction efforts. You fine-tune your positioning and marketing messages. Phase III: Scale your business As your company grows, smaller traction strategies stop moving the needle, so you'll start to scale. In phase 3 you have an established business model and significant position in the market, and you're focused on scaling to further dominate the market and to profit. Traction for funding When pursuing funding, first contact individuals who understand what you're working on. The better your investors understand what you're doing, the less traction they'll need to see before they invest. Also, try friends and family who may not need to see any traction before investing as they're investing in you personally. To pivot or not to pivot Many startups give up way too early. The first thing to look for is evidence of real product engagement, even if it's only a few dedicated customers. If you have such an engagement, you might be giving up too soon. Look for the bright spots in your customer base and see if you can expand from that base. How to get traction? The Bullseye framework The Bullseye framework helps you find the channel that will get you traction. Most businesses actually get zero distribution channels to work. If you can get even a single distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don't nail one, you're finished. You're aiming for bullseye: the one channel at the center of the target that will unlock your next growth stage. Here are the 3 Bullseye framework steps: Find what's possible: The outer-ring The first step in Bullseye is brainstorming every single traction channel. It's important not to dismiss any channel in this step. Think of at least one idea for each channel. For example, social ads is a traction channel. Running ads on Facebook or Twitter is a channel strategy within social ads. You could research what marketing strategies worked in your industry as well as the history of companies in your space. Find what's probable: The middle-ring Go around your outer-ring and promote your best and most exciting ideas to your middle-ring. For each traction channel in your middle ring, now construct a cheap traction test you can run to find if the idea is good or not. These tests need to answer the following questions: What's the cost of acquiring customers? How many customers are available? Are they the right type of customers for you now? You want to design small scale tests that don't require much up-front cost or effort. For example, run 4 Facebook ads instead of 40. Find what's working: The inner-ring The final step in Bullseye is to only focus on one channel that will move the needle for your startup: your core channel. At any stage of your startup, you should have one traction channel that you're focusing on and optimizing. Most founders mess this up by keeping around distracting marketing efforts in other channels. If search engine marketing is significantly better for you than other channels, you should focus all your efforts on this core channel and uncover additional strategies and tactics within it. If no channel seems promising after testing, the whole process should be repeated. If you tried several times with no success, then your product may require more tweaking and your bucket might be still leaky. How to test traction? Middle-ring tests: You should be running several cheap tests that give you an indication of how successful a given channel strategy could be. Inner ring tests: You're doing two things: Optimize your chosen channel strategy to make it the best it can be. Discover better channel strategies within this traction channel. There is always a set of things you can tweak. For targeting blogs, you can tweak which blogs to target, type of content, call to action, etc. For search engine marketing, you can tweak keywords, ad-copy, demographics, and landing pages. A common approach is to use A/B testing, where A is the control group and B is the experimental group. The purpose of it is to measure the effectiveness of change in a button color, an ad image, or a different message on a web page. If the experimental group performs significantly better, you can apply the change, get the benefits, and run another test. You can use tools such as Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer, and Unbounce. Over time, all marketing channels become saturated. To combat this, you should always be trying to discover new strategies and tactics within your channel and conduct small experiments. Also, experiment with new marketing platforms while they're still in their infancy. Tools To track your tests you could start with a simple spreadsheet or use an analytics tool with cohort analysis. You'll need to answer these questions: How many people landed on the website? What are the demographics of my best and worst customers? Are customers who interact with my support team more likely to stay? A basic analytics tool like Clicky, Mixpanel, or Chartbeat can help you with these questions. You can use a spreadsheet as the tool to rank and prioritize traction channel strategies. You should include columns like how many customers are available, conversion rate, the cost to acquire a customer, lifetime value of a customer for every given strategy. How to focus on the right traction goals? The critical path framework Define your traction goal You should always have an explicit traction goal you're working towards. This could be 1,000 paying customers or 100 new daily customers, or 10% of your market. You want a goal where hitting the mark would change things significantly for your company's outcome. Once that is defined, you can work backward and set clear time-based subgoals. Such as reaching 1,000 customers by next quarter. The key is to follow the critical path towards that goal and exclude all features and marketing activities that don't help you reach your goal. Everything you decide to do should be assessed against your critical path. Avoid traction biases Your competitive advantage may be acquiring customers in ways your competition isn't. That's why it's critical to avoid have traction biases. Stop your urge to refuse channels like speaking engagements, sales or affiliate marketing, business development, or trade shows just because you hate talking on the phone or you find the channel annoying or time-consuming. Targetting blogs Targeting blogs that your prospective customers read is one of the best ways to get your first wave customers. Mint's initial series of tests revealed that targeting blogs should be its core channel. They asked users to embed an "I want mint" badge on their personal blogs and rewarded them with a VIP access before other invitations were sent out. They also directly sponsored blogs. They sent bloggers a message with "Can I send you $500" as the subject and told them a bit about the product. To find smaller blogs in your niche: Google "top blogs for x" or "best x blogs." Search for your product keywords on YouTube. Use tools like FollowerWonk and Klout to find top twitter accounts in your industry. Use social mention to find sites with the most frequent mentions for your keywords. Talk to people to figure out what your target audience is really reading online. You can also target link-sharing communities like Reddit, Product Hunt, and Hacker News. Dropbox, Codecademy, Quora, and Gumroad all got their first customers by sharing their products on HackerNews because their products were a good fit for users on that site. Publicity Starting out, an article in TechCrunch or The Huffington Post can boost your startup in the eyes of potential customers, investors, or partners. If you have a fascinating story with broad appeal, media outlets will want to hear from you. It's easier to start smaller when targeting big media outlets. Sites like TechCrunch and Lifehacker often pick up stories from smaller forums like Hacker News and subreddits. Instead of approaching TechCrunch, try blogs that TechCrunch reads and get story ideas from. It's easier to get a smaller blog's attention. Then you might get featured on TechCrunch and then The New York Times which reads TechCrunch! What gets a reporter's attention? Milestones like raising money, launching a new product, breaking a usage barrier. A PR stunt. A big partnership. A special industry report. A good press angle makes people react emotionally. If it's not interesting enough to elicit emotion, you don't have a story worth pitching. A good first step is using a service like Help A Reporter Out (HARO), where reporters request sources for articles they're working on. It could get you a mention in the piece and help establish your credibility. Also, you could offer reporters commentary on stories related to your industries. You can use Twitter to reach reporters online; almost all of them have Twitter accounts and you'd be surprised how few followers many of them have, but they can be highly influential with their content. Once you have a solid story, you want to draw as much attention to it as you can: Submit the story to link-sharing sites like Reddit and HackerNews Share it on social networks Email it to influencers in your industry for comment. Ping blogs in your space and tell them you have a story that's getting buzz. Once your story has been established as a popular news item, try to drag it out as long as you can. Offer interviews that add to the story. Start "How We Did This" follow-up interviews. As your startup grows you may consider hiring a PR firm or consultant. Unconventional PR Nearly every company attempts traditional publicity, but only a few focus on stunts and other unconventional ways to get buzz. The publicity stunt Half.com renamed (Halfway, Oregon) to Half.com and launched it on the Today show with the mayor of Halfway, Oregon. Richard Branson made his press conferences as outlandish as possible (dressing like a woman, driving a tank through the streets) to get the media talking about whatever Virgin was launching. WePay (a PayPal competitor) placed a 600-pound block of ice at PayPal's conference entrance. DuckDuckGo bought a billboard in Google's backyard highlighting its privacy focus. Blendtec created a series of videos called "Will It Blend?" where they blended items like a rake, golf balls, and even an iPhone. When Grasshopper did a rebrand, they sent chocolate-covered grasshoppers to 5,000 influential people. Customer Appreciation Be awesome to your customers. Shortly after Alexis Ohanian launched Hipmunk, he sent out luggage tags and a handwritten note to the first several hundred people who mentioned the site on Twitter. Holding a contest is also a great repeatable way to generate publicity and get word of mouth. Shopify has an annual Build a Business competition. Great customer support is so rare that, if you make your customers happy, they're likely to spread the news of your awesome product. Zappos is one of the best-known examples of a company with incredible customer service and they classify support as a marketing investment. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) SEM is placing ads on search engines like Google. It's sometimes called "pay-per-click" because you only pay when a user clicks on an ad. SEM works well for companies looking to sell directly to their target customer. You're capturing people who are actively searching for solutions. Click-Through Rate (CTR) The percentage of ad impressions that result in clicks to your site. Cost per Click (CPC) The amount it costs to buy a click on an ad. Cost per Acquisition (CPA) How much it costs you to acquire a customer, not just a click. If you buy clicks at $1 and 10% of people who hit your site make a purchase. This makes your CPA at $10. CPA = CPC / conversion percentage SEM to get early customer data You can use SEM as a way to get early customer data in a controlled and predictable way. Even if you don't expect to be profitable, you can decide to spend a certain amount of money to get an early base of customers and users to inform you about important metrics such as landing page conversion rates, average cost per customer, and lifetime value. Archives.com used AdWords to drive traffic to their landing pages, even before they built a product, to test interest in a specific product approach. By measuring the CTR for each ad and conversions, they determined which product aspects were the most compelling to potential customers and what those people would actually pay for. When they finally built their product, they built something they knew the market would want. SEM strategy Find high-potential keywords, group them into ad groups, and test different ad copy and landing pages within each ad group. As data flows in, remove underperforming ads and landing pages and make tweaks to keep improving results. Use tools like Optimizely and Visual Website Optimizer to run A/B tests on your landing pages. Keyword research Use Google's keyword planner to discover top keywords your target customers use to find products like yours. You could also use tools such as KeywordSpy, SEMrush, and SpyFu to discover keywords your competition is using. You can refine your keyword list by adding more terms to the end of each base term to create long-tail keywords. They're less competitive and have lower search volumes which makes them ideal for testing on smaller groups of customers. SEM is more expensive for more competitive keywords, so you'll need to limit yourself to keywords with profitable conversion rates. You shouldn't expect your campaigns to be profitable right away, but if you can run a campaign that breaks even after a short period of time, then SEM could be an excellent channel for you to focus on. Writing ads Write ads with titles that are catchy, memorable, and relevant to the keywords you've paired with it. Include the keyword at least once in the body of your ad and conclude with a prominent call to action like "Check out discounted Nike sneakers!" Each of your ads and ad groups will have a quality score associated with it. A high-quality score will get you better ad placements and better ad pricing. Click-through rate has the biggest influence on quality score, so you should tailor your ads to the keywords. Google assigns a low-quality score to ads with CTRs below 1.5% Tactics Consider expanding your ads to the content network of non-Google sites. Consider luring people back to your site by retargeting through Google AdWords or other sites like AdRoll or Perfect Audience. These ads often convert better as they're aimed at prospects who have already visited your site. (Be warned that it may feel creepy to certain people) Consider using Google's Conversion Optimizer to automatically adjust your ads to perform better. Use negative keywords to prevent ads from showing for certain keywords you don't want to target. Consider using programming scripts to manage your ads. Social and Display Ads Display ads are banner ads you see on websites. Social ads are ads you see on social sites like Facebook and Twitter. Large display campaigns are often used for branding and awareness, much like offline ads. They can also elicit a direct response such as signing up for an email newsletter or buying a product. Social ads perform exceptionally well is when they're used to build an audience and engage with them over time, and eventually convert them to customers. Display ads The largest display ad networks are Google Display Network, BuySellAds, Advertising.com, Tribal Fusion, Conversant, and Adblade. Niche ad networks focus on smaller sites that fit certain audience demographics, such as dog lovers or Apple fanatics. To get started in display advertising, you could start to find out types of ads that work in your industry. You could use tools like MixRank and Adbeat to show you ads your competitors are running and where they place them. Alexa and Quantcast can help you determine who visits the sites that feature your competitors' ads. Social ads Social ads work well for creating interest among potential new customers. The goal is often awareness oriented, not conversion oriented. A purchase takes place further down the line. People visit social media sites for entertainment and interaction, not to see ads. An effective social ad strategy takes advantage of this reality. Use ads to start conversations about your products by creating compelling content. Instead of directing people to a conversion page, direct them to a piece of content that explains why you developed your product or has other purposes than immediately completing a sale. If you have a piece of content that has high organic reach, when you put paid ads behind that piece, magic happens. Paid is only as good as the content you put behind it. You should employ social ads when you know that a fire is starting around your message and you want to put more oil on it. Major social sites you may consider are LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Foursquare, Tumblr, Reddit, YouTube, and many others. Offline Ads Even today, advertisers spend more on offline ads than they do online. When buying offline ads, You should try to advertise to demographics that match up with your target audience. Ask for an audience prospectus or ad kit. Not sure if magazine ads are a good channel for you? Buy a small ad in a niche publication and give it a test. Want to see if newspapers would be good? Buy a few ads in a local paper. You can also try radio ads and billboards. You can save money by signing longer ad contracts. Look for remnant ads which are ad space that's unused; publications accept almost any price when selling empty ads near print deadlines. You could track ad effectiveness by using unique web addresses and promo codes. You could also try adding "How did you hear about us" to your sign up process. Magazine ads A compelling magazine or newspaper ad will have an attention-grabbing header, an eye-catching graphic, and a description of the product's benefits. Also, you should have a strong call to action, like an offer to get a free book. Direct mail You could also try direct mail by searching for "direct mail lists" and find companies selling such information. (Beware that it can be perceived as spammy) Provide a self-addressed envelope. Use handwritten envelopes and cards. Have a clear call to action. Investigate bulk mail to get reduced pricing. Local print You could also try local print ads like local fliers, directories, calendars, church bulletins, community newsletters, coupon booklets, or yellow pages. These work really well for cheap if you want to get early traction for your company in a specific area. Outdoor advertising If you want to buy space on a billboard, you could contact companies like Lamar, Clear Channel, or Outfront Media. Billboards aren't effective for people to take immediate action, but it's extremely effective for raising awareness around events, like concerts and conferences. DuckDuckGo bought a billboard in Google's backyard and it got big attention and press coverage. Transit ads can be effective as a direct response tool. You can contact Blue Line Media to help you with Transit ads. Radio and TV Radio ads are priced on a cost per point (CPP) basis, where each point represents what it will cost to reach 1% of the station's listeners. It also depends on your market, when the commercial runs and how many ads you've bought. TV ads are often used as branding mechanisms. Quality is critical for it and production costs can run to tens of thousands. Higher-end ones can cost $200K to make. You'll also need an average of $350,000 for actual airtime. For smaller startups, you could try local TV spots which is much cheaper. Infomercials work really well for products in categories like Workout equipment, household products, health products, and work-from-home businesses. They can cost between $50,000 and $500,000, and they're always direct-response. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) SEO is improving your ranking in search engines in order to get more people to your site. The most important thing to know about SEO is that the more high-quality links you have to a given site or page, the higher it will rank. You should also make sure you're using the keywords you want to target appropriately on your pages, like in your page titles and headings. There are 2 strategies to choose from: fat-head and long-tail. Fat-head: These are one and two-word searches like "Dishwashers," and "Facebook." They are searched a lot and make about 30% of searches and are called. Long-tail: These are longer searches that don't get searched as much but add up to the majority of searches made. They make up 70% of searches. "Wooden toys" is fat-head. "Wood puzzles for 3-year-olds" is long-tail. When determining which strategy to use, you should keep in mind that the percentage of clicks drops off dramatically as you rank lower. Only 10% of clicks occur beyond the first page. Fat-head strategy To find out if fat-head is worthwhile, research what terms people use to find products in your industry, and then see if search volumes are large enough to move the needle. You can use the keyword planner tool for that. You want to find terms that have enough volume such that if you captured 10% for a given term, it would be meaningful. The next step is determining the difficulty of ranking high for each term. Use tools like Open Site Explorer. If a competitor has thousands of links for a term, it will likely take a lot of focus on building links and optimizing to rank above them. Next, narrow your list of targeted keywords to just a handful. Go to Google Trends to see how your keywords have been doing. Are they searched more or less often in the last year? You can further test keywords by buying SEM ads against them. If they convert well, then you have an indication that these keywords could get you strong growth. Next, orient your site around the terms you've chosen. Include phrases you are targeting in your page titles and homepage. Get other sites to link to your site. Links with exact phrase matching from high-quality sites will give you a significant boost. Long-Tail strategy Because it's difficult to rank high for competitive fat-head terms, a popular SEO strategy for early-stage startups is to focus on long-tail. If you bundle a lot of long-term keywords together you can reach a meaningful number of customers. Find out what are search volumes for a bunch of long-tail keywords in your industry? Do they add up to meaningful amounts? Also, take a look at the analytics software you use on your site or google search console to find some of the search terms people are already using to get to your site. If you're naturally getting a significant amount of traffic from long-tail keywords, then the strategy might be a good fit. Also, check if competitors use this strategy. If they have a lot of landing pages (search for site:domain.com in google), then it's a sign that this strategy works for your market. Also, check Alexa search rankings and look at the percentage of visitors your competitors are receiving from search. If you proceed with a long-tail SEO strategy, you'll need to produce significant amounts of quality content. If you can't invest time in that, you can pay a freelancer from Upwork to write an article for every search phrase you want to target. Another way is to use content that naturally flows from your business. Ask yourself: what data do we naturally collect or generate that other people may find useful. Large businesses like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Wikipedia all gained most of their traffic by producing automated long-tail content. Sometimes the data is hidden behind a login screen and all you need to do is expose it to search engines, or aggregate it in a useful manner. How to get links? Don't buy links, you'll be penalized by search engines for it. Instead, you can do: Publicity - Get covered by a publication. Product - Produce shareable web pages. Content marketing - Create strong shareable content. Content that's highly shareable include infographics, slideshows, images, and original research. Widgets - Give site owners useful things to add to their sites which link back to yours. Content Marketing Companies like Moz and Unbounce have well-known company blogs that are their biggest source of customer acquisition. Unbounce started a blog and an email list from day one. They used social media to drive readers to your blog. They pinged twitter influencers to ask for feedback, gave away free infographics, and e-books. These actions don't scale but they push them to a point where their content will spread on its own. OkCupid is a free online dating site. They intentionally wrote controversial posts like "How your race affects the messages you get" to generate traffic and conversation. Tactics Overcome writer's block by writing about the problems facing your target customers. Use infographics because they are shared 20x more. Show your readers that they have a problem they didn't know about. Engage in online forums where your target customers are, and try to contribute. Do guest posting on other popular blogs. Keep a regular content schedule. Email Marketing Email marketing is a personal channel. Messages from your company sit next to emails from friends and family. That's why email marketing works best when personalized. It can be used to build familiarity with prospects, acquire customers, and retain customers you already have. Email marketing to Find customers Build an email list of prospective customers through your other marketing efforts. At the bottom of your blog posts and landing pages, simply ask for an email address. Create a short free course related to your area. Consider advertising on email newsletters. Email marketing to Engage customers If a customer never gets the value of your product, how can you expect them to pay for it or recommend it to others? Determine the steps necessary for customers to get value from your product Create targeted emails to make sure people complete these steps. You can use tools like Vero and Customer.io to automate these messages. Send an automated personal email 30 minutes after they signup to ask they if they need help. Email marketing to Retain customers Email marketing can be the most effective channel to bring people back to your site. Twitter sends you an email with a weekly digest of popular tweets and your new notifications. More business-oriented products usually focus on reminders, reports, and information about how you're getting value from the product. Mint sends a weekly financial summary to show your expenses and income over the previous week. You can also use it to surprise and delight your customers. Planscope sends a weekly email to customers telling them how much they made that week. Photo apps will send you pictures you took a year ago. Email marketing to Drive revenue You can send a series of emails aimed at upselling customers. WP Engine sends prospects an email course about Wordpress, and near the end of the email, they make a pitch to signup for its premium Wordpress hosting service. If one of your customers abandoned a shopping cart, send her a targeted email a day or two later with a special offer for whatever item is left in the cart. You can use email to explain a premium feature a customer is missing out on and how it can help them in a big way. Email marketing to get referrals Groupon generates referrals by incentivizing people to tell their friends about discounts. Tactics Use an email marketing provider that helps ensure deliverability like MailChimp. Use A/B tests for every aspect including subjects, formats, images, timing, and more. Send emails between 9 AM and 12 PM in your customers' time zone or schedule them at the time they registered for your email list. Learn copywriting techniques by checking resources like copy hackers. Viral Marketing Viral marketing is getting your existing customers to refer others to your product. It was the driving force behind the explosive growth of Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Dropbox, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest. It's so powerful that even if you can't achieve exponential growth with it, you can still get meaningful growth. If your customer refers a new customer within the first week, you'll go from ten customers to twenty and double every week without any additional marketing. The oldest form of virality occurs when your product is so remarkable that people naturally tell others about it — pure word of mouth. Inherent virality occurs when you can get value from a product only by inviting other customers, like Skype, Snapchat, and WhatsApp. Others grow by encouraging collaboration like Google Docs. Some embed virality like adding "Get a free email account with Hotmail" or "Sent from iPhone" to default signatures. Mailchimp and other email marketing products add branding to free customers' emails. Some incentivize customers to move through a viral loop, like Dropbox giving you more space if you invite friends to sign up. Airbnb, Uber, and PayPal give you account credits for referring friends. Some add embedded buttons and widgets to grow virally, like Reddit and YouTube. Some broadcast users activities on their social networks, like Spotify posting on Facebook when you play a song, or Pinterest when you pin content. The viral coefficient K is the number of additional customers you can get for each customer you bring in. It depends on i, the number of invites sent per user, and conversion percentage (who will actually sign up after receiving an invite) K = i * conversion percentage Any viral coefficient above 1 will result in exponential growth. Any viral coefficient over 0.5 helps your efforts to grow considerably. You can increase the number of invites per user i by including features that encourage sharing, such as posting to social networks. You can increase the conversion percentage by testing different signup flows. Try cutting out pages or signup fields. Viral cycle time is how long it takes a user to go through your viral loop. Shortening your cycle time drastically increases the rate at which you go viral. You can do it by creating urgency or incentivizing customers to move through the loops. Tactics Measure your viral coefficient and cycle time from the start Run as many A/B tests as you can. Focus on big changes that would result in a 5-10x improvement in a key metric, like a new email autoresponder or website design or onboarding flow. Then optimize smaller stuff. You need a constant stream of new customers entering the viral loop. This is called "seeding." You could use SEO and online ads for that. Copy those who have done it before. Engineering as Marketing You can build tools like calculators, widgets, and educational microsites to get your company in front of potential customers. HubSpot has Marketing Grade, a free marketing review tool. It's free, gives you valuable information, and provides HubSpot with the information they use to qualify you as a potential prospect. Moz has two free SEO tools, Followerwong and Open Site Explorer. They've driven tens of thousands of leads for Moz. WP Engine has a speed testing tool that asks only for an email address in exchange for a detailed report on your site's speed. Provide something of true value. Make the offering extremely relevant to your core business. Put microsites and tools on their own domains. It makes it easier to share and does well with SEO when people search for your tool. Business Development With business development, you're partnering to reach customers in a way that benefits both parties. Google got most of its initial traction from a partnership with Netscape to be the default search engine and an agreement with Yahoo to power its online searches. Business development can take the form of: Standard partnership, like Apple and Nike producing Nike+ shoe that communicates with the iPhone. Joint ventures: Two companies working together to produce a new product. Like bottled Starbucks Frappuccino produced by Pepsi. Licencing: Spotify licensing music from record labels. Distribution deals: Groupon works with a restaurant to offer a discount to Groupon's mailing list. Supply partnership: Deals between suppliers and Walmart. You should have already defined your traction goal and milestones, and you shouldn't accept any partnership that doesn't align with it. Many startups waste resources because it's tempting to make deals with bigger companies. Create an exhaustive list of all your possible partners. Send it to your investors and friends for warm introductions. Approach potential customers with a value-focused proposition that outlines why they should work with you. Make sure to find out who is in charge of the metric you've targeted, and contact them directly. Make the negotiation and term sheet as simple as possible Sales Sales is the process of generating leads, qualifying them, and converting them into paying customers. It's particularly useful for expensive and enterprise products. Structuring the sales conversation Situation questions. Ask one or two questions per conversation. The more you ask situation questions, the less likely they're going to close. How many employees do you have? How is your organization structured Problem questions. Use sparingly. Are you happy with your current solution? What problems do you face with it? Implication questions. Meant to make a prospect aware of the large implications that stem from the problem. Does this problem hurt your productivity? How many people does it impact? What customer or employee turnover are you experiencing because of it? Need-payoff questions. Focus attention on your solution and get buyers to think about the benefits of solving the problem. How do you feel this solution would help you? Cold calls Be judicious about the people you contact. You want someone who is one-two levels up in the organization. They have enough perspective on the problem and some authority for decision making. Avoid starting at the top unless you're calling a very small business. Try to get answers about: Process: How does the company buy a solution like this? Need: How badly does the company need a solution for this? Authority: Which individuals can make the purchase happen? Money: Do they have the funds? How much not solving the problem cost them? Timing: What are budget and decision timelines for purchase? Tactics It's better to gain traction through a marketing channel first, then use sales as a conversion tool to close leads. The next stage is lead qualification: determine how ready a prospect is to buy. Once you've qualified the leads, you should lay out exactly what are you going to do for the customer. Set up a timetable for it and get them to commit with a yes or no whether they're going to buy. Closing leads can be done by a sales team who does a webinar or product demo and has an ongoing email sequence that ends with a purchase request. In other cases, you may need a field sales team that actually visits prospective customers for some part of the process. A checklist that can help you with sales: Remove the need for IT installs Free trials Channel partners FAQs Demo videos or Webinars Testimonials or case studies Email campaigns Low introductory price (less than $250/mo for SMB, $10,000 for enterprises) submitted by /u/alollou [link] [comments]

To celebrate $500/month recurring revenue after 8 months of work, here’s how I’m making passive money with a simple business and an easy to sell service. Posted: 03 Jun 2020 10:29 PM PDT Last year, when I had just turned 19, I was desperate to leave my full time job. It was soul sucking and I hated it. I decided to come up with a simple business that I hoped would eventually replace my income without having to step foot in a workplace. I leant toward web design as I knew you could charge a good amount for projects and I had to do it for a couple of my own businesses in the past and found it to be very easy. As I was setting up the website for this new business, I remembered talking to someone who was saying Shopify had nearly a million active subscribers, all paying at least $29 usd a month to have a website. That's a lot of users and a lot of money when you still have to build and setup your website yourself. I decided to go for a piece of that pie (actually very, very small crumbs of it but it's good enough for me) and setup my business as a 'free web design' agency. The idea was that clients would get simple websites at no up front cost and then they would go on one of my (prices all in Australian Dollars) $29, $49 or $79 monthly hosting/management plans (soon to be changed to $49, $79 and $129). Running the business costs about $100 a month. The website setup generally takes 10 - 20 hours to complete and can be cranked out in a day or two. The monthly price depends on how complex the site is. It's easy to get clients and I have a high customer retention rate because it's a great offer for them and they'd be looking at paying a large upfront cost, as well as a monthly fee if they went elsewhere. It's not as much work as the big agency's make it out to be and you can generally get away with using templates for the designs. The clients are all given monthly maintenance and a few changes to their site every now and then, but I just send this work all offshore to be done at a low cost using some of the revenue I have now. It's showing to be a viable business and I hope to have enough revenue soon to be able to outsource all of the web design work and focus on bringing on new clients as I'm pretty limited by myself. I feel most clients will be long term as I haven't had anyone cancel yet and some people that I'm working with have had their old website for the last 5 - 10 years. It's a business model that works for me and I dont see why it can't work for most of you guys too, especially with the fact that about 50% of the people on here seem to be web designers already. There's not a big learning curve to the web design and setting up all the hosting stuff will just be a couple of days of headaches... lol. I'm also building a personal website, branded around myself that will show myself off as an expert in a specific niche that I'm passionate about, I'm hoping this will bring in some 5k - 10k, big projects on the side. You need to diversify your income sources. Let me know if you have any questions! I can point you in the right direction for the technical stuff like hosting but you'll have to learn about all that stuff yourself as you'll be interacting with it weekly. It's important to be familiar with it and to be able to find what works for you. submitted by /u/The_Lunchtime_Club [link] [comments]

Free Social Media Growth Posted: 04 Jun 2020 07:18 AM PDT Hello, I run a marketing and design company in Central Florida and as I know many are suffering from the devastating effects of COVID-19 I've decided to give back to the community with this free promotion. I will freely promote any one of your social media accounts. Cheers submitted by /u/SpaceCoastGraphics [link] [comments]

Has anyone had any luck with finding clients via LinkedIn? Posted: 04 Jun 2020 11:35 AM PDT I'm thinking about joining up to Linkedn to branch out, has anybody had any luck with connections and getting clients via LinkedIn? submitted by /u/WryLOL [link] [comments]

How do you handle your phone ? Posted: 04 Jun 2020 10:41 AM PDT I've been starting to feel crazy because of my phone recently. I usually hate phones, notifications but as business needs it, how do you guys handle being available without going 🥜? submitted by /u/LeChiffre8 [link] [comments]

Is it dishonest to use the "we" if I am alone? Posted: 04 Jun 2020 08:02 AM PDT Hi! So I am a 17 years old entrepreneur and I am a little bit lost about some conventions. Let's say I have a web design business and I am building my portfolio. Everywhere, I put "we" instead of "I". Like: "We make sure to have a design that will fit your values and needs" instead of "I will make sure to have a design that will fit your values and needs". I think the "we" sound better, but I feel like it's a bit dishonest, as if they may be expecting that "we" are a team. I was thinking of "we" talking about the business. So, what is your opinion on that? I don't want to mislead customers, but the "I" thing feels a little bit weird to me... submitted by /u/AsteroidSnowsuit [link] [comments]

Thinking Posted: 04 Jun 2020 02:32 PM PDT What about a store that sells various sweets. Of course ice cream, but maybe a soda bar, or a candy section. As the tag says, feedback please. Im just throwing ideas around submitted by /u/Thepistonboi [link] [comments]

Have an idea for a bar, but never worked in a hospitality business so I have several questions I would like to ask. Posted: 04 Jun 2020 12:16 PM PDT First, let me tell you my back story. I graduated a business-related degree and been working for the past 2 years. Had the idea for this bar for almost a year now and even found a relatively good location (city-wise), thinking about Prague as its relatively cheap, attracts a lot of tourists and I know the location pretty good. The idea is new for Prague and there is nothing similar in there. Question are the following: How important is it to find a general manager who has experience in the field before opening a place? Or the general manager is only required when the place is equally open? What are the best places to look for finance? How do you find those "exclusivity" contracts with the alcohol production companies? Any other things that you think I should include into the business plan? submitted by /u/games_for_me [link] [comments]

I need help with creating a new, fairer, wage structure Posted: 04 Jun 2020 01:49 PM PDT As we get back from all the shit that Covid created for us, I was hoping to take the opportunity to create a fair and transparent wage structure. First, some context. I own/run a small marketing firm (20 employees). We're currently all taking home an equal wage, basically pegged at the wage our lowest paid employee made. For most, this means a 15-20% reduction in take-home pay, but for some it means they're taking home a quarter or so. Which led me to start thinking about how we pay our people. I've always had loose budgets for positions, but then paid people what they asked for. Which means that the wage structure is basically inexistent and that some people are overpaid while others are relatively underpaid. I understand that a communist approach of one wage for all is unrealistic, too. It's either going to be too little for our top earners or it's going to drive us bankrupt. Is there something in between that I'm missing (short of defining scales and putting people into them - it seems too uncreative)? Have any of you guys examined alternative ways of compensation? submitted by /u/LibaTtir [link] [comments]

Startup I want to join is asking me to divest from my own previous startup which I co-founded Posted: 04 Jun 2020 11:30 AM PDT I recently interviewed with a highly successful startup who I really want to work for. They were attracted to me in large part because of my own startup which I co-founded. It turns out that there is enough overlap between the two that they see my existing startup as competition. My own startup is still very early stage, mostly bootstrapped by myself and the other founder. The chances of it taking off are slim (especially with competition in the space), but I do not feel good about completely giving up my share of the company. The company who wants to hire me is asking me to divest from my own startup before joining. My co-founder has offered to essentially hold my 50% for me, and pay me out personally if and when it ever sells. I understand the risk in trusting someone with this, but I'm more concerned with the legal risk. If I sign an NDA and agree to divest, if my co-founder pays me out eventually, could the new company sue me for that money? submitted by /u/eatclentrenhard69 [link] [comments]

What URL should I give my landing page for a pre-launch Shopify store? Posted: 04 Jun 2020 11:06 AM PDT Pretty much what the title says; I'm creating a landing page for a new Shopify store to sell a new product I've designed. Should the landing page be at the root domain (i.e. www.website.com), or should it be at www.website.com/landingpage? submitted by /u/HorseIsLikeMan_ [link] [comments]

Looking to help businesses get off the ground on Amazon Posted: 04 Jun 2020 09:14 AM PDT I have sold a little north of $11M on Amazon over the past decade: https://imgur.com/5hpPhbP My net margins have averaged out very close to 20%. Most of the products I have sold have been in the sports and outdoors category. I started working with small to midsize manufacturers and distributors a couple years ago as a side hustle. I really enjoy helping to launch a brand or product on Amazon. I am looking for a good way to find businesses to work with. I am not looking to create a large business, just continue this part of my side gig. Have any suggestions? If you have any questions, ask away. submitted by /u/jake42385 [link] [comments]

Free tutoring for all students through my project Posted: 04 Jun 2020 12:34 PM PDT Hello everyone! My name is Arhan, I'm 15 years old and from Hong Kong. I've started a project called CoVidya (Covid as in the virus and Vidya as in the Sanskrit word for knowledge). I would like to pair the many of us who need extra educational support during these difficult times to the many of us who have some spare time and wouldn't mind donating just an hour or two per week to help someone in need by sharing a skill. There are a lot of people on this sub. If you feel like you could benefit from a little bit of help with your classes (maybe you can't afford an expensive tutor, don't have online classes, or just need a little academic help during these hard times), I really hope my project helps you. It's 100% free and you can request to be paired with a teacher of whatever class/subject you need help with. Just sign up on my website, CoVidya If you happen to have some time and know a thing or two about any class/subject/skill you're good at, please feel free to help someone in need across the world by signing up to tutor. Just an hour a week could make a difference to someone's life. It's completely optional but if you're taking free classes for a topic you need help with and want to give back, teach a topic you are good at to someone else! Or even if you aren't signing up to be a student, please consider donating some time to help those affected the most by the pandemic. The project has already been featured in over 20 newspapers and there are a bunch of tutors signed up and ready, but we need more students too! So please, if you want to push yourself and study a bit while also getting free help, this is for you! Once again, to sign up to receive or give classes (or both), use this link: CoVidya Thank you for your time and consideration, stay safe! submitted by /u/Arhan8 [link] [comments]

How can I monetize a niche social media following? Posted: 04 Jun 2020 12:10 PM PDT I have 2 twitter accounts with the combined followers of 10,000 which are all targeted lofi hip-hop listeners and producers. I have received over 1,000 submissions in the last 6 months from independent creators to have their music featured on my YouTube channel and Spotify playlist. I run a 24/7 lofi radio on YouTube that has shown to be a waste of $2,000. My platform is called Lofi Zone. What ways can I monetize from this? I have put so much effort in, I have recently realized I am falling into a sunk cost fallacy. Thanks submitted by /u/idmfk [link] [comments]

Working with parents Posted: 04 Jun 2020 11:57 AM PDT I know it's always the other way around where teens and 20-ish work with their parents if they have a business. For me it's different, my mom works with us as Admin and HR Director. Just a brief background, I'm from a country that has been on corona lockdown since March 15. I've been working my ass to keep business afloat given that we lack in manpower since some do not have internet at home. I'm at this point where I always see my mom so unproductive, always slacking off and watching Netflix on her phone. It always takes a while for instructions to resonate and I no longer see her fit to be a director. This job was given the her for to feel that she still has purpose but living with my parents and seeing how she opts to spend her day, I just want to fire here. I have spoken to her multiple times asking why she's so demotivated and she cannot give me a proper answer. Am I seeing this wrong? Am I wrong to want to fire her? submitted by /u/travelbuddy27 [link] [comments]

Always dreamed of starting a business but I have no idea where to start. Any advice? Posted: 04 Jun 2020 08:03 AM PDT So I love nerf and airsoft, I use to take all of my stuff to local youth groups in my area and we would play for a few hours and have a blast doing so. I then realized I wanted to make a business out of this. I would want to find out a place and own a small pro shop/rental shop. I would do events during the day for both airsoft groups and nerf. I just don't know how to start any of this, I know I would need to find the place, get start-up to get the gear and everything needed. but I do not know how to even start. If anyone owns a similar business and is willing to throw out some advice I would appreciate it. submitted by /u/Masterpockets [link] [comments]

Need your tips on building a startup after crowd funding Posted: 04 Jun 2020 10:36 AM PDT Hi. So I have this game idea that I'm willing to bring into market. I have planned everything from funding to production to fulfillment. I am doing the minimum effective dose and polish it to crowdfund my first wave. But what I am not confident about is the aftermath. This product contains both physical parts and an app which I think (and Hope) kids from tweens to teenagers would buy. I would totally buy it if someone else makes it. I know there's a slim chance of a product blowing up in the market but better ready than sorry right? I'm teaming up with one of my friends on this but I don't think we are both professionals in what it takes. But we have what it takes to carry this product until we can make a profit out of it. But after that we need staff. We need people for app development, Story building(more like creative writing) and graphic designing on the tech side. On the other hand we need staff to do anything else that a business needs. There's no way I'm gonna break the law 7 if we exceed $50k in crowd funding program. ; ) You might think this is another kid dreaming the impossible but I have been perfecting this idea since I was 15. Now I'm 19 and I think this is the perfect age cause if I fail I'm going from 0 to 0. Other problem than me being young is that I'm from a third world country. My product targets first world countries so I don't think there will be people that I can hire in this country that has out of the box thinking(Not many people in my country plays games like this). Tell me what you think about all this and what I have missed. submitted by /u/kim_jong_veintisiete [link] [comments]

Creating a membership site for entrepreneurs new and old! Posted: 04 Jun 2020 02:01 PM PDT I am looking for feedback on what you would want in a membership site, various price points for different tiers, content, etc. Some things I am working on are weekly accountability calls, private forums, various basic entrepreneurship topics like credit, marketing, accounting, business formation. Anything else you would like to see in a membership site to make it worth your while? submitted by /u/ConfirmedCatholic [link] [comments]

Alibaba or Aliexpress Posted: 04 Jun 2020 01:49 PM PDT Hi guys, what do you think is Europe missing more? Alibaba - Classic b2b, most products have a min. order... or AliExpress- b2c, but can be used as b2c for dropshipping, no min order Thx and have a nice day :D submitted by /u/jajsjj [link] [comments]

What should I do for the next 3 months that's relatively low barrier to entry (<$1000) that can be done at 18? Posted: 04 Jun 2020 09:24 AM PDT I'm about to go into college but I have a few months that I have ample free time. I've been doing Instacart but it's difficult to profit a lot after gas and future car maintenance unless you get lucky with generous tips. I only profit about $100 in 8 hours if I'm lucky. Obviously I'm not complaining, in the state of the job market I'm lucky to have any income. Once I get to college I'm going to be very focused on my academics. For me the end goal is medical school so I'm not one to let anything come before my academics. Therefore if I start, say, an ecommerce business, it would hopefully be relatively easy to maintain after the initial investment of time to open, say 10 hours a week. I own a basic course on web dev on udemy so is this a good place to start? Last time I made a dropshipping business it failed miserably but I was doing it in a very saturated market dominated by highly competitive firms, clothing. Is it recommended to re-enter this enterprise in, perhaps, a more niche subcategory? If so, how do I do the research to start? Thanks to all! submitted by /u/jadondrew [link] [comments]

Feedback on my new startup Posted: 04 Jun 2020 07:00 AM PDT Hey folks, I'm a developer and I built the new product, which helps teams work better. It's designed to help companies keep the focus on top priorities in daily operations and automates status meetings. Just curious about your feedback. Here is the link: https://usefocus.co/ What do you think? submitted by /u/Aworkerman [link] [comments]

Customer hasn't paid after 4 years. Do I have to return his property? Posted: 04 Jun 2020 05:07 AM PDT I own an engineering business that offers 3D scanning and reverse engineering services. Four years ago, we had a customer give us some parts to 3D scan and reproduce using 3D printing. We did the work and had the parts made, but to this day, he has never paid us. We still have his original parts. Over these four years he had made countless excuses and false promises about paying us. I told him it's not worth my time anymore and I will be discontinuing any further communication. He said he wants his parts back and will have his attorney draw up a release. What are my options here? Am I legally required to give his parts back without receiving any payment? The amount owed is only $1800, so is threatening small claims court even worth it? Any advice is appreciated! This is in Ohio by the way. submitted by /u/rczqpu2 [link] [comments]

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