- Everyone seems to want some secret trick or shortcut to starting a business or making money. But it seems the real trick is to get up and consistently work on it every day for a year. Or two. Or ten.
- Approached to buy a domain for $50k. What do I do?
- Beware: Features don't move the needle
- Snake Oil Salesmen – Analysing the landing-page of a SaaS company
- Chinese pretending to be Greek, Colombians, Indians on UPWORK
- Found a killer niche during covid. Unsure how to scale or if possible.
- Australian Entrepreneurs
- Creating a Bespoke Website
- New business Owner
- Looking for name ideas.
- A podcast documenting our journeys freelancing, starting businesses, and working in tech
- Facing Fears and Making Coding my Entrepreneurial Edge
- Can you copy an entire business model and bring it to another market eg. Another country? Will you get sued
- Text messaging Service Question: Can i use multiple text services on same phone number
- I want to grow plants to make some extra money on the side
- What are some some all-too-common problems in people’s lives that need solutions?
- Need feedback on my website started..
- I want to start an ATM business.. do you think is a good idea?
- Review your project or idea (III)
- New domain, now ready to sign up for social media. How can I get a custom email address to register everything?
- Need opinions :)
- Amazon private label or a digital marketing agency
- Relative domain name TLD values (.com/.co/etc)
- Advice on Business Plan
- How to justify shipping low cost items?
| Posted: 02 Aug 2020 08:42 AM PDT Much like a person who becomes a good piano player by practicing every day, the same is true for business. There's isn't one moment that turns you into a successful entrepreneurs. The person practicing the piano may not see huge improvement from day to day. But will see progress over a year or two. It's the same with business. It's a gradual climb. Gradual improvement. And gradual success. [link] [comments]  |
| Approached to buy a domain for $50k. What do I do? Posted: 02 Aug 2020 09:44 AM PDT Over the past 15 years if I have an idea for a website or business I look for a domain and I buy it. Nothing expensive, just like $12/year or something. About 4 years ago I bought a domain that would be an interesting web app or novelty shopping experience and it was a play off of another online retailer's URL. It's a .com and I started developing something for it but life got away from me since it was just a side hustle. All of my domains are private so I'm not contacted directly and get blown up with a bunch of junkmail, messed up with that 10 years ago and I'm still getting crap for "webgameschannel.com" even though I let that gem go years ago. I received an email this morning from go daddy that a law-firm in another country is interested in buying the domain for $50k. The law-firm is legit, they have their address and phone number on the email too. What do I do? Is this real? Do I email a counter offer? Do I go through a lawyer? Do I ask questions? I appreciate all your wisdom and advice. Also, Mods, if this isn't the best place to submit this question, I'm sorry and I'll go somewhere else. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Beware: Features don't move the needle Posted: 02 Aug 2020 12:27 AM PDT I launched a side project a few months ago, and since then, have struggled a bit with growth. I wanted to share a bit more about our journey since then. Here is a list of things that have failed for us in terms of driving significant users:
As a specific example, 🚀 Launching most requested feature had no impact. Across 15 interviews, the problem most consistently mentioned was the inability to set weekly goals eg. "Work out 4X per week". Other habit apps had the feature, and it aligned with our intuition. So we built it : https://imgur.com/a/FXsYk1m The results... Practically no one uses it. Less than 4% of habits created use our "most requested feature". Retention did not change (graph), and in fact, got worse, after launching this. So in summary, we asked a set of users about their biggest problems — built an MVP of that feature — and saw no usage change according to any meaningful metric. Why do I think it had no impact? Even if our users "wanted" the per week feature... I don't believe that was stopping them from evangelizing the product. Like all things, I suspect it just goes back to the fact we are not solving a real user problem, per Paul Graham. At the core, habits are hard to build. There are a lot of habit apps in the app store... and for most people, habit tracking + doing habits with friends is not a natural behavior. There are some people we are solving a problem for (we have a few families and friend groups who use religiously), but we don't how many of these people even exist, and how to best reach them. The full background on the app is here. Hope this was helpful, happy to answer any questions. Can share more on Product Hunt launch, if people are interested. [link] [comments]  |
| Snake Oil Salesmen – Analysing the landing-page of a SaaS company Posted: 02 Aug 2020 07:26 AM PDT What is this post about and the title? Most people have great products but they are either unable to sell or they sell to the wrong audience and waste their efforts. Snake oil salesmen have been able to sell shitty products to gullible people since ancient history. The Snake oil salesmen series is my attempt to look at SaaS/E-commerce companies that could be losing sales by sending the wrong message/copy. It will also look at companies that are doing this right. I hope to use this analysis to sell better. This series is for people who
Background (You can skip to the next section for the actual post) I always wanted to start a business. In fact, I tried my hand at creating an e-commerce brand side hustle. I have built websites for others during college and thought if they could sell stuff, why can't I right? Wrong! I had decent sales through FB ads but I couldn't scale it because I didn't have an organic sales strategy. I was a designer, not a salesman. Even if someone created the iPhone before Apple did, if they don't understand human buying behavior or sales, it is going to fail.
If you can't sell and you have a great product, you need a partner who can. These were the key lesson I learned from so many hours and $$$ spent into that failed project. It seems simple enough, but so many people in sales miss simple concepts like these until much money and effort are wasted. I set out to become a salesman and switched to a sales job. I have been working in B2B sales for the past 4 years. I learn from my mistakes. I also learn from other's mistakes. I call my learning method – heuristic learning (a fancy name for trial and error). I hope to stoke discussion on better ways to sell through these analyses. Why am I doing this? I am interested in human nature and our buying behavior. Of course, my analysis is purely guesswork. From here on in, Harry, I may be as woefully wrong as Humphrey Belcher who believed the time was ripe for a cheese cauldron. Naturally, I think I am right. Depending on the reception, I will continue to post here. !---The post starts here---! Today, I am analyzing the homepage of clickfunnels.com through the AIDA framework. It is Awareness/Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. I will explain each step one-by-one. I am applying a sales funnel framework to a sales funnel website! Funnelception! (If you don't know what a sales funnel is, it's the various stages a buyer goes through from becoming aware of your product to finally making the purchase. For a more in-depth explanation check this out) 1. Awareness/Attention-Getting the attention of your Target Audience I am already aware of clickfunnels.com. But if I wasn't, the company would probably use a Clickbait ad targeting me to make me aware of it. I came across Clickfunnels on a YT ad (I think). The ad said I could earn 5X more sales by building a sales funnel. Intrigued, I click and land on their website. So they've got my attention. 2. Interest – Capture their attention with the 15 Second Rule Every website has on average about 15 seconds to capture the interest of their readers. How is it different from attention? When you snap your fingers at a person, you have their attention. But unless you have something interesting to say, you will lose them. Earlier, landing page designs used to have long scroll-downs and describe what their company does at the end. If you adopt that strategy now, you are most likely to lose your visitor somewhere in the middle. (Imagine if YouTube had a user interface where they put the comments section first before the videos, how many people would read the comments, get bored or distracted and leave the page before even actually watching the videos?) The current best practice is to describe what your tool does in a single sentence upfront to capture their interest. I will call this the hook. For example, as one post earlier this week in this subreddit pointed out, Apple mentioned in their iPod ad - "Carry 1000 songs in your pocket". (Of course, all rules are situational, you'll have to figure out which rule doesn't work for which situation through trial and error) Now the general rule of thumb is to describe benefits not features to capture a person's interest. Apple went against this for the simple reason that this feature is a hidden benefit. Back in those days, you had to carry clunky discs. Carrying a single device that stored all your songs was something people could imagine for themselves once they read this message. How is this relevant to Clickfunnels? Clickfunnels attempts to get the interest of their visitors with this hook:
Now the problem with this message is that people don't want beautiful sales funnels. (What do a beautiful sales funnel even mean?) Their target audience is people who want to create a high converting sales website without having to hire or rely on a tech team. Instead of highlighting this part, they chose to highlight "Quickly create beautiful sales funnels". Some visitors probably lose interest at this stage. If I were in charge of the copy, my hook would be:
3. Evoke Desire by going deep into the features. Bonus points if you can throw in how each feature can make their lives easier: Now that you have their interest, it's time to create desire by explaining how the product works. This is where their funnel copy fails big time. Instead of explaining how to use their product and giving a walkthrough, they chose to explain benefits for about 7 minutes in their 10-minute explainer video. So people have no idea how to use the product. I'm pretty sure a lot of people fell off their sales funnel at this stage. At this stage, I theorized that some more dedicated visitors (who are still in the desire stage) might go to google and search on how to use Clickfunnels. The Company's founder has a 3-minute video explainer on YT titled "ClickFunnels: What Is It and What Makes It So Different". I supposed that most of the visitors would land on this video. I go through the video and I am still confused about how to use Clickfunnels because throughout the video they are still explaining the benefits. I wasn't the only one. I go through the comments and the top comments are:
This video is in 2018. They still haven't fixed it. Obviously they are getting by with enough sales. But they could be getting more if they fix their copy. 4. Unless you ask, People won't bite: Use the Right Call-to-Action: Has your boss ever given you a raise without you asking for it? Probably not. Likewise, when you are selling stuff to someone, you need to nudge them to make an action For SaaS websites and many products in general the first CTA (Call to Action) would be to get the users to purchase a free trial. It is similar to Starbucks offering you free samples. If you are like me, you don't like trying new stuff. But Starbucks got me hooked on their cheesecake by offering me a free sample and since I liked the taste, I am now more likely to order it the next time I am there. However, imagine if I wanted to buy the actual cheesecake the next time I am there. Starbucks doesn't let me buy it. Starbucks asks me to try their free sample first every time before buying the actual cheesecake. If I wasn't that hungry, I would be satisfied with the sample itself and wouldn't want to buy the entire cheesecake and Starbucks would be bleeding sales that way. How Clickfunnels is bleeding sales without the right CTA Now, let's look at Clickfunnels' CTA – "Start your 14 Day Free Trial Now – Start Building your first funnel now!" There are two things wrong with their CTA. Nobody jumps with joy to build their first funnel. Changing it to something like "Improve your sales by up to 5x" would be a better option in my opinion. The more important issue is that there is an option to sign up for their free trial but there is no option to buy directly into their paid plan. This might be okay for Clickfunnels because the people who use Clickfunnels to build a website wouldn't want a website for 14 days only. But for other SaaS services, 14 days might be enough to try the product, get the maximum use out of it, and stop signing up. Netflix probably loses a lot of money when people sign up for their free trial just to view their favorite show's new season (because Netflix releases all episodes at once) and then cancel it. But I've also observed people sign up directly for the paid version of products (Like the Bit-Defender Anti-virus) without utilizing the 30-day free trial because they are already convinced that the product is worth it! Since Clickfunnels is not giving their visitors (who are convinced that your product is 'worth it') an option to directly purchase your paid plan on their homepage, they are probably bleeding sales that way. So this sums up my analysis. In my next post, I will analyze the pricing strategy of a company that gives a $7 for 7 days trial to its users while their competitor is giving a 30-day free trial. Sounds weird right? But it seems to be working for their audience. In the meantime, if you hate my analysis or think its horseshit, let me know in the comments. If you like my analysis, please sign up for my newsletter. Edits: Formating and clarity after feedback received. [link] [comments]  |
| Chinese pretending to be Greek, Colombians, Indians on UPWORK Posted: 02 Aug 2020 01:38 PM PDT I often use freelance sites but I have been noticing a trend lately on Upwork where freelancers are not who they claim to be. They are usually Chinese or Malaysian nationals (because they are banned from Upwork) pretending to be Greeks, Russians, South Americans or Indians in many cases. I spot them pretty easily now. Today I confronted a guy who pretended to be Greek: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hom1z6vapwv14n7/Screenshot%202020-08-02%2013.31.52.png?dl=0 It took a lot of prodding but he finally confessed https://www.dropbox.com/s/g7rmw9nf0m5yd4c/Screenshot%202020-08-02%2013.31.23.png?dl=0 Upwork does nothing to stop this because they earn commissions no matter who does the work. They have little incentive to stop this practice. And this fraudulent fake identity is more common on Upwork than you may think. If you do not care who is doing the work sure! But what kind of quality will you get from someone who is pretending to be someone else? Your code, your design are your property. Next time you hire someone on Upwork just remember, it may not be someone you think they are. [link] [comments]  |
| Found a killer niche during covid. Unsure how to scale or if possible. Posted: 02 Aug 2020 04:46 AM PDT I was a recruitment consultant by trade for 8 years in 3 different countries. The last year I've been doing a lot of digital marketing. It's always surprised me how little that people know about the hiring process. It's been highlighted massively given the current pandemic. Folks just sending a truck load of CV's through "apply now" and hoping for a miracle. I started offering 1-2-1 coaching online for a set fee for 45 mins. Started just advertising amongst peers on LinkedIn and I've been booking a ton. My issue is, given that it's 1-2-1 and there's only one of me and so many hours in a day, I don't know how I can scale it. I thought about video courses but to be honest, people vary greatly and the job search specific to the individual that putting out a blanket video would not near be as effective as sitting down with someone. Plus there's a ton out there already. Plus I fucking dread being in some video and all that. I've got a face for radio I know that much. So I can book 50 1-2-1 sessions in a week (not currently near that but assume thats max) but I can't go any further than that. Other option is hire another human. I don't think an active recruiter would be interested as it would be a big drop in pay. I don't think I could train someone from scratch either, to give advice on the hiring process having never done it. All I'm left with is to increase prices? It's fun working on the candidate side as opposed to working on the client side but if it's not scalable then I don't think it would be worth it. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Aug 2020 07:49 AM PDT Looking to get into contact with other likeminded business owners in Australia to share ideas with and just in general, help each other out. Together we are stronger! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Aug 2020 01:56 PM PDT Hello, I am wondering if I can get some input from people who has had work done, that is a little similar to my project. Basically I'm looking at getting a website made based on my designs that are already completed and so far the quotes I have received are around £30,000 due to its features. I understand that I should try to get a MVP completed to prove the business model and idea but my site really needs everything together. How much have you spent on a feature rich website? What can I do? Where should I be looking for a developer? Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Aug 2020 01:42 PM PDT Launched my business 2 days ago and I am proud and happy to be part of the business owners circle. My company is called "Grove Dial" and have a goal of reforestation of the planet. Tell me something about your business [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Aug 2020 01:24 PM PDT Building a CRM with special analytics for tracking freelancers and their performance. Would like to avoid having "CRM" in the name, trying to future proof it in case there is some major iteration/pivot that causes us to not be CRM focused as this gets rolling. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| A podcast documenting our journeys freelancing, starting businesses, and working in tech Posted: 02 Aug 2020 01:22 PM PDT In October of 2019, I was laid off (along with 80% of the company) from a startup here in Toronto where I was working as a full-stack web developer. I decided to take this as an opportunity to do my own thing. I had been passively consuming podcasts like Indie hackers, Startups for the Rest of Us, and Art of Product for some time before this, and was already pretty set on becoming self-employed one day. I had a bit of money saved up, but this certainly came sooner than expected, so I knew I would need to try my hand at freelancing. At this same time, I decided I wanted to document the journey publicly as learning for others, since I had learned so much from others who shared in this way. I also just thought it may be interesting for others to learn from people who are very new to this founder/freelancing thing. You can find a lot of podcasts from seasoned startup veterans, but not a lot of content from brand new or aspiring founders. So, for the past 8 months or so, my friend and I have been meeting on a weekly(-ish) basis to just give each other "updates" on our work-life journeys. We're 23 "episodes" in now. I actually cannot believe how much has happened in this time - finding freelance clients, obviously this whole pandemic, starting my first corporation with co-founders, and somehow managing to keep finding client work along the way. Speaking for myself personally, even if no one listened to the podcast, this has been an incredible accountability and documentation tool, so I would highly recommend anyone just getting started on their journeys to document the process. That said, hopefully this proves to be a valuable resource in some way or another. The journey is still ongoing, and we'll continue to update as it goes. Is anyone else doing something similar? If so, I would love to check it out! I would be happy to answer any questions about the process. [link] [comments]  |
| Facing Fears and Making Coding my Entrepreneurial Edge Posted: 02 Aug 2020 01:09 PM PDT In 2017, I read about AI beating professional poker pros. I felt a stab of fear. My work as a trader was similar. I thought: am I next? I channeled that fear into teaching myself to code. I moved to Medellin, Colombia and got busy grinding youtube tutorials. This led to paid freelance work through Upwork and a bootcamp TA position at the University of Texas. I learned that fear is a signal for change. I harnessed it to propel myself forward. And, I learned I'm more powerful than I thought. Feel free to reach out if you're facing similar fears and not sure what's next. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Aug 2020 01:07 PM PDT |
| Text messaging Service Question: Can i use multiple text services on same phone number Posted: 02 Aug 2020 12:58 PM PDT What the title says. Is it possible to use multiple text messaging services with the same phone number? [link] [comments]  |
| I want to grow plants to make some extra money on the side Posted: 02 Aug 2020 05:08 AM PDT I want to grow something to make some extra money on the side. Can anyone recommend some profitable plants or rare or unusual herbs that I could grow and sell? I live in a warm climate in Australia. [link] [comments]  |
| What are some some all-too-common problems in people’s lives that need solutions? Posted: 02 Aug 2020 08:47 AM PDT As an entrepreneur hopeful I still have yet to make any sort of break into the industry since I haven't really stumbled upon a major enough problem worth solving. At best, I'd honestly prefer it to be a problem plaguing virtually EVERONE'S lives or at least the majority of the population since the solutions I've come across have already been forged in one form or another. So, what are some of the most common day to day problems in the lives of most people (or your life) that you know of? Thank you [link] [comments]  |
| Need feedback on my website started.. Posted: 02 Aug 2020 12:33 PM PDT TurtlePanda is the store name.. kindly give the review on this..TurtlePanda [link] [comments]  |
| I want to start an ATM business.. do you think is a good idea? Posted: 02 Aug 2020 12:21 PM PDT Hi I'm 18 and my mother has a hair salon that takes only cash and is willing to have an ATM in her business from me.. she also has many friends who run other hair salons and markets themselves that take cash only. I believe these businesses have a substantial amount of traffic every month so it shouldn't be an issue.. I have about 50k in savings so I don't really have a problem in regards to loading up the machine with the funds and having to pay for the ATM to be programmed. [link] [comments]  |
| Review your project or idea (III) Posted: 02 Aug 2020 02:35 AM PDT Hi everyone, I've worked in the tech and startup industry for a few years and would love to give back. I'm a web designer/developer by trade and I've built over 100+ websites. Let me know your website or idea and ill give you advice Previous ones: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/hy4cz9/review_your_website_or_idea_ii/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/htxieb/review_your_website_or_idea/ [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Aug 2020 11:59 AM PDT Domain bought through namecheap but question would apply if bought through google domains (I own a few there too, unused domains though). [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Aug 2020 11:49 AM PDT Hey, I am new to this subreddit, and I wanted to ask if there was still any point in starting dropshipping if you have zero experience? Because I feel like there are too much people doing it. So basically I am asking if I should give dropshipping a shot or just focus on something else maybe like drop servicing [link] [comments]  |
| Amazon private label or a digital marketing agency Posted: 02 Aug 2020 11:32 AM PDT I want to buy inventory and improve an existing product and sell it on amazon FBA. I have $2000 to spend and if I fail then that money's gone. I could try out another product but by then it'll be a few more months. I plan on air shipping my first product, which would be light enough. I've also been thinking about starting an digital marketing agency. Many months ago I invested in training but didn't like the freelancer/cold calling aspect. I think I'd just pay contractors for outreach and fulfillment so it's not me with no experience and doing everything. This would be a little less than $2k in startup costs. I know everything isn't get rich quick but within 3-4 months it would be nice to have money coming in. Any of you guys have FBA or agency experience? What is the timeline of getting income and the hurdles? [link] [comments]  |
| Relative domain name TLD values (.com/.co/etc) Posted: 02 Aug 2020 10:24 AM PDT I'm looking at purchasing a domain name for which the .com is taken (what isn't nowadays). Does anyone have data or an approximate idea of what the relative value across TLDs looks like. For example, if entrepreneur.com sold for $1m, would you expect entrepreneur.co to be worth $10k, $100k as a broad rule? Here's the data I could find searching for this, from ~10 years ago for .nets and .orgs: http://www.dropmining.com/data/the-relative-value-of-tlds-part-1/ I'm wondering how much has changed since then and how this applies to TLDs like .co. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Aug 2020 10:07 AM PDT I'm currently writing my business plan using the Prince's Trust Business Plan Template. What is the one thing you missed on yours that you wish you'd thought of at the time? Edit: As advised - I want to start a product subscription business. [link] [comments]  |
| How to justify shipping low cost items? Posted: 02 Aug 2020 10:06 AM PDT I'm selling $15 items in person and my next step is to start a Wix site and ship to customers as well. After doing a little preliminary searching, UPS and FedEx ground seem to charge $8+ for ground shipping. Does that sound right? I can fit the items in those padded legal sized envelopes. How do folks ship items that cost about as much as the shipping does? I'm trying to avoid USPS because I feel like right now with "Covid-19 related delays" the delays could lead to a lot of customer service issues. Thanks in advance, everyone! [link] [comments]  |
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