Marketplace Tuesday! - June 01, 2021 Entrepreneur |
- Marketplace Tuesday! - June 01, 2021
- How I Launched my Product on Reddit to get 1,500 Sign-ups and 300,000 Page-views
- I did NOT quit my 6 figure tech job to officially build my own tennis app.
- Got my first users for the very first time
- Struggling to find any work in the construction industry. Not sure what I am missing, would love some feedback or tips on what I should be doing.
- Starting a window cleaning side hustle...?
- Side Hustle Thesis - Update
- Starting a handyman business: what type of 'contracts' do I need and 2, use 'handyman' in name or no?
- What are you using for Analytics? (eCommerce)
- Today is the last day to register for Tom Ferry's Summer Blueprint event.
- We have tea bags, why not coffee bags?
- Legal Software Suggestions for a Small Law Firm
- Launching a brand using online ads and influencer marketing only?
- I have three types of content but I don't know if I should put it all on one account?
- Anyone have advice on creating automotive lighting ?
- Want to study coding and specialise in building simple applications for small scale businesses, where would recommend I start from?
- How to enter the US market?
- Fropity as name for tokenised fractional property platform. Hipity hopity , own fraction of a property. Visit fropity.com now!
- 4 Simple Ideas for a Better eCommerce Homepage (+Free Swipe File)
- What do I have to do to get my web app (non-saas) featured on product hunt?
- Selling e-learning platform backed source code.
Marketplace Tuesday! - June 01, 2021 Posted: 01 Jun 2021 02:00 AM PDT Please use this thread to post any Jobs that you're looking to fill (including interns), or services you're looking to render to other members. We do this to not overflow the main subreddit with personal offerings (such logo design, SEO, etc) so please try to limit the offerings to this weekly thread. Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. [link] [comments] |
How I Launched my Product on Reddit to get 1,500 Sign-ups and 300,000 Page-views Posted: 01 Jun 2021 06:54 AM PDT In this post, I'll explain how you can come up with a start-up idea, get it validated, and have a great launch while providing value for the subreddit. I will not be discussing "how to build MVP" part because that'd be a waste of time for everybody. I've validated multiple products on Reddit and built one of them. The product I ended up building was for self-learners and I leveraged a self-learning community called r/learnprogramming. Using this strategy,
The framework that I listed down here can be used for Discord and other forums too. I'm sticking to Reddit since that's where I personally found success. Here are a few examples of the Reddit launches which benefitted the communities more than the creators and in turn found "community-idea fit". Why Should You Validate on Reddit?
What Should You Validate on Reddit?
Now since we listed down the pre-requisites, let's see how we can get this done! Frame the Problem StatementThe first part before building the MVP is to validate your idea. Most often the idea software engineers come up with is a solution. We see the end product, the website, the iOS app, the hardware. The aim is to frame the problem statement. You need to find an answer to this question - what's the difficulty the user is facing? In most cases, you'll need to optimize the solution multiple times to get to the problem statement to get to one that actually makes sense and one that the user would resonate with. Unless you're a person who's coming into the game with a problem statement, you're good to go. My problem statement was this "Beginners are confused regarding career options while self-learning a job."The solution was to build a platform where you could explore roadmaps on tech where it outlined how one could go from studying a particular programming language to a career in tech. I too started thinking of it from the solution instead of the problem. Before I wrote a single line of code, I was committed to talking to a hundred users to
Now we have the problem statement, and we haven't written a single line of code, how do we make sure there's a market for this idea? Find the Community-Idea fitI think the reason Reddit works well for this is that if I received a hand-crafted personalised message from a comment I wrote on the niche topic that I'm interested in from another anonymous user, I know for a fact that this individual is reaching out to me for what I'm interested in and not because of who I am. Now we have an idea why Reddit might be good for value creation and now you know that the way you reach out to these people has to be in a way that creates value for them while also engaging them. The first thing you need to do is find these communities, to do that I googled "learn programming subreddit". It returns three subreddits - r/learnprogramming, r/coding, r/programming. All three are important but r/learnprogramming had the biggest potential. Then you read the rules to get an idea of who uses this subreddit. You sort by the top (by the year) and you get a solid idea about what the community is about and what kind of posts people share there. Use your reasoning to see if the users here would resonate with the problem statement at hand. For the other products I validated, I googled for "podcasters subreddit" and it returned r/podcasting and r/podcasts. The second product was a product for youtube creators so the keyword I used was "youtube creators subreddit". It returns three subreddits - r/youtubers, r/newtubers, r/partneredyoutube. All three are important but r/partneredyoutube was more of my audience but I never went about building these two products due to multiple reasons even though I got validation. Find the Early-Evangelists From the ForumWhile reaching out to folks, please be absolutely sure that you're not spamming these users. This is a valuable channel for reaching out to folks and we as responsible citizens of the internet need to withhold a pact for using these sustainably in a way that creates value. So did you find a subreddit that you think would like your product? Great job. It might take some time to find the niche you're looking for. If you do not find the exact one, broaden your keywords. If you're looking for something like a community of cardiovascular surgeons, your idea might be too niche for Reddit but if you broaden your keywords, you get r/surgeon with 25,000 users. Now, how do we find the right users to reach out to? How do we frame that message to make it so that the person you reaching out will get value out of the exchange too? In this part of the step, you need to stake out the community and learn. You need to know what kind of people post on those forums, what kind of discussions takes place and who the right set of users to reach out to are. If you spam, you ruin your chances of landing an interesting conversation regarding the idea. For this, I staked out the forums for a couple of weeks. I went to "new", and read the posts which people were posting. Even if you do not have a solid idea of what your problem statement is, this part helped me to resonate with the problems and polish my value proposition. In the case of my roadmap product, I saw that a good amount of questions in r/learnprogramming was "how do I get started with X, "what's the next step after learning Y", and "how do you become Z". This was a moment of epiphany as this is exactly the target market that my product was designed for. Slowly but surely I started reaching out to these folks to get a better understanding of the problem that they were facing. Since I had experience with programming, I tried to answer their questions so that an exchange of value could take place. If you're willing to help out people, they would be willing to help you. Slowly I got to understand their pain points and even got some emails so that I can reach out when I finished building it. Through these conversations, I pinned down the value proposition and the problem statement. Explore, Create and Share Learning Roadmaps in Tech
Validate Your Idea and Collect Email.I still wasn't convinced that the users would come if I built it. Yes, I got validation for the problem statement and got a couple of emails but not enough for me to be satisfied. Would they pay if there was an option? Can I acquire users at scale? I wanted to run couple of experiments to see if it'd work. First, I asked my friend who was an established data scientist to note down the resources he used to self-learn data science. Then I visualised this using Figma, which I had to learn and released it with integration to substack to collect emails. I released this PDF in a subreddit, made a medium post and it got some much-needed traction. Second, I set up a dummy landing page using unicornplatform and shared it on Twitter and reached out to folks I was talking to already. It was a free platform, so that helped. I did not release this landing page on the subreddit since I did not build the platform that I was promising and it was just a test to see if it could get people interested enough to give me their emails. Through these two strategies, I got 150 emails which convinced me it's time to build! Build the MVPI know you have been itching to build the product but I'm glad you got had the patience to read till here. Hopefully, you've gotten rid of your biases and have a solid go-to-market strategy and distribution (email list) in place that's ready to see your bomb-ass product after you finish building it. I'm not going to explain how to build a product because I'm pretty sure there are better articles than this which outlines how to build an MVP. Make sure you keep this process to 1-3 months if you're on this full-time. I had a job so it took me a wee bit more, and I had to learn frontend and I chose Golang to build the backend which was a mistake in hindsight. I knew Python pretty well so I should've stuck to that. The learning phase probably added two to three extra months to the process. When you Get Stuck, Go Back to Your Initial UsersI suggested keeping this sprint short is because chances are you'll be hit with an existential crisis while you're building it. The longer it takes, the harder it'll be to keep up the momentum. It took me 5-6 months to ship, which could've been done faster and there were times I wanted to quit. I constantly asked myself "who'll want this?". During these tough times where you're questioning your sanity, you need to go back to your users and get more validation to get your momentum back especially if you're an indie-hacker. There were times I was like "only if I worked on a B2B product" before launch and then I'll go back and read the initial customer development I did and it'd give me a boost of energy to keep going. I think questioning your sanity is a good way to make sure that you're not building anything based on your delusions, too much of this can be detrimental. After the MVP is Done, Release it!The launch of a product is not the end goal. It is the iterations where you keep improving while finding sustainable distribution strategies to build a business that generates revenue. But the initial traction from your launch would introduce you to new users, problems and opportunities which would broaden your vision. Remember that launch is a one-time thing and it's not a sustainable strategy. But when you're doing the launch, it doesn't hurt to do it right! Now you have your distribution channels ready i.e the subreddit where you validated your product and you're absolutely sure that it creates value for the users from our talks with users. Now prepare for your launch. I personally prefer to have a text post than a link post so that I can explain my reasoning but there are multiple ways to do it, but ideally you should just stick to a text post. Be sure to outline the problem statement, since that's what users resonate with more, the solution and your motivation for building it and the link to the product. Make sure to get feedback on your post from your associates to see if it resonates. You can use your initial set of users to guide you through this. Research on what the best time to release it would be and launch! These are my successful launches
It did take some time to tune my launch strategies to see what'd get me the most exposure, growth and sign-ups. I had to keep the roadmaps free to create some network effects and it worked according to plan. I had no revenue creation strategies in place since growth was what I was targeting and I quite did not expect this kind of a launch. Now I have distribution with a big email list and an easy way to run experiments to create revenue. I do have regrets. I should've better engaged these visitors, and retained them but in my defence, I did not expect to get this kind of virality. During the initial launch, I should've at least converted these users to a Discord channel. Alas, I didn't. Here are some product metrics that are solely through the Reddit launch. Inherent RisksThese are some risks with this strategy,
If you have an idea of planning a launch like this for your product, shoot me an email or a DM, I would be happy to consult. [link] [comments] |
I did NOT quit my 6 figure tech job to officially build my own tennis app. Posted: 01 Jun 2021 09:03 AM PDT In all seriousness, TopSpin is a side project I've been working in the evenings and weekends while working a full-time job at <undisclosed company>. When COVID began, I started to really get into tennis, given that it is one of the more socially distant sport I was interested in. I would spend hours looking up online tutorials and videos on how to achieve better form in tennis, and would practice 7 times a week at the public court near my place. The problem I ran into was this: finding a tennis partner of a similar skill level was very hard, tedious and frustrating, and I would waste hours surfing across multiple 2000-era blast-from-the-past forum sites trying to connect with tennis players in my area (it wasn't hard finding "hot singles in my area" though, there were plenty of these adverts). I was genuinely surprised there was not a dominant app for finding a tennis partner, at least one that was heavily used where I was living (Toronto). Solution: I decided to build an MVP app, partly because I wanted to get my feet wet with mobile development, and frankly because I really wanted to find with more tennis partners. I themed it after a certain dating app where you would swipe left/right based on the person's profile. The UX of swiping left/right 1 profile at a time seemed more intuitive to me than the forum sites I visited where I had to scroll through hundreds of profiles and try to pick out someone I would message. I am starting small, proving out the product with a tight iteration loop and achieving product-market fit first in Toronto before branching out to other cities. This lets me do things that don't scale, such as spending 5 hours on a Saturday manually filling in every single public tennis court in the GTA It doesn't make sense for me to quit my job currently given that product-market fit hasn't been achieved. It also takes unnecessary stress away, and reduces the likelihood I would make an irrational decision under pressure. That being said, 80-90 hour weeks are not uncommon these days... The app initially was essentially just swiping left/right for partners, but after speaking with users and having several feedback sessions we eventually emphasized a "bulletin board" where players can post matches for others to join, as well as an interactive map of tennis courts. Besides the coding portion, I've been winging the design, marketing and SEO (lack thereof currently...) since I have no experience in this area, hence it would be great to get some feedback in this area :) I'm an open book on the tech side of things, so feel free to fire ask away here :) [link] [comments] |
Got my first users for the very first time Posted: 01 Jun 2021 03:09 AM PDT 9 months ago, I start the first project that I convinced a friend of mine to work together on for 6 months. Eventually, it ended up in the project graveyard. We spent 6 months working on the project without getting having feedback from any end-users. Few months down the road, he got bored of it, left the project, and eventually, I ended up killing it without having any users using it. Some mistakes I made are:
Reasons why I did not share with users fast enough:
Fast forward to my next project, took me 1 month to get it working with a minimal set of features, shared it with the relevant community on Reddit/telegram. The response received ranged from lukewarm to bad. Although I did not expect people to be excited about it, having bad negative responses kinda hurt. I know it is part and parcel and eventually, I will get used to it. On the bright side, this is the first time I am getting a few users every day on my site so that's some motivation. Currently doing this alone so there's nobody to rant to. Putting it down as a reminder and motivation for myself and hope others found this useful. [link] [comments] |
Posted: 01 Jun 2021 01:00 AM PDT Hello Entrepreneurs, I am struggling to find any work for my cleaning business specifically targeting the construction industry. I'm a 21 years old who's been trying to start something of my own for the past two years. I provide cleaning service which includes pressure washing,removal of all junk, post construction cleaning and any general labour work. I have tried many different marketing techniques such as emailing, cold calling ,and going door to door to each property developers and general contractor headquarters to drop off a brochure and that has only resulted in one phone call and that person heard my voice and immediately asked my age and then to told me that he would call back another time. [link] [comments] |
Starting a window cleaning side hustle...? Posted: 01 Jun 2021 12:04 PM PDT Exactly like the title says. I would love to one day turn it into a legit business but wondering if anyone here has ever done this or a similar cleaning business? I've worked in sales since I'm out of high school (3+ years) and I'm sick of working for someone else. What hiccups are expected, and what can you advise? TYIA [link] [comments] |
Posted: 01 Jun 2021 09:48 AM PDT A couple of weeks ago I posted my thesis here regarding building a drone photography / videography service. I have an update for anyone wanted to know how far I've gotten. Company: Aerial Dive Website: www.aerialdive.ca I started cold-calling a couple of realtors and pitching my service to them. I have 4 agents already wanting my work (I offered my service for free so that i can have their connection and grow my portfolio before I move away from Relators) My plan it to serve 5-6 clients free of charge and then charge people for my service. Any criticism, tips or advice will be greatly appreciated! Also, check out our site and let me know how it is! [link] [comments] |
Posted: 01 Jun 2021 01:59 PM PDT So I have worked on and off as a handyman for a while and taking the plunge into pursuing it fulltime. I am putting together a website, register my business etc. MY question is I have seen some people say have the word 'handyman' in your business so people know, others have said it makes you look cheap and it should be something posh like 'mountain home restorations'. One other question is given that people are called 'contractors' what type of contract do I actually need? So far I just tell people what they owe me, or occasionally have a bill I print them. I dont want to get burned, so what SHOULD I be doing? [link] [comments] |
What are you using for Analytics? (eCommerce) Posted: 01 Jun 2021 10:01 AM PDT Hello, As the title suggests, I am curious to know what everyone's go-to analytics as a service is? Are you guys using the built in reporting tools that the likes of Shopify offer? Or are you using paid for services? I'm trying to understand whether I am overlooking something obvious in taking the necessary steps to grow a ecommerce business. I appreciate any feedback. Thanks! [link] [comments] |
Today is the last day to register for Tom Ferry's Summer Blueprint event. Posted: 01 Jun 2021 12:01 PM PDT Join for the free 2-day event where Tom will show you how to get more offers accepted, position yourself as a listing authority, tactics to reboot your business in 2021, and much more. Register for the event here: https://www.tomferry.com/blueprint [link] [comments] |
We have tea bags, why not coffee bags? Posted: 01 Jun 2021 11:07 AM PDT Keurigs have invaded the work and home kitchen by providing an easy way to get that cup of whatever coffee you want. Sadly they have created a lot of plastic waste, the pods are expensive (as compared to a pound of coffee), and they coffee is already ground where it loses freshness. One could create a Keurig sized machine that grinds coffee, stores it in a tea bag, and include a boiler. It would be fresh, cheap (only price difference from regular coffee would be the bag), and eco friendly (compostable or biodegradable). It would also contain all of the convenience Keurig contains. You could even grind teabags to take on the go, just add hot water. I would totally develop this idea, but have other commitments, but I would love an easier way to get French press comparable coffee without the, albeit small, hassle. So if anyone else thinks it's worth the effort, help yourself. [link] [comments] |
Legal Software Suggestions for a Small Law Firm Posted: 01 Jun 2021 03:55 AM PDT Hi! Just looking to incorporate certain legal software into a small law firm to speed up the processes of drafting contracts and other legal work. Do you have any suggestions that I could use to save time and money? [link] [comments] |
Launching a brand using online ads and influencer marketing only? Posted: 31 May 2021 08:37 PM PDT Hiring influencers for the launch of a brand? Any input for a brand that uses online ads and influencer marketing only for their launch vs a brand that starts off sharing their products with people that they know, promoting their products themselves etc? Just in case this question isn't clear enough let's use an example. Let's say... my name is daisy and I want to start an online clothing brand. I want to run it virtually (online) primarily for the beginning stages, I'm starting out with 0 followers, 0 connections, totally starting from scratch. So for the launch, plan A goes a little something like this;
In that order. I'm wondering if doing things in this order is likely to yield results, please keep in mind this strategy would be for the launch of the brand, if you think this is not enough to maintain or grow a brand please do not focus on that thought because as I said I'm asking about this strategy for the launch. [link] [comments] |
I have three types of content but I don't know if I should put it all on one account? Posted: 01 Jun 2021 08:03 AM PDT Hi, so I do art/comics, skits/commentary and singing/covers and I put them all on my YouTube channel (art wise - speedpaints for now) since they don't clash. But I was wondering if I should have the same mindset for Instagram/Twitter/TikTok? Will my audience get confused? [link] [comments] |
Anyone have advice on creating automotive lighting ? Posted: 01 Jun 2021 12:55 AM PDT I'm interested in creating lights for off road vehicles and was wondering if anyone had advice on how I can get started with that? Do I take classes for electrical work ? Mechanic assistant ? Any help is appreciated, thank you! [link] [comments] |
Posted: 31 May 2021 11:43 PM PDT As I don't have any experience with coding or any programming languages, secondary research got me interested in Python as it's a simple language and can be used to automate basic human work processes. However, I want to study coding to be able to build applications in the future - targeting small scale business processes. How would you recommend I begin this path of self-education? [link] [comments] |
Posted: 01 Jun 2021 01:22 AM PDT Hi Everyone! I would like to share my story and ask you for some recommendations. I live in Russia and 4 years ago my partner and me established a company that helps people to solve any IG nad FB issues. For such a long term we found mechanisms to restore accounts quick and successful. Some users are trying to do that for months and even years, then apply to us and usually we make it. We are not hackers or scammers, our activity is absolutely legal and doesn't violate any rules of Instagram or Facebook, as well as laws. Any user can do the same without our help, we have just studied this topic and became more advanced users. All these years we worked only with russian-speaking users, our conditions are the following: a client pay 50% prepayment and after we finish our job — the rest. Now we are trying to enter English-speaking market (the USA firstly), there are we work on complete trust and ask for a payment only after we complete our job and also to restore an IG account we don't even need a password, so a client doesn't lose anything, there is no risks. Still there are a lot of doubts from the side of potential clients, they can't believe it works. And also I guess that there is disbelief in us because we are from Russia. How would you advise us to look for clients in the US? What do you think about our work from the side of being American? Any replies and recommendations will be highly appreciated. Thank you in advance. P.S. if you have any issues with IG or FB, will be happy to help you! [link] [comments] |
Posted: 01 Jun 2021 08:38 AM PDT |
4 Simple Ideas for a Better eCommerce Homepage (+Free Swipe File) Posted: 01 Jun 2021 02:43 AM PDT Lots of eCommerce merchants see their homepage as simply a placeholder.But the truth is, your homepage plays a crucial role in communicating your message to potential customers and nudging them to take the next action. If shoppers land on your homepage and get the wrong impression, it's likely they'll bounce. To that end, here's 4 quick-fire principles to follow when designing your homepage:
To see these principles in action - check out this free Google Drive swipe file of 10+ outstanding eCommerce homepages To read more on how to design a killer homepage, check out the full blog post version of this post I wrote here. [link] [comments] |
What do I have to do to get my web app (non-saas) featured on product hunt? Posted: 31 May 2021 02:20 PM PDT I started a company for my web application, a social platform for code sharing and I use product hunt every day to see new products. But I have no idea how to get featured. I know they have some blog posts about that, but they seem to be very scattered and specific to one unique feature instead of the whole process. Anyone with experience feel free to share tips! Do I have to pay money to get featured? [link] [comments] |
Selling e-learning platform backed source code. Posted: 01 Jun 2021 03:45 AM PDT I was developing a web application that could be used as e-learning platform, e-school or online university. The covid hit my family hard and I no longer have the motivation to complete the product. If someone wants the backend source code please DM for pricing. Also willing to support. [link] [comments] |
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