What are
/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong's
favorite Products & Services?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
The most popular Products mentioned in /r/EntrepreneurRideAlong:
The most popular Services mentioned in /r/EntrepreneurRideAlong:
Product Hunt
Notion
Stripe
Calendly
Moz
Bubble
Sktch.io
Indie Hackers
PageSpeed Insights
Airtable
Zoom
Anchor
Quire
Zapier
Carrd
The most popular Android Apps mentioned in /r/EntrepreneurRideAlong:
Music Player
AlarmDroid (alarm clock)
Memorigi: Todo List, Task Planner, and Reminder
Health Sync
The most popular reviews in /r/EntrepreneurRideAlong:
Do not store credit card numbers yourself!
In order to do this properly you need to be PCI compliant, which is a long, expensive, and overly complicated process.
Instead you should use a payment processor that will allow you to vault credit card numbers with them, and then charge those customers via a token they give you.
Two of the easiest companies to work with are Stripe and Braintree.
Disclaimer: I'm a developer at Braintree
I would prescribe David Goggins' 'You Can't Hurt Me' as the perfect remedy for you https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Hurt-Me-Master-Your/dp/1544512287
1- Buy this windshield repair kit for $10.
2- Print out flyers that say “windshield chip repair, I come to you, help me save for college, satisfaction guaranteed, blah blah blah”. $10 one-time cost.
3- Start in your neighborhood. Check out windshields in driveways and on the street. When you see a chip on a windshield, knock on the door.
4- “Hi sir, you have a chip in the windshields of two of the cars in your driveway. For just $20 per windshield, I can seal those right up and save you from a costly new windshield!” Bat your eyes. Say something about saving for college. Also mention you accept Venmo or Apple Pay.
5- if they didn’t answer the door, leave the flyer.
6- Fix the windshield (learn from a YouTube video.)
The kit you bought will fix about 7-8 chips. At $20 per chip, you turned a profit of $150 on just a Sunday afternoon. Do it two days per week for $300 profit. Do it every day after school for 2-3 hours and you’ll make more than an entry level college graduate.
Everyone gets chips in their windshield. People love to see kids working toward something instead of sitting on their phones. If you approach someone about their chip, I’d put my bottom dollar that 7/10 of them give you $20 to fix it. It’s the same reason everyone stops for the lemonade stand. They don’t really want cool-aid, they want to help an ambitious kid doing something productive.
Common businesses is the way I roll. Innovation for me is for people with a lot of money that can take huge risks. Innovation requires risk, educational cost, and more. It's fine and I benefit from it when other people do it, but for me I would rather go after simple things that are like shooting fish in a barrel vs trying to figure out how to get a rocket to the moon.
Book: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die!
It's the only book I ever really recommend anymore, because it's about communicating. Your entire online marketing life will rely on branding/communication and I've never read a better one on the subject.
Thanks for the questions man.
As said in the comments below, there are existing apps for quitting smoking, snoring etc. so there does appear to be a market for these kinds of apps.
To validate the concept you need to first consider:
- What exactly is the problem that you're trying to solve?
- ie. When quitting sugar we might be trying to improving our diet, for diabetics, getting healthy, getting fit, losing weight etc.
- You might have a different interface depending on a specific problem that you're solving, so how do you make a general/specific interface for changing a habit?
- Do you want to solve for any habit or a specific kind of habit that a certain audience might face?
- How do people currently track their habits?
- What competitors (direct & indirect) out there exist?
- (Direct) Habitica is a similar concept with 4M users - https://habitica.com/static/home
- (Indirect) Many use checklists, journals
- How big is the market?
- How many books, videos, podcasts are created on task management (bazillions)
- What is the overall install base for software to solve these issues?
- How big is the market for your specific audience?
- What is missing?
- What do people complain about on existing solutions? - (look at their bad reviews to see if there are any gaps in the product)
- What need is unmet?
- What competitors (direct & indirect) out there exist?
- Who is the customer?
- Is it someone of a similar age to you, a millennial like me, your parents age, grandparents, etc?
- What likes, interests, personality, ability with tech do they have?
- Where would they find out about your product?
Good luck to you, but frankly I think you're trying to create a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Here's how I already solve all these issues:
When I use a bulk item and I notice it's getting low, I write it on my magnetic laminated shopping list that lives on the fridge with a dry erase maker. I add the list to my groceries app before I go shopping. Total cost, $1.50.
Food going bad for temperature control reasons is extremely rare. Almost to the point of being not worth spending anything to prevent it. But I'll bite. I bought $500 worth of beef directly from a rancher years ago. Because if that i have a two channel battery powered fridge/freezer monitor/alarm from Amazon AcuRite 00986A2 Refrigerator/Freezer Wireless Digital Thermometer It has an audible alarm, records high\low temps and works quite well for the entire fridge and freezer. $25
I don't even know how I would use this. Either I would need 40 of these devices to track most of the kitchen staples I own, or it's a game of roulette that I put it on the container that I'm going to misplace next. Do people really lose things in their kitchen that often?
Like I said, good luck. I hope this is a amazing success and I'm just an outlying laggard. People who want smart home everything, or people addicted to buying kitchen uni-taskers are probably going to be your core customer.
All the best.
I love helping startups launch user referral programs. My startup has helped 26 Y Combinator companies launch viral referral programs (no-code, visual UI builder, fully integrated inside your platform) so if you’re looking for something that works for great startups, get in touch! Even if you just want free advice, happy to chat. Grab a meeting in my calendar: https://calendly.com/ijan-1/30min
I'm not the op but these are easy.
- Freemium. There's going to be upsales
- Super low. They don't host the expensive to host content, it's just mostly outbound links. If they're competent, < $100/month for a long time.
- The customers are supposed to do it on their behalf.
- Common stuff https://builtwith.com/detailed/znaplink.com
Site Appearance: 10/10. Great concept too. Site Load time minus 3, eg: totally fckd. Google tells the story: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpaperbagdelivery.com%2F&tab=desktop Suggest you fix hosting /pageload before you even open it for traffic.
This book "DeepWork" was a great book for me to read/listen to in 2020. https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692
2nd most important after the look of your websige. Great book on copy that I always recommend: Made to Stick
The $69/mo company probably spammed their way to the top and then shrugged helplessly the next time Google updated the algorithm and their clients sites got penalized.
The amount of SEO you need depends on your location and the amount of competitors you have to deal with.
The first thing any SEO agency is going to do is make sure you are listed in all the business aggregator sites. You can do this yourself for $84/year from Moz Local. Do basic on-site SEO to make sure you have your business name, location, and phone number listed exactly the same way on each page and preferably marked up with proper schema tags. Make sure you site is completely functional on mobile. Add HTTPs. Minimize the number of external scripts and stylesheets and make sure your page loads quickly. Once you have all of this in place for a few weeks, you'll probably see a bit of a jump for key terms and maybe even show up in the "local pack" of results already. If you want to hire an SEO company at that point, you can be more sure that your money will be going to more "high skill" things and getting more value for your dollar.
Yes and in fact it's better than ShoeDog. A book about Zappos: Delivering Happiness.
https://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446576220
It's a legit question :)
Honestly, we've started this venture with some free landing pages hosted on Gumroad, and subsequently, we've turned all the templates into a project!
We're seeing a lot of value with the free model, so, for now, we will support the product via custom commissions (clients), and later we will increase our offer with premium features, like ready-built components.
If you've any suggestions I'm all ears :)
If you are looking for CRM Software for your business, you can go with SoftwareSuggest.com, where you find right software for your organization. They provide list of top CRM software with free consultation, reviews, comparison, price quotes and many more. You can refer them at http://www.softwaresuggest.com/crm-software
Oh god! Let's work our way down just on the home page.
- The menu items are grey on a grey top bar. Barely readable.
- When scrolling over the options they jump around.
- Your company name, change the font and color to something else or develop an actual logo. (use this to help choose colors that won't strain eyes and work together https://color.adobe.com/)
- The video player has a weird black line on the right hand side.
- When resizing the windows your company name goes over the hamburger menu.
- Contact page footer is in the middle of the page (may be a responsive issue).
Final thoughts: I would do what HughMannity suggested and change your theme. There are plenty of good new ones and they'll help with most of these issues. Fix the colors, get a logo, and let people click on the services you offer to get more information.
Show Dog and Losing my Virginity are two of my favourite books.
I also like Duncan Bannatyne’s book. The title is terrible but Duncan has built up a lot of businesses in the UK and didn’t start until his thirties. link
Slightly off topic but Trevor Noah’s book Born a Crime is also amazing. Not so much a business book but it does have an element of business as Trevor is now a successful comedian.
I used to use this app below, yours sound cooler that it reads you the text you input :) Anyway check it out it might help. Good luck!
​
https://ifttt.com/applets/198891p-get-out-of-a-bad-date?term=bad%20date
My approach is similar to the book Key Person of Influence. I definitely recommend it. You need to give people reasons to come to your site and reasons to return.
SEO will bring you traffic but it's slow and takes time. It's like a marathon. Check out the Beginner's Guide from Moz to get started.
Another slow but true method is to collect email addresses and put out a newsletter.
In the mean time, you still need sprint traffic. You can pay for it with Google or Facebook ads. You can hire influencers. You can look for niche newsletters and podcasts and sponsor them.
Or, you can try to go viral with a stunt. You'll get traffic, but it's untargeted, unqualified traffic and very little will turn into customers.
I've built two marketing companies and specifically learned what to do and what not to do. I've combined these lessons and used what I learned from building a national real estate franchise system from scratch as well.
I built it to sell it, plain and simple. As we build it we are documenting macro and micro processes (learned the importance of this when we recapitalized our last company for north of $25M: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/mccarthy-capital-partners-with-united-real-estate-holdings-llc-2015-06-10.
Diffactory is built to control how and when the customers interact with us, how the team interacts with the owner and how workflow is managed and distributed.
Our USP is simple: We grow your business or we pay you. 200% guarantee. Completely unheard of the space. Based on my last company I knew I could build a team that would have 99%+ measured client satisfaction so I am willing to put my money where my mouth is.
Why does everyone aim for passivity? Work is fun! But to answer your question, I've built it to sell it. I don't don't work in the business, I work on it (E-Myth Revisited...read it).
Great questions! I hope you all achieve what you seek out to. You just have to jump!
This is pretty awesome and unique! Site loaded quickly, concept sounds really neat, and the concept of aggregating billboard ad space into this format has me thinkning, "Why didn't I think of that?"
Designwise, I'm thinking a more obvious homepage that describes your service would do better than a map with almost no instruction. This is especially true since I only see 1 billboard space currently advertised as a Featured Item. The map up top would work better when there are lots of places to choose from. Until then, copy Airbnb even more by building upon their homepage UI (https://www.airbnb.com/)
Personal preference, but I don't like the smoothed-out scrolling. Anytime a page doesn't scroll "normally", I consider it scroll-jacking. However, I leave this choice up to you.
You get my official "I hope you make millions" stamp of approval. Keep us updated on your project! And make sure you grab attention of the big cities (cough SF cough).
Does she have google analytics installed?
You could also look at the free version of hotjar to see how people are using the site: https://www.hotjar.com/pricing/personal/
The site isn't fantastic looking.
The product shot at the top is blurry, the packaging is the same colour as your background.
The text on the right doesn't give a clear view of what the product is. There's very little text on the first page at all, some flavour about the company and the product can help, whats the story of the company, why does it exist, whats the benefit you're giving to customers over buying from amazon or someone.
"Shop boxes" is a weak call to action.
That brown colour is on everything in the featured products section: product packaging, box background and section background, it needs to be varied so its not boring to look at.
The page is just not very engaging. It also gives no idea of the depth of your product range.
No where on the site is there any claim or information to say that these products are actually any good.
Product pages: your product description is at the bottom of the page, not at the top, it needs to be above the fold. But even if it was there's nothing there to sell anyone on this product.
There's no customer reviews on the site.
The video is more focused on the packaging than the product, it doesn't even show the full contents of the box let alone looking at them in any detail or showing the quality.
SE's look at everything incl. image names. It actually starts from the source code. Bots will discover & map entire site structure, plugins, framework, theme, it all goes to an algorithm to determine whether it falls within what G calls "Low Value Page" index: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/myths-and-misconceptions-about-search-engines
and also
Auto detailing is a pretty simple business model. The best people I've heard about have been via word of mouth, so please the heck out of your customers! Do one thing that no one else does like:
1) Provide a complimentary re-wash if it rains within a week (probably won;t need it in the desert)
2) For women, have roses waiting in their car. For guys, have something equally as nice, like a cigar/gas card/roses for their significant other. anything to stand out and make people tell others about you.
Someone posts on FB to their friends "Anyone know someone who can detail my car?" and the recommendations start kicking off.
Be sure to cover the local directory bases. $89 a year for an easy button (need to do this for our company as well): https://moz.com/local
Good luck!
P.S.: Don't get caught up in consuming books. I did it for two years. Take action.
Moz beginners SEO guide:
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
Good post that sums up niche site building for affiliate income:
I haven't done one yet, but I have
http://www.powtoon.com/videomarketing/animated-explainer-video/
bookmarked for when I do.
High_Five's looks great too.
> They won't go with freelancer, as they feel they could be scammed.
Sounds like you aren't really doing the marketing... ask for a marketing budget and what they want (20% increase in sales in 3 months, etc) and see if they'll be more hands off/flexible that way?
A/B testing with the cheapest plan from https://www.optimizely.com/ may also be helpful for testing ideas vs. conversions.
It's a bit hit or miss, but I'd post on Freelancer.com and Upwork.com. If you prefer working with someone from the US, I think you should be able to select that when you create the job post.
A quick tip: The results are often better when you:
- Describe what you do
- List the tasks you want them to do
- Hire them for a single position e.g. assistant. Don't expect them to be able to do more stuff like editing your website, graphic design, programming etc. (probably people's biggest mistake when they start outsourcing).
- Let them know what times you expect them to work
I'm sending you to the Stripe API documents because they're actually very human readable even if you don't know how to code.
https://stripe.com/docs/api#charge_object
The charge object has an attribute called capture, if you send the value false when the charge is created an authorization is created on the object. If there isn't enough funds available your charge will fail. You have 7 days from that time to capture the funds.
This link goes into the two-step payment process more: https://stripe.com/blog/auth-capture
Need to have a look at your site to review. But a good way to get visitors interacting is adding a live chat. Have a look at https://www.tawk.to/ which is a free live chat. Set up triggers where after 30 seconds a pop up asks visitors how you can help.
What are you doing digital marketing wise?
Am looking for something customized and translated into multiple languages. (Also the app for cleaners). And, adjusting to your own color scheme and text. Not every text is written for upselling and/or too technical.
I do think there is room for you: https://www.getapp.com/customer-management-software/a/launch27/#q=launch27&ac=listing
Read the reviews and improve on them.
HotJar is awesome. There's a lot you can learn about your landing pages and signup process from looking at heatmaps and running A/B tests. A competitor worth looking at is CrazyEgg. A lot of the same features of HotJar but a lot a cheaper.
If you're more code savvy and willing to put in a little more effort, you can get heatmaps with just Analytics. Here's an article on how to set up heatmaps with google analytics. Not quite as intuitive or turn key as the other solutions but worth looking into if you want to do it for free.
Another thing worth considering is paying for a usability report. Heatmaps can be useful but they're still up to interpretation and a lot of things can get missed or misinterpreted. A good usability report will give you a bunch of actionable things to change in just a week or two for a one time fee rather than paying for a subscription and hoping you're interpreting the results correctly.
Webdesigner here, critiques :
- It takes forever to load such a tiny website
- Clean but very generic
- Logo is bigger than the sticky header
- Pistachio green is not the best color
- Very cold homepage, almost only only text and icons
- Way too much javascript
- Don't ever scroll-jack
That's just the home page, I clicked on a link but took so long to load on my shitty connexion that I left.
I also found your dev.to article on how you automated the mundane tasks.
I am on also creating a newsletter on Project management articles and seems to be starting a similar path. Everything I have done so far is manual, and parts of it is boring! I would rather spend more time on the curation.
Much appreciation to you for sharing your stories.
Nice work, your site very much reminds me of one of Jekyll's themes and I thought you may have used them until I read your post.
I too am a web developer and am embarking on completely redesigning my website. My background has been more backend based (PHP mainly), but I have started a new job where I've been learning React and doing more frontend stuff.
For my website, I'm going to be moving away from a database driven website and instead go for a static site using a React static site generator called Gatsby and a static host provider called Netlify which also offers a/b testing using git branches.
My site is currently using a DO droplet deployed by Laravel's Forge and is based on October CMS (a Laravel CMS).
Congrats and good luck in your future endeavors.
One of my favorite online communities is IndieHackers, a community of early stage founders and makers.
It's an incredibly supportive community, and one that provides so much value for it's members. This is something that is super important for entrepreneurs, who usually have a somewhat lonely journey in pursuing their ventures.
After joining this community I was so inspired by the benefits of being a part of helpful online communities, that I launched a directory of online communities called the Hive Index, to help others find communities for their interests.
I've been working with Zapier - they have a lot of automated tools that connect with WordPress plugins, Google spreadsheets, etc
When a user signs up on my site Zapier translates that data into a spreadsheet that I can manipulate.
I have created Google Sheets to control inventory for a Custom A/V Integrator. I would utilize Google Forms also to fill out when restocking a truck and it would then pull the quantity from our warehouse stock. It was pretty slick and everyone loved that they could do it on their phones. I did a quick Google search, here's a link - https://zapier.com/learn/how-to/manage-inventory-google-forms-sheets/
Hi Thanks:)
CloudLAN is a Business VPN solution trying to mimic an office network environment vs other VPN solutions like ExpressVPN which are consumer-oriented products built for single-person anonymous usage.
CloudLAN comes with Business use-case features like
TeamVPN IP - restrict access to your business sys via company static IP
DevOps feature - Cast your local web service easily i,e reduce CI/CD deployment
Integration option ( you can secure your systems like WordPress, CMS, source code etc)
It's better, but not great. Localcasestudy recommended once to read the book, Made to Stick and I am too. I highly suggest you get the audio version and plug away everyday for an hour listening to it to help figure out how to sell your service to people. I consider myself pretty web savvy and if I'm struggling to figure out what it is you really want to sell me, imagine your target demographic (30-55 year old women). They're not going to be as tech savvy as the people who hang out in this sub. Or even reddit for that matter.
Thanks for your reply! I'll definitely give that book a read.
I see what you're saying with your views on innovation, it really contrasts with a book I'm reading right now, The $100 Startup, so thanks again for your thoughts!
It sounds like you have a bit of imposter syndrome going on. I highly recommend this book: The Secret Thoughts of Highly Successful Women. I have way less experience than you and I felt the same way. There’s no qualifications to create content. Especially when the content you’re sharing is your lived experiences and knowledge. This book will definitely help with changing your mindset about it.
I find word of mouth is my best friend when I do my very best. Here's the .ai file, and I usually give 1 hour of edits per 4 hours of my time purchased, so if you have any other requests feel free to ask me later if you aren't sure now, I'll give you a 1 year deadline for the edits.
Thanks a lot for participating dude! I can't wait to see what you guys do with these assets! :D
I'm a bit of a collaborative hobbyist myself actually, though I've not used a Maker's Shop before. I just like working with people on projects to build things I invent because I'm a bit of a nut, frankly hahaha. I collect old stuff and pull things out of dumpsters if I like them, and sometimes build stuff out of them, usually a sculpture or something. I should take a picture of the last one I made, it's... well it's ugly like the rest but it's almost interesting too so... ha! I don't have to be good at it to enjoy it I think :)
What I'd really like to do is build a prototype of my invention that a few people are bugging me to sign over to them so they can make money off my ideas! I'll show them, I'll just make it myself and sell them if nothin' else! I just have to find a maker's space and a 3D printer, someone told me a way to get one made pretty cheaply but there's some polishing involved, so it's not really economical to sell the product unless I make it rather large and specialty, which is sorta the plan if I do that... well anyway it's hard to talk about a thing you can't talk about lol, I can send you the schematic in a PM if you want to see what I'm blabbing on about, you might get a kick out of it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7yB9sDO7-1Ia2xmay1hc0RwaE0/edit?usp=sharing
First read it then you can judge the book by its cover https://www.amazon.com/Third-Door-Uncover-Successful-Launched/dp/0804136661
Is there any of the resources/links that you've linked in your case study (Link Cratejoy, 99designs and so forth) that doesn't supply Europe with their services and dont have a substitute?
I created a google document for this that I put in the armyofmaids thread. Here is the link to the spreadsheet. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0Ahvn-tg0xfWGdFYzYTIzZWszbGR1eFZVZjVMN2tNRnc
Thanks for sharing - I'll try them out! I've been an Android Engineer for some good time, worked at top companies and IMO, I don't know if I'm better than them but I believe that I'm pretty good at Android Development - Ivy Wallet
What I believe would made us different that the rest mobile builders is the FP programming style and the simplicity for writing complex business logic via drag and drop. (hopefully all that is possible in reality and not only my mind)
If we manage to get funding for this, we'll of course hire top tire engineers, too.
If you're interested ,So With my app you can listen to you documents and ebooks. It can also read text from images. Don't waste time reading your documents just listen to them with my app. Its an AI document reader which immensely increases your productivity. You can check it out here
I've worked with several high profile companies for anti-spam/deliverability. With a bit of digging around DNS, it looks like OP is running on Digital Ocean and could be using zoho.com to send emails, which is available for a reasonable price depending on the number of contacts (starting from €3/mo for 500 contacts).
The znaplink.com domain has not been properly configured with DKIM or DMARC, which isn't a great sign. Though it's possible that another domain is being used for mass-email delivery - or perhaps worse, they are yeeting the emails out under random send-from domains.
Based on the limited documentation on Znap Link, it looks like the Send From email can be defined when sending an email. There doesn't appear to be any documentation regarding the configuration for configuring SPF+DKIM for custom domains, so this is a big red flag and something that would easily be caught by spam filters. This is why hosted email services have the concept of verified emails/domains.
That being said, there is little information on the email deliverability of the email feature (without paying $10/month and looking at the email headers), so it could be using something totally different and sane. If someone does already have an account, I would love to receive an email from you!
I just upvoted your product on PH. It looks sleek and clean, will try it later.
I launched my logo maker 2 months ago, ranked 16th. I got 450 visit on the launch day and 150 on second day, total 9 orders from the traffic.
Here is my product on PH.
If you can, you should look look into stripe check out - you may still need someone to implement it for you but it should reduce time to finished product by a lot. We use it and really like it. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions about it!
Thanks for the explanation. I see now what you mean. I agree many (not all of them) SaaS apps need such tours but as far as I know, there is a ton of such apps. You can check some of them here, for example: https://userpilot.com/blog/best-user-onboarding-experience/
They create a specific layer that is put on top of your UI and guide users through it. But again, it requires a user to sign up at least.
We are creating something different. It's like an explanation video but users can participate in it. You will be able to create linear and non-linear scenarios to mimic a real product. It's not an explanation of the whole UI, but just what your product does, generally, what users can do with it.
it matters if you feel like coding your own referral is gonna take too much time. we're basically offering a referral that will be adjusted based on your needs and wishes and ofc it's no coding FOR YOU so you save a lot of time. feel free to sign up for our office hours though, we'd love to answer your questions https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN\_aW22u43pSZa516XlvGpVvA
Here’s the link! <strong>https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9aFeMyQjQfWKCMTfhKKShA</strong>
If you’re looking for feedback specific to your referral program, or just want help launching your referral program shoot me an email .
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7yB9sDO7-1IT3NGTUlhS2ZXRkU&usp=sharing
Here we go, let me know if there's something else I can do to these files for you.
Good luck, I can't wait to see your website :D
Well, here we are. All done, and I even had time to get a mascot in there for ya ;)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7yB9sDO7-1IRnJUMVd3enozTTg/edit?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7yB9sDO7-1IQUd1b3dOenlnUTg&usp=sharing
whew, i want to put about 2 more hours into this... i put some love in this thing, and i'm sad i have to stop working on it! but i can't be doing too much free work, you nderstand i hope
lmk if you need any other file types, otherwise good working with you today, thanks a lot for participating and i wish you many esports reports!
cheers!
Well, Squarespace is a theme-based builder, which means that you choose a template and can then customize it.
Sktch.io on the other hand is a canvas-based editor which means that you start with a blank canvas (or some people prefer to start with a base-template), but then you can add stuff to it and have total control over the look and functionality of the website/app.
To see projects built with Sktch.io you need to click on the Try demo button.
Based on your comment and others, I know see that this is not enough, I need to add a "Built with Sktch.io" carousel up in the page to clearly showcase example projects.
Interesting idea you mentioned about making a "done-for-you" solution, I'll look into that. (The more I think of it, the better the idea sounds!)
It's not harsh at all, it's very valid.
I'll admit that the research I've done is limited to seeing that Webflow and Bubble are being used by many people and growing very fast which indicates the demand for such products.
On the other hand, I've tested those tools and found that Webflow is too limited (you'll quickly find yourself needing to make code again to solve basic problems, an example of that is that you can't even add a native comment section, you have to embed disqus or something like that...)
Sktch.io attempts to fill those holes and provide a more complete solution to this problem.
Agreed, the visual programming tool is probably the one thing in Sktch.io that does require some training, I've been making Youtube tutorials on that but need to make more.
I also feel like people don't watch that content (people probably close the getting started window when they open the editor). I'll find a way to pop those tutorials when the users open the visual programming tool for example so that if they don't understand something, they can quickly find their answer.
SEO is okay so far, I get some traffic thanks to the Whatsapp Clone project I've made + Youtube videos I make. I tried registering Sktch.io on any imaginable directory to get as many backlinks as possible.
I'll try to be more consistent in terms of replying to reddit posts and facebook group posts so whenever Sktch.io is a possible solution, I'll mention it!
As as you mentioned first, I've been behind in terms of getting feedback from users that have tried the app. I'll be more proactive in reaching out to them so that I can improve.
Bubble user here.
This might sound obvious, or maybe I'm missing it...
But do you have any examples on your site? I don't see any "Built with Sktch.io" to give me real world examples of how people are using your tool.
Crazy/not crazy idea, but I'd suggest you consider offering a done-for-you solution for a few months. Act as your own no code dev agency, find SMBs with problems you can solve, build micro solutions for them, then get them on your SaaS plans.
It's a content/marketing/sales funnel all wrapped up into one. You get case studies, you get feedback, and you get customers with $0 CAC aside from your time commitment. Cheaper than running paid ads, cheaper than hiring a marketing agency (which is def the wrong approach, IMO).
And to scale that, find some folks killing it with Bubble on UpWork/Fiverr, and get them to build more solutions for more prospects.
Thanks for the feedback!
I have to agree that some of the demos I made don't really represent what users might want to build, they rather show the technical capabilities of the platform (someone using Bubble.io will see that making a calculator in nocode is a big deal).
I'll work on more projects that actually resemble what people may want to build with sktch.io.
I'll also rework the landing page (based on all the feedback I got!!)
We were just implementing the same thing this week. I would love to collaborate with you.
May I suggest the following theme?
~ How are you really doing?
~ Are you accomplishing the goals for your life?
~ Are we helping that in a way that you feel will support achieving that?
We run a discord channel here and would be down to set up announcement channels or to support this.
If you are struggling with this right now and need some help, which we all do, then let's set up 15 and maybe weekly from there.
#lock-stocked-accountable
Safe Journeys & Kind Regards
You can get a pretty detailed summary of the book for free here
It’s not mine, I found it a while ago by using the google.
Try airtable.com . It's like excel, but with more features to easily set up relational tables. I think the solution could work well for you. I am currently using it to track orders for a food waste (compost) pickup service. It is also a variable service where clients pause pickups and some clients add more volume.
We use Nextcloud's self hosted version. It has a bunch of add ons that you can use for collaboration.
You're welcome!
Thank you for the heartfelt advice, it is much appreciated and we will definitely doing our best to make this a priority. We have also been reading a bit of stoic philosophy to equip us to better mentally frame the worry, however it's definitely easier said than done. Exactly like you're saying, there's always another reason.
We're glad to hear you're liking the data entry process! Surprisingly, we've been getting this feedback from several people, and are happy to know that this key element doesn't feel cumbersome.
Ultimately, we would like to implement any and all device integrations, and will be working towards this vision. Please note that in the meantime, you can sync Garmin Connect to Apple Health on iOS. On Android, you're able to sync Garmin data to Google Fit using the Health Sync app. From Apple Health / Google Fit, you should have no problems syncing your health data to Metriport.
Thank you again for the support!
Sorry, (new)er to Reddit...see below:
I've built two marketing companies and specifically learned what to do and what not to do. I've combined these lessons and used what I learned from building a national real estate franchise system from scratch as well. I built it to sell it, plain and simple. As we build it we are documenting macro and micro processes (learned the importance of this when we recapitalized our last company for north of $25M: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/mccarthy-capital-partners-with-united-real-estate-holdings-llc-2015-06-10. Diffactory is built to control how and when the customers interact with us, how the team interacts with the owner and how workflow is managed and distributed. Our USP is simple: We grow your business or we pay you. 200% guarantee. Completely unheard of the space. Based on my last company I knew I could build a team that would have 99%+ measured client satisfaction so I am willing to put my money where my mouth is. Why does everyone aim for passivity? Work is fun! But to answer your question, I've built it to sell it. I don't don't work in the business, I work on it (E-Myth Revisited...read it). Great questions! I hope you all achieve what you seek out to. You just have to jump!
Every market is competitive. No matter what business you want to start, chances are there are 100 other businesses in the same industry within a 50 mile radius. Probably much more.
I'm a web developer. For a while I was frustrated because any 16-year-old with a bootleg copy of Photoshop and a library book about PHP could claim to be a "web developer".
Suddenly, I had to justify my $50,000 RFPs against their $10 an hour bids. But the difference between myself and those young "programmers" was that I had a well-thought-out system and trusted people working for me, who I had personally vetted.
The same is true for the maid company. Currently it's a fragmented market. For the most part, you have:
- the "big players" (Merry Maids, etc.) and
- uninsured part-time workers looking to pick up a few small gigs off Craigslist.
The goal is to do three things:
- Use the low-cost labor pool to build a real company, with insured, bonded, well-qualified people who can represent your brand.
- Offer a local service that can compete with the national "big box" brands.
- Build "premium service" into your work, so people keep coming back.
It can be done. Don't get discouraged. :)
If you don't have users yet, which users do you think will get the most benefit from your product; or, if you do have users, which ones get the most benefit now?
If your product consists of only case studies, you'd probably be most helpful to early-stage founders who don't have experience building startups. If your product was able to combine case studies with specific insights though, you could potentially target all levels of founders, kind of like Trends.vc, though most of your users would probably be early-stage to mid-stage founders (unless your insights were rare).
Hey!
We did launch today, (Well it was our 'official' launch date today) see our Product Hunt listing here: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/znaplink-2-0
We have built up an Instagram account of 130k, in the last year. We've been rolling out beta versions in the last few months.
Hope that helps :)
Hey! We did launch today, (Well it was our 'official' launch date today) see our Product Hunt listing here: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/znaplink-2-0
We have built up an Instagram account of 130k, in the last year. That's our community around the product.
Hope that helps :)
This really works. Sorry for shameless tag, but I am building a little tool that can help you do this faster and better. It's in early access and free for a month for you to try. If you it doesn't work you can walk away any time.. :)
https://www.producthunt.com/my/upcoming/pear-3
Even if you aren't interested, you can DM to bounce off some ideas how you can do this. I talk to a lot of customers who are looking to reach pmf. Maybe I can help you some do's and don'ts from what I know.
I think this is a product with a similar business idea:
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/leave-me-alone-3
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If you can build a trustable brand, I see myself paying for this type of services
Thank you! So one way we have been able to keep fees lower is by passing the charge fee (2.9% + $0.30) onto the customer when they make a purchase so that the creators/sellers are not having to eat all the costs. On top of this for Stripe Connect which we use to payout to sellers there is a $2/mo per active user fee(user that makes sales in a given month) + $0.25 per bank payout + 0.25% fee of that payout volume (https://stripe.com/connect/pricing). So quite a bit of fees haha, the reason the premium pricing works is that we cover a lot of the fixed costs with the $9/mo allowing us to only have to worry about the extra 0.25% which is covered by the 1% fee. I hope that helps explain it a bit.
Also, the IG was from a previous side project we did so we just changed over the username haha.
It's possible. Migration can happen only to another PCI compliant provider. I've gone through the process of migrating customers, it's painful on our end, but the customers' reauthorization isn't needed. More reading here: https://stripe.com/docs/security/data-migrations/exports
I'm going to be playing devils advocate here
Love the idea, website looks clean but few comments I have are:
- I feel like there are alot of these websites already. Zety.com is what I've used before. Given your pricing structure I feel like its going to be hard to compete with an established website. Are you looking to create a resume builder similar to what is existing or are you looking to expand and make incremental improvements to resume building thru new features and/or automation?
- I think there needs to be more templates or examples, although the one you have looks great, in my opinion it doesn't have that WOW factor.
- I have some thoughts on how you can make the with website bit more unique to increase the business case and value proposition. PM me if you are interested in hearing about the ideas.
If you know typescript you could build something around typescript backend tooling. I just recently created a post How good is typescript as a backend language? on reddit and many people said that typescript is super awesome but there is not as much tooling for backend development as in other languages like java & kotlin for example.
Maybe you can make something like fastApi in typescript. fastApi grew super fast and is considered not the state-of-the-art REST backend for python. I don't know how the creator earns money but I guess with donations you could reach 2k$ per month quite comfortably.
You need to do ASO (App Store Optimization) for your app. Is it Android or iOS or both? I can help. As simple as that. If you are interested to discuss further about it, please schedule a call with me at your convenient time. Here is my calendar link: https://calendly.com/urbantimer/va-services-understanding-call?month=2020-10
To any startup who has some customers, and looking to reduce some costs, and maintain their service levels. You can consider outsourcing your customer service department with us. I have a startup (iSource contact center) we specialize in customer service and inbound sales. I have more than 5 years of call center experience, and me and my team are experienced working at big name telecommunications companies such as Vodafone UK. In addition to this, we give trainings about the industry from an operational perspective, and also training for your CX teams, and we help in building/creating call structures.
You can check our website (we are not fully done with the content yet) Www.isourcecontactcenter.com Or you can send me a message on Reddit. For the purposes of this thread am willing to conduct FREE 1 hour coaching/consulting about customer service and the industry of outsourcing for the first 3 people to schedule the call. Meetings will be via Zoom, and it will be fun speaking with like minded people, and FREE.
https://calendly.com/mostafa-htc/isource-cc
Let us talk, I love talking. It is what I do for a living. 😁❤️
Thanks so much! This really feels like a project that I want to keep running. I would say no profits yet. It covered podcast hosting, webpage and domain fees.
I would love to let you know about my other hustles that were failures compared to this podcast (emotionally at least) but I'm not sure the comment section is the right way to do it due to the amount of details. But I would be happy to jump on Skype for a chat to talk! If (anyone really) interested, just schedule a chat with me here: https://calendly.com/blnt don't worry if it says 'podcast recording', we can talk about the other stuff :) just let me know your questions in the 'comments' part of the form.
After 10 years of working independently and virtually, I wrote a book about this called the Fail-Safe Solopreneur. My top 3 suggestions would be:
- find a support / accountability / mastermind group of other business owners going through similar challenges. one of the most powerful ways to take care of your mental health is to realize you're not alone
- rate your day everyday, and do more of the things (not just in your business, but in your life) that make you rate your day higher
- practice "emotion-based coping" where you give yourself permission to take time off, visit your favorite places, and do your favorite activities to restore your emotional state after a hard day / week / quarter of work
Thank you so much!!! Your feedback means a lot. Well I have worked on this for a year, so I'd hope I can show it at least to a future employer, if nothing else, lol.
How should I post it to ProductHunt? It looks interesting, but not sure what I could do there, and twist it? Thanks anyways.
And yes, dl link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ernestfogarassy.sparkleMaster
The book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares outlines a number of different marketing channels and how to use them. It's pretty solid.
I would wait to invest in SEO until you can easily pay for it out of the profit of the business. Go through this checklist of things to do to optimize your Google listing as much as possible. You should be able to take care of that without paying anyone and it will make a huge difference.
Google My Business is critical. Send a postcard to your location or get a PO box to set up the location to verify your Google listing. This will be the main way customers find you. Build this and nourish it and get reviews early on. Post on here often and answer every review. Services like OneUp let you schedule and auto-repeat posts on GMB.
Also, check out articles like this one that outlines ways to grow awareness of your business locally for free. Eventually, you can pay for SEO services out of the profit from your business.
It depends on which part of the business you want to focus, SEO is a process in which you rank up your website's visibility in search engine. Say google "cleaning services" the websites that make it on top of page 1 are optimize hence the term SEO Search Engine Optimization. There is a whole industry in SEO - here's one website that tittles "Beginner's Guide to SEO" https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
Hi guys, I’ve just launched a bi-weekly newsletter that exposes various unethical marketing technique.
Our main goal is mainly to educate people about these suspicious techniques and show you how you can spot them, and how you can avoid them after spotting them.
Check it out at Product Hunt!
We are so excited to inform all of you that we are currently at ProductHunt, we appreciated if you can help us getting top of the list:
OP, you seem to be trying to run a sports betting / gambling website through Stripe. This type of business is pretty clearly defined under Stripe’s restricted business and likely under the Terms and Conditions you agreed to when you set up your Stripe account: https://stripe.com/gb/restricted-businesses
Lotteries; bidding fee auctions; sports forecasting or odds making; fantasy sports leagues with cash prizes; internet gaming; contests; sweepstakes; games of chance
There is a good reason why Stripe doesn’t provide services to these business (along others like financial brokers, mortgage consulting, lending services etc), and that’s because these are highly regulated and Stripe would have to do a shit ton of compliance on their side to be able to work with these industries.
This means that you have ZERO recourse against Stripe.
As an entrepreneur, it’s your responsibility to do the required research. But say you didn’t know / didn’t read Stripe’s T&Cs, there surely must have come the moment that you said “better check if the nature of my business is compliant with Stripe’s T&Cs”.
Try finding a payments provider that is actually in this business like Skrill or Neteller.
Just an update! We got a sponsor called Black Tux. They're paying us $20 per 1k downloads...
Great number however our listeners are low. We only get around 100 downloads per episode... so we told them we'd love to take their offer just not now. Too soon to sellout!
Our new podcast is up: The Art Of Copywriting (How To Become A Legend) for whoever wants to listen click here.
In out latest podcast we went over why 99% of people fail at reaching their goal... and how you can prevent yourself from being apart of that statistic.
If you guys are interested in hearing why people fail... click here
Would love to start a conversation on here about the topic so make sure to come back and talk!
New Episode uploaded!
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Our numbers are really starting to pick up. Yesterday we had just over 30 listeners and today we're over 100.
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Other than the lack of SSL (OP should check out letsencrypt for free SSL certs), what critiques do you have for the site?
It looks a little 'JC Penney' to me, but to a certain segment of the population (eg. grandparents) I think the design might be more of a pro than con.
To add to the note about twitter, check out http://quuu.co which automatically posts 2 things to your twitter every day for free. I've had mine on auto pilot and am slowly gaining 10-15 followers a week.
I am on the planetmaid.com team as well. Btw. before you settle on a name could I get you to test this naming tool for startups I recently created? :) It will only take you 50 minutes ;)
Got it, thanks! Will work on the messaging then!
If you are an active Slack user, would love for you to try out the app and engage further for detailed feedback. Please do let me know if you have some time/interest in that! Thank you! :)
Hey!
My business partners and I started a VA staffing company that recruits and vets the VA’s before they even interview with you. We will find a VA with the exact skill set you are looking for.
You pay for the placement fee and the hourly rate of the VA ranges from $2-$4 depending on the skill sets and experience. We will help you all the way through the hiring and onboarding process, you'll enjoy personalized support and guidance from our team. Our goal is to find the perfect VA who will help loosen the pressure on your shoulders and allow you to focus on growing your business.