Start Small Stay Small

Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9167158-start-small-stay-small

Things to remember

• A developer who knows how to market a product is a rare (and powerful) combination.

• If you want to become a Micropreneur because it sounds like fun, you’re going to have a rude awakening on the 10th day when the initial excitement has worn off and you’re slogging through exception handling code at one in the morning.

• The up-front fear is a big indicator that you’re going to grow as a person if you proceed through it. And, frankly, the terror wears off pretty quickly.

• define your goals and write them down.

• How many times have you found yourself thinking you were being productive only to look back and realize you spent 3 hours searching for and evaluating something you may not need until 6 months down the road?

• Anytime you’re on your computer ask yourself “Is this activity getting me closer to my launch date?”

• While you won’t be earning anywhere near $50/hour when you begin building your product, once you launch you should aim to hit that number within 6 months.

• Work hard and play hard, but never do both at once.

• When reading blogs or books or listening to podcasts or audio books, take action notes.

• You may be using an agile methodology these days, which is more in line with entrepreneurship than the waterfall approach. Define a long-term goal (launch your product), look at the next set of tasks that will get you one step closer to that goal, work, and re-evaluate in a week.

• Documenting repeatable processes for anything you will do more than once is essential to your sanity.

• A “warm” niche is a niche where you have some kind of association. Perhaps you worked for a credit card company for a few years, your wife is a lawyer, you collect comic books, or your brother is a plumber.

• The Top Shelf approaches focus on two key areas: building an audience and search engine optimization.

• Other marketing approaches abound, which I call Second Shelf approaches. They include:

  • Building internet buzz and referral traffic
  • Joint venture partnerships
  • Article marketing
  • Cold calling
  • And so on…

• Think of a vertical market as a single industry or hobby. Examples of vertical markets include pool cleaners, dry cleaners, web designers, wine collectors and punk rock enthusiasts.

• By contrast, a horizontal market cuts across many industries or hobbies. General purpose invoicing software is a horizontal market since it can be used by pool cleaners, dry cleaners, and web designers

• Product - Your product has to be good

• Market - You need a group of people willing to pay money for it

• Execution – You have to market, sell, and support it

• If you’re over 400 hours, take a serious look at eliminating functionality to shorten your time to launch. This is the most common mistake I’ve seen with 1.0 products – too many features and too many months between the start of development and launch.

• For consumer products dealing with hobbies (i.e., products that aren’t going to make or save someone money), you’re going to have a tough time charging more than $29fixed-priceor$14/month.

• For consumer products that will make or save someone a tangible amount of money you’re going to top out around $49or$19/month.

• For small businesses you’re going to top out around $400or$99/month unless you solve a serious pain.

• For larger businesses your top end will be around $1,00037or$199/month unless you solve a serious pain.

• Use three tiers. There is no single best price for your product, so shoot for multiple price points. Use the low end of your range as your lowest tier price. Multiply by 2 for your middle tier, and multiply your middle tier by 2 for the top tier.

• End in 7, 8 or 9. It’s stupid, but it works. Make each of your three prices (the dollar column) end in a 7, 8 or 9 and be sure they all end with the same number.

• Determine the benefits of each tier. For each tier, based on your knowledge of your market, decide which metric(s) will increase as you step up the tiers (invoices sent, disk space, processing power?). Ensure that as your price doubles from tier to tier, you provide more than double the benefit.

• Add Support. If you charge a one-time fee for your software, seriously consider charging 20% of that fee annually for support and product upgrades. Failing to charge a yearly software maintenance fee will cut into your profit margin every single time you speak with a customer.

• The idea behind the sales funnel is that there are several steps between someone surfing the internet and buying your product.

• Convincing someone to give you their email address is much easier than convincing them to buy your product.

• To begin, imagine your ideal customer

• Now imagine how your ideal customer feels when they arrive at your website:

• To help understand what motivates your ideal customer, think about the following questions

• Six months before your launch date, use your audience on Twitter, Facebook and your blog to send traffic to your startup’s home page. The home page gives a brief description of your product and offers them a deal if they provide their email address to be notified of the launch

• Over the next six months create buzz around your product by guest blogging, sending interesting updates to your social networks, commenting on blogs and forums and generally engaging your target audience, always sending them to your home page.

• Approximately one week before launch (preferably on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday), email your list of targeted email addresses. Let them know that your product will be launching next week and that since they are on your mailing list, they will receive a special price available only to those on the list, but that the price will only last for 48 hours. Tell them the day and time they will receive the email.

• On launch day, email your list. Almost immediately, sales will start rolling in. You’re going to have the best sales day you will see for a while. Conversion rates on targeted mailings can be 20%+. A few hundred sales of your $19/month SaaS application is not a bad way to kick-start your startup.

• Send your list a final email informing them that the deal will end in 12 hours. You will receive another few sales before you close down your special pricing.

• Micropreneurship is different. With Micropreneurship you can run multiple companies at once, albeit tiny companies.

• Having a $2000/monthnichetoyourselfismuchbetterthanhavinga20$10,000/month niche. No competition means lower ad rates, less SEO competition, and as the market grows your income will automatically increase since you own the entire market

• Finding a niche, launching, setting up AdWords and SEO, email marketing, support…the more knowledge you gain in each of these areas the better all of your products become.

• Once your product is built and launched there are three areas that will require ongoing maintenance: Support New Features Marketing

• Realistically, startups are much better bought than sold. Meaning, if someone approaches you with an offer to purchase your startup, you should be able to ask for a higher price than if you sold your startup on the open market.

• If you decide to sell your product, your best bet is your professional network. Your first option should be to email colleagues and float it to your LinkedIn connections.

Essentials

• A Mailing List
• A Blog, Podcast or Video Blog
• Organic Search
• Social Media / Social Networks
• Pay-per-click Advertising
• Forums
• Press Releases
• Guest Blogging
• Affiliate Programs
• Banner and other advertising
• Everything else…