Getting to 10,000 Subscribers

After 14 months of publishing my curated IdeaEconomy newsletter, I’ve passed 1200 subscribers.

I’m now adding 150 to 200 subscribers per month. If I continue on this trajectory I’ll likely have over 3000 subscribers at the end of next year.

3000 subscribers would be great, but I can achieve much more. Here is my plan to get to 10,000 newsletter subscribers by the end of 2022.

The Basics

The four areas that have been working for me so far have been original content, newsletter advertising, newsletter cross-promotions, and general networking.

1. Original Content

My newsletter is almost all curated content, but curation is not enough. It’s very hard to get shares and backlinks without original content.

The two articles I have written (Unbundling Fiverr and Succeeding at the Creator Game) have brought over 300 subscribers and continue to drive regular traffic.

I hope to start writing at least two articles per month. I also plan to hire other writers to help with creating comprehensive guides and other content.

2. Paid Newsletter Ads

I’ve gotten more than 250 subscribers with paid advertising at a total cost of about $650. That is a little expensive for a newsletter that isn’t making any money, but it’s worth investing in to get an initial critical mass of subscribers. If I can get the cost per subscriber closer to $2, I’d be happy to pay for the full 10,000 subscribers.

3. Newsletter Cross-Promotions

I’ve gotten some good results by cross-promoting with other newsletters. I’ve only done it a few times so far, but it has driven about 100 subscribers. The more subscribers I get, the easier it will be to find more newsletters to cross-promote with.

4. Networking

I’ve connected with dozens of creators over the last year and many have gone on to promote my content or newsletter.

I’m going to be more deliberate in my outreach and creating value for others.

I want to give a special shout-out to Josh Spector of For the Interested. He’s been my biggest supporter and the source of well over 100 subscribers. Advertising on his site has also been very effective.

What’s Next

I consider the four areas above as the foundation of my future growth but there are many other areas where I can improve. I plan on leveling up my site design, SEO, Twitter usage, and personal branding.

5. Design

A distinctive graphic design can really make you stand out on social media and make your content more memorable. Julian Shapiro is one of the best examples I can think of.

I’m in the process of improving my lightbulb character, website, and newsletter landing page. I hope to use the new designs in post images and on Twitter.

6. Search Engine Optimization

James Clear built a million-subscriber email list largely from his domination of personal development content. Search for any keyword like productivity, motivation, building habits, etc. and you’ll see James Clear in the top results.

I’m getting practically zero new subscribers from organic search. This will change over time as I add optimized longer-form content.

7. Twitter

I can do a lot more to promote the content I curate on Twitter and connect with other creators. I’ve added about 800 Twitter followers last year, but I can get much better at this.

Some people I’m trying to learn from are Dickie Bush, David Perell, and Alex Llull

8. What guy am I?

David Perrell is the “writing guy.” Josh Spector is the “newsletter guy.” Andrew Kamphey is the “Google spreadsheets” guy.

I’d like to become known as the “IdeaEconomy guy.” That will help me build my personal monopoly and help with some bigger projects I have planned.

Bigger Growth Ideas

Once I start making progress in the above areas there are some bigger, potentially more impactful ideas I can implement.

9. Quantity Wins

I want to substantially increase the number of articles I write. I hope to do a challenge like Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s 100 articles in 100 days. She says;

“And Ness labs absolutely would not be what it is today without those articles. They laid the foundation for what Ness Labs is, and they generated hundreds of thousands of views, a dozen consulting contracts, and many coaching sessions to people randomly finding me through one of the articles. In terms of exposure, I have been invited to several podcasts and some articles were featured in the press.”

I’m also considering publishing the newsletter more than once a week. I started publishing it daily last year but cut back to a weekly edition. I’m thinking of testing two or three times a week.

10. Building in Public

I hope that tackling challenges and sharing my journey online will help generate interest in what I’m doing. The best example I know of is Pieter Levels and his 12 startups in 12 months. I’ve shared a little of my progress on IndieHackers, but I’ll put more effort into promoting what I’ve done as I get better results.

11. Giveaway

I’m planning my first IdeaEconomy giveaway for the end of the year. I’ve gained thousands of subscribers through giveaways in the past, so I know they can be effective. I hope this will be the first of many giveaways for IdeaEconomy.

12. Referrals

Large newsletters like Morning Brew get over 1000 subscribers a day from their referral program. I’ve heard of some small newsletters finding success as well.

With some attractive rewards, a referral program could become a good source of growth.

13. My Big Idea

I want to develop a more distinctive basic business premise than a weekly curated newsletter. I don’t want to give too many details away, but I’m planning a type of creator marketplace for the new year.

14. Bonus: What’s it all for?

In another business, I donate 25% of all gross profits to charity. I plan on doing something similar with IdeaEconomy. I’m not sure if this makes a difference to growth or not, but I find it personally motivating to be working towards something that gives back.

10,000 subscribers by the end of 2022

This is my plan to get to 10,000 subscribers by December 31, 2022. That will be about 2.5 years after I started this newsletter.

It’s a much more ambitious growth rate than what I achieved in my first year, but I still think is achievable. With more and better content, outsourced help, more paid advertising, and some bigger wins like a successful giveaway, I think 10,000 subscribers is a reasonable goal.

Am I missing any good audience-building ideas? I’d love to hear from you.

Succeeding at the Creator Game

So much work now is analogous to playing a video game. Move forward and try new things and you’ll find a way to level up. Stop challenging yourself and you fall behind.

There are many different games we can play. Most start with the Student Game, then switch to the Employee Game, hoping to eventually make it to the Middle Manager Game.

An estimated 50 million are playing the Creator Game. It’s a game of Learning, Creating, and Connecting. Scores are kept with metrics such as subscribers, likes, follows, and revenue. However, it’s much more than that. It’s a game of personal expression, agency, and optionality.

The Infinite Game

There are no winners or losers in the Creator Game, it is an infinite game. In the words of author James Carse. “A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”

We play the Creator Game because the work we do is intrinsically rewarding and it creates value for others. Creating today allows us to create more tomorrow.

Long-Term Games with Long-Term People

Naval Ravikant echoes that sentiment in his advice to “pick an industry where you can play long term games with long term people.”

“But essentially if you want to be successful, you have to work with other people. And you have to figure out who can you trust, and who can you trust over a long, long period of time, that you can just keep playing the game with them, so that compound interest, and high trust will make it easier to play the game, and will let you collect the major rewards, which are usually at the end of the cycle.”

The body of work you create, the audience you build, and the relationships you nurture are compounding assets that increase in value and provide more opportunities in the future. A subscriber is more likely to become a customer. An online connection might be a future collaboration. Promoting a colleague’s new book or course makes it more likely they will reciprocate in the future.

There are ways to manipulate others for immediate gain, but that is a short-term game. Your reputation lasts for a long, long time. When your work is public, it makes a lot more sense to play nice, be generous, and to keep your promises.

The Great Online Game

Packy McCormick calls it “The Great Online Game”.

“The Great Online Game is an infinite video game that plays out constantly across the internet. It uses many of the mechanics of a video game, but removes the boundaries. You’re no longer playing as an avatar in Fortnite or Roblox; you’re playing as yourself across Twitter, YouTube, Discords, work, projects, and investments. People who play the Great Online Game rack up points, skills, and attributes that they can apply across their digital and physical lives.”

“The Game rewards community and cooperation over individualism and competition. You get points for being curious, sharing, and helping with no expectation of reciprocation. By increasing your surface area, you’re opening yourself up to serendipity. For good actors, the Game has nearly unlimited upside, and practically no downside.”

You can’t lose by playing the Creator Game. Everything you produce, every relationship you build, and all the knowledge you gain can lead to new and often unforeseen opportunities.

The gaming metaphor is very powerful because it provides a demonstrable path to mastery. It’s a problem-solving mindset where consistent action and experimentation help you advance a little further. With enough time and practice, everyone can improve and achieve more in the game they are playing.

If you play more, learn more, and experiment more, you will get better faster. While there will be some that get lucky and find the secret path to a higher level, most will have to put in the time and effort. There are rarely shortcuts to anything worthwhile.

Get the IdeaEconomy Creator Newsletter

A weekly curated email of essential content for Creators and Indie-Startups.
Level up with the latest ideas, opportunities, and skills.
Grow your audience. Build your business.

No One Fails Forever

The most important characteristic of the Creator Game is that it is impossible to fail. There are no losers. Every day you play the game you get to create new things, make new connections, find better ways to promote your ideas, develop skills, and keep improving. This constant iteration and creation is a compounding asset that makes you a better thinker and doer.

This is difficult for many to understand. Most of our economy is transactional. When you work for X dollars per hour of your time, it can be hard to justify investing hundreds of hours with no immediate or guaranteed return.

Only a small percentage of the population has the discipline to stick through the time-consuming process of continually learning, creating, and promoting their creations. It’s hard work, and it can be disheartening when you are not getting paid.

Chris Williamson recently reported that:

90% of podcasts that are launched don’t make it past episode 3.
Of the 10% that make it past episode 3, 90% don’t make it past episode 20.
Simply by producing 21 podcasts, you in the top percentile of all podcastors ever.

Persistent consistency in the three areas of Creating, Learning, and Connecting make success inevitable. This is the creator’s secret weapon. Almost everyone else is going to quit. You just need to keep playing.

Creator Game Rewards

It’s important to remember that this is a Game, it’s not a job. There is no guaranteed paycheck at the end of the month. The vast majority of creators will never earn a full-time living from their work. Most will give up long before they can accrue any substantial rewards.

Those that intend to make a living with the creator game will likely need to diversify over many income streams. Here are some of the revenue opportunities available to successful creators:

Advertising

Sponsors and classified ads are the most common revenue source. Some examples are:

Podcasts like Chris Guillebeau’s daily Side Hustle School
Josh Spector sells classified ads in his For the Interested newsletter.
Many sites use ad platforms like Ezoic or MediaVine.

Donations

Sites like Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee allow fans to support your work.

Products

Selling courses, books, and other resources are also common. Here are some multimillion-dollar examples:

Affiliate Marketing

Promoting products and services from other companies for a commission can be very lucrative:

Pat Flynn continues to make tens of thousands of dollars from promoting web hosting and other services.
Niall Doherty is making more than $20k per month promoting make-money online courses.
Ryan Robinson makes over $30k per month from affiliate products.

Services

The content you create can be a great way to promote your freelancing or agency services.

Cole Schafer offers copywriting services.
Matt Diggity does Search Engine Optimization.
Elisa Doucette does editing, writing, and other content-focused services.

SaaS

Subscription software is one of the most lucrative opportunities because of the recurring revenue.

Nathan Barry created email software ConvertKit.
Laura Roeder created social media posting tool MeetEdgar.
Arvid Kahl’s latest SaaS is Permanent.link.

Merchandise

Selling physical products that tie into your creator focus can be a lucrative opportunity.

MrBeast launched 300 cloud kitchen hamburger restaurants in the US on the same day.
Joel Runyon sells branded clothing and nutrition products under the Impossible brand.

Communities

Paid membership communities are a great way to leverage your audience. Here are some examples;

Dynamite Circle for digital nomad entrepreneurs.
Fizzle for startups.
Nomadlist for digital nomads.

Job Boards

TropicalMBA has a remote work job board at DynamiteJobs.
ProBlogger has a popular job board for content creators.
Lenny Rachitsky has product manager focused job listings.

Investment Syndicates

Using your audience to raise money to invest in startups has gained popularity in recent years with investment SPACs. Here are some examples:

Licensing

Ryan’s World is not only the highest-earning YouTube channel, the Kaji family also have their own animated cartoon and Ryan Kaji’s image is used on mouthwash, toothbrushes, etc.
In addition to advertisements, affiliate links, and memberships, YouTuber PewDiePie sells his own branded apparel line.
Uber-influencer Huda Kattan of HudaBeauty has her own cosmetics line.

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

While still new and experimental, NFTs have offered a new way for creators to get paid for their creations.

Artist Beeple sold an NFT this year for $69 million.
Jack Butcher sold an NFT that explains NFTs for $135k
Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey, sold an NFT of the first tweet ever for $2.9m.

Optionality

The primary benefit of regularly creating is the options it opens up in your career. People who do interesting things, get to do more interesting things. Publicly creating, sharing, and connecting opens up opportunities for:

Collaborations – Partner with others on joint ventures.
New Business – Your audience is more likely to purchase your products and services.
Job Opportunities – Forget your resume, get hired because of your body of work.
Book deals – Smart people with an audience are much more likely to be discovered.
Speaking opportunities – Interesting people are hired to speak at events.
Consulting/coaching – Demonstrate your expertise and build an audience for your services with the content you create.
Investment opportunities – Investors put their money into people with a track record of hustle.

How to Play The Creator Game

Success at the Creator Game requires a long-term, continual effort on 3 main activities:

Creating (Audience)
Learning (Expertise)
Connecting (Network)

Create

Obviously, creators create. Being good at your craft is the price of entry. There are no shortcuts here. If you want to succeed, create a lot.

Seth Godin has published an article every day for the last two decades, in addition to his 20 best-selling books, popular podcast, and other ventures.
Ali Abdaal published 52 videos over 6 months before he reached his first 1000 subscribers. He now has almost 2 million subscribers.
Author Steven Pressfield wrote for 17 years before he made his first penny as a write.
Best-selling author James Clear wrote 2 articles per week for 3 years before he got his book deal for Atomic Habits. Search for any personal development topic and it’s like that one of his articles will be in the top 3. That’s how you get 1 million subscribers.
Podcaster John Lee Dumas, published a daily interview podcast for years to build his multi-million dollar business.

There is a constant battle between keeping the attention of your audience and burnout. You need to find a sustainable cadence.

You will also have to get good at promoting your creations. If no one knows you exist, you don’t exist. Creating = Promoting. If you don’t want to play that game, you are in the wrong game.

Learn

Continual learning is important to gain and keep domain expertise, as well as, mastering essential creator skills like:

Search Engine Optimation
Writing
Storytelling
Copywriting
Podcasting
Video Editing
Landing Page Design
Sales Funnels
Social media
Paid Advertising
Viral Marketing
Internet Memes
Interviewing
Public Speaking
Buying Businesses and Social Media Assets
Course Creation
Community Building

Learning is a dynamic, ongoing process. Those that keep up with what’s working now, and what’s on the horizon will be at an advantage.

Fortunately, we all get better the more we play the game.

Connect

Skills are the cost of entry, but the quality of your connections can open up so many more opportunities. Ultimately, the relationships we build are a superpower that amplify everything we do.

Like Naval says, we need to “play long-term games, with long-term people”. You will never know who will promote your work, recommend your services, offer you a job, invest in your startup, or collaborate on a joint promotion. It’s human nature to reciprocate generosity.

However, too much networking is self-serving. Expecting an immediate upfront reward from our connections is the worst way to build our networks. Connecting is not spamming people in forums or by email. It’s not handing out dozens of business cards at a networking event. Not every human interaction needs to be a financial transaction.

Help someone every day and see where it takes you. You’ll be surprised.

What Game are you Playing?

The Creator Game is not for everyone. Most are better suited for the Employee Game. Often the Startup Game or Freelancing Game can be much more lucrative with more immediate income. It can take a long time to earn sufficient income as a creator.

The best reason to play the Creator Game is that you can’t imagine doing anything else. Find a way to express yourself that gives you energy. If you have to create and love the process of continually leveling up your skills, the Creator Game might be the only game for you.

If you are interested in leveling up in the Creator Game, check out my IdeaEconomy newsletter. It will help you keep up with what’s working in the creator economy.

Unbundling Fiverr - Startup Opportunities with Productized Services

Unbundling Fiverr - Productized Services

The gig platform Fiverr.com is a great place to find validated business opportunities. Fiverr has a wide range of inexpensive productized services that can be started small, yet offer the potential to become substantial businesses. The number of jobs completed for all its freelancers are listed, so you can clearly see what is popular and how much people are paying.

I’ve gone through all 196 Fiverr subcategories to discover promising business opportunities. I provide many specific examples below. Hopefully, you’ll find some inspiration for your next business venture.

The Fiverr Startup Opportunity

On Episode 116 of the My First Million podcast, Sam Parr and Shaan Puri had a short discussion on the main opportunities with Fiverr. (Start listening at 35:10) Here are the highlights from the conversation:

I think I could do this in a matter of 30 days, is build a company by going to Fiverr.com finding one of two things:

One, the most impressive $5 bit of work. Something like … “are you kidding me this is only $5?” then I would make my own website and make it look amazing and sell it at a massive uptick and then just manage the contractors to get it done.

The second thing that I would do is find talent on Fiverr ….

I would find a Fiverr job that was positioned poorly and I would reposition it and market it just like this, so for example I found this guy that would do cartoons. I would just say, oh I’m going to just make it strictly dog cartoons. send me a picture of your dog … or I will narrate this thing for you… Custom voice mails by the guy who sounds like blank… Donald Trump impression voice mails.

You take impression guy who does a good Donald Trump impression… and this is Donald Trump wishing you happy birthday for $35 as a service… You just fix the positioning.

What is a Productized Service?

A productized service refers to taking an hourly service and converting it into a limited scope offering at a set price.

Instead of selling graphic design services at $60 per hour, you could offer a $199 logo package.
Rather than custom websites of widely varying complexity and scope, a web developer could offer landing pages at $299.
Xavier Coiffard’s started a $250 startup submission service that will submit your company to all the top startup directories.
Roast My Landing Page recently passed £20,000 with landing page critiques.

Almost any hourly freelancing or consulting project can be turned into a set price productized service. The model works for graphic design, consulting, coaching, website maintenance, content creation, social media management, online marketing, and almost any hourly service you can imagine.

WPCurve

WPCurve was one of the first and most widely known productized services. They sold unlimited minor WordPress Edits for $79 per month. Instead of trying to find and hire developers to do hourly work, WordPress users could have a team of skilled developers on-call to quickly fix small issues whenever they arise.

WPCurve grew rapidly and later sold to GoDaddy. Now there are many other companies offering similar services.

Why Productized Services?

Imagine if every Uber driver had to bid on each ride like most freelancers and agencies do now. It would be a nightmare for both drivers and riders.

Compare

“Get a 3 Minimialst Logos in 3 days with 3 edits for $199”

versus

“Let’s set up a meeting to discuss your requirements and we’ll come back with a proposal next week.

Productized services with upfront, fixed pricing benefit both buyers and sellers.

Benefits for the seller:

Discrete, limited-scope products are much easier to market, deliver, and scale. The product can be clearly explained and the deliverables clearly understood.
There is no need to write lengthy proposals or have a long sales cycle for every new client. Your website can explain the offering clearly.
Get paid upfront instead of billing for hourly work after the project is completed
Become very good at a narrowly defined service
Create clear work processes so that it can be outsourced or delegated and business can be scaled more effectively

Benefits for the purchaser:

Much easier to understand what is being offered
Saves the time and hassles of meeting with and evaluating agencies and freelancers
Buying a small project with limited risk is simple and easy. The worst-case scenario is that you ask for your money back because the productized service wasn’t delivered as promised.

Fiverr Productized Service Opportunities

Here are some specific examples from the 196 subcategories on Fiverr. Be sure to further research the categories you are interested in to find related ideas. There are a wide variety of services under each category.

Want the Full Spreadsheet?

If you are interested in the full spreadsheet of the 196 Fiverr subcategories and the first 48 gig listings in each, Subscribe to my free IdeaEconomy.net Creator Newsletter. I’ll make the spreadsheet available to subscribers.

Example 1: Million Dollar Tagline Writing Service

Fiver Business Slogans

The husband and wife team behind the Sucantare Fiverr account have 8521 completed orders for their “I will create a perfect slogan or tagline” service. It is offered at three price points: $100, $125, and $150. It’s very likely that this service alone has earned the couple over $1 million dollars in revenue. This is just one of the many services they offer on Fiverr.

The couple also owns the VerticalFold marketing agency. I suspect their success on Fiverr is generating leads for the agency.

Example 2: 2 Million Dollar Resume Writing Service

Fiverr Resume Writing

Richard Lambert is reported to have earned over $2 million with his resume writing service. His most popular service has over 11,500 sales now which starts at $75. He’s expanded to cover letters, Linkedin profiles, acceptance letters, and more.

Example 3: Keyword Research Services

Fiverr Keyword Research

Wajihafatima has completed over 1050 “I will do SEO keyword research and competitor analysis” at the $10, $20, and $40 price points.

What’s interesting here is that Gotchseo discovered that someone on Upwork is buying her $10 service and reselling it for $75. There are many arbitrage opportunities like this on Fiverr because the platform tends to attract low-price-point customers. With Linkedin announcing their own gig marketplace, there will be many more arbitrage opportunities like this.

Example 4: Million Dollar Voice Overs

Fiverr Voice Over

Back in 2019, Joel Young was reported to have earned over $1.5 million on Fiver. He has over 2600 orders for his “I will record a radio quality professional male voiceover” gig at $1 per word. He now offers phone greetings, explainer animations, and whiteboard videos.

Example 5: 6-Figure Copywriting Gig

Fiverr Amazon Product Listing

Levinewman has almost 4000 sales of his “I will write a professional FBA Amazon product listing description” service starting at $65. His “I will create unique sales, ad, and website copywriting” gig also has over 2000 sales starting at $55.

I love the Amazon product listing focus. That could likely extend into product photography services, paid ads, and Amazon SEO.

Example 6: SEO Website Audits

Fiverr SEO Report

Jacob21 has completed over 860 “I will provide expert SEO report, competitor website audit, analysis and video review” gigs starting at $60. While this is not as impressive as some of the other examples, I’m including this category because of the potential to take this offline.

Glen Alsopp has recently published a lengthy post on how he made over $100,000 doing website audits that started inexpensively and went up to $8000 for a comprehensive report.

Glen details a complete blueprint of what he did in that post. A service like this could be the foundation of a very successful SEO business with a variety of related services that can be sold beyond the reports.

Example 7: Jesus Videos

Fiverr Jesus Videos

For an example that is not business-focused, check out SocalChrist’s Jesus video greetings. He’s done over 14,000 personalized messages from Jesus that start at $10. Not bad for a direct connection to God. He advertises that “Jesus can be serious and or funny! Jesus will say ANYTHING you want. Yes, even THAT, you potty-mouth!”

Services like this would be perfect to promote on social media because of the potential to go viral. Check out the massive following that James Friedman has built for his funny photoshop edits. It’s a brilliant way to promote his non-profit foundation that supports the social and emotional well-being of children.

More Interesting Opportunities

Here are some more Fiverr gigs that seem promising. There are many different types of gigs in each subcategory, so please take some time to fully explore the niches you are interested in.

“I will create professional twitch logo , overlays and screens” 1649 gigs startings at $30
“I will do professional business card design” 1311 gigs starting at $50
“I will design and format your book for kindle print, createspace” 2084 gigs starting at $10
“I will create mobile app ui and website ui design” 2582 gigs starting at $15
“I will design a youtube banner for you” 1671 gigs starting at $40
“I will write a pitch for your kickstarter or indiegogo campaign” 2359 gigs starting at $90
“I will write about your music on my blog” 3069 gigs starting at $5
“I will write SEO articles or website content up to 600 words” 1673 gigs starting at $5
“I will transcribe audio and video accurately” 1549 gigs starting at $10
“I will do professional video editing and post production” 8569 gigs starting at $50
“I will put your lyrics to music or write lyrics for you, acoustic guitar, songwriter” 1400 gigs starting at $100
“I will do custom shopify coding and fix shopify code for your store” 1768 gigs starting at $15
“I will design and develop fillable PDF form” 1364 gigs starting at $15
“I will find you a winning product for your dropshipping or amazon business” 1800 gigs starting at $40
“I will predict your future using vedic astrology” 1103 gigs starting at $20

Want the Full Spreadsheet?

Building a Startup Beyond Fiverr

While there are many successful Fiverr freelancers, it is a competitive marketplace. Potentially even larger businesses can be built off the platform. Approach the productized service as a business, rather than freelance work and you’re likely to find customers that are much less price-sensitive. Start by differentiating your business so you uniquely stand out from other freelancers and companies.

How to Differentiate Your Service

Find a popular Fiverr service and see if you can differentiate it with better positioning. Here are some ideas:

1. Unique Positioning

Make your service unique by focusing on one particular in-demand trait.

Idea A: Video greetings from Santa Claus.
Idea B: Embarrassing postcards.

2. Industry Specialization

Rather than offering a general service to anyone, specialize in a particular market.

Idea A: Instead of website audits, do website audits for home improvement companies.
Idea B: Instead of a broad resume service, specialize in resumes for nurses.

3. Create a Mini-marketplace

Package together many productizex services so you can offer a one-stop marketplace.

Idea A: Voice Over marketplace in a variety of accents and styles.
Idea B: SEO marketplace of inexpensive gigs, similar to what Growth Geeks does for marketing.

4. Combine services for a more comprehensive offering

Idea A: Rather than ghostwriting, offer a complete ebook writing, editing, and design service.
Idea B: Add logo design and domain availability research to a business naming service.

5. Language Specialization

Fiverr is predominantly English. Focus on services in a different language or country.

Idea A: Birthday greetings in foreign languages.
Idea B: Translate Shopify stores to Japanese.

6. Turn One-off Services into Recurring Subscriptions

Idea A: Monthly content writing subscription like Content Sherpa .
Idea B: Recurring subscription to website customizations and maintenance like WPBuffs.com.

See if you can mix and match differentiation strategies like these to come up with something else. For example, a monthly blog post writing subscription for dentists.

Productized Service Blueprint

Once you have a unique service that you can position more distinctively than the competition, build it out into a real business. If it works on Fiverr, there is likely substantial demand from people who would never think to use Fiverr. Here are some basic ideas:

Create a professional website for the service
Utilize cold email outreach and direct sales to find customers.
Use paid advertising to generate leads
Regularly publish valuable content optimized for search engines to demonstrate your expertise and find leads
Become active on relevant subreddits and communities
Promote your service through affiliates
Hold webinars with related businesses where the host can earn affiliate commissions.

Other Considerations to Finding the Perfect Startup Opportunity

Arbitrage Opportunities

With Upwork’s new fixed price Project Catalog and Linkedin’s upcoming gig marketplace. There will likely be many arbitrage opportunities to buy low-priced services on Fiverr and resell them at a substantial profit with the right positioning. (Check out Example 3 above for a specific example.)

Let Artificial Intelligence Do the Work

Many of these services can be augmented with GPT3 type AI tools. Technology is rapidly developing in this area, so it’s worth keeping up with what can be done. Check out the large number of tools that already exist for copywriting, logo design, and more. It won’t be long before computers outperform humans in many of these services. Can you automate any of these services with machine learning to minimize the amount of human labour required?

Higher Value Services and Consulting

Think beyond the first service you are starting with. A low-priced productized service can be a great way to sell other services and consulting in the future. Businesses that know and trust you are much more likely to pay for more expensive services in the future.

Productized Services Startups

Here are some examples of productized services businesses for more inspiration:

DesignPickle — graphic design

ManyPixels— graphic design

Pixel True — illustrations

Fairpixels — logo design

Rocking Book Covers — book cover design

ContentFly — content

iWriter — content

Scribble — content

Content Sherpa — content

Scribly — SEO focused content

Audience OPS — content creation

Smart Lead Magnets — lead magnets

Scribe Writing — book publishing

Hubsnacks — Hubspot tasks

WP Buffs — WordPress website maintenance and support

Podcast Motor — podcast hosting and editing

Cashflow Podcasting — podcast editing

Growth Geeks — marketplace of marketing gigs

$99 Social — social media management

SocialPrim — social media management

FlatRateSocialMedia — social media management

100PoundSocial — social media lead generation

Hypegrowth — Twitter marketing

What Fiverr Gig Can You Improve On?

Fiverr can be a great source of inspiration for your next startup. There are countless proven services with clear market demand. Take your favorite ideas and combine them to better serve a particular niche. With better positioning, delivery, and marketing you can charge more and build deeper connections with customers for more future opportunities.

Brad Barrett: Financial Independence and 1.3 Million Podcast Listeners

Interview with Brad Barrett of ChooseFI on Fizzle Sparkline

Corbett Barr interviews Brad Barett of ChooseFI on the Fizzle Podcast. Brad shares his journey into building his successful podcast and business. When starting out he knew he couldn’t compete directly against popular sites like Mr. Money Mustache so he started locally with Richmond Savers. He became recognized as a local expert and got press for using travel miles to take his family to Disneyland. Seeing that there was an opportunity to make affiliate commissions with credit cards, he started offering free travel rewards coaching during his lunch hours while working full-time. He created the “Travel Miles 101” free autoresponder course initially marketed on Mr. Money Mustache forums. More than 50,000 people have taken the course now. There are some great lessons here on building early traction and using affiliate marketing as your primary business model. He also offers great advice on achieving financial independence. Every $100 taken out of your monthly budget means $30,000 less needed in retirement. He and his wife managed to save 50 to 70% of their working income.

Go to Link

SEO TEST Post

Newsletter Template

View this in your Web Browser

Ideas to Grow Your Business

Forwarded this by a smart friend? Subscribe Here.

Friday, February 7, 2020

1 What is Lorem Ipsum?

What is Lorem Ipsum? Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum

2 What is Lorem Ipsum?

3 What is Lorem Ipsum?

4 What is Lorem Ipsum?

5 What is Lorem Ipsum?

6 What is Lorem Ipsum?

Not an IdeaEconomy subscriber yet? Sign Up Here!

IdeaEconomy is a daily curation of the best articles, podcasts, tools and ideas to GROW YOUR AUDIENCE and BUILD YOUR BUSINESS.

You are getting this email because you subscribed at IdeaEconomy.net. If you no longer want these emails, please click
Unsubscribe.

SEO test 2

SEO test 2
SEO test 2
SEO test 2
SEO test 2
SEO test 2

SEO Test 1

SEO Test 1
SEO Test 1
SEO Test 1
SEO Test 1
SEO Test 1

test

Sam Parr

Website

Recent Blog Posts

Recent Podcast Episodes

Introduction

Sam Parr is an absolute rock star entrepreneur. Sam is the founder of The Hustle, an 8 figure email newsletter curating business and technology news and the HustleCon conference. Starting in May 2014, Sam has grown the newlsetter to over 1 million subscribers and he is only 30 years old. It goes to show what hard work and business creativity can do.

The My First Million podcast with Shaan Puri has become my favorite podcast. It is great to hear Sam and Shaan talk about business opportunities and trends. Being based in Silicon Valley, they have a deep connection with what’s happening with online business.

In the early days of The Hustle, Sam Parr bootstrapped the company, but his hustle and success have attracted superstar investors like Tim Ferriss, Ramit Sethi and Scott Belsky. There are 22 investors listed on the website.

Sam Parr left college to start a chain of hot dog stands called Southern Sam’s. The tagline was Wiener’s as big as a baby’s arm. Prior to The Hustle, he also founded an online liquor store, and roomate matching service.
spent a lot of time studying copywriting in order to

If you are interested in growing a business, I highly recommend both The Hustle newsletter and My First Million Podcast.

Links

thehustle.co
theantimba.com

2.2k followers on Instagram

4,3k followers on Facebook

18.5k followers on Twitter

500+ connections on LinkedIn

22 followers on Pinterest

13.8k followers on Youtube

Video Presentations and Talks

Sam Parr from Introduces The Hustle

Sam Parr from The Hustle Explains his Content Strategy

Sam Parr: How I Grew The Hustle’s Email List to 150k in 10 Months

Video Interviews

Sam Parr’s Discussion with Gary Vaynerchuk

Sam Parr’s Interview with Anthony Pompliano

Sam Parr’s Interview on Valley Talk

Sam Parr and David Denberg at meConvention

Sam Parr at Lean Startup 2016

Podcast Interviews

Sam Parr interviewed on Mind Pump

Sam Parr interviewed by James Beshara

How The TheHustle.co Gained 1 Million+ Subscribers – Sam Parr with Mike Dillard

aaa – People Sample Post

Website

Insert Image here with Broswershots (camera icon above)

Recent Blog Posts

Recent Podcast Episodes

Introduction

John will add this content

Links

Links to websites, wikipedia, medium posts

on Youtube