Uncategorized Archives - IdeaEconomy.net

Token-Gated Communities

“What are Token-Gated Communities? How do the work? What are the risks and opportinities to build a web3 business?”

Trends.vc has a large collection of links and examples covering Token-Gated Communities.

Why It Matters

Token-gated communities align incentives.

Problem

Traditional communities suffer from noise, spam and other extractive behaviors.

Solution

Token-gated communities build deep alignment between members.

Members are incentivized to protect and add value.

The Power of Commitment – David Perrell

“You achieve a Personal Monopoly once you become the go-to person in your area of expertise. Though students are drawn to the benefits of such expertise, they don’t want to pay the price of commitment required to achieve it.”

This is a powerful idea. Not enough creators commit to mastery. Almost everyone gives up too soon.

Hugging the X-Axis

Kill the paragraph -The secret sauce to digital writing

Kill the paragraph

“The secret sauce to digital writing:

Kill the paragraph.

Nobody reads an entire article, start-to-finish, on the internet. It just doesn’t happen.

People DO skim and scan.

Use clear headlines, give each sentence its own line, and don’t use big words.

This sounds too simplistic, but trust me.”

How Miss Excel Is Making $100,000/Day On TikTok“

“Shaan and Sam discuss Miss Excel, her business model, and how she is making millions of dollars being a Microsoft Office influencer.”

Product Hunt as an Acquisition Channel

I’ve written before on how launching on Product Hunt can be a major boost for a startup.

It can also be an effective place to get the attention of journalists.

“Don’t dismiss Product Hunt if your target audience isn’t there. The platform can be a great way of getting press. Hello Weather ($4k/mo) is a weather-forecasting mobile app, and they’ve seen this firsthand:

To our surprise, the app received some attention on Product Hunt, and then got positive reviews in AppAdvice and Macworld. That sent some nice traffic spikes our way. We quickly amassed a few thousand downloads, which gave us a bit of motivation to continue working on it.”

Go to Link

Interview with Sahil Lavingia of Gumroad

There are some interesting ideas talked about here.

Sahil chose a “horizontal” approach to Gumroad versus focusing on a particular “vertical” market. That means he created a platform where anyone could sell almost anything. This is in contrast to a vertical like Substack focused on newsletters. Sahil says this was probably the wrong choice.

Another interesting distinction is between “platform” and “aggregator”. “Sahil’s original vision for Gumroad was a white-label platform: it offered creators access to business without actually locating it for them, and remained invisible to consumers.

Since Gumroad’s founding, platforms like YouTube have shifted to become aggregators — “destination” sites that control interactions between creators and audiences and take a far bigger cut of the proceeds.

Today, Gumroad sits somewhere between those two poles. It has swapped that initial hands-off approach for an active push toward connecting its creators with new consumers.“We’re slowly moving into an aggregator model,” Sahil explains. In five years, he thinks Gumroad is going to look “somewhere closer to where TikTok and YouTube are now,” a destination site dedicated to discovering new creators.”

I think the best opportunities for bootstrapped startups are to be “vertical” “aggregators”. For example, businesses that help us discover and purchase products in a particular niche. You want to be vertical to better speak to customers. You want to be an aggregator because the real value for sellers is getting their products in front of potential customers.

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Shelby Church: Lessons learned from 10 years on YouTube

A great lesson in the power of consistency. Shelby Church started publishing YouTube videos when she was 14 years old. She now has 1.56 million subscribers and publishes one video a week. The interview with Noah Kagan provides some good insights in doing YouTube as a business. Check out Shelby Church’s video on how much she made from YouTube Ads in 2019 with 1 million subscribers. Hint: it is $140k. It seems she also earned about $100k from affiliate promotions.

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From $100 to 7-Figures: Amazon FBA Retail Arbitrage Case Study

Here is another take on selling products on Amazon. Instead of sourcing products in China, Nate and Alysha Jackson buy clearance clothing in bulk and resell it on Amazon for a 100% ROI. They can buy up to $10,000 of clothes from Kohl’s in a single day. Can you make money on the clearance items you see in many stores?

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Business Templates – A System for Success

Lenny Rachitsky shares a large list of business and marketing related templates to help with strategy, marketing, vision, product launches, etc. in his newsletter. Having frameworks and templates like this can help you think and work in a more strategic and focused way. It’s worth browsing through some of the templates that interest you to see how other businesses start new projects.

He also links to the High Output Founder’s Library which has even more resources for every aspect of growing and managing your business.

Creating processes or SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures), and tracking KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are essential to help you grow your business. Regularly take time to document what you are doing so that you can hand off the work to others as you grow.

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How Much Money A Blog With 1,000,000 Views Makes

YouTube sensation Shelby Church compares ad revenue sources for vloggers and bloggers. Bloggers have a much higher CPM and can earn $15 or more CPM (for every 1000 views) with ad networks like MediaVine and AdThrive. In contrast, Shelby earns about $5 CPM for her YouTube videos.

For example, FoodwithFeeling earns about $12k per month from ad revenues with 800,000 page views per month. Shelby Church made $4k with over 900,000 views. BySophiaLee earns more than $10k per month with ads and earns even more with affiliate sales. Pinterest is a major driver of traffic for these sites. Shelby Church also said her Medium articles have earned her $18,000.

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Business Systems with Rob Hanly

James Schramko of SuperFastBusiness has a great 3-part conversation with business consultant Rob Hanly. This is more for established businesses, but it’s worth a listen. They cover Rob’s comprehensive cheat sheet on how to run a successful business. (The cheat sheet is included on the link above.)

Rob’s work is to help business owners improve their operations and profitability. Businesses often get into trouble from not managing cash flow effectively or chasing the wrong goals.

“So you’ve got the right business model in terms of right customers, right product, you got product-market fit, you got the right partners, you know, that classic business model canvas, but you’re stuffing it up by spending too much on the wrong things and managing your cash flow poorly.”

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Is your business idea good or bad?

Slogging it out on a weak business idea is tough. You really notice it when you have the right product/fit because everything becomes so much easier. ‘An idea is bad when it takes too much effort and time to achieve (and sustain) the desired results.” ‘A good business idea has these characteristics:

Has demonstrated strong market demand
Multiplies your effort and returns healthy profit margins
Is a fit for you as a founder (your skills, experience, network)”

Sometimes a great idea is just how you present it. The first name for Tim Ferriss’s Four Hour Work Week, was “Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit”. There is no way the book would have become a global bestseller for years without the genius name. Try a lot of ideas to find the good ones.