Startup Ideas and Trends

Creating a Local Business: Freelancing vs. Running an Agency

There is a great discussion on the SideHustleNation podcast about the benefits and drawbacks of solo freelancing versus a larger agency model managing a large team.

Chris Schwab from ThinkMaids.com built his cleaning business to $60k a month and now works less than 10 minutes a day. Ken Carfango from SoloCleaningSchool.com is a solo entrepreneur, but only works 2 or 3 days a week.

Sometimes bigger is not always better. Running a larger company may seem more glamourous but it also entails more risk and smaller profit margins.

Business Opportunity: There are big opportunities in local businesses. With an online business, you are competing against the world. It can be much easier to stand out with local services in a smaller geographic area. Cleaning companies are particularly good because of repeat business.

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Start Before You’re Ready

If you are procrastinating on a new project, this post might offer the inspiration to just start. Marie Forleo offers some simple, but well-needed motivation. I was supposed to start this newsletter last year, so I definitely understand. If you don’t know Marie Forleo, you should check out MarieForleo.com. The exemplary professionalism of her website and videos, along with her charismatic stage presence is what every thought leader should aspire to. If you want to get an idea of the potential of starting before you’re ready, check out Marie’s first blog back in 2006. 24 years of hard work have gotten her to where she is today. Start with where you are and put in the effort to improve. How much can you improve with two decades of experience?

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How To Successfully Launch A Book

Bestselling author Tucker Max of Scribe.com has a detailed book launch guide with a checklist. Whether it is a book or new business, there is a lot that goes into a successful launch. It’s worth looking at the post to get some ideas for future projects you might be bringing into the world. As an aside, I love the Scribe business model. They help busy thought leaders write, publish, and market books. I think there are many opportunities to sell productized services like this. Professionals often have more money than time. What service can you package and sell like this?

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Are Productized Services Overrated?

In yesterday’s newsletter, I wrote about how I like the productized service business model of Scribe, the book writing and marketing company. A productized service is basically a limited scope of services offered for a fixed price. This is in contrast to doing custom services in a typical service business where you have to quote and sell each project. The TropicalMBA has a more nuanced discussion with Maryl Johnston, founder of the online bookkeeping firm Bean Ninjas, around that business model. They are some drawbacks, such as the long time until profitability compared to just consulting. Also, a general productized service business can be a race to the bottom as new competitors enter and lower prices.

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Temporal Discounting: The Battle Between Present and Future Self

“As humans, we tend to favour our present self at the expense of our future self. Our present self will eat an extra piece of cake, skip a training session, drink too much, stay up late, or procrastinate; our future self is left dealing with the consequences. This phenomenon is called temporal discounting. The further in the future the consequences, the least we pay attention to them.” Anne-Laure Le Cunff offers strategies to help us make better decisions now that will lead to better outcomes in the future.

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14 Plugins to Gamify Your WordPress Site

If you’ve used sites like Duolingo, you’ll know the power of simple gamification features like badges, leader boards, levels, and daily streaks. I’m at 37 continuous days for learning French and I don’t want to break that streak! Follow me if you want to compete. 🙂 You can add those same gamification features to your WordPress website with these plugins. My son loves the simple games and prizes you can earn from some sushi restaurants in Japan. Every five dishes allow you to get another chance at winning a prize. We usually eat more to get more chances to win. Gamification works!

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The Future of Personal Brands

Dru Riley of Trends.vc covers personal branding in the latest edition of the Trends Report. He outlines some predictions and opportunities for building your personal brand with more links for background information. I like the simple format of his newsletter. The free version has limited information but it is still a great read every week. Trends.vc is another good example of a paid newsletter business model. The free version offers a lot of great value, but you need to subscribe for the full reports.

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To Build a Business Empire, Own an Opinion (Not a Marketing Budget)

Ali Mese explains how opinion marketing can help you stand out in crowded markets using Basecamp and their new email platform Hey.com as an example. “By owning an opinion, you can still create value in industries most write off as finished — and you don’t have to employ shady tactics to do that, nor do you need hefty marketing budgets.” “Anyone today can copy your features overnight, yes. But they can never copy the YOU in your product.” It’s also worth reading Mese’s “How We Got 11.3 Million Pageviews without the Growth Hacking BS.“

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The Power of Real Marketing

MarketingExamples.com has some great examples of how talking like a real person in your messaging can help you connect with customers. One example shows an artist’s painting that gets 300 shares, compared to a photo of the artist holding the painting that gets 70,000 shares. Check out the other examples. It’s very valuable. I love the format of this newsletter. Every issue has many examples of actionable ideas you can implement. I recommend subscribing.

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$3000 per Month Niche Site Success Story

Doug Cunnington of NicheSiteProject has an informative interview that goes into what is required to build a website that earns thousands of dollars per month. A website that can consistently earn $3000 per month is worth around $100,000. That’s a pretty substantial asset built in less than 2 years, with largely outsourced writers. The niche isn’t revealed in the interview, but there is a spreadsheet of the monthly earnings every month including Amazon and MediaVine ads, along with traffic. Building a website around a particular niche focused on Amazon product sales and ad clicks can be a much better business strategy than just trying to blog or podcast about something you are interested in. Ideally, much of the work in creating content and promoting the site can be outsourced to generate somewhat passive income over time. Niche sites were once smaller websites, but they now often have hundreds of articles. A larger site like WireCutter sold to the New York Times for $30 million, so these are potentially big opportunities.

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How to Dissect (and Outrank) Competing Websites

Pat Flynn of SmartPassiveIncome.com has a good video on how to research competitors to grow your audience. The video is long so watch at double speed. He shows how to use Google Alerts to monitor mentions of a keyword. UberSuggest to see popular pages on any site, what their backlinks are, and what keywords the site is ranking for. SimilarWeb to find competing websites. More importantly, Pat Flynn shows how he uses this information to build relationships with people online. Networking is a key success factor to building your audience.