Well my site will be solely driven by users interacting with other users. I was wondering if the Hacker News community can provide some valuable insight into a viral marketing strategy to focus on niches and then expand.
Thanks for the advice. So target the niches rather than fortune 100. That sounds like a more promising way to get your foot in the door. You are right it is really tough getting noticed by the bigger players I guess my approach should be to squeeze in with the smaller ones first.
My Goal has always been to provide software as a service. I started working on one such product named it care to share. The product always you to share your purchases on facebook and make affiliate earnings from any purchases made by your friends. Project didn't sit well with big companies as they were not willing to change their marketing campaigns, although it was obvious that their sales would go up. As I didn't get sign ups from any big businesses I had to leave the working prototype in sandbox and start on my new app. This time I partnered up with PayPal to allow users to create wishes and share with their Social circle. Contributions can be made through PayPal. Very interactive and useful app. Tried to get PayPal to market the app to its users as users were hesitating creating a new PayPal account. PayPal ignored my 3 of my email requests. So I guess this project will go down as a failure as well.
My client pays for me and are not willing to have me replaced by anyone else. I have tried numerous times. I have seen a lot of people do contractual replacements where they hire people has employees and place them as contractors in other companies. That seems like a fairly stable revenue model but the goal here is to provide software as a service rather than the placement of resources. I guess one option could be to work for a startup and try to get some stake in the company fairly early.
I am a contractor, am incorporated and have a fortune 100 company as my client. I work 8 hours a day for them maintaining their intranet and extra net applications. It is fairly obvious to me that I have hit a roadblock as there is no way for me to climb the ladder without having my own business at this point. I have been striving day and night to achieve that very goal, getting 4 hours of sleep at nights but I want an honest opinion from HN, do you really think people like me can achieve success? If I was still in college I could have locked myself up in a basement for weeks and created the next AI browser but I do not have that luxury. So I try to squeeze out three to four hours every day to work on my projects and launch them. This is not good enough as the market this day is moving really fast with dozens of hot startups springing up daily.
This is good advice. Be smart, make other smart people work for you. I guess this all depends on circumstances. What if I don't have smart people around me, I don't reside in Silicon Valley where you have budding entrepreneurs but a desolate city of Toronto where everyone wants a more secure Job and doesn't want to risk much. Should I move to where smart people are? I also held the view that if there is a will you can really create a successful business yourself . All you need is access to a computer and some programming resources. But in this day and age the emphasis is not on idea or the execution but how much money you can pump into a business for it's marketing.
I do have a really good job that pays the bill and leave enough money to lead a happy life with my family. But this is not what any entrepreneur would want. I want to start a tech company of my own that would be the ticket to my financial freedom. I myself have created two Iphone apps and two facebook apps, but to start something meaningful and more rewarding would definitely take a lot more effort which a day job does not allow. It seems like I am an entrepreneur that has to work with one hand as the other hand is ties down in other responsibilities and formalities. Can I really create the next PayPal in given circumstances, I doubt it but I can keep on trying till one day I realize it would have been better if I wouldn't have tried as I should have realized that success was impossible for me.
That is exactly what I am trying to do but it seems like building that cushion will take forever and by that time the entrepreneur in me would have long died.
Absolutely, I only get max three hours to work on my side projects in a day and there is no way I can increase that time span without affecting my day job. It gets really hard to balance both along with family. I guess once you are stuck in this cycle chances of starting a successful business become slim.
I completely understand. This application is more of a word of mouth thing on facebook. You see your friends creating wishes and you want to make contributions or create one for yourself at that point you give application access rights. In case you want to pull away the permissions granted by you you can always do that in your privacy settings on facebook.
That's a really good advice and I have thought of that before but the application itself is targeted to users on facebook. I don't see a point in putting effort into a web presence unless I am marketing it outside facebook.It will definately come once I get some traction.
Chronicles of a Serial Failure: (Failure can be defined as any outcome that does not meet or exceed expectations.)
1) Made an Iphone App called Obama McCain Polls. A polling application tracking Smartphone users polls by state, gender and other categories. Was supposed to be launched 15 days prior to the Elections. Apple delayed it and launched it on the eve of the elections. Made 500 users in 5 hours but the election ended and so did interest in my app.
2) Feeding off the 5 hour stardom effect, created a new application called Intimate Secrets. Again a very interactive polling based app to cater to users of all age groups, marital statuses and interests. Getting polls on questions that usually don't get asked. Had amazing success the first two days where the application was displayed on the most recent app page on the app store. As soon as app went to the third page downloads dropped again. Try to run a marketing campaign on Google and partner sites spreading awareness of the app. But the only successful way to market an Iphone app is to market it on the App store and there was no way of doing that back then. So the list of failures grow.
3) Switched focus from smart phones back to the web. Created an interactive portal on facebook to merge Social Commerce, Affiliate marketing and E-commerce. App was called CareToShare. Where the user will receive affiliate earnings by sharing their purchases on facebook. Friends will get promotional discounts and the companies will get more sales. Thought it was a win-win model. Presented it to companies like BestBuy and shopping channel. They weren't that willing to change their marketing campaigns or I wasn't convincing enough. So CareToShare remained in sandbox and didn't see the light of day.
4) Latest Venture Social Genie (http://www.sgenie.com). A Facebook app that provides you an interactive tool to make a wish and share it with your friends. Your friends can make contributions through PayPal. The app also allows you to see all the wishes made by your friends along with list of contributors, comments statuses. With this app I am competing with major players like FundRazr (lets users instantiate fund raisers) that have already stroked partnerships with PayPal. PayPal is promoting their app to all their users and are heavily investing in the company. When asked PayPal for similar support for my app, so far all the inquiries have been ignored. So I guess another failure on the way.
What went wrong? The fact that I am a social outcast and need to make connections with the right people to support/market my business. Entrepreneurs like me struggle to find innovative ways to solve problems within contained niches while all the big players use their monetary assets to create new demands with little or no productivity.
Would you try again? Yes unfortunately this exercise keeps me busy and focused. I don't have a better way to spend the remaining years of my life. Just the hope that one day I will lead a successful online business keeps me going.