What Idea?

• Solve problems you’ve experienced

• Observe and looking for niches/problems

• Help people make money

• Not all businesses are equal

A Problem I Have …

• It’s hard to sell advertising for RSS and Email

• The market leader in RSS doesn’t provide Email Digests

• There is no one-stop RSS/Email/Twitter service for publishers

My Idea: A Service That …

• Helps people follow blogs with RSS, RSS Digest, Email, Email Digest, Twitter, Facebook, all automated for the publisher

• Helps bloggers make money with self serve advertising on RSS, Email and Twitter

BlogFollower

• Disclaimer: I’m not saying this is actually a great idea, but it’s a good example idea. And executed well, probably could work.

• Lots of ideas could be good if executed well.

• It’s not very glamorous or trendy, but it does fulfill a real need for a growing target market

Research

• Do other people think this is a problem?

• Is the problem solved already?– Look for direct competitors

– Look for similar competitors

– Ask around

• BlogFollower Competitiors:Aweber, Feedburner, Feedblitz, TwitterFeed, HeyAmigo (Defunct)

Identify the Audience

• Primary Audience: Bloggers

• Secondary Audiences: Readers, Advertisers

• Are these audiences growing or declining?

• How will you reach and capture these audiences? Do you know them well? Do you really know what their problems are?

• Survey them. They may tell you some surprising things!

Is There Money in This?

• How will you make money?

• How are competitors making money?

• Be pessimistic. To generate $1,000 p/m:– $10-20CPM is possible … but $.5 - $1 is more likely. At $1 CPM, you’d

need 1,000,000 impressions a month

– For example < 1% conversion for subscriptions. At $10 p/m subscription, you’d need 10,000 free subscribers to convert 100

• Of course you can do better than these numbers, but you should be assuming the worst!

Mission and Vision

• What are you actually trying to do?

• A mission should be something that inspires you to work, and should be the reason you are tackling the business.

• I am a blogger, I like blogging, I believe in individuals working for themselves. Therefore for me the reason I’d get into this business would be:To Make Independent Publishers More Effective

Start Planning!

• Carry a notebook

• Get excited

• Get obsessive

• Try out competitors

• Learn more about the niche

• Start networking

Personal Preparation

• You need to be ready to work hard

• You need to be prepared to carry it alone even if you are planning on having cofounders

• You need to have some money to start off and/or an income to subsidize you

Cofounders

• Find people you trust

• Find people who have different strengths

• Find people who work as hard as you

• Find people who you like and get on with

• You need to either:– lead people

– join someone else’s team

– find cofounders who are happy to lead in different capacities (technical vs business vs product)

Who is Going to Do What

• Money? Hours? Skills?

• How will shares be split?

• It's important that you don't look back and feel hard done by and that it wasn't fair

• It's like a marriage - you have to work at it, you have to be prepared to compromise

My Core Team

• My Wife: Project Manager, Branding, Organized

• My Best Friend: Detail Work, Money

• My Brother: Capable, Analytical, Business Minded

• My Father: Experienced, Risk-averse, Wise

• Me: Ideas, Instinct, Execution, Confident

Money

• Founder investment– Keeps you focused

– 100% ownership

• Outside investment– Time and attention consuming

– Less control

– Pressure to deliver ROI

• Debt– Repayments and Interest

– You own it, but the bank is watching you carefully

Accountant and a Lawyer

• Essential in the long run and helpful with initial setup

• Get recommendations

• Meet a bunch of them

• Build a relationship

• Initially:– Lawyer should advise on company setup and shareholder agreement

– Accountant should advise on company setup and creating your accounts

Business Plan

• Think through assumptions and details

• Don’t get bogged down with them, but don’t skip them either

• More necessary if you need investment or debt

What is Essential?

• Focus first on the essential, core of the product

• Nice-to-haves can be added later

• You should have a vague idea of how you think the product will grow, but don’t over-plan or over-spec

• How you can break the product into iterations?

Blog Follower Features

• Essentials:– Takes an RSS Feed and pushes out RSS Digests, Emails, Email Digests,

Twitter Notifications and Facebook Notifications

– Facilitate Banner Ad Sales on RSS and Email

• Nice-to-haves:– Self Serve Ad Marketplace

– Analytics

– Advanced Theming and Styling for Emails

– Multiple Payment Methods

Concrete Monetization Plan

• What exactly are you selling?

• Who are the buyers? Who are the users?

• How much will it cost?

• Are there fixed costs you need to account for?

• How much would you need to be selling to break even? To reach your ideal profit?

BlogFollower Monetization• Option 1: Subscriptions – charge the publishers

– Lots of small increments

– Easy to estimate and plan around, lots of conversion information out there

– Easy to develop and account for

• Option 2: Advertising cut – take a portion of ad sales– Potentially very lucrative

– Hard to develop and account for

– Only really works if your publishers are all selling lots of ads … hard to estimate and plan

• Option 3: Charge per email sent, per RSS feed published etc– May be necessary for emails

– Easy to develop and account for

– Could be lucrative

• Option 4: Mixture

Iterations• Iteration 1:

– Publisher Account System

– RSS -> Twitter and Facebook

– RSS -> Email

– RSS -> RSS Digest

• Iteration 2:– Digest Settings

– RSS -> Email Digest

– Email Subscriber Management

• Iteration 3:– Fine Tune and Testing

– Publisher Subscription Billing

– Launch Iteration 1 & 2

• Iteration 4:– Banner Ad System

– Basic publisher directory

• … and so on

UI & Development

• Wireframe out the application

• Assume that UI and Development will be harder and more expensive than you’d planned

• Contractors? Founders? Staff?

DON’T underestimate marketing

• Lots of little startups build decent products

• … but go nowhere

• A mediocre product can go far with good marketing (and you can improve it as you go)

• A great product may market itself … to some extent (but often is teamed with great marketers – e.g. 37Signals)

Branding

• A brand should:– Be memorable

– Have personality

– Is more than just a logo

– A good brand has a story

• The easiest brand path is to tie it to yourself – be the voice of your site/app/service. Be the spokesperson, the evangelist, the story…

BlogFollower

• Personal brand through – Blogging

– Personal emails to users about new features and personally responding to support requests

– Evangelizing and networking with the target audience

• Get interviewed on sites and talk about my experience with blogging to create the back-story for the brand

• Position as the anti-Feedburner (be the little guy)

How Will You Find Users?

• Advertising (how much will you spend?)

• Blogging (what will the blog be about?)

• PR (what is the story?)

• Networking (how will you reach out to people?)

• Social Media (e.g. 0atmeal)

BlogFollower Marketing

• Networking with bloggers, particularly bloggers whose audience is other bloggers and internet marketers

• Try to get reviewed, interviewed, run giveaways, send T-shirts, …

• Start a blog aimed at helping bloggers promote themselves

• Try some social media promotion with linkbait articles and giveaways (e.g. free icons for bloggers)

There’s No Finish Line

• Launching is not the end … it’s only the beginning. Now you have to build a business!

• “If you leave and everything stops, you don’t have a business, you have a job.”

• You need to be systematic in replacing yourself while still ensuring that everything keeps moving.

Stay Focused

• Focus on your users– Marketing to new users

– Improving the product for current users

– Providing great support for current users

• Focus on revenue and numbers– Accounting should be solid, watch out for cash flow!

– Make sure you have an instinctive feel for what actions correlate with what numerical results

Continuously Improve

• If you stand still, your competitors will pass you by

• There is a never ending list of improvements and fixes and upgrades you can make. Be prepared for this

• Improving isn’t always ‘adding’, sometimes it’s removing stuff or streamlining