RogueFreedom
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- Sep 29, 2014
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Thanks to those of you who have offered feedback to me on this concept of a “done for you” outsource staffing service. The guidance and insight has been very valuable in niching down my business focus. Today, I’m pleased to announce that http://www.OutsourceHound.com is live! Here is a brief look at how I’ve built the initial launch site and my plans for this thing going forward.
Background:
OutsourceHound is built to solve the problem of busy small business owners finding quality, reliable independent contractors. Our service will recruit, screen, interview, and vet, all through existing outlets, the quality of applicants. We do this for a one time fee per customer need. The recommendation is then delivered to the customer for them to hire, manage, pay, and build along side of. We are simply the matchmaker.
Build Process:
In the spirit of Dan Norris’ latest project (WPCurve) and his new book 7 Day Startup , which coincidentally is free at the time of this post on Amazon, I’ve taken a rapid startup approach to this project. Idea validation may already be dead.
Since it’s mainly a service based business that’s not terribly difficult, but did require some creative work in WordPress to make it happen.
Through a combination of the Genesis Framework, NinjaForms, Paypal, PrellyLink, Easy Pricing Pages, and a few others I’ve created all of the tools necessary to get this thing off the ground. OutsourceHound is live now and you can check it out for yourself. Beta customers will receive a discounted price of $39.99 for our service, and we’ll likely introduce additional tiers going forward based on project scope, budget, and type of service required.
All things told I would say that I’ve spend no more than 25 hours building out this simple MVP, all while working a full time corporate job, having a wife and 2 young kids at home, and even doing some initial prelaunch marketing. For someone who’s been guilty of both being a Wantrepreneur and having Shiny Object Syndrome in the past, this is the ideal way to operate and I’ll never go back. If I can’t test an idea live in the market within a week it’s not worth doing for me.
I did do some idea validation along the way, and thanks to David Schneider, Erica Hale, and Joe Hughes from the DC for helping me refine the idea a bit as I developed my MVP.
Next Steps:
I’ll certainly update you here as OutsourceHound gets it’s first paying customer and we get some feedback on how the process goes for the customers. I plan on focusing solely on marketing efforts until the demand is sufficient to either bring on part time help or build this into a true software based app. Right now everything is manual, but I think there’s big potential for automating a majority of the process.
My marketing plan includes guest blogging on related sites, social media presence (mostly through Twitter), and as I get my first paid customers I’ll run some targeted ads. This can scale a long way until I need to reinvest money back into development of the project. Nights and weekends will be spent marketing and actually performing the service for customers for a while.
Thank You:
This is an amazing community and I’m honored to be a part of such talented folks. Thank you all for your knowledge and guidance.
I look forward to updating this thread as we grow, learn, and help more entrepreneurs outsource easier.
Background:
OutsourceHound is built to solve the problem of busy small business owners finding quality, reliable independent contractors. Our service will recruit, screen, interview, and vet, all through existing outlets, the quality of applicants. We do this for a one time fee per customer need. The recommendation is then delivered to the customer for them to hire, manage, pay, and build along side of. We are simply the matchmaker.
Build Process:
In the spirit of Dan Norris’ latest project (WPCurve) and his new book 7 Day Startup , which coincidentally is free at the time of this post on Amazon, I’ve taken a rapid startup approach to this project. Idea validation may already be dead.
Since it’s mainly a service based business that’s not terribly difficult, but did require some creative work in WordPress to make it happen.
Through a combination of the Genesis Framework, NinjaForms, Paypal, PrellyLink, Easy Pricing Pages, and a few others I’ve created all of the tools necessary to get this thing off the ground. OutsourceHound is live now and you can check it out for yourself. Beta customers will receive a discounted price of $39.99 for our service, and we’ll likely introduce additional tiers going forward based on project scope, budget, and type of service required.
All things told I would say that I’ve spend no more than 25 hours building out this simple MVP, all while working a full time corporate job, having a wife and 2 young kids at home, and even doing some initial prelaunch marketing. For someone who’s been guilty of both being a Wantrepreneur and having Shiny Object Syndrome in the past, this is the ideal way to operate and I’ll never go back. If I can’t test an idea live in the market within a week it’s not worth doing for me.
I did do some idea validation along the way, and thanks to David Schneider, Erica Hale, and Joe Hughes from the DC for helping me refine the idea a bit as I developed my MVP.
Next Steps:
I’ll certainly update you here as OutsourceHound gets it’s first paying customer and we get some feedback on how the process goes for the customers. I plan on focusing solely on marketing efforts until the demand is sufficient to either bring on part time help or build this into a true software based app. Right now everything is manual, but I think there’s big potential for automating a majority of the process.
My marketing plan includes guest blogging on related sites, social media presence (mostly through Twitter), and as I get my first paid customers I’ll run some targeted ads. This can scale a long way until I need to reinvest money back into development of the project. Nights and weekends will be spent marketing and actually performing the service for customers for a while.
Thank You:
This is an amazing community and I’m honored to be a part of such talented folks. Thank you all for your knowledge and guidance.
I look forward to updating this thread as we grow, learn, and help more entrepreneurs outsource easier.
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