PROGRESS THREAD (James F) Startup #2

[JamesF]

Hey Fastlaners,
Alright, so if you didn't know, I recently launched Fendza (see Progress Thread here) but as I stated earlier in that thread; I had another startup idea brewing in my head. Now one would assume that I am crazy for moving on and that I need to spend 100% focus on Fendza since I just launched it; right?? <if you want to skip ahead onto the introduction of the new startup, please skip this post and read the 2nd post>

Well, after spending thousands of dollars and time on Fendza; after days of thinking; I need to move on. It's simply not fastlane. Why?

Fendza is polished and automized
to the point where all I have to do is maintain and answer customers. So I can slick run it passively while working on another web app. Of course, I should spend all focus on marketing Fendza.. but...

Marketing for Fendza is not scalable
Because it's in an industry that is too wide in scope and needs. For instance, out of the 200 signups (no paying customers yet) I have gotten so far, the companies have been in almost every industry imaginable (hotels, food, government, hosting companies, web design companies, retail stores, airlines, etc. etc.) Since it's so broad, I can't target just one industry AND it fit with them having employee scheduling problems. Because you see, every company has too many variables in the way they operate their employees, so Fendza would literally have to have 2,000 features in order to fit each company having their own needs. Also, there's just too many ways businesses interpret 'employee scheduling software' For example, some people are thinking employee scheduling software as being able to schedule appointments to each employee, or where their customers can login online and check open time slots, or be able to schedule out swing and rotating shifts, etc. etc. You get the point; there's just too many ways a business needs scheduling done and each needing it's own set of features.

So without being able to even define a qualified customer, there is no way to really market to them. Let alone, scale the marketing and building a system so it brings in traffic. I even thought about just doing a general business blog talking about broad business topics, but the conversions would be horrific, and the hundreds of hours spent on that with little traffic would be better spent making another idea with more opportunity. It would take years and years just to get enough customers to pay off it's debt it took to create Fendza.

Also, nobody really searches for employee scheduling software. And the few that do are all looking for different things in one. So without much volume in people actively looking, there's no real way to scale it, and do inbound marketing (which is a huge thing). Rankings on Google is about the only time they are looking, but again; each person searching are looking for different solutions.

Disclaimer: (now if you think you are genius and can market Fendza better than the hours and hours of thinking I spent, then feel free to and I'll pay you as an affiliate, but good luck.)

AdWords is too expensive
and cannot afford the front loaded cost to acquire traffic that will have low conversions (again, due to the broad range of needs in the scheduling)

Fendza solves a pain, but it's just nice to have
And nice to have isn't going to get a lot of customers. (remember, the whole point of fastlane is to impact millions) When I first thought about the idea of Fendza, all I thought about was 'will people buy this' rather than 'how can I get a crap load of users that will buy this'. It's a huge difference in thinking.

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Now, don't get me wrong, I am not shutting down Fendza and am leaving it open for signups and purchases, it's just that I will no longer spend time actively marketing it and will let the SEO work I did from before carry it from here.

Anyways, I hope everyone can learn a lesson from what I did wrong with Fendza and the way I thought about things from the beginning. DO BETTER MARKET RESEARCH BEFOREHAND, and also THINK ABOUT HOW TO ACQUIRE MASS LOADS OF CUSTOMERS and not just WILL PEOPLE BUY IT.

p.s. This thread is a progress thread for the new startup and not one for answering 'but.. you should do this and this for marketing.. dont move on.. ' comments on Fendza. Please shoot PM or post in Fendza's thread.

with that out the way; let's move onto the new startup venture: Freelanceful

[JamesF]

Freelanceful.com is going to be a better, safer Elance/oDesk. It will work in a similar function but with many differentiating things that solve major fundamental problems the big two have right now. (These problems I have experienced myself while using them)

So without further ado, here's the first progress.

CREATING THE NAME AND LANDING PAGE
Well, it's definitely a viable, huge, but very narrowly niche market and there's major players in it already, so there's definitely opportunity here. The major thing to consider is how am I going to penetrate this market? I have a few creative marketing ideas (unfortunately can't give em away just yet) in mind.

So I quickly sat down for a day or two and thought up on some good company names. Now I wanted something that was basic and contained the words of what it did. Unlike Fendza, which is out of left field. But I also wanted the name to be brandable in the long run. And also memorable. The big catcher; the domain had to be available. After hours of thinking and using various websites to help me out with names, suffixes, prefixes, etc.; I finally found something I thought was cool. Freelanceful. I asked several folks what they thought, and after the feedback, I finally decided on it. I bought the domain and quickly put up a splash page.

A splash page is something you put up to:

1) Age the domain
2) Start getting it some rank and links
3) Let people know what you are doing
4) Collect emails from interested people so you can start with a bang when you finally launch

It didn't take long for me to make this splash page since I am a web designer, but... for those that aren't there's a new web app called LaunchRock that I highly recommend. It pretty much let's you make a splash page very easily and also collect emails.

[Darkside]

p.s. This thread is a progress thread for the new startup and not one for answering 'but.. you should do this and this for marketing.. dont move on.. ' comments on Fendza.

LOL! I was gonna do just that. I guess I'll send you a pm with a free tip on how to acquire customers on Fendza. I'd like to see you succeed because you're a member who contributes a lot by sharing your business progress, etc.

[Darkside]

Freelanceful.com is going to be a better, safer Elance/oDesk. It will work in a similar function but with many differentiating things that solve major fundamental problems the big two have right now.

You probably will have many questions as to why I choose this, how are you going to be different and better, etc... A lot of the questions I won't be able to answer as I want the ideas to be executed and launched and running first. But I will answer the ones that I feel won't give things away.

The domain you chose sounds similar to Freelancer.com which does the same thing. People might confuse you with them and vice versa.

[Pat]

You got a lot of big competitors out there. I hope you did your market research, good luck

[JamesF]

INITIALIZING SEO FOUNDATION INTO THE SPLASH PAGE

So after doing some keyword research, I found some keywords that I thought would be nice to have and something that I can try to rank in. You can probably guess what they are from the looks. Doing this is important for a few reasons:

1) Do a bit of SEO work and see what progress it made in rankings and gives you an estimation of how much work it will take.
2) Gives you a head start before you ever launch.

Sorry, such a short update; just thought this would be helpful to some folks..

Anyways, so the next update will come as I am going to work on making the wireframe/prototype of the backend stuff for the new venture. I'll try to answer questions as well in the next weeks.

[JamesF]

@Darkside - thanks for the tip, got your pm. and yes, You're right, it is close..

@Pat - Thanks Pat! You're are absolutely right.. Still doing research in a way...

[JamesF]

SETTING UP YOUR FACEBOOK FAN PAGE & TWITTER

Just got done setting up the Twitter account (luckily the exact company name was available) and also the Facebook page. This are two things that you will want to go ahead and set up when you first start so you can start building some fans/followers organically while you are building out your startup.

The two links from the profiles will also help in SEO as well. As you can see; I didn't spend too much time on them, just added in the logos and some basic information.

[valuegiver]

So, why don't you narrow the scope and go vertical?

Marketing for Fendza is not scalable
Because it's in an industry that is too wide in scope and needs. For instance, out of the 200 signups (no paying customers yet) I have gotten so far, the companies have been in almost every industry imaginable (hotels, food, government, hosting companies, web design companies, retail stores, airlines, etc. etc.) Since it's so broad, I can't target just one industry AND it fit with them having employee scheduling problems. Because you see, every company has too many variables in the way they operate their employees, so Fendza would literally have to have 2,000 features in order to fit each company having their own needs.

[valuegiver]

IMO, it is not the SEO you should focus on.

INITIALIZING SEO FOUNDATION INTO THE SPLASH PAGE

So after doing some keyword research, I found some keywords that I thought would be nice to have and something that I can try to rank in. You can probably guess what they are from the looks. Doing this is important for a few reasons:

1) Do a bit of SEO work and see what progress it made in rankings and gives you an estimation of how much work it will take.
2) Gives you a head start before you ever launch.

Sorry, such a short update; just thought this would be helpful to some folks..

Anyways, so the next update will come as I am going to work on making the wireframe/prototype of the backend stuff for the new venture. I'll try to answer questions as well in the next weeks.

[JamesF]

@ValueGiver - SEO is priority #2, I have something else for getting massive users for priority plan #1. Did you have something particular in mind? As for the Fendza question, if you could please post it here and I'll be happy to discuss it with ya. (just trying to keep the two seperated in threads)

[darkjediii]

James, are you aware of the recent limitations the Indian government placed on Indian Paypal accounts? I hope you have this hurdle covered as this is an issue freelancer.com is facing now.. Many Indian providers are requesting wire transfer for payment these days.

[darkjediii]

As far as Fendza.com goes, there are hundreds of thousands of small businesses that are looking for your software. You're faced with a hurdle on how to market it. I can think of some ideas, but I know Fendza can be fastlane.. I hope you don't give up on it

[Darkside]

As far as Fendza.com goes, there are hundreds of thousands of small businesses that are looking for your software. You're faced with a hurdle on how to market it. I can think of some ideas, but I know Fendza can be fastlane.. I hope you don't give up on it

I'd also like for him to not give up on it but he does bring up a very good roadblock, which is that each employer will want a unique system since they all have different ways of scheduling. Unless they were willing to pay thousands of dollars to have the system customized to their needs, it wouldn't be worth it for him.

[mrhahn]

JamesF,
I definitely applaud you for the development and relase of Fendza. It's great inspiration to take action.

The reason I think you are trying to move on from this project is that you are not gaining customers, as you described.

So without being able to even define a qualified customer, there is no way to really market to them.

I think this was a big oversight in your market research. You have to clearly define a customer, so you are building your product for them. I hope you take this lesson with you in the future.

That said, I am sure there are ways to still continue development of the product.
1) Survey your current demo users for the most common features they would need to actually pay for Fendza
2) I'm sure you have a twitter acct for it. Follow startups/small biz owners/etc and gain traffic that way and more exposure. Repeat # 1
3) Do some test advertisement campaigns in small business publications and forums

I know those are just a few suggestions, and I just know enough of the project from what you've posted, but I don't think it's time to give up on it yet.

--

Your next project is also a very interesting one. I had the same idea which I've put on the backburner for now. There's definitely a lot of competition in that area as well.

[darkjediii]

I'd also like for him to not give up on it but he does bring up a very good roadblock, which is that each employer will want a unique system since they all have different ways of scheduling. Unless they were willing to pay thousands of dollars to have the system customized to their needs, it wouldn't be worth it for him.

pick the biggest industries, create scheduling templates based on industry.. maybe even picking user-created templates based on industry...

there are alot of ways to improve what he has now.. But even the way he has it now, there are alot of companies that can still benefit.

[snowbank]

James,

I think you're still missing the big picture. You're saying you learned from a mistake of not knowing how to market your last one, but then on this one the things you mention that you think are going to give you an edge are things you shouldn't waste a second on until you figured out how to market it.(and I mean market it big) Seems like you're doing the same thing- approaching a crowded market, planning out a bunch of seo, landing pages, collecting emails, starting a twitter/facebook account. These are things that are irrelevant to whether these types of businesses succeed. You are focused on "internet markety stuff" instead of actual marketing. They are extremely different things, and the actual ability to market is the only one that takes businesses like the ones you're describing off the ground.

There's like 74 people I've talked to this week who are starting a different version of elance/odesk. If you have 300 twitter followers and a bit of organic traffic, that's not going to be the reason yours takes off and these 74 guys don't.

Also, I think you're jumping the gun to take your energy off your first project right now. You launched(and learned that you should have had a marketing plan ahead of time, which is good), and now because of all the info you have received on ways you need to improve your product, you're quitting. I'm not saying quitting is necessarily wrong, but I'm 100% sure you're looking at things the wrong way and and possibly missing a great opportunity. Being in an industry is one of the fastest ways to learn where you can get a huge edge on other people, since if you're not in an industry you don't get the feedback/talk to others in the industry. You made it further than others, and giving up days after you launch after finding your current site isn't what people want, seems way too soon, especially when you're leaving to go into a niche that's probably going to be harder. The feedback you've gotten so far is the stuff I'd love, because it'd let me know which direction to go. I think you're trying to please everyone, instead of choosing a small group and making features just for them(and leaving all other features out), and dominating their market.

It would take years and years just to get enough customers to pay off it's debt it took to create Fendza.

not at all. how many phone calls have you made to your competitors? how many phone calls have you made to successful entrepreneurs who have run similar businesses? i'd bet you'd get ideas how to scale this pretty quickly.

Rankings on Google is about the only time they are looking

so think outside the box for your marketing

remember, the whole point of fastlane is to impact millions

you're regurgitating instead of thinking. you can be insanely fastlane and impact only hundreds pretty easily. go tweak your service towards one industry that isn't served correctly in that niche and watch hundreds of people pay you $100/month or whatever it is that they'd pay for you being the best at it. 500 x $100/month = $50,000/month.

[JamesF]

Hey everybody,
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions.. By no means do I mean that Fendza is completely unmarketable (is that even a word?), but there's no real way of scaling the marketing. (which in my eyes make it non-fastlane). So if I put in 40 hours a week of marketing, cold calling, hitting folks one by one at online biz forums, etc.; I would get out exactly 40 hours worth of marketing.

With that said... if anyone has a good year to be able to grow Fendza and wants to take a crack at it and sees opportunity that I overlooked; I will even offer the entire Fendza business/site/app for sale for a fraction of the cost it took for me and a developer to build it. Just shoot me a PM..

There's like 74 people I've talked to this week who are starting a different version of elance/odesk. If you have 300 twitter followers and a bit of organic traffic, that's not going to be the reason yours takes off and these 74 guys don't.

You are absolutely correct. That will not be enough. Good thing I am going a different route..

[CEBenz]

remember, the whole point of fastlane is to impact millions

you're regurgitating instead of thinking. you can be insanely fastlane and impact only hundreds pretty easily. go tweak your service towards one industry that isn't served correctly in that niche and watch hundreds of people pay you $100/month or whatever it is that they'd pay for you being the best at it. 500 x $100/month = $50,000/month.

Snowbank points out a valid detail. If you have a scale of millions, you need a dollar for each customer. If you have a magnitude of millions, you need 1 customer.

[JamesF]

James, are you aware of the recent limitations the Indian government placed on Indian Paypal accounts? I hope you have this hurdle covered as this is an issue freelancer.com is facing now.. Many Indian providers are requesting wire transfer for payment these days.

Wow, thanks for letting me know. I had no idea about that!