Computer Nerds - BREAK This Industry

[Vigilante]

I was looking for a SAAS to automate posting to multiple FB groups that I admin. You can "share" the post from within Facebook, but in the case of an industrial user like me that's an arduous clerical task. There are companies that can do this, but their pricing is based on "per page" or "per group" and I find the pricing egregious for an automation.

Hootsuite, Buffer, OneUp or Sprout Social are examples. I want to create one post and blast it out to 50 groups that my business owns the group pages for. $1800/year. Nope.

This should be $10/$20 bucks a month. It's a one and done automation. Where these companies get complicated is they are charging you to broadcast over multiple channels simultaneously (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.) and I get that but this market is ripe for disruption.

Charge $20/mo, get 1,000 users and you have a $20k/mo business of PASSIVE income. Once you build the API, it's done. Some Fastlane computer geek is just the person to disrupt this industry. You don't need 40 people in an office. You need one great programmer. The UI is easy, the connection to Facebook is encouraged by them (Log into Facebook ) so if you build it, we will come.

 

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[Skroob]

Is there a sizable market segment of "people who moderate enough Facebook groups to make this a hassle"? Social Media management firms?

 

[Saad Khan]

I was looking for a SAAS to automate posting to multiple FB groups that I admin. You can "share" the post from within Facebook, but in the case of an industrial user like me that's an arduous clerical task. There are companies that can do this, but their pricing is based on "per page" or "per group" and I find the pricing egregious for an automation.

Hootsuite, Buffer, OneUp or Sprout Social are examples. I want to create one post and blast it out to 50 groups that my business owns the group pages for. $1800/year. Nope.

This should be $10/$20 bucks a month. It's a one and done automation. Where these companies get complicated is they are charging you to broadcast over multiple channels simultaneously (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.) and I get that but this market is ripe for disruption.

Charge $20/mo, get 1,000 users and you have a $20k/mo business of PASSIVE income. Once you build the API, it's done. Some Fastlane computer geek is just the person to disrupt this industry. You don't need 40 people in an office. You need one great programmer. The UI is easy, the connection to Facebook is encouraged by them (Log into Facebook ) so if you build it, we will come.

I've used Publer for posting in multiple groups on LinkedIn on a much smaller scale. I can definitely see the pain point.

In a nutshell, whatever DFY (Done for you) service an agency is offering that just replaces time can be replaced with a program or an app that costs a fraction of their fees.

 

[Saad Khan]

Is there a sizable market segment of "people who moderate enough Facebook groups to make this a hassle"? Social Media management firms?

You can also sell this app to those SMM firms. They'd love to reduce their expenses and make their offers competitive.

 

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[Skroob]

You can also sell this app to those SMM firms. They'd love to reduce their expenses and make their offers competitive.

I definitely see the benefit. And the opportunity...

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Another industry that needs to be disrupted are the ridiculous prices for email list management. If you have a list of 50,000 or more, prepare to pay a mortgage for these companies simply to host your list, and that's before you send a damn email. The "charge by subscriber count" needs to be wiped off the face of the planet.

 

[ZackerySprague]

Another industry that needs to be disrupted are the ridiculous prices for email list management. If you have a list of 50,000 or more, prepare to pay a mortgage for these companies simply to host your list, and that's before you send a damn email. The "charge by subscriber count" needs to be wiped off the face of the planet.

Is there a reason as to way they charge per subscriber? Is there any technological limit or something they have to pay for when a user has that many people on a list?

I’m just curious as to why they charge that much? Is it really about them making profit or is it because something related to tech.

 

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[Skroob]

Geez. Can I pay an INE fee for these?

One of the market lanes I've been looking at is, in my notes anyway, "social media power users". Because they mainly work from their phones, so mobile apps are appealing, and thats where my strength is. I was mostly staying away from it though, because in my mind it was B2C (which is a pain in a lot of ways) and the long tail tends to not have any money at all to put into it. I didn't consider taking a step up the ladder and looking into working with the management companies. Until now.

 

[Andy Black]

Another industry that needs to be disrupted are the ridiculous prices for email list management. If you have a list of 50,000 or more, prepare to pay a mortgage for these companies simply to host your list, and that's before you send a damn email. The "charge by subscriber count" needs to be wiped off the face of the planet.

I don't know much about the ESPs yet. Have you looked at Sendgrid?

 

[BizyDad]

Is there a reason as to way they charge per subscriber? Is there any technological limit or something they have to pay for when a user has that many people on a list?

I’m just curious as to why they charge that much? Is it really about them making profit or is it because something related to tech.

The api's cost.

The competition for coders had developer salaries increasing. With recent layoffs, maybe that will change, but I'm sure pricing won't. Many companies like this are also facing increasing costs due to leverage to fuel growth.

@Vigilante is right, these companies got fat and bloated and there is room for someone lean and mean.

 

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[LoganM]

Once you build the API, it's done. Some Fastlane computer geek is just the person to disrupt this industry. You don't need 40 people in an office. You need one great programmer. The UI is easy, the connection to Facebook is encouraged by them (Log into Facebook ) so if you build it, we will come.

I don't use Facebook, so just to clarify, the UI flow in its purest form would basically look like:
1- Sign into Facebook
2- View list of recent posts, and select the one you want to share
3- Select all the groups you want to share it to
4- Send. Profit?

Seems pretty simple to me, unless I'm missing something...
I could prototype this pretty quickly.

 

[Archer_Zero]

Another industry that needs to be disrupted are the ridiculous prices for email list management. If you have a list of 50,000 or more, prepare to pay a mortgage for these companies simply to host your list, and that's before you send a damn email. The "charge by subscriber count" needs to be wiped off the face of the planet.

have you tried ConvertKit? I heard good things about them.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

have you tried ConvertKit? I heard good things about them.

Yes, I cancelled them. Same issue, charge by subscriber.

Have you looked at Sendgrid?

This is more of a transactional service, not an EMS with automations and marketing functions.

 

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[Andy Black]

This is more of a transactional service, not an EMS with automations and marketing functions

I thought it had automations.

Email Marketing Automation Software | SendGrid

With SendGrid Email Marketing Automation, create personalized experiences, tell stories, and invite conversations in a way that’s scalable and relevant.

sendgrid.com

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I thought it had automations.

Email Marketing Automation Software | SendGrid

With SendGrid Email Marketing Automation, create personalized experiences, tell stories, and invite conversations in a way that’s scalable and relevant.

sendgrid.com

Same issue, with automation, they want to charge by # of contacts.

I'm not paying some company $500/mo to host an email list.

 

[Fox]

Another industry that needs to be disrupted are the ridiculous prices for email list management. If you have a list of 50,000 or more, prepare to pay a mortgage for these companies simply to host your list, and that's before you send a damn email. The "charge by subscriber count" needs to be wiped off the face of the planet.

Yup.

And when you go from 9,999 to 10,000 subs you suddenly jump from the $50/m plan to the $195/m plan.

 

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[Skroob]

Yup.

And when you go from 9,999 to 10,000 subs you suddenly jump from the $50/m plan to the $195/m plan.

Wow, that's desperately-start-kicking-subscribers-off-your-list brutal. It doesn't seem like costs should go up with subscribers, not like that anyway. I wonder if there's some liability issue, like lists with 10k+ are more likely to get hit with automated spam filtering rules or something.

Anyway, I spent some time looking into these ideas and as much as I like the opportunities, I realized I've been trying to shift out of my core competency too much lately. I've been a mobile app guy for 15 years, I'm damn good at it, and I actually really enjoy it as well. It's a hard-earned, refined skill, and trying to jump away into web-first SaaS (or digital marketing for information products, as I've also been playing with) probably isn't the best use of it. So if nothing else, this thread has helped narrow my focus back where it belongs!

 

[John Clancy]

I recently checked out some different email marketing tools (I've created a personal site and may send a weekly newsletter at some point).

Since I'm just starting from scratch, I figure that the free tier of pretty much any of the major tools will suffice. I've gone with MailerLite for now. My needs are modest, so unless I run into some major issues along the way, I'll be sticking with that until I outgrow it.

That said, I came across an interesting WordPress-based solution that people here might be interested in: Marketing Automation For WordPress - FluentCRM

I haven't used this specific tool myself, but can vouch for the quality of another one of their products (Fluent Forms).

How it works is that you create broadcasts/sequences and manage your list via the backend of your WordPress site. The actual sending of emails then needs to be handled by a provider like Sendgrid, Amazon SES, Mailgun or others.

When you're not relying on those providers for advanced features (automations etc), the cost of using them is quite reasonable. But I guess it you're sending to a big list or mailing every day, the costs could rack up.

There are probably other plugins like this on the market too, so if you're interested in the idea, do some digging.

Likewise --> if you're a developer or have an appetite to bring something to market, you could do worse than spin up something like this and position it as a "decentralised" alternative to third-party tools like ConvertKit, Aweber and so on.

Might be a little hacky - but if you're not content with what you're getting from the big players, it's worth checking out.

 

[Guidance]

I was looking for a SAAS to automate posting to multiple FB groups that I admin. You can "share" the post from within Facebook, but in the case of an industrial user like me that's an arduous clerical task. There are companies that can do this, but their pricing is based on "per page" or "per group" and I find the pricing egregious for an automation.

Hootsuite, Buffer, OneUp or Sprout Social are examples. I want to create one post and blast it out to 50 groups that my business owns the group pages for. $1800/year. Nope.

This should be $10/$20 bucks a month. It's a one and done automation. Where these companies get complicated is they are charging you to broadcast over multiple channels simultaneously (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.) and I get that but this market is ripe for disruption.

Charge $20/mo, get 1,000 users and you have a $20k/mo business of PASSIVE income. Once you build the API, it's done. Some Fastlane computer geek is just the person to disrupt this industry. You don't need 40 people in an office. You need one great programmer. The UI is easy, the connection to Facebook is encouraged by them (Log into Facebook ) so if you build it, we will come.

I searched for "automatically post to facebook groups" and found Postcron. Have you tried that?

 

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[Vigilante]

I searched for "automatically post to facebook groups" and found Postcron. Have you tried that?

Their enterprise plan would be $2,000USD per year. Postcron, la mejor Herramienta para Programar Posts en Redes Sociales

 

[kareemt]

DM me, I can help you with that!

 

[Vigilante]

DM me, I can help you with that!

Post your ideas here. Many people here could benefit from this if you want to develop it.

 

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[HardWork]

I want to give it a try. Would anyone be willing to try out the MVP and provide feedback?

 

[Vigilante]

I want to give it a try. Would anyone be willing to try out the MVP and provide feedback?

Sure

 

[kareemt]

Post your ideas here. Many people here could benefit from this if you want to develop it.

Fine. So based on what I've read, you want to make your own developer account, and then give the access token to the SaaS, and finally get UI-represented options regarding auto-posting, is that correct?

Also,
What are you going to look for in that SaaS other than bulk posting?
How many times a month are you going to post/broadcast a post?

 

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[alexkuzmov]

I was looking for a SAAS to automate posting to multiple FB groups that I admin. You can "share" the post from within Facebook, but in the case of an industrial user like me that's an arduous clerical task. There are companies that can do this, but their pricing is based on "per page" or "per group" and I find the pricing egregious for an automation.

Hootsuite, Buffer, OneUp or Sprout Social are examples. I want to create one post and blast it out to 50 groups that my business owns the group pages for. $1800/year. Nope.

This should be $10/$20 bucks a month. It's a one and done automation. Where these companies get complicated is they are charging you to broadcast over multiple channels simultaneously (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.) and I get that but this market is ripe for disruption.

Charge $20/mo, get 1,000 users and you have a $20k/mo business of PASSIVE income. Once you build the API, it's done. Some Fastlane computer geek is just the person to disrupt this industry. You don't need 40 people in an office. You need one great programmer. The UI is easy, the connection to Facebook is encouraged by them (Log into Facebook ) so if you build it, we will come.

I get what you mean, and its really a niche that can be exploited.
The main issue I see is that you nees slighlty different content for each group and social platform, based on the following.
Which makes it so any mass media distribution system comes with a major drawback.
Now if there is case where the same post can fit perfeclty into 50 FB groups I can totally see a SaaS for that.

 

[alexkuzmov]

Another industry that needs to be disrupted are the ridiculous prices for email list management. If you have a list of 50,000 or more, prepare to pay a mortgage for these companies simply to host your list, and that's before you send a damn email. The "charge by subscriber count" needs to be wiped off the face of the planet.

I couldnt agree more!

Not only that but I'm actually building an email marketing system for the reason you listed and more:
1. Clueless support, refusing to divulge information about issues you have with an email list.
"We cant approve it",
Why?
"Its our policy"
What is your policy, what is the problem?
"We cant share such information"

Also taking days to respond to simple questions and refusing to give clear answers to things they should absolutely know.

There is an error when trying to send emails to a particular email address? Which one?,
"We cant tell you".
Can you just remove it then or add it to the unsubscrived list?.
"No, we are not an email list clearing service, you should clear the list yourself"

2. Autostopping campaigns for no clear reason.

Error while running the campaign, hmm what is the error?
"Error 1252: Cant work bro sorry, get fckt, lol"
Hello support, what is this error Im getting?
"Oh yea thats common, you have too many emails we've deemed to be untrustworthy, so we cant run your campaign. We have a list, its very extensive."
Can you ignore them, cut them from my list, or can I just send to them anyway?
"Nope, as the error suggests, go get fckt bro, lol, is there anything else I can help you with today?"

3. Insisting on opt in, opt out, integrations, JS code insertions, events and whatever else.

Hey aaah, I'm actually using my own SMTP server, you know the one I gave you the credentials for. Sooo any issues, spam folder problems, bans, none delivered emails etc. is on me, ok?
"On you? Nah nah nah, you need to add these checkboxes here, these scripts here, these forms here, these pages here, sign this agreement here add these DKIM records there... yea I know you dont need those records FU."
Ok so if I do all that, double opt in track users through your script and so on, my campaigm will work always, right?
"We've detected too many bounced emails, a grand total of 2, from the 60k email list you gave us, so we will be stopping your campaign until further notice, which will never come, cause you already paid your subscription this month suckaaaah"

---------
Honeslty I have more but after 8 services more than 10k BGN spent, frustration and problem, we just decided to solve our own problem.

Its actually sending emails for a charity website, so speed of campaigns and them going wihtout a hitch is crucial. Qe havent been able to run 1 campaign successfully in a year.

We are around 2 months away from beta.
Do you think I can post my progress for the beta on the forum? Offer discount options for and collaborate with forum members like the progress for goal sumo?

 

[Andy Black]

Hi @MJ DeMarco ... is it worth splitting this into two threads for the two different needs/frustrations by you and @Vigilante?

 

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[Andy Black]

Fine. So based on what I've read, you want to make your own developer account, and then give the access token to the SaaS, and finally get UI-represented options regarding auto-posting, is that correct?

I'm going to guess Vigilante doesn't use this language.

What are you going to look for in that SaaS other than bulk posting?
How many times a month are you going to post/broadcast a post?

And I'm going to guess he does use this language.

 

[Merlox]

Hosting and managing an email list is not cheap. You have to pay for an expensive server that can handle a big volume of emails so they are sent fast, then manage all the infrastructure related to sending emails and support dedicated to make sure the server is not compromised by spammers... I can see it costing more than 500 a month for a list of 100k subscribers just by sending an email a week.