Progress Thread - First Online Service

[SimplyMatt]

Hello Forum,

Wanted to create this thread to document my journey with my first Online Service. Without giving away the idea, It will be a lead generation service that allows individual users to find one another to exchange a good. It is NOT intended to hand the lead off to another company to satisfy the request.

Doing some basic market research, I see that this subject receives 1,000 - 10,000 searches in google each month (around $3 a bid for AdWords). My initial strategy to monetize this site would ad revenue (either CPM or CPA, preferably CPM if I can get traffic high enough).

In order to pull this service off I will need to use a few technologies foreign to me. I believe I found exactly what I need. I am sharing below for others to use if needed.

GeoLocation Service via Google: Place Search  |  Google Places API Web Service  |  Google Developers
GeoLocation Conversion Service via Google: Getting Started  |  Google Maps Geocoding API  |  Google Developers
(These resources will help me do the logic to find items near my users)

I also plan on using the Facebook SSO to make signing up / reviewing my site extremely easy for my users. I will be looking into the facebook API to see if I can set up the messaging system through facebook, and not store that data in my DB. (Ref. Below)
Facebook SSO Documentation: Single Sign On - Workplace - Documentation - Facebook for Developers

I have an idea or two for long term monetization of the site, but in order to release those features I feel it will be important to get a decent user base, so that will be my very first goal.

I foresee at lease 1 or 2 months of development time before I am ready to publish the alpha, and even longer before traffic picks up, but its a start

Goal: Have this project created and live before I move out of California end of July.

I am always open to criticism and suggestions, so please feel free to add in to the thread!

 

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[SimplyMatt]

Quick update. Just re-read The biggest landing page mistake and was reminded of @Andy Black's advice of stop building stuff. I will have my landing page up by the end of the week (Friday). Will have the SEO set up by end of night Sunday.

 

[BigRomeDawg]

Can you explain a bit more what your site is supposed to do?

I run a tech support company. Sell it to me

 

[SimplyMatt]

Can you explain a bit more what your site is supposed to do?

Without giving away too much, its a matching service that allow's people with bulk of the same "item" to exchange with each other to add variety.

There are already facebook groups, etc. servicing the need, but no website / app.

 

[BigRomeDawg]

Can you develop it faster?

Have you begun to collect leads for the launch?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Andy Black]

Quick update. Just re-read The biggest landing page mistake and was reminded of @Andy Black's advice of stop building stuff. I will have my landing page up by the end of the week (Friday). Will have the SEO set up by end of night Sunday.

Good stuff.

SEO setup by Sunday doesn’t mean any visitors on Monday. How can you get leads quicker?

 

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[SimplyMatt]

Can you develop it faster?

Apologies, but I am unsure what you mean by this. Can you clarify what you mean?

Have you begun to collect leads for the launch?

No and of course that is a big mistake on my end. I am going to have the marketing (sign up) page created and live by the end of the week to collect leads. I went to squarespace and wix.com to look for some templates, but was not happy with any of them. I need some type of hosting provider to collect those emails though, because if I wrote my own code, they would get caught in spam filter.

 

[SimplyMatt]

Good stuff.

SEO setup by Sunday doesn’t mean any visitors on Monday. How can you get leads quicker?

That's a great point. First step is first, get the sign up page created to direct traffic. I did plan on posting on those facebook groups / forums I found during research to get the word out. Ill give this topic some more thought at work today. I know there is more "low hanging fruit".

 

[SimplyMatt]

Spent my lunch hour researching hosting services for nice landing pages, but was less than impressed. Was curious if anyone was willing to share a service they use to manage their landing page(s)? I can achieve what I need using a squarespace.com template worse comes to worse. Thanks in advance.

It may just be easier to set up a sendgrid account and manage my own email service at this point. I wanted a service to save me time, and it seems to be costing me time.

 

[SimplyMatt]

Looks like Hostgator and Bluehost would be the way to go. They allow unlimited domains / emails in their "business" plan which is what I would need to be able to test my idea. Ill start with a leaner account to make sure I like the service, but I think they will allow me to do what I need.

 

[SimplyMatt]

Site is live but I want to spend time enhancing it tomorrow. It has 3 main call to actions and a simple form to sign up. The service I went with says it gives $100 in Google AdWord credits so I will be looking into that tomorrow, but will most likely launch my own campaign if I can't control the searches. Pretty beat so going to spend the night watching some videos on landing pages.

 

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[SimplyMatt]

I owe an apology to @rogainer. After reviewing some of the threads here, I see I was being a fool to not share more of my plan / idea. I will expand my idea and what the worries / progress are after I get back from the gym. (as it will be a lengthy post) Apologies for my idiocy.

 

[SimplyMatt]

So as I was saying...

Note this is my very first shot at a real online business so I feel it is important to be open to the community to see if my thoughts and actions are misguided. Feel free to give harsh feedback, as that's what I need right now.

My idea is to create an online community for meal preppers. I don't meal prep myself, but have lived with multiple people who do so. The biggest thing I noticed was that they ate the same meal all week (or same meal(s) if they prepared multiple meals for the week). I figured this must get boring quickly. Upon a quick search or two, I found a few facebook groups already connecting people and a few weekly meetups to swap the food. So the simple move is to create a site that people can post their foods to swap each week.

I have learned a lot from @Andy Black already and one of the takeaways was to create a landing page to get a temperate gauge before I start building anything. I have that created. I downloaded an online marketing / sales book, "The Conversion Code" by Chris Smith and it already brought light into how shit my landing page is. I mean its my first try, I knew it was shit, but wow. I have some work in front of me.

I plan on updating the page and attempt to run some ads for a few weeks (as well as post in those facebook groups I found, etc.) to get a feel for the validity of the idea. I have to admit since it's my first time, I am not sure what the numbers will mean. I need to put some research into what a good conversion rate (email submission for launch alert) will be to go forward with the idea.

For income, I plan on starting with ads. I don't have much capital so I think I need to build a user base before I introduce my other idea to allow users to make an income.

That's it for now. Still reading that book, at least enough to figure out what my landing page needs to look like.

Matt

 

[Andy Black]

So as I was saying...

Note this is my very first shot at a real online business so I feel it is important to be open to the community to see if my thoughts and actions are misguided. Feel free to give harsh feedback, as that's what I need right now.

My idea is to create an online community for meal preppers. I don't meal prep myself, but have lived with multiple people who do so. The biggest thing I noticed was that they ate the same meal all week (or same meal(s) if they prepared multiple meals for the week). I figured this must get boring quickly. Upon a quick search or two, I found a few facebook groups already connecting people and a few weekly meetups to swap the food. So the simple move is to create a site that people can post their foods to swap each week.

I have learned a lot from @Andy Black already and one of the takeaways was to create a landing page to get a temperate gauge before I start building anything. I have that created. I downloaded an online marketing / sales book, "The Conversion Code" by Chris Smith and it already brought light into how sh*t my landing page is. I mean its my first try, I knew it was sh*t, but wow. I have some work in front of me.

I plan on updating the page and attempt to run some ads for a few weeks (as well as post in those facebook groups I found, etc.) to get a feel for the validity of the idea. I have to admit since it's my first time, I am not sure what the numbers will mean. I need to put some research into what a good conversion rate (email submission for launch alert) will be to go forward with the idea.

For income, I plan on starting with ads. I don't have much capital so I think I need to build a user base before I introduce my other idea to allow users to make an income.

That's it for now. Still reading that book, at least enough to figure out what my landing page needs to look like.

Matt

Better than a landing page could be spending your money on diesel and coffee?

• "Spend your money on diesel and coffee"

Also:

• How to use forums (and Facebook groups)

And:

• The biggest landing page mistake

And check out the the Mother Theresa quote in my signature.


Hope this helps!