Update....
I've started reading Unscripted and that gave me another big kick up the arse (thanks MJ). I have been working on my idea in the last month or so, but my FL efforts were interrupted by my SL job offering me a promotion. Anyway, so far here's what I've achieved.
- Came up with an idea, not something "I love" but something there appeared to be a need for. I have a few sets of nice alloy wheels stored in the garage, but I don't want them getting damaged. I couldn't find anywhere someone that did high quality covers. There are some covers out there, but they all seem a bit cheap. Then I thought there must be a market for prestigious car owners who may do track days or car shows and want to store and transport various sets of wheels. Perhaps race team owners, car dealers, etc. may have a similar need? Perhaps people might want to customise the covers with their own car marque logo, or some wording embroidered on - classy! I wanted to test this hypothesis.
- I raided a few quality car forums and asked the question, sure enough, a few people said "yes I have that need" (paraphrasing)
- I sketched out some ideas and found a friendly and cheap design student on Upwork who knocked me up some product "artists impressions"
- I created myself a website on Weebly (yes I've still not learnt to code - SL job takes up too much time)
- I published the website and pointed the "Buy" button at a "register interest form", the mentality being that an inquiry would equate to a potential conversion without having to spend large amounts of capital on actually building a product. T His is the "minimal viable product" concept that is advocated in "The Lean Startup".
- I created a Google AdWords account and drove some traffic to the site.
- I created a MailCheat(Chimp) campaign and directed an advert at Facebook to generate traffic.
- Plenty of traffic came, but......NOTHING, no inquiries. A small percentage clicked through the "buy" link, which I guess could be a classed as a synthetic sale (being optimistic). The percentage clicking through the "buy" button equated to around 3.3% - not earth shattering.
So, why I don't I share with you the website and the product? Well I will. I'm keen to get feedback, if you guys think it's a non starter then that's just as helpful and someone telling me to keep going.
If there's one thing that sticks in my mind from reading Unscripted (about 30% in so far), it's "crank, crank, crank". So do I stick at this and pile some money into actually building a product ("build it and they will come" - dangerous!), or do I crank again? Take another swing? Thoughts welcome.
Website - www.carapacer.co.uk
I've started reading Unscripted and that gave me another big kick up the arse (thanks MJ). I have been working on my idea in the last month or so, but my FL efforts were interrupted by my SL job offering me a promotion. Anyway, so far here's what I've achieved.
- Came up with an idea, not something "I love" but something there appeared to be a need for. I have a few sets of nice alloy wheels stored in the garage, but I don't want them getting damaged. I couldn't find anywhere someone that did high quality covers. There are some covers out there, but they all seem a bit cheap. Then I thought there must be a market for prestigious car owners who may do track days or car shows and want to store and transport various sets of wheels. Perhaps race team owners, car dealers, etc. may have a similar need? Perhaps people might want to customise the covers with their own car marque logo, or some wording embroidered on - classy! I wanted to test this hypothesis.
- I raided a few quality car forums and asked the question, sure enough, a few people said "yes I have that need" (paraphrasing)
- I sketched out some ideas and found a friendly and cheap design student on Upwork who knocked me up some product "artists impressions"
- I created myself a website on Weebly (yes I've still not learnt to code - SL job takes up too much time)
- I published the website and pointed the "Buy" button at a "register interest form", the mentality being that an inquiry would equate to a potential conversion without having to spend large amounts of capital on actually building a product. T His is the "minimal viable product" concept that is advocated in "The Lean Startup".
- I created a Google AdWords account and drove some traffic to the site.
- I created a MailCheat(Chimp) campaign and directed an advert at Facebook to generate traffic.
- Plenty of traffic came, but......NOTHING, no inquiries. A small percentage clicked through the "buy" link, which I guess could be a classed as a synthetic sale (being optimistic). The percentage clicking through the "buy" button equated to around 3.3% - not earth shattering.
So, why I don't I share with you the website and the product? Well I will. I'm keen to get feedback, if you guys think it's a non starter then that's just as helpful and someone telling me to keep going.
If there's one thing that sticks in my mind from reading Unscripted (about 30% in so far), it's "crank, crank, crank". So do I stick at this and pile some money into actually building a product ("build it and they will come" - dangerous!), or do I crank again? Take another swing? Thoughts welcome.
Website - www.carapacer.co.uk
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