Startup Funds

[Anon3587x]

I realized if I took a loan out my life would be easier and I could handle many problems my website faces immediately.

I'm trying to weigh my options here and I'd like your help.

Basically I'm looking to get 2700$ however I can. I'm willing to use my car as collateral ( kellybluebook values at 3850$, 99 mustang )

I'm looking for a loan that will give me 60 or 90 days before I have to start making payments on a 24 month repayment plan and I'm not looking to pay over 12% interest.

I do not know if my demands are unrealistic, but where can I find such a deal?
Do any of you have personal references?

Any good websites where I can find angels who may be interested in this sort of thing?


Thanks,

 

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[darkjediii]

What are you looking to do with the $2700?

 

[Anon3587x]

What are you looking to do with the $2700?

I want hire a programmer on odesk to look over my code and add a few things to my site (This should be 200$-300$ max)

But I'm also looking to upgrade my web hosting to a better server and pay the next few months off. I need to buy a SSL certificate, a cord for my camera and few other small expenses.

The rest is going to advertising. I'm literally going to print a ton of fliers and hand them out personally to business owners in my area. My pitch sounds something along the lines of

"Hello, check out my website, everything is free and you may find some great advertising opportunities. /shake hand"

I plan on traveling to a few functions in the bay area and in my general area where I make my web presence better known. A few fairs are coming up, I'd like to go and promote there. I have a pretty good personality, I need to engage people in person because I'm great at selling the hell out of something.

These are things I just can't do right now. This morning as I was waking up it hit me like a ton of bricks that if I had a loan I'd be able to carry out my plan more efficiently.

 

[Kung Fu Steve]

You didn't ask for advice, but I'm going to give it anyways.

Don't pursue this loan. It will just put you into debt, this is
how many new business owners get into trouble and why most
businesses fail.

You have one result you need to achieve, and one only. That is
get $$. Without $$ your business fails, you fail your customers,
you fail your clients, everything fails.

This idea came to me in the shower this morning: most people are
thinking "gosh, if I can just get noticed, then I will do amazing things"
the thought process needs to be "I will do amazing things to get noticed."

You are saying "If I can only get some money first... then I'll be able to make money."
You should be saying "I will start making money, then the money will.. be here!"

How specifically? You have the right idea. Get as many people signed up as you
possibly can. Find people with websites who have space for sale and then find
people who would buy that space. Visit, call, and e-mail. You don't need any
flyers or anything. Since your deal is no-risk, there is absolutely no reason you
should walk out of any meeting without a sale.

Once you have people looking for people to rent ad space, you visit and sell the people
who want advertising in that market the ad space!

Trust me my friend, go make the $2700 instead of borrowing it hoping you will
earn it back. It won't happen.

 

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[Anon3587x]

Trust me my friend, go make the $2700 instead of borrowing it hoping you will
earn it back. It won't happen.

I know if I can get people to lay eyes on me and I can talk to them, they will signup for the site. I can't do this empty handed. They need something physical to remember the idea by.

I believe that seo and link building is a slowlane method of advertising a website. Sure you get people to sign up scattered across the country, but what if you promoted your site in the real world heavily in one area?
I feel this is how you get solid momentum and growth.

I'm all about word of mouth and going viral.

I really want to get my site working before the elections come around. It would probably take me two months, working on top of what I already do to save 2700$.

In two months time, I could already be that much more ahead with my sites progress, as opposed to just starting.

I'm a risk taker and I'm trusting my instincts here completely.

My gut is saying do it and I believe I will be happy with the results either way.

 

[Ready2bfamous]

My suggestion is make the money. There are several things that you can quickly make the cash flow in. I know there are some people and when I was in a tough time, they taught me some of these methods to take cash in. You just have to know what you are dealing with and have a straight plan.

Taking a loan means you have to pay additional money including the seed.

There are SEVERAL methods that I know if you work it hard, you can get in little less than a few weeks than a few months. Its whether you have that mentality to take it over and make it work for you.

Good luck!

 

[FDJustin]

Well... What about a credit card? Higher interest rate than you want, sure. But the freedom to pay $81 a month (assuming 3% minimum payment on $2,700) might be worth it.
And if you qualify, and look around, there are cards with 0% interest for a time. You'll want to be sure that 0% applies to however you get the money off the card.

 

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[snowbank]

The rest is going to advertising. I'm literally going to print a ton of fliers and hand them out personally to business owners in my area.

I'm all about word of mouth and going viral.

You don't need start up funds, you need start up knowledge. Spending $2k+ on driving around giving out fliers is not what word of mouth/going viral is. You don't have a product you can go viral with yet.

I'm a risk taker and I'm trusting my instincts here completely.

Risk taking is good, but only when the odds are in your favor. You haven't set them up that way right now.

I believe that seo and link building is a slowlane method of advertising a website.

The people on the forum doing seo weren't ready for the fastlane of handing out fliers.

I think you're misunderstanding fastlane/slowlane concept. If it took someone 3 years to make 1m/yr, are they slowlane because they didn't have a chance to make that the first year- obv not. Are there faster ways to get traffic to a website- of course. So many people here are trying too hard to be labeled "fastlane" or "slowlane" that instead of learning what a great business is, they're just trying to fit a certain label.

You realize there are people on this forum about to buy a ferrari due in a big part to crushing their competitors at seo right?

 

[Anon3587x]

I'm attempting to do something different so I wouldn't expect people to be gung ho about it.

I know my website needs some tweaking but it doesn't require to much work.

With a few little switch ups it could be way more efficient. This is why I want to hire some programmers from Odesk.

My plan is only to prove my website works and can be profitable. Everything I'm doing now is to attract angel investors. I'm only targeting users and businesses in my city and general area, so SEO is pretty much obsolete (right now).

 

[JEdwards]

You realize there are people on this forum about to buy a ferrari due in a big part to crushing their competitors at seo right?

I agree with everything Snow said...

Snow, you getting a Ferrari? Let's go driving...

 

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[JEdwards]

To the op.. Handing out flyers? Really?

Please rethink this part..

What kind of free things you giving out?

 

[Kung Fu Steve]

I'm attempting to do something different so I wouldn't expect people to be gung ho about it.

I know my website needs some tweaking but it doesn't require to much work.

With a few little switch ups it could be way more efficient. This is why I want to hire some programmers from Odesk.

My plan is only to prove my website works and can be profitable. Everything I'm doing now is to attract angel investors. I'm only targeting users and businesses in my city and general area, so SEO is pretty much obsolete (right now).

You're missing the boat here brother.

No one doubts your business. It is a solid, viable business.

Everyone doubts that you need money to do this. You just don't.

How many people can you realistically talk to in a day? 10? 20 tops? A sheet of professionally copied paper costs 8 cents. 20 if you have bright colors. $1.60 for 20 black and white, $4.00 for colored ones. You can borrow that from your couch coushins.

But with so many free places to advertise you just don't need it...

Snowbank is right, you don't need money right now you need knowledge!

 

[snowbank]

Everything I'm doing now is to attract angel investors.

That's where you're messing up. Now's the time you should be focusing on building a great business. Angel investors will be easy if you have a great business.(and often not needed anymore) Change your focus.

 

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[Anon3587x]

To the op.. Handing out flyers? Really?

Please rethink this part..

What kind of free things you giving out?

I'm going to walk into every business in my city.

Hand them flier/candy and tell them about my website.

I assume they will think what the hell? and check it out.
As I'm walking from store to store, I'm going to hand fliers and candies to people walking by.

If I wake up early, I can come in contact with a lot more than 20-30 people.

I feel I can get a lot more people using my site doing this than grinding through SEO all day.

 

[snowbank]

Snow, you getting a Ferrari?

not me.

 

[JEdwards]

To be Young....

 

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[JEdwards]

not me.

That's no Fun.. I am bringing mine up in may to some Italian car show, You should come out.

 

[Anon3587x]

I am telling you guys it's going to work lol

In life I've come to realize that my ideas in which sometimes sound stupid, end up working out great.

Only time will tell, so let me work my magic and I'll show you guys what I can do.

I do appreciate the criticism by the way, if you guys didn't give a dam you wouldn't say anything.

 

[Inphinity]

I don't think anyones saying your approach *won't* work, but just trying to suggest there may be *better* options

Whichever way you end up going, I hope it works out for you! Make sure to keep us updated!

 

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[snowbank]

I am telling you guys it's going to work

Anything can "work". I could sell pencils door to door and make it "work". That doesn't mean it's an optimal way to make money. You've got everyone with more experience telling you there's better ways, and you telling them you're going to stick with your way, despite not having a clue why they're telling you what they are. You need to work on learning instead of trying to prove your way will work. 50% of your vocabulary at the stage you're at should be "why?".

It's opportunities like this that could allow you to learn and grow. You're passing the opportunity up. All I would do when I started out was pick people's brains for as long as they'd let me. It's amazing to me that instead of doing that you're just telling people your way is the one to do.

You're on the slowlane to knowledge, and it's knowledge that's going to help decide whether it will put you on the slowlane or fastlane to wealth. Right now you're passing every learning opportunity up and it's mind boggling to me.

You're branding yourself as a person who doesn't want to learn so the guys who have knowledge and could share it with you won't waste their time as they know you won't put it to use.

 

[Anon3587x]

With a site like mine the hardest part is to get life flowing through it. I feel like if I only promote it online, people will see the site has almost no posts and leave.
By going out into the real world and tying people to the idea emotionally, I feel I could get blood circulating through my database quicker than I would doing other things. The people I talk to will know who I am, and see that the site is just starting and I hope this will motivate them to help me get it going. This is my train of thought right now.

But you're right, I have not asked you guys why? or what else I could do.
Since you brought it up I am curious, what are my other options? I'd like to be as open about this as I can even if it seems like I have not been paying attention.

 

[dkt91]

If you think that having not enough posts for promoting the website online is your problem, you can easily solve it. You could start by selling as much addspace as you can yourself. Proceed by asking all your friends and relatives to do you a favor and sell theirs on your website, too. Sooner than you know, there'll be some life in your database for no cost at all. Plus you'll have most likely collected some feedback.

Also I don't think it is necessary to have tons of posts on your website yet in order to get other people to sell addspace. Surely your online promotion efforts would benefit from having some decent user/customer base, but it is by no means an absolute precondition. If your concept seems convincing to the people out there, some of them will sign up and it doesn't matter whether there are 15 or 15.000 posts in your database.

 

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[ZCP]

Why not do both.......get some money together to print a few flyers / hit the pavement AND seo like crazy? In the mean time, take snowbank's advice and ask / learn / absorb. To add to the brainstorm for you, maybe business cards instead of flyers?? Let them know you solve their problem and to call you anytime...

 

[sharky]

An idea I've seen for relatively small amounts of startup funding is kickstarter.com. You can check them out and see what criteria they have, but i believe it is a community of investors and startups where you put your idea out to them and see who's interested in helping out.
That being said, anything you can do to avoid seeking or taking loans or investor $$ at this point until you have traction in the marketplace would be more beneficial to you in the long run.

 

[Rem]

Solution: Can you develop an affiliate program? Find people/sites that you would advertise on and instead approach them with your affiliate program. If they believe in your product they will advertise for free in exchange for a percentage of sales.

 

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[Anon3587x]

ZCP ,after all the SEO talk yesterday I decided to check out some keyword hits. I was astonished to find one of my major search terms that is completely relevant to my site, was getting 60k hits a month and had almost no competition.

I started optimizing my site for this word and others last night.

To start, my site is completely free. I'm not even trying to make any sales right now . I just want to get the site pumping blood.

Kickstarter.com requires your project has a beginning and end, they do not fund business startups if I remember right.

 

[TK1]

If you think 2700 bucks will make the difference between make your business work or not, you have a problem...

 

[hatterasguy]

My 2 cents for what its worth.

I'm not really familiar with internet business but with brick and mortar I am. If you already have a pretty good business starting up it will attract investors. If the investment is good money will want to flow to it. Also $2,700 is nothing, if your business is on the right track you should be able to get that easily, and probably a lot more. Just imagine what you could do with $30k!

IMHO listen to the above advice and try to get the business working first before you take on debt. This is a mistake I have seen a lot of new start ups make, they over leverage and than choke on it and fail. When starting a new venture like this for the first time you have to boot strap it and make it work before you get money, its not the other way around.

Besides handing out flyers is damn near free, go get some made up and walk around. Shouldn't cost more than $200 max. Walking into businesses is also difficult since most of the time you will not get a decision maker and your flyer will go right into the trash. You need to talk to decision makers the secretary is a waste of your time.

 

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[rexxkai]

thank you to everyone for all the great knowledge!!!

i learned to:
1)not take debt until the business is making money
2)listen to the advice of the more experienced ppl who have been there done that and have a better solution to my problems
3)take risks only when the odds are in your favor

 

[valuegiver]

Basically I'm looking to get 2700$ however I can. I'm willing to use my car as collateral ( kellybluebook values at 3850$, 99 mustang )


I'm looking for a loan that will give me 60 or 90 days before I have to start making payments on a 24 month repayment plan and I'm not looking to pay over 12% interest.

2.7k is not a big sum of money. If you can't come up with 2.7k, you'd better get a job.

With a site like mine the hardest part is to get life flowing through it. I feel like if I only promote it online, people will see the site has almost no posts and leave.

It seems that you are building a forum. My suggestion is black hat that works.

Go and get synonym database or any semantic web stuff (think latent semantic indexing). Scrape the competitors. Change the words, and insert the posts into your database gradually according to post time. If Google sees that you dump 1 million pages in one day, they will think that your a$$ is made of lies.