Making a presence on the web
Making a presence on the web while bootstrapping
Everything in life that you will try to do will seem a lot easier than it really is. The rule of thumb in business (sometimes you find out the hard way) is that all work to be done will take twice as long, will give you three times the headaches, and cost you four times as much as you expected.
The key is to learn from every business experience that happens whether it’s right from the beginning on formulating an idea to testing it out to see if it’s a feasible business. This recently happened to me the other day as I have a good friend named Marc who is home from industrial design school in San Francisco, California and we discussed my idea of creating a new digital Brannock device (the thing that measures your feet that hasn’t changed since 1926). The problem is like many other business ventures is why build a better mousetrap?
Well on a mission to see if this was a mousetrap worth retrofitting we sketched out a few drawings, asked friends for their inputs, ideas, and feedback, followed by going to shoe departments as well as local shoe stores to speak with sale representatives to gain their perspective on the feasibility of such a product, a need for it as well as other problems the retail shoe sector has that could be solved and how a device as simple as the Brannock device could help.
In the end we concluded that the device hasn’t changed EVER because it was ample, worked well and is nearly obsolete in shoe stores today due to many shoes being made in off sizes and the mass majority of people actually knowing what shoe size they are.
So how does all of this relate to bootstrapping and making a presence on the world wide web? Great question. When I started to learn about search engine optimization I had no idea of how the search engines work, how much effort goes into a website, and what would soon follow.
Going back over 5 years ago a friend of mine told me of a business where your able to consult on sports betting much like a stock broker consults their clients on what stocks to purchase. I told him not even the Schaub from stump the Schaub knows more about sports than he and that would be a great business for him. Fast forward to learning more about the internet and a website is built and a business launched.
Problem # 1 – We started off with a pittance that we had to opt to make payments to the programmer which bought us more time to raise capital from our jobs but this prevented us from advancing from the get go.
Problem # 2 – You will always have a lot of bugs to be worked out that you can’t expect a smooth ride from the get go but many first time website/business owners will think otherwise so be prepared to pay up to fix errors and make changes even if this means draining the businesses early rainy day fund you may not have a logical choice.
So now onto the fun part. You are sure to blow threw money in the beginning trying to figure out what works well and what doesn’t for advertising. We found that you will have a lot of sponsorship opportunities for banners and text ads but many of them will be too expensive for what you receive in return on a conversion ratio. All of our advertising efforts from the first 3 months of business seem to be a waste now but are nothing more than a business expense and learning experience which could have only been learned one way and that’s how it was taught.
Now that we are running lean and mean we have forced ourselves to bootstrap by cutting out fixed costs that were not essential. The only essential costs a website should have in the beginning is what it costs to host on a server and well that’s all I can think of. Everybody else should be working to get the company off the ground not to get yourself off the ground so the company can maybe become a profitable entity.
Participation, communication, being ethical, honest, and friendly have been the deal maker. Reaching out to similar businesses have really helped because as we grow your competitors see you not as competition but as allies that are helping each other out. Whether it’s been us swapping email lists, phone numbers of leads, or trading articles sharing is the key to success. It’s similar to having a great business idea and never telling anybody about it. It will forever remain a great idea locked in the vault and nobody will ever benefit.
Going to forums and participating as a knowledgeable member of the community and building reputation points has really benefited the readers and our website because we end up getting free back links from others who like our site and see us as a helpful recommendation. About us I stumbled upon and have found helpful wiki’s are really useful for informing those who may not know about your business. Finally social bookmarking and writing a plethora of articles on many subjects related to the sports world has made a huge difference in our search engine and referral traffic.
When you don’t have a choice many jump to desperate measures. While we didn’t jump to desperate measures we just allotted what we could play with and had to figure out how to successfully bootstrap when our competitors where playing with 6 figure budgets we were trying to figure out how to play with $60.00 and thus far our no choice model has carried through as profits have risen and the model of bootstrapping is being proven to work.
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I'm Cooper, and my website is CoopersPick.com.
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