BC STARTUPS

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Jordan O'Connor
@jdnoc 4 years, 10 months ago 827 views

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This is the blueprint I've followed to build my own business/income in ~4 years. This is how I learned to make websites + apps, learned SEO, learned how to write well, and how to grow my SaaS product.

👇

Get your time right by eliminating most entertainment and leisure.

Produce (work) more than you consume (watch/read/listen to entertainment).

Work intentionally, have fun intentionally, create a balance that you control. Free up a few (3-4) hours a day.

Use that new time to build new skills + knowledge by doing work for free for other people.

Do free work that helps save them time, make them money, or save them money (things that people will pay for).

Do a bit every day. Because it's free, there's less pressure to perform

Enhance learning by purchasing courses, reading books, and taking action to learn those skills by applying them to the free work you're doing.

Figure out what you like to do and what you don't like to do (do more of what you like to do and less of what you don't).

Figure out what works and what doesn't work (there's definitely a lot of advice out there that doesn't work or is contextual to the environment it works in).

Combine and use those new skills for your own profit by helping other people and charging them money.

Customize your work to enhance your strengths (things you like doing) and mitigate your weaknesses (things you don't like doing).

Build an income by either providing a service (get paid by the hour)

A productized service (get paid for the work regardless of how long it takes)

Or my favorite, a product (you spend lots of time up-front to build and then sell repeatedly).

A service is easier to grow and get paid, but harder to scale beyond yourself (there's limited hours in a day).

A product is harder to grow and get paid for, but can scale far beyond yourself without much work/time on your end.

Once you learn the skills, you have them forever. Just Keep building, learning, growing, and helping people.

Learn from mistakes and keep pushing through failures. New problems are good, it means you're growing.

It took me about 2 years of helping people to learn the skills, and about 2 years of building before my income replaced my (then) day-job salary.

https://t.co/2FPqgc7OJ4

More from Jordan O'Connor

Jordan O'Connor
@jdnoc

Getting started with SEO 101:

If you to start getting some organic traffic from Google, but don't know where to start, here's how I recommend getting started.

I'll outline:

- On Site SEO
- Basic KW Research
- Longtail Traffic
- Content Approach

Let's go 👇

SEO is about trust.

Everything stems from trust.

If Google trusts your site, it will promote you to searchers.

If people trust your title(s), they'll click your links.

If people trust the content they are reading, they'll share & give backlinks.

Trust signaling is the goal.

How do you signal trust to Google?

- Fast page loads.
- Great user experience.
- Natural, human generated content.
- Bot readable content.
- Good schema structure.
- Long page dwell times.

Basically, providing great content and a great experience gives you a leg-up.

In search results, Google keeps track of these signals:

1. CTR (Click Through Rate) - When people see your titles, do they click them?

2. Bounce Rate - Do people immediately leave after clicking the link?

3. Page Dwell Time + Scroll Distance - Do people read your content?

Here's what you want:

High CTR
Low Bounce Rate
High Dwell + Scroll

✅ People are attracted to your titles.

✅ They actually make it to your fast-loading site.

✅ They stick around and read the content.

Check these boxes and you'll have a great foundation.

Jordan O'Connor
@jdnoc

How to build an audience using a content flywheel

(how people like @SahilBloom, @JamesClear and @jackbutcher build massive attention & audiences)

👇 👇 👇

This model is used widely, but is often overlooked because it takes time (years), effort, and focus.

It's not "sexy". It's hard.

The great thing about building an audience using a content flywheel is that you can learn everything as you go.

Here's the steps:

1. Write concise, valuable content on very specific topics.

2. Publish those pieces natively on a platform.

3. Bundle the specific topics into larger "pillar" content.

4. Promote pillar content to capture & convert attention.

5. Engage w/ audience throughout.

6. Repeat.

Here's what happens:

The smaller pieces of content demonstrate expertise, knowledge, and clarity. Fans promote them.

The pillars demonstrate vision, authority, and value beyond the knowledge published.

The pillars attract outside traffic and convert traffic to followers/fans.

begins publishing articles on his website convering specific topics related to habits, productivity, etc.

He then bundles those articles into pillar content that attracts massive SEO traffic.

He then converts that traffic to his email list (which just hit 1 MM).

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Jordan O'Connor
@jdnoc

SEO helped me generate over $350k in the last three years (over $200k in 2020 alone).

Indiehackers that focus on SEO tend to have more success than those who don't.

I'll break down what makes it so valuable.

THREAD

1. Demonstrated Demand 🗣

If people are searching for a solution to the problem they have, there's demand for a product that solves that problem.

There's no guessing. You can see the search volume for different markets to determine its size.

People want what you're selling.

2. Search Intent 🔍

SEO is so different from social media, simply because the people typing in keywords are warmer leads.

If you're on FB and see a promotion, it's mildly annoying. If you're on Google, you're looking for that thing anyways.

They're ready to buy something.

3. Ownership 👑

You hear it all the time - people say to write on your own blog, host your own email list, etc.

SEO allows you to do just that. It drives traffic to the most valuable assets you have. You don't need other platforms.

You can do whatever you want on your website.

4. Traffic Value 💰

I pay ~$2.5k/month for 3k clicks using Google search ads.

I also get an average of 250 clicks/day through SEO, working out to be 10500 clicks/month.

That's ~$8750 in free traffic every month.

Jordan O'Connor
@unindie

Another month flew by. Here's your @closettools September stats!

MRR: $13475.49 (+6.90%)
Organic: 4633 (+7.47%)
Trials: 237 (+21.54%)
New Customers: 146 (+5.0%)

If you're just getting started Indie-hacking, this thread is for you.

I'll tell you how to get here.

THREAD 🔥👇

Market 💹

The market you chose is the most important facet of your Indiehacker journey. It doesn't have to be the best market, it just has to be right for the thing you want to build.

Pick a market that is growing, has needs that are paid for, and has demand for your product.

Product 👚

Start with your MVP and iterate slowly and intentionally. Introduce features at a good clip, but don't sacrifice quality.

Do your testing. Ship excellence. Write your documentation. Design with the user in mind.

Your customers will trust you.

Ideas 💡

It's true, ideas are worth nothing. Execution is all that matters.

However, your product idea(s) should solve problems.

It should make your customers more money, save them time, or both.

Make things that give them more of what they care about.

Patience 🧘‍♂️

It has taken me 3 years to learn the skills I needed to make this product (business). And another 1.5 years to get the product to the revenue it's at now.

This is a long-term game. Build valuable skills. Put your head down and execute.

Jordan O'Connor
@jdnoc

My blueprint for transitioning from employment to entrepreneurship

👇 👇 👇

If you're looking to have more control over your life, finances, and future, keep reading. This is for you.

First, I'll talk about why someone would want to transition from employment to entrepreneurship.

Employment is fine. It works for the majority of people as a way to generate sustainable income and live a decent life.

Entrepreneurship isn't for everyone. If you don't desire it above most things, you won't stick with it long enough to succeed.

The first thing most people bring up when talking about employment vs. entrepreneurship is risk.

People assume it's risky to start a business, and that a traditional paycheck is a safer option for providing for your family.

There are many risks pursuing entrepreneurship, but there is no risk in *starting* a business.

You can start a business while still being employed. Then, if it fails you're not totally destroyed. You can try again.

Many see failing as a risk, but it's just part of the journey.

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$Corey Haines \U0001f4a1$

Corey Haines 💡...
@coreyhainesco

A couple months ago, I got an email out of the blue from someone I had never met or heard about.

Today, that person co-hosted a webinar with me that had over 470+ registered and 130+ live

👇 Quick lesson on how to successfully pitch partnerships and co-marketing opportunities

How did he get in contact with me?

He sent a cold email, but not just any email. It was clearly personal, relevant, and conversational.

Lesson: Notice the language he used and how he tied it back to previous webinars.

Not only was it well written, but I could also easily judge if he'd be a good fit based on the article he wrote and linked to.

It's SUPER well-written and proved that he knew what he was talking about.

Lesson: Make your "ask" as easy as possible to consider.

There were three things that made the webinar a big success:

1. Tyler sent the webinar to his email list and did a lot of promotion.

2. He prepared ahead of time and put a lot of work into the deck, even incorporating some Baremetrics assets and references.

3. He had fun

Super appreciate all the work @TylerHakes put into today's "SEO for SaaS"

If you missed it, here's the recording:

Massimo Di Berardino
@Massimokris

@_shahedk @buzz_chronicles save as startups

@buzz_chronicles @buzz_chronicles save as startups

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Ryan Caldbeck
@ryan_caldbeck

1/ Tuesday was my last day as CEO of @CircleUp. I’ve been CEO since starting the co. in 2011 with my co-founder @roryeakin.

This is a thread about what happened, why and my emotions about it. For more detail:

https://t.co/vYImcm1bTM

Much of this I have never talked about.

2/ My goals: I hope it helps founders feel less lonely than I did. Little public content about the challenges of transitioning exists, but I longed for it. I’m not here to provide a playbook- just to share my experience. Hope it might build greater empathy.

Here goes….

3/ Why: When I tell people that I’m transitioning to an Exec Chairman role their first question is always: “why?” Short answer: co. pivot + fertility issues + health issues + a false sense that grit was always the answer = burnout. Long answer: is longer so hang in there with me

4/ Over a 12-18 month period that ended in late 2017 I ran my tank far beyond empty for far too long. You know that sound your car makes when it’s sputtering for more gas? It was like that. Worst year of my life. Since then it has felt like bone on bone.

5/ Here is what happened:

Professionally: pivoting a Series C company was a living hell in and of itself, as I’ve talked about before.

1/ We Pivoted a few yrs ago. This is the story- mostly my feelings. It has never been told publicly.

This will be rambly and represents the chaos in my head at the time. There is [hopefully] no advice here. I don\u2019t know if we did it right.
— Ryan Caldbeck (@ryan_caldbeck) April 16, 2019

Marketing Examples
@GoodMarketingHQ

🔥 I got 2000 new subscribers from my Product Hunt launch

THREAD...

Last week I launched Marketing Examples to Product Hunt.

✔️ 1,500+ upvotes
✔️ Product of the Week
✔️ Email list grew from 1,300 to 3,300

This is the step by step account of how I did it

Step 1 - Don't launch straight away

23rd May 2019 Marketing Examples v1.0 went live. The site had a few case studies, several bugs, and an email box which didn’t convert well.

The old version of me would have thrown it on Product Hunt straight away. But I decided to wait.

Why?

1) I didn’t want to waste my “turn” with the very first iteration of my site.

2) I didn’t want to launch in a vacuum. Product Hunt multiplies current momentum. Having a small following of “fans” on launch day goes a long way.

So I set myself a target.

✔️ 1000 email subscribers
✔️ 1000 twitter followers

And then I would launch. 70 days later I hit my target.

It was showtime.

Gagan Biyani
@gaganbiyani

At Udemy, we were 3 first-time entrepreneurs trying to raise seed capital. We made every mistake in the book.

We got 200+ no’s and wasted 12 months fundraising.

We eventually pulled through, just barely. 😅

This thread shares our mistakes as lessons for founders.

**Read On**

We built an impressive product, but we were nobodies.

We thought: we need money to build our vision, so let’s go talk to some investors.

WRONG.

Nobody gave a fuck that we needed money. We needed to prove we deserved their money.

We met some associates and intermediaries who might introduce us to investors.

Few decision-makers wanted to meet with us.

We should’ve stopped there.

If getting meetings is hard, it will take you forever to raise.

Instead, spend your time building product + getting traction.

I was frustrated with investors: treated them as adversaries who asked dumb questions. My derision turned them off.

Learn to understand and appreciate investors. Follow them on Twitter, listen to podcasts from @HarryStebbings or @eriktorenberg.

An investor's job isn't easy.

They kiss a ton of frogs just to find one deal that may make them money 10 years from now.

They only win if you become a billion dollar company.

Don’t kid yourself - if you aren’t the right fit, bootstrap.

Risk-adjusted, bootstrapping can make you happier and more successful.

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$Andrey \uf8ff Azimov$

Andrey  Azimov
@AndreyAzimov

The best way to know if people like your product is NOT:

- Have a lot of emails in the waiting list
- Become #1 on PH
- Become #1 of HN or Reddit
- Have people that saing "I'll pay"
- Have a lot of free users

The best way to know if they're actually pay for it.

The only thing that matters is your product providing a value, and you can't know this until people will pay money for it.

We can have a first signal of a product/market fit after the launch by check how many sales we've got in the first 24h. Some scale:

200+ This has a high potential.
100+: This has a potential.
50+: Some people need it.
10+: People almost don't need it.
0+: People don't need it.

This is for a single time payment product. For a subscription probably it should be less because people hate subscription.

And obviously, you should have a lot of traffic like 3-5k+.

Here is a stat for my products (macOS apps) for the first 24h after the launch:

$Dr Fish Philosopher Todd (Dr FPT)\U0001f41f$

Dr Fish Philosopher To...
@ZoeSTodd

1. I was walking in the woods yesterday and I had an epiphany. It wasn’t one I wanted to have. I was thinking about today’s class, where we are reading Kimmerer’s ‘Gathering Moss’. I’ve taught Braiding Sweetgrass in multiple classes every year since 2016. It’s eminently teachable

2. Both books are beautifully written. Students uniformly enjoy them as assigned reading. They do a great job communicating to non-Indigenous folks the contours of basic Indigenous relationships to more-than-human beings. They’re wildly popular with white readers.

3. I’ve found Braiding Sweetgrass to be a great entry point for non-Indigenous folks to Indigenous scholarship. But this is where yesterday’s epiphany comes in. Neither Braiding Sweetgrass or Gathering Moss tends to the deep deep lineages of Indigenous scholarship in Canada or US

4. As the popularity of ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ has soared, I’ve seen more and more white folks wax on about ‘braiding knowledge’. But they often don’t know any of the lineages of these concepts beyond what is presented in this one book. They confidently run with this.

5. Kimmerer does a commendable job of weaving in her own experiences, her family stories+nods to some very important knowledge keepers who deserve to be celebrated for their work. But Braiding Sweetgrass does not tend to the citational politics Sara Ahmed & others teach us about

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Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1

SRI KALAHASTI KSHETRAM, CHITTOOR (AP)
#bharatmandir

Panchbhootasthalam representing vayu element, also called Dakshin Kailasha.
As per Shiva’s boon, Vayu is incarnated here as Shiva and worshipped as Kalahasteeswara.
The kshetram is also associated with Rahu and Ketu.

The Kshetram is named after 3 devotees of Shiva- a snake, spider and elephant who worshipped a lingam in the forest. Elephant did jal abhishek with water from its trunk, spider protected it from dust by weaving a web on it and snake adorned it with his jewel.
@GunduHuDuGa

Once, the web and jewel got washed away when elephant sprayed water on the lingam. Angered snake entered elephant’s trunk and bit him but died in the process. The agitated elephant trampled the spider accidentally. Shiva gave moksha to all three.

Hence the name-Sri for Spider, kaal for snake n hasti for elephant.

Shiv bhakt Kanappa is said to have plucked his own eye to put it on the lingam here when he saw blood oozing from the eye on the lingam
This place is the ultimate location for Rahu Kethu Sarpa Dosha Nivarana.

$Andrey \uf8ff Azimov$

Andrey  Azimov
@AndreyAzimov

The best way to know if people like your product is NOT:

- Have a lot of emails in the waiting list
- Become #1 on PH
- Become #1 of HN or Reddit
- Have people that saing "I'll pay"
- Have a lot of free users

The best way to know if they're actually pay for it.

The only thing that matters is your product providing a value, and you can't know this until people will pay money for it.

We can have a first signal of a product/market fit after the launch by check how many sales we've got in the first 24h. Some scale:

200+ This has a high potential.
100+: This has a potential.
50+: Some people need it.
10+: People almost don't need it.
0+: People don't need it.

This is for a single time payment product. For a subscription probably it should be less because people hate subscription.

And obviously, you should have a lot of traffic like 3-5k+.

Here is a stat for my products (macOS apps) for the first 24h after the launch:

Patrick McKenzie
@patio11

So the cryptocurrency industry has basically two products, one which is relatively benign and doesn't have product market fit, and one which is malignant and does. The industry has a weird superposition of understanding this fact and (strategically?) not understanding it.

If everyone was holding bitcoin on the old x86 in their parents basement, we would be finding a price bottom. The problem is the risk is all pooled at a few brokerages and a network of rotten exchanges with counter party risk that makes AIG circa 2008 look like a good credit.
— Greg Wester (@gwestr) November 25, 2018

The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.

This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.

The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."

This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.