My goal is not build the next unicorn, just a profitable business that could sustain me.
In that case, reselling physical goods manufactured by others is the simplest thing that might work.
For example, stand on a bustling corner with your hotdog cart (around lunch time of course). More people eat hotdogs than buy JavaScript frameworks and more people will gladly pay three bucks for a hotdog and a Mountain Dew than for a bookmark manager.
a very limited budget
If you are undercapitalized for your business idea, start a business where you are not. Running out of money is how businesses fail.
a waste of time.
Having ideas is almost always a waste of time. Ideas where the first step is spending money are usually a waste of money as well. Having ideas is easier than doing something and spending money is the easiest thing to do because shopping avoids rejection and it’s nearly impossible to fail at shopping.
I meant that you can earn enough in 2 days, and then spend the rest of your time building a product which you really want to build and get off the time-selling treadmill.
Most profitable ideas are something that solves a problem you or one of your founders and who's customers would be businesses or individuals who could save/make money using your service in their own business.
Listen to the archive starting at episode 1 Rob goes from drop shipping beach towels and jobs websites through a couple successful software products to founding and exiting with Drip.
http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/archives
I really like the strategy layed out in MJ Demarco's Millionaire Fastlane. A lucrative startup idea should have five things:
Need - There has to be a need for what you're delivering. Don't blindly do what you love or are passionate about, do what the market requests. The market doesn't care at all about what you love, they care how you can solve their needs.
Entry - It shouldn't be easy to start the business/to step in the market. If it's to easy to get into the market, it's probably way harder to succeed in that market. There's a reason why it's almost impossible for blogs to earn serious money, it's simply too easy to start one. Everyone can start one. If everyone can start up a clone of your business, it's not likely to succeed. However, if it takes some real work/investment to startup your business, it's probably a better business.
Control - You must be in control over your own business success. If somebody else can shut down your business, you're not in control. If your business is relying on API access or affiliate income from somebody else, it's not a very substainable business.
Scale - The business must be able to scale to the masses. If you're running a sandwitch cart, it doesn't matter how good your sandwitches are. You can't suddently sell 100 000 sandwitches in a day in your neighboorhood. However, if you're selling access to something online the whole world is your market and it doesn't cost you much more to sell 10000 subscriptions than it does to sell 10.
Time - The business success needs to be seperated from your time. If the business can't grow seperated from your time , it's not really a business. It's just a job you have created yourself. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't spend a lot of your time on your business, it just means that what your business earn shouldn't be connected to how much time you spend running it.
Build a business or product that is profitable by the end of January 2020
This is a sprint not a marathon. A fun challenge to do together, not something to take super seriously
Rules:
- has to be truly profitable, no matter how small of a profit. You can’t spend $100 on ads and call your $5 return a profit
- No just convincing your friends and family to buy. Has to be strangers as customers
- it can be something you’ve thought of before, but not something you’ve already started building
- Don’t get upset if someone copies your idea. This is for fun, not to become the next Facebook/Uber/Netflix
- At the end of January post what you worked on and how it turned out. Failure is always an option
Motivation:
It can be super easy, when reading stories about big startups, to only try big ideas. The truth is that some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world started small and worked there way up. As a community, let’s see what we could learn from trying a small challenge as a group
Let’s assume you want to reduce risk of capital investment and also risk of operations so we’ll rule out physical products.
That leaves us with digital products and services.
You need a business that you can sell to 20,000 people at $1 each, to 1,000 people at $20 each, 20 people at $1,000 each or 1 company at $20,000.
If you are going for the cheap value you have to mass market it somehow. Either by generating massive quality content or spending money in ads. 6 months is enough to generate leads to provide that A big enough following if you put effort into it.
If you want to go to the top bracket you will probably be in the B2B market. Since 20k is not pocket change you’ll most likely be playing the procurement game and each sale on this game can take anywhere from 3 to 12 months.
> 1. Lots of Google searching for potential keywords to see if anyone's posted about a need
That's good. Make something people want.
#2, ideally, is get some money. Like, make your first $20 ASAP in the market. There's been lots of "cool ideas" that don't make money. A lot of smart people in tech gun for a Facebook-style massive victory. But for every Facebook/Linkedin/Myspace/Youtube, there's orders of magnitude more sites than never catch on.
Or worse! They do catch on, but then you can't get any money! I imagine nothing hurts as much as being wildly popular and bankrupt. There are many of these stories.
So try to get some money fast. Money does all sorts of wonderful things in terms of letting you expand or getting some security, but most importantly, it proves that people really, truly want you're selling. And if you are going to be looking for funding, there's not many things that are going to be as good for getting quality terms as being profitable. You can wait out the right deal and you're not desperate. And one of investors' biggest fears - no market - is alleviated. Get that first $20 ASAP. It'll teach you what you're doing wrong and show you what to do next.
Edit: Also, don't do excessive planning on your first business, competitive analysis, and all that such. Your assumptions are wrong, you don't have the instincts for what people pay for yet, and competition doesn't matter when you're small. Seriously, leave the SWOT analysis for big corporations fighting over 3% market share and distribution in supermarkets. I've learned this lesson the hard way. Damn near all of that planning is useless if not validated with getting some money. Your assumptions are almost certainly wildly incorrect when not validated with the getting of money from customers.
My take is that you’re unlikely to get rich in 1 month. So instead, I would find a way to go for the long run:
- become a consultant and sell your time to cover basic needs
- invest the rest of your time into solving a problem you care about, and building a business around it. Caring is important as starting a new business is incredibly challenging and you will think of giving up often
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