Your Digital Rolodex of Funnel Experts (We're Hiring)
Managing business development for ClickBank in '13-'14, and onboarding hundreds of clients, I identified the need for a platform-specific marketplace. Today, I've partnered with ClickFunnels to build their marketplace.
Our team is expanding as we're in the process of re-designing and developing a new site from scratch. There are a lot of features we're looking to add as well as re-building all the existing features in the current site. If you are a skilled Front-End developer, please get in touch!
Here is our current development stack: React, Redux, GraphQL, CSS, HTML, Node.js, AWS, Github, Stripe, PayPal.
One of the major frustrations we had with our MVP product, is that it was limited to only work through PayPal. Our PayPal account had major limitations and on every marketplace transaction, the payment would be immediately sent to us and the seller. It didn't give us the ability to place payments into an escrow account that would be released to sellers after they had completed the sale. Fortunately, most sellers continued to deliver their services, but we had a handful of instances where that wasn't the case and PayPal wasn't helpful in getting those funds back to us.
Launching with Stripe couldn't come soon enough, they have been a tremendous partner and we haven't looked back.
The first version of the marketplace, we started out by using a script from another platform. This has been both good and bad. Good in the sense that is allowed us to launch quickly to a hungry audience, bad in the sense that the script came with its own baggage and we've spent a good amount of time fixing bugs, addressing customer complaints, etc.
Russell Brunson is a good friend of mine and a partner from a previous business. In recent years, he built and has grown ClickFunnels.com to 55k+ paying customers. On his podcast, he announced they were going to launch a marketplace for his customers and call it the FunnelRolodex.com. I immediately sent him a voxer message and after a few messages back and forth, we came to an agreement and were off to the races.
After years of talking about the idea, and waiting for someone else to do it, it never happened. I knew the difficulty of starting a two-sided marketplace, recruiting both the demand and supply-side had different challenges. I knew I was capable of wearing one of the hats and was waiting for my partner to show up to wear the other. I could either focus on sales and leverage my existing network, or I could get buried into the user experience and work with the developers to build out the site. But I didn't want to do both.
After 4 years of waiting, and not seeing the idea come to life in any other marketplace, I decided it was up to me, to make it happen, so I started building out the site, with complete faith that my business partner would show up.
From 2013-2104 I was a business development manager at ClickBank.com and while onboarding hundreds of clients, I recognized the need for a platform-specific marketplace. When clients would ask for a copywriter, developer or an affiliate manager I didn't dare send them to a 3rd party outsourcing platform, so I typically turned to my own resources/connection and made as many introductions as I could, but it wasn't always enough.
Managing business development for ClickBank in '13-'14, and onboarding hundreds of clients, I identified the need for a platform-specific marketplace. Today, I've partnered with ClickFunnels to build their marketplace.