Resume Workshop

Talked to 6 different individuals and small agencies, all of whom seemed like they knew what they were doing. I chose one that's based in SoCal and is a small team of 3. Total cost will be between 8 and 10 grand over three months.

There was consensus among the 6 that I'll need to spend at least $2000/mo, maybe more, for a few months to really dial in the receptive audiences and get the CPC down.

There was also consensus that my business model can probably work on Facebook; lots of models don't. But they also said that the only real way to confirm this hypothesis is to just do it. And to do it right, you have to give it a little time and put real money toward it.

So while 8 grand is a ton of money for me as a bootstrapper, this seems like the quickest route to traction and revenue.

I've been using a great designer for Resume Workshop that I originally found via a contest on 99designs. She did the first version of the site, and post-pivot I assigned her version 2.0. We've been working for the last few weeks on those new designs, and today she delivered the final assets.

I posted the job to Upwork and within 24 hours had a number of qualified candidates submit proposals. I've lined up 6 calls over the next week or so.

In their Upwork profiles many of these candidates have screenshots of the Facebook advertising control panels of their clients, showing the low CPC/high ROAS they were able to achieve. Some of them are really impressive. Hoping it's not BS.

I've been struggling with how to get people to Resume Workshop.

I don't have the 12 to 18 months to wait for a content/SEO strategy to bear fruit. I'd looked at Google and Facebook ads earlier this year, including a few conversations that were discouraging. According to PPC marketers, the CPCs are just too high for me to realize profit if my margin-per-sale is about $39.

With the new marketplace model, however, my margins are better, between $50 and $70. After a few additional conversations, it seems this might be workable for Facebook ads.

But not without a commitment of a couple grand per month for a few months, plus the marketer's fee. Evidently it takes that amount of spend and time to gather enough data to nail down the right audiences and have Facebook's own automated ads optimization do its thing.

I'm going to try it.

The original vision of Resume Workshop was a powerful & affordable service for job seekers to receive personalized, high-value feedback on their resumes from qualified professionals like recruiters and resume writers.

You upload your resume and within 24 hours receive 3 videos, one from 3 different recruiters who have recorded themselves reviewing your resume. Each video is about 10 minutes long, meaning you receive 30 minutes of personalized, actionable feedback on your resume from a cross section of experts. Powerful, effective, and both the job seekers and reviewers loved it.

Problem is, people aren't looking for it. No one is out there saying, "I need to pay some recruiters to review my resume."

So I've decided that a faster route to revenue is providing value where people are already aware of their pain and are expecting to spend money to solve it.

In this case, that would be job seekers who have decided to work with a professional resume writer to help them prepare their resume.

Turns out there's a whole industry of resume writers. And, the industry actually exhibits a high degree of dissatisfaction among its customers. Bad reviews are all over the internet complaining about the crappy quality of the resume that was purchased. This frustration is all the more acute given that many of these unhappy customers are currently unemployed and therefore strapped for cash.

So, how to help?

A marketplace of vetted resume writers, complete with reviews and profiles. You can upload your resume and receive a brief video review from writers you like actually telling you how they would improve your particular resume. So now you've gotten to browse through a couple dozen resume writers, and you've actually seen 2 or 3 of them comment on your particular resume. You have a strong sense of exactly what each would do to improve your resume, what her approach is, and whether you feel good about her personality. You're much more confident about which writer you should work with, and consequently more confident in spending a few hundred dollars for an updated resume from that writer.

This is what Resume Workshop will now be.

Which resulted in my first sale. Granted, I still had the price on the website listed at only $5, which was artificially low while I tested. But still, I'll take it!

In mid-May I paid about 20 users to go through the entire flow of the product, then hop on the phone with me to share their thoughts on the UX and overall value. This process led to ironing out a few kinks, refining a few rough edges, and most importantly, hearing lots of glowing feedback on the product.

In early February I contacted about 8 resume writers to try doing video-based reviews. When I got their videos back, I knew the value was there. Having an expert video themselves poring over your resume and verbalizing all the places where it can be improved -- it was powerful. The value was clear.

Spent a week or so in mid-Jan interviewing resume writers to understand the business and get questions answered about how to approach the product and distribution.

Was really tempted to build it myself with the MERN stack but had to admit it was a bad use of time. Sometime in mid-December decided to build a no-code MVP, then develop something custom post-revenue.