Startup Resources
Curated list of tools for startups
TLDR: Added a classified section to newsletter, built booking process, sold out.
Last Friday I floated the idea of adding a small classifieds section in the weekly Startup Resources newsletter (issue here)
The idea was to a) obviously add a revenue stream and b) allow businesses a low cost way to get in front of their target audience.
I got a lot of positive replies and a few saying they’d be up for advertising.
At the weekend I built a simple automated booking process using google sheets, formsite and paypal. Completely stole the process from this article about how Dense Discovery automates their sponsorship. Although I didn’t need to add Zapier as well.
(It’s a mini no-code project so I get extra points 🙌😄)
On Sunday afternoon I sent an email with the link to all the people that thought classifieds were a good idea.
And waited....
Then a few minutes later.... I got a sale. Then another.
It was cool to see the paypal notifications on my watch whilst eating dinner.
I sold out yesterday’s “inventory” and a few slots into the future.
Also very happy that the booking tool didn’t fall apart.
If interested in how the classifieds look, they’re towards the end of the latest issue of the newsletter
Definitely a worthwhile exercise and I hope it works well for the advertisers.
After way too long, the startupresources.io website redesign is finished.
Why did it take too long? Could only fit in an hour here and there to work on it.
However, happy with the result and looks good / is not too slow even though it's on Wordpress.
Also, moved the email list from Revue to Mailchimp to get more control over subscribers (eg segmenting) and the design of the weekly newsletter.
After a very simple handover, closed the deal on acquiring startupresources.io website and the weekly newsletter with approx 2,800 subscribers.
Started the updating accounts to my name and preparing the first newsletter to be sent out by me.
Also, begun the planning of a website design change.
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Very interesting. Will you be measuring how people react to the change of ownership?
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Been checking stats like a hawk since I took over. So far no big changes to email opens and clicks and unsubscribes (which were all good before). Positive replies to the newsletter come in each week.
So I’ve been able to maintain the quality and now feel comfortable testing out some new ideas.
The main improvement has been the subscribe rate since the redesign of the website.
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Thanks Paul. Happy to see that the people on that list are there for the quality and you continue to deliver and strive to improve. Truly what a founder does, so I wish you the very best!
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What was the sale price?
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Congrats! FYI their is a typo in the post (missed the s in resources of the domain)
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Damn that was dumb. Was late when I added it - thanks for pointing it out. Corrected it.
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This comment was deleted 4 years ago
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TBH, I didn’t realize it was a field I could edit 😀
@robfitz makes good points but I’ve changed it to avoid confusion.
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Yes, of course, just as someone can join an existing company as a "late cofounder". The founder role is about navigating toward product-market fit and building a repeatable business model -- any early stage product will still have a huge amount of founder-level work to be done.
Semantics aside, congrats on the acquisition. I've long been curious about doing something similar myself, but haven't ever been able to get past the due diligence in a way which made me comfortable. Wish you the best with it.
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This comment was deleted 7 years ago
5 Comments
"Various use cases. But one that stood out was sending out a personalized video to new subscribers and new users. Just whip out your phone, record video and send.
It doesn't scale well, but at the beginning, making that extra effort could help connect with true fans. "
Got this from your newsletter. Why exactly doesn't this introductory video example scale well ?
Both hubspot and mailchimp allow you to automate email welcomes.
You’re making a short personalized video for each subscriber (or whatever action someone took).
It’s not a normal welcome email which, of course, is automated.
Cool. Good idea.
I'd probably go with a handwritten note with a discount voucher though.
Although you'd need to have their address.
Love this creative monetization idea! You get to keep the lights on and continue running this newsletter. You also get to support the community back. Mind if I borrowed this idea for my newsletter 🙈?
It definitely isn’t going to make me rich in a hurry but it all helps!
I like seeing classifieds in other newsletters. There’s always interesting things to find.