Student Upstart

In another 5 days after hitting 500 views, I managed to double the amount of traffic to my site.

Again, I did not expect to get 1000 site views so quickly, but I made sure that I had all essential email subscription forms and lead magnets set up.

Currently, the bounce rate is really high (close to 65%) because of a lot of people getting directed to the site because of my LinkedIn page instead of blog posts that I share.

I'm currently focused on writing long-form content and optimise it for SEO so that more people actually find the site for the content, instead of just clicking through because they found the idea interesting.

After having the site up for under 2 weeks, studentupstart.com received 500 views in the month of April.

I was not expecting to get much traffic, but I found that targeting the platforms where it's easy to drive people to your site (LinkedIn and Facebook worked the best for me) worked the best.

I also had people in my extended network share it around a bit because they supported my vision of inspiring more students to explore the world of entrepreneurship.

The feedback that I received from all the people that visited the site was incredibly positive! A lot of people shared their problems as a young entrepreneur and gave my suggestions for what other topics I could cover.

To my surprise, I managed to get 50+ email subscriptions in under 24 hours after launching. This was extremely motivating and gave me even more proof that a platform like this was needed right now.

After receiving feedback and insight from the small group of people I had released the site to initially, I spent the following four days working hard to fix any bugs, typos and adding a few pages here and there.

When I was confident that all buttons were working, the email subscription form was set up, and the site was loading fine on all devices, I decided to go ahead with the big launch.

I set up social media accounts for Student Upstart on all platforms and then proceeded to share what I was working on. I shared it within my circles as well and some of my friends shared it around too!

After spending another week polishing the content, setting up an email list service, and various other small features here and there, I was ready to share my idea and site with the "real world" so to speak.

I messaged other student entrepreneurs within my network, gave them a short intro to what I was doing, and asked if this was something that would interest them.

Most of the people I approached were super excited about this, some even wanting to partner up! I shared my site details with them and had 100 site views on the same day!

After spending perhaps a little too much time working on writing content, creating logos and graphics, setting up WordPress and designing the website, Student Upstart was finally live.

I shared the link with a few close friends and family, and I got a lot of great feedback (taken with a grain of salt though, those close to you will always want you to succeed (: )

Now that the site was finally live, I felt the gears turning and I was ready to work 10x harder than I was earlier.

Fast forward to 11th months later. I had already come to terms with the fact that my platform for student entrepreneurs was never going to come to fruition.

I was stuck at home because of quarantine, and I kept hearing chatter among my social circles about how people wanted to start projects or work on some initiative during this time, but don't know where to start.

I again grew frustrated because I KNEW that if I had started my platform earlier, I would be able to serve this rapidly growing audience of young people who want to start their own businesses and take a non-traditional route.

Well, after a long conversation with my Dad about how it's better to start now and see where it goes, instead of twiddling my thumbs and wishing I had started earlier, I was determined to get back to work on this project.

The first plan of action was to register a domain, I had my mind set on studentstartup.com, which was unfortunately taken. My dad then suggested Student Upstart, which turned out to be a much better name and had a bit of edge to it as well.

With that, studentupstart.com was registered, and we were ready to get back to work!

The idea for Student Upstart came about on a car ride home with one of my friends.

We had been working on our own startup at the time and were having some issues with it at the time. While discussing solutions and insights, we realised that a lot of the startup advice that was relevant to adult entrepreneurs was not as applicable to students.

We started going through all the lessons that we learnt through our entrepreneurial journeys and jokingly suggested that we ought to write a book.

When I got home, I was scrolling through my favourite blog, CollegeInfoGeek, when it hit me.

Why stop at a book? Why not create a central platform for student entrepreneurs? It could serve as a hub for all sorts of content, resources, and tools that are relevant to young founders.

I spent the next week working tirelessly on structuring it, coming up with ideas and doing research. I was riding the initial "honeymoon phase" of startups that most of us know too well.

Sadly, as with a lot of projects, it ended up being put on the back burner as I had more "important" things to take care of, such as school and college applications.