SXSWi: Turning Projects Into Revenue Generating Businesses
Total rock stars on this one. One of the panels I’m looking forward to the most…
Panelists:
- Ted Rheingold (Dogster)
- Shanalyn Victor (Pixelgirlshop.com)
- Gabe Rivera (Techmeme)
- Tara Hunt (Citizen Agency)
- Ryan Carson (Carson Systems, Vitamin)
Ways People are Making Money Online
- Advertising & Sponsorships
- Adsense: Easiest way to make $50 a month.
- Sites like PlentyofFish make a ton
- Sponsorships: Great
- Annual buy, lump sum
- More concerned with brand outreach and continual presence
- Adsense: Easiest way to make $50 a month.
- Affiliate Programs
- Can’t find one good example of anyone doing it
- Selling Goods
- SuperDuper - sell software
- One person company
- Jonahtan Coulton - geeky songs
- DeviantArt - buy a print of anyone else’s art
- Piexelgirlshop - online store
- SuperDuper - sell software
- Services
- Laughing sqid webhosting - great support
- DropSend - Buying online storage
- Citizen Agency - consulting
- Business is the “Get in Touch” link
- Future of Web Apps - training
- Subscriptions, Virtual Currencies, Virtual Gifts
- DeviantArt - show advertising and say “subscribe now and don’t see this”
- Hot or Not - give virtual flowers
- Made one flower that that was $10 to make the others seem cheaper
- Ended up being the #2 cash generator
- Dogster - Zealies, earn them and give them away
- Micro-Sponsors, Donations
- Save Karyn - in debt and people bailed her out
- Ze Frank - buy a duckie. Has message attached.
- Bling Duckie - $250
- Anyone can have a gimme some candy
Start because they wanted to do it or because they though they could make money?
- Ryan: Even when passionate, think about the business model because you want to be able to keep doing it.
- Shanalyn: Did it for free until hosting costs were too much. Never realized it would actually make money.
- Tara: Need to support passions more than make money.
- Gabe: Comfortable with low range when started (resume-ware), high range was national sensation.
On Business:
- Need Mentors in Business
- Tara/Chris interested in experimenting, exploring. Perhaps hire someone for the business side.
- Invest in marketing
- Dogster’s advisor was non tech serial entrepreneur
- Who’s selling 50% of the time?
- Shanalyn is
- Tara says she and Chris incorporate it into everything they do
- Keeps them “top of mind”
- Shanalyn endorses advertising
- Tara endorses being part of the community that you serve
- Doesn’t come naturally to everyone
- Tara endorses being part of the community that you serve
How do you determine the price of what you’re selling?
- Ryan: Set a price and see if people buy it
- Make sure not to offer too much for free (came from Jason Fried)
- Tara: What are comparable products/services? What are they charging?
- If you are boutique, can charge extra
- Shanalyn: Value your time as well.
- Ted: Once you get the first sponsor, you have set your bar.
- Ryan: Do a spreadsheet and found out how much you have to make to quit your job.
- Shanalyn: Open schedule is worth a lot of money.
Exit strategies?
- Ryan has a lifestyle business, you can do it as long as you want to.
- DropSend has an exit strategy, for sale now
- Every company should be built to be sold
- Tara: To sell her company would be selling her and Chris.
- She wants to do this as long as she can
- Gabe: Has been approached and met with them, but not looking to sell
- They don’t tend to see the value the same (and not just price)
- What’s valuable about the service
- They don’t tend to see the value the same (and not just price)
- Shanalyn: Never thought of it until someone asked a month ago
- Started as a hobby, not very business oriented
- Still feel it is growing, so hasn’t evaluated
- Premise of Pixelgirl is that it is her.
- She could be consultant, but that would be boring
- Ted: Feels exit strategies are distracting
- Ryan: Read “The E Myth”
Jeremiah asks: What are the sacrifices.
- Ryan: Work 4-day week
- Works in product based business, but not service
- Ryan: Sacrifice is peace. Sometimes money just doesn’t come.
- Tara: Sacrifice security
- Early on, a lot of sacrifice of personal life
- Found they were losing what they were good at
- You don’t make sacrifices like that, you cut back on Gucci bags
- Early on, a lot of sacrifice of personal life
- Gabe: Went 2 years without a salary
- If you enjoy doing it, it’s not sacrifice
- Shanalyn: Loves what she does, always is online
- Took laptop on honeymoon.
- When nobody cares about it as much as you or is doing what you are, you can feel alone
- Took laptop on honeymoon.
- Ted: Don’t spend more money than you can afford to spend. Leave money to try the next thing.
- Tara: There are ways to do things for free.
- Software, advice, etc.
- Shanalyn: Free is good, free desktop, free widget, etc.
- Sign up, free earrings
Q: Keeping users coming back on a consistent basis?
- Tara
- Web 1.0 - Sticky pages.
- Web 2.0 - Everyone wants communities
- Go to where the community is already
Ryan:
- Now is the most exciting time to be alive and doing business because we have this amazing enabler called the web.
- If there was ever a time to succeed it is now.
- Just cover your expenses for a while.
- Doesn’t matter where you live.
Hiring:
- Ryan: Don’t hire anyone unless you REALLY eed them.
- Get to the point where you will quit or kill yourself, then hire someone
- Shanalyn: hire contractors
- Tara: Make sure you are on the same level—not someone that just wants a job.
This panel totally lived up to my expectations.
Update: Good notes from others:
Thanks for the notes. I was about to write this up myself.
I did think that this talk could have had more of a spread of appeal - the speakers were very much talking about how to start up a lifestyle business rather than looking at how you could make something which would continue to make money with ‘you’ taken out of the equation. I was hoping for more along those lines…
That’s a good observation. Perhaps if the panel had more “product makers”, it would have been more diverse. For example, Ryan even said his approach towards DropSend is much different than his approach to his other ventures. (Heck, DropSend is for sale.)
The panelists had a ton of heart and soul put into their businesses, and the businesses often relied on them. I mean… take Tara & Chris out of Citizen Agency and all you have is a name. Where if you take Ryan out of DropSend, you still have a codebase.
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