Update
- still haven't resolved the merchant issue for business charges. You wouldn't believe how slow and difficult these high risk merchant providers are. I've jumped through hoops to get approved and then to be able to connect their API to my website and in both areas they suck. I decided to stick with the original high risk merchant that approved us and try to connect it to the website. Going on 2 weeks trying to implement their API. Really mind boggling how much of a pain it is trying to communicate and get answers from their side.
- I started out emailing businesses convincing them to join our platform. I got 5 sign ups from businesses who added their offers and credit card in 2 cities within 14 days. Not bad right? Well, too slow for my style. As mentioned in my previous posts, I've gone ahead and started adding businesses and offers without their knowledge. I've been busy populating the top 50 cities across the US with offers. I've hired 3 people off upwork to work on this task with my help. I've got 2 people adding businesses to the website and 1 person researching websites and compiling them in an excel. I then add the actual offers because I need to be in control of that part. We've got over 1k businesses added and over 1500 live offers so far.
- Now that we've got a decent number of cities and businesses with offers added, I've got another worker sending out emails to similar businesses in each city convincing them to sign up by using their competitors listing as relevant proof to convince them to join. The end goal is to phase out all the "fake" offers once we get more businesses signed up and adding offers on their own. This will take awhile, but I believe its the best path forward. When people start claiming fake offers, I'll immediately email/call the companies I added and tell them and ideally get them to 'take over' the offers and pay for any future claims that come in.
- With all this going on, my mind is also on advertising. With all these offers on the site now I can start a push with advertising. The biggest goal is to get users to sign up. Once someone signs up I can send them new offers and communicate via email. As users grow, claims will start being made and I'll have proven the concept thoroughly. At that point it's just exposure, exposure exposure and adding new business users to the site to grow it even further.
- Some of my advertising angles I'm going to look at will be..
* pennyhoarder (maybe outside my budget at the moment though) + other similar sites
* bloggers/coupon crowds - get them to review my site, link to me, might have to come up with an affiliate angle for them unless I wanna pay out the butt in ad costs. Maybe get on their email blast.
* social media
* PR - gonna start a hard PR outreach introducing the website. The news loves money saving stories this time of year. *puke*
- still haven't resolved the merchant issue for business charges. You wouldn't believe how slow and difficult these high risk merchant providers are. I've jumped through hoops to get approved and then to be able to connect their API to my website and in both areas they suck. I decided to stick with the original high risk merchant that approved us and try to connect it to the website. Going on 2 weeks trying to implement their API. Really mind boggling how much of a pain it is trying to communicate and get answers from their side.
- I started out emailing businesses convincing them to join our platform. I got 5 sign ups from businesses who added their offers and credit card in 2 cities within 14 days. Not bad right? Well, too slow for my style. As mentioned in my previous posts, I've gone ahead and started adding businesses and offers without their knowledge. I've been busy populating the top 50 cities across the US with offers. I've hired 3 people off upwork to work on this task with my help. I've got 2 people adding businesses to the website and 1 person researching websites and compiling them in an excel. I then add the actual offers because I need to be in control of that part. We've got over 1k businesses added and over 1500 live offers so far.
- Now that we've got a decent number of cities and businesses with offers added, I've got another worker sending out emails to similar businesses in each city convincing them to sign up by using their competitors listing as relevant proof to convince them to join. The end goal is to phase out all the "fake" offers once we get more businesses signed up and adding offers on their own. This will take awhile, but I believe its the best path forward. When people start claiming fake offers, I'll immediately email/call the companies I added and tell them and ideally get them to 'take over' the offers and pay for any future claims that come in.
- With all this going on, my mind is also on advertising. With all these offers on the site now I can start a push with advertising. The biggest goal is to get users to sign up. Once someone signs up I can send them new offers and communicate via email. As users grow, claims will start being made and I'll have proven the concept thoroughly. At that point it's just exposure, exposure exposure and adding new business users to the site to grow it even further.
- Some of my advertising angles I'm going to look at will be..
* pennyhoarder (maybe outside my budget at the moment though) + other similar sites
* bloggers/coupon crowds - get them to review my site, link to me, might have to come up with an affiliate angle for them unless I wanna pay out the butt in ad costs. Maybe get on their email blast.
* social media
* PR - gonna start a hard PR outreach introducing the website. The news loves money saving stories this time of year. *puke*
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