Internet Only Business

Heya All,

Just curious to know if anyone here operates an internet only business?

If so what is it? How much effort is required? Does it provide a good income stream?

I am currently developing a passion project which stage1 development has nearly finished. My wife laughs at me because I tell her it’s a free platform....she doesn’t get why I would do that.

I try to explain to her it’s a passion project and “If you build it they will come” meaning the database is what holds the value.

Keen to hear what’s out their!

 

Any more information on what you are working on @albanga? e.g. industry, problem you are solving, etc.

My wife and I are working on a mental health / wellness startup.

If so what is it? Secure Nest (securenest.org), an online platform providing a range of tools which empower individuals to change negative life patterns and get their core emotional needs met in everyday life. It can be used by therapists with their clients or independently as a self-education tool by individuals.

How much effort is required? We have been working on it for around 3 years. I've never added up the hours spent on it. My wife and I have been working on it part time alongside full time work. Effort can range from 5-10 hours during a slow week (creating some social media content, blog posts and general customer service) to 30+ hours in a week when I was working with the developers most nights to get our recent updates completed and launched.

Does it provide a good income stream? Not yet. We are working on product-market fit.

 

That’s amazing Guest!
Site looks great and it’s a fantastic cause, so a huge congratulations to you and your wife. You should be very proud of your achievement.

It sounds like a lot of hard work and hours have gone into it. Are you starting to find traction?
What marketing strategies do you employ?

I feel embarrassed discussing mine given what your doing .

Mine is a sports tipping website. Different to traditional tipping though as I am combining an extensive database of sports around the world. Users are able to select And combine sports to build their very own custom competitions to compete against their mates.

I don’t want it to be a betting/gambling site though. I want it to be accessible to anyone and everyone. I basically want to give people a platform to easily create these and have a bit of fun.

If it takes off then down the track I’ll look to leverage the database for something. For now though it’s just a side pet project.

The site is in Beta so cant share anything just yet

 

Thank you

We are starting to see some traction (still small numbers) since opening up the platform with a range of new features which we soft launched in August and officially launched in September:



We have been working on it for 3 years, but until this recent launch it was very much an MVP. We spent most of 2016 working on a pilot study and tweaking some of the basic features based on the results. Then in 2017 we went looking for additional funding (we financed the initial development ourselves) and threw ourselves into the startup community (local entrepreneurial programs such as eChallenge, Venture Catalyst & SAYES). The first half of 2018 we spent working with our developers on the features we planned while going through these programs. We now feel more comfortable doing some more marketing as the platform is much more flexible and open than it was. Most of the marketing we have done so far has been the time intensive/low cost kind, content creation (with specific keyword aims in Google) via blog / newsletter, social media, engaging therapists directly through various social media or email groups, we've been to a couple of international conferences to present on it. We have spent a little on boosting posts / Facebook ads, but not more than a few hundred dollars. We've been working with a marketing company who helped us with our press release for the launch and got a little bit of media coverage. We have some funds that we could throw at marketing / ads, but I feel it's a bit early and we have other priorities.

Sounds interesting. I'm sure there would be plenty of paths to monetising that data / group without needing to go down the gambling route. Looking forward to updates

 

Quick question - who did you use to produce your site video? I've been looking into options for mine and wouldn't mind a second opinion.

 

Well I would consider myself the producer
My wife and I came up with the script
We hired someone from Fiverr to do the voice over (link to artist)
Then I created the animations in GoAnimate, now Vyond (Vyond) to match the script / audio <- was time consuming, but easier than you might think
And added some royalty free music for backing (Royalty Free Music by Bensound), edited in with Camtasia

 

Awesome thank you,
That really helps. Total cost wouldn't have been much either I assume.
Had been quoted between 2-5k for a video company to create one.

 

That sort of pricing is exactly why we opted to do it ourselves. I think the cheapest I saw which would have been passable quality was US$1000 (for offshore development).
Cost of voice over and 1 month on GoAnimate was under $200 and then we paid another ~$200 to get some advice from the marketing company we are working with when editing the video.
Editing the video myself probably took around 8-10 hours.

 

I have a client with a full net based business. Its a referral business. He basically hosts ads. How can that make $$ ? People chasing cheap deals and discounts use the web and he gets a fee. He matches buyers and sellers who sign up. 100% Free. And some of them are real great unadvertised deals...Big names too. Sony, Big W, Qantas, Maccas etc People sign up and choose preferences and get reminders and daily tips rather than spam. Its a full time job but makes a mint. And its all in the cloud. Great lifestyle but it does mean nights and day become a blur and so he has to know when to just shut the laptop. It works that way. He can walk away and take a day off and he still makes $$$...Think $500K a year profit. His problem is costs dont go up. Just the income. And the tax. Doesnt even employ anyone. No rent.

Booking.com is also a free platform (well it is for the consumer). Google said....Booking Holdings reported earnings of US$2.341 billion, with an annual revenue of US$12.681 billion, an increase of 18.0% over the previous fiscal cycle. Booking's shares traded at over $1,998 per share, and its market capitalization was valued at over US$84.1 billion in October 2018.

Ebay is free for buyers (sort of), so is Facebook...Free stuff can still make money. Look at Google. Funfact : If Google was allowed in China the value of the company would double.

 

@Paul@PFI I have heard of others who have created similar things. No employees, referral based businesses which generate serious $$$$.

I think a lot of people tend to focus too much on how to generate $$$ as opposed to just doing something they enjoy. If you put your passion and hard work into it then that can usually fall into place.
I know with my platform I will never charge a fee. Honestly I just want people to use it and enjoy it. If I can get a few thousand random people using it then I will be stoked!
If somehow that turned into tens of thousands and I could get a revenue stream then amazing.

 

How is it coming along @albanga, any developments?

 

Heya Mate,
Yeah 2 weeks ago I released the platform only to a group of around 50 friends running my first beta competition.
I learnt a lot in the process and have a number of changes/fixes to implement. I knew around 90% of them but it was good to get general feedback as well.

I knew the importance of mobile but even I underestimated how critical is would be even for my first beta release. My site is Responsive however due to time restraints my developer needed to introduce some “cards” that broke the sites responsiveness on the critical tipping page. Trying to get even friends to participate without mobile was a huge challenge.

The next phase will be making all those changes and then I will run another comp with hopefully a larger audience. I’m thinking it will probably be the cricket World Cup. When that is ready I might open it up to a few of my PC family like yourself

How is your site tracking? Any new updates?

 

Yes it's tricky with mobile, we need to make some improvements on our platform even though it works fairly well on mobile devices. Mobile + tablets makes up just under 50% of our traffic, so it's critical to get right. I would think a tipping site might even have a higher % on mobile.

Interested to have a look and play, but I don't watch any sports so probably not the target market unless you introduce some tipping around other markets... maybe you could introduce some tipping around house price movements to appeal to the PC crowd?

We were accepted into an accelerator program recently.

Aiming to secure seed funding this year..

 

WOW that’s incredible! A massive congratulations to you for al your hard work. It really sounds like the traction is building.

Can you provide details on what the accelerator program means? Is it recognition, support, funding?
Be sure to let us al know more about the Seed Funding when the time comes

Regarding my site, mobile is definitely key. When it gets released to the public I imagine majority of traffic will come from a mobile device.

Haha regarding your tipping idea. TBH the platform is capable of anything like that and in the early stages I did plan on detaching the site from sport with the idea that anyone could tip on anything they want. I had to reign it in though and just focus on a specific market, even though sport is still very broad.
With that said heck I could run a tipping comp on the general market for the PC family. A lot of people on here talk the talk. A 12 month comp predicting where each states market sits would show who also walks the walk....watch this space.

 

Accelerators are run in various ways, but effectively it is an acceleration of your startup through regular workshops / education / mentoring / sprints / feedback... over a fixed period of time. Often a startup will operate out of a particular incubator / hub during the accelerator, but in our case that wasn't possible due to location. You can be provided support in mentoring, funding, desk space, access to back office resources (legal, accounting, etc), discounts to tech resources. Usually all the work you do during the accelerator will culminate in a pitch to secure investment. The unboxd accelerator we were accepted into is ~10 weeks long. We were provided some funding upfront in the form of an option to invest in our startup at a valuation we agreed to before entering the program. If we pitch and are successful, the investment we secure through the program will be enough for our seed capital (12-18 months runway with a small team).

We also saw it as an opportunity to trial our self-education program.. we are running a pilot program with employees of the organisation that is funding the accelerator to learn more about the benefits to wellbeing that our program can provide. The therapy approach we are using on the Secure Nest platform is largely untested in an eHealth format.

Excellent

 

Guest thats fantastic! Congratulations again, that’s all very exciting and sounds like your on the right path to success.

Are you still working in another job or are you now full time on this?

Just on my site I had a few people text me this week as they were excited about the Masters Golf this weekend. A sport most of them would never care about but because they have points up for grab they are showing a keen interest.
It’s exactly the point of my site so was great to get that feedback.

 

@albanga, doing it alongside another job, which has been tough, but still have to pay the mortgage!

 

Yes, more than one.

If you want income effort is required though many variables. And income does not equal effort amount. Often the opposite, and always changing.

When it comes to internet imo "if you build they come" does not apply.

It's a tough business and without a plan to make money these days I doubt anyone ever will.
The novelty has gone and it is a plateau of commodity markets.