Adiakritos Journal

So the user interface design is ready for testing. I'm going to where my target audience is most likely to be tomorrow to ask them go through it with me.

I'm thinking of grabbing some small incentives I can get for free and give them out free and in return they can give me a little feedback on my sites user interface. Once I get enough input to see the patterns I'll tweak it and begin on the rest of the site.
 
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As for the incentives:

Good idea to show appreciation AFTER the test.

Also don't let them know beforehand.

Why not? Because it skews the results, making people happy and govong you grade A when it is an F.

What we did in market research in Germany was to give people a free choice of some products on a shelf afterwards.

Some nice chocolates, body lotions, whathaveyou.

::emp::
 
So I called up some venues where my target market goes to see if I could swing by to chat about the app I'm making, and surprisingly, they were very open and easy going about it. So I found out the best time I go and I showed up the next chance I had time. I met the PERFECT person on my arrival who didn't even look at my app... he just asked me what it does.

Soon after describing it to him he immediately pointed out the benefit it would have to him. That's exactly what I was looking for... for anyone I speak to to point out what's important to *them* and keep solving any frustrations or bottlenecks in the process of whatever they do..

anyways, he was so in to what I described he's setting up a time for me to meet with him and about a dozen of her co-workers to give them a presentation of the app..

Now, I have 1 concern right now, and it's that the app isn't an app at all right now. It's just an HTML mock up of what the site will look like. I'm hoping to illicit more needs and suggestions of what they'll need and expect so I can weave all that in before actually spending another massive chunk of my time developing the site. That way I starting from what I know is an immediate benefit to my audience and I'll be able to write effective copy with that knowledge.

I'm super excited about the meetup and I'll write about it here.
 
Was listening to Gary Vaynerchuk today and he said two things that I wanted to record here..

There are 2 big picture commitments that align everything he does:
1. The first thing that he focuses on maximizing his happiness. Doing what he loves and leveraging that into his business as much as possible.

2. Focusing on building brand equity on a global scale through social media like vlogs and twitter and even email.

He says those focuses allowed him to spend the 20+ years of his life since his early 20's building his wine business into a $50M/year business.
 
I felt like updating this blog since it's I've been updating it for so long already. Anyone following it might find some value in what I'm doing today.

I'm still not a millionaire. But everyday I'm still that possibility and everything I do is geared for one goal.

I'm still working on my application. I know it's dumb that I've not launched it after like 2 years, although the first application I built was so shitty I would have had a nightmare getting it to work. I've spoken with a handful of people in my target demo and they are willing to test the app out, some people still are asking me where to sign up..etc

My friend has been helping me along the way build it up the right way so I run into less severe issues in the future.

I'm 23 now, turning 24 this year. I religiously spend at least 1.5 hours on the app every day each morning.

I decided that building websites as a freelancer with no job to sustain me was seriously screwing with my psych and peace of mind, as well as limiting my experience, so I got a job with an internet marketing agency and they've been training me in SEO, landing page optimization, and PPC for clients with budgets upwards of 2.2 million dollars.

I've got 7 classes left in my college career and I'm entering summer time right next week where I'll be taking 1 class and working on freelance work as well as my job and my app.

The biggest reason I am able to handle this workload and stay effective is because of these Landmark courses I've been taking. I'd have buckled under the pressure. I'm becoming a different person, a more powerful person, with each distinction I learn and apply from those classes. I nearly destroyed my relationship with my mother a few weeks ago and I was able to heal what I'd done within 1 hours by using what I learned. My clients are sending me ever more work, and my new boss is delighted to be working with me.

The biggest take away from these courses that I can share, although this share would never do it justice, is this: There are 3 parts of leading a powerful effective life. Choosing to be responsible for anything that isn't working, Living your word and planning your work, and communicating whatever it is you are creating such that people are inspired by what you're saying.

Anyways, I know that all this learning and training and effort will pay off. As Steve Jobs says that it's hard to know how life will turn out looking forward ( all the while having a goal ) but it's in retrospect that we can see how all the dots will connect. I can't wait to see my dots connecting!

So that's my little update. I know this is an internet marketing forum, and not so much a "business start up" forum, either way I know these posts are providing value to some.

I think I'll end up sharing with each milestone I reach because that's when the shares count. That's when they have value and something people can take away for themselves.

To recap for myself and my followers on this thread, my goal is to make $300,000/mo before I'm 30 years old. Ideally, before 28.

Well.. I have to get back to work now. Till next time.
 
I just wrote this big ass entry and it got wiped out.

Basically my app is almost ready. Learned to configure Redis to make autocomplete wicked fast. I was able to launch the app with ubuntu manually, and now I'm making some fine tuning adjustments to really tighten up both security and usability.

I'm extremely excited and scared at the same time. My motivation has been something like obsession/desperation, because I'm tried of driving a car with no AC in the summer in FL. I don't want to spend the $ to fix it because I want that $ for my expenses that might arise in fixing my app or whatever else. There's more to it than that, but that's the gist of it.

I think I'll post here again once I've gotten my first PAYING customer :) I've gotta get Stripe installed, so that will be soon hopefully.
 
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Haven't read this thread until now, but it sounds like you're on, especially if you're at the Stripe state. Keep on!

Would love to try your app, by the way, assuming you make it open here, either in the forum or through PM.
 
Hey thanks for the encouragement!

I may post it later on when I'm confident it's secure and I've achieved first movers advantage in this niche.
 
Right now the revenue stream is subscription based. On the back-end I'm not sure what to offer yet.

I have a few ideas floating around. Like upgrades for more advanced features. Once I know what other needs my demographic would want solved I can then build it. Another idea would be to include a store to cater to them. I'd move from only an SaaS to somewhat an online retail store. Another idea I have is to organize the data I collect on the choices my users make and sell it to manufacturers or marketing companies. My least favorite idea is placing ads on the site to a paid service. Another idea is to contact manufacturers who are trying to market to my demo and offer them a higher ranking in the search results of my autocomplete feature in exchange for a monthly $.

What I should put more focus on though after getting the SaaS part going is the virality of the product. Me having to manually recruit customers will take making a fortune infinitely longer. At first it wouldn't be so bad because I can improve the site through direct observation. But simultaneously I think the app would need to have some kind of viral aspect to it. To get the "engine of growth" going as Erick Reis puts it.
 
I think if you put a bit of time into making sure you get emails from these people and build an autoresponder sequence, you won't have to manually recruit people and can put a lot of stuff on autopilot. You can outsource a lot of this, at least in terms of content, and wind up creating lots of goodwill with your customer base if you do it right.

True, this is an extra step, but I think it will be critical to keep your SaaS subscribers over the long haul because you've really got to remind people what they've invested in.

Speaking of which, I just signed up for Grammarly for my writing needs. It looks like it's going to be cool. Let's see what kind of autoresponder sequence they've squeezed me into ...
 
Yeah I totally agree.

Actually the book "Getting Real" by 37signals talks about that. They go the extra mile to actually start a blog, build up an email list, build up anticipation before launch, and then unleash the list into their new app to get it traction much faster.
 
whoa that book hooked looks awesome. Just got it!

There's also a really good book by Seth Godin called "Unleashing the idea virus". It's all about virality and making things go viral.

I think these ideas all go hand in hand so at some point I have to start thinking about forming and executing a viral strategy.
 
Also, thanks for sharing that book "ReWorked" with me. I was getting a little discouraged with my app and then that book got me pumped up again.
 
My pleasure. It is a good book.

I never mentioned it, but I'm working on two apps myself. But these are entirely outsourced. One guy is doing it pro bono just because he likes my books. Cool, but makes for many a frustration because I don't know how to tweak things to my pleasing.

The other is a game. Much less frustrating because I have a partner to help with communicating with the coder.

The important part, even if it is cliche to say so, is the journey.
 
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