Watch me grow my company!

Good luck!

Just a quick piece of feedback - get some higher quality images on your site. The low-res stuff just looks bad on your product details page. Also I bet things like video reviews of each of your products would really go a long way to making sales. People love to see how flashy touchscreens and stuff work.
 


rish3 said:
I run a somewhat similar business. Not alarms, but similar in that it's a narrow niche, electronics related, and something that's "hackable".

I see you're working one approach pretty hard...big name partnerships. A different approach that's worked well for me is to appeal to the uber-nerdy DIY electronics crowd.

- reverse engineer the protocol for some of your alarms and publish it. Become the source for information on how to integrate your own sensors, etc, in with the alarms you sell.

- pay somebody that's capable, either with cash, or products, to create a cool project and publish it on instructables or some popular electronic hobbyist website. For example, integrating a home-made water sensor, and showing how it could detect a flooding basement and trigger the alarm.

At least with my stuff, this created direct sales, and a good deal of free, high quality backlinks. It also netted me a contact with a smart guy that gave me bargain-basement pricing on some PCB design work, saving me quite a bit.
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I think that's an awesome bit of advice. And yes, the pics are the default pics right now. We just setup a studio to start taking high res photos of all the products that aren't teh same as every other site.
 
Good luck Sam. Giving back helps make the world a better place.

I wanted to do something like this for my new project, and WF would have been the logical place to share it, and everyone would have been whining that it would be me trying to get free promotion.

So instead, BlueSteele has invited me to blog on his new marketing blog, and I will try to make some founder type posts about what it's like to start an SaaS and general small business challenges.
 
guerilla said:
Good luck Sam. Giving back helps make the world a better place.

I wanted to do something like this for my new project, and WF would have been the logical place to share it, and everyone would have been whining that it would be me trying to get free promotion.

So instead, BlueSteele has invited me to blog on his new marketing blog, and I will try to make some founder type posts about what it's like to start an SaaS and general small business challenges.
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Hey, I'll subscribe to yours. The beauty of the internet is that the creativity here is endless and since we're not all in the same niches, helping each other doesn't hurt.
 
samgeneric said:
I think that's an awesome bit of advice. And yes, the pics are the default pics right now. We just setup a studio to start taking high res photos of all the products that aren't teh same as every other site.
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Is this something you're going to do yourself or are you hiring a professional to take the pictures?

I have an e-commerce business where we make the actual products. It took us a ton of tweaking to get good pictures even with lighting equipment.
 
GingerSnaps said:
Is this something you're going to do yourself or are you hiring a professional to take the pictures?

I have an e-commerce business where we make the actual products. It took us a ton of tweaking to get good pictures even with lighting equipment.
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We're doing it ourselves initially just to get the low res pics to disappear. But I do eventually want to hire professionals to take them. For now, priority 1 - disappear grainy photos.
 
I work for a security company and just redid our website. Gotta say, your website could use some maaaajor improvements. Also, why aren't you doing the interactive shit? 2GIG, Alarm.com, etc.
 
rm@tag said:
I work for a security company and just redid our website. Gotta say, your website could use some maaaajor improvements. Also, why aren't you doing the interactive shit? 2GIG, Alarm.com, etc.
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We are going to be offering them. But contracts take some time to get in place. Since we're going after just the Honeywell keywords at the moment, a majority of our subscribers are looking for AlarmNet and Total Connect. Everything in its proper place and everything in its proper order.

We can't grow too fast because of the nature of the business. We are bootstrapping. It's what makes this business both compelling and scary. We have accounts coming in, but that pays the salary of one person. That one person is working at capacity currently. At some point, we will have enough accounts to bring in a second person who can then handle the additional volume for Alarm.com, 2GIG, Connect24. In the meantime, everything is about conversion testing and brand building.

Also what sort of imporvements do you think would be good? If it's just design, that's coming. But if there is something key you think we're missing, I'd love the insight!
 
Test different copy that scares people. "Every 35 seconds a home invasion occurs" or use maxmind and personalize it to their area. "Every 35 seconds a home invasion occurs in "City, State". Will your house or business be next?
 
cool thread. Looking at a few product pages I would break up some of that info/copy into smaller more readable chunks. It's okay if you still want to keep lots of text content on the page, but focus your above the fold real estate on key benefits, features, etc.
 
Congrats on getting your company started. Let me share my opinion as someone who was recently in the market for security systems. Hopefully some of this can help.

Who is your REAL focus thats makes you unique from other companies in this space? On your homepage title its "Why pay an installer when you can do it yourself?"

So you're after the DIY market. IMO, pretty cramped with the residential crowd and there are some great choices out there already. Pretty much the crowd, like myself, who didn't want the old school companies like ADT who jack you on the monitoring and shit contracts and were looking for a different soultion.

You got people with normal sized homes, condos, renters, etc.. They want DIY but have limited to no skills in this area and don't want to pay ADT prices. Do you know about SimpliSafe? I beileve this company will utterly destroy all competition in this space in the future. Hit up their site: simplisafe.com
From a marketers perspective they have it ALL covered. Right on their front page you got everything you can think of: benefits, features, famous testimonials, videos, plays on emotion, they just make everything seem easy for the prospective buyer. And it is. That whole web 2.0 feel to the entire site, I can tell you that design like that can win over more customers then the product itself sometimes. On top of it their product is super simple for the average DIY'er and the prices for the equipment and most importantly the central station monitoring, really can't be beat. I have referred numerous people to them and they all rave about it, especially the ones coming from the big national companies. They really got a lock on this growing market - DIY who want plug and play, no real skills.

For the DIY'er with a decent skill set and knowledge of the space, you got "HomeSecurityStore". I've used them when I purchased my new home, I know a decent amount but nothing on par with a home security pro. I put together a good system that was priced right and their monitoring is priced very competitively. Site has a nice design, good feel to it with a ton of details and information. Articles, videos, etc.. Has established trust in this niche. I know pro installers who use this site for thier customer installs. They seem to have a good stronghold in this market - DIY who already have skills and like to tinker with shit.

On to business/commercial. I haven't really looked into this niche of the market, is it untapped? DIY alarms for business owners? Not sure, but I know when I was doing risk management for an insurance company, I met with plenty of business owners - meaning commercial storefronts to multi-unit residential, who wanted systems but didn't want to pay pros or the national account prices. Maybe something like a SimpliSafe for commercial?

Also take a look at this thread over at fatwallet:
2012 Alarm Monitoring Thread: Get Rid of ADT/others - smarthome.com, alarmrelay.com - $8.95/mo w/ one time $35 setup fee
Pretty much residential but they dissect everything regarding DIY alarms. Maybe you can gain some tips from the consumer prospective.
 
Ok, so we're growing, which is fun. I just had signs and stickers produced. If you guys want to 1) get some free window stickers that say your house has a security system and isn't robbable, 2) want to help promote a fellow wickedfirer's company, or 3) both, let me know. I'll happily send any forum member 2 free stickers. They look like this:
 
samgeneric said:
Ok, so we're growing, which is fun. I just had signs and stickers produced. If you guys want to 1) get some free window stickers that say your house has a security system and isn't robbable, 2) want to help promote a fellow wickedfirer's company, or 3) both, let me know. I'll happily send any forum member 2 free stickers. They look like this:
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Wait a sec... I just saw contract made a similiar logo for me...

contract said:
Was bored, don't ask...

SKEzgPk.png
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What's going on here, looks like I got trolled and didn't know it! LOL

Carry on...
 
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