Rob Walling: The Stairstep, No-Bull Approach to Bootstrapping
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For start-up marketing, how do you get something off the ground without outside funding? What’s required to launch a product?
Marketers and developers will learn a lot today!
In this episode, I’m talking to Rob Walling, a Web developer, podcaster, entrepreneur, and conference co-host about stairstepping your way up when it comes to bootstrapping.
Topics covered:
Topics covered:
- How to launch a new software business without a lot of time or money
- Stairstep Approach: Build something small, a one-time sale product; find source of traffic or niche
- How to come up with useful product ideas for angles; use tools that show places that generate traffic
- Make money online by knowing SEO practices
- Optimize for an engine to provide a valuable resource for people searching for a specific term
- By using marketing to get to the top or to get in front of people, only to let them down - then you will not have longevity
- Utilize communities and marketplaces, online or elsewhere, that already exist and people are using
- Gain confidence, experience, and knowledge to improve and make money
- Process of building a simple plug-in: Research; come up with an idea; know where to go; teach yourself or outsource work; submit; and determine level of interest
- Acquire something rather than building it from scratch; leverage other people’s work
- Start something guaranteed to get traction by using an idea done before, several times
- Determine if a certain number of people are looking for the same thing
- Can you charge for it? Can you add something to charge for? Can you build something people are willing to pay for? Are you interested in building something?
- Rob’s Goal: Provide value to people in exchange for money; take that money to quit day job
- Identify that there are volumes of searches to sustain your objective
- Focus on a landscape with a lot of products that are not good enough; competition validates the market
- Go for the goal to rank #1; that’s the challenge
- Niche-down results in smaller opportunities but that does not matter initially
- Earning your first dollar is a life-changing moment, but it is still good to sell stuff; as the dollars get bigger, the more interesting it is
- Rob’s passionate about being ethical and adding value to people’s lives and making money out of it
- If you make money from an add-on, then launch more add-ons for diversification; if not, start over
- You have an audience, grow it slowly, offer solutions to their problems, and make a living
- Practice patience and maintain a long-term mindset; marketers get overwhelmed with the amount of day-to-day information available
- Set long-term goals because choices you make today, stick with you
- Marketers should learn to think analytically like developers; measure conversions, link dollars to spending on ads to how many people are buying, etc.
- Developers can learn from marketers that a product is not everything; customers and marketing are directly related to the success of a product; and talk about the benefits rather than the features
- Some marketers go for growth hacks - grow at any cost and just for the sake of it
- Marketers have a bad reputation because of overstepping bounds of ethics
- Good marketing goes unnoticed; bad marketing is in the news a lot
- Have an opinion, stand for something, and be real
- Define your enemy because when things get tough, fighting against it is the only thing
Resources mentioned:
- Rob Walling on Twitter
- Startups for the Rest of Us podcast
- Drip
- MicroConf
- Google AdWords
- Ahrefs
- Market Samurai
- Jungle Scout
- DotNetInvoice
- Justin Jackson - Marketing for Developers
- Shinesty
- Rand Fishkin - Step-by-Step Guide to Inbound Marketing
- Copy Hackers
- Inbound.org
- Ultimate Sales Letter
- louis@everyonehatesmarketers.com
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→ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3p4wL4r
→ Leave a review on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7iEF1qovZZiaP1iRtxGARo
→ Buy my book: book.stfo.io
→ Join 14,000+ weirdos who learn to stand the f*ck out with my daily (Mon-Fri) emails: everyonehatesmarketers.com
→ See my pretty face on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisgrenier/
→ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3p4wL4r
→ Leave a review on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7iEF1qovZZiaP1iRtxGARo
Finally...
If you're curious about putting your brand in front of my 14,000+ daily newsletter subscribers and/or podcast listeners, email me: louis@stfo.io
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