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- Started this in February, now earning $8175 per month 🚀
Started this in February, now earning $8175 per month 🚀
Welcome to a fresh edition of eBiz Insider, my free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business.
Today...
Simple Software Tool Earning $8K/Month Within A Year
Making 6 Figures, Working From Anywhere
$20 Million Annual Revenue Thanks To Meetups
$3000/Month Virtual Assistant Within 6 Months
How To Do Your Best
Gamified Productivity App Earns $100K/Month
$16,000/Month via Amazon UK in His “Spare Time”
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Simple Software Tool Earning $8K/Month Within A Year
Tag Parrot helps your site get indexed on Google within 48 hours via Google's Indexing API 🤓
Founder Chris Blakey tweets…
🗓️ October update for @TagParrot
💰 $8,175 MRR (+$3,646)
He only launched the tool in February this year and looks like most of his initial growth was from tweeting about it and word of mouth (example).
🚀 The product started to gain serious traction around May-June thanks to…
Word of mouth and SEO kicking in.
Now, the business has reached a run rate of $100K/year 🤑
Sounds like an overnight success, but Chris set the record straight a few months back…
About 3 years ago I started this solopreneur journey. In this time I have built 7 products only two of which are still alive and only one has actually made any money.
Working full time in a senior position for a very large company, while growing the family to 3 children doesn't leave much time to work on side passion projects.
The important thing is to keep grinding away, finding an hour here and an hour there…
…If you don't get any traction initially, don't give up, but keep working at it, keep experimenting, keep pushing yourself and keep growing.
Tag Parrot is an interesting product idea that you might be able to apply to other scenarios.
You can spend hours manually requesting pages to be indexed in Google Search Console, one page at a time. Or spend that time concentrating on marketing and let Tag Parrot handle indexing for you.
What other tools force users to spend hours doing tedious tasks, instead of having a bulk processing option? 🤔
Could you create an add-on tool to help with that?
Or maybe a productized service?
Making 6 Figures, Working From Anywhere
Today's email is brought to you by Comprehensive Copywriting Academy.
That's a highly-rated copywriting course by Filthy Rich Writer 🤩
One student told us…
I can honestly say that without the CCA my copywriting business wouldn’t exist. Nicki walks you through everything you need to know, from the nuts and bolts of setting up a business from zero to how to write great copy.
Thanks to her guidance, I’m making six figures and can work from anywhere.
$20 Million Annual Revenue Thanks To Meetups
🎙️ From an interview on Mixergy…
Lloyed Lobo believes anyone could have founded Boast, a company designed to help businesses secure R&D tax credits. However, when asked about why he built it to tens of millions in revenue when others didn’t, he attributes it to community.
Apparently the business now does $20 million in annual recurring revenue, and Lloyed recently sold a chunk of it for a big payday 💰
From another interview…
Boast.ai was launched in 2017 after starting a services business in 2012 that helped larger company administer their R&D tax credits.
So essentially Lloyed started out as a freelancer, helping companies get those tax credits.
And then he "transitioned to an automated product over years."
Back to the community aspect 👇
Lloyed writes on his website…
If you build a community, you won’t become a commodity.
He explains in the Mixergy interview how Boast got traction…
We started hosting our own events and we had a coworking space. We could get a free meeting space there.
The first event we invited 10 people. I’m inviting Sarah, she just bootstrapped her company to a million. She’s going to talk about how she got her first hundred customers by doing X, Y, and Z. There’s going to be some free pizza. 10 people showed up.
We never stopped, we just kept doing these meetups… One day 200 people show up [for a meetup]
… meetups were the lifeblood of us building social proof… and getting warm client referrals.
Everyone prefers to do business with people they know and trust 👍
And there's no better way to build familiarity and trust than by getting in front of people regularly.
What if you organized a regular meetup in your local area to connect with your target audience?
Or, if you're a bit on the shy side, how about teaming up with an extroverted friend or acquaintance?
💬 Last words from Lloyed…
Your companions matter the most. Loneliness is the number one killer in America.
And recently there is this concept of blue zones, the five places in the world where people live functionally to 100 [years old]. They have nine traits. Four or five of those traits have to do with human to human connection.
$3000/Month Virtual Assistant Within 6 Months
🗂 From the archive, published February 2023…
👉 Here's an interview with a woman named Jacqi Dix, sharing how she went from zero to $3000/month as a virtual assistant within six months.
Jacqi used to work an office job as a CFO, but got laid off and decided to find online work so she could be home more for her daughter with special needs.
Not wanting to do the same kind of work online – "I've always been told I don't have the personality to be an accountant" – Jacqi started learning graphic and web design.
Now she does all kinds of tasks for her clients, including website updates, email management, CRM work, etc.
She has two main clients…
A company that does accounting for wineries.
Her daughter's school.
The first pays her $25/hour. The second gives Jacqi's daughter free schooling (valued at $4200/year) in exchange for her VA services.
Maybe there's a business in your area that you can "barter" with like this? 🤔
Jacqi also says in the interview that her clients sometimes ask her to do something she doesn't know how to do. In those situations she first tries to figure it out and do it herself.
But if that proves too difficult, she advises the client to hire a specialist.
She'll say…
I don't mind figuring it out but you may be able to pay somebody an hour and have it done, whereas it may take me three hours.
I used to do similar as a freelance web developer.
I could always figure out tricky coding problems given enough time. But I would often advise my clients to hire a programmer instead. I'd even recommend a programmer and arrange everything with them so the client only had to deal with me.
It was a win-win-win 🥳
(Btw, Jacqi credits a course called 90 Day VA with helping her launch her VA career. I've reviewed that here.)
How To Do Your Best
📝 Shane Parrish writes about his son explaining away a low grade…
he shrugged his shoulders and said, “I did my best,” and walked away.
Shane sat down with him later that night to discuss the issue further…
Doing your best is as much about the position you put yourself in as the result you get.
I asked him what it meant to put himself in a good position for success on a test. He listed factors like sleeping well, eating a healthy breakfast, avoiding arguments with his brother, and studying effectively.
Too often, when people say they did their best, they mean they did their best at the moment with little regard for all the things within their control that came before. My son gave his best on the hour of the test, but by not preparing, he inadvertently chose to play on hard mode.
Whatever game you're playing, are you choosing to play it on hard mode?
Are you putting in the prep work to give yourself the best chance of success?
Or are you setting yourself up for failure before the game has even started? 😕
Last words from Shane…
Over the long term, the average person who constantly puts themselves in a good position beats the genius who finds themselves in a poor position.
What looks like talent is often nothing more than good preparation.
Gamified Productivity App Earns $100K/Month
Forest is a productivity app that incentivizes users to avoid their phones through a gamified system.
You basically open the app and plant a virtual tree 🌳 which grows while you focus on a task. If you then stay off your phone for the duration of the timer, the tree fully matures.
But if you exit the app to use your phone, the tree withers and dies 😩
Launched in 2014, Forest has more than 10 million downloads on Google Play and the product description on the Apple App Store reads…
Top productivity app in 136 countries. More than 2 million satisfied paying users.
Last month's revenue estimates by SensorTower (free account required) 👇
$20,000 via Google Play (300k downloads)
$100,000 via Apple App Store (30k downloads)
I know, those download numbers don't exactly vibe with the revenue numbers.
iOS customers will need to pay [$3.99] if they want to download the app which comes with premium features, while Android users can install it for free but they will receive the basic version. For more advanced options they will have to make in – app purchases.
SensorTower's estimates aren't perfect, of course, but I reckon it's still safe to say that Forest is pulling in around $100,000 in monthly revenue 🤯
Some of that revenue goes towards planting real trees, 2 million and counting…
"Forest team partners with a real-tree-planting organization, Trees for the Future, to plant real trees on Earth. When our users spend virtual coins they earn in Forest on planting real trees, Forest team donates to our partner and creates planting orders." (source)
Much of Forest's success can be attributed to its use of gamification strategies 🎮
Rabani Kharbanda wrote in 2021…
I credit [the app's] success to effective use of gamification psychology. The app is fun to use because it appeals to certain Core Drives within us that motivate us towards certain activities.
Using something called the Octalysis Gamification framework, he goes on to break down the different features of the app that make it so appealing 😍
One such…
Core Driver 5: Social Influence and Relatedness
You can invite friends and family members to the app. If any one of you exit the app when the timer is running, then the tree will automatically die. This shared experience helps people bond, at the same time drives competition. If you do succeed at not opening using your phone, while your friends fail, you get their envy and respect.
Might be worth giving this app a try yourself if you struggle to stay focused.
Also, if you're a 90's kid like me, Forest might remind you of Tamagotchi. It's essentially the same thing, except with a Tamagotchi you were looking after a virtual pet 🐶 instead of a virtual tree 🌳
And Forest tied their game to productivity, so it became a useful and enduring tool.
Always interesting to see old ideas succeeding in new ways.
Could some old tech from your childhood be the next big thing? 🤔
$16,000/Month via Amazon UK in His “Spare Time”
🗂 From the archive, published March 2023…
London-based Daniel Sarpong started his Amazon business in mid-2020, after COVID put an end to another side hustle he'd been working on.
In a recent interview on YouTube, Daniel shares how he's built his Amazon business to £13,000 in monthly revenue (about $16,000 USD) 💰
But don't get too excited just yet: Daniel is still in the scaling phase, with a profit margin of 13-14%.
So his monthly profit ends up being around £1700 ($2000).
He reckons he can get to £35,000 in revenue and 20% in profit in the next few years in the UK 🇬🇧 before expanding his business to Amazon in the USA 🇺🇸
Daniel uses something called the "replens" strategy for selling on Amazon. He basically focuses on sourcing and reselling items that people order regularly (replenishables) rather than novelty or clearance items.
Typical replens products would be items like disposable razors, grocery items, pet food, shampoo, etc.
Related: Amazon Replens Strategy - The Full Guide (YouTube)
Daniel has built up his business despite working full-time as a real estate agent in the UK.
His schedule makes me want to take a nap 😴
I now get up at 4 in the morning, work till probably about 8 when I leave [for my job], and then do the same in the evening from 6 till 9. And that gives me enough time to essentially source the products that I need and do all the admin behind it.
With that kind of work ethic, I wouldn't bet against him getting to £35k/month and beyond.
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Thanks to Fardeen Khan for helping me write and research today's newsletter.
Hasta la próxima, rock on with your legendary self 💪
Niall Doherty – Canillo, Andorra
eBiz Facts (follow on twitter)
P.S. Today's email is brought to you by Filthy Rich Writer's highly-rated Comprehensive Copywriting Academy.
Read our review or check out their free training for more info 😎
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