/Entg/ - Entrepreneurship General

Hows the competition

Thanks lad

If it precious metals then yeah it’s probably gonna devalue

does bitcoin count as a precious metal? :thinking:
i got in the low 5.5k levels, seemed pretty stable there. GE contracts are still 10 cents out of the money, but I have 15 days until they expire so it's no big hurry. KO never filled though =[

>Hows the competition
Pretty much nonexistent, which is great.

Market Leader: Banking and Finance

Still, there are some pages to be studied.

test

How do people find shops to open in shopping centres and shit like that? I feel like a retard because I wouldn't even know how to do something gay like opening some shitty candle shop

Cancelled my project before launch day since I made a miscalculation in the profit track sheet and it dropped 50%.
All that prep work for nothing, please call me a retard.

My guess is that they contact those who own the centre. Idk

Affiliate Marketer here.

I focus on mainly mainstream sweeps and adult dating in GEOs like CH, DE, AU and SE. Here's some stats from my ads in the past 7 days. I dabbled in AM a bit in 2016 but stopped and only got serious about it a few months ago.

Attached: Screenshot_120.png (1180x159, 25K)

You're a retard.

>Also Marketing pro tip:
If you're relying solely on gimmicks to get a response out of direct mailings, instead of actually hiring a competent copywriter, you're leaving vast amounts of money on the table.

HOW DO I GET IN ON THIS?

can you post some more info on this? how many hours do you put in? what are the costs?

Please tell me your traffic sources. Thanks in advance.

Attached: georgemann.png (301x361, 163K)

nice.

I do paid traffic, mostly mobile pops and mobile display from networks like ZeroPark, PropellerAds and Exoclick. I find my offers through affiliate networks like MaxBounty, Clickdealer and Mobidea.

^ and my costs are all in the screenshot besides hosting costs for the landing pages which I pay ~$150-200/month for.

^^

>hosting costs for the landing pages
Depending on traffic, you might be able to get away with lower costs via free GCE instance VPS?

>my costs are all in the screenshot

sorry i meant what are you purchasing?

I use AWS Cloudfront, S3 and Certificate Manager so I get ultra-fast load times due to the CDN (Content Delivery Network - chooses the closest server to the visitor to display the page). The costs scale depending on how much volume I'm sending to the pages.

I'm purchasing traffic in the form of popup ads and display ads (banners like you see here on Jow Forums)

so you run ads for other people products right? why do you need to host your own landing pages?

my understanding of affiliate marketing is that the vendor gives you a special link and you get a cut of any purchases made using that link

Neato.

So what's the entry investment?

Cause here's what I'm thinking, I could do exactly what you do in my area, but given that I'm a writer, not a graphics designer or anything, I'd have a harder time.

How can I get you to guide me through the process?

Yeah basically so for example I could promote something like "Win a free Walmart giftcard" that pays me $2.20 everytime someone fills in their email, name, etc. The reason landing pages that redirect to the actual offer work better is because the actual offer page tends to be less "aggressive". Meaning that I would usually create/steal a landing page that has some sort of game like "Spin the wheel for a chance to win" and they would lose the first 2 times and on the third spin it would land on the Walmart giftcard and send them to the offer page to fill out their details. I usually test 5-10 landing pages per offer and choose the best converting one.

You have to expect to lose money for a while until you gather enough data to become profitable, eg. what OS, ISP, landing page, offer, placement, etc. is making money and which aren't so you can then stop targeting the non-converting variables.

I was down roughly $3000 USD before turning it around and turning some campaigns profitable.

I could teach you but it wouldn't be free obviously.

Yeah, $3k and time spent isn't quite my idea of a fun time.
At this moment, all my resources are pooling into my direct marketing agency, so the best I could do is 70-80% revenue share your way so it becomes a secondary income stream for you, while keeping me at least break-even.
Thoughts?

Suit yourself bro, it's all good. You have to lose money to gather sufficient data. The only way to avoid that would be directly copying my profitable campaigns/placements which I obviously wouldn't be open to as you'd essentially become my competitor for volume.

I'd be open to signing a territorial non-compete, if that's what you're worried about.

Buying my first rental la’s, owner occupying for a year for that cheap down payment

I think I get it now, so MaxBounty for example will give you the link to the offer page and the rest is all up to you. Thanks for sharing.

No that's not what I'm talking about. I'm responding to the fact that you're not prepared to lose money in the pursuit of data. If I were to start a new campaign (which I do quite often) for a new offer I would lose money on that campaign until I gathered enough data from the converting traffic to make it profitable. So if you're starting off with no campaigns already profitable then you will 100% lose money in the beginning. As I said the only way to avoid that would be by directly cloning an already-profitable/optimised campaign.

Yes exactly.

by chance, are you any good with angular/frontend? I'm out here trying to learn so i can build a cool landing page + webapp for a hedge fund im planning to run. I just need some resources, really. I'm all set for the backend side of things.

I've dabbled in a bit of NodeJS before and obviously know JS although I haven't used Angular specifically. I'm mostly proficient in PHP and Python but make/edit my landing pages in HTML/CSS/JS

>I'm responding to the fact that you're not prepared to lose money in the pursuit of data.

I'm quite confident that research can make up for it - I haven't had a situation where my copy would absolutely bomb yet.

Even if you took the #1 performing offer in the world and paired it with the #1 performing landing page in the world and ran some traffic to it, it would not be profitable at first. Research has nothing to do with it. You would need to first cut the bad placements, OSs, ISPs, connection type, city, country, keywords, banner, etc. to become profitable. When launching a new campaign even the best affiliate marketer in the world would not have it be profitable right off-the-bat. That's just how it works with paid traffic affiliate marketing.

Hm. Those are things I pretty much never consider when running ads. I'll need to dig deeper.

It's just the nature of affiliate marketing, ask anyone who does affiliate marketing and they'll give the same answer. Think of it as buying data.

just made a todo list app in angular. no css of course but it's a good first step.

God bless whoever has to do this frontend shit for a living it sucks ass.

Bump

So market research done... pretty much NOBODY does what I do in this country.

Closest thing I could find was one old dude who did one old slogan for a milk company and made millions off of it. And that's it.

Direct Response is dead. All Hail Direct Response.

wow I finally found a thread in Jow Forums that isn't just moronic shit shoveling of cryptocurrency.
That stuff in the dropbox is especially good!

Yep. Good shit. How can we help you?

not really sure, I graduated college with a interdisciplinary degree in art and business about six months ago. just been working in the family business since then making 500 a month trying to get my own income streams going, drawing, writing, working on starting a podcast with a friend.

I've done all the research, I just can't seem to make any headway on my projects cause I am a lazy bastard who can't get into the proper stride of things once I get distracted.

I got all my plans and I keep on hesitating and self sabotaging. does't help of course when I get sick.

>dropped out of college (1st year)
>strarted learning web design and gamedev
I hope I didn't make a grave mistake! haha
fuck college though

What exactly is distracting you?
I'm in a similar position and what has helped me the most is identifying the unproductive activities that i fall in to and making my ability to access them a huge inconvenience. For example, i deleted all of the video games off my computer, and because i have third world internet (Australia), and it takes HOURS to download them again, it's easy for me to push through the times where i feel like shifting my attention to something more immediately gratifying.
It also helped to plan out my days to the minute in advance

Not alot of entrepreneur posters here. They all left because of the blatant chainlink shilling. Go to r/entrepreneur OP. Much better info there.

Okay /entg/, buckle up because this is going to be a fairly long rant/business plan/request for feedback.

RANT:
You may have seen me posting in these threads about some drone with a ridiculously long flight time. Who am I? I'm a mechanical engineer who is stuck working a shitty job and is barely able to afford rent in this shithole called Seattle. I swear to god, if I don't do something to radically change my situation in the next year, I am going to kill myself. That is why I'm embarking on this project and why I want you, /entg/, to hold me accountable.

How did things get this way? I have done an enormous amount of self-reflection over the last year, and the conclusion I have come to is a combination of anxiety, bad social skills, and even worse luck. I find it very difficult to win friends in a team environment, and while I have made efforts to improve in this area, this has resulted in me being passed over for any sort of leadership or career advancement opportunity.

I still managed to make the best of the cards I was dealt (pic related is my resume) and graduated two years ago. But right at the end of college, I got this absurdly rare autoimmune disease that started attacking my retinas and threatening to make me go blind. So after graduating I spent the next year and a half living with my mom in a darkened bedroom, trying to fix my health full time.

Attached: resume2.png (1247x1558, 413K)

Thanks to chemotherapy and a bunch of other drugs my eyesight finally started getting better, so I started applying to work again. I realize that I never was the biggest social butterfly, but over 400 job applications later, I couldn't get through any technical interviews because the combination of methotrexate and prednisone I'm on would make me get too nervous and freeze up.

I finally got a job through a friend installing thermostats in elementary schools in downtown Seattle for $62k a year as a """"""controls engineer"""""". Between rent, taxes, and student loan payments, I'm pretty much living paycheck to paycheck.

I know I'm capable of more than this, and I am going to either fix my life or die trying.

BUSINESS PLAN:
I'm going to go ahead and spill the beans because I honestly don't think you guys will replicate it.

I'm working on a long endurance VTOL UAV that can fold up and fit in a backpack. During hover flight it behaves like a normal quadcopter, with a flight time of just 20 minutes. What makes this drone special is that the props are actually mounted on wings so that the entire drone can tilt sideways and fly as a much more efficient fixed tandem wing aircraft. Depending on which version I end up producing, that gives it a flight time of 4-8 hours on battery. With wing mounted solar panels, that turns into anywhere from 12 hours to near continuous flight.

The drone has no control surfaces or moving parts besides the props, which when combined with its composite sandwich construction, makes it very durable. Long range control and live video are facilitated by an onboard 4G modem, and all that you need to control it are a laptop and an internet connection. It's not the most stable or easiest to fly aircraft design, so for best flight efficiency and user experience, the user just gives it GPS waypoints and lets the drone do all the flying while they operate the camera. The payload is a 4k video camera with thermal imaging capabilities.

This is where it starts getting into design tradeoffs, since there are a few different ways I can take this, each with varying levels of polish.

The first option, as I originally envisioned this project, is something that I could pull off making in my apartment. The plane's structure would be made from a carbon fiber/kevlar blend that's vacuum-bagged directly onto foam cores produced with a hot wire cutter, with additional parts 3D printed from polycarbonate as necessary. The problem with this is that I can only make constant cross sections reliably with the hot wire cutter, so this isn't very good for aerodynamics and battery powered flight time will be limited to 4-5 hours.

All of the motors and electronics would be sourced from off-the-shelf hobbyist components for this crude DIY iteration. Overall, I could probably throw one of these together per week by myself in my apartment, and it shouldn't cost more than $5k in tooling.

A somewhat improved version would be possible using more expensive VARTM composite layups, which would let me make more efficient wing shapes and also save some weight. I would basically take the empty wing clamshells, glue them together, then fill them with an expanding rigid foam. Also the 3D printed parts could be replaced with injection molded ones, reducing weight.

This version would be able to fly for 5-6 hours, and I could produce them in much higher quantities for cheaper, though the initial capital cost would be very large ($20k with VARTM, upwards of $100k for injection molding).

__

The ultimate polished, and most difficult to produce, version would mainly focus on having improved electronics. Everything would be migrated onto a single custom PCB to save space and weight, and the ESCs would be tuned to have their peak efficiency at the aircraft's cruising conditions, as well as to accomodate a higher battery voltage. The vertical wing section would house a custom arrangement of LiPo cells to make more efficient use of the space, rather than an off the shelf RC pack. My hand calculations show that this ought to bring the total flight time to 7-8 hours.

__

There is also the issue of solar panels. They offer a pretty nice flight time extension, but they do also add to the cost and complexity of the aircraft. On the really DIY version of the drone described above, they would add about 4 hours of additional flight time, but on the ultimate polished version, it miiiiiggghht be possible to get the batteries to last through the night and allow it to fly continuously.

REQUEST FOR FEEDBACK:

I'm not really sure what the best way to go about developing this is, and how I should proceed bringing it to market. Would it be best to bootstrap this from a crude initial model that I sell to enthusiasts, or should I continue developing it and then launch a kickstarter or something? Is it worth bothering with patents? Should I get a business loan?

I think the people who could use it most would be farmers, surveyors, law enforcement, firefighters, search and rescure, and (for the very polished version) the military. The drone itself costs about $2k in materials to make, plus the $6k camera/thermal imager. Would $15k be a fair market price? Should I go higher? I know other drones with similar flight times go for tens of thousands. Please give me any and all feedback/questions you have!
I posted this in a fit of depression, and I will probably regret it, but I'll check back in the morning.

P.S.: How to lean on my engineering strengths without falling victim to my social weaknesses when growing this business?

Bumping cause I enjoy lurking the words of all you go getters

b u m p

I just read your posts and being from a non technical background I am fairly impressed.
Far from being credible enough to advise you, I think you should try and find a suitable and like minded business parter. Surely there is someone in Seattle or Washington, maybe california too with the right know how to market and financially aid you.

I don't know shit, but I wish you the absolute best of luck user. It sounds fucking awesome

Is coding considered a "trade"?

I've been reading The Hobbit

What do you hate about front-end?

Was the slogan "Got milk?"

Hey, first off, great idea.

Big question: Have you accounted for weight?
I didn't read anything about how adding the props, the modem, and the solar panels would affect the amount of power needed to lift it off the ground.
Having said that, I'm no engineer.

Also, how strong is your competition? And what differentiates you from them, ie. What's your leg up?

Moreover, and this is out of curiosity, how loud is it?

Lastly, I don't want to take the attention away from the threads but if you want more consistent replies try the discord, if you haven't already.

will read after the fork

I'd say it's a real good one. Entry level Java coders start off ~$90k/yr

I love these threads but is the antisemitism really needed here?

I'm Jewish and I just want to escape the working for someone else trap as well but what does that even have to do with Jews?

>I'm Jewish
So what? No one care who you are on an user board. Can't take a joke?

Like it or not, Jews know how to do business. I was recently looking at Israel's legal policies regarding land returns from the Polish government, which nationalized large swathes of land abandoned post WW2.

It's quite a set-up, and one that we should strive to emulate for maximum business efficiency.

I actually think it's quite funny but I can't help but think some people will take it seriously and think they're enslaved by Jews.

All land is nationalized what are you talking about lol

But yes Jews seem to be more business minded than most people. I was shocked by every non Jewish friend I had at school for their willingness to work for someone else. They take pride in it. It's something I'll never quite understand.

need a degree right?

Off yourself you fucking bluepilled kike. No one gives a shit what you are here but you felt compelled to bring it up.

>All land is nationalized what are you talking about lol
You can reclaim land over here if you can prove that it belonged to your family before it was literally stolen by the government.

this, css is easy to learn but a pain in the ass to use

Contact the management at the center. They usually have a physical office onsite. Depending on if it's a mall or stripmall. Usually for those types of smaller shopping centers, there will be a for lease sign on the property somewhere. If not, Google the address and find a property manager and ask about renting one of their open spaces.

Brb I’m sending this to my chink friend. You better develop it faster then them

Why the hell did we get prunes so fast yesterday? Also morning lads hope you're all doing well.

Have you tried social anxiety exposure therapy, that significantly helped me out.

Come join us

If you’re competent yes

I suck with visual appeal like align this and that and changing color of this, adding padding to that container all of that I dislike . Backend is more my type where you just find a solution most effective way possible and literally nobody will see the backend.

When is the fork ?
Lmao it’s more of an inside joke bro , you know in all of Jow Forums. I didn’t mean to offend you or any Jews for that matter

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A flood of wojacks and crypto dying threads. I calculated every minute that passed by their were 8 new threads, biz was alive yesterday

Yesterday's been super-slow.

Woah that's nuts, it's usually pretty dead here on biz. The "i want my money back" threads are funny as he'll though

Like said, exposure therapy is the most effective way. Although it won't help in every situation it does dull things over time. Speaking from experience. Last year I went from scared shitless anxious neet, to semi normal human bean just from getting a wagie job I could handle. Couldn't look people in the eye, always felt awkward, etc. Then I slowly was able to small talk to people. Be friendly and say hi, eventually conversation will come naturally. Not every interaction is positive but you learn as time goes on to just accept it. I'm neet again because I lost my job, but I won't stay that way for too long. It's a process that takes time. Anxiety won't completely go away though. Also look into cognitive behavioral therapy of you can afford it. Nice to see you opening up droneguy.

If you browse arfcom long enough you'll find threads about how shitty it is to work in the firearms industry. If you want to be a kitchen FFL on the side it might work but by and large the firearms industry blows to actually work in. Think about it this way, if you're a "gun guy" you must realize how absolutely retarded the average joebob fudd is? I love guns as much as the next guy but I've spent enough time in gun stores to observe how penny pinching and ridiculous most clientele are. The magazine rush is over, ammo is at a low, ar prices are rock bottom, imports are fugged. Exactly what is your niche gonna be? Retail? lol. Seriously make money another way and god bless user.

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>Thanks to chemotherapy and a bunch of other drugs my eyesight finally started getting better, so I started applying to work again. I realize that I never was the biggest social butterfly-

Dude, you took a big hit there. I have a friend who is a legit ladies man and all that "alpha" stuff. He had a horrible injury with a similar recooperation time as you. He lost his gf, social status, job opportunities, delayed college graduation, etc etc. My buddy has taken this hit very hard even though he's got social skills and all that. Anyways, my point being, is you already admit you previously weren't the most social person, and then you took a solid hit. Everyone who goes through a shitty patch of luck needs to regroup and refocus and recover. You are probably mid 20's? It's okay if you're struggling for another year or two because you just got knocked off your feet. Push forward slowly and surely. Don't be so hard on yourself if it takes time to develop more socially and financially. I hope these other anons can help you more in the business/work area. Good luck.

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oh video games are definitely a big distraction for me I have been pretty much no-lifing this one mmorpg. I should do something similar to you, at least limit my game time. I think you have opened my eyes to what I was turning a blind eye to. thanks user!

Sounds like a good project, user. If you build a good prototype, it's entirely possible that you could probably pair with a smoother talker who can work with you to get funding for a larger operation.

A lot of the time it's less efficient to work on your weaknesses than it is to focus on your strengths and find someone who fills in the gaps. If you're terrible at dealing with people and great at engineering, then by all means work on developing social skills - but that doesn't mean you can't pass off that part of the business to someone else.

I'm going to start posting in these threads.

Tell us more about yourself user

If I get into print on demand I wouldn't have to register a business right

(checked)
I don't think so, I guess it depends on how big it gets? Or maybe if you have you're own website or store.

most likely yes, especially if you are going to hire employees, in which case you will need an EIN from the IRS (Employer Identification Number).
Business address, business bank account, register your businesses name with your state, probably a website, business phone, setup payment systems, email, accounting, etc. etc....

If you don't register your business, then the business will have to be in your name and you'll lose some of the convenience and protection registration provides, usually its not that expensive either. You'll want your business to be a separate part from you otherwise if things go tits up then you'll be more liable for its failure than if you registered it as its own thing.

at least that is all I have gathered from my research.

If you're still here.
I am happen to be what some call a "data scientist", could that give me an edge in such market ?
I know how to web dev/host too.

anybody have some tips for a newbie copywriter on finding first time clients and creating a portfolio? Would be greatly appreciated.

noob question, is it really true you make no money for an entire year because of the google algorithms?

is there a way to get some dough quicker via AM?

Check this thread for posts by DRC and also the dropbox.

awesome thank you so much

medium.com/@soundclouders/how-to-use-soundclouders-com-promotional-services-5f104696fe92

medium.com/@soundclouders/soundclouders-bronze-token-sbt-details-more-91a330596891

Investment: 1-6 ETH minus the cost of web-hosting

Reason: Creating your own Music Promotion Service

Soundclouders.com offers a bunch of different forms of music promotion. They're launching an SBT token which can be utilized to pay for these services.

There's a supply of 70,000 and the domain name is fucking mint alone, plus they've already done a ton of promotion for artists in the past.

So why invest in this?
OUTSOURCING.

Basically, you set up your own music promotion service and get money from rappers, artists, etc.

Then, with your already-owned SBT tokens, you can basically trade it for promotion from soundclouders.com

Right there, you'll have an automated business. How much would it bring in?

0.02 ETH per token right now during the Initial Sale vs. 0.11 ETH when it goes on sale in january.

So $4 vs. $19, not a bad spread, and there's profit to be made. Keep in mind that the SBT token can only be used to pay for BRONZE PACKAGES!!!!

So what you do is make your initial SBT investment and keep your tokens safe.

Afterwards, set up your own soundcloud music service or something. There's new musicians every damn day. Use marketing services to advertise your service. Use bots if you need to.

Offer your own Bronze service for $15 or whatever.

Once you have an artist who wants promotion, simply take payment and send 1 SBT token back to Soundclouders.com in exchange for a bronze promotional package.

Right there, you just completed a perfect business transaction without having to do any serious promotional work...minus getting your site out there in the first place.

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copytist.com/blog/easy-way-to-hustle-up-copy-clients
Hope this helps.
Alternatively just network?