Yeah you can start with a little team and then expand to bigger one. Double the tech support people every time your customer base gets doubled and increment sales people as needed. The reason why I am saying doubling the tech support people is because the technical support is one of the top reasons a hosting company is selected by the customer. No matter what kind of services you provide, if your tech support is weak then people will switch to another immediately. I can't tell you much here as these strategies are part of my own business model. But if you could give me a call then we can discuss it further.

You want to prioritize your financial structure. It is apart of the foundation of your business and will cause a lot of harm if you aren't hands on about it. Yes- Get one-on-one help from a financial adviser or consultant. If you want to get a CFO, make sure they are are not just capable- but are committed to your company's success. Having a CFO long term will be likely be the best option. Personally, I am currently assisting a friend of mine with her start up company and her lack of financial structure is a source of conflict. You cannot expect success without planning for it, it's a part of the bloodline for your business!

That's the golden question! One solid way- involvement. Join local VA groups, check in with senior and community centers- sponsor events and actually workshops (everyone loves speaking, but most people love seeing company's doing things more than speaking). Getting involved looks good and makes you trustworthy beyond just good customer service. As far as data services are concerned, that's a valuable service! And a lot of individuals who own and run companies often time forget or misunderstand that- educate them. Give them the understanding of these services- without selling to them, and them come around to the crux of the issues with these service: hiring professionals to do it saves them time and money, but hiring professionals who love it does that and provides high quality!

I'm definitely not an attorney, but have worked with several (many dozens) startups who have gone through the seed, angel and venture funding processes. The first step to consider is whether you are financing your investment as debt or equity. If you're talking about interest, you could be referencing interest paid on a debt note, or you could be referencing interest (shares) in some form of an LLC corporation. Which, brings me to my next point, the format and style of investment you take on can also be influenced by which type of legal entity you are incorporated under. Each classification, from S Corps to C Corps to LLCs and LLPs, have different implications surrounding how you take on outside investment. Also, I'm not sure if your model is unique in someway, but offering employment in exchange for investment seems somewhat unwise and possibly sticky to complete (if even possible.) I would definitely speak to a Labor attorney about that since if it were even possible to do may it could make the contract writing side challenging (terms of employment/firing etc.) For what it is worth, most people consider a convertible or Safe (simple agreement for future equity) note at the funding levels you are describing. It makes the process very smooth and there is a ton of freely available documentation/templates online you can use to complete these with little or no legal involvement. Happy to discuss any other formation or investment positioning items, feel free to reach out if you have other questions. best of luck with your round!

Hello! My name is Humberto, I'm the co-founder of Unthink Digital Marketing (www.Unthink.me) in short - yes you can build whatever you want if you have all the capabilities necessary to do so. Programming through a skilled engineer can be and do wonders. If you have an idea for an app and are even considering looking to hire a team to help you build an MVP, try outsourcing to teams like BetaBulls.com - who are one of the startup industry leaders in app development plus they are known to be very flexible with their pricing. Best of luck to you!

We have a few programmers in house but when we have to we outsource to a NJ based Software Development company - www.BetaBulls.com, their leader Sree is amazingly talented and well adapted to working with startups as his niche market. I know they have taken clients on equity before but is always a small percentage and even allow flexible payment options. How flexible? You'd have to ask him for more details. With that said, I do agree with you, when I launched my very first startup years ago I had to partner with a small programming team and gave them the CTO position (as a team) with their shares and rights but because they were being hired - they also took payment. Needless to say, the partnership didn't work out. We did get an MVP going but because they weren't entrepreneurs themselves they only cared about their share of the work and pay and were not willing to put in extra work for the equity they had received - equity is not meant to be seen as a payment for the contractor, but as an opportunity for the contractor who believes in your product to generate something for themselves much higher than their typical fee would allow. As first time entrepreneur, or Newbie CEO as I call them, you need to watch out for these subtle differences in the companies you are looking to outsource your work to. Consider the dev agency's entrepreneurial spirit, their capabilities as well. For example, we chose BetaBulls because they have so much skill power behind their team that any development setback can be quickly out maneuvered and they can probably churn out better work than other teams who have the same skill sets through out the table where as they have overlapping and niche skills. ON BRANDING Beware of these promises, it reminds of me those who offer 'free promotion' in exchange of your service. Branding is part of marketing, and marketing is not advertising while branding is also not a logo. If what you need is cohesive branding through out your app, web and accounts online an affordable graphic designer (maybe one from our team) can do that for you. If is branding design work for the app/web itself - then that is not something they are doing for free, because it should be part of the Statement of Work - how can they build something with no design? As far as Marketing goes, do they have any marketers in place? previous case studies of how they did something for someone and exponentially grew their company? MARKETING IS NOT ADVERTISING Marketing is a management level effort, for example when we get hired, our clients get our MBA, Startup experience, Strategy expertise to help them fine tune their operation, their product, their branding, market positioning and anything else that is CUSTOMER FACING - once we have that do we begin working on a marketing strategy that involves advertising to the right audience, right demographic, timing, channels, with the right words, the right content, right images, right blogs, right relationships and running paid advertising on the right channels - if their "Marketing Help" is helping you post on social media--- that's not worth 12% equity, maybe .5% percent. For context/contrast - is typical for board members of a growing startup to get .5% - 2% for their participation - for most non-snap chat type of startups .5% is the standard offering - because you need as much equity to leverage as you continue to grow. I hope I was of any help, below are some links for you. www.betabulls.com - app / software development Http://blog.unthink.me - marketing tips, practices, strategy If you can do me a favor and follow me on Twitter @HumbertoVee and or http://facebook.com/iwillunthink Thank you for asking and reading :)

I love this type of questions because it has to do with strategy which is my sweet spot!! My name is Humberto and I'm the co-founder of www.Unthink.me a digital marketing agency that allows small business owners and entrepreneurs negotiate their subscription budget. We started offering marketing as a quality measure for our strategy consulting, over time we pivoted a bit and offer our combined services to small and new businesses at a higher leap in value. FROM YOUR QUESTION You have built a dedicated team of writers and bloggers that write about Travel - my question to you would be what type of travel? what scope within the Travel niche are you focused on right now? if at all. Answering these type of questions will help you identify possible prospects for your business. As inbound marketers we have a methodology that we follow, is called the Buyer Persona, the Buyer's Journey and their Moments Of Truth ::: A Buyer Persona is a semi-fictional character of who your audience is, hobbies, lifestyle, family, personal/professional phase in life, etc. - use this to help you identify what social channels they are most likely on, what are their interests in travel, what magazines or blogs do they read on travel, etc. This helps you identify possible clients such as family oriented magazines, bloggers, media companies, PR agencies, travel agents, etc who might want to pay for an article or two... Then you use the Buyer Journey methodology to help you create the type of content that your prospect client might be interested on and thus searching for on Google or their social account of choice::: Awareness -- Prospect first becomes aware that they have a problem, may not be sure of the origin or if there is a solution, but they Google their problem or situation. Consideration -- Prospect finds content (various formats) that identify the problem and possible different solutions and alternatives. Decision - Prospect finally understands the different available solutions and alternatives for their problem. Makes a decision on what approach to take and who to hire or what to buy or not to buy. For example, a travel agent first launching her business might know she needs to blog but has no time nor the skills to write content with the right structure and images and CTAs for her so she might subscribe to travel blogs, magazines, and accounts for inspiration as well as maybe actively Google for subscription services for travel articles she can share on her own blog. She might be re-sharing content with some attribution to it already. Knowing this you might then create content that talks about how travel agents benefit from outsourcing their writing to other travel bloggers, you might write about why travel writing is good for business, how can travel agents benefit from travel writing in general and then share it through her favorite medium or have the content built with really good SEO so she finds it on her own. That would be for the Awareness stage, then you may write content for the Consideration stage of why is good to outsource as a business owner, or travel agent best places to visit, etc. You can do the same, SEO, share and or because this piece is for the 2nd step which is now consideration you might send it to those who have subscribed on the first content CTA and now you have targeted email to send to her to move her from Consideration to Decision of actually giving you a try. Obviously this approach applies to anything else in any other industry and does sound easier than it actually is, but the methodology is pretty straight forward. Consider the fact that many magazines and publishers already pay for the content inside those magazines too, so all you have to do as well is cold-email them or cold call them if that's your thing. For a more scalable and sustainable approach though, Content and Inbound Marketing is key. I hope I have been of any value and brought some clarity. If you think so and would like to do me a favor, please follow me on twitter @HumbertoVee or my team on http://facebook.com/iwillunthink Thank you for asking and reading!

This is a very common question, and the short answer is - work hard and don't listen to your naysayers nor your lizard brain. Starting a business doesn't require any capital, but often times many entrepreneurs aren't skillful enough to couple swagger + brute determination + insight. You have to know that it isn't about what you have, what you don't have or who you know but about how willing you are to pivot your efforts, try the same thing 3 times 3 different ways before saying that strategy didn't work, how good are you at negotiating distractions and negativity like self doubt. I have helped several companies launch out of pure ideas and coached entrepreneurs to hustle their way to obtaining an MVP or minimal business product inventory to generate sales, in some cases you can sell before you even having a product. It all depends on the person, how likable that person is and whether or not the entrepreneur can be laser focused. When you don't have money then you need time and clarity (that's why communities like this one here are so vital) When you don't have time or money, then you need swagger and dedication to be everywhere, meet as many strategic potential partners as possible, learn from them, build relationships and get liked - is not about you who know but who you know and if they like you. My name is Humberto Valle, I'm the co-founder of a global digital marketing agency (www.Unthink.me) and I have been working with startups for about 10 years and launched and exited 2 successful (no big deal though) startups myself. Best of luck, if you have any specific questions follow up and send me a message.

Discounts or free service incentives are just part of the equation. You first need to capture your prospects attention with a value driven initiative. Ideally you want to build a level of trust and authority with that prospect through multiple touch points. By focusing on adding value first, you increase the likelihood that your prospect will care at all about your free discount or free service incentive. I'm not sure what type of business you are in (B2B, B2C, Online, Offline etc.) but this determines the types of mediums that would fair best in delivering that value. If you want to dig into the details and share some more insight about your business feel free to schedule a call.

This is a great question! I think I've seen some of your other questions here as well. Let me try to help you out. My name is Humberto Valle, I'm the co-founder of a global marketing agency (www.Unthink.me) we help startups and small businesses with an expertise in non-tangible products and services; like yours for example. This is great timing because we just wrapped up a slack conversation with the founder of The Hustle, Sam Parr. Their team offers content as a service, so they are a media company providing useful information with a niche focused on humor but their content ranges and is often very very helpful for its readers. It seems to me that you too are in the media business itself but haven't discovered that yet. They had a strategy from the get go, Sam Parr told us that even though they knew they wanted that humor help niche they had to adjust their deliver as they went. *** This adjustment comes at different times for different people, yours might be now*** You already have a niche - SPIRITUAL MOTIVATION now your immediate next effort needs to be find your blue ocean within that niche - an area or industry that houses the most people who need this type of content - you can make a list of jobs/life stages such as pregnancy, divorce, coping with death, disability, VA, etc and pick the ones you can relate to or have a lot of interest and or knowledge in... you could also pick one that is something you want to learn eagerly and your BLUE OCEAN media is motivational content for your own growth and use yourself as a case study - such as blogging about yourself and publishing self help books on that one area. If you are a funny person try making your blue ocean a funny spiritual motivational author - now that's a blue ocean strategy to follow. WHAT'S A BLUE OCEAN? I've dropped this a few times now, so just in case - a Blue Ocean is a strategy methodology discovered by Chan Kim and Renee Maugborne (Corporate Strategists) that showcases how niches aren't good enough and how metrics based off competition aren't good enough for sustainability. A Blue Ocean is not a niche, but a completely newly created market space not previously served. Red Oceans are bloody with competition and noise while Blue Oceans although smaller are much better for ROI and incumbents such as yourself. The key to growth is finding a niche and then the blue ocean of that niche. OUR BLUE OCEAN At Unthink our niche was startups and small businesses and our Blue Ocean is leap in value for low budgets - we let our clients negotiate their subscription fee. It affects business processes such as I had to build a team of engineers, graphic artists and marketers that would work with me and work their bones for pennies on the dollar to deliver value to small and struggling companies. We do what we can for that client even if we lose financial ROI that month - on average we increase profit margins month over month. Finding your niche is not enough, this can often confuse you because you tend to then find competitors and try to mimic their own efforts and even get discouraged by not getting the same results - try finding a niche and then a blue ocean (a twist, oxymoron, reduce industry standard cost, increase standard value, eliminate fluff in typical offerings, and create new offerings - could your content be better in GIFs? or Mobile App or as a Table Game? ON IMPLEMENTATION Your content online can be a marketing channel to drive traffic to promote the end product - but you won't find that product unless you have the blue ocean approach first. Otherwise you may find yourself writing content for the sake of writing and that's not cool for business. Sometimes in order for your content to scale and go viral you just need the right channel - when it comes to inbound marketing (which is what we do) we call this "Content Recycling" - we may write a good article or how to and published it as text and after a few weeks if it gets a decent traction we may create a slide or video out of the original text article - sometimes that will generate even more traction that the original, sometimes the content should be acted or on interview form, specially if your written content is long. The structure of the content itself is important, headlines for SEO and readability, good relatable non-stocky images are also a factor for increased shares and subscribers. Facebook is a good channel but it shouldn't be your hub, invest in a good platform to build your community in a controlled space, Facebook is its own ecosystem and is hard to export validation and growth elsewhere from FB to the rest of the global (internet) community. Once you have your niche, one thing that we do as inbound marketers is create content for our personas. Let's say you write for professionals who work 24/7, have no time for vacations, have lost their families, been divorced, haven grown in years, etc - you may write for each of these phases of their journey - share snippets of your content or article and get them to subscribe to receive the article you wrote, this helps you build a list you can send a next phase article to them... as you grow your list you can get sponsored updates, promos, and sell your own work as well. I hope this helps a bit, if you can do me a favor please follow me on twitter @HumbertoVee or Facebook at www.facebook.com/iwillunthink - if you have any questions please feel free to message me :)

A very good question, with many long, complex answers. As a starting point, take a look at flippa offerings to get an idea of common metrics disclosures. You can also search for flippa + metrics + read up on the entire deal flow of site sales. In general, most sites sell for 2.5x-7x yearly profit. This also depends on payment spread. In other words, a site might sell for 2.5x cash or 7x paid a 25% of monthly profits, till sale price is reached. If you go the 2nd route, be sure you escrow your DNS records with an attorney + have a reversion clause. In other words, if 3 years into the deal, the person you sold to gets hit by a bus + can no longer make payments, then business reverts to you, along with control of DNS records. Very important to have a reversion clause which triggers any time your buyer fails to make a payment. Many people miss considering this when they sell a business for payments over time. Which is tough, because many times you can sell your business for much more money if you're willing to sell over time, rather than a single up front payment.

General Motivation for a general audience sounds like a hard focus point. Try breaking down- all motivation have singular aspects outside of faith and religion. What are your topics? Relationship, Career, depression/Mental illness, etc? Sometimes there's a need to talk things through to fully understand what it is you have rather than switching focus. I've been to art school, I've proofread and guided lots of writers through this- the creative process takes some analysis, but sometimes you're just too close to see what's right in front of you. Take a step back, do some general blogging. Tumblr is great for becoming engrossed in various cultures- the motivation culture is one of them! Take time to know the general community and that will help.

Best ROI can be obtained with best class management on Working Capital and Focus on each P&L line. Over this 2 major itens detailed action plans are nedded in order to obtain continuous improvement and high productivity level. Tolls like Balanced Score Card can contribute for Goals achievement. For more details it be a pleasure to offer detailled answer through a phone call.

Most of those are very good at syndicating content. Because Facebook doesn't do much in terms of copyright infringement, people can take great content from other places and use it for their own pages. If you do that and include a paid strategy behind it, you have the ability to grow your page quickly.

If you sign up with KDP select, you'll be given 5 days where you can drop the price to free. You'll be restricted to only publish on their platform, however. Hit up your email list, use sites like BookBub, or reddit.com/r/FreeEBooks in order to prepare for the discount launch. Start the deal on a Sunday since more people will be at home and prepared to read rather than Friday and Saturday nights when they're out. Include, at the end of your book, a request for people to leave honest feedback. They're more apt to do it if you remind them. You can also include links to your other titles. I've published a handful of titles under different pen names but I'm not an expert. I just figured I'd share what my research picked up.

Instagram is great for attracting targeted customers. But the biggest problem is you can't add links in the post. The links are added as text and are not clickable. I think following is the only best way to covert your followers to customers: 1. Keep posting quality content. Always post unique, catchy and "can't resist to share" content. Content must force its viewer to share. And by force I mean it must be AMAZINNNGGG.... It's not like you just wrote "share this or you will go to hell" :D 2. Use hashtags. Research about them. Use most used hastags like "followme" "instacool" etc. But use that are more relevant to what you are selling. When you type "#" inside description of your post, Instagram will suggest you top hashtags. Select the one that is relevant to your business. 3. Give your followers free content like Preview PDF book (or something else that introduce your offer) in the website link on your profile page. 4. With each post add a line like "Click the link in the bio to get the free book" or "To know more click the link in the bio" or something else. 5. When user clicks the link you must take him to a page where he/she enters his/her email and then taken to a FREE content or download. 6. You collected their emails. Now its time to send newsletters about your paid content. Send them in 3 days gap or weekly. Don't send too much mails otherwise they will report your email as spam. This is how I made a good business from Instagram. I hope it helps you too. :)

I have experience in monetizing and selling companies both based on paid memberships to a forum and online courses. In both cases the value derives from you or your brand driving the purchase. So, you can't just create a course or private message board about, say, how to fix BMWs. There has to be a reason why they want to get the information from/through you. That's what will really drive the purpose. So, the passive income won't start out as passive, but can be once you have 1000 true fans (so to speak).

Hello! My name is Humberto Valle, I'm the co-founder of www.Unthink.me, growth hacking and digital marketing service. I can go over all the different tactics and strategies that you can implement but there is a book by a fellow growth hack marketer, Ryan Holiday, in this book he talks about how he did just what you are looking for. In essence, he scheduled his book release with enough time that allowed him to promote snippets of the book through blogs, forums, influencers, etc and get traction on this website to capture emails from interested marketers and business owners. You can also trade emails for snippets/sections of your book as well as schedule a timeline releasing chapter by chapter through a blog wrapping up the entire project with the release of the book itself. (sounds contradictory, but if your book is good people will want to have a physical copy and support you for it) Once the book is launched you reach out to influencers who have shown support before hand as well as through emails and even paid ads. Check out his book is definitely worth it.

The main reason people opt-out of your mailing list is because you are not offering anything of value to them, whether it be through sample products, free information that solves a problem, or simply offering them a free ebook. Another reason people will opt-out is because you send too many emails throughout the week and you’re cluttering up their inbox with offers, sales pitches, and things that look like spam. Then there are those people out there who really don’t want to be on anyone’s list, and might be willing to look you up again if they need something from you. The best way to keep them on your list is to keep them engaged, offer them true value, develop a relationship with them through personable emails, and send out just one or two emails a month unless you’re in a business where it is necessary to send more and your subscribers expect that from you.

If you are a self-published author, you may want to consider publishing via both options. I just remembered a survey I did with US-based readers when I published my book. I initially wanted them to just be on print versions to hold a special offering for the books. However, 80% of the readers say they rarely read print books nowadays and most of them consider continuing the books via Kindle. Though, one answer struck me the most. One guy said, it's not up to us to decide the definition of "reading." It's up to your audience. So, if you're thinking of publishing your book, it's better of have it either way because the end goal, aside from profit, is having your books read by your audience. Whether it's on kindle, android or live book, they should have the option to choose.

If I had to start over, I would have built my email list of raving fans first. I was already published on Amazon, B&N, Kobo, and iBooks, but I gained traction by having a readership of peeps on my mailing list who I could contact every time I had a book ready for release. Something I've learned over time is that the most important thing to focus on in your author business is: 1.) Creating high quality books 2.) Building an email list of fans who want your high quality books. That's it! That's how you get traction on any platform.

Keep me posted. I'm interested.

You should start by looking at networks like Behance and scouting designers with portfolios that match your product expectations. Great editorial projects are made by designers who are able to translate your ideas and to visually attractive designs.

Here is pricing approach that I have seen used by large companies. The data provider typical try to align their pricing model as close to their customers model as possible. Let's say if you are pricing your data to be included in the Bloomberg terminal. If Bloomberg charges $24,000 per terminal per year to their clients. The data provider might want to have a fraction of that. I have seen some companies charge $60 per year for their data to be included in the bloomberg terminal. Again, there are a number of different models. Bloomberg, on the other hand, likes the data to be licensed to them at a fixed annual cost irrespective of how many terminals they include it. There is no one-size-fits-all pricing model for data.