I have started listening to the Lifestyle Business Podcast with Dan Andrews, where I heard one thing that really made me think. The question was, "How can I grow my business as quickly as possible?". The answer was, "outsource as much as possible". Most of the time required to set up the document types is spent searching for the relevant information on the web. Creating the code is relatively fast at this point (although somewhat complicated). The obvious solution is to outsource the web search portion of this work.
I have used Odesk once before with reasonable results, so I spent an hour writing some instructions and creating a spread sheet in google docs for the VA to fill in with data. Within 30 minutes of posting the job, I had roughly 45 responses. I am interested in working with people in the Philippines because it seems the combination of good English, good education and low costs makes a great value so although there were many suitable candidates from Asia (Pakistan mainly) I focused on the candidates from the Philippines. Then I focused on the responses that indicated the person had at least read my request. This lead to Rodel, who I hired for a limited run (max 15 hours) at a rate of $2.50 per hour. He started the next day, but unfortunately misunderstood what I wanted (probably my explanation was not clear). This can happen, which is why you have to limit the first run and check the first results (this is why I like using google docs, you can see the results in real-time. A few emailed exchanges (his written English seems to be very good) later and we are back on track.
Assuming that he can process one country per hour, that will give me 100 countries for $250. This will give me around 200 photo types which is a solid offering. It will take me about 15 minutes to process each country, so that's 25 hours worth of work. I can manage that in about a month (maybe a little sooner as vacations are coming, so the wife and kids tend to sleep later giving me more time to work in the mornings). For me to do this one my own, it would take a minimum of four months, with no other developments going on. Is a 3-month acceleration worth $250? I think so - besides, I would go nuts if I had to do only this for 4 months!
I want to build up at least 100 documents before adding any additional features. I should reach this goal in mid January. After that, I want to set this up as a business in the US, with a US bank account, so I can use the super simple (and reasonably priced) Stripe credit card processing. This will make the experience much nicer for the user (higher conversion too, based on stories of switching from Paypal).
After that, the next feature is to add the Assistant functionality. This will be a big change, but it will be the main differentiation for my product. I want to use RSpec and Cucumber to make my attempt at Behaviour Driven Development (BDD). Once I am comfortable with this process, I can further eliminate myself by just writing specs and letting other coders (who are certainly better and faster than me) fill in the blanks. I will have fully testable code so I can re-factor or add features later with a good certainty that I won't break anything done by others. This will be a big step into making it to the next level of lifestyle design.
Of course I also need revenue to pay these guys, so I will have to start marketing Picutive as well. I can start locally with my and my wife's companies. They would both benefit from such a service. I know enough admins to get some first users (people in my office are traveling all the time). Once I get the process running well, I will approach the travel office for our companies to propose the service. I will offer a discount in exchange for being able to use the company name and logo on our web site (happy customers). I'm thinking of something like offering it for 14.90 normally, and giving 2CHF off if the user has an Alstom email address.
Other features that could be implemented are:
- Creating and adding travel tips (originally, the plan was to add these to a separate page, but now, I'm thinking to just add them to the bottom of the document pages - have to test which combination is best for SEO and ultimately conversions.
- Multiple copies of a print can be ordered (must come from customers)
- Multiple types of prints can be ordered. (must come from customers)
- Checking the document validity
- Intersting idea may be to offer this as a service to other photo providers - I could make an API!
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