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> I'll get on a way to sell it in advance. Awesome. Really glad to hear you're ready to take the initiative. > where I would sell an annual deal on the server

> I'll get on a way to sell it in advance. Awesome. Really glad to hear you're ready to take the initiative. > where I would sell an annual deal on the server for 25-33% off You may not get people to commit to a year up front if you're brand new, but 3 months in advance can be pretty effective and still pay for most of the server. > I also wanted the website to feature a permission marketing campaign & collect email addresses of interested parties Okay, this is easy. I've used both Mailchimp and Aweber and like them both; I'd recommend Mailchimp in your case since it has a free plan for you to start with. It is easy...literally copy and paste. You will be surprised how simple it is to integrate this. > I guess I can achieve the same thing with a facebook page with people 'Liking' us & adding our announcements to their news feeds. This will work; for me, conversions have been much stronger from my email list than from Twitter/FB. Again, Mailchimp makes this easy. Facebook also makes this pretty easy. > I saw an interesting social commerce app that allowed for one-click facebook purchasing, that would make the storefront part easy & free of up-front capital. Use Stripe. Again, copy-and-paste simple. Mailchimp + Stripe + a shared hosting account + a WordPress install + a theme and you've got everything you need to sell your first server. Best of luck!

tmzt 13y ago
Thank you for the timely advice. I'm actually a technical person teaching myself SEO and marketing and working on something vaguely related to the hosting industry. I've found myself needing to do the opposite, stop focusing on the technical aspects of things and putting up a Wordpress site for the content marketing side of things. I've got a few targeted pages up already with Mailchimp forms to gather interest and validate the idea. I've actually got some code already written but have found that the advice to gauge customer interest first is spot on and have refocused my efforts on that. Once I've identified what aspect of the full business model customers are actually interested in based on the Mailchimp group that gathers signup, I'll focus on that subset for the private beta.) If anybody is interested the site is lanceject.com.
cdvonstinkpot 13y ago
Yes, thanks.
cdvonstinkpot 13y ago
So what I've done today was I brought this spreadsheet I have that details the plans for 'Server #1' with all its parts & where I'm going to source them all so that I can afford to build the server, down to a friend's computer shop who is an A+ certified builder so that I have a second set of eyes on my plans- just to be sure that what I have worked out isn't going to present me with any surprises once I get all my parts together to build the server. I would hate to get all my money spent on the server parts & have customers having paid for a specific product & then not be able to deliver that product just as it was advertised because of some unforeseen surprise that came up once I got all the server parts together ready to be assembled. So before I go & put up links for people to be able to pay for a quoted system, I want to be absolutely sure that this is the system that I can build with my $4k. No surprises once I get my parts together. And that's what I've accomplished this morning, I'm still working on the rest of what everyone's written. I'll be working off of this post for a few days it appears. Thanks to everyone who's replied.
cdvonstinkpot 13y ago
I have hosting, but it's static hosting only- no server-side apps on the backend, it's with Fastmail & it comes with my email service, so I want to use that for the site. It limits me to a static only site, but I'm okay with that. I like Ribbon for payment processing https://www.ribbon.co https://www.ribbon.co because it works on any website, especially my static site. It's expensive, but the user experience it provides is worth it to me, I like that there aren't any hoops for customers to jump through to check out, its as simple as I'd like my own checkout experience to be. To me that's high-end & matches the image I have for the company to project. I'll look into both Mailchimp & Aweber & see which I like. Thanks again for all the valuable info. I appreciate that you've taken the time to post such a detailed reply for me.

tmzt 13y ago

Thank you for the timely advice. I'm actually a technical person teaching myself SEO and marketing and working on something vaguely related to the hosting industry. I've found myself needing to do the opposite, stop focusing on the technical aspects of things and putting up a Wordpress site for the content marketing side of things. I've got a few targeted pages up already with Mailchimp forms to gather interest and validate the idea. I've actually got some code already written but have found that the advice to gauge customer interest first is spot on and have refocused my efforts on that. Once I've identified what aspect of the full business model customers are actually interested in based on the Mailchimp group that gathers signup, I'll focus on that subset for the private beta.) If anybody is interested the site is lanceject.com.

cdvonstinkpot 13y ago

Yes, thanks.

cdvonstinkpot 13y ago

So what I've done today was I brought this spreadsheet I have that details the plans for 'Server #1' with all its parts & where I'm going to source them all so that I can afford to build the server, down to a friend's computer shop who is an A+ certified builder so that I have a second set of eyes on my plans- just to be sure that what I have worked out isn't going to present me with any surprises once I get all my parts together to build the server. I would hate to get all my money spent on the server parts & have customers having paid for a specific product & then not be able to deliver that product just as it was advertised because of some unforeseen surprise that came up once I got all the server parts together ready to be assembled. So before I go & put up links for people to be able to pay for a quoted system, I want to be absolutely sure that this is the system that I can build with my $4k. No surprises once I get my parts together. And that's what I've accomplished this morning, I'm still working on the rest of what everyone's written. I'll be working off of this post for a few days it appears. Thanks to everyone who's replied.

cdvonstinkpot 13y ago

I have hosting, but it's static hosting only- no server-side apps on the backend, it's with Fastmail & it comes with my email service, so I want to use that for the site. It limits me to a static only site, but I'm okay with that. I like Ribbon for payment processing https://www.ribbon.co https://www.ribbon.co because it works on any website, especially my static site. It's expensive, but the user experience it provides is worth it to me, I like that there aren't any hoops for customers to jump through to check out, its as simple as I'd like my own checkout experience to be. To me that's high-end & matches the image I have for the company to project. I'll look into both Mailchimp & Aweber & see which I like. Thanks again for all the valuable info. I appreciate that you've taken the time to post such a detailed reply for me.