A Software Business on 5 Hours a Week

Running a software business part-time and building systems to help do the marketing for you.

My (patio11's) presentation at Microconf 2011.

Transcript

1. A SOFTWARE BUSINESS
   ON 5 HOURS A WEEK
   Patrick McKenzie
   

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2. The Problem: Making This Sucks
   

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3. The Big Idea
    $60 budget
    1 week schedule
    Big Hairy Audacious Goal: $200 a month
   

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4. Bingo Card Creator – July 2006
   

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5. $0.00
   $50.00
   $100.00
   $150.00
   $200.00
   $250.00
   $300.00
   $350.00
   7/2006 8/2006
   Sales In First Two Months
   

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6. Why Did It Sell That Much?
   

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7. Version 1.02 – Now With Less Crashes!
   

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8. $0.00
   $100.00
   $200.00
   $300.00
   $400.00
   $500.00
   $600.00
   $700.00
   $800.00
   $900.00
   $1,000.00
   7/2006 8/2006 9/2006 10/2006 11/2006 12/2006 1/2007 2/2007 3/2007 4/2007 5/2007 6/2007
   Sales In First 12 Months
   

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9. AdWords, Halloween, Google… Oh My!
   $0.00
   $500.00
   $1,000.00
   $1,500.00
   $2,000.00
   $2,500.00
   7/2006 8/2006 9/2006 10/2006 11/2006 12/2006 1/2007 2/2007 3/2007 4/2007 5/2007 6/2007 7/2007 8/2007 9/2007 10/2007
   Sales Through Halloween '07
   

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10. A Brief Aside About EMDs
    • Mini-sites targeted at individual
    customer needs: $200 + $10
    per year (~$500 for this one,
    for the domain)
    • Exact match domains
    (“halloween bingo
    cards”.{com|net|org})
    • Declining part of my strategy,
    but still print money three
    times a year.
    • Why lease traffic when you can
    get it for free?
    

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11. The Big Idea: Scalable Content Creation
    

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12. $0.00
    $500.00
    $1,000.00
    $1,500.00
    $2,000.00
    $2,500.00
    $3,000.00
    Sales Through 2008
    

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13. Make It A Web App
    

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14. $0.00
    $500.00
    $1,000.00
    $1,500.00
    $2,000.00
    $2,500.00
    $3,000.00
    $3,500.00
    $4,000.00
    $4,500.00
    $5,000.00
    Sales Through 2009
    

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15. Holy Cow.
    This Is My Day Job.
    

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16. $0.00
    $1,000.00
    $2,000.00
    $3,000.00
    $4,000.00
    $5,000.00
    $6,000.00
    $7,000.00
    7/2006
    8/2006
    9/2006
    10/2006
    11/2006
    12/2006
    1/2007
    2/2007
    3/2007
    4/2007
    5/2007
    6/2007
    7/2007
    8/2007
    9/2007
    10/2007
    11/2007
    12/2007
    1/2008
    2/2008
    3/2008
    4/2008
    5/2008
    6/2008
    7/2008
    8/2008
    9/2008
    10/2008
    11/2008
    12/2008
    1/2009
    2/2009
    3/2009
    4/2009
    5/2009
    6/2009
    7/2009
    8/2009
    9/2009
    10/2009
    11/2009
    12/2009
    1/2010
    2/2010
    3/2010
    4/2010
    5/2010
    6/2010
    7/2010
    8/2010
    9/2010
    10/2010
    11/2010
    12/2010
    1/2011
    2/2011
    3/2011
    4/2011
    5/2011
    Sales To Date
    

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17. Adventures Since Quitting
    

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18. Five Quick Bits Of Advice
    

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19. Charge More
     Programmers consistently underprice. Double it,
    then go higher.
     Avoid pathological customers by charging more.
     Revenue is dominated by customers on most
    expensive plan spending other people’s money.
     Recurring revenue is the best kind.
    

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20. Make Web Applications
     Faster iteration.
     Easier support.
     Dramatically higher conversion rates.
     Recurring revenue is the best kind.
     Better tracking of actual use than MiniPeace.
    

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21. Figure Out SEO
     Free traffic from interested people = free money.
     Single best thing you can do for SEO: create a
    reason why people who do not buy your software
    should cite your website anyhow.
     Second single best thing: create a system which
    makes content at scale.
    

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22. The Inverted Iceberg Rule
    Photo:
    Natalielucier
    on Flickr
    

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23. Optimize. Everything.
     All factors in success of a software business are
    multiplicative.
     A/B testing: 5% increase in conversion rate, once
    per month, is ~70% increase in revenue per year.
     A/B testing is cheap & easy to get started with.
     More advanced: funnel optimization, first-run
    experience, etc.
    

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24. In Five Hours Per Week!?
    

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25. Three Keys To Avoid Wasting Time
    Outsource
    Automate
    Eliminate
    

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26. Stuff To Outsource
    Web design
    Web content
    Self-contained
    programming projects
    Customer support
    

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27. Stuff To Automate
    Routine customer support tasks
    Drudgery – license generation,
    keyword analysis, etc
    Server maintenance/monitoring
    

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28. Dashboard O’ Goodness
    

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29. The Big Idea: Scalable Content Generation
     Automate production of high-quality
    pages responsive to specific user needs,
    around a template and/or data source.
     Outsource the production of text for
    those pages.
     ????
     Profit!
    

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30. Make One Page
    

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31. Do It 941 More Times
    

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32. … Without Going Spare
    Live Demo Time
    

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33. It Really Works
    Baby Shower $6,870.00
    Halloween $4,230.00
    Valentines Day $3,600.00
    Christmas $2,520.00
    St Patrick's Day $1,890.00
    Summer $1,680.00
    Easter $1,470.00
    Cinco De Mayo $1,170.00
    Addition 1 To 10 $960.00
    Thanksgiving $600.00
    Christmas
    (Seasonal)
    $600.00
    Football $570.00
    Multiplication 1 To
    10
    $510.00
    Mother's Day $450.00
    Back to School $390.00
    Periodic Table Of
    Elements
    $360.00
    4th of July $330.00
    Spring $270.00
    Women Of The
    Bible
    $270.00
    Winter $270.00
    Nutrition $270.00
    Geometry $240.00
    Autumn $210.00
    Careers $210.00
    Fraction
    Multiplications
    $180.00
    • Total sales: $39,270
    • Total investment: $3,000
    • 251 activities / 942 have generated sales
    • Top selling activity: I didn’t even know people did
    that.
    And 226 More!
    

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34. Stuff To Eliminate
     Checking Google Analytics 37 times
    per day
    Worrying about competition
     Development which does not meet
    demonstrable customer needs –
    see Lean Startup
    

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35. Thanks for Listening
     Blog at http://www.kalzumeus.com
     Slides will be posted. See @patio11
     Send me email. I love chatting about this.
    patrick@kalzumeus.com
    

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