Provide more detail in your question. Specifically, your target goal. Likely having this information, someone can assist you.

It sounds like you are going after high value targets who have layers and layers of insulation between your company and decision makers. If it were me, I would find someone either on here or on Linkedin who have existing relationships in your core industries and work out compensation deals with them directly. Everyone is different with how they want to be compensated, however, since you have self-funded, any revenue is good revenue at this point. I have some ideas for you if you want to contact me directly.

You can make it entity based. For example , brand it for an elite group usage. You can also make it server based, where entities , like universities, clubs or companies, can use it for their internal network to reach each others.

Identifying user personas is critical to your agenda. I originally come from South Africa, where the best "tech" startups are fundamentally copies of successful businesses in the USA or EU. The advantage, of course, is that they can copy many of the aspects of the original market leader: UX, UI, user acquisition strategies, growth tactics, business models etc. They also have a great use-case for raising capital and a potential exit to a local player, PE firm or the original company they copied when the company expands to their shores. So the key piece of advice: research who their ideal customer is. Read all the articles interviewing the team and watch videos where they discuss these issues. Want to be really sneaky? Get someone to interview them for you. Stalk them on social. There are a variety of other tools you could be using to analyze their followers on different social media channels to discover who the ideal persona is as well. EG: Sprout Social. Another thing to do: join their boards and see if you can get some business for yourself to see if you can get a handle on what the interactions are like.

Essentially you want to create a tech blog with more embedded purchasing options. Tech blogs work, so if done right there's no reason this idea would not work.

Yes, you can. However, the success is highly depended on the information architecture. You need to plan in creating and arranging the categories & subcategories in such a way that it gives the best user experience. You can also cloud powered instant search tools like Algolia to make the product finding easier via search box.

You are competing against Amazon at that point, I would pick an underserved niche that you are most passionate / knowledgeable about and start there. For instance, drone after market accessories like stickers, lights, carrying cases, etc. Look for some trends using Google, Pinterest, etc. It's business 101, find a need and serve it. Your best bet is to focus and go very deep, than casting a wide net because you're resources will be spread to thinly. I'd be more than happy to help you narrow your list and am available any time for a call. Good luck!

Hi there. No matter where you are; Kickstarter, gofundme or indiegogo are really good crowdfunding options Take care

You need to consult a Lawyer before you go live. The thinking you are using did not work for Napster, Napster argued that they were not in control of how the users shared the content, they were just a vehicle to share it on. They lost in court, so that might be one precedent someone uses to sue you. I am not a lawyer, and I do not play one on TV, so please contact a lawyer, spend the little money it will cost you to have a two-hour conversation, and make sure you are covered.

You need to build trust in your vetting process, which means you actually need a good vetting process. Some ideas would be to have reviews of the potential guest from their facebook friends. Each review would have links to the reviewer's facebook profiles. Have links to the potential guest's own facebook profile, twitter, linkedin, etc. The more background links you provide, the easier it will be for the wedding couple to decide whether to invite the person or not. I don't know if you will ever get to the point of convincing a couple to invite a stranger to their wedding, but those things will at least get you closer to that possibility. If you'd like to brainstorm other ideas on the topic, let me know, best, Lee

You could probably use any Wordpress theme that had a design and feel you like. I would use a good events plugin such as Calendarize It. That plugin makes it easy to set up a nice calendar of events. You can make specific calendars for each country, category and city. They could view them all on one calendar or filter down to specific locations. You could even enter the venue information for the events as well. It's a pretty decent plugin. You can see an example of it working here: http://tvqma.org/schedule

You're describing the problem, it's setting, and your platform very vaguely. But from general principles, it's best to charge in the least noticeable way possible, so a % of the seller's commission would be the best method. That way it's invisible until a sale comes through, and even then, it occurs automatically as a deduction. If you charge a subscription fee you're requiring the seller to actively pull out their card and send you money, a barrier that's much harder to get them to cross than the less noticeable, passive and automatic deduction from a sale. If you'd like to discuss the issue with respect to the specifics of your particular platform and its market, let me know and we can set up a call, best, Lee

If you have not tried buddypress have a look at it and see if it can do for you what you are looking for.

This has been done many times over. You can create an RSS feed from these sources, yes.

Yes, that can definitely be a problem if you are not redirecting all of your traffic to one or the other. The easiest way to solve this is to add a simple redirect to your site's .htaccess file. Here's an example of how to redirect all non-www traffic to www: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L] Editing your .htaccess file can be a little tricky, so be sure to do a little platform-specific research first before you do this as you could easily break your site!

Try: https://wordpress.org/plugins/members/

This is more of a subscription rather than a membership. In you mind, what are the benefits of "membership" that differentiate it from a simple subscription?

Go the National Housewares Association, they publish industry information by industry sector within housewares.

Get in touch with datacusp(dot)com

Hello, I believe that you may be over-complicating this a little. Typically, you need to have either citizenship or some other legal presence within a country to open a checking account within it. I would recommend establishing accounts in your own country first and then using ATMs in other countries to withdraw money, as "wiring" money internationally can be expensive. If you just need to pay for expenses while abroad, look instead into using credit cards that have no foreign transactions fees such as the Capital One Venture Card. If you really need accounts in multiple countries, you will likely need to incorporate within them. As for accepting payments in different currencies. Your best bet will probably be 2Checkout or Stripe Atlas to start. Stripe Atlas will probably have lower fees but will take more technical expertise to get up and running. Best of luck to you!

I'll urge you to reconsider. Speaking slowly and clearly in a presentation goes a long way in retaining attention and interest from your audience. I'll quote Paul Graham of Y-Combinator here "Err on the side of speaking slowly. At Rehearsal Day, one of the founders mentioned a rule actors use: if you feel you're speaking too slowly, you're speaking at about the right speed." Presentations can feel "slow" if they lack passion or enthusiasm - but increasing the speed will do little to help on that front. If you haven't yet - record a video of yourself delivering your pitch - it will tell you a lot about where things are falling flat.

Social engagement requires more than posting information about your product or service. You need to look for ways to be helpful to people without trying to drive them to your site. Look for opportunities to build relationships first and foremost. Once people see that you're helpful they'll begin to be interested in what you do and offer, but rarely before then. On the issue of your site, you may have some optimization/usability issues that need to be looked at. High bounce rates are indicative of improper messaging and a site that just isn't meeting visitor's needs and expectations.

Good Morning, Your question may appear to be a simple one. As a CPA, CGMA, and business performance expert for over 25 years now, I get questions like this from my clients often. Your options are not clear from your question, however, I will steer to you to where you need to look to determine what options are available to you: 1) Your company structure will determine some of your options. This means are you a Corp (C corp or S corp), LLC, partnership/multi-member LLC. Due to the 10% held by others, I'm sure your not a sole proprietor. 2) Any operating agreement you may have will also define more of your options. Operating agreements can hold many terms of how you operate your company, including ownership changes, so I cannot give you any advice here without knowing if you have one and what's in it, but the contents will flush out more options. 3) In the absence of an operating agreement (this is always possible) you may need to take "politically and legally prudent" steps. That means you'll need to work out any sale of your stake with your fellow partners. 4) Once you've flushed out your options available to you, you can then set the steps you need to take. 5) Your steps will need resources to help you. Business resources such as guidance on the sound business steps to take, and negotiations to conduct, while keeping your business rolling, as well as legal resources to put any agreements on paper. Because this is complex, by legal and business measures, I encourage you to call me for more accurate information to help you. I hope this helps!

There are advantages to both approaches. Using a theme such as Avada or X (my recommendation) will make the process faster and guarantee consistency, however the downsides are bloated code and potentially slow page load times. If you don't have a large or media-heavy site, this may not be an issue. Choose a theme that has a solid reputation for customer support and theme updates. Look at all the demos and be sure that you can mix and match the different elements that you like. And keep in mind that they all come with their own page builders and shortcodes, so you will need to choose a theme you want to stick with until you are ready to completely re-design. The pros of developing a custom theme are having more streamlined code and total control over the updates. The downsides would be an increased time/cost factor, a need to have someone monitor software changes and make necessary updates, and further development for future functional needs. Additional attention will need to be placed on required plugin compatibility. If you use ecommerce solutions, payment processors or email marketing opt ins, you'll need to be sure the custom code plays nice with them. Both approaches should allow you to create a totally customized design and user experience. Additional note regarding using a pre-coded theme: Be sure to check the compatibility with your required plugins as well. Most of them take the major ones into consideration, but if you aren't sure, reach out to the developers and ask ahead of time. Good luck! Feel free to contact me if I can help further. ~ Nicky

I highly recommend Mandi Atkins: http://veteransnationallending.com/staff/mandi-atkins/