If I'm reading this correctly, you're essentially asking if there is a market for marketing services. To which the answer is a resounding 'yes'. Effective marketing and sales is essentially giving people money. If you are wondering whether photography and facebook content is effective, there are plenty of people who use this alone, or to augment other efforts. Success is more dependent on the ability than the channel selected, in my humble opinion. The easiest way to get started with something like this if you aren't 100% positive on your ability to deliver is to do it for free. The only risk is your own time. This also gives you an opportunity to base your price off of value. Many people start out arbitrarily determining their worth and start charging per hour. With this, you might discover 5 hours of work yields $5000 in revenue for a client, which you could easily charge $1000 for. You just started making $200 an hour. If you choose to go this route, I would be careful with choosing your first test client. Some types of businesses (fashion retail for instance) are heavily influenced by photography while others (industrial chemical manufacturing) are not. If you choose a category without a lot of leverage you will have skewed results on the value your talents can produce.

Tell me how you can make money for my organization. Promote your quality work with a "Made in USA" badge. Offer transparency and give me a guarantee that you will teach me something. • • • "Call / Text +1 720 RACECAR Anytime" is a favorite slogan of mine, perhaps you should put that on the back of every picture. I really love the site ETSY because it's personal and I think once you make that connection you'll earn growth. • • • I bet if you find a neat way to write (instead of using pen / sharpie) a message on the back of each photo you'll see results. • • • Have you visited AC Moore to pickup art supplies? Remember to snag a 50% Coupon from their site.

Short answer: of course you can! Anything can be a bayonets, the differentiation comes from the entrepreneur in securing that market. You have, in a microlevel, proved that there is a need and is just a matter of how big that market can be. What I would do, if in your shoes is keep the idea simple. Target only one industry or type of phone call in which there is in fact a benefit of having a third party listening to a call to then offer suggestions. The phone calls that you guys made could be the type of call to focus on! But it has to be one where the feedback is the only service to the customer. Don't get too hung up at first about monetizing, once you find the right type of call you can then focus on how to monetize. You can charge businesses within that industry or charge customers directly. If you charge customers directly maybe have a prepayment processed similar to clarity for example. If you need more feedback give me or another a call Best of luck!

Use Mattermark.com to find them. They have a 14 days free trial. The tool will let you filter by founding and type of company, so it will probably give you what you need.

On a selective basis, I'm beginning to offer landing page content writing (including rewriting) services. If you think your website text may be less than stellar, I can take a look.

Short answer - yes, it is possible. To avoid that you may need to think about the barriers that make this scenario less likely: 1. Frame your solution such a way that it will be easier and more profitable to cooperate with you than copy 2. Select for begin small enough niche, so they don't bother 3. Get a patent for you technology You may also try to ask them to sign NDA and Non-compete agreement before presenting the idea, but it will be extremely hard to do.

It depends :) Financing: When you're ready to start raising funds, C Corps (especially Delaware) are still preferred in the VC world although some angels are increasingly willing to invest in LLCs. Risk: When you're just starting off it's okay to have a holding LLC with DBAs. As you grow one or more of the ideas, you may want to separate out the risk so that if one company has issues it doesn't hurt the others. But it isn't necessary when you're early on. Once you add employees, cofounders, and/or investors, it's probably time. Your holding LLC could have equity in the idea and you could setup the idea as a C Corp. It's a good structure. Also -- this ain't legal advice. Just general blahblahblah about legal structure. Really good article from a fellow Seattle startup attorney here: http://www.startuplawblog.com/choice-of-entity/

The way I see things, a pay-per-minute phone consultation ought to involve no sales pitch whatsoever. Nobody wants to pay for that, and nobody should. Consulting and sales are utterly different roles. Mutually exclusive, in fact. Is your value proposition external to the call or internal? A consulting call ought to be self-contained. By the time a client hangs up, they ought to be in a better position than where they started – with no further obligation to pay us. So ask yourself what the purpose of the phone call is. If your goal is to sell a product or service – a useful WordPress plugin in this case – then the call is a sales presentation not a consultation, and it ought to be free. The hard truth of sales is that a large percentage of prospects (the majority, usually) won't buy, even after a 30-minute presentation about the virtues of your offering. Time spent talking to dead ends must be factored in to your price and recouped by successful sales. Adding that cost as a fee for the sales pitch itself won't work out well. This is sometimes a tough distinction to make. In my own case, I offer a number of services (e.g. brand name creation) that go beyond the scope of a 15-minute phone call. When someone is paying me $5 per minute, I don't want to squander their time and money by explaining some other paid service! So the rule I've set myself is to stick to problems I can solve on the phone. When it's appropriate to explain the broader services that I offer, I try to do so in a non-paying context. Mainly through email. There's nothing wrong with using a free Clarity.fm call for a sales pitch. But it does sound like you're using phone calls in order to pitch a purchase; so charging for such calls would probably backfire.

To build an online community you need to show your expertise and leadership in the subject. You can start by blogging content in the subject and start attracting interested people in the subject. It is a rule that the number of people that reads is 3 to 5 times the number of people that collaborate in the site. You break this rule by having more and more people involved in the discussions and when you have great quality producers of content sharing ideas and answering questions you are on track to grow the community. From the investment side, it is a very complex issue because this subject the people needs a higher level of trust of the people they are taking. I foresight a great challenge in sharing information about deals, then I will find how the share the learning of the subject as a way to gain trust.

There isn't a such a service per se. There are several methods we us to find bloggers but most are more manual. They are: 1) Via conferences like Affiliate Summit (largest affiliate conference in the US), Type-A Mom (one of the most active mom focused blog conferences), NMX (largest blog conference in the US), PubCon, AdTech, etc. 2) Via analytics tools like Salesforce Cloud (formerly Radian6) that allow queries/searches based on content created in social media 3) Identifying bloggers that are open to affiliate deals based on which ad networks, if any, they are already working with. 4) There are also still plenty of active forums: A4U, ABestWeb, and Affiliate Summit's own forum.

There is a famous saying in Silicon Valley "if you ask for moeny you will get advice, ask for advice and you will get money". With this said, I'm a strong believer that is more important to get the right investor than to get a good valuation or a lot of $$. Money is the same everywhere, green. So what you should focus is in: -Did this investor (or firm) actually knows about my market -Have they invested in companies in the same industry/sector -Have they invested in competitors? In future clients? In future partners? -Do they have expertise in the technology in using? Do they know people that do? (PhD, others ex entrepreneurs ~ possible mentors) All this questions would help you filter BEFORE you start looking and even approaching investors, which will save you time and frustration. Once you have done this filter/research, there are several tips to move forward. I wrote one trick here: https://medium.com/@JDcarlu/1-trick-to-get-a-vc-bd36f9dbff5b My friend and CEO, wrote a great post here: https://medium.com/@pyjamastartups/11-hacks-to-get-meetings-with-investors-in-silicon-valley-14b4851ab3e8 My advice applies to everywhere, Hernan's is more focus to Silicon Valley. This should help you start. Good luck !!

I'm a software developer at Clarity and I built the weekly digest email that I'm assuming you are referring to. I can assure you that we do not spy on you and can't keep track of what you have searched for on Google. The subject of the email is the first question shown in the email. The questions that we feature are chosen based on some internal factors, mainly popularity.

Yes. Try looking at Salesforce and its suite of cloud solutions like Chatter, Marketing Cloud, Services Cloud, and Sales Cloud. Let me know if there's something around the same I can help you out with.

If I was you I would talk to those companies that have had great approach with retailers and learn from them. Some of this companies (not limit to this list) are: Reserve, Foursquare, Yelp, Density, Estimote Learn from them, maybe even partner with them

Absolutely. There is no residence requirement or immigration status required to legally start a company in the US. I have addressed this on my law firm's blog: http://www.meltzerhellrung.com/blog/can-foreign-students-and-other-immigrants-start-businesses-in-the-us/ In terms of getting to the US once you have decided to open your business, that would depend on a variety of factors. I recommend contacting me directly to discuss your situation further. I would be happy to discuss what immigration options you may have as an entrepreneur.

yes. As long as your main place of work is your home/office.

You can use a QR code to print on business cards. There are a ton of sites that allow you to create codes. You can google to see which ones offer the services you need (expires after download, etc)

Thanks for your inquiry. We should probably have a quick chat. I have a few questions to better understand your situation, like these (probably others too): Where are you located? Where is the company registered, domiciled? What are your intended financing activities? Where? Have you done a round already? Any other financing activities to date? Cheers, rm

Sounds ambitious! What are the key challenges for you? Are you able to develop the product yourself, and just looking for ideas of how to grow it to millions of users? Or do you need to find people to build the product/app itself? There are lots of resources available for both.

One of the largest frustration/gap I see in today's market is: My online journey and coupon aggregation are two different entities and there is nothing that ties them. I am also from India and I see this as a big gap. For example, if I am searching for pizzahut menu and if I have selected Veg Corn Pizza or something like that, I need to come to a different service to get related coupons. When I come to coupon aggregation service, it lists all coupons related to pizzahut but not to the specific one which I am currently searching for i.e. Veg Corn Pizza. I see that will be the upcoming innovation to have a seamless experience for end users to effectively derive value out of coupons. Connect with me over LinkedIn/Clarity, to have a detailed discussion on this.

I don't think there is a more beautiful feeling than that (on a business perspective). So there are several strategies you can do take to grow your business without venture capital. First you need to understand the problem you have: working capital (cash flow). The fastest you grow the more you need cash. (Uber is the perfect example today) Before implementing any strategy please understand the concept and its implications: cycle of your sales, payment cycle, inventory cycle, etc with this said, my strategies tips: Factoring: sell of receivables or invoices at a discount. You can "sell" you rights to collect the money to make your payment cycle shorter and be able to reinvest that moeny faster In advance payment: just literally charge X days in advance so you can make shorter the production cycle or inventory cycle and ship on time, plus growing faster re investing until the next order Bank: so this guys have several products for this situations: 30 days loan that it automatically renews, "revolver" loan where if you need more you just take it as a line of credit and its decided in small loans each with a specific merchandising as warranty, if you are shipping out of the country you can use and discount an LC, etc etc There are others that are more risky but I think you can start by analyzing this three and see how they apply to your specific case Cheers!

I have been away with a bad leg. And I don't agree with the answers so far (sorry). So to begin with, what resources do you have? Other people, time, money? These play a role in your choices and the reach you can achieve. If no one knows you exist, you won't get any customers, will you? It all comes down to the daily behaviors you (and your staff and your other resources, if you have any) actually DO. Suspects >> Prospects >> Customers That's a generally accepted flow. Suspects are breathing human beings who MIGHT have a need for what you offer. Prospects have stuck up their hands and said, "Yes! I *am* in that situation which your solution can get me out of!" And customers have paid you for that solution. An effective sales process is all about filtering. You filter suspects into prospects, and prospects into customers. So returning to daily behaviors, how many suspects a day can you encounter? And on average how many will filter into prospects? Of the prospects, how many can you filter into customers? The more you can automate this process, the better. Especially the Suspect >> Prospect section. You do not want to be wasting your time on people who are unlikely to buy. At first you won't know the exact ratios. How could you? Industry trends may be available to help your guess, but it will still be a guess. That's fine. Begin with a conservative ratio, and then improve as you get real feedback. You have at least two approaches to reaching your X number for revenue. Either you can set the revenue target at the number you want to earn and work backwards to develop the behaviors and resources you require to reach it...or you can figure out the behaviors you can accomplish per day and work forwards to a possible total. Example #1, Working Backwards: You want to make $500,000 in the next 12 months. Your revenue per sale is $1,000. Simple division: you need 500 customers. Let's say you're new and not very good at selling, so a reasonable ratio would be 15 prospects who have to be spoken to for one sale. That's 7,500 prospects you need to get into your funnel this year. Building back from that, let's say conservatively you will require 20 suspects to learn about your existence to get one prospect to stick up their hand and say, "Yes, I might need that!" So now you know you need at least 15,000 suspects. Daunting? Now compare to your resources. How will you get in front of those 15,000 suspects? Who and where are they? How much does it cost to reach them? What process will you use to convert the 1 in 20 you expect to become a prospect? How long does this part of the process take? And for the sales...out of the 15 prospects you must meet to get an order, do you have the time to personally do this? Or must you hire salespeople? Can you automate? How much does this cost? How long does it take to convert? For simplicity's sake, assume it takes less than 30 days for the whole funnel to work and a suspect to go in and a customer to pop out. This means you must meet 625 prospects every month, or an average of more than 31 EVERY DAY! This is useful information, isn't it? Because it tells you what you need for resources: it's unlikely you alone will be able to meet with 32 people in one day, every day, 20 days out of the month, isn't it. 5 or 6 is more likely for a moderate-ticket sale like this, right? Now you know you need a half-dozen more sales staff or you won't meet your target no matter how hard you work. Example #2, Working Forwards: You have 20 working days in the month. Each day you can meet with 6 prospects. That's 120 prospects a month to get your revenue from. At a 1 in 15 closing ratio, you can expect 8 sales in a month or $8,000 in revenue... **and there you will be capped until you can apply more resources.** This is critical to understand, as a single operator. There comes a point where you just can't do any better alone. And continuing, you need 20 suspects to generate one prospect...that's 2,400 suspects you need to engage. Where are they? How will you reach them? Do you have the time--with blog entries, emails, what have you--to do this? It should be obvious how you build in affiliates now. They have their own funnels with their own ratios, but you can forecast their conservative results on an individual basis. Remember, your ratios will improve over time. You will learn the market's pain points, get used to the sales process, and be more comfortable closing. Make sure your costs of customer acquisition--marketing, your time, sales staff and more--don't eat up your profit. Consider your pricing carefully. I teach people to begin with Price because it keeps them out of trouble, and focuses them on who they should be going after as their target market.

It is, but you have to understand that you will need to: -Find a partner in the US, or and -Get a company that will do the distribution for you -License the product to another company to produce If I was you I would listen to this podcast https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mixergy-interviews/id348690336?mt=2&i=333880076 from the guy that brought the UGG shoes to the U.S. Also buy his book, really good

Yes but you need to spend a fair amount of time in person so that you'll be effective together. "Date" online for the co-founder but once you've found a likely partner, spend time together to make sure it's a good fit.

I'm going to give you a personal experience. I wanted some business experts to join a panel of judges and this was my "execution plan": Research universities and non-profits where this executives or business people give their time. Why? Most successful people that can teach (both are different skills) feel the need to "give back". So many of them volunteer their time and money on universities or organizations. If you find those who have this characteristics you will be one feet closer to actually being able to reach them. This is because they are "minded" in helping. To approach them I will recommend an exchange where they are not benefit of your conference but someone else is. If you tell a company owner that teaches "entrepreneurship" in a university that you want him to give. "Speech or class" and in exchange you will give 10 tickets for his students, he will be much more receptive of the idea. The other strategy is the one you mentioned and it actually focus on two feelings: possible new clients (leads) form the conference or ego. I would definitely go for the second one, and instead of approaching saying "you will benefit from this" I would go for inflating his/her ego. Hope this could give you some ideas.