How I Built a $5k/mo Side Project in 5 Months

http://www.getsimpledata.com/blog/2015/8/28/how-i-built-a-5k-mrr-side-project-in-5-months

by mike2477 • 11 years ago

89 24 11 years ago

getsimpledata.com

gue5t• 11 years ago

Passive income is the epitome of privilege.

sp332• 11 years ago

Do you mean this how-to guide probably isn't useful?

gknoy• 11 years ago

Maybe it's that I'm not confident enough, but "First, find a skill of yours you can monetize..." sounds an awful lot like "First, find oil in your backyard...".

I like what the author wrote about the subsequent advice -- pick a niche, go with established competitoin, etc -- but it still feels like it's meant for someone who has found the thing they do which is Special, and I don't yet feel that yet about myself.

fweespeech3• 11 years ago

I have really mixed feelings.

On one hand, I want to congratulate them on getting their dream....on the other hand, as someone who regularly has to tell the receptionist to screen my calls....

Yeah. This is really a tool to collect prospects to spam and cold call. I'm sure it will last the OP awhile, possibly it'll be a project that survives forever with different data sources, but at the end of the day "lead generation" is really just a way to collect people's information to pester them. This sort of marketing is, frankly, invasive and for every person you get from this...you've also likely convinced a dozen or more people never to have anything to do with you.

Berone• 11 years ago

hahahah this comment is absurd

fweespeech3• 11 years ago

How so?

Our team scrapes the web
Once we identify your ideal prospect we'll search LinkedIn and our internal database for prospects that match your ideal customer profile.
First name
Last name
Email address
Company name
Job title
Company phone number
Company address (including street, state, zip code and country)

For a $1/person.

This is purely for cold calling/emails.

HeyLaughingBoy3• 11 years ago

Some people want to be contacted. If I need something and you have it, I'd much rather you contacted me than I spend hours searching for it.

That's the point of targeted email/communications: don't waste time contacting people who don't want what you're selling.

fweespeech3• 11 years ago

Yet, oddly, of the hundreds of people that contact me this way a year...

0 of them have something I want to buy.

theworstshill• 11 years ago

Congratulations, this is great.

"Whether you’re working on a startup, side project or contributing to a larger company, the place where you work should be a place where you go to grow, interact with people, and have fun. It should never be a place where you derive unhealthy stress, anxiety or fear. "

Good perspective as well, hopefully once your side project grows into a real company you'll recall this line for your own employees.

metalliqaz• 11 years ago

Somewhere between 80-99% of people do not have that luxury.

mike24775• 11 years ago

Great point, metalliqaz! Definitely something I think about a lot. I don't intend to suggest that everyone in the world should be doing this. I realize that's not possible. But for those who do have the opportunity I encourage them to.

HeyLaughingBoy3• 11 years ago

All the more reason the rest of us starting businesses should consider it a goal.

mike24775• 11 years ago

Thanks theworstshill! I absolutely plan on keeping this cultural value as the company grows!

pavel_lishin2• 11 years ago

That whole post is duplicated about five times - in entirety - in various <meta> tags. Kinda weird.

The email he sent to the founder of Growth Geeks also appears to be missing (after this sentence: "After receiving a couple marketing emails from the company I sent this email to the founder:")

mike24775• 11 years ago

Hey Pavel, the author here -- thanks for catching that! What do you mean by the meta tags?

pavel_lishin2• 11 years ago

View the source of your blog post, and ctrl-f for (e.g.) "Monetize your brain" - you'll see that there's a bunch of meta tags in your <head> where the entire blog post is duplicated.

I'm kind of assuming that whatever blog engine/templating system you're using just copies the entire blog post into those.

iokevins• 11 years ago

I found each point illuminating; this one stood out, for me, as a good description of market positioning: "When you hear Volvo what comes to mind? Scandanavians, but more importantly you probably think “Safe car.” How about Honda? Odds are “Reliable car” came to mind. This is the basic idea of positioning. What comes to mind when people hear {company name}?"

mike24775• 11 years ago

Thanks iokevins! Glad that was useful :)

barryhand• 11 years ago

Great read.

I found it very interesting in how this might scale for you. Is it possible to continuously source, say 2000 leads/month for your clients?

Some further questions.

1. What process do you go through to both source the contacts, and to verify their quality (e.g UpWork team to scrape etc.)

2. Have you any feedback on how successful this has been for clients (e.g response rates)

Good luck with this, and really hope it works for you.

How I Built a $5k/mo Side Project in 5 Months

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