

Ask HN: Is it a good idea to sell my startup? - gamebak

I have been running my startup for a while, no seed funding and still was able get around ~$500 (ish) monthly profits.<p>Yet I was thinking that if I could sell it I would have more money to start something new plus to help me with my college.<p>I would like an advice from someone with more experience, should I sell my startup and attempt to create something else or focus more on my product?<p>Url: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;skyul.com
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jpetersonmn
I actually would be in the market for your product. It's not so much the web
design turning me off, it's that a 1 day trial costs me twice as much as it
would to sign up for the service.

$2/day = $60/month.

I would suggest a way to get a free trial, for at least a week that's linked
to a credit card or paypal account or something to keep people from just
signing up for tons of free trials. Kind of like how Netflix or Hulu does it.

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brokenbeatnik
How many hours a month would it take to run if you weren't focused on
improving the product, just keeping the site running?

If the answer to that is a decent hourly rate, do that and then just start
doing something else.

If it's not, and you aren't able to figure out growth, you may want to shut
the doors, as I think it's not likely that you'll see a lot of buyers looking
for $6K annual revenue, even at high margins.

I'm not that good at marketing either, but I'm having to figure it out. We
programmer types think that "if you build it, they will come", and that a
better mousetrap will trump any need for a sales and marketing strategy beyond
a good checkout page. The truth is, if you don't figure out some of the
marketing basics for yourself, at least enough to know what type of marketing
experts to use, you'll be likely to have the same problems with your next
venture. You might get lucky and stumble into a hot market, but if you don't,
marketing will be the difference between being in the top tier making a double
digit percentage of the available revenue in the market and being an also-ran
making a pittance.

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gamebak
Thank you, this really put me on thinking. The good part is that I always like
to work hard and automate most of my products even if it takes me more time,
and in this case it's ~97% automated. The problem with marketing is that I
couldn't find my buyers when I tested, most of the success was with forums but
at a low volume. So I assumed that I picked the wrong niche where to do
business :)

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benologist
What have or are you doing to grow that revenue?

If you've done your best and you can't get past that $500 barrier then move
on. But getting from $500 to $5000 should be a shorter path than starting a
new product from nothing.

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gamebak
I tried different approaches but I'm not that good when it comes to marketing.
From what I saw the proxy industry is pretty big with over 1 mil searches
monthly, just that I don't know how to get to my customers. Recently I tried
to get more exposure and it has a slowly growth, but yet I don't feel that I
can get much out of it.

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fractallyte
You could probably secure more customers with a better landing page. It's too
wordy, gramatically awkward, and there are several spelling errors
('ressource' -> 'resource'; 'recieve' -> 'receive'; 'paypal' -> 'PayPal'). The
crucial 'Subscribe' button is semi-transparent, overlaid on a busy background.
The menu is not 'balanced' vertically. Also, I don't particularly like the
name, either; but that's just a random point-of-view.

Basically, considering that you mention the proxy industry is pretty big, your
offering is just not competitive! Yet with a few simple cosmetic changes, the
look (and thus the impact on first-time visitors) could be improved hugely. It
might make all the difference...

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thenomad
FYI, I'm in the target market for your product and after reading the sales
page, I'm not entirely sure what your product does.

So there may well be some potential improvements to be made there!

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anotheryou
this :)

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gamebak
Thank you guys for the great feedback, I never considered that my dirt looking
design could be the source of my problems, plus the embarrassing typo errors.

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benologist
I think you're making a mistake writing this off as an issue you can solve by
working more on your website and perhaps most importantly using only your
existing skills that you are comfortable with.

Your design and the improvements and optimizations don't mean anything until
_after_ you find a way to reach your market. If you can't reach your customers
nothing else matters. You have some paying customers so apart from typos your
website is good enough at least for now.

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mattm
Web apps generally sell for about a year's worth of profits. So you'd probably
get around $6000 if you sold it. Is that worth it to you?

If you are serious about selling, I'm currently looking at acquiring products
in your profit range. Please email me if you'd like to discuss.

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michaelbuckbee
I took a look at your site and you could probably double signups if you bought
a $20 theme (or even just used default Bootstrap) and fixed the typos.

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gamebak
Thank you, I prepared a new design for my newest product
[http://seo.skyul.com](http://seo.skyul.com) and I will implement that in the
main domain as well and see how people are reacting to it.

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Gustomaximus
Marketing guy here, once cleaned up that will be a massive 'trust'
improvement. Though I'm a little confused, you seem to have a proxy scanner on
one page and a kw tool on the new site... what are you doing? If your focusing
on search volume and KW cost, Google have a very good tool for this so not
sure why I would use you? I cant see a USP.

In general, the new website will help but probably less than most people
think. The most important thing for a product is distribution channels until
they build their own brand. For a product like yours (either) you need to get
a view on what your expected customer life value is, what margin you expect to
retain and then look at distribution channels you can fit. An obvious one is
Adwords. Test using social as a knowledge point. Also look to resell your
product via other seo 'experts' as you might get fast recognition through
this.

I'm not kidding about the distribution focus. As a young marketer I was so
concerned about a perfect website and content. Experience has taught me I will
take a weak product & sale point coupled with good distribution over a great
product/website with weak distribution any-day.

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rolyatyasmar
How much would you consider selling it for?

