$500 and 4 Weeks Challenge

Ryan Goldstein

Hey!

I wanted to reach out to talk about a start-up challenge I set for myself - with $500 and 4 weeks, take an idea and turn it into a sale for the first time.

I wrote an article detailing out my experience and some of the decisions I had to make. I would love to get your feedback on the article and product and see what you guys think.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/500-4-weeks-sale-ryan-goldstein

What would you have done differently?
Does anyone else have a similar experience they can share?

Thanks for your time!
Ryan

Air Vinyl Design
www.airvinyldesign.com
@airvinyldesign

Ryan O'Bleness

Hey, @Ryan Goldstein. Welcome to the community! You don't have the capability to post links until you reach 10 posts, so I'll link your article here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/500-4-weeks-sale-ryan-goldstein 

After reading your article, I think you have taken the right steps -- getting a website built quickly, outsourcing design work to Fiverr, giving yourself a strict timetable and budget to follow with actionable goals. 

I have a couple of questions, though. 

1. How much to plan to charge for these? 

2. Can you briefly explain how the rights to stock image licensing works? I'm curious myself. 

3. Have you identified your target market? 

Ryan Goldstein

Ryan, thanks for re-linking!
To answer your questions:

1) How much to plan to charge for these?
Each design is selling for $5.99 and includes free shipping. With each purchase, the customer gets multiple designs that they can use. For example, the Music theme comes with 3 designs that can be used or switched out whenever they want.

2) Can you briefly explain how the rights to stock image licensing works? I'm curious myself.
For ~$10 you can purchase a Stand License for a stock image to use, however, you cannot use those images for merchandise. These are basically to use in presentations, online, apps, etc. In order to use an image in a physical product such as t-shirts, mugs, decals, etc, you need to purchase an Enhanced License. These licenses cost $99 for 1, and $68 if you order 25 at once.

3) Have you identified your target market?
In the early market studies I've done, I have had more engagement with people aged 20-25 in California (most likely because one of the designs I sell is based on Los Angeles. Identifying my market is the main task I'm working through now. I am obviously targeting people who own AirPods, so I have been using social media tags for 'airpods' to find potential customers.

Some feedback I'd love to get from this community is how to effectively market the product. My initial plan is to further trial Facebook and Instagram marketing.

Ryan O'Bleness

Very cool. I would suggest checking out our Marketing forum for ideas: https://community.startupnation.com/categories/marketing 

Additionally, our content side (www.startupnation.com) has hundreds of articles on marketing. Definitely check that out. While your product is something different, there are best practices, tips and tricks regarding marketing all over our website. 

Check out our marketing and branding tag here, where we have a quite a few articles on the subject: https://startupnation.com/tag/branding-and-marketing

If there is anything specific you're looking for, let me know and I will see if I can find an article or discussion for you. 

Ryan Goldstein

Ryan, thank you so much! Always helpful to have a community of smart people to draw from!

Ryan O'Bleness

Ryan Goldstein said:

Ryan, thank you so much! Always helpful to have a community of smart people to draw from!

No problem, happy to help! Feel free to reach out if you need anything else. 

borntorule

Hello Ryan,

Great work! My appreciations! As far as I can see, you sell stickers with design of different cities. To my mind you can also suggest them to different souvenirs shops in accordance with the city. I am sure, there are will be many people who would like to buy them