hey tuck wait here and welcome back to
another episode of the tech lead I'll be
your host the X Google tech lead in this
coffee time and today what we're going
to be talking about are my five top tips
on my way to a million dollars that I
have learned on my path up now as far as
I'm concerned all of these tips are
worth their weight in gold
they have taken years to learn from
their mistakes failures and successes
and I'm here to share them with you if
you know what's good for yourself you
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so the first tip I have for you is that
for a while I was working on this
website it's like a social network and I
charged a monthly membership it was like
five bucks a month or something like
that and it just kept out at that much
no matter how much more people wanted to
pay there was no way for people to pay
more and other than that I was
monetizing through advertisements and it
was decent it was okay right and it was
even paying me more than my day job so I
was pretty happy with that but the
problem was that I don't think I was
monetizing it at the maximum potential
you know like there were probably people
will need to pay far more than that and
I was getting this virtual economy all
set up where there were virtual in-game
currency and points and things you could
mess around with but I kind of felt
slimy if I were going to try to monetize
that and sell points and things like
that so I never really got around to
doing that until months later on right
and even then I had them fully developed
that feature set out so the tip here is
that you need to monetize and you need
to be charging a pretty decent amount
right like if you're capping the amount
that you're charging people I say 5
dollars a month and then you give them
full access to everything that you're
offering that's just not going to be
enough you know I don't think that's
enough to generate significant revenue a
quick
back-of-the-envelope calculation can
figure that out for you you can think
about hey if you had say 10,000 daily
active users and maybe like one percent
of them is going to actually purchase
and that's a decent conversion rate
you've got maybe a hundred people who
are buying you charge them five bucks a
month that's five hundred bucks a month
it's okay but at the same time
considering how much work you're putting
into this you may want to look into ways
that you can offer more and then charge
more for your services tip number two I
have for you on this journey was there
was a second project I was working on
and this was after I have built the
social network I realized that all I had
to do actually do was clone another app
another website or game that had proven
success so in this original social
network app that I had built I had spent
about two weeks coming up with a concept
and it was very innovative and crazy and
unique but the idea was improving and
personally I felt bad about trying to
just take another person's idea and
clone that now you don't necessarily
want to clone that completely but I
would say that you can take an idea take
a look at what's working the proof
imparts about it studied the other
competitors and then take that portion
and then copy that and then put in your
own spin from there this is essentially
a guaranteed path to success and I
remember at the time there are other
large app companies and their entire
business model would be that they would
take a look at the top say 1020
performing apps the new apps that were
coming up onto the market each week and
then they would just take those and
clone them and that's essentially
guaranteed success right there right and
again here you're applying your own look
and feel adding in any additional
features and unique things that you
think are is going to make the app
better and then just push that idea
forward instead of coming up with your
own unique crazy idea which is unproven
in the marketplace and then you have to
build that market it's going to be
easier for you to gain traction to just
take a look at what's working out there
and then copy that idea and then put
your own spin on that now tip number
three I have for you here is that there
was this app I was building and this was
at a time when Facebook was becoming a
platform Twitter was becoming a platform
everyone was making their website a
platform for developers to build
additional site apps that could be
hooked in and it was an exciting time it
was very novel unique and people were
very interested to see what could be out
there
essentially anything that you put out at
the time would become an overnight
success if you think about iPhone apps
at the beginning any silly app like an
astrology app could become successful
now here's the insight okay I remember
that at the time a lot of the people
would say that they wanted to build a
big sustainable business something like
the next Microsoft or the next Excel the
next uber and that's great that's all
good but at the same time I would say
that you don't necessarily need to build
a sustainable business around any of
this right if all your building is an
astrology app that may be fine then you
can just read that trend and there's a
whole class of apps where larger
businesses are not going to come after
large businesses are not going to try to
build a far too app an astrology app a
silly stupid game a calendar app or a
calculator app these may be areas that
you can come in you can build something
right the trend for a short period of
time and then at some point every single
app and that whole area is going to just
die off if you think about iPhone apps
and the app that was popular say two
years ago all of them probably 90% of
them are out of existence now and
anybody at that time who was trying to
build a big sustainable business in
retrospect you can see that the whole
industry was being transformed and every
app was going to be dead within a few
years
so my recommendation for you here is
that on your path to a million dollars
you won't be looking at those trends
ride the trends and don't worry too much
about trying to build some big
sustainable multi-year business that's
going to be around for your
grandchildren to take a look at and
marvel at you know just read that short
term trend see what you can make out of
it if you're lucky your business will be
sustainable but other than that you can
just read the trend and have a good run
chick number four I have for you here is
to go after a niche many times I hear
about people who come up with crazy
product ideas that work at scale like
they're gonna come up with some
dog-walking business right or some dog
babysitting business and that's just way
too broad there are plenty of other
businesses and larger companies or
they're operating in this space and when
you try to push out your advertising to
like say sub red that's like dogs it's
just going to be really difficult to
compete even at that level the more
specialized initiative the higher the
chance you'll be able to find some group
of people who are not being served by
the current products in the market
the key to know here is that it is not
about quantity of people you don't
necessarily need a hundred thousand
people visiting your website to be
successful even if you have say a
thousand people and they're each paying
$10 per month on a recurring monthly
subscription that's already going to be
pretty successful actually and it's
going to be much easier for you to build
a product identify that group of people
precisely fit their needs
build something that they absolutely
need and not just want and then
advertise either them through specific
targeted marketing either through like
Reddit ads LinkedIn as Facebook
Instagram ads you know when I built this
time-lapse photography software panel
apps that was at the time when there
were already tons of other photographic
software out there but I was able to
identify this market of people who are
very interested in time-lapse specific
software and photography and then
building at the market that specifically
to them on a very niche forum and
overnight I was starting to generate
hundreds of dollars in sales per day now
my fifth and last final tip I will
consider highly essential for you and it
is a key insight here and it is that you
need to continue to learn there is
nothing worse actually than being stuck
running a million dollar business that
is slowly dying say or that you're not
that excited about imagine putting in
80-hour weeks killing yourself over some
app website or business putting in all
this time and then the platform changes
or maybe you're not making as much
income as you thought you would make
right maybe you're only making say 50k a
year that's okay that's sustainable but
it's essentially like a second job that
you've picked up and you're just putting
way too much work
maybe suddenly the platform changes some
area of the business changes you've put
in too much risk and you have to take a
look at the opportunity cuz in which
maybe there was some career that you
left on the other side of the table that
you could be working now and that career
has some value as well maybe is your own
personal youth or time that you're
giving up so my suggestion here for you
is that you need to learn to automate as
many tasks as you can and free yourself
up such that you can continue to learn
and build up additional skills for me
I've been through a number of businesses
they all have life cycles right there's
a peak and then slowly they start to go
down after a while if I'm not really
putting as much work or time into it or
maybe the landscape just changes but
what's worked for me is I've
continue to learn keep my skills sharp
and look into other businesses that I
can work on imagine if I had started
with that one small social network that
I had built and just spent years working
on it maintaining it continue to build
on it and you know that project just
didn't have enough legs to really go
that far the market potential was pretty
much capped at the type of product that
it was and what I really needed to do at
that point was perhaps build additional
other properties and then use a
cross-promotion email marketing to bring
those users to those other properties
and continue to build additional
businesses that way this is really about
freeing up your time such that you can
do other things delegate tasks use
computer programs system scripts to
automate tasks such that you can spend
your time doing other things and
continue building out other areas of
your business you never quite want to
get stuck in which you're putting all of
your time into one area of the business
and then you don't have time to do
anything else you're not well
diversified the landscape could be risky
and things can change they'll do for me
let me know what your top tips are for a
successful business if you liked the
video give it a like and subscribe I'll
see you next time
Thanks bye