And we come to the third edition of free business ideas.
Today each idea that we will explain to you is different, a business-to-business marketplace, a
software that converts everything it touches and a one-person agency that invoices more than
$150,000 a month ($1.8M a year).
Let’s get to it! 🔥
Idea #1. BluWave, marketplace for SMEs and large companies.
BluWave is a private invitation marketplace that connects medium and large companies with
consultants, auditors, lawyers and, ultimately, highly specialized professionals in each area of a
business.
On this platform you can contract services such as due diligence, search for highly qualified
employees, value proposals, cost reduction, mergers, acquisitions, company sales, M&A, etc.
Data:
How could you replicate this idea (MVP)
In countries with low per capita income, the idea could work better if registration is open and
does not require an invitation.
To earn money, you could charge an amount for publishing ads, to guarantee their seriousness,
you could also charge for advice to find the best professional and add a commission to each business done on the platform. This commission may vary depending on the budget, since a due diligence of €5,000 is not the same as selling a company for €2M. In each case the percentage
would have to be adapted to the allocated budget.
I would recommend this business idea to people who have worked in the consulting sector,
M&A, lawyers, auditors, etc.
As for technology, you could make a marketplace from scratch and bespoke, or use a prefabricated option to save costs. The latter would be what I would recommend if you are not very sure. There are tutorials for making a marketplace without code, or if you search on Google or CodeCanyon for “marketplace scripts” you can get some. In any case, if you are not a programmer, look for a professional to advise you on this.
Finally, to make the MVP even simpler, you could start with a single service and scale to several
depending on demand. For example, start intermediating only with due diligence: you look for several companies that do them and when a client arrives you offer them a quote from all of
them so that they can choose the best one.
To end
If you have contacts, have worked in the world of M&A or have experienced the process of
buying or selling a company, this idea may come in handy for you. If you are not ready for this
idea, you can use the structure to do other projects. Intermediate in digital services, design,
marketing, legal, financial…
Idea #2. Personizely, tool to improve conversion
Many companies focus all their efforts on getting more traffic, but few on optimizing their website so that, with the same visits, they achieve more conversions: sales, registrations, meetings, reservations, etc. This is what we know as CRO or Conversion Rate Optimization and tools like Personizely allow us to improve it very easily.
Data:
How many ways could you make an MVP?
Getting traffic is fine, but getting more registrations or sales with the same visits is another matter.
Well-known tools such as KissMetrics, Optimizely, Unbounce, CrazyEgg… compete in this sector.
And although they are very complete, they leave a gap in the market for two reasons: they are tools that require a lot of learning time and have a much higher cost than a tool like Personizely can have. Without going any further, Kissmetrics costs from $299 per month.
And to give us a slight idea of the money that moves in this type of tools, Kissmetrics has an estimated income of more than 2 million dollars a year and CrazyEgg is estimated to earn more
than 4 million dollars a year. Another SaaS that has worked with a small team is Fomo, which
achieved a turnover of more than $88K/month.
Another option is to create it through WordPress as a premium plugin, like Proven does.
Finally, as a direct competition to Personizely that are working, you have options like provesrc.com, or useproof.com.
Conclusion
This type of business requires creativity and time. In addition to having knowledge about digital
marketing and more specifically about CRO. If you’re a data geek and can partner with someone very creative to shape it and come up with novel conversion ideas, you can make it work. Without a database, tutorials or success stories, it will be difficult for people to trust you.
Idea #3. DesignJoy, a one-person design agency with a turnover of $1.8M
DesignJoy is an agency for graphic design, web, branding… everything. Its main value proposition
is that, with a flat rate, it offers unlimited designs for companies. And this is done by a single person, how? I’ll tell you here 👇
Data:
How to make an MVP
In this case, rather than telling you how I would do it, I’m going to tell you how Brett does it.
He charges a flat rate for companies, now he charges between 4,000 and 6,000 thousand dollars a month, but at the beginning it was about 2,000 dollars on average. It may seem expensive to you, but he justifies it by saying that a senior designer in the United States earns $100K a year. In this way, the client perceives that it will cost half as much to hire him as it would to have a designer on staff. In your case you could argue the same, but based on the salaries in your country.
Apart from the quota, what generated the most doubts for me was the following: how a single person can organize himself, offering services that are not scalable, bill so much and have so many clients. Doing quick math, if you bill 1.8M per year, that is, 150K per month, and we divide it by the 5K that you charge on average according to your current rate, it corresponds to 30 recurring monthly clients.
And how does he do it? I’ll tell you what I’ve been able to see so far:
- Brett has banned gatherings. There are not. Although he has not said it as such, he says that
he works “asynchronous.” - Everything is managed through Trello. Here you can see what each client’s dashboard looks
like. - The client puts the designs he wants on Trello, but he only makes one at a time. The next one
never begins until the first one is finished. And here is the secret to your productivity. - According to their own website, they deliver orders within 48-72 hours (depending on the
design). So each month, by my count, he makes between 4-8 designs per client. And surely many
of them are not constantly asking, there are people who always pay and do not use 100% of the
contracted resources. - Finally, you do almost everything with Figma. A very powerful and economical design software
allows you to draw designs very quickly and customize them to the client’s taste.
Related ideas:
Knowing how he does it, you could create your own unlimited design agency, or pivot towards
other services following his methodology.
Another idea that occurred to me as a result of this, and that if a professional designer heard it would kill me, is to create a website and sell only logos created with Canva, which are made in a
few minutes for a very low price. Something lowcost with fast delivery in 24-48 hours.
To end
One-person businesses, or solobusiness as they are known in the English market, are ideas that I love. They require little financial investment, although they do require you to dedicate a lot of time to them. If you like them, let me know on Twitter and I’ll prepare more.
