A small idea: before launching the first startup, perhaps, to practice at least in a simple online store?

Let's imagine that our eyes are burning more likely to make our startup in a billion. There are millions of ideas on how to change the world forever and lead the Forbes ratings. Two small things just do not have enough: experience and money, even for a minimal project development. Weeks, months and years go by. These stupid investors of ideas do not understand. These ideas are too innovative. Nobody gives money and the useful experience no longer becomes.




Over time, it becomes clear that these two small things mean something. Especially any adequate experience in creating your own project, attracting clients and counting metrics.
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What to do?

Get a job and work at work? Pfff ... As an option, go to some business incubator, where everyone will tell and show.

But we have another simple idea. Let's set a goal: create a profitable online store in 3 months?

Why choose an online store?

The simplest business model is buy-sell. You can provide services, but they will need to provide and then support customers. In the online store, you can charge the delivery of special services and train only 2-3 hours a day, without being distracted from the main start-up tasks.

Quite an interesting thing can happen

Our main goal is to get a real experience of launching and at least minimal progress of your project.

So, we will supplement our missing competencies.

We, as a startup, it is desirable to be a techie or marketer, or sales person. So usually recommended.

If we are a techie , then the creation of a store will take us a few hours, if we are not capricious and choose a perfect solution for a month (we still will not find this). We need, as we already know from dozens of books, articles and seminars - the minimum working product for testing ideas. To quickly and inexpensively. Right?

Further, it will be possible to practice in the launch of various advertising and customer acquisition.

If we are a marketer or sales person , then we will learn, using various services and designers, to build our website, in our case, the store. If you have to order the services of freelancers, we get invaluable experience working with developers. In the future, create a landing page for lazy startups, etc. will be extremely simple.

Of course, for a couple of months, the results will be extremely modest, regarding our plans for rating in Forbes. But the real experience from the area that complements us will be useful in finding partners (more precisely, these ... co-founders). The main thing is not to star, of course.

Learn how to highlight the target audience

When choosing a niche, it may turn out that the option “we sell clothes” will be a failure. What clothes, for whom and where will we sell? Is this a hypermarket throughout Russia and the CIS or in general the whole world? Or is it a boutique monobrand expensive clothes in Moscow? Or is it second-hand in Rostov-on-Don? Similarly, for example, a clock. Is it Patek Philippe or their 100% identical copies of 600 rubles each?

Most likely, it turns out that there will be completely different sales scenarios if we study in more detail what we sell to whom. The site wordstat.yandex.ru will help determine whether it is necessary to someone.

Since the project is educational, we will choose a niche that is already popular and relatively massive. We will not try to explain to customers something new or look for customers for half a year on expensive goods. It’s so easy to learn how to count metrics and test your ideas for growth and development.

Learn to count metrics and metrics

You can make a lot of metrics for yourself, but more often the attention is paid to the following three.

The cost of attracting a client . We take the amount, how much money was spent on advertising for a certain period, divide it by the number of new customers. We get the price of one customer. It is desirable that the period was adequate - from one month. Number of customers from ten at least. It is advisable to check if you double the budget, whether the number of new customers will double. If yes, then everything seems to be calculated correctly in the framework of our training project. The main thing is not to get caught in a situation where the cost of the client seems to be extremely low, but such clients are only 2-3 per month with a check of 1000 rubles.

Percentage of refusers . How many people have stopped buying from you. Not all store niches are definitely suitable or impossible to evaluate in a few months. But, for example, for pet products or cosmetics - it can be considered.

The average income from the client . For each client, calculate how much on average they paid you. If one client bought once for 1000 rubles, then the average income is 1000 rubles. If he bought 3 times for 1000, 1500, 1000 rubles, then the average income is 3500 rubles. So we will understand how much you can spend on attracting a single client and when the whole business pays off, on average.

Learn to test hypotheses

These may be hypotheses about the niche itself . Most likely, it turns out that no matter how cool the store is, whatever the revolutionary product we sell, customers will not overwhelm it with orders instantly.

These may be hypotheses about attracting customers , when the context or super virus in top public did not produce a result. It becomes clear that you have to puff.

These may be hypotheses about increasing sales . The idea to make a newsletter with an incredible 30% sale may not bring as many customers as you want.

So one by one, the inadequacies in our hypotheses will be polished and each next one will be much more accurate.

What is all over?

Your online store is the same business project and experience as any other. Therefore, there are several scenarios.

If we are lucky and we will try, then we will start earning something. You can continue to continue bootstrapping , providing yourself with 2-3 average salaries and invest it already in your startup. If anything, find an assistant.

We do not have an IPO, so we will sell . If the store with a profit and turned out stable, sell it on telderi.ru. Get your deserved pre-seed, so to speak. Perhaps much faster and easier than presenting your ideas. Then it will be possible to consider your ideas more critically, is it worth investing your money in them?

Just complete the learning project . Unlike services or production, nothing happens to customers. Bought from us, will start buying elsewhere.

As a result, we got a real experience.

You can understand what to do in one evening by reading a rather popular blog in a niche of stores. With us you can create a store in one day and make a working website out of it according to internal checklists.

According to the experience of our clients, the level of 2-3 average salaries can be obtained in 1-3 months. Depends on niche and speed of work. We will be glad if you like the idea. Then create your online store, share the results.

Of course, there is no direct connection between a successful store and a future startup. But real hands-on experience and training will definitely be helpful. Perhaps even more useful than any seminars or trainings.

We have now gone about along this path and are making our store with blackjack and courtesans with different modules and great opportunities.

And let your startup soon start and shoot! :)