How We Started Our $10K/Month Community For Entrepreneurs With Just Facebook Groups
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
I am Shubham Kumar and I founded StartupTalky, a community and media platform for entrepreneurs. We are mostly focused on the Indian region for now but we are also increasing our viewership from other countries.
At Startuptalky, we focus on content and the community of entrepreneurs. I built one of the largest Facebook groups for entrepreneurs with 100K members. I also built a media company startuptalky.com with over a million page views per month in 4 years.
We have recently launched a Digital PR service too as it was quite easy for us to and one of my team members came forward to lead the same.
I am very much interested in the SaaS Industry so I am building seizelead.com, a lead-capturing tool. I hope to share its story with you all someday.
Collectively the blog and the PR agency are making $10K/Month. The main channels of our revenue are affiliates, Adsense, brand partnerships, and link-building services to other brands and agencies. This is quite stable revenue and has grown gradually over 4 years. We also plan to start interviewing founders on Youtube.
We mostly serve startups including unicorns across the globe. Our pricing, reach and service is unmatchable.
No matter how perfectly you plan, things will go left and right and you will have to fix that at that moment only. So the best thing is to just start with whatever you have.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
Starting from the start, I cracked IITJEE, which is considered to be one of the toughest exams in the world to get into the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. There I was introduced to the world of startups and found it quite exciting the way people start something from 0, acquire every user, serve them, raise funding, and sell the business for huge money.
I wanted to explore more about it, but couldn't find any community or platform where I can learn and connect with other startup founders.
So to scratch my itch, I created a Facebook group and started posting all the valuable and relevant content (articles, images, videos) I used to come across by googling or news. People started joining in and finding value in what I did and gradually the group rose to 20K, 50K, and 100K.
Even with such engagement, monetizing a community was tough for me. I couldnβt. The community was taking approx 10-12 hours of my day. So to build some revenue, I thought of starting a blog to feature stories of my community members and make some money with AdSense.
We focused on the quality of content and made sure if a user comes to our platform they must take away something to implement in their startups. The articles were about challenges being faced by the founders and professionals in their startups. During the start, it was mostly written by interns from journalism backgrounds however gradually we shifted to more experienced folks.
Gradually traffic started coming organically and so did revenue. People also started to pay to get featured. That was like an aha moment. At that time we were making $500 or so per month and had a very small team of interns.
Today we are among the top 3 startup media platforms in India.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
Starting up was quite easy. We just had to set up a WordPress blog which one of my friends did for $100. We picked a theme from Themeforest, modified it a bit, and got started.
Later we shifted it to Ghost and I found that it was easier to use and free from any technical challenges.
The server used to cost $5 and there was no other expense. Hired college students at quite cheap rates and made quite extensive SoP for them so the content quality is great.
Choosing topics was the next challenge, we started with UGC for our community members and some listicle articles. After that google search console is the only tool we use to pick topics.
So let's say one of our articles is ranking in position 8 or 9. We will go to queries of that article and see if we have written content around that or if those keywords are included in the article or not. If not, we either include or create a new article. This also makes our content more useful as we are answering what people are searching for.
I didn't register a company initially, Yeah I think this is one thing where founders focus too much in the start while personally it should be done(if not needed) once your idea is validated and you are committed to making it big.
Almost 80% of my team work happily from the comfort of their home at their comfortable timing. and at the end of the month, they are judged only on their performance.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
If you are into content marketing, it takes time to bring users in bulk but once it's started you sit and let the show run itself. In today's time, the importance of SEO including link building can not be ignored. Any brand which is on the internet and is to build a strong brand has to do SEO.
You don't need any other tool apart from the Google search console and Ahrefs to run the SEO show.
Try to get a way to capture information from users who are landing on your page. For that, you can use a tool like seizelead.com and email them regularly with your content/offers.
Consistency is the key, keep doing it.
Have some monetizing plan even before you launch and focus on it from the start
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
We are profitable, quite automated, and with a very strong foundation. Revenue streams are constant.
There isnβt much expense apart from the salary of the team. Having a great audience in email and social media, we are growing approx 30% YoY.
Operation is quite smooth. A content writer writes. The article then goes to the publisher. Publishers publish the content after making required changes/editing and doing a bit of SEO. The whole process is also documented with all Dos and Don'ts.
In the long run, we plan to be a one-stop startup platform to serve every startup stakeholder and reduce the failure rate of the startups.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
We built a startup listing platform in 2013, this was built on laravel and we have got good traction also. But one guy came and said he can deploy the site in angular within 7 days and I agreed. Trust me it was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.
Learning- don't try to fix what isn't broken.
Not thinking big and putting a boundary around you is one mistake which I have been doing and need to overcome. Youtube is such a growing market and a huge opportunity for us. However, I just feel I am not ready yet or it should be in a very perfect way from the start. So I am not doing it. India still needs a platform with a proper database of every startup ecosystem stakeholder but there is none.
Not focusing on money-related keywords has hampered our revenue. Now we are focusing on it and are seeing great results with AdSense.
SEO- This is the only thing we relied on to bring users. Not a single penny has been spent to bring traffic to the site and this has paid off well. Also, we focus mostly on evergreen content so even if we don't publish content for some time the traffic remains constant.
I did some great hiring, which has led us to where we are. Here is what our hiring process looks like - apply via Google form- submit an assignment (which will take 2-3 hours to do and help you to learn something new)- interview- done. This way we find a great way to filter out candidates who are not interested.
I am quite good with analytics which helps me to understand data and predict what content will do great.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We use Ghost for blogging. Apart from that, we use Google Stack - Analytics, Console, and Tag Manager to track various data. We also use Ahrefs for link building. I also try to make guidelines, SoPs, and templates in Google doc, sheet, or slide to run the process smoothly. Sadly I haven't explored much about project management tools or CRM. Linkedin and angel.co are go-to hiring platforms.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
Most of the content you find online is a waste of time. I focus on insight-based articles or articles which help me to implement something in my startups. So mostly I read newsletters and sites like the-ken, Starter Story, and Indiehackers. Product Hunt is a great source of inspiration.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
One of the mistakes I made was not starting up because I didn't have a perfect plan ready in my mind. Startups are just so uncertain. No matter how perfectly you plan, things will go left and right and you will have to fix that at that moment only. So the best thing is to just start with whatever you have.
Second, have some monetizing plan even before you launch and focus on it from the start. I have seen very few founders focus on sales. Product, marketing, team, and everything is secondary but the priority as an early-stage founder should be bringing money to the table. If you can have a regular cash flow, there is very less chance that a bootstrapped startup will fail.
Focusing on building a brand especially if you are in the content/media industry. This is one thing we did not focus on and are paying hugely for it.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We are always looking for awesome team members. Currently, we are hiring content writers and digital marketers. Interested readers can apply here.
All our positions are remote and paid. You can choose full-time and part-time based on your availability.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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