#selfmadebusinessman

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#lifeoftwala23💆💃📷😎 Standing alone doesn't mean im alone #inGodsgrace 🙏#iwillkeepshinnig💫 #bookingsnowopen @0632763729 @twala23_icapture_reallife 📲☎️📕 @0780885227 #whatsapp📲 #socialmediamarketingservices #selfmadebusinessman #ambitiousyoungking #ownyourthrone 🤴🇿🇦 #founderof @23famphotographyvisualstudio #yourbeliefinyourself 🤴#emerldason💫✌👌 (at Tokoza, South Africa) https://www.instagram.com/p/CRKpEH0Mk9w/?utm_medium=tumblr

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Hi, my name is Dave and I'm the CoFounder of Blogger Outreach software NinjaOutreach.com.Last year I published a post here on Reddit entitled:In September 2014 We Set A Goal To Build A $20k/month SaaS Business In 1 Year – Here’s What HappenedYou can read that here:While I recommend anyone interested in our story to read that post to get the proper background on the start of the company, I’ll highlight the TL;DR as it’s written there:January 14: We launch the business several months later than we expected after 2.5 months in beta and a few hundred people trying it out.January – July: We make a ton of mistakes and the business “grows” to around $3k mrrAugust – December: We make more mistakes, but we do a lot of things right, and end the year over $10k mrr, short of our original stretch goal, but in line with our “first” goal which was $10k mrr, (although not in 365 days from the original statement, but within 365 days from launch).And at the end of that very long post, there is a small line that is easy to overlook. It readsOur goal for 2016 is $30k and 1k customers!So here I am ready to report on our progress, and again I’ll start with another TL;DR:We did it.Here’s our REVENUE statement from the last few months plus the Year To Date. The profit statement is not very impressive because we invest everything back into the business such as new hires, etc—but it is positive. Customers actually turned out less than 1k, but because we increased prices we hit our goal anyway.Click to view screenshot hereIf that piques your interest, here is a bit more about what actually happened.January - MarchTo summarize these three months, the business didn’t really grow much at all. Actually, it flatlined around $10k and was like that for most of December through March.In fact, in one month we actually went BACKWARDS in MRR, which, for a subscription business, is a big no-no.It’s important to look back at a time like this when we’ve actually hit our goal and remember that things didn’t always look this good. The year actually started off terribly and I was legitimately thinking that this might be it i.e. that the business wouldn’t grow anymore.Frankly, we were running out of ideas.Given what I know now, there are some pretty important lessons here, those being:You can finish strong even with a slow start. Don’t lose hope until you really have tried everything.April - MaySo, how did we get out of it?The biggest thing we pulled out of nowhere during this time was “acquiring” my personal blog.I had been running a personal blog on marketing and business for about two years called SelfMadeBusinessman. While it never lived up to my expectations, I had definitely worked hard on it and it had a decent amount of traffic and quality white hat links.Unfortunately, on account of the fact that I was actually running a business as opposed to just blogging about business, I no longer had much time to keep up with the blog. Eventually, I stopped writing on it altogether and it was just sitting there collecting dust.Right around this time, I read a post from Matthew Barby about acquiring websites for traffic and it sparked an idea to transfer all my site’s content to NinjaOutreach and do a full redirect.Mind you, this was not an easy decision. Although it wasn’t making any money, I believe based on the traffic alone I could have sold it on a market like Flippa for at least mid-four figures. Additionally, SelfMadeBusinessman represented my personal brand and was a source of networking and forming contacts. And of course, I figured one day I would go back to it, and I’d be better off not having to start from scratch.Still, NinjaOutreach has been my number one priority since the beginning, so we decided to go through with it. NinjaOutreach basically swallowed SelfMadeBusinessman.The traffic boost from this after a month or so was significant. Within two months we had doubled our traffic, and doubling our traffic meant more sign ups and gave us the fuel to grow again.Here’s what that looked like:Click to view screenshot hereSurprisingly, over the course of last year, we never pulled the trigger to acquire another website.However, that changed just a few days ago when we bought one off of Flippa, which is in the process of being redirected. Whether or not it produces similar results is yet to be seen, but it’s definitely one of our goals this year to find and acquire a few websites. If you have one you’d like to sell, hit me up!We also launched massive link building campaigns throughout the year using our prospecting and outreach tool.One of our earlier campaigns involved broken link building work where we leveraged thousands of bad-for-SEO dead URLS leading to the now defunct company, Topsy. Long story short, we contacted bloggers who linked to Topsy in their posts and suggested our tool as an alternative where we provide the content and they link back to us instead.This campaign alone drove hundreds of backlinks to our site in a span of a few months.We also launched a competitor link building campaign where we contacted bloggers who’ve included some of our competitors in their posts. We reached out and asked if they were interested in also adding NinjaOutreach to their articles or resources.This campaign received a pretty high response rate (72%) and generated close to 150 unique inbound links for our site.Overall, it helped us gain higher Domain Authority and ranking, taking our site from DA 30+ to DA 50.June - JulyDoubling our traffic in such a short time was huge, no doubt about it, but at the end of the day all it really does is move the ceiling higher, but it doesn't remove it altogether. Basically, we had bought ourselves time, but we needed to find new ways to keep up the momentum.Two major things happened in June / July that helped us do that.The first was a promotion / partnership with Warrior Forum where they sold our product for relatively cheap. We had done something similar with AppSumo the year prior and it was a huge success. Now we wanted to try a new audience.While the launch from Warrior Forum didn’t quite deliver the kind of revenue we were hoping for, it was the highest grossing month we had all year and gave us new traffic, links, and exposure. While we aren’t looking to do something similar in the near future, it’s definitely something I recommend for a new, small business.The next step was upping our prices.We had upped our prices a year before in August and experienced a lot of growth from that.Firstly, there is generally an uptick in sign-ups as people want to be grandfathered in to the old prices.Secondly, the new sign ups are worth more after the change, and although the number of sign-ups might go down slightly, in our experience, the added value from the customer far outweighs it.This is something I have heard from a lot of other business owners and it’s why the general advice is to make sure you continue to increase your prices as you add value to the product.To give you some context on the increase, when NinjaOutreach first launched, our prices ranged from $19 - $149. Now they range from $49 - $599 and we have people on all plans.As a side note, it really does feel a lot better having fewer customers but of higher value. It helps keep customer support more manageable and allows us to be more personal in our approach.For example, we’ve always invited people to have free consultation calls with us, but when people are only paying you $19, it feels like you’re selling your time for peanuts.August - DecemberBelieve it or not, there weren’t any major tricks pulled out in the most recent months that I would describe as “game-changing”.At the end of the day, it’s mostly just math. If you have the sign ups, the conversion rate, and the customer value in the right alignment, you’re going to grow. Not forever, of course, but for us to hit our goal, it was enough.Although there are a few things I thought we did well.We also continued to improve the product and the traffic during that time, but mostly through the same ways we always have, i.e content marketing and influencer marketing. One new channel we added was retargeting, which has definitely helped us be more efficient with turning our traffic into signups.Most notably, during this last half of the year, we’ve been able to bring on 5 new employees, which has helped tremendously with a number of things we’ve been able to get done. Though, I should also mention we had to let go over 2 other ones, which is never enjoyable.Currently, we’re up to 14 people including the 2 active co-founders.Our Next GoalFrom here, we want to get to 1M in Annual Recurring Revenue, which is more than double where we currently are at—so we have a long way to go.But, since it pays to be ambitious, we’re going to try to do it by the end of the year, mainly by sticking with the team we have and putting the right processes into place. Some other revenue streams we’re excited about are building out our services.For example, we just launched The Ninja Academy, which is a 12-module course on how to grow a business via Inbound Marketing. You can learn more about it here:We also have our Done For You link building services, where we leverage our network of bloggers to get you featured. More on that here:If we properly market all of these and continue to grow the subscriptions, I think we can have a great year.Happy to answer any questions the community has!

[twala-23-icapture-reallife]

#lifeoftwala23💆💃📷😎 Standing alone doesn't mean im alone #inGodsgrace 🙏#iwillkeepshinnig💫 #bookingsnowopen @0632763729 @twala23_icapture_reallife 📲☎️📕 @0780885227 #whatsapp📲 #socialmediamarketingservices #selfmadebusinessman #ambitiousyoungking #ownyourthrone 🤴🇿🇦 #founderof @23famphotographyvisualstudio #yourbeliefinyourself 🤴#emerldason💫✌👌 (at Tokoza, South Africa) https://www.instagram.com/p/CRKgWncsJnV/?utm_medium=tumblr

[twala-23-icapture-reallife]

#lifeoftwala23💆💃📷😎 Standing alone doesn't mean im alone #inGodsgrace 🙏#iwillkeepshinnig💫 #bookingsnowopen @0632763729 @twala23_icapture_reallife 📲☎️📕 @0780885227 #whatsapp📲 #socialmediamarketingservices #selfmadebusinessman #ambitiousyoungking #ownyourthrone 🤴🇿🇦 #founderof @23famphotographyvisualstudio #yourbeliefinyourself 🤴#emerldason💫✌👌 (at Tokoza, South Africa) https://www.instagram.com/p/CRKpEH0Mk9w/?utm_medium=tumblr

[twala-23-icapture-reallife]

#lifeoftwala23💆💃📷😎 Standing alone doesn't mean im alone #inGodsgrace 🙏#iwillkeepshinnig💫 #23famphotographysocialmediamarketing #photoshootlover📷😃 #studiophotography #bookingsnowopen 📲☎️📕 @0780885227twala23_icapturereallife✌👌 #whatsapp📲 #socialmediamarketingservices 👑 #selfmadebusinessman #o#ambitiousyoungking #ownyourthrone 🤴🇿🇦 #founderof @23famphotographyvisualstudio #emerldason💫✌👌 https://www.instagram.com/p/CQZJLLUH1Y0/?utm_medium=tumblr

[twala-23-icapture-reallife]

#lifeoftwala23💆💃📷😎 Standing alone doesn't mean im alone #inGodsgrace 🙏#iwillkeepshinnig💫 #bookingsnowopen 📲☎️📕 @0780885227twala23_icapturereallife✌👌 @0730546661#whatsapp📲 #socialmediamarketingservices 👑 #selfmadebusinessman #o#ambitiousyoungking #ownyourthrone 🤴🇿🇦 #founderof @23famphotographyvisualstudio #photoshoot #yourbeliefinyourself 🤴#Emerldason💫✌👌 https://www.instagram.com/p/COv4anoHp1D/?igshid=32pry5tmp6hy

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#lifeoftwala23💆💃📷😎 Standing alone doesn't mean im alone #inGodsgrace 🙏#iwillkeepshinnig👑 #selfmadebusinessman #ambitiousyoungking #ownyourthrone🤴🇿🇦 #founderof@23famphotographyvisualstudio #photoshoot #yourbeliefinyourself 🤴#Emerldason💫✌👌 #ceomindset#blackchilditspossible #creattoinspire #eastrandsociety https://www.instagram.com/p/COTexxTHumX/?igshid=rlcrzqjmnt3k

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#lifeoftwala23💆📷😎 #Godsplan📸🇿🇦🙏 #photoeditingsession 📸🖥💻📲#atmycrib #ohlord #twala23_icapturereallife✌👌 #acer #hp #appleipad #socialmediamarketingservices 👑 #selfmadebusinessman #ambitiousyoungking #ownyourthrone 🤴🇿🇦 #founderof @23famphotographyvisualstudio #bevliveinyourself #KINGSWAY🐃🤴♟ 🤴#sittingonmythrone #ceomindset#blackchilditspossible #creattoinspire #23famphotographylegacyliveslong🤴💫🙏📸🤟 (at Alberton,Thokoza) https://www.instagram.com/p/CKu8faJnus2/?igshid=y0lnxcwi9ed5

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#lifeoftwala23💆📷😎 Standing alone doesn't mean im alone #inGodsgrace 🙏#iwillkeepshinnig💫 #bookingsnowopen 📲☎️📕 @0685065548 #twala23_icapturereallife✌👌 @0730546661#whatsapp📲 #socialmediamarketingservices 👑 #selfmadebusinessman #ambitiousyoungking #ownyourthrone 🤴🇿🇦 #founderof @23famphotographyvisualstudio #photoshoot #yourbeliefinyourself 🤴#sittingonmythrone #ceomindset#blackchilditspossible ##creattoinspire #eastrandsociety (at Thokoza Khumalo) https://www.instagram.com/p/CKpUILfH2r1/?igshid=2i5pv8vh3yd2

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#lifeoftwala23💆📷😎 #founderof @23famphotography_worldwide Standing alone doesn't mean im alone 🙏 #Godsplan📸🇿🇦🙏 #familyvalues #bigbro #muchrespectandlove @thembasikhosan23 #23famphotographylegacyliveslong 🤴🇿🇦 #photographysouls 🤴#brotherhood #ceomindset#blackchilditspossible ##creattoinspire #eastrandsociety💫 #bookingsnowopen 📲☎️📕 @0685065548 #twala23_icapturereallife✌👌 @0730546661#whatsapp📲 #socialmediamarketingservices 👑 #selfmadebusinessman #ambitiousyoungking (at Tokoza Ext 2, Tokoza) https://www.instagram.com/p/CIzORm9njQX/?igshid=1l1bwv015to5

[twala-23-icapture-reallife]

#lifeoftwala23💆📷😎 Standing alone doesn't mean im alone #inGodsgrace 🙏#iwillkeepshinnig💫 #bookingsnowopen 📲☎️📕 @0685065548 #twala23_icapturereallife✌👌 @0730546661#whatsapp📲 #socialmediamarketingservices 👑 #selfmadebusinessman #ambitiousyoungking #ownyourthrone 🤴🇿🇦 #founderof @23famphotographyvisualstudio #photoshoot #yourbeliefinyourself 🤴 #ceomindset#blackchilditspossible ##creattoinspire #eastrandsociety (at Tokoza Ext 2, Tokoza) https://www.instagram.com/p/CIPGaQRn2bd/?igshid=40k3ckamm8ju

[twala-23-icapture-reallife]

#lifeoftwala23💆📷😎 Standing alone doesn't mean im alone #inGodsgrace 🙏#iwillkeepshinnig💫 #bookingsnowopen 📲☎️📕 @0685065548 #twala23_icapturereallife✌👌 @0730546661#whatsapp📲 #socialmediamarketingservices 👑 #selfmadebusinessman #ambitiousyoungking #ownyourthrone 🤴🇿🇦 #founderof @23famphotographyvisualstudio #photoshoot #yourbeliefinyourself 🤴 #ceomindset#blackchilditspossible ##creattoinspire #eastrandsociety https://www.instagram.com/p/CHWdaBbHvsC/?igshid=1fjlgk1e968k5

[twala-23-icapture-reallife]

#lifeoftwala23💆📷😎 #Godsplan📸🇿🇦🙏 #photoeditingsession 📸🖥💻📲#atmycrib #ohlord #twala23_icapturereallife✌👌 #acer #hp #appleipad #socialmediamarketingservices 👑 #selfmadebusinessman #ambitiousyoungking #ownyourthrone 🤴🇿🇦 #founderof @23famphotographyvisualstudio #bevliveinyourself #KINGSWAY🐃🤴♟ 🤴#sittingonmythrone #ceomindset#blackchilditspossible #creattoinspire #23famphotographylegacyliveslong🤴💫🙏📸🤟 (at Alberton,Thokoza) https://www.instagram.com/p/CKu8faJnus2/?igshid=se297ig5vkol

[twala-23-icapture-reallife]

#lifeoftwala23💆📷😎 Standing alone doesn't mean im alone #inGodsgrace 🙏#iwillkeepshinnig💫 #bookingsnowopen 📲☎️📕 @0685065548 #twala23_icapturereallife✌👌 @0730546661#whatsapp📲 #socialmediamarketingservices 👑 #selfmadebusinessman #ambitiousyoungking #ownyourthrone 🤴🇿🇦 #founderof @23famphotographyvisualstudio #photoshoot #yourbeliefinyourself 🤴#sittingonmythrone #ceomindset#blackchilditspossible ##creattoinspire #eastrandsociet (at Thokoza Khumalo) https://www.instagram.com/p/CKpUILfH2r1/?igshid=k1tlfph74ahj

[twala-23-icapture-reallife]

#capturedby @thembasikhosan23 #ediitedby @twala23_icapture_reallife #vital #godplan 🧡👸🏽#sa #muratti #selfmadebusinessman #ontherodeoroad #dreamchaser #emerldason💫✌👌#23famphotographylegacyliveslong🤴💫🙏📸🤟 https://www.instagram.com/p/CQJoZfanejp/?utm_medium=tumblr