First post of the series here, read more about my current startups
Today someone subscribed for a 6-month membership on HK Christians!
First sale is always exciting… although HK Christians technically isn’t a startup, and had always been making some money, it’s still good to see it coming through the new web app I built!
This also this mark the first income that I take part of (I don’t take part of any income that didn’t come through the new system). And it’ll be the first income for me starting as an entrepreneur!
(although I do have a toy project, online tutorial website http://finitehelp.com, I made back in university and had been making me enough money for a nice dinner every month. I wasn’t a full-time professional entrepreneur back then though)
I wasn’t expecting the first membership sale to come through until next month, so it’s definitely a good start. I’m hoping to get membership sales number to be at lesat 3x-5x than what we were getting in the old site. My plans for how to achieve that:
- Better user experience: the old site works, but quite a bit outdated. You buy membership in order to send messages to people. I always feel like that’s not the best model as non-paying members have practically zero chance to connect with anyone. I want free users to get more value out so they use the app more often, and more frequent use means they are notified more about events, more likely to refer, etc.
- Better customer service: we used to have our web design company secretary double as HK Christians admin, which meant she didn’t not have full attention paid to servicing HK Christians members. Now we have a part-time staff dedicated to answering emails and whatsapp. We phone approve every member, and hopefully we’ll get higher quality members who are more satisfied.
- More triggers for purchase: Old site you want to send message, you pay. That’s the only trigger, and a poor one I think, as unpaid members will stop using the site very soon. New site you can like each other, mutual likes create match, and free users can talk. But if they want to super like a user, or extend chat period, or see who liked them, then they’d need to pay. Many more features upgrade for the paying member, whilst providing decent value for the unpaid member, which in turn increases value for paying member as well
- Digital marketing strategy: Old site we had zero digital marketing strategy. New site we’ll have a full strategy, starting from the top, attracting users through SEO, PPC, strategic partners, banner ads, content marketing, social media, etc. Tracking conversions through the funnel. Calculating ROI on each effort. A/B test on each step and optimize. Review and improve. Rinse and repeat.
I’m hoping eventually the entire revenue could achieve 5-10x of what we used to get … my partner will be very happy if/when that happens XD