$90K/month writing book reviews + The $7M/year USP

Dear starters,

Pat Walls here, creator of Starter Story. 

I’m hitting your inbox to share with you the best ideas and insights we've published over the last week.

P.S. I'm also offering a limited-time deal on Starter Story premium for just $1.51/week, our best deal ever (see below).

📈 No Code movement is still big (and growing)

We just interviewed Seth who’s making $6k/month with No Code MBA, a website with over 150 real-world video lessons building apps like Tinder, Zillow, and Product Hunt. He saw the no code trend and capitalized on it - now he currently has over 400 paying members and growing.

And Google predicts it’ll continue to rise thanks to the growing interest in countries such as Russia, Vietnam and Brazil.

Every day more and more people want to start their projects and businesses but many can’t code. And here’s where tools such as Carrd, Webflow or Zapier come in handy. You may not get all the functionalities of a custom-coded website, but at least they’ll help you validate your idea and test the level of potential interest.

Don’t believe these tools can build “serious” products? Jesús started LowCode Agency and they use only No Code tools to make their apps, thanks to which they are consistently 80% cheaper than a traditional app development agency, and 70% faster. In their first year, they did over $150k in sales.

Another success story on the online education side of the business: In No-Code MVP, Bram teaches people the mindset, process, and tools they can use to build and validate their startup and business ideas without knowing or learning how to code. This is one of the best and most detailed examples of a starter sharing his design, prototype, and launch stages. Of course, he did it so well that he made $8k in just 3 weeks.

​Thinking about starting an online education business? We got you. This guide is the best way to get started.

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Get unlimited access to 2,000+ case studies, 3,000+ business ideas for just $1.51/week using the code "MARCH". This is the best deal we've ever had.

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📝 $90K/month books reviews business

We just interviewed Victoria who’s making over $1M/year reviewing books!

In 1998, Victoria started a magazine called Foreword Reviews. They provide long-form reviews of books from independent publishers, these were smaller presses that weren’t getting much coverage in other media.

Takeaway: Find what’s missing out there. What isn’t getting proper coverage. Become an authority in a niche topic. Scale down by going specific (80’s rap music) or by sticking to a certain geographical area (Atlanta rap scene). And grow from there.

One of the many wonders of the Internet is that the barrier entry is amazingly low for many businesses or projects. You can literally start a content-based business for $0. In January 2021 there were 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide, so the potential audience, even for a niche site, is quite astounding.

These are some great examples of businesses we have spoken to previously:

Patrick created a blog about games you can play at the bar, with your family, on vacation, etc. with over 300K monthly pageviews and generating $4k/mo. He started publishing “how-to” guides that would teach a beginner how to play classic games like 8-ball, 9-ball and cutthroat pool; cricket and darts.

Originally Debbie started a flooring store and she started a blog to share floor styles and decor ideas, as a marketing vehicle for the business. After a while, the flooring business wasn’t doing so well but the blog had around 120k monthly visitors. So she decided to turn the blog into the main business. Now every month her blog gets 700,000 pageviews and makes over $20k being ads, referral links and ebooks are her income sources.

But these are just a few! You can write about anything, find an audience and make money off it. Be it an $8k/mo blog for coffee lovers, a Texas-only $4k/mo travel blog or a $10k/mo personal finances blog.

🗣️ Quote of the week

You absolutely can’t try and save on professional services. As the old saying goes, if you think a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur!

Rob Williams, Hawthorn founder, a $50K/month company that manufactures clothing for other brands.

💰 The $7M/year unique selling proposition

Keith has an interesting business model, he decided to try something kind of revolutionary: his ecommerce development agency guarantees a $10k/month revenue to its clients. This proposition doesn’t make his attorneys very happy but it does mean one thing: he doesn’t have to spend any money on advertising. It keeps the partnership inquiries coming without having to advertise.

In a world where standing out is really hard, developing a unique selling proposition can really help you acquire customers and grow. Keith’s probably the wildest we’ve seen so far in Starter Story, but not the first. 

• The founder of the $1m/year men underwear brand Stonemen discovered that their customers were middle-aged women buying a gift. After that, “our message became clearer and we knew how to budget to our particular audiences.” 
• Gary’s online custom stickers, labels and decals will take orders from “any shape, any size and any quantity”. That open-mindedness and willingness to deliver made them grow from zero to $10k/mo in a year.
• Andy started a $9k/mo online personal training service, his USP? Himself. Once he figured that out, he was able to improve sales.

Additionally, we asked Keith his secret to growth? His answer: Building his business in a trending space.

Ecommerce is such a hot space and the opportunities are huge. Finding suppliers and manufacturers to create your own product, selling and shipping products worldwide, communicating with customers. Starting an online store has never been easier. And Shopify is probably the most popular platform to do it, so it might be a good idea to capitalize on that success.

Dan specialized in a trending platform. He chose to become a Shopify Plus Partner. That helped them build better products, gain authority and grow the customer deal flow to $100k/mo.

Leighton took the same path with his $30k/mo conversion-focused Shopify agency. As he states: “Shopify has exploded as the eCommerce platform of choice over the past few years, and demand for Shopify-related services has skyrocketed”. You can underestimate the importance of focusing on a growing platform.

The guys at Sidekick ($12k/mo) approached the market in a different way and innovated by positioning themselves in an unoccupied space between freelancers and agencies. Priced far below agencies, but superior in service to freelancers.

Dive deeper and go check our complete guides on the topic:

• How To Start A Shopify Ecommerce Agency 
• How To Start An Ecommerce Marketing Agency

Or check out these amazing stories of agency founders:

• JB started an $8.5m/mo company providing marketing solutions to SMBs at 28
• Brian started a marketing agency that grows at 84% with $1mm monthly revenue
• TribalVision is a $700k/mo outsourced marketing department for hire
• Darren’s marketing and PR firm makes $516K/mo with just 14 employees

​You’ll find actionable advice and learnings that companies shared with us.

🛠️ Job Opportunities

Ever heard about plant-based chicken? At Daring they just raised an $8m investment round to keep making more plant-based products and are also hiring in two key positions Director of People and Culture and Influencer Manager.

The $7m/year ecommerce development agency Qwantify is looking to hire Partner Success Managers, Digital Marketing Experts, Shopify and WordPress Developers.

Steelkiwi is a $2m/year full-stack American outsourcing company, providing web and mobile app development services looking to grow their 80+ people team with these positions: Project Manager, Team Lead Python/Django Developer and Business Analyst/Requirements Engineer.

Want to join a deep tech company working on Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) solutions using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA)? Our friends at Rapid Acceleration Partners are hiring Full Stack Lead, Python Developer, Technical Architect, and Product Marketer.

P.S. Huge thank you to Klaviyo - our exclusive sponsor at Starter Story. By using Klaviyo, we've grown our email list to 60K and added thousands of dollars in revenue per month through email marketing. Get Klaviyo today!

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