Rob Walling: The Stairstep, No-Bull Approach to Bootstrapping

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For start-up marketing, how do you get something off the ground without outside funding? What’s required to launch a product?

Marketers and developers will learn a lot today!

In this episode, I’m talking to Rob Walling, a Web developer, podcaster, entrepreneur, and conference co-host about stairstepping your way up when it comes to bootstrapping.

Topics covered:

• How to launch a new software business without a lot of time or money
• Stairstep Approach: Build something small, a one-time sale product; find source of traffic or niche
• How to come up with useful product ideas for angles; use tools that show places that generate traffic
• Make money online by knowing SEO practices
• Optimize for an engine to provide a valuable resource for people searching for a specific term
• By using marketing to get to the top or to get in front of people, only to let them down - then you will not have longevity
• Utilize communities and marketplaces, online or elsewhere, that already exist and people are using
• Gain confidence, experience, and knowledge to improve and make money
• Process of building a simple plug-in: Research; come up with an idea; know where to go; teach yourself or outsource work; submit; and determine level of interest
• Acquire something rather than building it from scratch; leverage other people’s work
• Start something guaranteed to get traction by using an idea done before, several times
• Determine if a certain number of people are looking for the same thing
• Can you charge for it? Can you add something to charge for? Can you build something people are willing to pay for? Are you interested in building something?
• Rob’s Goal: Provide value to people in exchange for money; take that money to quit day job
• Identify that there are volumes of searches to sustain your objective
• Focus on a landscape with a lot of products that are not good enough; competition validates the market
• Go for the goal to rank #1; that’s the challenge
• Niche-down results in smaller opportunities but that does not matter initially
• Earning your first dollar is a life-changing moment, but it is still good to sell stuff; as the dollars get bigger, the more interesting it is
• Rob’s passionate about being ethical and adding value to people’s lives and making money out of it
• If you make money from an add-on, then launch more add-ons for diversification; if not, start over
• You have an audience, grow it slowly, offer solutions to their problems, and make a living
• Practice patience and maintain a long-term mindset; marketers get overwhelmed with the amount of day-to-day information available
• Set long-term goals because choices you make today, stick with you
• Marketers should learn to think analytically like developers; measure conversions, link dollars to spending on ads to how many people are buying, etc.
• Developers can learn from marketers that a product is not everything; customers and marketing are directly related to the success of a product; and talk about the benefits rather than the features
• Some marketers go for growth hacks - grow at any cost and just for the sake of it
• Marketers have a bad reputation because of overstepping bounds of ethics
• Good marketing goes unnoticed; bad marketing is in the news a lot
• Have an opinion, stand for something, and be real
• Define your enemy because when things get tough, fighting against it is the only thing

Resources mentioned:

• Rob Walling on Twitter
• Startups for the Rest of Us podcast
• Drip
• MicroConf
• Google AdWords
• Ahrefs
• Market Samurai
• Jungle Scout
• DotNetInvoice
• Justin Jackson - Marketing for Developers
• Shinesty
• Rand Fishkin - Step-by-Step Guide to Inbound Marketing
• Copy Hackers
• Inbound.org
• Ultimate Sales Letter
• louis@everyonehatesmarketers.com

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