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How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business

myclean.com

51–60 of 171 posts

Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business

#51
post #46
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. Our Canadian developer is working on fixing now!

Why not go ahead and learn basic HTML? You brag about it like you're proud of knowing nothing. You could literally be proficient in HTML and basic server management this afternoon if you tried. I'm not saying you should or taking a cheap shot, I just can't understand why some refuse to learn when their jobs depend on it.

Maybe for the same reason that doctors don't give you shots or do the various other things that nurses do. There's a theory, I can't remember the name of it, that basically says the more you know how to do, the less proficient you can be at any one thing.

Dunno if this is why, but just a thought

Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business

#52

This is a classic case of removing purchase friction. There is a market that wants to hire cleaners. There are cleaners who want to be hired. The traditional way of hiring a cleaner or finding a cleaning job requires a lot of effort on both parties. myclean.com goes ahead and reduces that friction with a website. They allow both parties to meet without issue. No wonder they are doing well. Now, can you do this too? Y…

"myclean.com goes ahead and reduces that friction with a website."

Not a new concept at all.

A few examples:

http://www.maidpro.com/

http://www.mollymaid.com/

http://www.merrymaids.com/

And others.

The hard part of this business isn't "reducing the friction".

It's hiring people that you can trust, that show up for work, that you can get at a price and still make a profit.

Obviously many people run mom and pop 1 or 3 person cleaning services in local markets and that's been going on forever. What you typically do is get a suggestion from a friend, see an ad or respond to a flyer put in your mailbox or door.

"The traditional way of hiring a cleaner or finding a cleaning job requires a lot of effort on both parties."

Finding a cleaning job is actually pretty easy. If you are good you can get a job doing this getting hired by an established company. Or, as many have done simply put flyers in peoples doors in neighborhoods that you want to work in (or in office buildings for that matter).

In short this is not a web or technology play at all. It is simply running a business (and that part is fine obviously) the secret sauce of something like this is managing people and quality control. If you can handle that there are a multitude of business opportunities where you can make money. But that part is not easy at all to do. Plus if you are competing with larger companies that offer an upward path to employees starting at the lower level and have economies of scale.

Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business

#53

This is a classic case of removing purchase friction. There is a market that wants to hire cleaners. There are cleaners who want to be hired. The traditional way of hiring a cleaner or finding a cleaning job requires a lot of effort on both parties. myclean.com goes ahead and reduces that friction with a website. They allow both parties to meet without issue. No wonder they are doing well. Now, can you do this too? Y…

Another example of a company that successfully did this is uShip

uship doesn't handle the actual shipping with their trucks and employees. The cleaning services employees the people who do the cleaning.

uship is probably more of the concept that the parent commenter was referring to that I replied to though as an example of reducing friction.

Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business

#54

yet another sinner of linking the main site logo back to the blog: http://blog.jazzychad.net/2012/05/28/startups-fix-your-blog-... - please fix!

It looks like a wordpress blog and so is non trivial to link to the main site.

I have no idea why Wordpress made it so difficult to relink, but it's not easy to do.

Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business

#55

This is a classic case of removing purchase friction. There is a market that wants to hire cleaners. There are cleaners who want to be hired. The traditional way of hiring a cleaner or finding a cleaning job requires a lot of effort on both parties. myclean.com goes ahead and reduces that friction with a website. They allow both parties to meet without issue. No wonder they are doing well. Now, can you do this too? Y…

Hopefully they'll fix the blog thing when they roll out the new site. You're right though, linking to the main site is generally what someone naturally expects a logo to do.

Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business

#56
post #31
post #7

Would love to hear more about the first part of the trip: how they got to $15k per month. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Hello ovi256, we received some excellent press early on (Thrillist was huge for us), ran a Gilt campaign, and listed ourselves on free directories. We did not spend any money (outside of the money we lost with Gilt) in customer acquisition to begin with.

the money you "lost" with gilt? did the promotion not pay for itself in volume and repeat customers?

Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business

#57
post #49

Insert mandatory caveat here about fictitious self-employment.

Can you clarify what you mean?

If I'm guessing correctly (I searched the website but didn't find any definitive answer), they are not hiring cleaners themselves, but are instead outsourcing jobs to cleaners working for themselves.

It's a very common method to avoid all the pesky little taxes and legal liabilities that come with actually employing someone. It's also russian roulette for your company if the IRS decides your outsourcing partners are not actually real companies.

(I think the confusion is because of the term "ficticious self-employment"? I searched for a translation and that was the best I could find. I would welcome anyone to tell me what the actual colloquial term for this is)

Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business

#59

And this is probably why I will never be rich. The idea of hiring somebody to clean your house(or watch your kids, or do the grocery shopping) is completely foreign to me.

On the plus side, there seems to be a dearth of ideas for the not rich that can be equally lucrative, so perhaps it's a leg up toward building the killer app that really helps a lot of people.

Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business

#60
post #46
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. Our Canadian developer is working on fixing now!

Why not go ahead and learn basic HTML? You brag about it like you're proud of knowing nothing. You could literally be proficient in HTML and basic server management this afternoon if you tried. I'm not saying you should or taking a cheap shot, I just can't understand why some refuse to learn when their jobs depend on it.

You may want to look at Ricardo's comparative advantage concept in economics to answer this question.
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