To the point of launch and including some early advertisements, BizzBuzz cost around $30,000 to start up. I funded this with the sale of my previous company, Pinstripe.
Prior to launch I was actively posting in online business forums, on Facebook walls and I ran a couple of small advertisements with some online business communities.
All of these strategies worked to varying degrees and allowed me to build a decent pre-launch following.
Upon the launch itself I took a punt based on my feel that the press would be interested in the launch of the first group buying site for small business owners and shelled out some cash on a PR firm. It paid off.
Beyond this I put a lot of effort into ensuring that each and every one of the deals Bizz Buzz features will actually be worth talking about. This is perhaps our biggest drawcard and has been the lifeblood of Bizz Buzz’s traffic.
Between $1.6 and $2.2 million from September to the end of June.
Three full-time staff and a range of freelancers.
Running bad deals and losing the trust of our audience. Trust is everything so we have to make sure we continue to both provide a high level of service to our customers and to make sure our deals are as transparent as possible.
BizzBuzz allows business owners to try the best products and services available to them at a cut price,and determine whether or not they will work for their business before paying top dollar.
BizzBuzz features deals from the big guys like Couriers Please, MYOB and Vistaprint, all the way down to your more local level service provider.
To help our visitors understand each deal or merchant our deal write-ups are structured as a sort of quasi guide for our small business owner audience.
Growth and managing growth. We are growing rapidly right now. This means we need to manage the load that comes hand in hand with this growth or our service levels will drop, which we can’t afford.
We also need to maintain the rate of growth we are experiencing to achieve our long-term goals. However we’re quietly confident that the strategies we will implement in the near future will propel BizzBuzz sky high.
Had I have been clairvoyant I would’ve known that the group buying business is one hell of a lot more demanding than it appears on the surface and would have been even more prepared for the incredible amount of work I was to face upon launch.
Either way though I’m pretty sure I would have wound up working until 2am each night.
