The blue market is that which we're addressing. People in this segment generally haven't got websites because:
- they know they really should but they're busy and don't seem to be able to find the time
- they have a perception that getting a web designer will be expensive when all they really need is a basic web presence that get's their message across
- they think that to add content they need special skills or will have to pay some to do that
- they try and DIY a website in a template-based site and get frustrated or stuck
We solve all these problems by having an initial phone chat with interested businesses whereby we assure them we're doing our best to get them started on the web for close to £100, and all they need to do is get info to us like photo's, content etc and we'll do the rest - and we give them tools to modify the website themselves in the future simply by logging in and drag'n'dropping.
Research shows this market to be large. For example, in the local Bexley newspaper in South London there is a trade directory at the back. In that we counted 84 businesses with display advertisements (not just text), and of these 73 had no link to a website.
How We Reach The Market
If we make 12 phone calls in an hour we generally get 1 rude response, 7 polite no thank you's, and 4 people interested enough to give us their contact details for a trained customer service person to ring them back and get things underway - and we're finding that 80% of these people become paying customers at an average invoice size of £125.
So the Software Rights Owner doesn't have to actually do anything but may choose to increase revenues in their territory by:
- handing out business cards which we supply to small biz owners, or at events which attract them
- having agents working as old-fashioned footmen walking in and talking to small business owners
- seeing local councils and having them make startups aware of our service
- and probably many other ways we haven't yet thought of
How The Income Works
We split the revenues 50/50 with the Software Rights Owner after telemarketing commissions and support labour costs. On the average invoice of £125 this works out at £30 to the owner, and £45 if they bring in the prospective customer themselves.
We set a telephone sales target for the territory which achieves enough new customers, and the above revenue share formula is applied to any sale from within the territory whether it comes from our telephone sales, the owner's time spent talking to people, or from customers' word of mouth.
Rights pricing is based on the owner getting full money back after 3 months, and the same again quarterly until year 2 when this increases because of customers from year 1 who repeat their subscription.
If a territory isn't performing to expectation for the owner, we increase the revenue share percentage in his/her favour until the numbers work as outlined, and address the issue either by more telephone sales efforts, or increasing the owner's territory size without charging any more for the rights.
Why We Are Offering This
We've spent three years building the software. We originally thought we had a product that would cater to the orange market in the top graphic. That segment is now crowded with competitors, a lot of them offering free product and supporting that with ads on customers' sites.
So we need to get some investment in to grow the human resource to support our software and create our point of difference. We also intend to invest heavily in product innovation so we can offer more products and services over time to the growing small business community.
The minimum investment is low (equivalent to £750) for a territory and this buys a population base of around 1,000,000 people.
Interested In Owning Rights for a County, State, Province or Country? Just send an email to Paul (Fletch) Christian at pc@mydnd.com and he'll explain this in more detail.
To see some population statistics we gathering please click here. There's also a summary of Google searches and we're testing Adwords to see if the cost/benefit of attracting new customers that way works.
MICROINVESTMENT
Microinvestors are people who own our software rights for any given territory. These territories must be able to be defined when a customer pays a PayPal invoice, or by invoice address if they need to pay some other way.
The Market
Overall the market is small business owners without a website. As an example, New Zealand estimates looks like this (this can probably be applied by population to the UK, Canada, Australia and USA and will be reasonably close to the truth):
Population: 4,000,000
Businesses 1-10 People: 121,000
Those Without Websites: 90,000 (estimated from research mentioned below)
Annual Sales Target: 400
Market Capture: 0.44%