StartupResources.io — Issue #81
Hi, it’s Jói again!
I’ve been spending a bit of time thinking about how to improve conversion rates on the StartupResources.io website as well as how to do content upgrade offers on the CrankWheel site, so you’ll see a bit of a trend with tools like that in this week’s issue.
The other thing I continue to obsess about is how to best do outbound sales for CrankWheel. Of course, it’s time for me to stop looking at tools and start implementing, but hey — you know I love tools 🤓
Tool of the week
ContentUpgrade.me | Lead magnets, signup forms etc. for Medium and WordPress
I cross-post these newsletters to Medium, but have not seen a great conversion to new subscribers from there, likely because it’s a couple of clicks to sign up if you’re reading on Medium.
With ContentUpgrade.me, I now have an embeddable sign-up form that I can use in Medium stories (here’s an example). They also do lead magnet forms (with an auto-download) and CTAs (i.e. just a big button that .
Free for one form, but as soon as you want more forms or an integration (like Zapier) to automatically get leads into your system of choice, it’s $9/month. For now I’m starting with the free version and manually exporting leads.
Tools I actually used recently
40Nuggets
This is a set of lead capture widgets (newsletter, whitepaper, coupon, customer feedback and Facebook like) that I’m evaluating using on the StartupResources.io website instead of Privy. The lead capture templates have a nice look to them and it can generate insights from your conversions. Lots of integrations built in and also a Zapier integration. Free for up to 700 monthly visitors, fairly reasonable after that.
Listennotes
A podcast search engine. Probably useful to find stuff to listen to, but what I’ve been using it for is researching podcasts where I might propose an interview about, or pay for an advertisement of, CrankWheel.
Tech4Reporters
This is a new place for technologists to answer reporters’ questions about technology. Kind of like HARO for getting some PR, but more fun and targeted. Made by my friend John Biggs.
Tools discovered recently
Eagle Speak | Audio Calling, Video Conferencing, Screen Sharing and more. — eaglespeak.net
Eagle Speak is similar to Appear.in but allows you to create separate links for each call without having to make up your own name. Looks polished.
Reply.io | Enabling 1:1 Conversations at Scale
I want to try this tool. It’s sort of like Mailshake but with lots more features including contact management and sharing, built-in sequences that you can add contacts to right from your Gmail, built in VoIP-to-phone and more.
Postrocket | Auto Post on Instagram
Helps you manage your Instagram accounts, auto-post and analyze all your posts.
Referral Magic | Referral Tracking Software for SaaS Businesses
Looks interesting — a platform for building a referral program for users of your software (think Dropbox-style rewards rather than actual money for referrals). It’s free for now.
Shareaholic — Content Amplification Software
This is a free suite of tools for your website such as social sharing buttons, related articles, and more. Also some native ads through their network of sites.
Articles etc.
Lessons Learned Scaling Airbnb 100X
Interesting read from the first product manager at Airbnb.
Live Chat Statistics: Trends and Insights from 400 Consumers
Essentially a whitepaper presented as a web page, looks nice and lots of interesting statistics, trends and insights.
Email Onboarding Tricks Used By Drift & Dropbox To Boost Conversions — www.fieldboom.com
Case study on email onboarding / nurturing, some interesting insights including: You’re too much of an expert in your product to get your onboarding sequence right.
Material Components
GitHub repo full of components for Material Design on web, Android, iOS.
Products ? made without code
Made without code is a showcase of products built by a single maker without writing code, and a community for folks interested in this. Maybe of interest to some of the less technical founders out there?
That’s it for this issue
Remember how I mentioned I’d be using Toptal myself, for a WordPress plug-in for CrankWheel? The project is currently ongoing and so far it’s been very smooth, I was immediately matched with an experienced WordPress developer and he seems to be getting the project done in record time — first demo version later today. I’ll do a full write-up once the project is done!
Have a great weekend!
Cheers,
Jói
