LemonadeBoy

You are starting at the right place and asking the right crowd. You need to provide more details, what does no budget mean? What resources do you have at disposal to execute a marketing plan even when the budget is limited. What you did by posting here is comment marketing but even for this you need manpower. In the uk for property, there is zoopla and rightmove who have the large chunk of the market. Are you going after the estate agents or home owners? If I had to give you my take on marketing, 60% is your product, if it is easy to use and solves a headache for your target market, it should keep people coming back. This repeat traffic will have no choice but to share it with their contacts but you must make sharing easy. If you want viral help: Your internet marketing plan for viral growth must provide clear understanding of what your product is going to do for your users and it must deliver on this. If you can take away only one thing from this, remember: from the start, only push One Main Message to achieve viral growth. This should not necessarily be your unique selling point but rather your Unique Spreading Point.

I agree never change what you stand for but to figure out what you stand for is lot harder than people think. People change, ideas change, law change and situations change. Things i stood for six years ago are different than things i stand for today.

Interesting facts but third one wins. 1. Coffee is a psychoactive, which means high doses can make you see things…. 2. Espresso in Italy is regulated by the government 3. This one takes the cake: In the ancient Arab culture there was only one way a woman could legally divorce: If her husband didn’t provide enough coffee.

Startup is the fuel for the idea economy, although you know most won’t make it but you jump init anyways. It has a rush, which normally is at all time high when you first come up with the idea but when you find out it is not a 100-meter race but a marathon, that’s when the reality starts to appear. When you lose contacts with your friends, don’t show up to family functions and talk to yourself in public, that’s when the reality sits in.

Will you want to do this when _____ happens? No doubt Yes, twice on Sundays.

I agree with “build that will benefit you” benefits communicated in the right way to your users, will get them to spread your venture on their own free will. Learn, apply and track what you applied - repeat the cycle until benefits are clear to everyone.

Applying what you learnt is far more important than just learning. That’s why if it were up to me, I would change the long-standing slogan for Nike from “Just Do It” to “Just Did It”.

Connections and credentials matter in getting a job. If I had to pick between the two, I would say connections would tip credentials in opening the door and credentials could keep it open. Getting a job in a startup especially in a smaller market, raw skills get noticed. When someone I know and trust, refers me to a rock star developer, I don’t even look at his CV and don’t really care who he knows. I simply throw the sink at him. His work shows his worth fairly fast. This is true even when the developer has no educational credentials.

James, that is the whole part of really understanding the benefits of your startup. Focused drive makes it easier not only for the viral growth but it also makes it easier to create your overall marketing plan. Just like target market it is the basis for creating a marketing roadmap, Unique Spreading Point is the basis for creating a successful viral plan. This does not mean you stick with that one point forever; in due course, successful companies create many little things to make it easy for their users to spread the word. In the beginning sticking with one main point makes it easier to focus on all fronts including faster entry to the market. The cost and time for getting multiple viral plans in the beginning may be just too high. Hope this helps.

Self-doubt is the first step in keeping us sane and grounded. It is what brings the best in us, it makes us look over our plans with fine comb and it forces us to look at the bigger picture without losing sight of task at hand. I am in the same boat as you and find different things to worry about but I think it is better to worry when you still have the chance to make a difference rather than saying, “only if” at the end. I’m sure even when you launch your next book, you still will be worried.