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Thanks man. I’m feeling good. Really looking forward to making use of those free weeks, as we do 1 week with kids 1 week without, so going to really work that time.
The Cheezus Thread - A Startup Journey
- Thread starter randomshenans
- Start date
Thanks man. I’m feeling good. Really looking forward to making use of those free weeks, as we do 1 week with kids 1 week without, so going to really work that time.
I suppose I didn't really explain the vision well at all. I completely agree with what you're saying, and while I have recently posted a couple of clipped parts (as I haven't actually created any other videos over the christmas holiday period), my actual strategy would be to create long form content, as my general videos, and use clips of those, or create the short form content out of those/ while making those. So that way the audience is inline as is the content and it's easier to see the cross over on the two. That's my aim for this year for sure. I will stay consistent. My car stuff is what I plan on sticking with.
Thanks for the feedback though I appreciate it. Also on the name. I am planning on changing it, as it's all me now anyway, I was considering just using my username here randomshenans, but open to feedback in general. Again, I do appreciate feedback
They don't really do the same thing, but I did see it. I love how they used the exact term vivino for cheese. If they had actually googled it they would have seen it just points to all of our stuff.
Anyway, they do all the fulfillment themselves, and do subscription boxes as a general model. Ours is different, and while we're using the UK as a start, my model would mean that we can do it all around the world without any issues with fulfilment and cost. For them to do the same it would have to be setup in every location to do so.
For example, if you take the new users from the last 30 days and their locations:
Sure, UK is second highest, but the total of the rest by far outweigh it. So while it did frustrate me some, it validated that the market is there in general and people care about cheese
The truth is I was up untli 3am that morning I heard making sure the things I was doing or had planned would be finished in half the time. I now have the sync tool being developed offshore and will be done next week. The UI work is underway. Feb I'm looking to be testing it all and trying to onboard first producers in the UK. Will see how it goes but don't think I'm dead just yet
Sure, UK is second highest, but the total of the rest by far outweigh it. So while it did frustrate me some, it validated that the market is there in general and people care about cheese
The truth is I was up untli 3am that morning I heard making sure the things I was doing or had planned would be finished in half the time. I now have the sync tool being developed offshore and will be done next week. The UI work is underway. Feb I'm looking to be testing it all and trying to onboard first producers in the UK. Will see how it goes but don't think I'm dead just yet
This is the last 30 days, so to build on the above, it hasn't been a worry for us. In fact, it's been the best month we've had worldwide on all accounts. The most use, the most new cheeses, the most new users worldwide. So while I was a bit peeved at that whole thing, it just kicked me up the arse really.
I'm in the process of testing the sync plugin that will sync all producers sites using WooCommerce to our woo instance. Seems OK so far. This is the 3rd batch of testing I've done. I need to test it in anger to make sure I can't break it, which I tend to be a great use case for this sort of thing. "what happens if I click this and then do this weird thing?"
Either way, it should be finalised and code handed over next week.
Ahmad is working on updating the ionic codebase at the moment to the latest version. That will be released early next week, with App Store optimisations, then starting on the UI for buying from the app. Dan is currently implementing some monitoring for our infra/ load so we can stress test our systems prior to pushing something out.
Just a little update but a good one
Ha I saw this as well. And of course have been sent it by people, too. It was not! I know of them though, it's a company that built it, they have 9000 images, which is pretty small for ML models, but they have money being a company
We're doing OK though, growing nicely still. Having the best month to date I think this month, fixed a lot of things and building out intended stuff to be able to purchase from the app, still. Just passed 2000 users, which again, is small, but considering the cost vs. user base it's pretty good. I'm fine with competition. I think they've done great with PR of course, but when you have a big company it's much easier
Much as vivino did though, the value for me comes with working with producers and this upcoming shift should be hopefully where we can make a difference and our model will be entirely different in that way. See what happens. I still haven't invested huge sums at all in this, so for me it's been a really interesting journey.
Those big pocketed ******** with their PR and ****
So a funny thing happened since my last post on this. Firstly, we had mega traffic this week because of it. Our downloads have been great. Best month we've had in fact.
On top of this, I get an email from a US publication I hadn't heard of asking for an interview. I was like sure, why not. As I was chatting with him on Zoom, I checked out their site stats and viewership. They average between 500k-1m readers a month to their publication. They were started by the founder of vanity fair and have a massively high end following!
The guy who interviewed me was an ex FT columnist, who was recruited over to them. It's AirMail.news - Nothing I'd heard of until this point. Anyway, he'd heard of the cheezam stuff but couldn't find anything about them or to use it. He was like everything I search for on cheese apps I kept finding you guys (lol **** you and thank you app store optimisation/ SEO work!) and you seem to be the top cheese app in the world? I was like ha thanks.
He interviewed me and reiterated their foodie, high end, cosmopolitan readership saying "Tom Cruise once bought what I recommended in my column" - erm, cool? I mean, it would be cool to say Tom Cruise was a cheezus user I suppose? ha
The fact I was an English guy, living in France and drove a Black London Taxi around with Cheezus on, making a cheese app, was something he thought the American's would love. So yea, that's supposed to come out in a couple of weeks!
It's just funny because of all the ground work that's gone into those things as well. I spent a long time and still do on app store optimizations. I looked at where most our d/ls came from and 75% were app store searches. Hence the work that went into pushing it. Same with general SEO as well. Anyway, no idea what will come of it.
Been generally fixing things and pushing small updates as we go, still working to get this big update out for producers, it'll come. Just wanted to improve some of the core things first, like search and data which I've worked on.
Have a good weekend!
Ha I've realised that way before this point! Embracing my weirdness and not giving a **** is actually quite liberating
Cheers man, no idea if it'll be useful but either way, I'll take it
That's what it does! See example: https://twitter.com/CheezusApp/status/1526862339642953728?s=20&t=nG-2Z8-7-culeM8dyTM0cA
@Russinating Totally! I have a long list at the moment and the app branding and app store stuff is updated but the site is very behind!
@Diddums 100% - I had a job out to get someone to redo the site but think I'll redo it myself. As above it needs aligning with my app store artwork and that. It's just not aligned and was the first thing done and desperately needs improving. It's next on my list!
I appreciate all the feedback from everyone, honestly. It's all good feedback and I don't take any of this stuff personally haha most I might know and it'll kick me up the ass to sort
Interesting points, mate! Thanks for this! I don't know how I missed it! I have done personas, way back to be fair. Would be worth going through them all again for sure.
I'll spend some time on this as I really want to complete the redesign of the site and everything, so can tie this into all of that. Thanks mate, appreciate your time in putting that together.
I got the nod from Ahmad we're getting closer to sorting **** out on buying cheese, so kicked off cheese producer outreach and am currently in the process of onboarding one producer with 15% commission arranged. I am in talks with 3 more and need to send an agreement to another on commission contracts. So still chipping away
just passed 2200 users which is nice. Again, not massive but better than nothing for organic growth. I think all the work in branding @Russinating would then help with future campaigns, too, when I do plan to market more heavily as it'll hopefully lead to revenue then. I have been doing it organically at the moment for pure growth but when there is no potential of $$ back it's all a sink cost.
I also don't know how I missed these, too. It's been a time! I have not factored in my time in anyway at all. Purely out of pockets, and sure you could say I'm paying out time, but my wage would be far too hard to calc in this to be fair. That number is just to illustrate the $$ that went into it, not the effort.
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Ah it was a little one, but it's not something I had even banked on, so?
Preview of the buying side on the app, it's not hooked up to the APIs yet on the backend, so will see how it looks like that. I would like payments and orders to be structured and labeled differently but it's getting there!
I am not sure I wrote about it above, but I had agreed terms with Butler's cheese, but their install of shopify is a bit unique, so things went a bit quiet as I was working things out. I reached out to ask some Qs and the guy I'd agreed things with had left. Nooo! Anyway, I got through to a new lady and we've had a back and forth for a week. Jumped on a call today, she's the operations director there and lovely. Rekindled the whole thing and she's agreed it'll be a great idea and we're back in the game.
That's on top of a couple more. I am jumping on a call this week to sort out a plugin install as well. I hope to hit 10 producers on board before Sept is my aim! Slowly slowly catchy monkey, but it's fine for me at this pace. Means I can balance it with everything else, which is the main thing really.
Just wanted to update as it was today. As you were.
That's on top of a couple more. I am jumping on a call this week to sort out a plugin install as well. I hope to hit 10 producers on board before Sept is my aim! Slowly slowly catchy monkey, but it's fine for me at this pace. Means I can balance it with everything else, which is the main thing really.
Just wanted to update as it was today. As you were.
Probably! You're one the many images now! I think we have over 100k images by now. And users in over 100 countries, which is cool.
I'll start to actually push some UK focused marketing once I've onboarded about 10-20 producers so we have cheese buying power in the app and once we have soft launched that to test it out... then I'll start a bit of a ramp up. Happy to do it much more slowly at the moment. I really would like to push this by Christmas. I normally always give tight timelines, but Christmas is huge for cheese, so would be great to aim for that and be realistic. Just need to make sure work doesn't get in the way. Damn those people wanting me to work for my money.
Mate I did the same and literally this minute eating a cheese board for lunch!@randomshenans - I've made my way through about 8KG of cheese over Christmas. I'm on detox now but I'm still thinking about cheese. Any cheese-related updates?
We closed out the year on 2735 users - I need to check in on the development side of things. Once it's ready to go, we can at least start to see if I can make money from some of it. I figured out a few niggles I was having with the whole only showing things for sale for people in the country they're in i.e. you can't buy cheese from a producer that is in another country etc. so worked that out and some categorization (how to link existing Db entries with search/ products for sale etc. was a bit of a mission, but I did that over the last few weeks.
I'll do a proper update in the coming weeks, but we went from 1400 users to 2735 over 2022 so that's not bad for $0 marketing spend. It's not mega numbers, but it's not nothing! Now to try and make some money back from it!! I have a meeting scheduled next week on it
Proof of my lunch
With over 2000 people in our user DB and mailing list, I wanted to bring more value in some way to promote the content we have to our users - with a view to look at both value creation and monetization possibilities.
I created the first issue of "The Cheese Board" today; Our newsletter that covers articles written on the site (I've been writing a lot and storing them for release over the weeks), new cheeses added by users (we have an absolute boatload), pairings recommended, and will also add things like cheese recipes, little tips etc. and updates on the app, but in smaller amounts. Make it about the cheese.
Will see how this one goes, what the unsubscribe / open rate looks like and how I can use this in the future to try and drive more value to users with cheese, but not just always in the app.
Will see how it goes on this week's episode and report back.
I created the first issue of "The Cheese Board" today; Our newsletter that covers articles written on the site (I've been writing a lot and storing them for release over the weeks), new cheeses added by users (we have an absolute boatload), pairings recommended, and will also add things like cheese recipes, little tips etc. and updates on the app, but in smaller amounts. Make it about the cheese.
Will see how this one goes, what the unsubscribe / open rate looks like and how I can use this in the future to try and drive more value to users with cheese, but not just always in the app.
Will see how it goes on this week's episode and report back.
Released the first issue of The Cheese Board today. Had about 25% open rate in the first 12hours which I don't think is too bad.
Shared it on 6 Cheese Groups on Facebook (only reason I stay on that place is for business stuff and not bloody personal!) which has actually led to some more subs to the newsletter.
Already had some reflections on how to use it in a better way; there were 3 articles in there, 1 new cheese, 1 pairing, 1 article about temps to serve cheese, which showed a preview and linked back to our site.
I think it'd be a good way to steer more people places with outbound links that I didn't really do in this one. I can also link back to the app, as well as the site. What's more, I can try layering in some affiliates with pairings in the future. I do want to try and create a decent value add for both readers and producers/ makers etc. so let's build it up slowly and see how the cadence goes.
I really need to completely redo the website this week as well. It's been on my list for ages and I have some ideas for it. Just need to pull my finger out now. Maybe I just outsource the ****** with my ideas. That sounds like a better plan... I might do that.
Still not jumped on a call about the new releases and features. I spent all the time doing this as well approving a boat load of images from the christmas period, adding descriptions, images and all that jazz to new cheeses, so now I have that up to date and content ready for the next few newsletters I can work out what's next.
The Cheese Board! From Cheezus
mailchi.mp
Shared it on 6 Cheese Groups on Facebook (only reason I stay on that place is for business stuff and not bloody personal!) which has actually led to some more subs to the newsletter.
Already had some reflections on how to use it in a better way; there were 3 articles in there, 1 new cheese, 1 pairing, 1 article about temps to serve cheese, which showed a preview and linked back to our site.
I think it'd be a good way to steer more people places with outbound links that I didn't really do in this one. I can also link back to the app, as well as the site. What's more, I can try layering in some affiliates with pairings in the future. I do want to try and create a decent value add for both readers and producers/ makers etc. so let's build it up slowly and see how the cadence goes.
I really need to completely redo the website this week as well. It's been on my list for ages and I have some ideas for it. Just need to pull my finger out now. Maybe I just outsource the ****** with my ideas. That sounds like a better plan... I might do that.
Still not jumped on a call about the new releases and features. I spent all the time doing this as well approving a boat load of images from the christmas period, adding descriptions, images and all that jazz to new cheeses, so now I have that up to date and content ready for the next few newsletters I can work out what's next.
It does also say at the bottom to reply
thanks man, I'll do a monthly then! I was wondering so appreciate the feedback
Been signed off this week with a bloody chest infection that buggered up an old **** disc issue in my lower back, so I've been unable to do much but last few days climbing the wall and sitting was easier, so I decided to make the most of only being able to sit and not having to work...
So I redesigned the cheezus website, which I'll be implementing soon.
I'm still deciding what else to have on it. Do I want there to be cheeses from the app on there? The blog posts and everything can be, but other things? I'm unsure where to draw the line at the moment but either way, this is the design now.
I absolutely HATE the current one. It was thrown together 3yrs ago and I didn't like it then haha but never got round to changing it, so now I decided it was time to do so.