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Paying Contractors, Scaling Up, and Free Visibility

The Revolve Nation Boston Entrepreneurs Meetup is the largest community of entrepreneurs and small business owners in the city of Boston, offering networking, discussion groups, seminars, business plan hot-seats, and more. We meet every two weeks on Wednesday nights to network, socialize, learn, and promote a thriving community of entrepreneurs.

1. How are you paying your contractors?

Many use Google docs to track hours and has invoices because of shared viewing and instant updating.  Most impressed the importance of having milestones for contractors to keep hours to a minimum.

A great tip that came out of this was to use Dwolla for payment if possible because it assesses only a $0.25 fee per transaction instead of 2-3% off the top like most credit card companies.

2. My software based solution could serve more people. How can I scale it up?

The member who brought this up has tried cold calling and email solicitations, but hasn’t seen any results. Members suggested protecting IP and then partnering with larger entities if possible, or building into other apps like LinkedIn.

Partnering might also involve selling licenses or adopting a per use SaaS model. This involves a substantial investment in building and testing a user front-end

3. How can I increase visibility for my business without shelling out tons of cash on ads?

This question comes up regularly at Revolve, and the answer is largely the same. The two tried and true ways are to meet new people every day and to establish a web presence.

Networking can help on a small scale, and may help you find partners, referral sources, and feedback. But you are limited by your free time and the timing of networking opportunities.

Web scales better, but you have to realize that free won’t get you very far. A free website template may not be very good, and doing SEO without spending money on even minimally targeted ads is difficult. Unless, of course, you’re doing some in a very small niche.

If you want to hear more or throw in your two cents, join us at Meetup!

You can contact the author here, and follow @revolvethis and @gerritbetz on Twitter.

Keywords

Revolve, entrepreneur, startup, business, contractors, SEO, SaaS, scale up