Serious Question

Should I whitelabel or keep it private?

  • Whitelabel

    Votes: 2 33.3%

  • Private

    Votes: 4 66.7%
  • Total voters
    6
D

Deleted member 1198594

Guest
Hey BHW! Hope all is well...

I have a serious question. It's currently 12:30 am and I'm laying in bed tossing and turning over one question I can't answer....

So some of you may have seen my journey on BHW about my AI SEO project that I've been working on. Now I've gotten the word out there and have picked up a good amount of clients with FB ads... But now that's dead..

I've been trying to hire people to do sales but everyone thinks their worth $250k+/year plus commission... So the hiring process has gone no where.

I've had a lot of companies approach me and say hey we'd love to sell your service to our existing clients and have our sales people sell it for you as well... However it would have to be white label.

So here's my question... Do I want to make millions building a brand or do I just make millions and whitelabel the shit out of my software/service?

Do I care about being known as one of the first AI SEO companies or do I open the doors up to all my competitors and have them sell it for me?

I'm literally torn between the two.. would love everyone's opinion.

Kind regards!
 
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Why not do both?

Be the brand but also offer white label.
 
MisterF said:
Why not do both?

Be the brand but also offer white label.
Click to expand...

I could be both... I guess the real question is do I want to whitelabel. I feel like with the AI that I have built I have a competitive edge over everyone.. but if I release it to my competitors then we're back to square one.. even.
 
With a unique product like that i would not open it up to competition so soon.
Hiring someone to re-design your site and optimize it for conversion + affiliates is not an option?
To be honest, your deskx.com looks horribly amateurish and it is very difficult to find out what the tool even does.
Why are there no videos explaining it? No more in-depth explanations?

I'm afraid whitelabeling it would get you slaughtered by companies much better at sales. But maybe thats one strategy if you'd like to get bought out in the future.
 
Andre Youkhna said:
Do I want to make millions building a brand or do I just make millions and whitelabel the shit out of my software/service
Click to expand...

The first would take time to millions but the later would fast track the process to millions. No matter what route you plan to take - You would still reach millions with determination.

juijuie said:
hy are there no videos explaining it? No more in-depth explanations?
Click to expand...

There are structured explanatory videos on the website you could ask him for a link. Truth be told, the website is not well structured for easy navigation.
 
Andre Youkhna said:
Hey BHW! Hope all is well...

I have a serious question. It's currently 12:30 am and I'm laying in bed tossing and turning over one question I can't answer....

So some of you may have seen my journey on BHW about my AI SEO project that I've been working on. Now I've gotten the word out there and have picked up a good amount of clients with FB ads... But now that's dead..

I've been trying to hire people to do sales but everyone thinks their worth $250k+/year plus commission... So the hiring process has gone no where.

I've had a lot of companies approach me and say hey we'd love to sell your service to our existing clients and have our sales people sell it for you as well... However it would have to be white label.

So here's my question... Do I want to make millions building a brand or do I just make millions and whitelabel the shit out of my software/service?

Do I care about being known as one of the first AI SEO companies or do I open the doors up to all my competitors and have them sell it for me?

I'm literally torn between the two.. would love everyone's opinion.

Kind regards!
Click to expand...

I personally would allowed those companies to sell it and white label it. Less work and stress. You still can have your own site and also sell it directly for higher profit as well. Also selling stuff with monthly or yearly subscription could also drive up revenue as well.
 
I'm really taking everyone's opinion into consideration. Some on reddit pretty much said..

You can get 100 clients to pay you $1k. You'll make 100k/month

Or

You can get 100 agencies to sell it to 100 clients each at $300 and make $3,000,000.00/month.

Crazy numbers too look at obviously they're not accurate just for sample however it does make sense.

I'm leaning towards white label and private brand.
 
Andre Youkhna said:
I'm really taking everyone's opinion into consideration. Some on reddit pretty much said..

You can get 100 clients to pay you $1k. You'll make 100k/month

Or

You can get 100 agencies to sell it to 100 clients each at $300 and make $3,000,000.00/month.

Crazy numbers too look at obviously they're not accurate just for sample however it does make sense.

I'm leaning towards white label and private brand.
Click to expand...

regardless you have good product that people want but our point is u have options which is good
 
As a software owner, my advice to you is: do both,
Build your brand slowly, let other companies do the sale part for you,
You should be focusing on developing your solution and your support staff, when you'll start having more clients via your resellers you'll start having technical issues & support tickets all the time,
So focus on the quality of your product,
But at the same time build your sales funnel and start slow by putting a small objective every month (First Month: 10 Clients, Second: 20 ...)
And for sales, I tried hiring people, ended with only 3 of 12 peoples I started with (Full-time jobs),
Then I started an affiliate system and I advertised that system instead of hiring people,
So I have now agencies that sell my products under their names, affiliates that sell the product under my brand & the 3 full-time sale representatives that manage and sign big companies,
Oh I forgot, try to segment your product into multiple categories: A version for personal use, Another version for Small-Medium businesses & another one for big companies
There's a lot of things you should do if you want to do it right, that's why 99% of startups fails, it's not because of the product itself, but because of the bad management.
 
The reason sales people ask for "$250k+/year plus commission" is because it's a really tedious job, where you should also include working on a PR guy for a brand, reviews/case studies of current clients, making sure front page of google says good things about the software, media/blog coverage is always helpful. After you have all that, sales team has to go through all of that info so that they are aware of all details, then get into writing down leads, work on bypassing the gatekeeper, and after a month or two, there is no guarantee that they can deliver. Marketing agencies already take 70% of the market out of your hand (because marketing agencies are shot-callers about what kind of tools they use, owners of companies won't force them (and it's unlikely that you can reach them), so in the end you'll have to deal with agencies one way or the other), and there is like 30% of big companies left, where they have in-house team taking care of SEO, and knowing which person is the one you should be talking to (or your sales team) is a hassle (especially if people you bring are not experienced in this niche).

If you go at it fully alone there are to many variables you can't control, where you can lose money and time, and someone might beat you to market (my take is that if you did bring this to reddit, there are many programmers/marketers working there, someone is probably building a prototype or something if you wrote that you have agencies interested already. Second is that if you say to agencies that you are not interested, they will build it themselves (something close to it) if they are not thinking about it already.

In the current state, i would go with setting up affiliate system on website, optimize homepage, and go with white label. Do a PR coverage on "the first SEO AI powered company etc. etc", and have those articles/comments/posts lead back to your brand, and clearly state everywhere that you are doing white-label, spread it all over so that you are the go to guy for "SEO & AI", that will attract all the attention of all whales that you'll need and you'll be able to use such reputation for future things, then do white label. White label would initially allow you to beta-test the software and market, without you taking a risk of losing money, time and nerves. Then look on upwork for agencies within USA (who are into SEO and sales) that you can hire to sell your product ~ that shouldn't cost more than $4k to test them out, they are like sales team you'd hire for 250k$/year and they don't need training as they are already familiar with the niche.The play here is that since you are doing white-label, your "competitors" are going to have a higher price than you, so that they can make up the margin, which gives you advantage in a long run.

tl;dr, go with private and white label, as with private you won't be able to sell to half of the market as marketing agencies are the ones who are making the decision anyway, and they won't decide to use your software unless they are getting a cut & they love getting more $ out of their clients , so after a few months of trying you'll end up where u are now. Make sure you get recognition by pushing articles about your software as a first tool of such kind that is being used by marketing agencies - enough for your sales team to be able to sell to big companies later on once agencies do the testing of market and it gets some traction.
 
GAMBLER O_O said:
As a software owner, my advice to you is: do both,
Build your brand slowly, let other companies do the sale part for you,
You should be focusing on developing your solution and your support staff, when you'll start having more clients via your resellers you'll start having technical issues & support tickets all the time,
So focus on the quality of your product,
But at the same time build your sales funnel and start slow by putting a small objective every month (First Month: 10 Clients, Second: 20 ...)
And for sales, I tried hiring people, ended with only 3 of 12 peoples I started with (Full-time jobs),
Then I started an affiliate system and I advertised that system instead of hiring people,
So I have now agencies that sell my products under their names, affiliates that sell the product under my brand & the 3 full-time sale representatives that manage and sign big companies,
Oh I forgot, try to segment your product into multiple categories: A version for personal use, Another version for Small-Medium businesses & another one for big companies
There's a lot of things you should do if you want to do it right, that's why 99% of startups fails, it's not because of the product itself, but because of the bad management.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the feedback! I am going to start looking into affiliate systems and I'm also going to redo my website.
I need to get a sales page together and have a funnel built as well.. It's all in the testing. I've never had any luck with Fb ads, and I hired a team to do it for me... First week was amazing. 168 sign ups... 2nd week was terrible with 2-3. The team started asking for more and more money with no traffic and no return. Had to fire them.

zigzagzig said:
The reason sales people ask for "$250k+/year plus commission" is because it's a really tedious job, where you should also include working on a PR guy for a brand, reviews/case studies of current clients, making sure front page of google says good things about the software, media/blog coverage is always helpful. After you have all that, sales team has to go through all of that info so that they are aware of all details, then get into writing down leads, work on bypassing the gatekeeper, and after a month or two, there is no guarantee that they can deliver. Marketing agencies already take 70% of the market out of your hand (because marketing agencies are shot-callers about what kind of tools they use, owners of companies won't force them (and it's unlikely that you can reach them), so in the end you'll have to deal with agencies one way or the other), and there is like 30% of big companies left, where they have in-house team taking care of SEO, and knowing which person is the one you should be talking to (or your sales team) is a hassle (especially if people you bring are not experienced in this niche).

If you go at it fully alone there are to many variables you can't control, where you can lose money and time, and someone might beat you to market (my take is that if you did bring this to reddit, there are many programmers/marketers working there, someone is probably building a prototype or something if you wrote that you have agencies interested already. Second is that if you say to agencies that you are not interested, they will build it themselves (something close to it) if they are not thinking about it already.

In the current state, i would go with setting up affiliate system on website, optimize homepage, and go with white label. Do a PR coverage on "the first SEO AI powered company etc. etc", and have those articles/comments/posts lead back to your brand, and clearly state everywhere that you are doing white-label, spread it all over so that you are the go to guy for "SEO & AI", that will attract all the attention of all whales that you'll need and you'll be able to use such reputation for future things, then do white label. White label would initially allow you to beta-test the software and market, without you taking a risk of losing money, time and nerves. Then look on upwork for agencies within USA (who are into SEO and sales) that you can hire to sell your product ~ that shouldn't cost more than $4k to test them out, they are like sales team you'd hire for 250k$/year and they don't need training as they are already familiar with the niche.The play here is that since you are doing white-label, your "competitors" are going to have a higher price than you, so that they can make up the margin, which gives you advantage in a long run.

tl;dr, go with private and white label, as with private you won't be able to sell to half of the market as marketing agencies are the ones who are making the decision anyway, and they won't decide to use your software unless they are getting a cut & they love getting more $ out of their clients , so after a few months of trying you'll end up where u are now. Make sure you get recognition by pushing articles about your software as a first tool of such kind that is being used by marketing agencies - enough for your sales team to be able to sell to big companies later on once agencies do the testing of market and it gets some traction.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much for the feedback. I really appreciate you taking the time to type all that out.

Some people want $250k/year and have 0 experience in the industry and barely any experience in sales. America has gotten soft with a bunch of 20 year old kids feeling entitled to large salaries... I'm a 24 year old American... I'm not hating lol

I am definitely looking into doing some PR work in July so I will see how that goes. I looked into Inc, Forbes, entrepreneur and honestly the prices aren't too bad. I'm going to give it a shot..
 
I haven't seen your product, but do you have any custom scoring for items? The reason I ask is that a lot of other services have a branded score, like Moz's PA/DA, Majestic's metrics, etc. If you can brand a metric, you may still get your brand included into the white label software. Just spitballing...
 
Depends on how confident you are in your software.

If you truly think you have something that will change up the game forever, and is ahead of the competition, then don't do it.

Follow your instinct. Deep down you know what you should do.
 
Before making any decision I would redo your website.
As a client it's impossible to know what are you getting into and you make the same promises any seo agency does.
Your website should be more informative and show real seo cases that support your ai advantage claims.
The looks are kind of shady.

PS: do you support other languages than english? I may be interested in your white label if you do.
 
If the software is successful you will have a million +1 copycats quick. Go Stealth. Patent + Whitelabel ... Bundle it in an app and sell to Adobe for $$ .. They are making moves in adtech
 
All the big seo names are shit, the guys killing it no one knows.

Make your millions, who cares if anyone knows your name?
 
Everyone that told me to redo my website... I redid it. Working on some videos to explain everything more in depth.

Would love some feedback...

https://www.deskxai.com/
 
Andre Youkhna said:
Everyone that told me to redo my website... I redid it. Working on some videos to explain everything more in depth.

Would love some feedback...

https://www.deskxai.com/
Click to expand...

I think it looks a lot better, but you struck one of my peeves. There is a lot of mixed- case. Most of the page uses title casing, like (This Is a Header), but some (at least one) is all lower case, and that specific one uses all caps for the description. I'd make sure it's all uniform, as it stuck out to me like a sore thumb.
 
Houdinii said:
I think it looks a lot better, but you struck one of my peeves. There is a lot of mixed- case. Most of the page uses title casing, like (This Is a Header), but some (at least one) is all lower case, and that specific one uses all caps for the description. I'd make sure it's all uniform, as it stuck out to me like a sore thumb.
Click to expand...

Very true... I edited it.
 
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