How to launch a successful startup without innovation

It is generally believed that a successful startup is an innovative project that came to the mind of a lonely geek in the garage, after which he became famous and rich in a short time. This need for innovation stops a lot of talented people who simply cannot come up with something that has not yet been invented before them.

In fact, it is not necessary to invent something new at all - it is enough to look around, think, and then make familiar things better and more practical. And most importantly, it works, because nowadays people strive for simplicity, convenience and comfort. Read the real experience of a successful startup that made the work of optimizers and webmasters a little easier and more convenient.

One example of a successful startup that is not related to innovation is GoGetTop.ru — a service for buying eternal links in installments, invented by Igor Miroshnik. In a relatively short time for a startup, its small team managed to get off the neck of investors and start making money on the Internet advertising market.

Igor answered several questions about his service and its foundation, and his experience is a clear confirmation that a successful startup does not need innovations at all, but thoughts about how to make something more convenient and easier for users.

Igor, first tell me when you came up with GoGetTop and what was the main idea?

We came up with it in February last year, with which we came to the management of Mirafox, where I actually work. This is a whole holding company engaged in a full cycle — from development to promotion and sale of websites.

The main idea was to make the process more convenient and easier for the person who needs such services. Only we have chosen the part concerning the placement of advertising materials.

What kind of promotional materials?

These are the so-called exchanges, where the owner of the resource can buy a promo article on one of the sites with the topic he needs and a link to his resource.

Only this process is not so simple, because you need to understand something about it, spend a lot of time searching for a copywriter, choosing a place to place.

When you don't have a specialist on staff, you have to do it yourself, and it just scares many people. So we decided to make a friendly interface, which is, in fact, an add-on over the mechanisms already available in Mirafox.

Was it easy to convince the management of the need to launch the project?

At first, no one believed that someone needed such gestures and that someone would be willing to pay for a convenient "pad". Therefore, I had to think about some kind of killingfeature, which will become a key feature of GoGetTop. And it was invented — it is payment in installments.

An advertising article with payment in installments? What's the point of that?

When placing such materials, the client usually pays a large amount at once for "eternal" placement, or switches to a subscription fee and pays a little bit every month throughout the life of the site.

And this often scares away customers who plan to expand the campaign to promote the resource, but find themselves tied to a constant monthly payment. They may no longer have the funds for further development. And not everyone can afford to buy "eternal" accommodation either.

And then our system works with installments, when the client pays for the "eternal" placement not immediately, but gradually, over several months.

Thus, the load is small, and after three months he is generally exempt from payment and can use our services again. It turns out not a monthly bondage, but on the contrary — the possibility of further advancement in new directions.

But such a "layer" cannot exist in the air, it turns out that it will be more expensive through you?

Yes, a small commission allows us to work further, develop the project, follow trends, control the sellers of sites and the quality of service.

The client, in turn, gets rid of unnecessary hemorrhoids, saves his time and effort. After all, in fact, we take 80% of the promotion of his site on ourselves.

I would also like to mention the effectiveness of this approach due to the fact that buying links is used mainly for search engine promotion, and "Yandex" and Google are more loyal to thematic references within articles, not links contained in the footer of your website.

And how do other departments relate to your activities? Are you using their mechanisms, actually taking away some of the customers?

The whole trick is that we can say that we ourselves are clients of exchanges, since we pay them for services exactly the same as the end user would pay.

It's just another door to the same room, only beautiful and does not creak. And as for the "withdrawal" of customers from divisions — paradoxically, but our customer base practically does not overlap with the Miralinks and Gogetlinks databases.

How long did it take you to develop the service?

At first there were five of us: three coders, their lead programmer and, in fact, me. And already the design was outsourced. We came up with all this in February last year, and in August we launched the project in beta.

Launched to evaluate and catch bugs. And three months later, everything has already worked to the full. Moreover, there were no pauses, the stages changed purely formally.

The feeding process by Mirafox Holding, as I understand it, has already been completed? I mean the financial question, have you become independent?

Yes, and very quickly — already in January we noticed that the profit from the service fully covers our expenses. So, we can say that we have already celebrated the anniversary.

And this summer we also returned all the investments to the holding, so now we not only don't owe anything, but also make a profit.

What advice would you give to those who are thinking about launching their project?

First of all, look around. Facebook* and Google are good, but this is not often born. So postpone your maximalism periodically so as not to lose touch with reality. It requires many more simple and effective solutions. And, perhaps, such solutions will bring maximum profit.

Always think about what you can improve in a particular segment.

There are many projects and services created, but not all of them really solve people's problems.

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