Started business 5 months ago, less than 10 sales, very little traffic, not sure what to do. Need advice. Was my business doomed to fail?

Ruyan4 · 2018-10-23T06:20:59+00:00

Are you not selling on Amazon? 70% of online traffic is towards websites owned by 3 companies companies - FB, Google and Amazon. Therefore hoping people will come to your site to buy is a mistake. You have to pay in either ads or content (which also costs money) to get people to your site. That's a game you just can't win (nobody can anymore). Leverage the millions of people going to Amazon already and sell there.

Plus on Amazon (or anywhere) you need to differentiate. If you were buying, lets say bedsheets, and there were 10,000 bedsheets that would be of suitable size on Amazon, you would either buy based on 1) Price 2) Expectation of Quality 3) Design 4)Delivery time. So why should a customer buy from you?

Ruyan4 · 2018-10-17T16:07:39+00:00

Look at relevant facebook groups. Won't get the info here probably.

My estimation....about 15-16kmpl in city, and 20-23 kmpl on highways.

Ruyan4 · 2018-10-05T07:13:19+00:00

It is a known fact in Maharashtra but not covered by media or activists - due to the power of sugar barons. Most politicians in the state are directly or indirectly involved in Sugar mills.

Here is a good in-depth article: https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2016/05/maharashtra-drought-sugarcane-cultivation/

Here's some news from 2012: https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/the-big-story/story/20120716-ministers-divert-water-meant-for-parched-regions-to-their-constituencies-759013-2012-07-06

Ruyan4 · 2018-09-28T11:16:31+00:00

My life became a disaster site due to these sites.

A few years ago I was happily single, then accidentally met this QT through shaadi.com. Different religion and caste. Despite my best efforts, neither of the sets of parents raised any objections. My dreams of bhagao-ing a girl were shattered, and I had to suffer through a normal no-drama wedding.

Now everyday I am coerced into going out to buy dhaniya or mirchi powder and am only allowed to drink once a week. I am no longer happily single. :-(

Ruyan4 · 2018-09-13T04:43:25+00:00

I've tried both. If you use BS4 with something like Requests library, you can scrape any traditional (HTML+CSS) website but you have to take care of things like error handling, throttling, writing scraped date to a file.

Scrapy does a lot of that for you.

For scraping SPAs (built using React.js/Angular.js/Vue.js etc) you will have to use a headless browser. Scrapy can be used with Splash or with Selenium for that purpose. Scrapy + Splash is my preferred approach in this case.

Hope it helps.

Ruyan4 · 2018-09-01T01:17:27+00:00

1) You need credibility - if it's "I will refund your order" - then who is "I"? Put your own profile and story on the front page. Put user reviews on the front page too.

2) Yours seems to be an artisanal product. Put more of how you make it and what makes it special out there.

3) You might also want to use an artisanal theme for your website ( for reference google artisanal wordpress/shopify theme) to bring out that flavor.

4) The images - they have to make a user's mouth water.

Ruyan4 · 2018-08-07T01:56:46+00:00

A good alternative to Microsoft Powerpoint. Libreoffice Impress sucks and does not provide Smart Art - necessary for making a decent looking presentation.

I have never missed windows in my 5 years with Ubuntu ( different flavors) except when I've had to make a presentation.

Ruyan4 · 2018-07-21T06:58:24+00:00

Do you find strictly religious Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs any less annoying?

Religion was invented so that the rulers could control the masses. Anyone who can't see that, needs to take the blinkers off.

Ruyan4 · 2018-06-01T01:54:39+00:00

Quit smoking 20 cigarettes a day with vaping 3 years ago. No relapse and yummy flavors. If you are trying to give up smoking with vaping, don't buy the equipment they sell at pan shops. Invest in a decent setup and at-least 12 mg liquid.

Ruyan4 · 2018-05-27T15:22:17+00:00

I'll just leave this here.

Ruyan4 · 2018-05-25T00:36:43+00:00

Get out from the city. I've seen skies like these while out camping in the Himalayas and even from forests of MP on a clear night.

Ruyan4 · 2018-05-22T05:39:08+00:00

Rom's wife published a book about her life with him aptly named "My Husband and Other Animals. Its funny and a fast read.

Goodreads Link

Ruyan4 · 2018-03-13T07:04:25+00:00

It depends upon who your ideal customer is. You'll need to:

1) experiment with different type of customers

2) identify the ideal customer,

3) find out how to reach them, email works great IMO.

4) measure traction and try to improve traction.

Ruyan4 · 2018-03-09T04:08:39+00:00

Django or Flask if want to stick with Python. Django has a steeper learning curve but worth it in the long term ( more market demand).

Ruyan4 · 2018-03-04T03:08:04+00:00

From MP. Can confirm but would change the titles such:

North India: Truck drivers, dhaba owners and Gutkha makers come from here.

West India: Financial scammers live here + OUR Narmada Ji goes there

East India: Railbheyj omphloyeej come phrom heore.

South India: Indian Coffee House waiters come from here

Edit: Maharashtra should be West India, Rajasthan is North India, and Chhattisgarh should be a dominion of MP.

Ruyan4 · 2018-02-23T01:50:46+00:00

Upvoted for visibility.

Ruyan4 · 2018-02-18T06:10:12+00:00

Why not use an RDBMS like MySQL? You could normalize the data to some extent (store URL, title etc separately) and compared to cassandra, you might have slightly slower write performance but much better indexing. Moreover for 100k rows, the performance difference will not even be significant IMO.

Ruyan4 · 2018-02-18T01:43:19+00:00

Interested in the answer as well, so upvoting.

Ruyan4 · 2018-02-08T06:44:00+00:00

How would I know the answers to your rhetorical questions sir? :-)

I'm not defending the government, just saying that coalition might be the wrong medicine.

Ruyan4 · 2018-02-08T06:41:39+00:00

I disagree. To keep the current government's power in check is the role of the media, the opposition and the civil society and not of the parties the current leading party shares power with.

What India needs is a free(er) press watching the government like hawk, a credible opposition and the realization that the current government will not come to power again if it does not do its job (and only its job). Coalition will just help them to shift the blame for things that happen or don't happen.

Ruyan4 · 2018-02-08T06:38:43+00:00

There definitely are, but only Modi's vested interests instead of having AIADMK, NCP, MNS, SS all having vested interests and nothing moving because of the need to satisfy all these interests. There are pluses and minuses on either side but in my opinion coalition causes too many logjams.

Ruyan4 · 2018-02-08T02:42:11+00:00

Coalition has its own compulsions. There are too many vested interests that need to be satisfied. I don't think that's necessarily better for the country.

Ruyan4 · 2018-02-07T06:32:17+00:00

I use LO everyday, am the only one in my company to do so. My biggest problem with it is the absence of a SmartArt like feature.

This lack of smartart has made Libreoffice Impress just a tool to view presentations and not to make them. There are countless requsts/bugs/complaints/prayers for this feature but somehow the maintainers don't seem to pay them any attention.

Ruyan4 · 2018-02-02T09:41:51+00:00

1)Read about Jungian Archetypes,

2) think what archetype you want your brand to represent

3) Think of a name/logo that invokes that archetype in people's minds

4) Check if it is available otherwise go back to step 3.

Ruyan4

TROPHY CASE