I actually got a request on Hacker News to write up a “where are we now” on DoLeaf. Since I’m an egotistical bastard who loves talking about his projects, here I am with an update. But, since I’m also an entrepreneur, I’m going to try and use you, the reader, to my benefit!
Timeline
Before launching into the particulars, let me lay out the timeline. DoLeaf as an idea was born around September of 2008. The business was officially founded and coding started around January 2009, and we officially launched into our beta in July of 2009. So, we’re a little over a year into it now. So, for all you get-rich-quickies, stop reading now, since this is a story of the long-view, not a 6-month hockey stick fairy tale.
Recruiting Sellers
We knew the hardest part initially would be getting sellers to sign up. Fortunately for us, it seems that we were right to assume that there was a need unserved out there.
As of now, we have 11 active stores, and a couple more that are finalizing their preparations before going live. Overall, the response has been very positive from the nursery community. They see the value in what we’re offering, and it’s definitely a nicer alternative for them than paying some shady consultant $1000s to set up a rickety online shopping cart.
We also hired a marketing consultant to help us reach out to the sellers via magazines and such. Overall, we’ve been very pleased with her work and it allowed us to recruit our first crop of sellers. Believe me, your first user is 1000x harder to recruit than your 100th. It’s hard to convince someone to be the first to jump.
Where are these orders coming from?
We’ve done essentially no marketing or advertising to buyers. Instead, we’ve been focusing on recruiting sellers in order to make sure we have a robust catalog of listings. We knew we had a chicken(sellers) v egg(buyers) problem, so we decided to try and find some chickens.
Even still, we’ve had a fairly brisk pace of orders. I’m not going to list actual numbers, but suffice it to say that we expected pretty much 0 orders (aside from friends’ whose arms we twisted) without advertising. The brisk (and increasing) pace was pretty baffling until we looked into how the customers were arriving.
SEO is still King
We forgot to factor in the power of SEO + targeted searching. Initially, we had hoped to place high for search phrases like “garden marketplace” or “buy plants online“.
Imagine our surprise to find out that we placed high for things like “siam ruby banana” or “peachy sunrise daylily“. Moreover, the conversion rates for these terms is crazy high. Of course anyone familiar with search engine marketing can see why. People searching for very specific things have money in hand ready to buy. People wanting a Siam Ruby Banana can have one ordered in a couple clicks.
We also (on the advice of a savvy seller) decided to submit our listings to Google Product Search. It took an hour or so to whip up an Atom feed that they crawl. Sales started rolling in the very next day. Every day I love Google a little bit more.
Forget Social Media
Initially we had planned to try and be all kinds of social savvy. Forget it. Now that we’ve seen the power of SEO, we’re going to walk that road. Antiquated? Old-school? Maybe so, but I’m convinced that DoLeaf can corner the market on a good chunk of plant botanical names. I’m confident that we can be on Google page 1 when you search on a botanical or common name of a plant we carry. I’m much less confident that I can get people on Twitter to fawn all over us and fan us on Facebook. That’s fine with me, though. We’re looking for sales, not fans.
Overwhelming Enthusiasm
For better or worse, we’ve got one star seller who is pushing DoLeaf to the max. We expected most sellers to list a handful of plants and take a wait-and-see approach. For the most part, that’s what they’ve done.
…Except for one. One seller found DoLeaf and turned the dial up to 11. He’s listed over 300 plants, and accounts for probably 75% of our total listings. Not surprisingly, he also accounts for the lion’s share of our sales. It’s a little scary, but exhilarating at the same time. He sees the same potential that we do, and really believes in what we’re doing. I just hope that we can make it worth the time he’s invested. As always, I’m more worried about disappointing our users than about making a profit. I’m a firm believer that if our sellers are successful and happy, then it’s impossible for DoLeaf to fail.
Buyers: The Next Frontier
Now that we’ve got a decent selection of plants, we’re ready to turn our focus toward enticing buyers. We’re going to..wait for it…try and reach people offline. This is a bit of a stretch for us, but we’ve been reminded over and over that the gardening community still has a very strong physical presence. So, we’re talking to print magazine editors, going to local gardening meetings, and generally trying to get more involved with the real-life of gardening. It can be difficult, but at the very least, I’m learning more about plants, which is a subject I truly enjoy. You can see me outside at all hours of the day inspecting my tulip bulbs and climbing roses.
I’m not sure how successful we’ll be in our buyer outreach, but the fact that our SEO efforts are proceeding so well gives me confidence that even if we fail as advertisers, we’ll still do OK on sales.
YC 2k10?
Since most people reading this will be coming from Hacker News, I’ll go ahead and say that we’re planning on applying yet again for YCombinator. However, I’m going to be smart about it this time, unlike before. I’m going to dust off our previous application, edit some dates, and resubmit. Then I’ll forget about it. We’ll probably do the same with TechStars.
Why so little effort? Because at this point I’m confident that we don’t need them. We could definitely use the help, but we’ve crossed the barrier of proving it could work. Now all we have to do is show that we have the skill and perseverance to be the ones to actually make it work.
Wanna Help?
Since our SEO efforts are proving so fruitful, I’m going to ask for your help. If you have a blog, please write a short post about DoLeaf. Pick out some crazy plants (here are a few specimens) and link to them from a blog post. That’s it! We’ll be eternally grateful, and you’ll be helping a small startup, as well as the small, family-owned businesses we serve. It counts as your good deed for the day.
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