Niche found - How do I approach?

[Marc]

Hey guys, I have been thinking about this for the past week and really need a second opinion on my thoughts before I go insane. The main question is : should I sink time into this or in finding another niche?

Project Name : Logosomething ( gotta come up with something short, catchy, and that is not registered )
Project Description : The design market is dominated by two types of service providers, freelancers and agencies. Freelancers are usually where you would look for designing your mom's candle business for a small price, whereas agencies are where you would look for designing your multinational's new website. Either way, the area is still grey and the "fixed" services are all outdated. Logosomething will sell just logos for a price inbetween freelancers and agencies ( thinking of $200-$300, flat rate ), while providing top notch services without the usual hassle, something like just buying a product off of amazon, simple quick and you get what you paid for.
Project Plan : Sink 1-2 weeks into coming up with a great name, some concise descriptions and pages and a minimal website that is straight-to-the point, advertise it on reddit because young entrepreneurs who want to sink more than 50$ for a logo can only be found there from my experience, and see what happens. I'll probably get more than 3 clients a month and quickly I'll be able to generate some templates on my end so that I can ease my workflow, I'll get some nice testimonials and a good portfolio while creating a network of people recommending my services. After that, it's all IM. I want to invest ALL the money I get from this into paid marketing ( can I get some suggestions as to where I should look for this? ) and get more than 10 clients a month. If business keeps expanding, I'm looking at hiring a bunch of freelancers to do my work so that I can focus on getting clients.
Project Expectations : If I come up with a good name and do sink the time into it, I suppose I'll be able to get about 10 clients in the first 3 months, but nothing more if I do not focus on marketing. I am a newbie in this area so it's pretty much where I fail or I succeed from my point of view. If I learn the ropes quickly, this could turn out into something I could well live off and pay for my studies/rent, if I am not decisive and do not focus all my resources into it, it's guaranteed to fail.

What do I do?

 

[Shimmy]

I don't have any valuable answers to your questions, but this is my favourite domain idea generator:
http://www.leandomainsearch.com/search?q=logo
You can filter it by having words only at the start or end.

 

[John P.]

Here's a nice post about how to find a good name for your biz. :

http://startupbros.com/how-to-pick-the-perfect-name-for-your-business-or-startup/

 

[Ashraf]

From @John P.'s link above, found their latest post to be relevant to what you're doing too : http://startupbros.com/how-i-starte...ch-and-turned-a-profit-in-less-than-6-months/

 

[Marc]

I don't have any valuable answers to your questions, but this is my favourite domain idea generator:
http://www.leandomainsearch.com/search?q=logo
You can filter it by having words only at the start or end.

 

[CCarter]

Write down a long term game plan, with revenue goals for phases of the game plan. Put as much detail as possible on it (it's going to be your roadmap - it's not set in stone, but still should have it written down - the most important part - WRITE IT DOWN - PAPER and PEN, not a computer file), and but most importantly look if it's sustainable until you hit your revenue goals.

Everything else is just you taking the leap and grinding to make it work. If you are hyper focusing on the logo niche, I'm not so much concerned about the name, but more so concerned about generating paying customers. One way I would do it is find websites with absolutely horrible logos and offer to redesign it for them for a fee. There is usually a want for a new logo at most companies, but it "never got done" cause they couldn't find the right person. Harp on the fact that a logo can re-energize a company and create a new mission statement for that company to get by. I'd advertise on LinkedIn, that's probably the most serious place for b2b yet is social platform.

Other then that, there wasn't really a direct question which I could help out with. "Should I sink time into this or in finding another niche?" - That depends on your end goal, your skill set, and how hard you are willing to grind. People give up the most profitable businesses cause it sucks the soul out of them, and people stay in barely profitable businesses simply cause they love it - that's a personal preference no one but you can answer. If you had to do this for 10 hours a day, would you without going mad? With my projects, the clear answer is always yes, cause I love my work.

 

[Pheasant]

I like the idea of focusing on LOGOS in particular because every website needs one and it's a lot easier to chew on vs getting an entire brand designed or an entire site overhauled, but you can still have those things in your back pocket as upsells.

If you can come in with basic logos in the $100-$150 range and a price going up as they get more complex and hammer down a smooth process that makes it easy for people to order and to check revisions and give feedback etc (99designs makes it pretty easy to communicate with the designers and to rate the designs with stars and stuff), BUT without having to deal with 93% of the designs being mud that you have to wade through like with 99d... I think you will find yourself getting a lot of referrals and repeat customers because there are a lot of people that need great logos on a regular basis, so the easier you can make that for them the better you'll do.

 

[Bastion]

If you can truly deliver pro looking logos at the $200-300 price point you'll kill it. Almost anyone can justify that.

I've had no luck on freelancer boards for logo design. Lots of interviewing / filtering only to finally select someone that produces meh-quality proofs no matter how many revisions I ask for. In fact the trickiest part about this concept may be finding the design talent at the right price point.

Seems like a lot of freelance logo designers are in the business of showing you what your business name looks like in Helvetica and calling it a day. If you're lucky you might get a bolded word and a color accent. You drop $300 and the guy sends you this on a fancy background:

logopogo
​

 

[Slander]

Don't choose a 'clever' name. Choose a name the tells what you are doing.

 

[Juice]

Write down a long term game plan, with revenue goals for phases of the game plan. Put as much detail as possible on it (it's going to be your roadmap - it's not set in stone, but still should have it written down - the most important part - WRITE IT DOWN - PAPER and PEN, not a computer file), and but most importantly look if it's sustainable until you hit your revenue goals.

Everything else is just you taking the leap and grinding to make it work. If you are hyper focusing on the logo niche, I'm not so much concerned about the name, but more so concerned about generating paying customers. One way I would do it is find websites with absolutely horrible logos and offer to redesign it for them for a fee. There is usually a want for a new logo at most companies, but it "never got done" cause they couldn't find the right person. Harp on the fact that a logo can re-energize a company and create a new mission statement for that company to get by. I'd advertise on LinkedIn, that's probably the most serious place for b2b yet is social platform.

Other then that, there wasn't really a direct question which I could help out with. "Should I sink time into this or in finding another niche?" - That depends on your end goal, your skill set, and how hard you are willing to grind. People give up the most profitable businesses cause it sucks the soul out of them, and people stay in barely profitable businesses simply cause they love it - that's a personal preference no one but you can answer. If you had to do this for 10 hours a day, would you without going mad? With my projects, the clear answer is always yes, cause I love my work.

completely agree here, first thing I do for a new project is a full brain dump (trying to organize as much possible with subsequent revisions) in a google doc that I refer to as "the business source code" - this document serves as a general point of reference both for myself and for any potential business partners

 

[Michael Decker]

Whatever you do, build some EMD social media properties for keywords that you'd like to rank for in additional to your brand or main site name.

I have seen some great success with Facebook and Youtube pages/channels that are EMD or close to keywords I am trying to rank for.