BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Automated Affiliate Links 🔗 

The missing link

Available Domain: Autoaffil.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Millions of creators, like bloggers and newsletter writers, are missing out on thousands of dollars, or more, every year. Even if some creators won’t miss the money.

They’re missing out on earnings because they’re missing out on affiliate links which could be in their content, but aren’t. So let’s build a platform to make sure they don’t miss out anymore.

Market Size: The global affiliate marketing industry is worth over $17 billion

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform which allows creators to automatically insert affiliate links into their content

How it Works:

• Creators sign up to the platform and install a chrome extension

• When they are writing a blog post, newsletter or other piece of content any website they link to which has an active affiliate program is highlighted

• All of these highlighted links are automatically converted into affiliate links, allowing the creator to passively earn more income

• Creators can then track and draw down their earnings from the platform

• Over time, by integrating with platforms like beehiiv or Wordpress through an API, this can be embedded into content creation platforms

Go-to-market: Start by working with a niche group of creators, like bloggers, and grow from there

Business Model: Charge a transaction fee

Startup Costs: There’s a bit of complexity in this build, meaning you’ll need a pretty stacked engineering team to make this work. Doing a small, early raise makes sense here.

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: You could be snapped up by one of the big players in the affiliate marketing space, like CJ Affiliate or Rakuten

Exit Multiple: You’ll likely get valued on revenue (4x - 6x) or EBITDA (8x - 15x) for this business

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Scooter Strollers

Love bringing your child out for walks in a stroller, but looking to increase the pace?

Well with our new scooter stroller you can do just that. Scoot along at high speed while your baby peacefully naps around your neighborhood.

Electric version coming soon…

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Jawline Gum

Facial gum is all the rage on TikTok right now. A strong jawline has always been a sign of masculinity and young men are turning to hard chewing gum products in order to workout their jawlines and make them more defined, all in a bid to become more attractive.

Business Ideas

• White Labelled Face Yoga App: Create white labelled apps which provide exercises and other tips on how to improve your jawline. Partner with chewing gum brands in this space and white label the app with their branding

• Women’s Facial Fitness Gum Brand: Create a facial fitness gum brand aimed at women who want to tone their jawlines

• Modern Mastic Gum Brand: Create a tasty mastic gum brand (a type of gum which helps with jawline definition) since it usually tastes pretty terrible.

THE MONEYSHOT

The $300m/year Business with 1 Employee

People massively underestimate how big the gaming industry is.

In fact, the gaming industry is double the size of the film and music industries combined. Which is why if you can create a hit game it can be the path to incredible success.

And that’s exactly what happened to Eric Barone.

Back in 2012 Eric Barone, also known as Concerned Ape, was a computer science graduate struggling to find a job. So he decided to build a game to get some experience for his CV.

To complete the game, Eric worked 10 hours a day, seven days a week, for four and a half years all by himself. He was the sole designer, programmer, animator, artist, composer, and writer of the game. He lived with his girlfriend who worked 2 jobs to support them as Eric worked part-time as an usher.

But finally, on February 26, 2016, Stardew Valley was launched on PC.

The game was a farming simulator which allowed players to grow and sell crops, tend animals, make cheese and so on.

In order to drive early users to the game he created a website and a subreddit to share updates and gather feedback from gamers.

His strategy worked and the game was an instant hit.

Within two months passed 1 million copies sold, generating around $15m in revenue for Eric.

Incredibly from 2016 to 2019, Eric was the still the only person working on the game. Since 2019 a small team of developers and a designer have been assisting with the game, but Eric still appears to be the sole full-time employee of the company.

Over the years the game has remained incredibly popular and as of February 2024, Stardew Valley has sold over 30 million copies across all platforms, with over 19 million copies sold on PC alone.

The business generates around $300m in revenue per year and is ridiculously profitable.

There are very few people in the world who could have shown the resilience Eric did when creating this game. This is a guy whose earned every bit of success he’s had.

GG Eric. GG.

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