Selz gives creative entrepreneurs an extremely easy way to sell their work online via their site or social media without any programming.
We at Start-Ups.Co, had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. ‘Geoff Austin‘; Marketing Director at Selz.com regarding his US (Delaware)-based start-up “Selz.com”.
“Selz.com“ makes it easier for entrepreneurs with no technical skills who want to securely sell online without their customer’s leaving their site to do so within minutes.
Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Austin’, regarding his internet start-up company “Selz.com”;
1. What is it exactly that you do and what “Selz.com” is all about?
The purpose of our service is to give creative entrepreneurs an extremely easy way to sell their work online via their site or social media without any programming. Selz takes care of the online payments and delivery of digital products.
Selz makes it easier for entrepreneurs with no technical skills who want to securely sell online without their customer’s leaving their site to do so within minutes. Plus the integrated one click sharing turns social media into a virtual store front. No merchant accounts are needed. There is no monthly fees or initial costs, there is just a simple flat fee per sale.
2. When has “Selz.com” been founded? And what stage is “Selz.com” currently at?
We launched at the end of May as a PayPal alternative for entrepreneurs wanting to sell digital downloads easily from their site or via social media.
We have 000′s of registered users from the US, UK, Australia, and Canada who love the simplicity of Selz.
Users of Selz include bloggers, self publishing ebook authors, artists, musicians or developers wanting to sell their work.
In September we won Shoestring Startup of the Year 2013.
We are now working on expanding internationally with a multi lingual version.
3. What is “Selz.com”‘s business model and how does it work?
Like the product Selz has a simple business model. Users can register with Selz for free. Selz handles the online payments plus the file hosting and automated delivery for digital downloads. There is no setup cost and no monthly fees or hidden extras. Selz has simple flat fee of 5% + 25c per sale. We are looking at providing additional value added tools like an ebook creator that will be competitively priced.
4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?
The team had worked together on a previous innovative business directory which incorporated ecommerce tools for small business when our Founder joined and we began looking at change in business direction. Our team includes our Founder, Martin Rushe, steers the ship, and keeps us in biscuits and tea. Mat is our Technical Director. He manages our development geniuses who create the Selz awesomeness. Geoff is the Marketing Director, he is busy helping entrepreneurs find Selz and spreading the word. You can see more of the team here https://selz.com/about
5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique about you and what’s new about what you make?
Selz makes it easier for non technical entrepreneurs to sell securely directly to their audience via their website or social media in minutes. It removes the need for a merchant account or the need to integrate a payment processor. There is no setup involved. Selling online is now as simple as uploading an image, adding a description and price, and copying and pasting a snippet of code onto your site or sharing a post of tweet.
6. What is your growth like? And what milestones has “Selz.com” achieved so far?
The company already has thousands of sellers across the US, Australia and Europe, and processes payments in 190 countries. Recently winning Shoestring Startup of Year 2013 was great, and positive recognition of the potential.
Further international expansion is planned for later this year with a multilingual version.
7. Who are your competitors? And what is “Selz.com”‘s competitive advantage over them?
Services like e-junkie, or PayPal that do one part either handling the online payments or the digital downloads but need integrating. Selz is simpler and easier to use for the merchant. It is also easier for the customer to buy with its simple checkout process.
Other competitors include traditional complex ecommerce solutions that more complex and suitable for retailers than an entrepreneur or bloggers who have a couple of digital items to sell rather an hundreds of physical products. These are often more costly, require more technical skills and integration, and aren’t designed for selling digital downloads.
8. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?
The major challenge has been the payment processing of credit cards and disbursement of payments to merchants. The technical challenge has included building our own automated system for handling the processing of payments with our banking partners. The other challenge has been around making social commerce simple and easy. It has involved the technical integration of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Youtube.
9. What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?
We are passionate about helping other entrepreneurs or aspiring part time entrepreneurs like bloggers, independent artists, authors, developers, film makers to be able to realise their dream of making a living from doing what they love.
We want to help web entrepreneurs have a greater control over their business by making it easy to sell direct to their fans. Giving them more choice and control reduces the need to rely on large marketplaces like Amazon or Apple who then take a huge % of every sale.
10. Why are you going to succeed?
We have a passionate, highly skilled and experienced team whose mission is to make it incredibly simple for web entrepreneurs to make a living from doing what they love. We work very closely with our sellers on developing a solution that they want and in making it easier for them to sell. We really take care of our sellers, and listen to their ideas, as our success relies on their success.
11. If “Selz.com” succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?
We are already working on a multi lingual version of Selz to help entrepreneurs in non English speaking countries. Other areas that we can expand into include the idea of helping self publishing ebook writers with creating their ebooks. Many writers find this a big challenge at the moment with the many formats needed and they want a low cost easy way to create an ebook from a Word file.
12. Why did you choose this idea and concept to build “Selz.com” based on?
Our Founder initially identified that obtaining a merchant account was a greater challenge than building an ecommerce website for his clients. The team then confirmed this with desk research and in the many interviews we conducted with prospective users. We identified that there wasn’t an existing solution for non technical entrepreneurs that allowed them to quickly and easily sell online.
13. What have you learned so far from launching your idea?
We launched with a minimum viable product so that we could quickly validate our solution as a PayPal alternative for selling online. We received lots of positive feedback that people loved the simplicity and how easy it was to use. Since then we have been adding more features in response to feedback and requests from our user community. We’re now building and refining our marketing strategy about telling people that there are PayPal alternatives available such as Selz.
14. Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?
The online payments space is a very dynamic and expanding market. The many companies competing in it are driving a lot of innovation. One of our challenges will be keeping pace with that innovation, and to continue to develop the features that make it easier for web entrepreneurs to sell online.
One of the other things we would like to tackle in the next 6 months is to challenge a common misconception with self publishing authors. Many self publishing authors believe they need to rely solely on the big existing networks like Amazon and Apple to sell their ebooks. Those networks are obviously important, however we believe that self publishing authors can gain greater control and make more money by complimenting them with selling their ebooks direct to fans. So we are focused on making this easier and with getting this message out.
15. What’s the benefit for the customer/user?
Many entrepreneurs like bloggers, artists, musicians, or software developers want to be able to make a living by selling online their work. Selz enables entrepreneurs with no technical skills to sell their work online to their audience from a website or via social media quickly and easily. Selz takes care of the secure online payments and delivery of digital products without needing a merchant account. Using Selz gives the entrepreneur the benefit of greater control over their customer relationships including easily building an email list of buyers. One of the major benefits of using Selz is that customers can quickly and easily buy from a seller without leaving their site. So the buyer is not redirected to an external website to complete their credit card details. This means a better buyer experience and less abandoned sales.
16. How did customers / users find out about you?
We rely a lot on digital marketing, word of mouth recommendations, and inbound marketing with our blog where we provide relevant, interesting and helpful content to our Selz seller community. We always on the lookout for more new opportunities to do some guest blog posting or PR. Plus we have a number of prominent users like Blogcastfm or Jeff Bullas who talk to their audience about using Selz.
17. Who are your current customers / users? Who are your target customers / users?
Selz has been developed for internet entrepreneurs who want to make a living doing what they love by selling their work to their audience. This includes bloggers or authors selling ebooks, or independent film makers wanting video on demand, musicians selling their songs, or developers that want to sell their software.
18. Where do new customers / users come from and what makes new customers/users try you?
Selz has thousands of entrepreneurs from the US, UK, Europe, Canada and Australia who have signed up and are using it to sell online. Most entrepreneurs are careful about spending their money, so they like that it’s free to register with no monthly fees and you only pay a small fee per sale. The other reason that many people try Selz is because of how easy it is. They love that they can be selling online in a matter of minutes without any integration or payment processing hassles.
19. What do your customers / users say about your product and/or service?
The overall feedback we get from our sellers is that they love how simple, quick and easy it is to start selling online using Selz. In a recent survey, over 77% of Selz users said they would recommend Selz to others. People also appreciate the high level of support we provide and our feature development is driven by their feedback.
20. How are you going to scale?
From the first day we launched we have built a scalable international solution. Selz enables sellers to sell items in one of 9 major currencies, and we support transactions from 190 countries. Selz is now multilingual so that we can help entrepreneurs in non English speaking countries and will soon begin our first non English marketing campaign.
21. What’s the biggest missing feature? The one thing customers/users keep asking for?
We are continuously adding new features that have been prioritised based on feedback from our users on what would help them to make a living by selling online.
One of the most frequent requests is from bloggers asking how to create ebooks from a word document in the various different formats needed. We might look at developing a quick and simple solution that would allow bloggers to easily create an ebook and then sell them using Selz.
22. Are you going to internationalize? And if yes how are you planning to expand your start-up’s operations accordingly?
We are already international. We have thousands of entrepreneurs from the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Europe using Selz to sell online. We will continue to focus a lot of effort on these key markets. Plus the Selz platform is now multilingual, so we will soon begin our first non English speaking marketing campaign.
23. How big do you think you can get? Why? And how you are planning to achieve your goals?
Selz aims to make it easier for bloggers and other web entrepreneurs to sell online. Currently there is estimated to be over 173 million blogs in the world and this is growing rapidly. Only a small percentage of those currently handle any ecommerce, so there is plenty of scope for Selz to become a core part of any bloggers toolkit.
24. Are you looking to hire a new workforce? And if yes, what job vacancies do you currently offer and where can potential applicants contact you at?
We’re not looking at hiring at the moment. We are lucky to have a fantastic team of really experienced people that have worked together for a long time. In the future as we grow this might create new opportunities to expand the team and for us look at attracting skilled, passionate people to help drive the business forward.
25. Are you looking for partnership opportunities or funding from Venture Capitals (VC) or other funding sources? Or your business is self-sustainable? And if the first option applies where can potential partners / investors contact you at?
We are not actively seeking additional financial support at the moment. However, as we continue to grow we’re always open to having discussions with potential new partners or sources of funding. We would love to speak to potential ambassadors with an existing audience of web entrepreneurs who are looking at making a living online and would be interested in promoting Selz. Potential investors or partners can contact us at help@selz.com
26. What advice do you have for fresh entrepreneurs?
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