Intro
STOP PRESS: Stardate 5th Feb 2025. I have registered the domain name chasingtails.org on your behalf. It's yours. It's getting real.
I’m going to start building-out a framework for the website. The look & feel etc. I will need you to have a big input to – it’s your website! For now, I’ll just do what I think looks right – this is how I tend to work with any client.
Congratulations on being a website owner 🙂
More earnings potential!
Selling reports isn’t the only opportunity. Once the website is launched and getting good traffic, we have the opportunity to sell advertising space & possibly sponsorship.
In addition, we could promote dog training products etc. using Amazon Affiliate Links. Basically, it’s money for nothing If someone clicks on an Amazon link and even if they don’t buy the product – anything they do buy in the next 2 weeks on Amazon, the value will accrue to your Amazon Affiliate account, which you can then use for purchases or a cash payout. This is a big opportunity! It’s entirely free to set up.
It’s not just the website either, any link we post in reports, email etc. all can contribute.
So, lovely Lisa, this is where I’ll make notes and share ideas with you. Never be afraid to tell me what you really think and how you feel about stuff. I will never be offended 😉 Also, I know there’s a lot to take-in. This is stuff I do day-in-day-out so it’s easy for me so, never be afraid to say “Whooaaa tiger”. You also said you weren’t great with tech so always ask if something is not clear.
What do you think someone would be willing to pay?
Firstly, it’s estimated that the total number of pet dogs in the world is around half a billion – 500 million, although the real numbers are probably higher. It is also estimated that between 20% and 40% of those pets have some kind of behavioural issue. If we say it’s 30%, that equates to around 150 million dogs with some kind of issue and that means 150 million potential customers for an online service. We can never hope to capture that number but for the purposes of planning, we can assume a capture rate of just 0.5%, which means a potential customer base of 750,000 globally and, at, say, $30 a hit, that’s around $22.5 million, lifetime. A significant sum, and even if my calculations are wildly wrong, it’s still a good potential. My realistic thinking is that we would be doing pretty well if we could get 10 cutomers a week to start with.
What do I mean by “We”?
Like I think I said, I want nothing out of it money-wise. I want to try to help you and the best way I can do that is to give you my skills, expertise and time. When you make your first million, just make sure I’m in a good care home and you come to visit 😉
Possible barriers to success
- We don’t really know how dog owners will react to an online “expert”.
- They may just be able to Google for possible solutions.
- We don’t really know what’s already out there that is similar?
- We do know that there a a LOT of dog behaviourists out there but, they all seem to be fact-to-face. I cn’t find anything like it as an online service.
Just having a website is not the answer. We somehow need to drive users to the site and that means getting it out there on “dog owner” Facebook Groups” etc. This is actually the hardest part of the whole thing. Eventually, people will find the website through searches but, this can take up to 3 months or more to get Google to show the site.
This web address ancientgeekery.com is just a test site I use for experimenting with stuff. Eventually it will have it’s own unique address, depending on the name we come up with – the main thing determining names is the availability of domain names (like ancientgeekery.com is a domain name). Many good ones are already taken so we’re going to have to be cute to find something with a ring to it and which is available.
I have registered chasingtails.org for you.
The challenges
It’s not just a matter of making the website and waiting for customers, the service needs to be promoted. We can set it up with a Facebook page easily but, still, it needs pushing. We will get hits from Google search eventually, though this can take anything up to 12 weeks for Google to list the website and show it to people interested in the service. A better shorter term option is to be a wee bit cheeky and scour the local Facebook Groups, pet forums etc. looking for people asking about dog behaviour problems and responding with a link to the website. This often results in a post getting taken down but, usually not before people have seen it! There are all sorts of ways to get free advertising. Don’t expect miracles – whatver we do and however well we do it, it will take time to gain traction – just how long depends on how much effort we put in to it 🙂
Link to a sample report for the dog “Petal”
The form below is just for testing, the proper version will be split in to sections to make it more manageable, especially of smartphones.
Here’s how it all works, the customer completes all fields in the form and pays by credit card before they are able to submit the form. Once submitted, the form contents are stored on the website. We then take the form contents and save it in a way that can be understood by the AI Agent I have created – this is a set of instructions we give to AI to tell it how to behave, how to speak, where to go to get information and how to compile the report. Once it has made the report, we can download it, check it and make any edits we feel it might need – usually none in testing. We can then send it to the customer by email.
It is possible to automate the entire process from start to finish but, I think we need to vet the report.
Literally, it’s as easy as copying a file from one place to another, best done on a laptop or computer as phones and tablets sometimes make moving files, editing etc. tricky.
The business of the business. As I said, this is an unregulated market so, no qualifications or licences are required to operate. We can safely advertise you as a “canine behavioural specialist” with no comebacks. In terms of your business, you can operate for up to a year without even thinking about registering as self-employed or declaring tax etc. but it’s always a good idea to keep an accurate record of income and expenditure – most of that is captured on the website I’ll build for you anyway.
Talking about the website, I would like you to have a major input to the design, look and feel of it. I have my own ideas but, it’s going to be your baby so, I want you to love it. When you have the time and inclination, have a browse around websites of similar businesses and show me examples of stuff you like and stuff you don’t.
Accepting credit cards. No problem. I set you up with what’s called a “Stripe Payments” account. It’s free to do and they process the customer’s credit card and look after all the security stuff. When you have a minimum of £50 (I think) credited it will automatically transfer the funds (minus about 6% card fees) to a bank account you specify. Usually, it’s a good idea to create a separate bank account for these purposes. It really is that simple.
Your persona
I get the impression you’d rather not use your own name etc. for the website? If so, we need to come up with a faux persona for you as people in this sort of business would like a more personal approach. We also have the need (by law) to include on the website basic trading details – an address as a minium. What we can do, at least for now, is to use a “Care of” my office address, if that’s ok with you?
When testing the form, you can checkout with the following test credit card details.
Card number: 4242 4242 4242 4242
Expires: Any future date
CVV: Any 3 digits.
If you want to apply a coupon code, you can try WAG502025
