Starting Boostinsider | Heidi Yu

So my story, somebody already shared with you guys a little bit. When I was in Seattle U, I've done a bunch of startups that time. So Pocomaru is one of the company. We were selling those iPhone accessories to everyone, to the whole world that time. And we did our own design. We also work with manufacturers. We also work with individual people here. Design. Designers to have their cool design, to sell their design to everyone. But actually, that time I was a student and I don't have money. I maybe have like $10 on Facebook ads today, maybe $10 the next week or sometime. It's just hard, really hard. Google AdWords is getting so expensive that time. I cannot compete with those big companies. Like those case companies, what is a, I'm knowing business for a little bit. So those big name case companies out there for iPhone, if you do the search for the iPhone case, I cannot afford that. It's so expensive. So I was like, oh, actually, when we're doing the ecommerce, I need models to model my product. So I have so many good-looking classmates. I was like, okay, can you be my model? Actually, we were casting some models at that time in Seattle. They were charging me $100 for a shoot. It's still expensive. I was just asking my classmates, hey, come to be my model. You will have this product. What you need to do is I will tag you on my Facebook. So they're like, oh yeah, sure. This is cool. $70 case, worth my time. I will also have a good nice photo and okay, you can tag me on Facebook so all my friends know I'm model material. Kind of that. And it's so cool. So actually that time, it's getting cool. Every time when I tag this, not only I have the content for this person, and every time when I tag her or him, their friends see it and this guy send me the traffic. So I was like, oh, this is so cool, so many people send me the traffic. But how to measure who is really sell stuff for me? So during I was thinking about that, so those guys come to me and say, hey Heidi, I'm already your model. My friends want to buy this. Can I have a promo code? I said, this is cool. Okay, yeah, so what's your name? What's your name? Me? Yeah. Fresha. Fresha? Okay, so Fresha come to me. I said, Fresha, so your promo code is Fresha50, which means all your friends use that code to purchase will give 50% off. Actually, I know that's her. So every time when people enter her promo code, I know, okay, Fresha. So something for me. So I was doing a lot of, lot of those things every day in Seattle and already take like 400 people photos. I was like, I find— Those are my classmates. Some of the people are doing like Miss America stuff and some people are like players for the games. So everybody have different type of followers and also friend circles. And I find out, There's 2 type of people really can sell for me. Type one are the people have so many followers. When they post something, when I tag her or him, you will give me traffic and give me sales. It's so cool. There's another type of people. They are not like those online stars or celebrities. They're like girl next door. But she really likes this product and all her friends have a similar taste. Mm-hm. So every time when she talk about something, all their friend would buy. So I said, oh, this is so cool, definitely we should do more. So we went online and have bunch of my classmates all searching more people. I already took so many people's photo in Seattle, I was like, we need to get out of Seattle. We need to go to Austin, we need to go to New York, we need to go to San Francisco. So how to contact those people one by one? So I was searching people, the good-looking girls who might like my stuff or guys like that, aluminum cases. I was like, oh, this is so cool. So we just like, can you do a post for me? Can you do a shout out to me on Instagram or something? And this girl like, okay, yeah, I can do that, but $50. Some people like, that's cheap. Yeah, that's cheap already. But that was like 2011. $50. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, you have 2 million followers. Yeah, let's try it. So I sent her the stuff and she post online. That $50 definitely sold me a lot of stuff. So there's somebody said, okay, $500. I was like, wow, $500, that's a lot of money. Should I do it? The last time $50 already sold me stuff. Should I do this $500? Should I do that? If that's you guys, should you do it? How many floors? How many floors? What else? Engagement, yeah, definitely. But that's a flat fee deal. It's like I'm taking the risk. Give him the flat fee, he will post, maybe he will sell, maybe he won't. So this is so cool, definitely we will do that. But what if I only pay people depends on the results? So like, only, like, you can split the revenue between the— customer he bring to you. Totally, yeah, yeah. So there are so many affiliate programs just like that, right? The bloggers, they just plug in your tracking code or something, post your ads, and they get paid every time if there's a sale. But however, there's less people really have that bunch of followers or have their own website, but they can also still make money on their social media. I would say, okay, sure, but what if, just like what you said, what if There's less people really want to do the revenue share. They're like, okay, maybe I give you 100 likes, and I will charge you $10. I would say, oh, this is cool. Somebody just 2 cents on Facebook for a like. So depends on the thing. I was thinking about if there's a place I can just pay people based on the results. By click, that's fine. By impression, yeah, maybe. sign up so I can send them emails all the time, or buy sales. So there's so many ways we can do it. So I was thinking about maybe we should have a system. So this become the story of how I started Booth Insider. So that time we're building a stuff for ourselves to use to manage all our social media influencers. At that time I didn't know those, we call those influencers. It's just those cool people on social media. So like, We need to have a management tool to manage every time we have new products, we can quickly send it out to everyone who can have it, who can unbox it, who can have a YouTube thing, and who can post on Instagram and give me the traffic, give me the sales. Also pay people really based on the results. Some people, if I'm paying $50, if the conversion rate, we just talk about conversion rate, is really high, that's worth the money. If I'm paying somebody $500, Actually, he can only sell 2 for me. The conversion rate is so low. So that's not cool. So when we talk about conversion rates, there's a lot of things called relevancy. So relevancy means maybe this guy have 10 million followers. But those are followers and nobody care about cases. So actually, a lot of traffic, but sales are low. So which is not cool. Thank you.