UTS startup Kindershare, a peer-to-peer network facilitating the rental of baby equipment, was recently featured on an episode of A Current Affair focusing on the sharing economy. Founder Vanouhi Nazarian, shares her learnings on preparing her website for the deluge of traffic that followed Kindershare's first TV appearance.
Photo by Unsplash
I can't think of the last time I watched free to air TV live. I'm not a sports fan, and use Netflix and Catchup TV to watch the few shows that I am interested in. Many of my younger friends don't own a TV so I think advertising or promoting through TV makes no sense at all.
Add to that the timing of A Current Affair - right in the middle of parent's bed/bath routine and logically, the answer should have been no.
But, my ego couldn't resist, and so I said yes.
What did I do to prepare?
I'm a huge fan of the Minimum Viable Product - our website's base architecture is best described as 'developing' - we have had a functional product from day one, but I hadn't bothered ensuring our website was scaleable or optimised as there were always other things that were more important to concentrate on.
A quick look through the Oztam Ratings data showed around 850,000 people watched A Current Affair across Australia each night - panic set in! Was our website going to even cope with this?
A quick test using Load Impact gave us ten x 404s in a three minute test with 50 concurrent users - clearly our website was going to crash if even 1/1000th of the audience typed us into their phone while watching TV.
We're in the middle of an upgrade, so we wouldn't be able to change scripts on our home page and push it out without crashing the rest of our site. Our hands were tied with less than five days between when we were first notified and the potential air date.
How to prioritise what to do
After reading about 50 blog articles on how to prepare for surge traffic, we landed at the following action plan with the help of our Chief Technology Officer and offshore development team:
-
Install a Content Delivery Network (CDN) - the speed improvements on our site were immense through this one step alone!
-
Turn off all non-priority scripts running through GTM
-
Upsize web servers and remote desktop servers - we relied heavily on the support we got from Amazon Web Services and had some budget to play with given we were still using the credits through the Springboard SBE program.
-
Set up a 404 redirect - having a customised 404 page always looks better.
-
Set up a new landing page, which new visitors would reach through a GTM-enabled pop-up.
-
Have your emails to new users amended and ready to go.
00:00
back now money for Jam how you can make
00:02
hundreds even thousands of dollars a
00:03
month renting out stuff you'd probably
00:06
never thought about we live in great
00:11
times to make a buck in the last
00:15
opportunities exist now that word around
00:18
just a few years ago only a little bit
00:21
of extra money at the same time which is
00:23
great they call it the shared economy
00:25
over a year it's a bit over three and a
00:27
half grand online transactions that
00:30
connect buyers and sellers
00:31
we've all heard or used uber or Airbnb
00:35
but now there's so many more business
00:38
ideas coming out nearly every week that
00:41
all of us could jump onto this lucrative
00:44
money spinner and supplement our income
00:47
tonight we follow four different groups
00:50
renting their wares or services and see
00:53
how much they make and perhaps what you
00:55
could make in a month
00:57
oh and save the world what a great way
01:01
not to throw more dump into this world
01:03
what a great way to recycle things that
01:06
we do have and give it to someone else
01:07
and give it new life and make money out
01:09
of it hazel had so much baby gear from
01:13
her first born and it was going to be a
01:15
while until number two she decided to
01:18
rent it in between buds Wow see you're
01:21
making a profit
01:22
I am yeah definitely collecting dust in
01:31
the garage the cot cost one hundred
01:33
dollars but she's renting it for twenty
01:36
dollars a week so it's a paid for itself
01:39
it has paid for itself and now I'm
01:42
earning a profit likewise the pram
01:45
it's a rocker so it's really good for
01:47
newborn babies and she's collecting
01:49
fifty dollars a month on the snazzy
01:51
rocker which has also paid itself off
01:54
for a small Commission the online
01:56
company kinder share covers her
01:59
insurance marketing and bookings
02:02
and it's found Avenue EDA's Arion says
02:05
it works for both the owner and renter
02:08
oh it really helps them with space but
02:10
also helps with money as well I mean you
02:12
don't want to drop five hundred dollars
02:14
on something that you're only going to
02:15
use for two weeks
02:16
speaking of space Ellen had a garage he
02:20
wasn't using then he heard about spacer
02:24
took a few photos of it set my rates at
02:27
the location and then literally within a
02:30
week had someone moving in here spacer
02:32
puts owners and renters of garages car
02:35
ports or spare rooms in contact with
02:38
each other for a small cut as they fully
02:41
cover me with insurance if there's any
02:42
issues on the rents are not paying me on
02:44
time they step in will tell you how much
02:47
he makes in a moment but I'm using it
02:50
myself to help to find for a few trips
02:51
with the missus Paul and Cynthia loved
02:54
dogs so babysitting them and getting
02:56
paid for it was a double bonus even the
02:59
locals know we've Tama got a new dog
03:01
that's another one today
03:02
that's no one this week kennels can cost
03:06
up to $100 a night for owners but these
03:09
to get around $30 a night from the
03:12
online company mad paws visit mad paws
03:15
but it's constant with walkies feeding
03:18
and playing it's fun it's fun
03:26
Susanna has had some fun days with all
03:29
her dresses but her better ones she's
03:32
only wearing once or twice a year so
03:34
he's top cost three hundred and fifty
03:38
dollars and I've got it rented for $65
03:41
for four days I've probably hired her at
03:44
about five times so it's almost paid
03:48
itself off with the online business the
03:50
vault her designer clothes that cost
03:53
between three hundred dollars and twelve
03:55
hundred dollars of working for her
03:57
rather than her working to buy them
04:00
distress he is quite popular for wedding
04:03
1500 Aussies are now using this service
04:06
which also covers her insurance and
04:09
dry-cleaning it's profitable time using
04:12
the vault would be
04:13
spring racing first you the fact because
04:16
it's nicer weather and there's more
04:18
events on and people are having weddings
04:20
so last month
04:21
how much did our savvy for make out of
04:24
the gear or space they weren't using for
04:26
the services they loved giving paisa
04:29
learned $200 for stuff that would have
04:31
been in the garage susana raked in 500
04:35
bucks but she had plenty of walks to the
04:37
post box to send off dresses and to the
04:40
dry cleaners Alan got $300 and he didn't
04:45
have to lift a finger for a month except
04:48
for the first time when he lifted ten of
04:50
them to open the door and Cynthia and
04:52
Paul made over a grand pick up a hell of
04:57
a lot of you know what turn your car
05:00
into a billboard rattly will wrap it and
05:03
give you up to $600 a month the
05:06
advertising has you do your normal days
05:08
driving and when you're not using your
05:10
caravan camper home or trailer camp
05:14
Liffe I will rent it out for you with
05:17
some owners reporting they're earning
05:19
$40,000 a year on something that would
05:22
be sitting in the front yard
05:23
but there are implications yes money
05:26
magazine editor F is our hottest part of
05:29
your new earn money may also belong to
05:32
someone else
05:33
you must declare this as income you've
05:37
got to work out am i enterprise do I
05:40
have to pay GST these are things you
05:43
need to consider and have I put it into
05:45
my tax statements as well because
05:47
believe me even if you have it the 80
05:49
know exactly knows exactly what you are
05:51
earning but that's not all them on the
05:54
good side there's a lot of deductions
05:56
you could possibly be up for as well and
05:58
remember these new online businesses are
06:01
as much for customers as they are for
06:04
owners or service providers why buy an
06:06
expensive tool for those once a year
06:09
jobs
06:09
there's tool mates hire hire from
06:13
someone in your suburb get a group of
06:15
friends and rent from get my boat
06:17
pretend you're rich like the guy who
06:19
owns it and do the same and have a
06:22
five-star treatment not a plane
06:25
that's early and if you thought about
06:27
Airbnb but didn't want the hassles now
06:31
there's a sorted pool manager and
06:33
cleaner there's a whole new world of
06:37
money-making opportunities on the web
06:39
out there so I find the vault a great
06:41
way of any a little bit of extra money
06:43
without doing much work but keep in mind
06:47
even if it's a car space capital gains
06:50
tax may be applicable so it's always a
06:53
balancing thing you're gonna make some
06:54
money but you got to pay some money out
06:58
there's more on that story on our
07:00
homepage
So was it worth it?
Yes - watching Google Analytics during the four time zones was like watching a GIF - consistent spinning of numbers - it was beautiful to watch. Our architecture held too.
We had a month's worth of traffic to the site in an hour, about a month's worth of sign-ups and, most-importantly - over 20% of those converted less than 48 hours later. And best of all, mum finally got to understand what it was I did all day!
Top tips for other MVP startups
-
Install your CDN today - sign up to the free level and configure it properly. When you have a surge event you can upgrade to a paid plan, but most of the fiddly stuff is already done for you.
-
Test and test again - we managed to break one of our DKIM email settings when moving across to Cloudflare and for two days our customers were unable to click through any transaction emails.
-
Install GTM on your site so you can quickly install / uninstall plugins with minimal coding / testing.
-
Check your invoices - our retargeting was suspended because my credit card had maxed out - I realised about 30 mins before air time. A quick reset on a backup credit card and we were all okay!
University of Technology Sydney is sparking the next generation of entrepreneurs. Find out more at startups.uts.edu.au.