Inspired by the book Traction, written by Gabriel Weinberg, I decided to add a widget! This is the announcement blog post with an example of the widget.

What do you think about it? I think I need to improve the design, but I'm not sure how to keep it simple and neutral.

At your price point ($10-50 per sale, $10-500 lifetime value), it simply is not worthwhile to have anyone doing 1:1 sales. You should be acquiring customers via marketing.

There's a pretty famous book called Traction that introduces founders to marketing. It goes over 19 marketing channels, and after reading, you should have a good hunch about which 3-5 channels might work well for you.

Off the top of my head:

- Partner with climbing gyms. They all have a store that sells chalk and shoes and whatnot. Either sell them 50x of your product (this does require actual sales) or see if they have a model where they get a cut for every sale made.

- Influencer marketing. Reach out to people like Alex Honnold and ask if they'd be willing to try your product out for free and give you feedback. If they like it, ask if they'd be willing to help out by talking about it on social. Could eventually explore some kind of affiliate model where they get a 20-30% cut per sale they drive your way.

- Paid search ads. If anyone on the internet is searching for "climbing chalk" then they should end up on your site via paid ads.

- Retargeting ads. If anyone visits your website or puts something in their cart and doesn't buy, make sure you use Google Display and/or FB/Twitter retargeting ads. These will be the most profitable ads you ever pay for.

- SEO. This one is pretty hard because your site is relatively small/new, but if you write articles talking about why your chalk is better for the environment, you might get some traffic this way.

Some of this work does involve "sales", in that you're selling to gyms or recreational stores or influencers 1:1. BUT, just try to think about it from their perspective. You aren't "selling them on your product", you're "helping them make more money by promoting a cool environmentally friendly chalk brand".

A list I put together a while back: https://www.encona.com/posts/product-manager-resources

Overview books:

* Inspired

* The Product Manager’s Desk Reference

* The Lean Startup

* Agile Product Management with Scrum

Interview preparation (good for breadth, even if you’re not applying for jobs):

* Decode & Conquer

* Cracking the PM interview

Other good books for PMs:

* Hooked

* The Design of Everyday Things

* Zero to One

* Traction