Learn how we advertise.go viral.content market.use webinars.get customers.
Follow along with us as we share everything that works and fails to grow Hubstaff.
The Story of Hubstaff
Why We Built Hubstaff: Personal Pain and a Need to Be Free
0 Customers / $0 MRR
The deeply personal story of how Hubstaff came to be and why we do what we do. Includes our core values, why we exist, and where we are going. Must read for anyone that wants to know Hubstaff on a deep level.
How to Test your Startup Idea Before you Build
0 Customers / $0 MRR
Here’s a quick list of tests to think about before you embark on the long journey of building a startup.
How I Used LinkedIn to Find a Technical Co-Founder
0 Customers / $0 MRR
A breakdown of Dave’s journey of finding and pitching to Hubstaff’s technical co-founder, Jared Brown. Filled with tips and tricks for those seeking a business partner.
First Paying Customer
Acquiring Early Adopters: How Hubstaff Got Its First 25
25 Customers / $1,222 MRR
When we first launched Hubstaff, it was important for us to get feedback on the experience. That’s why we searched far and wide for early users. We tried inbound marketing, reaching out in person, paid ads and more. Here’s what worked and what didn’t.
How we Determine the Real Priorities in our Startup
99 Customers / $3,637 MRR
There are thousands of things to work on. Which tasks get attention vs. the hold button.
Our Big Free Plan Mistake: Why Giving it Away Didn't Work
122 Customers / $5,748 MRR
Read about Hubstaff’s failed attempt at offering a three-user free plan. Learn what we discovered and why we don’t offer it anymore.
High Quality Content: How it helps us automatically drive laser targeted leads
239 Customers / $7,292 MRR
Content marketing keeps our communication efforts laser-focused on quality leads. Learn how we create and leverage the excellent content we showcase to drive leads and get sales.
250 Customers / $7,373 MRR
How to Evaluate Market Size and Pricing
388 Customers / $11,566 MRR
How and why to evaluate market size, product pricing, and your customers BEFORE starting your business.
Where we Invest and Why
496 Customers / $14,295 MRR
We decided to invest our money back into software instead of into marketing. Here’s why.
500 Customers / $14,224 MRR
Software that helps us Grow Hubstaff
694 Customers / $20,143 MRR
We use third party software whenever we can. Here are the systems we use and how we use them.
750 Customers / $21,959 MRR
How We Used Buffer to Boost Our Social Traffic by 350%
964 Customers / $28,725 MRR
In order to increase our social media growth and take full advantage of Buffer, we developed a few strategies that resulted in overwhelming success.
1000 Customers / $29,590 MRR
The Decision to Embrace Revenue Transparency at Hubstaff
1026 Customers / $29,920 MRR
The decision to embrace revenue transparency at Hubstaff was long discussed and extensively analyzed. Ultimately, we decided to go transparent down to the core of our business.
Virtual Employees: How We Find and Hire the Best
1131 Customers / $35,658 MRR
If we’re going to build our virtual startup to $1 million in MRR and beyond, we need to have an all-star team on board. Here’s our process for finding and hiring our awesome virtual team members.
1250 Customers / $40,039 MRR
How We Built and Manage a Successful Remote Company
1,336 Customers / $43,611 MRR
Since the inception of Hubstaff, we understood the kind of team we wanted to create. This post goes over how we built our successful virtual team, management strategies, communication tools and why we think 9 to 5 is dead.
1500 Customers / $47,053 MRR
Paying Independent Contractors
1,592 Customers / $47,176 MRR
Once we started working with independent contractors, it was of the utmost importance to find a solution that allowed us to pay them in a fair and efficient way. Here is what we learned.
Entrepreneurial Mindset: Setting the record straight
1,611 Customers / $47,739 MRR
There are a lot of things I didn’t expect when becoming an entrepreneur. Here are a few unexpected challenges and the mindset I’ve had to develop to get over them.
What I’ve learned from 10 years of remote team management
1,685 Customers / $50,920 MRR
I spent 10 years and counting refining team management in virtual teams. I’m sharing the actionable steps and useful tips I learned in this post.
2000 Customers / $61,329 MRR
The Full Guide to Scaling Your Business with Virtual Assistants
2,186 Customers / $68,404 MRR
I built 3 multi-million dollar businesses with outsourced teams, and in this post, I’m going to lay out exactly how we do it the right way.
2250 Customers / $76,787 MRR
Why Bootstrapping Our Startup Was One of the Best Decisions We Ever Made
2,268 Customers / $77,315 MRR
An in-depth look at why we choose to retain ownership of Hubstaff and remain bootstrapped instead of accepting investment offers.
We dumped MailChimp. Here’s how we picked our new email marketing platform
2,362 Customers / $81,341 MRR
We love MailChimp, but decided we needed something more robust. See what spurred our decision to change email marketing platforms and how we chose a winner.
What I Learned Starting, Buying, and Selling 3 Businesses
2,485 Customers / $86,382 MRR
I don’t care about building a unicorn, and you shouldn’t either. This guide covers what every entrepreneur should know about buying and selling businesses, based on my personal experiences growing businesses to millions in annual revenue.
2500 Customers / $88,261 MRR
Revising Our Social Media Content Strategy Boosted Visits by 230%
2,655 Customers / $94,589 MRR
Our social media profiles went from a no-mans land to having a dedicated social media manager. Learn how humanizing our brand earned us more engagement and smiles.
The Blog Post Checklist We Use to Publish Great Content Every Time
2,652 Customers / $95,623 MRR
Many of Hubstaff’s marketing channels depend on content to achieve their goals. Here’s how we ensure great content is produced every time.
2750 Customers / $98,716 MRR
How to Manage Remote Teams: We Uncover the System That Lets Us Grow 10% Each Month
2,809 Customers / $101,000 MRR
Dave Nevogt hired his first employee when he was 23 and didn’t know what he was doing. In this post he shares the system he has developed since then to manage an entirely remote team of superstars who helps Hubstaff grow 10 percent each month.
The Secret of Our Growth: Successful Integration Partnerships
2,959 Customers / $109,000 MRR
Our partners’ successes are our successes. We share how and why we invest so much time to build meaningful, mutually beneficial relationships with our integration partners.
3000 Customers / $112,000 MRR
How To Build And Scale A Curated Newsletter In 5 Easy Steps
3,020 Customers / $112,000 MRR
We built a curated newsletter that got 213 subscribers within 2 months after the first issue. This is the journey of how we did it and why we pulled the plug on it.
Is Paid Acquisition Worth It? Lessons Learned at Hubstaff
3,155 Customers / $117,000 MRR
We’ve experimented across a number of different channels to see what works best for our business. This post contains examples of the campaigns we’ve used, the channels we’ve explored, and the results we’ve generated.
The SaaS Free Trial Is Essential to the Success of Our Startup. Here’s What We’re Doing to Improve It
3,202 Customers / $120,000 MRR
Our free trial has been crucial to the success of our SaaS. We go over what worked to convert our trial users into paying customers.
Content Marketing ROI: How We Measure Success at Hubstaff
3,230 Customers / $121,000 MRR
Measuring content marketing ROI can be challenging but without doing so you’ll never truly know if your strategy is working. Here is our process for measuring the ROI for content marketing.
3250 Customers / $125,000 MRR
Developing Marketing Strategies: The Effective 7-Step Process We Use at Hubstaff
3,286 Customers / $125,000 MRR
Finding the right way to build a sustainable marketing strategy isn’t exactly easy. After some trials and errors we created a proven 7-step system for developing effective marketing strategies.
Marketing Trumps Sales: How We Built a Million Dollar Business Without Selling
3,310 Customers / $126,000 MRR
At Hubstaff, we’ve grown a million dollar company focusing on marketing, not sales. Find out why we’ve invested heavily on inbound marketing and what we’re doing to see results.
The Super-Detailed Guide to Setting Up an Editorial Calendar
3,387 Customers / $128,000 MRR
Publishing useful and engaging content is a top priority for marketers from all fields today but nobody said doing it is easy. Learn how to take back control with this detailed guide on how to set up a content calendar.
Lessons in App Store Optimization: How We Launched Hubstaff's Mobile Apps
3,398 Customers / $128,000 MRR
Optimizing for app stores is quickly becoming one of the most wanted marketing skills. Learn more about our strategy for app optimization.
Be a Project Manager: Our System for Hiring and Managing Remote Teams
3,475 Customers / $131,000 MRR
Want to know the secret to Hubstaff’s success? We’re 100% remote. Discover the secrets to successfully hiring and managing a remote team.
3500 Customers / $137,000 MRR
How We Use Webinars to Make Free Trial Users 2x More Likely to Convert
3,600 Customers / $137,000 MRR
If you want to connect with a large number of prospects of customers online, there’s no better way to do it than with a webinar. Here is our strategy from start to finish.
The 7-Step Process We Use to Grow and Convert Organic Traffic
3,686 Customers / $140,000 MRR
Discover our highly effective 7-step process for growing our traffic and converting viewers into customers.
How Trust 'Just Happens' Inside Our Remote Team of 25
3,726 Customers / $141,000 MRR
Trust is a common theme when it comes to remote teams but trust in remote teams isn’t really something you build. It’s something that just happens when you focus on putting the right systems in place. Discover how trust just happens for us.
The 8-Step Process We Used to Start a Successful Podcast
3,773 Customers / $144,023 MRR
A year since launching, we’ve published 57 episodes of the podcast, it has been downloaded tens of thousands of times, and it’s consistently delivering actionable content to a core segment of our target market.
43 Lessons Learned from Growing Three Startups from Zero to $1M+
3,915 Customers / $152,000 MRR
In this post, I review the most significant lessons I’ve learned from growing three startups from zero to over a million (including Hubstaff).