Business opportunities often arise out of solving your own problems. For Alan Perlman, the problem was crashing a drone into a car tire back in 2014. Discovering how difficult it was to find drone training and regulation information online, Alan created UAVCoach.com to fill this need in the market. UAVcoach.com offers drone news, product reviews, and now has a community with over 50,000 members.
In the early days, the business was grown through inbound marketing. Creating high-quality content that ranked in search engines. Later the company shifted to contacting email subscribers and having phone conversations to find out exactly what readers wanted. This is where the idea for the first online course came from.
In 2015, Alan Perlman created an online drone training course that earned $6000 in its first few days of sales. That success enabled Alan to go full-time on the drone business.
In 2016, the Drone Pilot Ground School test prep course was created to help students pass the FAA drone exam. More than 25,000 students have taken the course now.
Business Lessons:
Finding product/market fit makes growing a business much easier. Alan struggled to scale his previous marketing consultancy business, but drone information and training was the right business at the right time. It’s important to try different ideas to see what the market wants.
Another important lesson here is that Alan invested the time to find out what his subscribers wanted. He emailed them and set up phone calls to really understand their needs. That lead to the training courses and a successful business with lots of future potential.
There are big opportunities in becoming a content hub and community for a rising trend. The difficulty is noticing the opportunity at the right time. Alan Perlman did it for drones. Pieter Levels did it for digital nomads. Courtland Allen did it for Indie Hackers.
Similar opportunities are emerging for “drop-servicing”, “no code”, “paid newsletters”, home schooling”, etc.
If you want to keep an eye on what’s next, you can try Google Trends, Exploding Topics and rising subReddits.
