The Gadget Flow story started in an apartment in 2012, not in a garage like many start-ups stories do. Three friends, all aged 21, were working on a design inspiration blog and curating content for designers and artists. They were publishing new content almost every day, and the blog was generating a few thousand dollars every month just from sponsored posts and banner advertising. It was a way for them to stay creative, and it also brought in some revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Evan Varsamis<\/a>, Cassie Ousta<\/a>, and Mike Chliounakis<\/a> met in BCA college in 2009 in Athens, Greece where Mike was studying marketing while Cassie and Evan majored in shipping and finance. They were meeting after class almost every day to work on their blog, write new content, and find potential advertisers. While searching online for fancy products for a roundup feature on the blog, they were having difficulties finding unique content. And, with that, they started a brainstorming session to figure out a better way to discover quality products online. A couple of days later, on August 15, 2012, Gadget Flow<\/a> was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Evan, Cassie, and Mike started by developing a simple website; they purchased a theme from ThemeForest as well as shared hosting and had a domain name with GoDaddy. Within a few hours, everything was in place, and the hustle for new content began. The idea of Gadget Flow<\/a> was, and still is, to simplify online product exploration by introducing fresh, new content daily. Within two days, they discovered and published 150+ products from third parties plus Amazon and Etsy. Each product page consisted of high-quality photos, a title, and a brief product description. Each page was also finalized with a “Buy Now” button that took the visitor directly to the seller\u2019s website. After a few days, they created their Facebook Fan Page, newsletter list, and Google Analytics account. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Gaining momentum in just a week, they successfully published nearly 300 products on their website. All the while, they realized that they were able to organically generate more than 10,000 visits to their product pages. Evan started to work on a couple of growth hacking techniques and cross-promotion with other websites and Facebook fan pages (back in 2012, the organic reach of Facebook Fan Pages was more than 10%). Within a couple of months, the website generated an incredible 100,000 visits. People loved being able to discover new curated products daily, and readers shared the website so others could do the same. The Gadget Flow team started doing some affiliation with Amazon<\/a>, and they added banner ads via buysellads.com and Google AdSense, all of which produced a four-figure revenue after just three months of going live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They were spending a couple of hours every day generating content for Gadget Flow. Evan and Cassie were also working part-time for a shipping company to get some experience from the corporate world. In early 2013, the team launched a media agency to assist companies with their digital advertising goals, web development needs, and social media strategies. Mike was Head of Operations and managing the majority of the agency’s customers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n After hiring their first developer, John Antoniou, in mid-2013, they decided to start working on a website redesign. Plus, they launched an app for iOS<\/a>. A few months later, they launched Gadget Flow 1.1 complete with a redesigned, custom UI that people loved. The new design increased time on site by 60%, page views per user by 200%, and revenue by 140%. Realizing the potential, this site had become more than just a hobby for the team, and it needed more attention. After just a year, they closed the media agency and started to work full-time on Gadget Flow.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEarly success<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The media agency <\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n