Ted Alcala

Usually, you may have an original business idea but you need funding. This has been the case for many of the contestants you have watched in the debut of all the Shark Tank episodes. These entrepreneurs who make the cut have a chance of showcasing their idea to a large viewing audience; their potential customers.

The chosen few whose ideas are outstanding land a deal with one or more of the show’s investors. This pedestal gives the select companies the chance to scale and in some cases, they end up becoming a nationally recognized brand. This review samples out some of the most successful stories on the show, some are the shark’s own favorites.

Successful Businesses from Shark Tank

1. Lollacup

This debut was a BPA children’s drinking cup with a flexible straw which allowed children to drink easily. For 40% of the phthalate-free children cup company’s equity, Robert Herjavec and Mark Cuban invested $100,000. It has since made a gross sales of over $1,000,000 since its debut on the Shark Tank.

2. Squatty Potty

Squatty Potty’s debut on Shark Tank was no surprise. This personal care company was already well established and renowned for manufacturing a toilet stool that enhanced easier bowel movements.  For 10% of the company’s equity O’Leary and Lori invested $350,000. The Business Insider was shocked at the 24hours that followed after the two sharks bit.

Squatty Potty made $1 in sales within 24hours. Its gross revenue in 2015 was $19 million and was expected to shoot up further to $30 million.

3. Ten Thirty-One Productions

Before their debut on Shark Tank, the Hinnants made about $1 million in sales. When Cuban decided to invest $2 million for 20% of Melissa Carbone’s Ten Thirt6y One Productions, a live horror-entertainment company in season 5, the company is now expecting $6.5 million in gross revenue.

This boost in sales was boosted by an appearance in Cosmopolitan magazine. The company has grown and one thing that has stood out is the company’s philanthropic nature. It has used its profits in India to house a total of 100 kids. Last year alone the company grossed $3 million in revenue and although the shark disclosed the company’s exact figure, he hinted that it makes a half a million dollars in annual revenue.

4. Breathometer

Breathometer is a portable breathalyzer that works with a smartphone and mad its first appearance on Shark Tank’s 5^th episode. For a 30% deal of their company’s equity, Kevin O’Leary, Daymond John, Herjavec and Lory Greiner got on board with an investment of $650,000. In partnership with Cleveland Clinic, Yim, the company CEO secured an additional $6.5 million in funding. This partnership helped Yim develop a more accurate and more portable main product. This was all in addition to a product that could track both oral health and hydration levels.

In reference to what Yim told Inc., the Breathometer was going to make $20 million gross revenue in 2015 which was double what it made last year.

5. Bubba’s-Q Boneless Ribs

A former pro football player from Ohio came to sell the sharks his scrumptious baby back ribs which can be cooked in a microwave in 2 minutes. This went down in 2015 and John invested in the idea for 30% equity, for $30,000. When he spoke to the Business Insider, John told of his amusement because he had not expected to make the most out of a rib business.

John not only helped Baker license rights to his company but also helped him to secure a deal with a large-scale food processing plant. The shark said that he can make Bubba’s-Q become a national brand with a sterling $200 million in lifetime sales.

6. Tipsy Elves

A man from Lubbock came to the sharks with his colorful, magnetic light strands were a remarkable solution to one of the holiday’s biggest headaches. It was only one of the sharks, Robert Herjavec who placed his money on Evan Mendelsohn and Nick Morton’s ugly Christmas sweater.

This was in season 4 and most viewers thought that Robert’s investment of $100,000 for 10% equity was a lost cause because the sweaters were a fleeting fad; Christmas comes only once. It turned out to be his most profitable Shark Tank investment when he spoke to Business Insider.

In order to stay ahead of trends, Herjavec helped Tipsy Elves become a year-round novelty apparel company. He helped the company capitalize off not just Christmas but also but in multiple holidays and even the college football season.

The change in annual revenue has been immense because, before its debut on Shark Tank, it made gross revenue of $900,000 in 2013 and last year $8 million while $12 million this year.

7. Grace and Lace

This business idea was a husband-and-wife duo, Melissa, and Rick Hinnant’s fashion company, Grace, and Lace that shark, Barbara Corcoran invested $175,000 for 10% equity. When she spoke to Business Insider, the shark said that Grace and Lace was her most profitable Shark Tank investment.

8. Wicked Good Cupcakes

Wicked Good Cupcakes, a mother and daughter company that makes cupcakes premiered on the show in season 4. The duo made a deal with O’Leary who instead of equity invested $75,000. After its debut on the show, the duo expanded Wicked Cup Cakes to a new production facility. In the course of this, O’Leary made $1 for every cupcake sold and when his return on investment was paid back, he earned 50cents for every cupcake sold.

9. Scrub Daddy

This sponge company has become the biggest Shark Tank’ success stories. Investor Lori Greiner has had a total of $75 million in revenue over the past three years as return on investment in Scrub daddy. In season 4 of the show, Lori made a deal with Scrub daddy CEO, Aaron Krause for $200,000 in exchange for $20 equity.

Reiner invested in the company not because of its gross sales because it had not been doing so great; $100,000 in sales over 18 months. The investment was based on foreshadowed potential Greiner saw in the company’s signature offering.

It was a proprietary smiley faced sponge that was better than the traditional sponge as it was more durable and hygienic. She helped grow Scrub daddy by placing the company in a myriad of stores like Bed, Bath and beyond and also QVC. The sponges have become the best sellers.

Site navigation means the architecture or the framework of your site. Building a Search Engine friendly navigation together with visually appealing effects is a good SEO practice.

Here are the few tips which helps you to design your site that’s optimal for both Search Engines and your Visitors. I have summarized the post in such a way to help both web developers and SEO experts.

Universal Navigation

Those navigation strips that you can see on Top of most websites are the Universal navigation. They are located on Top of most Websites. The strip remains unchanged for all the pages and helps to focus visitors to the important pages of your site. Some sites use it on the left side as a side bar. Erident’s Nav-bar looks like this:

Search Engines see this like every page of your site is linking back to those top pages. So they rank those pages well among your internal pages. The navigation bar may include a table of sub-contents. Its a good On-page optimization tip to build the sub-content to link-back to its parent directory.

Implementation

• Give priority to include the important keywords to the nav-bar. Use the analytics report of your site and choose the popular search terms.
• Find the pages of you website that receives the most traffic and include them to the navigation. This will help your visitors and Search Engine to understand the importance of that page.
• Try to find the visitor’s favorite exit pages which contain any contact information or location. Do include those pages.
• Build Categories for your products and include them in the bar. Use Keyword Analysis Tools to find the best category name for a product.

Drop Down Menus – only CSS.

Drop down menus are common. They are easy to implement, but hard for Search Engines. If possible make your navigate through site without those because the mobile or tablet platforms never display these drop-down. Always use CSS navigation elements for building this drop down menus.

Three Links Deep Rule

Make sure that any web page of your site is accessible with a maximum of 3 clicks. This is more favorable to visitors than Search Engines and reduces the Bounce rate of your site. Say if your webpage named “Best Article” can be accessed as ” home > page1 > page2 > page3 > page4 > page5 > Best Article ” 9 of 10 visitors leave the site before reaching the intended page.

Product Pages

When a product page is implemented then visitors always hop to the previous or similar pages. It’s the duty of navigation bar to ensure that Visitors easily get what they need. A full research of the product is always expected before a conversion or sale. Vertical linking and Horizontal linking are the two types.

Vertical linking means telling your visitors where they came from or currently their position in the site. Breadcrumbs are the easiest method to apply Vertical linking. Breadcrumbs are usually located in between the product Title and the brief summary of a page. Often these Breadcrumbs will be limited to a single popular parent category than the whole tree.

Horizontal Linking: Related Products

The related or similar products helps visitors stay on the page after a product search. This is why you stay on YouTube after watching a video or browse through similar Amazon product after a purchase. Horizontal linking helps to share the page authority of the product pages which is a good On-Page optimization process.

I have seen so many companies offering cheap rates for SEO process. SEO is a highly competitive field which constantly changes and the ranking will easily gets affected. Try to make sure that your SEO Company is not giving out-dated or bogus advice for your project. Here are a few lies that such a company might tell you.

1) “Rank high if you add keywords in Meta tags”

Back then Keyword Meta tags served to help to gain good rank, but now Search Engines don’t consider it. It’s a kind of telling search engines to avoid main content and follow the listed keywords in the meta-tags. The latest Panda and Penguin search engine algorithms are intelligent enough to pick the keywords from the main content of the site.

2) “Submit to search engines and directories”

Often your SEO Company gives you the advice that they will “submit your site to 100s of directories and sites”. This isn’t an effective method as Google counts the quality of the page which links your site. So if they are offering this they are actually harming your site rank by adding your content to so called “link-farms”.

3) “A high amount of traffic is good for SEO”

This one is the most interesting part of the deal. Cheap SEO companies will guarantee you with huge traffic. They will show you a PowerPoint slide with steep graph showing the number of visitors to your web site. This rate may not reflect in your business profit. If you look your Bounce rate, you may find the reason why those visitors are not turning into profit.
This kind of high traffic is possible by submitting your website to popular directories or even traffic exchange sites. The visitors leave your web page because they don’t find what they need there. The best traffic is from people who want to see your content. Mostly organic Search Engine search will do this.

4) “We can guarantee number 1 result in Google”

Often some SEO companies make a statement that then will guarantee #1 position in Google without even knowing your keywords. Now search results became personalized for each internet user .You may see the official Google explanation about this here. The results are sorted with a set of complex calculations which include both Pagerank and social factors for the particular keywords. So never get cheated by the companies who offer these advices. More over who can guarantee you #1 position in search results, other than Google.

5) “Higher pagerank score will get you a better ranking”

Pagerank score is one of the many factors which rank a website. So getting a higher pagerank score alone isn’t effective. And the pagerank displayed on the Toolbars of certain browsers may not be same as those real time rank calculated by the Search Engines. It’s only an approximation of the previous rank and current back-link status.

Conclusion

So never choose a Company with their cheap rates. Always go for the latest trends in SEO industry and stay up-to-date with the SEO blogs in internet. Our advice is to

•  Make a list of keywords that your business needs.
•  Ask the company about their SEO process in detail.
•  Don’t get confined to the link-building process but go for an overall On-page and Off-page optimization.
•  Demand them to provide the bounce rate of your web site after optimization.
•  Don’t hesitate to get tied up with a good Company if they are asking reasonable rates for SEO process.