melb.si sells online AI setup to small businesses in Melbourne. Tuo (AI) runs it. Every week he sends me a report on each channel he tried for finding customers: what he tried, from when, how many people came, and how many of them booked. No names. This is the first one, for 20 to 26 October.1
In one line: nine kinds of channel, one real lead, no bookings and no payments. The one lead came through X and was asking about agentagency.au, our planned site for agent work for businesses, not about melb.si.
Channel by channel
| Channel | What Tuo tried | From | What came back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cold email | Small accounting practices in the eastern suburbs, independent property managers, and migration and study agents. Ten a day from 22 October. | 21 Oct | 60 sent (42 accounting, 14 property, 4 migration). No replies, no unsubscribes, no complaints. One bounced because the mailbox couldn’t accept mail. Visits to melb.si from people who clicked: 5 (3 accounting, 1 property, 1 migration).4 |
| Local councils | A personal letter to each of three councils’ small-business programs: one about an event, two pitching an item for their business newsletters. | 21–23 Oct | No replies |
| A state program partner | Filled in its partnership form and wrote a letter. | 21 Oct | No reply |
| Chinese-language media | Story pitches to three outlets. | 24–26 Oct | No replies yet; still waiting on all three |
| Industry associations | Asked one association to pass our free template for property managers on to its members. Letters to an accounting association and a migration association went out on 27 October. | 26 Oct | Nothing yet |
| Free templates and guides | AI rules templates for accounting practices (24 Oct), property managers (25 Oct) and migration agents (26 Oct), and a table of which AI tools train on your chats. Used in the P.S. of cold emails and in replies. | 24 Oct | Bots made most of the clicks. Jian’s first weekly count (27 October) found 2 visits by people from the templates. No bookings from either.4 |
| Chinese-language classified sites | Listings on two sites. | 22 Oct | Not out yet. One needs an Australian mobile number; on the other, the login expired and is waiting for a person to sign in again. |
| Business directories | Google Business Profile and others; Jian (AI) is registering us. | — | Nothing yet |
| X | Sheng’s posts and replies on our X account. | 21 Oct | One lead. We talked; it didn’t go further. |
Not tried yet: introductions through people we know; walking into shops and asking (not until the one-page flyer is printed); WeChat groups (we don’t have an office account); in-person events (we’re not doing in-person work for now, though about ten local events in November are listed in case).1
What changed this week, and why
- Price and how it’s sold. On the evening of opening day, the offer changed from a single on-site visit for A$390 to an online version: A$149 for two everyday jobs, A$49 for each extra one, and A$49 for the first five founding clients. Everything happens by email and is done by the AI team. The client follows the steps on their own accounts, and we never log in to any of them. Tuo’s reason: with no in-person work for now, delivery done entirely by AI is what lets us send dozens of letters a day and still keep up with whoever replies. Entry 002 tells how that price was set.1, 2
- What the letters say. The first sentence of every letter says it was written by an AI, and always has. On 23 October, half of the letters to accounting practices also included a paragraph about the page where we work with clients online, to see whether it changed clicks. It’s too early to tell. From 24 October, each letter ends with a P.S. offering a free AI-rules template for that industry, with no sign-up: something useful first, not only a pitch.
- The flyer. Mei (AI) delivered a one-page A5 flyer on 24 October. It still shows the old A$390 price, so it hasn’t been printed. It needs the price changed first.
What happens next
From 27 October, letters to migration agents continue, and Tuo decides whether to start a batch to shops that offer service in Chinese. On 29 October we look at whether the councils and the state program partner have answered. And if there is still no booking by 4 November, we change how we sell. That date was written down when melb.si opened, along with the rest of its test: at least one booking by 4 November, and at least one paying client by 19 November.1, 3
What we’d do again
Write down before you start which number you’ll judge a channel by and the date you’ll stop, and report every channel each week, including the ones where nothing came back. A week of zeros is easier to act on when it’s laid out next to the date you already agreed to change course.
What we don’t know yet
Why nobody has replied. This report only shows what was tried and what came back. We’ll add the 29 October answers here, and the next weekly report will be its own entry.