Creating a team and expanding/starting a "real" Business. Advice please

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bassmaan

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I would love some advice on getting to the next level with affiliate marketing. So far I have been doing every thing by myself and doing it from my laptop usually lying in bed. I am getting to the point where I am profitable but all my available time is taken up preventing further growth. I would have an immediate need for a part time web designer and coder for things like:

-Getting some real websites made that have long term potential.

-Getting some coding done to have a easy access visual display of daily vital stats. At present using prosper202 is a little cumbersome in this regard.

-Getting some automated bidding script made to automate my very profitable but time consuming bidding strategy.

-Getting some kind of ad scrapper to give an overview of the most shown ads on a give platform.



In a 6-12 month period I am interested in expanding into related more profitable areas such as:

-becoming a merchant (white labels, info products, or full scale physical products including buying a factory in china or something)

-Becoming a traffic source.

-Becoming a cpa Network.

-Training startup affiliates for rev share.


My first step is going to be to outsource individual projects online at places like elance. However I would like to hear of some other options and directions to grow a business.

My main concern is that whom ever does the work for me will steel my ideas and become direct competition.

If any one could share some of their experience on taking that first step to creating a solid foundation to a real online business im sure it would e very insightful. Or if anyone has any specific advice on any of these areas that would be great.
 


One piece of advice is that you have many good ideas, but you have to focus on 1-2 before tacking all those ideas.

If you really want to build a business and a team, then spend a lot of your efforts on hiring, because there is nothing harder in business than that. Finding the right people that are good and can do what you want them to do, when you want them to do it and how you want them to do it is challenging and an on-going effort of interviewing, training, teaching, etc.

Outsourcing everything out from your bed in not necessarily a bad thing, but it is not building a business.

Building a business is great, but it is a lot of work and requires a lot of patience.

best of luck!
 
You really do have too many goals there. You do need to pick a couple out, focus on those, make them successful and as automated as possible and then move onto the next. You're not going to succeed trying to do them all at once.

As for finding workers, look to India. If you find one that doesn't scam and does good, relatively cheap work, then great. They won't have the cash to coopy your campaigns anyways, so you don't need to worry about them.
 
Thanks for the response. I seem to be hearing "focus on one thing" from every direction, not just this thread.

I will do my best the think of the opportunity cost of all my options and focus on my best potential opertunities one at a time.

- This week I will launch 6 new campaigns on the platform I already know.

- Next week I will learn some basics of webdesign/html and how to use my new dedicated hosting set up and find a coder and web desiener

- week 3 I will have several different landing pages/websites made to test for my top campaigns.

-week 4-10 I will focus on learning and testing all other major advertising platforms.


I think doing these things will put me in the best position three months from now to reevaluate my path with the greatest knowledge and experience.

Also I'll add that my goal is not to be considered a "business" simply to make more profit and free up more time. As I will be traveling permanently for the next few years I will also focus on developing daily routines that allow me to get focused work done on a daily basis while enjoying my travels. I will also have to be more creative if I choose to create a team as the traditional "office workplace" is out of the question.
 
Well I'm hiring people right now myself, but I have things on a grip. You want to hire quality people - cheaply, but DO NOT lack quality. Pay more for quality if you have to.

I'm not out sourcing shit, I'm opening an office and having all the staff work in the office. I'll train them if need be, which will help lock them in at a lower rate possibly. This is something you should look at, in depth. Being in an office and explaining something is gonna be a lot easier.

In regards to your 'stealing' theory. All my eployees will have to sign an NDA and CNC. This will stop them talking about our in-house shit and ideas/secrets etc and if they do - I will launch a mother fuckin Jihad on their ass; you get the idea.

I don't think outsourcing everything is going to be a realiable or long term option, so it's probably better to open an office and get people in office, trained or untrained. Training them means they'll know EXACTLY how to do shit.

Don't over work them or leech them easier, it will just make them less productive. Relax, have a good work enviroment and don't be harsh with pay either. They'll jump on another offer or even into another trade if they can make a better wage and do significantly less work. Set them goals and bonuses if they are met etc.
 
Sohan said:
Well I'm hiring people right now myself, but I have things on a grip. You want to hire quality people - cheaply, but DO NOT lack quality. Pay more for quality if you have to.

I'm not out sourcing shit, I'm opening an office and having all the staff work in the office. I'll train them if need be, which will help lock them in at a lower rate possibly. This is something you should look at, in depth. Being in an office and explaining something is gonna be a lot easier.

In regards to your 'stealing' theory. All my eployees will have to sign an NDA and CNC. This will stop them talking about our in-house shit and ideas/secrets etc and if they do - I will launch a mother fuckin Jihad on their ass; you get the idea.

I don't think outsourcing everything is going to be a realiable or long term option, so it's probably better to open an office and get people in office, trained or untrained. Training them means they'll know EXACTLY how to do shit.

Don't over work them or leech them easier, it will just make them less productive. Relax, have a good work enviroment and don't be harsh with pay either. They'll jump on another offer or even into another trade if they can make a better wage and do significantly less work. Set them goals and bonuses if they are met etc.
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Your signature makes every thread NSFW..
 
Sohan said:
I'm not out sourcing shit, I'm opening an office and having all the staff work in the office. I'll train them if need be, which will help lock them in at a lower rate possibly. This is something you should look at, in depth. Being in an office and explaining something is gonna be a lot easier.
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if i ever hired people, i would definitely not have an office. virtual companies can work quite well. take the hive for example. an entirely virtual company that created singlesnet.
 
having people in the same office has a ton of advantages - you can save money with virtual offices, but you cannot replicate what a good team can do together. This industry moves so fast, it is challenging enough to stay on the same page when you are together - being aonly connected via IM, email and an occasional phone call is much more difficult.
 
In regards to your 'stealing' theory. All my eployees will have to sign an NDA and CNC. This will stop them talking about our in-house shit and ideas/secrets etc and if they do - I will launch a mother fuckin Jihad on their ass; you get the idea.

I'm not meaning to throw this thread off-topic, but how do you enforce something like that? Must they allow their laptop or hosting accounts (or whatever) be available for inspection if copying is suspected?

Wouldn't it be possible for one of them... using the name and credit-card of a close trusted relative who doesn't have the same last name... to sign up for the same offers and then setup domains/hosting/adwords accounts, and run "similar" (not directly cut & pasted) campaigns?
 
Actually keeping everyone in the same office has its advantages and its disadvantages. If everyone is in the same office then cohesiveness of the team happens as well as quicker responses to issues/questions. The bad part is that it gives them time to work together and learn what your entire operation is. Outsourcing a few key tasks or having workers who work remotely would help reduce the chances of workers taking your entire campaign and running with it. Think Manhattan Project, US Gov contracted out work on key things and kept workers in the dark by keeping them separate. Very few people knew what the end result was.

Agree with other posters above about picking one or two ideas and that is it. Focus and attention is key. Creating your own business is really hard and not as easy as some books or people make it out to be. But the rewards are unbelievable.

good luck!
 
yup way too much going on. stick with one goal and achieve it, then don't just move on but think about how you can grow and build on that goal that you achieved. one of the hardest things for an entrepreneur to do is focus. Entrepreneurs tend to jump from idea to idea. When i started out this was my big mistake i went from an affiliate with a good site to a guy with multiple outsourced teams and a bunch of in house guys building like 5 different projects from a clustering search engine to a social media site. I sat down one day and wrote a to do list and a not to do list i put both on my refrigerator and every morning i read both. The to do list was all about focusing on my best project and the not to do list started with " say no to good ideas" it worked out and I got one really awesome business out of it. I learned from that and have been ultra focused ever since.

looking at your ideas:

-becoming a merchant (white labels, info products, or full scale physical products including buying a factory in china or something)

-Becoming a traffic source.

-Becoming a cpa Network.

-Training startup affiliates for rev share.

These are all over the place and all big! I can tell you the CPA network idea that is a full time gig and i can't see how anyone could do that (the right way) and also these other things.

Also training start-up affiliates - another good idea. But you really need to be a recognized leader in the affiliate space before you offer that.

Out of all your ideas - I like the merchant thing with your own product, that is a huge margin business.

Good luck.
 
Get your ass out of bed and work on a desk and be really productive. ;) Then set priorities for your goals and start working towards them. You can easily outsource coding and design. After that if you really want to grow to your ideas - pick up the office idea above and see if that would work for you. You have to scale your business appropriately.
 
A Key point is the stealing ideas part. Be VERY careful who u share your ideas with. I once told my boss an idea I had and then next week I was out the door looking for a job. I kept in touch with some co-workers and heard he was bragging how much money he was making and he doesn't need this job anymore. OK, sorry for venting but your right about that.
 
PlexiMarshall said:
In regards to your 'stealing' theory. All my eployees will have to sign an NDA and CNC. This will stop them talking about our in-house shit and ideas/secrets etc and if they do - I will launch a mother fuckin Jihad on their ass; you get the idea.

I'm not meaning to throw this thread off-topic, but how do you enforce something like that? Must they allow their laptop or hosting accounts (or whatever) be available for inspection if copying is suspected?

Wouldn't it be possible for one of them... using the name and credit-card of a close trusted relative who doesn't have the same last name... to sign up for the same offers and then setup domains/hosting/adwords accounts, and run "similar" (not directly cut & pasted) campaigns?
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Yes, they could do this. However, after signing a NDA if they were caught doing this then all the profits would be given to the company.
 
marketer23 said:
A Key point is the stealing ideas part. Be VERY careful who u share your ideas with. I once told my boss an idea I had and then next week I was out the door looking for a job. I kept in touch with some co-workers and heard he was bragging how much money he was making and he doesn't need this job anymore. OK, sorry for venting but your right about that.
Click to expand...
My favorite one is when the boss repeats your "stupid fucking idea" back to you a week later, like he just thought of it.

My one Boss did that all the time. I never got credit for anything.

So I just started telling him really lousy ideas. It was funny listening to him repeat the most assinine shit, trying to make it sound like he was a genius for regurgitating my BS.
 
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