First Post, How would you start OVER from scratch?
Hi, I'm new here but I've done IM before and would like to know how you would do things if you were starting over from scratch.
I've done SEO, Link building, Affiliate Marketing, Sold ebooks, and got cold feet when I finally started making serious money because I was selling things that you're not supposed to sell in the USA. I dropped everything and haven't done IM in a little less than 2 years. I missed IM so I decided to help a friend market her local business and now I am being overwhelmed with referals. I have had to decline customers because I was not prepared for the demand and did not have a portfolio. I'd appreciate some input on my business plan.
The general plan:
- Focus on my current clients to build a portfolio.
- Promote my own local sites and rent out the phone number/contact information section of the site. Sell these networks of link pyramids and connected social media profiles if possible. Also do local workshops on IM for local businesses. I may make more money by focusing on the workshops.
- After I have a mixed portfolio of clients sites and my own networks, I can promote my local seo business by giving people massive referal fees
- Work on a monthly retainer, minumum of six month contract to promote local businesses, while also renting out the use of my own sites.
- Use my income to bootstrap my own brick-and-mortar businesses and mobile apps that I have ideas about.
I'm not sure, but I think I need to quickly form a "Holding Company" to control the diverse businesses I am getting into. That will make it much easier to partner with people on only some businesses, and also make it simpler to sell them and exit those businesses completely.
I intend to work from home to begin with. I rent a room in a 6-room McMansion. We have a massive formal dining room with 10 seats that I can use as a conference room. We have a brand new fully soundproofed recording studio in the basement. My landlord is a professional chef who will cater meals for my groups if I hold workshops here. A company called ephricon (.com) looks like my primary local competitor. If anyone local wants to co-lo an office and share a secretary in Towson-Timonium, MD then I may eventually be interested. I checked out the office park where Zynga has an office, they have available offices, and it is pretty sweet -but I have just started on step 1.
I have a trusted, competent VA in the Phillipines who says she might want to do revenue sharing so I don't have to pay her hourly or up front. I'm thinking of putting xrumer on a cheap desktop PC at home and giving her access to it for runs. The way I've done this before is to give her remote access to my PC, then I made the desktop background a graphic that is actually instructions on how to acceess my VPN and proxies, and she runs all software through that. Also going to put scrapebox on an old tablet pc for her to access when needed. My first client is buying me a Macbook as payment for my first month of work. For the second month I will get a new PC and xrumer. This is cheap for them, tax-free for me, and gets me both new tools and a showpiece for my portfolio. Between that, Bookmarking Demon, and SEnukeX + my link pyramid architecture, I think I'm set.
If you were going to do something similar, and you were starting over from scratch, how would you do it differently from the way I have laid out my plan?
Add me on Google+. I also have invites if you haven't got one yet:
gplus.to/gabrielpark
