The recipe for a $200K per year job

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Designing a page for your client could be relatively easy. Again, make a process, document said process then use verbatim.

There are many sites that offer free templates for use. freecsstemplates.com is the first that comes to mind. Hell you can even buy those flashy templates and outsource the editing of them. The bottleneck here is in the client side information gathering and/or copy writing. So be very specific on your terms.
 


Firstly, I would like to say thank you to everyone who's contributed to this thread. I've been toying with a similar idea about targeting local business and this thread really convinced me to dive it. I do, however, have a few questions.

#1 - Is it better to have one site with niches and each niches with subniches? For example, citydomain.com is the mastersite. Citydomain.com/restaurants is the restaurant niche and citydomain.com/restaurants/chineesefood is the subniche you sell to a chineese restaurant. Would you take this method and repeat it (citydomain/restaurants/italianfood; other niches - citydomain.com/auto/brakerepair etc)? Or would you divide it up more into different websites; cityrestaurants.com/chineesefood & cityrestaurants.com/italianfood & cityautorepair.com/brakerepair?

So, which is better - citysite.com/niche1/page-you-sell & citysite.com/niche2/another-page-you-sell OR cityniche1.com/page-you-sell & cityniche2.com/page-you-sell?

#2 - I'm not a great salesman when it comes to face-to-face or cold calling. However, I'm a decent writer and I think I'd be good as marketing the techniques on my website or through snailmail. Should I expect to get much sucess through contacting the businesses online and through the mail, or is direct vocal contact a must?

#3 - When creating my main site that explains what my company does, would it be unwise to limit it to a specific city (like, having the city name in the domain)?

Thanks!

Thanks again!
 
DanielQ:

#1 - Based on discussions in here either method is fine. You could actually do both strategies and then cross link your sites for added fodder. Based on some things I have read, google loves URLs that contain keywords. So having URLs that are descriptive of what you are selling may be beneficial. Just know that when you advertise you do not want people to try and remember www.citynamebestrestaurants.com/chinese. Too long for the common man to remember. A thought is to take a short name for your local directory and put the long niche specific URLs on your local directory site.

#2 - Mailers work but there needs to be a due date attached. Like act now by a certain date. Done a few mailer campigns and got 30% to 45% conversions. Think in person sales are going to need to be done until you get a buzz going in your local area.

#3 - I would not do a city unless it is a major city with a population a high population. You will also need to do market research on internet usage in that town.
 
Thanks for the reply, techustle.

#3 - what's considered high population these days? Over 100,000? 500,000? 1,000,000? Including/excluding metropolitan areas? :P

#4 - Most companies would rather deal with another company and not an individual, correct? So instead of running my site/business in my name I should register a business name to give myself more credibility. Good logic?
 
DanielQ said:
Thanks for the reply, techustle.

#3 - what's considered high population these days? Over 100,000? 500,000? 1,000,000? Including/excluding metropolitan areas? :P

#4 - Most companies would rather deal with another company and not an individual, correct? So instead of running my site/business in my name I should register a business name to give myself more credibility. Good logic?
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#4 - Get some kind of corporate structure if you plan on doing this in any serious manner.
 
There is no set number but the bigger the population the better your chance of success. So over 200k people.

And highly suggest you set-up some corp structure to protect your current assets. Note I am not a lawyer so go meet one and ask him what you should do.
 
techustle said:
#2 - Mailers work but there needs to be a due date attached. Like act now by a certain date. Done a few mailer campigns and got 30% to 45% conversions. Think in person sales are going to need to be done until you get a buzz going in your local area.
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Techhustle, could you explain these numbers? I don't think you mean that 30-45% of your mailings resulted in conversions do you? If so, that would be the best response rate ever. I'm thinking more like 1% would respond to the offer.
 
LotsOfZeros: Yes, I do mean 30% to 45%. I guess I should put a star next to the numbers. Here was the situation-

The mailers were 3.5inx5in yellow cards printed with black ink. So it was only two colors. The cards were sent to professional / vocational license holders about six weeks before their license was going to expire. The card stated the due date as well as offered a discount if it was done online.When the cards would drop our numbers would spike. It was amazing. Again this was a unique situation since something of great importance to the licensee is about to expire so they need to do something pronto. I know typically in the mailer industry a 3%-5% conversion is awesome. 1% I would re-think my cards and target audience.

After a few times of dropping the same color mailer, the licensees knew what the card was about as well as media. So it was almost as if the yellow card mailers was a branding tool. Newspapers would reference the yellow cards in their articles. But again doing online license renewals for a state agency is different than trying to sell a subscription to a business directory. The customer values their license more than a business directory access. So you need to ask yourself how do you overcome that situation.
 
^^^
Excellent. I do this in another niche. I scraped a government website for over 900,000 professional license records and their expire dates. We shotgun a mess of automated phone dialer calls at them. I knew from your post you had an angle :thumbsup:
 
kimboslice said:
Dude, you're not seeing the big picture.
Who cares what you call it.
Call it a site, blog, page, directory, chicken, whatever.

What you have is a "thing" that gets extremely targeted clicks.
Targeted clicks in a local market = $$$$$$.


Figure out how to get people who get to that "thing" to your paying customer.

Stop selling the "blog".
Sell the fact that you have a way to get targeted buyers sent their way.

You say you get 10 hits a day.. 10 people at the pizza joint who spend $10 bucks = $100 a day = $3,000 a month = $36,000 a year. Sell that to the pizza place owner...

If your blogs nothin pretty, just tell them you'll redirect all the clicks to there own personal homepage. If they don't have one, make them one.
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Many thanks, Kimbo. I will change my strategy a bit and make sure I create a value to the site so they will buy the site.
 
ponce007 said:
To test the theory I personally walked into about 100 different stores in New York city.
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I almost did the same thing but what I´ve done is creating a site before walking in the stores and offices

ponce007 said:
This is my finding:
1. Most have no clue what ranking could mean for their business.
After explaining, how useful it could be for them most just changed the topic.
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This is exactly what I´ve experienced across the ocean in Europe :)

ponce007 said:
CONCLUSION: Most just don't get the value of ranking.
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Same thoughts here..



ponce007 said:
BTW, I went to these businesses with a proposal to rank. I wasn't already ranking for the terms.


I think the success is in a mixture of:
a. Being able to rank.
b. Being able to design a nice site quickly.
c. Good at presentation/selling. Innovative ideas might be required.
d. Not giving up easily. It's a numbers game.

Of course, the list could go on.
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I agree with you bro. I have experienced the same and yes your assumption is correct; when you are ranked on page 1 they are suprised and they will have a better idea what it could mean to their business.

but still, they are not really convinced yet since my blog I've created is just a simple stupid, ugly looking fundamental basic seo thing. So yes, I think you are also right about being able to design a nice site quickly. Business owners wants to see a good looking design, that's one of the essential things in order to sell it to them. At least that's what I have experienced.

ponce007 said:
BTW, if anyone needs help with the design and ranking part please do feel free to conact me. I am a developer and SEO myself, but I also have an offshore team that can do the boring job.
The offshoring is helpful if you are doing large number of sites and don't have enough time. The cost is also lesser, of course.
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Well this is something I can offer too (SEO) except the design part. Perhaps I can outsource my clients for designing purposes to you.


PS. after you have visisted 100's of stores in NYC, what do you think the sales conversion is? Or non of them were willing to give a shot with you?
 
Tips and observations...

Don't get me wrong, the goal is a 1 call close, but it ain't always so..


Techniques that work:

Vertical specific landing page ==> email ==> postcard ==> phone call = profit!

or

Vertical specific landing page ==> email ==> postcard ==> phone call ==> follow up email ==> follow up postcard with value added bonus ==> follow up phone call with irresistible value added bonus = profit!

or

Yellow pages, database, salesgenie.com etc... ==> email ==> postcard ==> phone call = profit!


Yellow pages, database, salesgenie.com etc... ==> email ==> postcard ==> phone call ==> follow up email ==> follow up postcard with value added bonus ==> follow up phone call with irresistible value added bonus = profit!


If I don't close a sale, I tell the potential client that i'll call them back in a month to see how things are. They always agree. When I call back I tell them how much potential money they've lost the previous month by not signing up with us. I do this by counting the hits on the site and multiplying that by the amount a customer brings the potential client.

If they don't bite again, I tell them I'll call them back again in a month and I give them the cumulative amount of sales they've potentially lost since i 1rst made contact with them. I've only been doing this for about 5 months so I figure I'll call a person 3 months in a row. Then I'll just mail them a postcard each month and send them an email to try to get them on board eventually. Maybe I'll call them every 6 months after that...


I've even given someone a 2 week test run. I pumped up the PPC spend and he signed up with us after seeing the value and increase in traffic and sales. I still keep the PPC spend relatively high for this client since the monthly payment he makes covers the expense. Plus I plan on upselling him down the line anyway so i anticipate to make the real money on the back end. He's already referred me a couple of people as well already..

Be systematic about this. I looked into a few web based crm packages, but have yet to pull the trigger on one. I'm using ACT for follow up and scheduling simply because of my past sales experience using it.
You'd be amazed at how many people sign up after being contacted a few times, so you gotta have your contacts organized.

If you approach this as a real business, put some thought into your plan, and actually provide with people something of value you can make some serious bank.

The recurring billings are starting to add up nicely :) .

I also encourage anyone considering this to take some time studying sales techniques and tactics. I know a lot of people don't like to sell, but the truth is that you will have to sell if you plan on doing this.
If you don't like selling, this may not be for you.



Now, if I could just figure out how to make some real fucking money running cpa offers i'll be ok. Gettin close though...
 
techustle said:
The mailers were 3.5inx5in yellow cards printed with black ink. So it was only two colors. The cards were sent to professional / vocational license holders about six weeks before their license was going to expire. The card stated the due date as well as offered a discount if it was done online.
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Sorry to interrupt you, techhustle, but perhaps I've missed something. About what kind of "mailers", "cards" are you talking about? Do you mean the cards you send to potential clients?
 
Kimbo, your contribution to this thread is astonishing and I know I speak for others when I say thank you for that.

If I could make a few suggestions to elaborate on this thread....

kimboslice said:
Techniques that work:

Yellow pages, database, salesgenie.com etc... ==> email ==> postcard ==> phone call = profit!
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Scraping Gov/state.us sites for professional licenses, Yellow pages, database, salesgenie.com etc... ==> email ==> postcard ==> phone call = profit!

and try goleads.com - a family member of mine has used both and he claims that goleads.com is the same information (InfoUSA) at half the price and he also says they have a built-in CRM to use with the leads
 
Here's another piece of information that could be a great source of leads:
coffeenewsusa.com

I came across this at an IHOP near my house. After doing some checking, the businesses that advertise here pay around $150 per month for a small display ad in something not much larger than a flyer..... they are RIPE to be sold advertising to!

So go to coffeenewsusa.com/locations.html and locate where you can get a copy of this newspaper/flyer and start marketing to their advertising customers. This principle can be applied to all forms of advertising. Any time I get junk mail I keep it and am very happy to pull leads out of the weekly shopper junkmail bundles we get on Wednesdays. I basically created a little web form with a mysql database and will soon pay someone to do data entry out of pennysavers/local free weekly newpapers and the sort to build my database of potential customers.

The truth of the matter is, there are many businesses out there that have more money to spend on advertising and don't know where to put it.
 
LotsOfZeros said:
Here's another piece of information that could be a great source of leads:
coffeenewsusa.com

I came across this at an IHOP near my house. After doing some checking, the businesses that advertise here pay around $150 per month for a small display ad in something not much larger than a flyer..... they are RIPE to be sold advertising to!

So go to coffeenewsusa.com/locations.html and locate where you can get a copy of this newspaper/flyer and start marketing to their advertising customers. This principle can be applied to all forms of advertising. Any time I get junk mail I keep it and am very happy to pull leads out of the weekly shopper junkmail bundles we get on Wednesdays. I basically created a little web form with a mysql database and will soon pay someone to do data entry out of pennysavers/local free weekly newpapers and the sort to build my database of potential customers.

The truth of the matter is, there are many businesses out there that have more money to spend on advertising and don't know where to put it.
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Great idea. Those folks are already programed to pay that monthly expense. Boo ya.
 
I just happened to stumble upon this when I was researching for a good company name for my service.


its proof that there's a shitload of money to be made doing this(although Vladi and kimbo should be enough evidence)...I'm working on this now and will report back soon when I have everything together
 
Does anyone know where I can find a manual for wordpress mu? If not a manual then something that will walk me through it step by step, how it works etc. I have searched and cant find one.

I am very familiar with wordpress but, and while MU looks confusing, it looks perfect for this.

Great ideas everyone!
 
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