Need a little bit of guidance for 2015, would you help me? (pls) (4)
Need a little bit of guidance for 2015, would you help me? (pls)
Hi there!
As English is not my mother language I'm going to summarize what I have done and what I want to do:
2014:
- Run quite a bit of PPV traffic to affiliate offers, doing about ~2000$ monthly net revenue.
- Good offers get hit, I start losing winning campaigns, each time gets harder to get a good performing campaign and they're not very long lasting.
- Got fired because I expressed that I just wanted to work 9-5 and not 24/7
- Motivation plummets.
2015:
- Somehow I can keep a handful of profitable campaigns that pretty much run on autopilot. They generate about ~500-1000$ net revenue monthly.
- They're good to keep this as a hobbie, I can invest the money in "free" knowledge and tools.
- I have decided to stick to systems/strategies which focus on the long term.
- I have a background as a SEM specialist (Adwords, Bing Ads). The usual stuff for offline business, you know, not as crazy as your typical affiliate marketing day.
- Currently in three jobs selection processes, one of them seems to be for a really serious position.
- Really want to boost my current skillset/knowledge as it seems that this SEM specialist jobs are on the rise and it's not that hard to have a good profile (compared to a software developer for example). So far I've identified Google Analytics, Photoshop, Facebook Ads and Excel as areas I should put some effort.
Something I realized:
- One of the jobs was as a community manager. They want a guy to write articles on their blog and then keep the Facebook FanPage updated and everything running smoothly. They didn't know a thing about FB Ads "Likes Campaigns" and they really emphasized on the "likes" they earned in the last few months.
- It seems that for the average offline user I am kind of a demi-god in terms of Online Marketing, and I can't get over 100$ profit daily online, go figure...
So here are my ideas to win some money offline-online:
- Offline, using Facebook Ads: target "small business owners" in my local area. Provide a low cost service that I could outsource easily. Fanpage creation and management. Not so sure on this as it seems time consuming but it is recurring income.
- Online, using Facebook Ads: target people with special events (wedding, having a baby) or Facebook Page Administrators in my country. Look for a service that I could outsource easily (logo creation, cover design). Seems easy to outsource and if priced correctly maybe they will sold well, not recurring income I guess.
- Online: revenue share for gambling, dating, casino offers. I have read this and this posts and it seems like a good thing to focus.
- Offline, using Adwords: it seems that there is a lot of people looking to buy properties in my area. I have created a simple Wordpress site that can be used as a template for single property listings. Commisions could be brutal on this one, not sure about how I could get the properties to advertise (I tried with real estate salespeople and they don't want to hear about a cooperation between an "Internet Hippie").
Why I'm creating this thread:
- Because my head is a mess right now and I need some people to talk about these things. I can't talk about this with my friends or family because they don't have a clue (I'm their "Online Marketer" demi-god 
)
- Maybe someone will chime in and show me an angle that I haven't thought of.
I have a budget of about 10.000$ and I'm also open to JVs, Masterminds or whatever.
Thanks for reading,
Bimoca.
Your first idea of helping local companies. Is a solid one. But you 100% need to outsource some of the work. You also need to 100000% pre package your offerings and if they want extra support then charge by the hour. From my experience small business want a million dollars worth of service for $500.
Targeting businesses is a very good idea - although as MrGreen says, beware that many businesses will expect enterprise-grade service for gas-station prices.
I'd expand on that and strongly suggest that you price yourself at the high end of the market for whatever you're doing. Don't compete on price - it attracts pathological customers. If you position yourself at the high end and deliver quality appropriate to that (which doesn't have to be world-class - just responsive, friendly, and professional) you'll build higher profit margins and attract a higher class of customer.
Brennan Dunn has written a lot of excellent guides, articles and courses for freelancers that are very applicable if you're packaging a fixed service too. Check his stuff out.
Special events business: this is a good idea too. There's a reason that "wedding videographer" is probably the most stable form of side-income for filmmakers, for example. The targeting's comparatively easy, the market's not terribly price sensitive and already in a buying mood. One point on your "no repeat income" thing - people have friends, and groups of friends tend to hit life events in waves. Word-of-mouth can be very powerful there.
Also, you can predict that someone who has gone through one experience recently (getting engaged, for example) might soon go through a couple of others (having a baby, getting married). There's a lot of potential for smart email marketing here.
Sounds like you've got some really solid ideas - looking forward to hearing how they come out!
I can definitely identify with your situation. Since you are a ppc expert, you may want to do some pay per call. Regarding the weddings industry, it's got it's pros and cons, as Caurmen mentioned the pros I will not repeat them, the cons are that you're going to be dealing with bridezillas very often. Before my life as an affiliate I used to run a photobooth company, no repeat customers in the wedding industry is a thing... Very few WOM goes on... At least here in Israel (and my service was top notch) still targeting customers on facebook based on their engagement status is sheer bliss... Highest response I have received for any campaign... Engaged couples are really responsive. Anyway, good luck sounds to me like you h
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