Andrew Cavanagh's post bounced around in my brain all night

4 replies
Hi All,

I went back to sleep after reading and posting in a thread titled "Where's the product."

A post in the same thread made by Andrew Cavanagh didn't impact me until I went back to sleep and dreamed about it off and on.

A few minutes ago I started typing another post in that thread and by the time I got to the end of my post I realized I should take it to a new thread as I really got off topic by the end. So here it is as I spoke to Andrew after his comments.

Andrew,

What you said below is so true. What I highlighted in red is profoundly true. If we could tear ourselves away from the PC long enough we would find that to be the case.

I "sold" (not literally sold, no money changed hands, but, convinced) a young man who works for a corporation that sells both online and offline nationwide to start an article writing/marketing campaign. (until now their Internet Marketing efforts were limited to telling their phone-in customers about their website where orders could be placed)

I didn't want to take on a large article writing assignment so I took about 3 hours and explained to the young man about article marketing.

His company is now in the process of hiring college students to work in-house at $10 an hour to crank out articles.

The company heads don't even know I exist and the young man I taught is a hero to them...

The young man I told about article marketing and how to do it, presented it to upper management. He was immediately given a raise and an Internet marketing department was created in the company. He was put in charge of the whole operation. The hiring, supervising students and article submission.

Listening to him talk I get the impression that the heads of this company did not have a clue about anything having to do with Internet marketing other than putting up a website and telling everyone they talked and shipped to about it.

He made statements to me like "I was an instant hero." "Man George you could have made a lot of money from my company," and "They think I'm a genius."

They already reached the front page of Google and are only two or three links below their nearest competitor who has been doing Internet Marketing for a few years.

Another thing, I visited a company who paid $100,000 for a website and 6 months fees for consulting. At the time I felt so inadequate that I wouldn't think of charging that much. It's been over a year and I've read a lot about outsourcing projects so even if I never do a project like that I know it's possible by using outsourcing. Looking at the $100,000 website I know I could have had it built for $10,000. No I could never build a site like it but I could have outsourced it.

That is still another idea. Teach companies how to have in-house departments to outsource to places like elance and guru.com.

The amounts of money many of us quibble about to get jobs done for us is absolutely nothing for offline businesses.

We are on the outlook for $3 articles. Offline Corporations who we could show the benefits of article marketing would buy $30 articles by the hundreds if they could see bottom line results. Sometimes the "bottom line" is not money at all. Being on the front page of Google is a ego boost even to large company owners.

I've seen with my own eyes that big money is waiting for all of us in the bank accounts that belong to small businesses, medium businesses and large corporations, not necessarily from fellow Internet Marketers.

Then again there is nothing wrong with it if we buy each others information. I've learned something from every WSO I've ever purchased not to mention the tons of stuff I've purchased elsewhere.

In the mean time I guess it's easier to set behind the ol PC and repackage what we know. And on occasion when we do actually discover a great new method and share it at least we can make a dollar or two doing something we enjoy.

What I don't understand is the frustration some express regarding marketers marketing to marketers. As long as you know more than me and I know more than others our knowledge has a dollar value.

The fact that you can find it free on Google shouldn't make anyone bitter.

I can find the most delicious and juicy strawberries growing wild about 20 miles from my house. Due to time constraints and a lack of desire to drive 20 miles and pick strawberries I make a personal choice to buy them picked, washed and packaged from a store a block from my house.

Just because I can get the same product for free elsewhere, the store is not evil for buying large boxes of strawberries and repackaging them and making it easy for me to buy and I'm not stupid for going to the store to buy my strawberries. Although my neighbor who picks his own considers the store greedy for charging so much for the product he gets "free."

George Wright

Originally Posted by AndrewCavanagh View Post

The real power is in taking internet marketing strategies and applying them to other niches and other fields.

Over the years I've used internet marketing to sell health information products online and offline (including appearing for over 2 years on a show that fed to 40 commercial radio stations across Australia. I got onto that show be sending an email to someone. That's...a form of internet marketing!)

I've also helped many brick and mortar businesses not even vaguely related to internet marketing to make huge sales using internet marketing strategies.

And I made my living doing that for many years.

If you think the money in internet marketing is in selling reports and ebooks online you are really missing the boat.

There are a whole world of businesses out there you can help cash in with the internet marketing knowledge you have.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh
#andrew #bounced #brain #cavanagh #night #post
  • Profile picture of the author Frank Bruno
    George what a masterful insight!

    A lot of markers online really do get tunnel vision. We only know our own little world and don't realize what GoldMine we could be offering off-line businesses.

    People off-line that don't really do anything online, aren't doing anything online because they don't know how, don't have a clue.

    What would be considered everyday simple knowledge to us, would be a gold mine to others off-line.

    I also know this talking to relatives and friends and associates off-line, they get mesmerized when I start talking about Internet marketing. Even though they have no clue they can understand the potential and can see the results based on my lifestyle.

    A real eye-opener George!

    Frank Bruno
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  • Profile picture of the author Bishop81
    Great points! I live in a small town, and I'm sure that many of the businesses would jump all over the chance to get online (for starters), along with great rankings. I've started working on this by getting a domain name for a business directory, but unfortunately, that's all the farther I got there.
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    I'm tired of my signature... Deleted.

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  • Profile picture of the author jasonl70
    I managed a $200,000 project that took 2 web develpers 6 weeks to finish. It was simply deframing a companies existing site and integrating webtrends into it.

    regarding sites likeelance, etc.. good luck convincing any company to go that route! They aren't interested in scraping the bottom of the barrel for developers. A corporation is willing to pay PREMIUM rates for the benefit of reducing risk.

    Here's an example of this:

    As an independent contractor, I charged on average $85 per hour. Most corporations would not talk with me. They would give the contract to IBM for $250/hr, IBM would contract it out to "Company X" for $180/hr, and company X would turn around and contract it out to me for 2000 hours at $85/hr .

    side note: why would anyone with my skill set, and established abilities to deliver, ever work for pennies on the dollar on sites like elance? Capable programmers with marketable skills, who actually have a work ethic and can finish a task, are always in demand.
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    -Jason

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    • Profile picture of the author George Wright
      Hi Jason,

      In a way I agree with you and in another way I don't.

      Remember I was talking about everything from small businesses to large Corporations and everything in between.

      Consultants, programmers and web developers who make their living in the U.S.A. Europe and other inflated economy countries and must make USDs to survive are rightly (self preservation) quick to call others "the bottom of the barrel."

      I say rightly only because I understand the frustration of needing a certain amount of money and having it taken away by someone who under bids me on a project.

      I don't say rightly because they are right. Right is defined in the eye of the beholder. It's right for an elance programmer to feed his family by earning $10 an hour (to him anyway) just as it is right for a corporation to pay $1,000 an hour and not give the job to the cheap guy because the big corp thinks that guy is at the bottom of the barrel (to the corp anyway).

      Assuming for a moment that they really are the bottom of the barrel, a lot of companies don't even know there is a bottom of the barrel to scrape. They don't even know about a barrel. Without knowing they scrape it every day.

      Believe me I'm at the bottom of the barrel you talk about and some people are ecstatic when I walk into the room. "You know how to put up a website," "Come in, set down, how much money do you want?" "Now that you are finished with mine can you do one for my brother's-in-law company." "But, shhhh, charge him more and give me a little taste for getting you the job."

      All I'm saying is that being so unsure of my skills I opt for the easy to do brochure sites and sell them cheap. More than one of my customers have insisted on giving me more than what I charge. They have thrown in more money, $100 gift certs. a Laptop computer (I'm typing on it right now) $200 worth of dead chickens (no lie actual dead chickens. Oh yea they were BBQed) all in the effort to let me know they appreciate me. But...

      Some of them want more than just a simple site. That more could easily come from others of my bottom of the barrel friends who know more than me.

      Now I know for SURE there are people on elance etc. who could do better sites than me and I could hook them up with my type of clients, either directly or me being the muddle man, make that middle man.

      I said most of the above under the assumption that sites like elance only provide bottom of the barrel freelancers. Greater minds than mine who are more successful than I will ever be, laugh all the way to the bank about that false assumption.

      George Wright

      Originally Posted by jasonl70 View Post

      I managed a $200,000 project that took 2 web develpers 6 weeks to finish. It was simply deframing a companies existing site and integrating webtrends into it.

      regarding sites likeelance, etc.. good luck convincing any company to go that route! They aren't interested in scraping the bottom of the barrel for developers. A corporation is willing to pay PREMIUM rates for the benefit of reducing risk.

      Here's an example of this:

      As an independent contractor, I charged on average $85 per hour. Most corporations would not talk with me. They would give the contract to IBM for $250/hr, IBM would contract it out to "Company X" for $180/hr, and company X would turn around and contract it out to me for 2000 hours at $85/hr .

      side note: why would anyone with my skill set, and established abilities to deliver, ever work for pennies on the dollar on sites like elance? Capable programmers with marketable skills, who actually have a work ethic and can finish a task, are always in demand.
      Signature
      "The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book." Mickey Spillane
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