Newbie introduction - and my plan

[klublok]

Hi guys

I have been lurking for a couple of weeks now and thought I would break my silence and introduce myself.

Last week the company I have been slaving for told me that I will be retrenched at the end of June. The funny thing is that I am not upset – rather I see this as the push that I needed to go out on my own. They are giving me 6 months pay, plus I have about 6 months in savings so that gives me a year to get my firm up and running.

I have been toying with the online idea for a while now – but have been too busy to really get into it. I am a lawyer in Australia, and after doing some research I found that not many lawyers venture online to get clients.

I hope I can learn from you (and someday return the favour to others).

So here is my plan (I was hoping you guys could provide me with some guidance please):

The niche

My niche is estate planning, and there are two or three websites online that offers DIY wills for around $20 - $30 each. After some further digging I find that one of them is not a law firm. The others offer some very simplistic wills that are quite inflexible.

I am going to offer visitors the ability to do their wills online for free. My will would be much better than the ones currently available and I would be providing step by step instructions on how to complete their will online. Visitors would have the ability to print out their wills and I will be providing info on how to make the will legal.

After studying this site, I know that I need to build a list, so the free will is my bait to collect their email addresses.

Making money

The first point of making money for me would be the binding and printing of the wills. Most courts in Australia would want to see bound wills on probate – otherwise there are all these procedures (headaches) of proving each page of the will is legitimate. This (theoretically) requires no input from me as the will would be emailed to a commercial printer to be printed, bound and sent to the customer.

I have also written a report on how people have legitimately cut unwanted people from their wills, minimize the tax on their estates and protect their children’s inheritance from divorce settlements and bankruptcy creditors. The report will also contain common traps that people often forget when they are organizing their affairs. I am planning to sell this as an upsell.

Then I plan to offer a service to check visitors’ wills to make sure they have done it correctly. Also there is my main service of doing the entire estate planning (where I aim to make most of my money).

The marketing plan

My friend has kindly offered to build my website for free since I know nothing about web design, building etc. He is also going to optimized it for me as well.

The main thrust of my online marketing effort would be article marketing. From my experience working at law firms, getting lawyers to write articles is like trying to put a 4 year old to sleep after giving him a packet of lollies. So I plan to have 30 articles written and then submit one a day to the leading article directories (I plan to outsource these, so if anyone can suggest someone good, please let me know). This is going to be on-going as well. The reason why I am outsourcing is because I want to concentrate my time and effort in doing the high value work of estate planning (I am already receiving on-going referrals from a couple of clients who knows I am leaving).

I also plan to do a press release announcing the site and my offer of free wills.

I am not aware of any forums so that would not work. I registered on twitter (but not sure how that would help at this stage, I will research the forum a bit more).

Hopefully with continued efforts of my online marketing efforts, I would be able to generate some passive income as well as continuing client work!

I am sure to have lots of questions, so hopefully I won’t be too annoying!

Jeff

[mpeters7]

Sounds like an ingenious niche.

Have you considered charging up front for the will service (printing included) and offering the report for free as list bait? I would be concerned that once the customer has a free will in their possession, they could just print it themselves.

Is their any liability on your part if something gets screwed up and you are seen as offering legal advice?

As for forums, you can always check The largest Message Boards and Forums on the web!. There's also grandparents.com and the AARP site. Work backwards and imagine your typical estate planning client and then think of the search terms that would lead to where they hang out -- as well as how they will find your site.

[Sonni]

Sounds like you have a good plan I wish you the best with it. Welcome to the forum.
Sonni

[klublok]

Originally Posted by mpeters7

Sounds like an ingenious niche.

Have you considered charging up front for the will service (printing included) and offering the report for free as list bait? I would be concerned that once the customer has a free will in their possession, they could just print it themselves.

Is their any liability on your part if something gets screwed up and you are seen as offering legal advice?

As for forums, you can always check. There's also grandparents.com and the AARP site. Work backwards and imagine your typical estate planning client and then think of the search terms that would lead to where they hang out -- as well as how they will find your site.

Hey

Thanks for your pointers!

I did think about charging up front. But I thought about that for a little while (about 2 months actually) and decided against it. The reason for not charging is because the value of my services is not in the actual document itself - it is in the experience and the strategies that I could put in place.

I plan to put a lot of case studies on my site to make people aware of the potential traps they may not be aware (to be honest a lot of lawyers are not aware!) which will hopefully get some upsells

[klublok]

Hey AnarchyAds

Interesting angle, never thought of that! Something to work on.

Thanks!

[grumpyb]

I think its a great Idea
You need to concentrate on how to make sales and have that as the focus of the venture. The on line bit comes second ( IMHO)
Being on page 1 of google for your niche is as simple as paying adwords for it ( i have one site that is highly profitable running on ad words ) getting organic traffic is a harder proposition but is worthwhile.
Making your website user freindly and ensuring that it is esy to BUY NOW is of vital importance so whilst your freind is trying to help you if he/she is not in sales and marketing then you may not end up with a good selling site, which in the end is a false economy.
Lots of web designers make websites that are pretty and have hundreds of bells and whistles BUT they dont sell anything.
Good Luck and if I can help send me a message

[Paul Buckley]

You come to internet marketing far better prepared than the averag newbie. Welcome to the forum.

You have a USP (Unique Selling Point) in that you ARE qualified to offer legal advice. Plaster your picture and credentials all over your 'About' page.

You've wisely decided to stick to your knitting, the law, and outsource the creation and optimization of your website.

I think you'll do well.