From 0 to 6 Figures - My Local Biz SEO Journal

When I logged on this morning I really didn't expect to see much in the way of responses here. Right now though I am actually quite speechless -- blown away would be a more accurate description -- by all the well wishes, sheer support and encouragement that all you guys have been offering.

I realise we are all busy working on our own projects and businesses so I just can't say thank-you enough for taking the time to post and for all the encouragement, tips and advice.

In my IM endeavours I'm something of a lone wolf and although I enjoy the challenge of going it solo it can also be an isolating experience. It's very motivating then just to connect and hear from other like minded business owners and entrepreneurs in this field such as yourselves. So thanks again.


I agree 100% about freeing oneself from the "magic bullet" mentality. Unfortunately it is something which is propagated ad nauseam in the IM and Biz Op niches. And let's face it, we are all prone to that kind of thinking from time to time. Sometimes more than others And as a marketing ploy it's probably sold untold millions of dollars worth of info products including WSOs.

When it comes to my business though, I've intentionally defined what I believe to be conservative and very realistic earning goals. As you wisely point out, hopefully in time I will be quickly replacing those goals with higher ones. That reminds me actually when as a teenager when I read Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography. What impressed me was that he was so single-mindedly focused on achieving his goals, and worked intensely on them each and every day that after several years he reached a point where he "sling-shotted" far beyond all his earlier goals. He described it like reaching some kind of maximum velocity where suddenly the gears shift and at that point the sheer current just sweeps you along.

Many successful people seem to say the same thing i.e. that when success and wealth finally arrive, they actually arrive fast. The trouble is people then fixate on the apparent "over-night" success which in reality has been years in the making. But coming back to your comment I hope to arrive at that point later on down the road where the gears shift and I'm then setting myself higher and more ambitious goals.

Congratulations there, with 2 clients under your belt you are already well ahead of me and making a great start. With regards to your comment about competition, well, as I mentioned in my first post I believe that this industry is very far from reaching saturation. For all the hundreds or thousands+ of internet marketers now doing local SEO there are tens or hundreds of thousands more small businesses out there globally who desperately need the services we provide. So no worries at all. The more the merrier actually!

Btw I was in Montreal a few years back and really enjoyed my time there. In the future I'll hopefully get a chance to see more of Quebec. Beautiful part of the world.

How long ago was this, and did you start in a competitive market, or a small small city? I am starting in a city of 35k, and my biggest fear is that even if I can get top rankings, this city wont bring enough traffic to charge anything significant. Did you ever have this problem, getting rankings but cant deliver enough leads for what client is paying?

Thanks

I agree. I'm only going to offer initially the kinds of services I know best and will then slowly expand from there. Otherwise I'm just to going to become scattered and spread myself too thin. So good advice.

I hear you. Actually I'm on very few WSO lists but I am on most of the big player's lists in the IM marketing arena. One of my gmail accounts is completely overloaded with emails from the Who's Who of IM. There was a time when I was caught up in all that but not any more. I'm much more focused now.

Okay, I'll keep that in mind. I guess my main concern with the $500 p/month services was overcommitting myself by taking on too much load for a much smaller profit margin. And if I were to commit to too many of these then I could easily see myself grinding my teeth with frustration down the track.

But so long as my services are directly proportional to price then that's fine. What I would do in that case is decide on what my time is worth and then break it down that way to make sure that I'm only doing x no. of hours for those jobs and no more. For example if my time is worth $40 p/h then for a $500 p/month service I want to be absolutely sure that I can offer everything agreed upon in under 12.5 hours.

I agree though that I can't be too picky in the beginning and I should take these initial jobs within reason. I've actually taken on board my first client for free and will mention that in my Day 2 post.

I do intend to ask my clients to take referral calls because I believe that to be incredibly helpful. I also want to ask clients from day 1 whether they would do a video testimonial as soon as they see results and are obviously happy with the service.

I'm seriously considering even offering steep discounts e.g. 50% off one month of services in exchange for a video testimonial. These will be worth their weight in gold as time goes by when I'm growing my business.

Thanks again Joe for all your advice and well wishes. Likewise all the best in your own business.

Glad to hear we have similar goals. We all create hurdles for ourself, it's just the nature of things. I'm sure a could win a lifetime achievement award for procrastination. I say that in jest but the reality is that I'm currently LIVING the consequences of that. Hence my goals and urgency to change that quickly. I've actually developed some powerful "shock" techniques for myself which have tremendously boosted my productivity. They have worked for me but might not work for everyone. At some point if I have the time I'd be happy to share them here.

@ Chris Cho -- Glad to hear you're doing well in your business. Please excuse my ignorance but why won't you be able to offer custom Facebook Fan Pages after March 30th?

That's exactly why there is still SO MUCH opportunity in local SEO. I'll talk about my first client in my next post but in doing the initial KW research I was stunned to see that the no. 1 competitor in this niche, who is ranked no. 1 for ALL the most competitive local phrases isn't even using title tags on their home page! It just says "home"! Nor are there using meta-tags and description tags with keywords.

So yes, the window is definitely wide open and there is a lot of opportunity here.

I'll basically know the range as to what I'll be charging but the actual price will most certainly depend on the client, the scope and what I feel I can charge them.

I'm planning just to figure out what the average lead is worth to a new client and then base my fee on that figure as well as how many leads I think I can get them each month.

Listen to this guy! I'm trying to break-through and get my 2nd client and I was hoping on gaining a new client in January & February. Reality is, I reached out to maybe 25 prospects [which took me a lot of time] in January and gave up when I didn't hear back.

Back on that horsey again. I've been touching base with Ryan here and he has been helping me tremendously. This week, I'm starting to get back into the swing of things again. I'll have contacted 7 businesses by tomorrow. Not a lot at all, I know.

Gearing up and doing a good amount of prep work this weekend. Getting that handful of clients when starting up seems to be the hardest part for me so far but I need to stop going through my discouragement periods. I wasted a whole month where I could have contacted a good # of prospects.

Time.. something you can't get back. Don't waste it. PM me and maybe we can Skype and keep each other on target...?

Good Point.

My experience: Just do a good enough job and they will refer you without asking!

When 1 of my clients referred me off "I said Thanks for the referral, if they turn into a client, I will give you a %50-100% off next month, depending on the scope of work set up fee, etc." - He was so excited, he literally works part-time for me now referring me to everyone.

Ryan

Quick confession to make. I've never really owned or run my own business. I certainly don't have much experiencing in the way of hiring and firing people so the world of outsourcing is new to me. Seeing just how much time I have wasted already on tasks that could easily have been outsourced I'm starting to realise that outsourcing is really one of the key elements to becoming successful in this business. But I'm also finding that it's not so easy either.

One of the core packages I intend to offer in my own business is video. I want to offer differently priced packages which include the creation and distribution of x no. of videos per month along with other SEO services. As I'm not living in the city/country where I'm targeting clients I have to outsource the production/editing side of things. In other words I need to find a good and reliable video guy or girl who offers competitive rates and who can get the job done in a timely manner.

I pitched the video idea to my present (initial) client who really liked the idea so I went about looking for someone to shoot and edit the videos. My client has a colleague who recommended a video person to them and he passed those details on to me and so I got in touch. I sent a job description via email covering the entire scope of work and we then agreed on a price. Then I soon found myself with a major headache.

First we confirmed a date for the shoot which was to be two weeks later. This is because my client is extremely busy and he only had a small window of time on that date to shoot the videos. Then a few days before the shoot the video guy sends me an email asking if we can post-pone the shoot and make it a week later (so that would mean 3 weeks would have elapsed) because he now realises that he has double-booked.

My gut instinct at this point was to drop this guy and find someone else and I sent him a polite email saying that I couldn't re-schedule at this point in time and that my client who is very busy had already committed to this day and time. I mentioned that if he could no longer do the job that's fine but to please let me know so I could find someone else. He immediately replied asking me not to do that saying that he'd now find a way to make it work!

On a positive note he did turn up on time on the day of the shoot and all the footage was shot. But that's when the real problems started to arise. Keep in mind that this was a very small scale job and there was little if any real editing to actually do. It's something that I could have done myself in a couple of hours flat and I'm not an experienced video editor. I had actually considered hiring this person just to shoot the footage and then have it sent to me but it would have taken up to 2 weeks to arrive and I didn't want to lose that amount of time. The individual I hired shot the footage on a Monday and told me that the editing would be done by that same weekend. Considering that the editing could be done in a single afternoon at most this seemed fair enough.

So the weekend arrives and I haven't heard a thing. I sent an email and tried to call but no answer. Then THAT ENTIRE NEXT WEEK GOES BY and all my follow-up emails and calls go unanswered. Eventually I received an email back saying that there was a family emergency but that the videos would get done by the end of this (now second) week. To cut a long and frustrating story short A WHOLE ENTIRE MONTH went by before I saw just a single draft edit of one of the videos! He avoided answering my calls during this time and each sporadic email gave a new excuse.

It was also when I saw that first clip that I realised this individual couldn't even follow simple instructions. Believe it or not I had to re-edit his clips myself and send those back to him so he could just follow along. It was then another 10 days or so before I received all the videos. So the whole thing took over 6 weeks in total. It's still actually not finished because he just needs to change one letter of text on a title slide (I can't because I don't have the original footage) on one of the videos. I sent him an email several days ago now asking him to do this and also asking him for the invoice so I can pay him. He STILL hasn't replied.

Lesson Learned:

I am the business owner here so I have to take responsibility. I'm complaining yes but I have to keep in mind that there is a learning curve when it comes to outsourcing. I'm new to hiring and firing people so I have to learn the ropes. I'm a little wiser now and in future will check demo reels and even call past clients before doing business with someone.

I just immediately accepted a recommendation from a client's colleague without even doing my own due diligence and this was a stupid thing to do. And ultimately I paid the price.

Some problems right now:

The predicament I'm now in is that my business model is dependent upon video and I still need to find a good video person. I've already utilised my present client's small video budget and I'm going to be hard-pressed to talk them in to doing more videos so soon after just so that I can find the right person to work with.

And especially because of what has transpired I'm very weary to try and sell a video package right now to a new client only to then hire someone "blind" again with no guarantee that the job will get done properly. If I had done that now with a paying client I would have shot myself in the foot as over a month would have elapsed before the client ever laid eyes on a single video. And my goal is to have all the sites including social media sites up and running and the videos distributed within a few weeks after shooting the initial footage.

I'm also starting to see that outsourcing anything does take some time. I found a design person on the Digital Point Forums who does simple logos for $20. Of course these are very simple and running a professional logo design competition on a crowd-sourcing site can start at $300. But I wanted to get a place-holder logo in the meantime, an e-cover graphic as well as a custom design done for some opt-in forms.

This is how the timing is panning out:

8th March - PM designer and ask if they are available for work
9th March - Get PM back saying yes. I then send job description and ask for quote.
12th March - Get PM back saying job description is clear and receive quote. PM back asking to start work.
15th March - Receive sample draft of logo. I then reply with some suggestions.
16th March - waiting for reply.

So basically this has taken 9 days so far from initial contact to receive a sample version of a $20 logo. I'm estimating that another week will go by before the entire job is completed. Would this be a normal amount of time for something like this?

Wow, Rus, you constantly enlighten me, by bringing up things we already know, but cant hear enough of and most of us dont practice them enough. Repetition is mastery and your message is consistent. Keep driving it home.

Great point ! I had this problem of not charging enough in the beginning. As I got more clients and needed to outsource certain tasks/jobs there wasn't enough margin in it. Needless to say, I did eventually get to a price point that made sense and I could replace myself.

What ever happened to this guy's adventure?..

We started same business at the same time (about 1y ago), except he seems to have quit, or simply stopped updating the forum..

Anyways maybe this post will revive his interest and give us an update, good or bad.

Whats funny is his outsourcing horror story, I went through very similar difficulties, just never stopped pushing (and fired 4 guys during the process) before finally finding an excellent web designer!

Well you definitely have a point. And you say this because we have seen it time and time again. Its like the friend who says for the 17th time "Im stopped smoking!", you're like "hooray*", but inside you are so convinced they will pull through the hard times, its just the sad truth..

Anyways, like I said I started following this thread because at almost the EXACT same time last year when this guy started, I also started a local SEO business, and I am proud to say that I have dozens of clients, am INCORPORATED, and have just quit my day job LAST WEEK! I was a web developer for another company the whole time.

It was hard, I had to push through a lot of outsourcing problems, client wanting more then you originally planned on offering etc. Basically just going through all the "cycles" once or twice and adjust. But at the end of the day... I now own a profitable, REAL business! And I expect this second year to really be multiple times better then the first year since I now have worked out lost of the "first cycle" problems.


Hope maybe my story can encourage a few of you, especially in this "un-encouraging", dead thread..


Gilbert