Accidental offline sale

12 replies
So I stop at my beloved coffee roaster yesterday to pick up 4 pounds of some Tanzanian Peaberry, and we started to talk about his business. He's a wholesaler, so selling less than 10 pounds to someone happens to only family & friends. He asked about the new venture I'm launching, and we discussed how things were going. He started to ask about what I thought about his site. We talked about his abysmal, static corporate brochureware, and I tossed some ideas to him. I actually sort of blew the top off his skull. He said that he's killing all his Yellow Pages advertising and trade press print. He asked if I would be willing to work with him on a performance basis. I told him that I would as long as he provides an incentive to induce list enrollment, and can be available once a month for a 1 hour webinar targeted to his end customer.

In exchange for that, I was willing to front a few "man days" worth of effort to translate into what will become a $10K a month or better contract covering everything from article marketing, SEO, site hosting & management, and eventually information product development & marketing - which I will own the rights because I fronted the effort. I will simply market to his customer base, coffee shop owners (about 4,000 strong), on a JV basis.
#accidental #offline #sale
  • Profile picture of the author Micheal Perkins
    Very cool. I've just started trying to crack the offline market. Hoping to get some work from it soon.
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  • Profile picture of the author activetrader
    Very cool! Congrats! It's time to branch out into an offline business. Also, you just reminded me I have to call this guy who has been asking me for weeks to do some work on the website for his sprinkler system business
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    Me

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  • Profile picture of the author GoGetta
    Awesome Michael, It really does show the simplicity in this offline world and how effectively 1 job can have great rewards! ; )

    Awesome Job!!

    GoGetta
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  • Profile picture of the author MichaelHiles
    In all fairness, I've been doing web dev for 15 years. ;-) Programming professionally for 24.

    I've done stuff for P&G, Siemens Business Communications, Chrysler, and Reynolds & Reynolds, Cox Media, Val-Pak, some big guys. Many, many, many little ones as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author ideasuniversity
    This is cool. I m doing a seminar for my friends on Sunday on what IM is all about.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonl70
    I have a similar arrangment with a couple clients.. you have to have a really good relationship with them to be able to verify sales you generate, or else be able to track email leads against their customer database (if the have one).

    Also, get it in writing.. I'm getting shafted about 7k a month from a client. I only do 'pay for performance' for friends and family, so I never got contracts
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    -Jason

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  • Profile picture of the author Droopy Dawg
    Good stuff Mike... good luck with the venture... sounds like this guy's business is about to go thru the roof!
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Whitrod
    Hey Michael,
    I'm interested to hear how your go. Especially if you develop an info product. The coffee shops in Australia are predominately owner/occupier. It's a huge market. One of my clients is in coffee bean wholesale. I introduced him to a similar concept 12 months ago, but as a small operater he didn't think he was ready for such gorilla concepts. And I didn't think it was worth pushing him on it.
    Good luck to you.
    Chris
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    • Profile picture of the author MichaelHiles
      Originally Posted by jasonl70 View Post

      I have a similar arrangment with a couple clients.. you have to have a really good relationship with them to be able to verify sales you generate, or else be able to track email leads against their customer database (if the have one).

      Also, get it in writing.. I'm getting shafted about 7k a month from a client. I only do 'pay for performance' for friends and family, so I never got contracts
      I don't lift a finger without a contract. Strong fences make good neighbors. I think we can agree on some analyticals that make sense for payment basis -- since the focus is list building and we're going after a very targeted prospect, I am thinking that step 1 is to charge them on a per opt-in basis for the list.

      Of course, hosting fees to live in my rack at Level 3...

      After we get rolling with the info product side, I would revshare.

      Originally Posted by Chris Whitrod View Post

      Hey Michael,
      I'm interested to hear how your go. Especially if you develop an info product. The coffee shops in Australia are predominately owner/occupier. It's a huge market. One of my clients is in coffee bean wholesale. I introduced him to a similar concept 12 months ago, but as a small operater he didn't think he was ready for such gorilla concepts. And I didn't think it was worth pushing him on it.
      Good luck to you.
      Chris
      Chris, I friended you. I will definately keep in touch. These guys are a plethora of information about running a successful shop, because they have access to so many of them and can extract the best practices for busines ops.
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  • Profile picture of the author Hackbridge
    I have been wanting to do some offline work for ages and on Saturday I was able to approach a guy who was cutting back the tree in my neighbours garden and talked about creating a website for him.

    I've posted on the forum about it but need some advice how to take it forward, and some more. His business partner is also interested so it's an opportunity for me (first time ever) to create a website for someone which I hope will lead to many more.

    Brian
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