In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Hello everyone,

I just bought a well known mobile site creating software, Mobi-o-Matic, which I intend to use in order to create mobile sites for offline businesses. Of course, with my luck, the software will either turn out to be impossible to figure out without a degree from MIT, or the mobile sites I create with it will be of inferior quality - as compared to what others who are experienced in this field can turn out.

So, some of the things that I'm wondering, and your insights into them would be very welcome, are, is it still possible to make money creating these mobile sites, or has this all been taken over and saturated by more experienced factions - meaning web and graphic designers?

Also, if there's still an outside chance that, even at this juncture, I could venture into the field and sell some of these, is Mobi-o-Matic a good weapon of choice for this task? On the surface, it appears to be easy to figure out, almost push button easy, without any coding knowledge required (and, this is a vital feature for me). But, I could be all wrong about it. Any input about this software specifically, good or bad?

Thanks for any help.

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

I don't do it at all but have met many people who do quite well doing it! Not sure it's as scalable as other models, but it's absolutely a feasible model! Don't know anything about the mobi-o-matic though :(

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

You should be able to sell mobile websites, just start small and approach local businesses or people you know to start with and show them what their competitors are doing

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

i tried, i had a prof website (trust me)

I contacted over 100 local business, maybe 10-20 with an pre-made post website..

Like -> Hi i saw your website and visited your resturant -> i made this pre-made -> are you interested..

I did not make a single dime, not saying their is no money there, because where their are a market there are money..

But i will never do that again, i spend a month not earning shit..

Most other business i have tried, i have made a little amount..

But this was a walk in a desert..

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Kenster,

Many thanks for taking the time to reply to my query with your advice.

Jorge

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Thanks MobileMarketinMogul for taking time to offer me some encouragement; if anyone knows whether this model works, it would be someone who is involved in this market like you are.

I do not yet have enough posts to PM anybody, so if you don't mind too much, and it might help another Warrior who has a similar question, may I ask one more thing?

This is where I get confused. Say, I go ahead and learn to use Mobi-o-Matic with some degree of competence, and can make some marketable sites. When I complete one for a client, if I get lucky enough to get one, do I upload it to their server?

Or, do I host it myself? If I host it myself, what about questions about the domain? Will I need to buy one for them, and then, I guess, redirect it to their main site?

If you could share with us how you handle things once you have SOLD a mobile site to a client, it would be of extreme value. Can you do this, please? thanks

Jorge

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Hello steffanmax,

Your version of this is discouraging, to say the least. But, I thank you for giving me the other side of the coin. Maybe, you did not have good luck because of your location, not than I know where you reside, may not be a heavily populated area, and that there aren't that many potential clients there?

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

I always look for "WHAT DO PEOPLE WANT?"

For ex: Restaurants WANT....More Diners!

What do people who check into local Hotels/Motels WANT? A "directory" of where to eat. They are hungry and WANT...FOOR!

These Hungry Tourists/Travelers have;
1) a Mobile Device
2) Money

What if they could Find a "Restaurant Directory" ON THEIR PHONE?

Would restaurant owners WANT to be in the Directory?

You betcha!

Don Alm....

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Soooo how munch have you made by doing this??? Or are you just guessing ???

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

The Short answer is no, I havn't gone anywhere near this area, as I don't Consider it my strength

Applied Education is the difference

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Mobile is exploding as shown here: and the market is going to be MASSIVE.

But for now its still in its infancy like any other new advertising format. It takes a while for business owners to figure out how valuable it is. Its just like selling websites was when the internet started exploding.

I'm just getting started and so far, I've sent out 2 mockups to businesses I already have a relationship with (via e-mail) and sold 1 - 13 page mobile site for $500. Just a fluke? Maybe but I think the key is finding the right prospects....businesses that could really benefit like restaurants, locksmiths, etc.

And personally, I'm only going after ones that are already spending money on advertising/marketing and are doing well. So if I drive by a restaurant and its busy on Tuesday evening and I see they are already advertising and have a nice site, etc. they are a prime prospect.

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Yes, last year I started my business and started with mobile sites/social media, I then moved to responsive sites (bigger clients, 'bigger needs'). My company is a two men show now (third person is coming into play). My focus for 2013 will be back to mobile sites. (in combination with the responsive sites we are building now) The third person who will be working with us will be 100% mobile focused (design/building)

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Thanks midasman09,

You're giving me, or us, a perfect example of how to think outside the box.

Instead of doing what I'm doing, which is bumbling around in the dark, you're asking yourself a key question first before plunging in. Many thanks.

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Thanks you PaulintheSticks,

What you're sharing here gives me sufficient confidence and impetus to look upon this business as more than just a "maybe," and more like what I want to make it: an actual, workable, profitable business model. Many thanks to you.

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Hi Don, I agree, however, I would still have to find the first one willing to pay money for being in the directory.

Cheers
Dan Hower

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Thanks Social Guy,

I'm not sure what a responsive site is, but what you're telling us about how things are going for you with the mobile sites business is very inspirational, at least from my end.

You're not only making this work for you, but are obviously doing well. Much luck to you.

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

One way to get started is when you are out shopping or doing things you are doing anyway, see how their sites look on your mobile phone and show them. I've found those are the easiest sales.

Another way to get started is to make a few free ones for friends and try to get referrals from them. Even if you don't get referrals you'll have samples.

Once you get beyond these 2 methods it gets harder trying to get clients by phone, email, etc. I have a family member that is trying this and has tried different email, direct mail approaches, tried Linkedin (not cold calling) and has yet to find a system that works (time and cost effective and gets results)

The whole world maybe turning mobile but it can still be a tough sell to offline businesses.

Ron

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Thanks Ron,

Your honesty regarding how it seems to get harder, rather than easier to sell these to offline businesses, is appreciated.

As is, of course, your mention of the first two methods that actually work. It won't hurt me to work these two in at the outset; they both make a lot of sense.

Thanks,
Jorge

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

You're welcome. You can do it but it takes work but if you are commited you will get results. Take massive action and you'll get results more quickly and not get discouraged. But don't believe all the WSO's that claim a system that gets offline clients to beg you to help them. :rolleyes:

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Are you saying they won't throw money at you? :D

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Ha! I forgot that infamous phrase that's also used in so many WSO's :-)

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Answer to initial question: In truth, yes I have.

Reply to above post by steffanmax and anyone who may have been discouraged by the outlook it offers:

My experience was not all too different. Contacted well over 100 businesses in November, sold literally one, and for dirt cheap. The got a couple more in December. Then a few more in January. Now referrals are starting to come in as well.

Am I banking big time? Heck no, but each month is better than the last!

By the end of 2013 over 50% of all web traffic will be mobile. There is money to be made and I will get my chunk of it!!! :D

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

One of the quickest ways to fail in this business and any is to do exactly what you did. You approached 100 businesses and then just gave up?

Why waste all that hard work? The reality is most people do what you did and just give up when things get a little tough or don't work right away.

I would say get straight back on the horse and keep going. If you are not getting the results you want then take a step back and look at things. The chances are it's something you are doing or could be doing better that is causing the non-existent response rate.

So test and tweak things and you will get there. But if you give up the only thing you guarantee is that you will make no sales.

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

I once made $80.000+ in 3 months (no-work), and should I scrape a market for some small changes.. I will test everything until i hit the lottery again :D

There are money in everything, if you have the time..

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

This is a very informative and inspiring post. Thank you very much for this.

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

[QUOTE=steffanmax;7667864]I once made $80.000+ in 3 months (no-work) and how did you do this? Offline or online?

With regards to hosting, I would just get them to allow you to create a m. subdomain on their main site and this is where you would upload the mobile website files. If they are hosting it themselves then offer to migrate their website as it will allow you to keep in touch with them if they require anymore work

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Exactly! Quite often I've had to say to myself: "The journey's longer and harder than I thought it would be. But I've come this far, so I might as well go a little further."

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Great points...and I would suggest doing things a tad different as well...and this applied to any entrepreneurial venture...

Instead of just approaching 100, do them in batches

Approach 25 with a pitch or whatever. Then go back, study, and write down everything you learned, what worked and what didn't. Then do another 25, and do the same thing. Then the other 25 and then the last 25.

The SECRET

which isn't really a secret

is that you can make a damn lot of money with virtually ANY method or strategy ever discussed on this forum. It's not the method that's the problem, but your approach to implementing and learning it

It's a learning process that requires never quitting and always learning.

Rock on warriors!

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Selling mobile sites is easy

The main problem comes down to people approach and sales skills.

Before approaching businesses think about what you are going to say to them, how are you going to close them.
You also need to believe in it yourself and be very enthusiastic too!

If you don't have sales skills I would recommend reading a few books on the subject anything from Brian Tracy is really good

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Yep. Anyone who needs some tips on enhancing their sales skills needs to grab a notebook and a pen, shut down everything else, and spend a good solid hour absorbing and taking notes from this:

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

I'll chip in here with some different view that has been largely ignored when it comes to marketing to "offline" clients, be it selling mobile sites, or in the early days, selling websites/designs, or social media, or any other services.

And that is that you must treat it, set it up, and operate it as a local business yourself.

You need a local presence. You need a sales person to go out and get orders, you need a guy/gal to actually full the orders (i.e. making the sites), and then you need a guy/gal to do the support.

You will most likely fail if you:

1) Think you can do all these by yourself.
2) Think you will make enough money fast
3) Not prepared to stick it out for at least a good amount of time for the local businesses to take notice, while making no money
4) Think your "making mobile sites for local businesses" business is no different than any other local business, such as a restaurant, a shop, or a local dentist.

So, before you jump into any such business servicing local clients/businesses, you should use the above as your "yardstick" to see if you are going to make it or not.

The bottom line, you must be prepared, both mentally and financially, for a good stretch of dry spell, i.e. working hard without income, before your "own" local business can take off.

You can certainly shorten this dry spell by being well-funded to afford hiring good face-to-face salesperson(s) (if you are not one yourself) going at it aggressively, persistently.

Just like any other local businesses you plan to make money from, set up yours like one first.

So, are you an online marketer or are you an offline business owner?

IMHO, you can't be both at the same time as a one man operation.

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Mobile websites are an easy sell if you can get in front of the decision maker with a mock-up and have a reasonable price. Here is your website on a phone now, here is what it could be. This is a powerful demonstration. I usually use a QR code as well to pull it up so they can see more possibilities. I am selling the website but I really want to sell them on all of the ways my company can help their business make more money. That is how you build long-term success and loyal clients.

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

I think trying to sell mobile websites, or anything for that matter, like this is a mistake when business owners don't really know how they can BENEFIT from a mobile website.

Sure, if you cold call a few hundred people you may get a few that happen to have a clue what they are and how they can benefit from them, but most business owners don't care about the technology - they just want more customers or diners in their seats, and you need to be upfront with What's In It For Them and help educate them to the benefits a mobile website can provide.

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Responsive sites scale to the resolution of every device (smartphone, tablet, pc). When a client wants a complete new website we advice to go responsive in most cases. We build mobile sites when they have a fine website but when they want to have a good mobile presence also..

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Hi,
this is slightly unrelated.. but I am looking for a WSO released last fall, that showed
how a flash based site looked on a mobile phone.. I think it was a plugin..
of course there are probably more than one of these products,
the only unique I can recall about it was that you could email them within the software
a link showing how their site looks and it had some email templates on what to say and such..
anyone recall this or something similar?

thanks.
:)

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...pproaches.html for selling them

for making them:
http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...2000-sold.html

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

I sell at least one a month ... Not bad. I usually sell them for around $600 to $700.

I don't use any software to make them tho, all custom

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Excellent put

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Hi mgoddo

Can you please share with us how you develop these mobile site without using any software?

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Thanks for your input. You provide me with hope and encouragement. You're right pulling down $600 - $700 each is "not bad" at all.

Unfortunately for me, I'm not skilled enough to be able to create them from scratch as you're able, I'll have to stick to using software, but you prove that there's a market out there for them.

Jorge

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Thanks a lot. Your point is well taken, and it could be the key to getting them to sit down and listen to you. After all, now that you've pointed this out, how can anyone express an interest in buying something if they haven't a clue about what it is, and how it can be of any help to them at all?

Jorge

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Yeah mgoddo, this question is very pertinent, and I forgot to ask it myself.

How do you create your custom mobile sites? Are you a web designer by profession? Please share.

Jorge

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Since you make it sound so easy, would you be able to share with us what types of businesses, in particular, you are successfully targeting with this approach? Are you going after dentists, car dealers, real estate pros, etc.,?

Jorge

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

This is particularly poignant and useful advice, GraemeHawley.

You hit the nail right on the head. Even though I have not yet started trying to sell them, I know it's fundamental to be mentally prepared, to have your shpiel ready, to be assertive, to believe in yourself and your product, and, very importantly, to do your best to be likeable and professional. thanks

Jorge

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

This forum makes it seem a lot easier than it actually is. However, when there is a will, there is a way.

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

I'm sorry, Tyler, forgive my ignorance. Can you elaborate on your comment?

Are you saying that, based on your own experience in this field, you think that some of the respondents to this thread on this Forum make things sound easier than you have personally found things to be marketing mobile sites?

Or, is your statement your own general opinion?

Jorge

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Many thanks Social Guy for taking the time to clear that up for me regarding what a responsive site is.

If you don't mind, would you kindly answer another question. If you and your client determine that all that is needed is a simple mobile site, rather than a responsive site, where does the site you build get uploaded, and how? thanks

Jorge

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Jorge,

Please try and use the 'Multiquote' feature when replying to a number of posts at the same time. It makes it easier for everyone. That way you only need one post to reply rather than replying to every post separately.

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

I've actually had more success by building, or remaking, a businesses existing website and then providing a mobile optimized version of the site as part of the package. I think every business needs a mobile website, especially restaurants, but they just don't seem to get it yet like they should when presented with that alone.

I have a restaurant client that gets 30% of its traffic to the mobile site. I think that is pretty standard for a restaurant, and I could see that easily going to 50% this year. I met with that client yesterday and the owner thanked me over and over for helping to explode their business over the last 2 years. Granted, the mobile site is just one thing I've done for them, but it is definitely a part of the whole equation.

If you are having trouble selling just the mobile site, then try adding another service that adds value - like SMS list building or email opt in, or whatever. From my experience, you have to prove yourself over a period of time, but once you do, they don't question your judgement at all. Make them more money in any way you can and they don't question the next idea you have.

Re: In Truth, Has Anyone Made Money Selling Mobile Sites to Offline Clients?
 

Sorry, been busy!

Actually Just sold another one today! Usually most sales are coming from Doctors and Lawyers.

Your over thinking the "software" part, you dont even have to be all that experienced. I believe WillR even has Html Mobile templates that would work fine.

I personally code do most of mine in JQuery Mobile, I like the flexibility, and I can optimize the page speeds pretty good.

Im not a web designer by trade, Im not a coder either. To be fair tho, I do know how to code on a medium level and can code in PHP, HTML, CSS....so that helps

Most are my sales are actually coming from Web Designers, not even from the actual client.

Hope this helps!