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Local Business Brainstorm Thread

by Tommyg123
5 replies
Hi everyone, Happy New Year.

I was thinking of offline business opportunities in your local area. It is actually a pretty appealing prospect if you think about it.

Who knows your local area's needs and demographics better than you?
Who knows you local competition better than you?
Who knows all the local media outlets in terms of advertising better than you?

Certainly not a multinational corporation.

You have so many advantages in your are it is your own niche. You can visit customers and give a personal service, word of mouth spreads fast. People trust other people that live locally.

Ok maybe your upside is capped a little in terms of you cant sell to everyone and anyone if you are only focussing locally but I think advantages outweigh that.

So I wanted to brainstorm lots of ideas we can potentially sell to local businesses/households.

I have just been looking through my local classifieds paper and the standard of the websites, sales copy, adverts and just generally business practices are so shoddy and ripe for some competition.

Only caveats are we can gain an edge by focussing on our local trade and lend themselves to our internet knowledge (outsourcing, fast research abilities, affiliate deals we can sell in to our leads etc).
Would love to hear some other people's success stories seeing as we dont live in the same area we can share without competing.

The obvious ones:
Webdesign (tied in with an affiliate hosting package maybe?)
Logo Design (can be outsourced)
Brand Consultation
Book keeping (can be outsourced).
Repackaging of goods. ( can be outsourced)
I read someone else on here sold business valuation software and did really well.

......
#brainstorm #business #local #thread
  • Profile picture of the author sunoy14
    Selling local would be a good start. Unfortunately I am not really socially smart. I am socially awkard actually
    I am running a web hosting company and I doubt there are many people who are interested in having a website in my place. Online thing has just started recently in my place but most of the people are just browsers and not really website owners.
    Networking, communication and letting others know about your service or products would be the obvious things to do first. Would like to know about some ideas from other people
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    • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
      Originally Posted by sunoy14 View Post

      I am running a web hosting company and I doubt there are many people who are interested in having a website.
      I don't understand this. Surely there must be some kind of error in communication here. You run a web hosting company but doubt there are many people who are interested in having a website? Is that because you assume that everybody with a website will never need another website again?

      By that logic, shoe companies should go out of business because once you have a pair of shoes you never need another pair again.

      To the OP... you make a good point when selling local. When you run a business of any kind, you have to figure out your advantages in the market place. What some see as a disadvantage, you see as an advantage, which is a good place to be.

      The only real problem I have with your post is the hosting. The web design is good, I like it, but just handing them off to a hosting company and getting a small commission causes you to lose out on a bunch of money. It's not possible all the time, some people want to control their own hosting. However, you're missing out on a lot of income by not locking them up in hosting through a reseller account.

      All the typical web services can be offered to local businesses.

      Bookkeeping is a good one, there's a guy on Craigslist in my area that kills it by calling people who post ads and offer his bookkeeping service.

      An old friend of mine has been selling Christmas Light hanging services to people in the area and has been doing really well with that. Also sells yard clean up and different type of low energy jobs that pay decently. He loves what he does, which is more than most people can say.

      Pet photographers, low competition sub niche in a high competition niche.

      Dog shit clean up... in demand service.... shitty job though.

      There's so many ways to make money online and offline, local and national.

      Edit: Another good hustle is scrapping. There's a lot of people that make a lot of money with peoples old stuff. One of the most successful in the area actually targets people with EDDM, he recycles washers, dryers, electronics. Specializes in computer and electronic waste which is super profitable for him. He does it full time and makes 6 figures easy.
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      • Profile picture of the author Freebiequeen1999
        I think you have some viable ideas but I would NOT take on bookkeeping, that is a whole career/profession - not something I would chance to "outsource"

        One thing I think is important is to realize that most small business owners want more customers/sales/profits.....many are NOT interested in the technical side
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      • Profile picture of the author sunoy14
        Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

        I don't understand this. Surely there must be some kind of error in communication here. You run a web hosting company but doubt there are many people who are interested in having a website? Is that because you assume that everybody with a website will never need another website again?

        By that logic, shoe companies should go out of business because once you have a pair of shoes you never need another pair again.

        To the OP... you make a good point when selling local. When you run a business of any kind, you have to figure out your advantages in the market place. What some see as a disadvantage, you see as an advantage, which is a good place to be.

        The only real problem I have with your post is the hosting. The web design is good, I like it, but just handing them off to a hosting company and getting a small commission causes you to lose out on a bunch of money. It's not possible all the time, some people want to control their own hosting. However, you're missing out on a lot of income by not locking them up in hosting through a reseller account.

        All the typical web services can be offered to local businesses.

        Bookkeeping is a good one, there's a guy on Craigslist in my area that kills it by calling people who post ads and offer his bookkeeping service.

        An old friend of mine has been selling Christmas Light hanging services to people in the area and has been doing really well with that. Also sells yard clean up and different type of low energy jobs that pay decently. He loves what he does, which is more than most people can say.

        Pet photographers, low competition sub niche in a high competition niche.

        Dog shit clean up... in demand service.... shitty job though.

        There's so many ways to make money online and offline, local and national.

        Edit: Another good hustle is scrapping. There's a lot of people that make a lot of money with peoples old stuff. One of the most successful in the area actually targets people with EDDM, he recycles washers, dryers, electronics. Specializes in computer and electronic waste which is super profitable for him. He does it full time and makes 6 figures easy.
        There has been an error. Sorry about that. I have edited the post. I was actually trying to say, "I doubt there are many people interested in having a website in my locality". Thanks for pointing out the error
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        Web developer at www.rom-link.com. Web design, themes and plugins.
        Free guitar lessons www.mamamusicians.com

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  • Profile picture of the author kaikauai
    Thanks for starting this thread, I'm REALLY interested in ideas for services that other marketers are using to service offline clients.

    I started looking at local restaurants and found a couple that were using wordpress sites and still had their photographs named generic picture names, meta titles that did not mention anything but the business name versus things like "Best steak in xyz city" etc.

    I also have a friend who is growing a client list in the eyelash extension niche in his city.

    I noticed that many of the local businesses that were using wordpress sites were not using an opt-in form on their sites.

    Those are some of the ideas I had for approaching businesses and offering to show them how to get set up with an autoresponder and building lists of clients to whom they could send out event notifications, specials, etc.

    Thanks again!
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