Web Design for Local Biz Helped Me Build A Multi-Million Dollar Property Portfolio

Hey warriors,

If you're new to offline IM consulting or you've been providing services to local businesses for a while, then please take the time to read this. You
owe it to yourself and you'll discover opportunities you may never have considered before.

How offering Web Design Services to Local Businesses helped me build a multi-million dollar property portfolio and took me from being broke and in debt to cash rich in just 9 months.

Hey guys and girls, Urmil again and this is a another one of my long-ass threads however I guarantee you wont be disappointed.

If you've been working hard in your business, trying to stay on top of the day to day work, learning all the new things going on in the IM industry and working towards getting new clients then you've probably missed what I like to call the "hidden opportunities" of just being in offline consulting niche.

There are lots of other threads about the many different methods you can use to find clients and the many different services you can provide to them once you have them...

BUT what about the massive opportunities that reveal themselves to you and could potentially change your financial future (like mine has), just because you've positioned yourself as the local internet marketing "go to guy" or "go to girl" and are providing your internet marketing skills and web design services to local business owners.

Just think about it, what other opportunities could present themselves to you if you were contacting local business owners offering to help them market their businesses.

If you have no idea about what potential "hidden opportunities" there
could be, then I am very glad you are reading this thread, because by the end of it you too will hopefully become more aware of opportunities you may currently be overlooking that could change your financial situation.


Well Firstly, Why I'm Writing This Post!!
After receiving such good feedback and comments about how my last thread has helped many people get going in this business, I decided that i'd share another episode of my life in IM offline consulting and how simply by being in this industry...

...I was able to go from over $150,000 in debt to over $225,000 in hard
cash in my bank, plus a monthly income of $4500 per month within 9 months and that doesn't even include the money I was charging my local business clients. (and no I didn't win the lottery...)

My main motivation for writing this thread is to help others and to describe an opportunity that fell into my lap simply because I was providing web design services. Many of you may have experienced similar opportunities or maybe you missed them.

Now even if only one person benefits from this thread then the time i'm taking to write this will be worth it. And if you are that one person, please be kind enough and share your appreciation by leaving your comments and clicking the thanks button.


Ok let's get to it.

A few years back (November 2006) I was running a web design and marketing company and the main service I was providing was web design (not even wordpress... can you believe that and basic marketing and audio and video services.

When I mean basic, I mean very very basic (no animoto, no audacity, no broadband either - well everyone has to start somewhere right? )

I'd just taken on a friend to work for me, Kyle, who knew absolutely nothing about web design, but he was prepared to work for free until he picked it up.

That was great for me cause free was all i could afford to pay him back then and I really needed someone to help me contact local business owners and build websites (of course nowadays its all about outsourcing, but back then there wasn't 100's of WSOs about it and even now I believe its worth doing it yourself first so you have a benchmark to measure outsourcers against...)

Well Kyle was a fast learner and I'd taught him how to design websites from scratch in under a week. (Personally I think anyone can, if they really want to bad enough...)

So now the goal was to get lots of clients, so I could afford to pay him
something. My main source of new customers was from local flyer/postcard marketing, telemarketing, editorials in the local newspaper and running special offer promotions (you know discounts and giving your services and time away for next to no money just to build some awareness...we've all done it.)

It was November 2006 and business was a bit slow, so I thought I'd run a promotion to create some buzz.

So Kyle and I came up with the idea of building template based 3 page websites for local business for FREE for the next 30 days, and only charge $150 for a domain name and hosting for the year. (we thought it was a pretty good deal..) and we'd make our money from the web hosting fees.

We contacted the local press, who came down and took photos of us, wrote up a great editorial about how we were helping local business owners and mentioned our website in the local paper.

We thought surely, this promotion would peak the interest of the local business owners and we'd be rushed off our feet and get at least 100 new clients, especially cause they had very little to lose.


BOY WERE WE WRONG!


We only had 26 new clients over the 30 days. Thats $3900 and we had to build 26 3-page websites. I learnt a massive lesson from this
experience.


LESSON 1: Giving something away for FREE doesn't necessary mean people will fall over themselves to take you up on it! You have to still sell them on the idea of how they will benefit from your offer, even though its free!

During the month of that promotion I was reading the editorial written about us when I saw an advert for a local business networking meeting and thought that it would probably be a good place to attend and I could get our offer in front of local business owners (our target market).

I called the organiser immediately and booked Kyle and myself onto the next meeting.

Now this business networking meeting was a breakfast meeting and the local business owners met at 6am. I'm not an early riser and neithers Kyle, but this was a small sacrifice to hopefully get some new clients.

Before the networking event, I had printed some white t-shirts with my company name on them and also a massive call to action on the back saying "Get Your Free Website Today... Ask me for more info"

I also printed some basic DL size flyers to hand out. These came in very handy as most people at the networking event wanted something to take away with them.


LESSON 2: Always have something available to give to business owners at networking meetings, such as business cards, flyers etc.. because many of them are in the mindset that they need something to take away with them. Its easier to print some flyers than it is to try to persuade them why you dont need flyers in your business model.

So its 6am on a Wednesday morning and Kyle and I arrive at this Hilton hotel where the BNI meeting was taking place.

As soon as we walk in, the entire room stops and look at us as if we were in the wrong place. (It's not our good looks, you see, everyone's in a business suit and we're in trousers and white t-shirts with a massive logo on the front and a call to action on the back).

The fact we were different actually worked in our favour and we spent the entire event networking and being approached about what we do and how we could help these local business owners.

We might have felt embarassed for all of 10 seconds, but we had the last laugh as everyone wanted to talk to us because we were different than the other business owners.

I met this gentlemen at the meeting who was a film producer and he was in the process of releasing a budget film (not mainstream).

The first thought that went through my mind was, I wonder if I can get a small part (come on we all want to be in a movie... but no such luck, however he didn't like his existing website that had been created for the film.

So we exchanged numbers and arranged to meet later that afternoon.


LESSON 3: Networking meetings are not about trying to sell your services there and then, they are about meeting new prospects, making them aware of you and what you do and most importantly leaving a great impression that would make them feel they'd benefit from working with you rather than any other web designer/marketer.

Let's fast forward to that meeting between the film producer and myself. He showed me the website he currently had.

It was flash based (now we all know that flash based sites are a BIG no no especially for SEO), so the first thing I suggested was we'd need to change that into html. I explained that the free 3 page template site promotion wouldn't work for what he wanted and i'd have to charge him.

I showed him some of the other sites I'd created and their rankings in the search engines and by the end of that meeting the client was happy to hand over a cheque for $1500 to re-design his website.

One of my golden rules has always been to ask for referrals when the client is most excited about my services and working with me, so just as he hands me the cheque, I asked him if he knew anyone else that was looking to get a website or would be interested in the free website promotion we were doing.


LESSON 4: If you are not asking your new clients for referrals, you will find yourself working very hard constantly looking for new clients. So do yourself a favour and ask the very next client you get if he or she knows anyone that doesn't have a website or is looking to have a website created for their business, you'll be glad you did.

Well my film producer client did know someone who wanted a website, his brother who ran a property business about 120 miles away. Normally I try to stick to my local area, but this was a referral and therefore in my opinion a warm lead.

And also my business wasn't booming back then, so if I had to drive 120 miles to meet the client, well thats what i did. I arranged an appointment and drove up to see this client in December 2006.


THE HIDDEN OPPORTUNITY REVEALS ITSELF
My first thoughts when I was told that this client was in the property business was that he runs a real estate agency (estate agency), boy was I wrong.

He actually provided a service to people who needed to sell their property fast because they are facing foreclosure / repossession and the banks are about to foreclose (repossession) on them. And he'll buy their property for CASH at a discount, sometimes a huge discount (upto 50% off).

Now I'd never purchased a property back then and no-one I knew had ever told me I could buy a property at a significant discount, so what he did really intrigued me.

I was so intrigued to find out what he did and how he did it that I negotiated a deal with him. I'd spend the day with him where he would give me a seek peak inside his business and how to buy property at a discount and in return I'd build him a lead generation website at a 50% discount.

We agreed on that arrangement. I actually ended up building him a 40 page content rich lead generation website and marketed it for just $1200 and that included writing all the content for the site as well (I know what
you're thinking, I must have been out of my freaking mind for doing it so
cheap...but hang on, later on you'll see how much I really made out of this deal)

A week before Christmas 2006 the property investor client and I decided to spend that day together and he teaches me the process of how to buy a house using none of my own money (which is good because i was in over $150k of debt), at a 30-50% discount below the markets current value and told me that the only thing that you needed to make a fortune with this system was leads (people who needed to sell their house fast for whatever reason!).

I had that skill and i remember thinking to myself, i've got the most valuable skills that this business owner and most business owners needed. The ability to get leads through the internet.

Well anyway that's why I was there, my job was to build him a website to get leads. And that's exactly what I did. I researched the other websites of this business nature online (best place to start any web design or marketing is to see whats out there), analysed their content, their website structure and their backlinks and put my all into building this client a site that would work for him.

In fact within the first week of the website going live, the client received a lead through the website and made $12,000 on a property transaction (thats 10 times what I charged him). Not a bad return on investment.


The client was happy and I was happy.


LESSON 5: When working on a new client in a niche you've never worked in, the easiest way to get up to speed is to analyse the competition. Especially those that have high search engine rankings, because the search engines obviously find these sites well optimised.

Now its January 2007 and I'm thinking "I wonder if using my internet marketing knowledge and skills, could I build myself a website, generate leads and build my own property portfolio using ZERO money of my own".

Now I have no idea where this thought came from and if I wasn't in the web design and web marketing business and if I hadn't met this client and produced some great leads for him then I provided would never have had that thought.

But the reality is I did build a website, i did generate leads for this client and i was in the web design and marketing business!


SO HERE'S WHAT I DID
I built myself a website similar to the one i'd built for the client but focused on my local area NOT his. I wouldn't want to compete with my client, after all in my opinion that would be unethical.

So I built a website to acquire leads in my local town for people who needed to sell their property quickly.

I got Kyle to design one for me as well, so I know had 2 sites both focused on generating property leads for myself in my town.

I had no idea what I was going to do with the leads, in fact i'd never even
purchased a property before so didn't really know if it would work for me.

Now there's a lot of things, as you can see, that could have stopped me but I thought I owed it to myself to try to figure some of this stuff out. After all, I had the one skill I needed and that was how to build a website and get leads.

Over the next few months my 2 lead generation property sites were generating me lots of leads but I really wasn't confident with what I said to these people looking to sell their house nor did I know about the legal process.

So I actually started selling the leads. Now the property niche is unlike any niche i'd experienced. I found investors who were paying a flat fee for a qualified property lead of upto $5000 upon completion of the deal. I found them on property forum (again online).

So I started selling leads and within weeks was making 2-4 deals per month at that rate.

I thought to myself, I must be missing a trick because why are other investor happy to pay upto $5k for a property deal, they must obviously be making even more money than that.

So whilst running my web design business, I spent many days calling solicitors (attorneys) trying to find out who could help me with actually buying these properties myself and also to help me learn the process involved.


LESSON 6: When you see these hidden opportunities, you will very rarely know everything you need to know to make the opportunity work for you. However, if you seek out the information, you can make a fortune.

These hidden opportunities start life as a concept you hear about, but it with educating yourself on the concept and its process that it can become a life changing opportunity.


To cut this long story short let me tell you what happened.


I learnt how to buy houses and on the 4th March 2007 purchased my first house at 20% below it market value and made $30k on my first property deal.

Over the next 9 months, whilst still running my web design and marketing business and using my property lead generation websites I purchased lots of other properties, all without using any of my own money. In fact upon buying each property I'd normally receive a cash lump sum back from the mortgage lender because I had purchased at such a good discount.

In those 9 months I cleared my $150k debt, ended up with a multi-million dollar property portfolio, $225k in the bank and a positive net cashflow each month of $4500, which I still have to this day. Oh yeah, and also a massive amount of equity in the portfolio.

I stopped buying property in Jan 2008 and just sold leads that I got to investor because I realised property and dealing with tenants wasn't my
passion, it was just a hidden opportunity for me that was brought to my attention because I was in the web design business and its only because of my web design and marketing skills that I was able to quickly take action on it and make a great income.

I still kept the properties that I owned as they still bring me a very lucrative income each month for very little work.

I then returned full time back to internet marketing because that is where my PASSION is and I realised that if I improved my web design skills and my web marketing skills, I'd be positioned to take advantage of lots of different hidden opportunities that present themselves.

You see I love the internet, I love marketing and I love helping people make money using internet marketing so thats why I returned my main focus on striving to build me internet and information marketing business.

It was also simple maths. One web marketing client that pays me $500 a month is the same as owning a rental property, without the hassles of a mortgage or tenants.


For me I'd rather do something I enjoy and that why internet marketing and offline consulting is right for me.


LESSON 7: If you build a business that you enjoy, its 100 times easier to make money and you'll be motivated to put in those extra hours when you first start, because you'll have the desire to succeed.


HAVE YOU FIGURES OUT WHAT "HIDDEN OPPORTUNITIES" ARE?
Now I hope you have all worked out what the "hidden opportunities" of being in the web design / web marketing to local business industry is.

THE REAL HIDDEN OPPORTUNITIES are the all the different opportunities you will be exposed to whilst providing web design and marketing skills to other clients.

There is a saying I once heard, "you don't know what you don't know".

Its so true, I didn't know anything about property nor did I really want to know about it, before I took on a web design client who was in that business who "exposed me to that opportunity".

If I had not been providing web design services, then I would never had met this client nor learnt about the property industry and perhap my life would not be as abundant as it currently is. Who knows.

One thing I do know is, that by being in this industry, by providing services to local business owners, by building relationships with local business owners, and making sure I put myself out in my community as the go-to guy for internet marketing, then I have many opportunities offered to me on a daily basis that could potential make me life changing money.

And by learning and having these web marketing skills, I have everything I need to take advantage of any of the opportunities I wish to pursue.

I hope that you are succeeding in your local consulting business and I hope that you are keeping your eyes and ears open for hidden opportunities in your area that are not directly related to just building websites or just providing web marketing services...


BECAUSE by being the go to internet marketing guy in your local town, you could also become the guy who local business owners want to JV with on their business projects, because you are the person who has the marketing skills they lack.


SO the sum this thread up...


Being a local business IM consultant can be very lucrative in itself, and you can make a huge income providing services to local business owners, but the "hidden opportunities" of local business consulting are often missed by most people because they are too busy to notice and take advantage of these opportunities.

It doesn't matter what level you are at, just keep in mind that there is a much bigger picture than just facebook marketing, or SEO or video marketing, and all the other services you could provide.

There are opportunities you wont have even dreamt of or know exist and if you pay attention as you speak with local business owners, you'll be amazed at how quickly you can become a JV partner or even take advantage of a new opportunity just like I did and make money from industries and niche you know nothing about.

I hope you have enjoyed this post and if you have any similar experiences, please comment and help others see the bigger picture as this will help overcome those days where everything seems like its going wrong.

If you've had an "ah ha" moment whilst reading this, then please share and if you are the one who this thread has inspired, benefitted or just opened up new possibilities too, then please share and I'd be grateful if you could use the thanks button to show your appreciation.

Good luck in your business and speak soon.

Urmil