How I Went From $0 to $3000+ Income From Local Businesses in 30 Days

This is the first thread I've ever started on the WF. I've been "lurking" on here for a couple of years with a few posts here and there, but nothing substantial.

Over the last 30 days, I went from $0 income to over $3,000/month income (actually a lot more from 1 time projects ... more about that in a minute) by offering internet marketing services to local businesses and I want to share exactly how i did it.

As you can see from this post, I don't have a signature ... I'm not promoting any links ... I LITERALLY just want to give back to the community who helped me "crawl" from the depths of unemployment to having a full time income and starting a new business.

Let's start from the beginning ...

Back in 2001 I started my first business. It was a vending company that helped me pay for my college tuition.

It worked GREAT! I was making $800/month and I only had to work two days a month.

When I graduated from college, I had to sell the business and get a "real" job. ($800/month doesn't go far when you can't live in a frat house)

So I took an outside sales job and it sucked.

Three years later, I was miserable ... my job sucked ... and I went through a divorce and decided that I needed to get back into entrepreneurship.

So I moved to Atlanta, GA and started a bottled water company.

It went ok ... but not like I expected.

The one thing that really worked well for the bottled water company was getting business from the internet.

After two years in that business, I sold the company to a regional bottled water company and moved to Nashville, TN (for a girl I met ... and we're now married).

I didn't really know what I would do next, but I recognized the power of internet marketing for local businesses so I asked my wife if I could do her marketing because she owns a local business.

9 months later ... her business skyrocketed. Getting over 100 new customers a month from the internet (they were only getting 2/month previously from referrals).

So I decided that I should offer the same services to other local businesses. Maybe plumbers ... maybe dentists ... maybe ... anyone who would call me.

I created a website ... did a little seo ... sent out some emails ... and posted something to my Facebook friends ...

... and then I waited.

In less than a week, I had three new clients.

The funny thing is that most of them had NO IDEA that you could rank on the top of Google for local search phrases.

Some of them were old high school friends, some from college ... and I asked my wife to start spreading the word at her office.

In the past week, I've picked up new clients for Facebook marketing, email marketing, local search marketing, website designs, and seo.

SO HERE'S WHAT I SUGGEST FOR EVERYONE TRYING TO GET STARTED IN OFFLINE MARKETING ...

First ... set up your business. I know this sounds obvious, but make sure you've got a good website set up. Print some business cards. Put up a professional Facebook Fanpage, etc. You don't even need to set up a corporation yet ... or take the easy route and set up a sole proprietor with the IRS so you can open a business bank account.

Second ... offer your services for FREE to one local business (hopefully you know the owner). Ideally, this should be a retail business that serves lots of customers, or a CPA, or an attorney. Someone who will have a lot of interaction with other business owners.

Third ... kick a$$ with your internet marketing skills. Get that business to the number 1 position in Google, start doing email marketing for them that gets results, and get them on Facebook and get them a ton of "likes". If it's a retail business, make suggestions for their outdoor signage, use QR codes to get them online reviews ... and (I did this) ... make sure they win a local award in their niche. Just do everything you can to make sure the business owner makes a ton of money.

Fourth ... tell the business owner that you need referrals.

This part was easy for me because my wife was the business owner ... but I've done the same thing for three other businesses since I started and they all refer people. More than I can handle.

The key is getting results.

Local business owners perceive #1 google rankings as "magic" ... and new business that they get from your work will make them so happy ... they will LOVE you. They can't help but talk about you to their clients.

But you have to deliver results.

This has literally changed my life. I never thought I'd be getting so many calls for new business.

So I hope that helps someone.

I learned a lot from this forum and never gave back.

***For Complete Transparency ***
I bought A LOT of WSO's along the way. There's a lot of great info on here that helped me learn the trade. And two of them (I can't remember the name ... but I'll find it if there's any interest) was about email marketing to get new clients.

I actually didn't get ALL of my new business from referrals. I've grabbed several clients from email marketing. I wrote a piece of software that allows you to input the niche and city name into it, and it goes out and finds all the businesses associated with your specified niche in your specified city and then it figures out if that business is doing anything with Google Places, SEO, email marketing, and Facebook and then emails the business with a specific message based upon the results.

My software landed two clients from this during my first week ... but everything else was from referrals. I hope that doesn't muddy the water. I really think that kicking a$$ with internet marketing for a highly visible client is the way to go.

And even those two clients I picked up using the software have been referring so much business, I haven't even had to turn it on since I started.

Okay that's it.

Love you guys (and gals)!