Made £2000 in the last 3 months.(Namesless,John Durham & Jason please advice) How do I scale?

by Ron20
9 replies
Hi everyone! As you guys might know I joined this forum a few months ago as a newbie trying to make money offline selling SEO and website design. Thanks to the encouragement from people here like Jason, Iamnameless and John Durham etc I have actually managed to make some money.

I know that I am not the best sales guy but I thought this might help someone. In the last three months I have made about 3-4000 calls and have managed to close 9 deals so far. 2 SEO and 7 website redesign. The website redesign total sales comes up to £2000 and the SEO is on top of this.

Here is my current situation where I need help! I have about 7 SEO clients that were on page 1, but after Google's Hummingbird update 2 of them dropped in the ranking. In the past I have lost many clients like this due to Google's updates. So for the past few days I was thinking about how I can build a reliable stable business with a recurring revenue so that hopefully one day I can sell it.

My conclusion is that I decided to stop selling SEO. The reason being, I dont want to spend 5 years of my life building up a business that can be wiped out my Google overnight. I know that many of you might not agree with me, but to me SEO is good in the short term but for a long term goal to build a million pound business I dont see this as a good strategy.

So I have decided that the only best way to build a recurring revenue business is by selling websites with a monthly hosting fee. I have read the bower method and I want to do something like this.

The offer will be :

£99 new 3 page website and £20 per month for hosting, maintenance, emails etc.

So today I made about 200 calls from the yellow pages to business that do not have a website and I have managed to get only 1 lead that I feel is strong. (he's actually looking to get a website done)

Here are my stats:

200 calls
47 answers (31 Decision Makers)
5 leads in total
( 3 - asked me to send him my mobile number so he will get in touch when he needs it)
(1 - asked me to ring back in new year)
(1 - looking to do it, asked me to send email) - strong lead

Now I would like to sell atleast 1 of these sites per day. The question is, how do i do it? Am i ringing the right list? From what I know, it is better to sell redesign rather to sell a website to a business that has not got one.

The problem is, lets say I call a company and offer to redesign their site for £99. They wont want to leave their current hosting company that they pay £120 per year and start paying you £20 per month. Understand?

I also know that I can ring advertisers in the yellow pages etc who do not have a site and sell them. But the question is how long will it take to put together a list like this and where can i find them?

How many sales can I expect from this list? lets say it takes me 4 hours to put together a list of 100 numbers and I make 1 sale. It is really not worth the effort, also it is not a scale-able idea cause i will always need to keep searching for advertisers.

So HOW DO I DO IT? please help

Thank you all.
#advice #bower method #cold calling #durham #iamnamesless #jason #john #made #monthsnamesless #scale
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    • Profile picture of the author Ron20
      Originally Posted by Jason Kanigan View Post

      What are you doing to get referrals from your existing customers?
      Like I said I got only 7 SEO customers. and 2 joined me only 1 month ago. How will they recommend me if they them selves are not yet on page 1.

      How do i get referrals form my website customers? any idea?

      Thanks much Jason, you are really been a help to me.
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      • Profile picture of the author Jason Kanigan
        Originally Posted by Ron20 View Post

        Like I said I got only 7 SEO customers. and 2 joined me only 1 month ago. How will they recommend me if they them selves are not yet on page 1.

        How do i get referrals form my website customers? any idea?

        Thanks much Jason, you are really been a help to me.
        Ah, too much head trash again I see. YOUR reasons are not THEIR reasons.

        YOUR fear that you haven't accomplished your goals for them yet is not necessarily THEIR fear. They may be happy with you so far (after all they hired you and haven't fired you)...and be willing to give a referral.

        Instead of talking about what you do, ask them if they know other business owners who are experiencing problems the likes of which they hired you to fix. If you don't know why they bought from you, ask them. If they tell you "price", you have a problem.

        Why do they have to leave their hosting company for you to make them a new website??

        And those 200-odd people you dialed...you have over 150 there who you didn't talk to. Call them again.
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  • Profile picture of the author mjbmedia
    what sort of businesses are you going for by charging £99 for a site?
    More to the point, what sort of value are you placing on your websites effectiveness by pricing it at £99.
    You are saying to them, here have a cheap site, don't expect it to work for you though.

    At those prices you are going to struggle to ever outsource /employ and therefore expand, its always going to be you and just you doing all the donkey work. Work out how many hours it takes to win (collect data, make call, reach decision maker, gain decision) and then service a client (agree website requirements, design/develop site, set up the relevant back ends etc) and then see how far that £99 really goes, theres only you and you only got 24 hours and 7 days a week, you need to sleep, eat and play a little .

    You done great taking all that action, make damn sure you get rewarded for it
    Signature

    Mike

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    • Profile picture of the author abbot
      Banned
      Originally Posted by mjbmedia View Post

      what sort of businesses are you going for by charging £99 for a site?
      More to the point, what sort of value are you placing on your websites effectiveness by pricing it at £99.
      You are saying to them, here have a cheap site, don't expect it to work for you though.

      At those prices you are going to struggle to ever outsource /employ and therefore expand, its always going to be you and just you doing all the donkey work. Work out how many hours it takes to win (collect data, make call, reach decision maker, gain decision) and then service a client (agree website requirements, design/develop site, set up the relevant back ends etc) and then see how far that £99 really goes, theres only you and you only got 24 hours and 7 days a week, you need to sleep, eat and play a little .

      You done great taking all that action, make damn sure you get rewarded for it
      You need to re-work some numbers here. One thing I can tell you...

      You are going to have a harder time selling someone a $99 website than a $500 website.

      There are many posts on here regarding WHY this is. But if one thing is for certain...it's true.

      I strongly advise you to think about this. The bower method is great and all, but people seem to forget that guy obviously had a much larger budget to invest into the startup up front. He had a full call room, he was able to call in MUCH higher volume than you are.

      Down the road this is something you could look into, but for now, being independent and I'm assuming here; on a lower budget, you need to actually get paid for your work.

      Just something to chew on

      Edit: And props to you for taking action. You're already one step further than 99% of the people here.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ron20
    Hi Jason! Thanks fro your support. Do you think i should change the list that i am calling?
    I am currently calling businesses from the yellow pages that do not have a website
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  • Profile picture of the author Huskerdarren
    If organic SEO is not to your liking, maybe become a Google Adwords expert? The businesses sold on it are easy enough to find. Can you better results or get their costs down?
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  • Profile picture of the author Marta K
    Do what the rest of us do - write a report, price it £19, hold a seminar, sell websites for a £1000 each plus consulting retainer for at least £100 per month. This way, 20 customers a year give you a decent wage and you are not desperate canymore. Than sell seminars for £100 per head, than move onto seminars £300 per head, than £1000 per head, eventually. That's how you scale - when it's just yyou. Build small product, use it as a stepping stone to bigger products. Selling your expertise is a natural progression of providing a service. £99 website is headache, but nothing to compare to having 100 customers on the phone when their hosting got hacked.
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