[encanto]

Hello, I would like to share the business model I will be testing in the following weeks. I would like to know if you guys think this could actually work. I really appreciate any advice and opinions. I hope this plan can inspire other people to try similar business models in order to achieve freedom of mobility.

I am a web designer/marketer and been working locally on this field for about 12 years as a freelancer.

My current goal is to be location independent. Most people would think freelance job sites could help me achieve such goal but these sites are full of indian, phillipine, and other 3rd world freelancers that are good and cheap so it's very hard to compete with them for projects.

So I came up with a business model which is probably being used by other digital entrepreneurs.

My business model consists of selling different web services such as web design, video marketing/production, SEO, etc.

My marketing strategy consists of using classified ads to get independent salespeople for doing the actual selling to local business owners.

For example, if one of my services costs $600, the salesperson would get the local client, get paid $600 (or more if he can charge more). Then he would order the service from me at $300. The salesperson makes $300 (or more) and I make $300. Assuming I spend $50 in expenses to provide that service, I would be left with $250 profit.

Just 5-10 sales per month would be enough to alternate between living in Colombia, Brazil, and Thailand which is my goal.

Now, 5-10 sales per month looks attainable for a good salesperson but if one or two can't do it, I suppose I can always get more, in any city in the US or even in other "rich" countries.

Heck, for the lifestyle I can have, I would even be willing to lower my prices so the salespeople could earn more while maintaining the same competitive prices.

I understand I would be limited by the work volume I can handle but after 12 years doing web services, it takes me very little time/effort to finish projects. I can always outsource to a third world country if I am overloaded with orders

Do let me know if you have any questions!

[DareP]

Sounds really hard. Managing commission only salespeople is very difficult. They quit often, they don't actually care about your customers (and will do anything to make a sale,) and it's very hard to find quality salespeople.

Don't expect to be able to hire in sales skills if you don't personally have any. You need to be able to train a salesperson up from scratch. Anyone who has existing sales skills, E.g. the ability to sell a $600 item with no guidance, wouldn't work for you, a solo freelancer. They'd be working for a multinational making far more money than they would working for you. So basically the people you'll attract are people who can't find a consistent job but have drive, so you'll have to train them up from scratch. And still 80% won't make it in sales.

Bottom line is, this business model is *really* tough. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're building it to scale. It's not a lifestyle business. If you're looking to earn just a few thousand a month to live on, go do your own sales or find an easier sales channel. If you're looking to build a $10 million dollar business with a well trained sales core, that's when it's worth investing in building a system for finding, hiring, training and running a sales team.

[encanto]

(04-02-2012 06:04 AM)DareP Wrote:  

Managing commission only salespeople is very difficult. They quit often, they don't actually care about your customers (and will do anything to make a sale,) and it's very hard to find quality salespeople.

Thank you for your advice. I will not hire commission only salespeople. I will market this as a business oppportunity for independent salespeople. In other words, "make money selling web services to local businesses, be your own boss, start your own business, etc."

Maybe I shouldn't have used the term salespeople. Anyone know the correct term I should use?

Quote:

Anyone who has existing sales skills, E.g. the ability to sell a $600 item with no guidance, wouldn't work for you, a solo freelancer.

It's not that hard. I suck at sales and never had a problem. The only problem is doing the selling ties me to a location in a "boring" country like the USA. I want other people to do the selling for this reason.

[DareP]

Quote:

Thank you for your advice. I will not hire commission only salespeople. I will market this as a business oppportunity for independent salespeople. In other words, "make money selling web services to local businesses, be your own boss, start your own business, etc."

They don't own their own business though. It's your business. They're just feeding traffic into your business. Just as being a Realtor, joining an MLM or selling knives door to door doesn't mean you have your own business, what you're talking about is the same. They're not going to form an LLC to work for you. They don't have a sellable business if they're successful. It's semantics; they're a salesperson working for you. No business person is going to come to you thinking they're starting a business. The people you'll attract are the people who need sales jobs, and unskilled ones at that.

Quote:

It's not that hard. I suck at sales and never had a problem. The only problem is doing the selling ties me to a location in a "boring" country like the USA. I want other people to do the selling for this reason.

IMO You'll have an easier time figuring out other business models. Example:

1) Write a killer ad for the Warrior Forum. I get tons of clients from there.
2) Create a stunning design related blog, then guest write for other design blogs. Get ranked for specific design-related terms and sell SEO and other traffic on your design services.
3) Pick up the phone. Cold call businesses instead of going door to door. Your conversion rate will be lower, but you can approach more people per day.

There are many, many easier ways to get design clients than what you're talking about.

I'm not trying to convince you not to do something you've already decided to do. You asked if we thought it would work, and I'm telling you, both as an entrepreneur and as someone who's worked on the employee side of a sales staff, I think you have the wrong business model.

[encanto]

Quote:

They don't own their own business though. It's your business. They're just feeding traffic into your business. Just as being a Realtor, joining an MLM or selling knives door to door doesn't mean you have your own business, what you're talking about is the same. They're not going to form an LLC to work for you. They don't have a sellable business if they're successful. It's semantics; they're a salesperson working for you. No business person is going to come to you thinking they're starting a business. The people you'll attract are the people who need sales jobs, and unskilled ones at that.

I really appreciate your valuable advice. I understand your point and you're probably right. The fact that they don't have a business looks like it could be a problem. However, in my experience, I never needed to have an office nor have a website to sell web services. What I did was start with business people I knew, they never asked me for my website or anything. Many didn't even ask to see my portfolio. Again, these were people I knew personally or had a mutual friend.

I don't know if I could convince my reps to start selling to people they already know though.

I wouldn't try cold calling. It's quite hard to sell this stuff over the phone. I suck at sales and don't feel comfortable bothering people on the phone.

What if I could get some related businesses to sell web services and outsource the work to me?

[Keyser Söze]

I think you will be better off by changing your model.

Don't look for gold, sell pickaxes and bluejeans to the people who do.

You have a great deal of web design experience. You understand what web designers do and the challenges they face.

Create a guide about how to achieve your above described business plan, and instead of actually carrying out the idea, sell the idea itself.

[RichieP]

Too much effort. You dont want to be managing a sales force AND doing web design. Get leads from networking and prospecting. Have your own well-branded site with testimonials and portfolio. Read "The Wealthy Freelancer", and "The Education of Millionaires". You HAVE to read that first one, it might literally save you 100's of hours of ineffective marketing/sales. What about your contacts from 12 years of web design?! That's a lot of businesses you've done work for... surely huge potential for repeat work and referrals.

[WanderingSoul]

As someone who has worked in sales at a web design company, and is also location independent from my online income, I can tell you this won't work. They are in fact commission only sales people, and you will not get any qualified people to apply for this position. I have tried it, I know.

Even though I am hesitant to help you at all since you were a jackass in your Colombia thread, I'll drop a little knowledge for you anyway.

What you should focus on is creating a niche for yourself in the web design market. Focus on one niche and build up a portfolio. For example, maybe you focus on doing websites for sports bars, or independent car dealerships, or dentist offices or whatever. Then once you have a solid portfolio of 3-4 happy clients you hire a virtual assistant on oDesk.com. Put together a sales pitch email and then have your assistant find shitty websites of businesses in your niche and send out the email to them, with a small personalized touch on each one. They can find them by simply Googling "Your City sports bar" and doing it with lots and lots of cities.

You must also have a US based phone number setup, so get a Skype number so potential clients can call you, because you will be spending a lot of time on the phone with each client to close most sales since you are not a professional sales person.

Selling websites to business owners is not fun, and can be a real pain in the ass. Most business owners know jack shit about the internet, and don't understand why a $300 website is a big pile of shit most of the time. That said, it can be turned into a real business, and once you have a solid reputation and portfolio built up things get much easier.

[AntiTrace]

You can also build a portfolio of website, either created yourself or outsourced, and have one general webmaster oversee them all.

If you have some cash to throw down you can go visit flippa.com. Be warned most of the websites selling there are complete shit. Look for something with a solid domain name, long history, already producing visits, and with good valuable content. Buy those sights, overhaul them to get them looking modern if they are not, and find a way to make it a cheap subscription service. You get what you pay for on flippa, so don't be the guy going there and trying to flip a bunch of the $20-$50 sites. They are cheap for a reason.

Blogs can make a decent relatively passive income as well. Content is king with this strategy. And this is one of the few routes where I would suggest doing something your passionate about, otherwise you will lose interest and never update it. Add a forum and build a community around your blog, that will keep people coming back. This is not a slow route at all and will require a lot of effort until you start to see any income at all.

Mediocrity rules just about everything on the internet. The same can said about life itself. Put in a little more effort than the average person, and give your customers a little bit more than what they are used too, and you will be head and shoulders above almost all your competition.

[DareP]

(04-03-2012 06:17 AM)AntiTrace Wrote:  

You can also build a portfolio of website, either created yourself or outsourced, and have one general webmaster oversee them all.

If you have some cash to throw down you can go visit flippa.com. Be warned most of the websites selling there are complete shit. Look for something with a solid domain name, long history, already producing visits, and with good valuable content. Buy those sights, overhaul them to get them looking modern if they are not, and find a way to make it a cheap subscription service. You get what you pay for on flippa, so don't be the guy going there and trying to flip a bunch of the $20-$50 sites. They are cheap for a reason.

Blogs can make a decent relatively passive income as well. Content is king with this strategy. And this is one of the few routes where I would suggest doing something your passionate about, otherwise you will lose interest and never update it. Add a forum and build a community around your blog, that will keep people coming back. This is not a slow route at all and will require a lot of effort until you start to see any income at all.

Mediocrity rules just about everything on the internet. The same can said about life itself. Put in a little more effort than the average person, and give your customers a little bit more than what they are used too, and you will be head and shoulders above almost all your competition.

... How much personal experience do you have with this? I wouldn't give advice about internet marketing unless you really know what you're doing.

Rehauling Flippa sites profitably is far harder than most gurus say it is. First, auctions for great sites often go for several days in the last 4 hour period as bids keep getting renewed. You literally have to set an alarm clock at night to go off every 4 hours to make sure you don't get outbid. You won't sleep as you try and snipe the great sites.

Then handling a site transfer is a real pain the ass. You need to transfer the database, the files and everything else. If there are limited licenses, you need to buy your own license to run on your server and make sure it doesn't break in the transfer process.

Many of the super cheap WordPress sites you buy in Flippa could be infected with plugins that have all kinds of security holes. Once you install it on your MySQL database, hackers can gain access to the rest of your site.

Then there's actually remodeling the site and making it profitable. Often time's the traffic that Flippa sites get is shit traffic, especially if you're buying in the low price range.

I'm not saying it doesn't work. I've made money on Flippa. I'm just saying it's way harder than people imagine. I'm also saying you shouldn't give advice if you don't have personal experience.

Same goes for blogging.

Quote:

What you should focus on is creating a niche for yourself in the web design market. Focus on one niche and build up a portfolio. For example, maybe you focus on doing websites for sports bars, or independent car dealerships, or dentist offices or whatever. Then once you have a solid portfolio of 3-4 happy clients you hire a virtual assistant on oDesk.com. Put together a sales pitch email and then have your assistant find shitty websites of businesses in your niche and send out the email to them, with a small personalized touch on each one. They can find them by simply Googling "Your City sports bar" and doing it with lots and lots of cities.

You must also have a US based phone number setup, so get a Skype number so potential clients can call you, because you will be spending a lot of time on the phone with each client to close most sales since you are not a professional sales person.

Now this is pure gold. What works, pure and simple from someone who's been there and done it. Double thumbs up.

A much, much better business model than trying to hire a sales staff.

[Andy_B]

I work on freelance sites charging $25 an hour as a copywriter and I have no trouble winning contracts. I've said it before and I'll say it again, when I lose bids, it's always to people who charge more than me, never to people who charge less. Man, I should make that into a personal motto or something. But I digress.

Yes, there are good Asian-based freelancers, and yes, there are cheap Asian-based freelancers. But just like with American freelancers, the good pile and the cheap pile don't overlap much. Most of the serious competition are the people who charge $20 an hour where you'd want to charge something like $30. You can compete by positioning yourself as more able to communicate with North American clients, since communication and understanding is just as important as output. It doesn't matter what part of the world you're talking about, the under $10 an hour crowd generally produce shitty work, or bump their rates up as they get more experience.

Anyway I don't mean to discourage you but I think conventional freelancing is probably a better bet than the business model you describe. It sounds interesting but it looks like a lot of work for the results you'd get.

[AntiTrace]

Quote:

... How much personal experience do you have with this? I wouldn't give advice about internet marketing unless you really know what you're doing.

Rog, Ill throw up a resume next time

Quote:

Rehauling Flippa sites profitably is far harder than most gurus say it is. First, auctions for great sites often go for several days in the last 4 hour period as bids keep getting renewed. You literally have to set an alarm clock at night to go off every 4 hours to make sure you don't get outbid. You won't sleep as you try and snipe the great sites.

Hard work, damn that shit can be scary.

Quote:

Then handling a site transfer is a real pain the ass. You need to transfer the database, the files and everything else. If there are limited licenses, you need to buy your own license to run on your server and make sure it doesn't break in the transfer process.

Good input

Quote:

Many of the super cheap WordPress sites you buy in Flippa could be infected with plugins that have all kinds of security holes. Once you install it on your MySQL database, hackers can gain access to the rest of your site.

Again, you get what you pay for

Quote:

Then there's actually remodeling the site and making it profitable. Often time's the traffic that Flippa sites get is shit traffic, especially if you're buying in the low price range.

Again, you get what you pay for

Quote:

I'm not saying it doesn't work. I've made money on Flippa. I'm just saying it's way harder than people imagine.

Hard work, damn that shit is scary

Quote:

I'm also saying you shouldn't give advice if you don't have personal experience.

You added one piece of good input, proceeded to rehash what I said, and then attack my experience level. Well played.

[DareP]

Quote:

You added one piece of good input, proceeded to rehash what I said, and then attack my experience level. Well played.

*shrug* not gonna get into an argument with you on an internet forum. It sounded like very generic advice to me. "Go start a blog," or "go buy and fix websites." Not really valuable advice in my book. But again, I'm not gonna get into an argument with you here.

Cya.

[RichieP]

Good advice DareP, sounds like you've got some experience under your belt with Flippa. Do you have any advice for selling sites? I've got some established content sites I want to sell and get the best price possible.

[drymarro]

I'm into offline marketing right now. In a sense it's location independent. But, I would have to go back to the areas sometimes for the bigger clients. Sure there are "webinars" and the like, but sometimes you gotta handle things in person. I know a couple of great resources and a few threads on a forum I'm on, if anyone is interested. Maybe I'll write a guide here for you guys. That's an idea.

[Rah]

I more or less do the OP's plan, but with one partner who does all the selling. My advice would be to focus your time and effort on becoming a really amazing designer.

I'm trying to hire designers right now and it's astounding how much mediocrity there is out there. If you're just a "good enough" or even a "pretty good" web designer in 2012, you're fucked. There's a gazillion guys just as good as you that want the same life you want all over the world. It's not a secret anymore: anyone can figure out how to do it with free (or pirated) tools and you can do it from anywhere with a computer and internet connection. So everyone's doing it, esp. in the developing world. It's a race to the bottom unless you're at the top.

Become awesome and you'll have your whole year booked up by great clients that will seek you out and pay you handsomely. As a bonus, you'll probably also enjoy your work about 10x more than if you're creating a site for Bob of Bob's Kitten Mittens who calls you every 10 minutes explaining that the site needs to have at least one more kitten on the homepage to make it "pop".

[whitenoise]

just suck dick for a living, bro! it pays well per hour and you can do it anywhere in the world!

ok, i'm being facetious, but none of this stuff looks remotely appealing or especially well rewarded (still a full time job if you want any real cashflow)

plus most of this stuff is in incredibly saturated markets. chances are, if you're reading a pdf telling how you to do it, you're too late to the party. if you can do it from anywhere in the world with just a web connection, so can apu, vikram and the rest of the developing world

[DareP]

Quote:

just suck dick for a living, bro! it pays well per hour and you can do it anywhere in the world!

I recommend Thailand. Go to Pattaya, there's a street dedicated to guy on guy action A bet a foreigner would get a lot of business!

Quote:

plus most of this stuff is in incredibly saturated markets. chances are, if you're reading a pdf telling how you to do it, you're too late to the party. if you can do it from anywhere in the world with just a web connection, so can apu, vikram and the rest of the developing world

... You think everyone making money online figured it out from scratch? o.O

Also, there are many issues with developing world guys. Their writing sucks. For programming gigs, communication can be a real issue. Sure, a lot of the truly automatable things like playing low level poker can and have been automated by 3rd world countries. But there are plenty of ways to make money online that simply can't be penetrated by the third world yet. Not all of these are hard; often time's it just comes down to bad communication and lack of trust.

When one of my sites got hacked, I paid a guy who really seemed to know what he was doing $200 to fix it. I found him through eLance. He gave me a guarantee for the work, that if I got hacked through the same method he'd fix it for free. Indian guys were offering to do it for $60, but I just didn't feel I could trust them. I didn't trust their guarantees, I didn't trust that they'd deliver, etc and so I paid the other guy more.

Anyway, there are plenty of ways to make money online. Yes, it's harder than most people think, but I don't think that just because you can learn it on the internet means it doesn't work anymore. Just do it better than someone else who's already making money doing it.

[RichieP]

Yep +1 for developing world guys not being the right fit for many jobs. As someone who's outsourced quite alot for my sites I can tell you they are great for SOME things, not for others and probably never will be.

DareP... keen to hear your thoughts on selling sites on Flippa and any tips you have for maximising revenue from the sale?

[drymarro]

(04-03-2012 08:34 PM)whitenoise Wrote:  

just suck dick for a living, bro! it pays well per hour and you can do it anywhere in the world!

ok, i'm being facetious, but none of this stuff looks remotely appealing or especially well rewarded (still a full time job if you want any real cashflow)

plus most of this stuff is in incredibly saturated markets. chances are, if you're reading a pdf telling how you to do it, you're too late to the party. if you can do it from anywhere in the world with just a web connection, so can apu, vikram and the rest of the developing world

That's the kind of mentality that will have you working a 9-5 because you don't know how to do online business. A lot of people can't do it. 95% of people won't succeed online. Part of the reason is they won't take action. Those that do aren't working hard and they're expecting it to be an easy "cash machine".
A lot of people are ignorant at how making money online is.
The work itself is easy.
Being a person that can learn the work, put a twist on it, and productively manage their time as well as learn from their mistakes: well that's a lot more rare.

Right now, offline business is the most unsaturated market. There are plenty of businesses without a website and those with websites usually have something clunky/and don't know how to promote themselves.

What do I mean by offline business? Well those are the leads. Then you provide services for them.

SEO, Google Places, Email marketing, Video Marketing, Social media marketing, autoresponder setup(ex: aweber), countless different services you can provide.

I think people really aren't taking me seriously enough. I definitely need to write a thread on this. It's perfect for people trying to travel. Once you got the clients on your billing and as long as you have internet access you can communicate with them.
It's easy. However the mentality to do this has to be rock-solid titanium reinforced with kryptonite. bad metaphor but you get my point.


Richie flipping sites isn't as easy as it sounds.

[whitenoise]

(04-03-2012 10:31 PM)drymarro Wrote:  

(04-03-2012 08:34 PM)whitenoise Wrote:  

just suck dick for a living, bro! it pays well per hour and you can do it anywhere in the world!

ok, i'm being facetious, but none of this stuff looks remotely appealing or especially well rewarded (still a full time job if you want any real cashflow)

plus most of this stuff is in incredibly saturated markets. chances are, if you're reading a pdf telling how you to do it, you're too late to the party. if you can do it from anywhere in the world with just a web connection, so can apu, vikram and the rest of the developing world

That's the kind of mentality that will have you working a 9-5 because you don't know how to do online business. A lot of people can't do it. 95% of people won't succeed online. Part of the reason is they won't take action. Those that do aren't working hard and they're expecting it to be an easy "cash machine".
A lot of people are ignorant at how making money online is.
The work itself is easy.
Being a person that can learn the work, put a twist on it, and productively manage their time as well as learn from their mistakes: well that's a lot more rare.

Right now, offline business is the most unsaturated market. There are plenty of businesses without a website and those with websites usually have something clunky/and don't know how to promote themselves.

What do I mean by offline business? Well those are the leads. Then you provide services for them.

SEO, Google Places, Email marketing, Video Marketing, Social media marketing, autoresponder setup(ex: aweber), countless different services you can provide.

I think people really aren't taking me seriously enough. I definitely need to write a thread on this. It's perfect for people trying to travel. Once you got the clients on your billing and as long as you have internet access you can communicate with them.
It's easy. However the mentality to do this has to be rock-solid titanium reinforced with kryptonite. bad metaphor but you get my point.


Richie flipping sites isn't as easy as it sounds.

fair enough, but like all solo ventures it's a risk. you can have the tightest attitude and still come out worse off.

if you have high value in the conventional job market, it's even less appealing. plus the work seems low rent and uninteresting. personally, i'd prefer teaching english as a means of supporting myself abroad

[drymarro]

(04-03-2012 10:53 PM)whitenoise Wrote:  

plus the work seems low rent and uninteresting. personally, i'd prefer teaching english as a means of supporting myself abroad

?? This work could land you major bank $$$. It's unsaturated and if you fail at it you're unfit for business altogether.
Teaching english? Good luck.

You can make money several times over and then teach english. Do something productive with your time. Teaching english is barely enough to cover your expenses.

I don't throw all my eggs in one basket. Diversification. There's risk in everything in life. Walking outside you have a 1/200,000 chance of getting hit by lightning.

Live life. Take action. Don't ever underestimate what you can do.

[whitenoise]

(04-03-2012 11:08 PM)drymarro Wrote:  

(04-03-2012 10:53 PM)whitenoise Wrote:  

plus the work seems low rent and uninteresting. personally, i'd prefer teaching english as a means of supporting myself abroad

?? This work could land you major bank $$$. It's unsaturated and if you fail at it you're unfit for business altogether.
Teaching english? Good luck.

You can make money several times over and then teach english. Do something productive with your time. Teaching english is barely enough to cover your expenses.

I don't throw all my eggs in one basket. Diversification. There's risk in everything in life. Walking outside you have a 1/200,000 chance of getting hit by lightning.

Live life. Take action. Don't ever underestimate what you can do.

yeah... i don't buy it. there isn't the money out there you suggest

how well have you done?

[drymarro]

(04-03-2012 11:30 PM)whitenoise Wrote:  

(04-03-2012 11:08 PM)drymarro Wrote:  

(04-03-2012 10:53 PM)whitenoise Wrote:  

plus the work seems low rent and uninteresting. personally, i'd prefer teaching english as a means of supporting myself abroad

?? This work could land you major bank $$$. It's unsaturated and if you fail at it you're unfit for business altogether.
Teaching english? Good luck.

You can make money several times over and then teach english. Do something productive with your time. Teaching english is barely enough to cover your expenses.

I don't throw all my eggs in one basket. Diversification. There's risk in everything in life. Walking outside you have a 1/200,000 chance of getting hit by lightning.

Live life. Take action. Don't ever underestimate what you can do.

yeah... i don't buy it. there isn't the money out there you suggest

how well have you done?

You don't buy it? Whatever. It's not like a scam or anything. You work hard and you do the right stuff and you can go far in life. I've done pretty well so far. My company is getting bigger each month.

One easy tactic you can get into though is making free websites for businesses.
How?
Well you hit up businesses without websites(check yellow pages) and you call them or mail them(don't email trust me).
Make them a simple wordpress themed website for free.
Sign them up for hostgator and you get paid $125/signup if you get 21 signups/month(easily possible to get 30) so thats over $3.1k/month.

There are threads on this in a forum which explain this further. PM me if you're interested as I'm too lazy to write right now.

That's pretty much the simple groundwork. You offer them facebook page management, SEO, email marketing, etc.

Everything is outsourceable.
Everything. (look on Odesk or fiverr)
As long as their is a margin of profit between outsourcing costs and revenue then you're good.) Everything will become recurring.

heck outsource sales to some college kids and you're fully automated.


It's not some get rich quick scheme. You'll probably fail the first couple of calls, maybe get 1 signup in every 20. But you'll get better. Sometimes businesses are just busy. Set up an excel sheet of who you contacted.(Contact them at least 3 times, trust me). Have business cards, be personal with them).

I have a software where I can scrape leads from yellowpages(3,000 in like 10 minutes) and export to excel.

I'm trying to concentrate on this more than ever. When I finish spring semester early May I'll be able to make this fulltime++ and make some serious bank.

[AlphaTravel]

Quote:

I definitely need to write a thread on this.

Write a thread on it for us, would be interested.