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I'm lost and discouraged about my Ad Agency even though I got results. Any advice?

Anything considered a "hustle" and not necessarily a CENTS-based Fastlane

Talb

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I spent thousands of dollars of unemployment benefits during the COVID pandemic on courses that teaches you how to start a digital marketing agency so I wouldn't have to go back to the assembly line earning $8.00 per hour. I have no degree and really no marketable skills and even worse I have to head back to the assembly line. AND Facebook restricted one my business managers for about 70 days now...

I did managed to bring 7 new clients to a nail salon and got a video testimonial from a trial...I covered her ad spend of $100. She didn't want to stay on a retainer even though she got results. Since then I've been targeting broad niches and carpet cleaners. Posting on my profile that I'm looking for 2-3 owners that want 10-15 jobs guaranteed or that I'm looking 2-3 owners that want 7 customers in 7 days.

The offer for carpet cleaners is for a paid trial where $100 would go to my ad fee and $200 would go to the ad spend. I created a generic FB page and from lead forms, found that the average cost per lead was $18. I qualified people through messenger through a series of questions and told them that the guarantee if I fail is that I would refund them the $100, minus processing fees, and work for free for another week not including ad spend. AND I would do a google review and a reactivation campaign for social proof and help them get more sales from past customers. I've booked a couple of demos but got no shows. Only one showed up and he wanted me to work for free for a month. Some even wanted me to guarantee their free trial.

The gurus are telling me that saturation doesn't matter in a niche but I financially cannot come up with a better offer with the income that I earn nor attend the coaching calls since I must work. An example of such an offer is, get 30 booked appointments or your money back plus $1,000 for wasting your time. The only guarantee they want me to offer as a risk reversal is free work with a Google review campaign and reactivation campaign. Even more so, I don't have much time to set appointments and close appointments since I now have to go to work at a day job and as for paid ads, the coaches are telling me to spend at least $50 per day on ads for booked appointments. I commute to work by taking bus which takes almost 1 hour to and back.

I literally must get up at 5 am in the morning, get ready for the day, catch the bus and be at the assembly line from 7:15 am to about 4:30pm and arriving home at 6pm. On a side note, they are starting me off at $13.20 and occasionally they want us to work on Saturdays as well... feeling discouraged and wondering if I should either:

A) Attend a coding bootcamp with an ISA and get a higher paying job to fund the agency with paid ads
B) Freelance copywriting so I that I wouldn't haven't spend $ on software tools that I am not using because I am not getting enough booked appointments organically, I'm flushing dollars...
C) Do Drop servicing so that I can focus primarily on sales calls and not concern myself with fulfillment or software costs.
D) Continue with the agency even though most local businesses close by the time I get home to internet access for zoom calls and fulfillment of the service.
F) Choose another niche or online business model like Fox Web Design

The goal is to quit my day ASAP!!! A consistent $2.5k per month would be great!
 
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Jeannen

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I would definitely not spend any $ on ads until you have a good offer and know how to talk to your target audience

Also, as someone who has bought numerous guru courses and most often been disappointed, I wouldn't recommend following that kind of shit. If someone is selling a lifestyle, this is a HUGE red flag.

The only way I could consider buying a full-price course now is if it's a technical course (example: how to do a very specific task).
Also, what you'd often find is that they're selling content that is 1-3 years old, and most likely not applicable anymore.
 

Talb

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I would definitely not spend any $ on ads until you have a good offer and know how to talk to your target audience

Also, as someone who has bought numerous guru courses and most often been disappointed, I wouldn't recommend following that kind of shit. If someone is selling a lifestyle, this is a HUGE red flag.

The only way I could consider buying a full-price course now is if it's a technical course (example: how to do a very specific task).
Also, what you'd often find is that they're selling content that is 1-3 years old, and most likely not applicable anymore.
Thanks and good point as well. I always felt as though the content was outdated. A lot of local business owners are hip to agencies and their strategies as well. The only carpet cleaner that showed up to the call pretty much yawned at my demo presentation... and he said that he was burned in the past.
 

Jeannen

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Problem is that there has been an explosion of shit-tier social media marketing agencies in the past 10 years because of gurus who promoted the "Sell it and learn later" idea, leading to people getting trash results and losing trust
 
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Talb

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Problem is that there has been an explosion of shit-tier social media marketing agencies in the past 10 years because of gurus who promoted the "Sell it and learn later" idea, leading to people getting trash results and losing trust
I agree and everyone really is in the space... I had a conversation with my registered agent service and the rep said that he was also looking into creating a digital marketing agency. It's nuts
 

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Hey Talb, great job on taking action! Please don't be discouraged. You've come a long way, and you have some skills, and you've gotten some wins.

The big question is whether you can harness all that into enough momentum to get the flywheel turning and build up enough trust to get the clients you need coming your way.

So your post raises a few questions for me.

Are you located in the US?

What is your assembly line skill? Can you transfer to a bigger / better company in that industry and get more pay? If you can improve your hours and bring in more income, you'll open up space to devote to freelancing.

What are your housing options? Would it be viable to move, say, within biking distance of work? This could help free up your time.

I did managed to bring 7 new clients to a nail salon and got a video testimonial from a trial...I covered her ad spend of $100. She didn't want to stay on a retainer even though she got results. Since then I've been targeting broad niches and carpet cleaners
How did you land the nail salon as a client? Can you repeat those steps to land another client?

Also, why didn't you go after other nail salons? "Targeted broad niches and carpet cleaners." Why those? Your testimonial is from a nail salon. If you niche down to be the "client-getting machine for nail salons," you could have a nationwide clientele and not have to reinvent the wheel very much for each client's campaign because you're able to reproduce the same set of actions just about everywhere.

I financially cannot come up with a better offer with the income that I earn nor attend the coaching calls since I must work. An example of such an offer is, get 30 booked appointments or your money back plus $1,000 for wasting your time. The only guarantee they want me to offer as a risk reversal is free work with a Google review campaign and reactivation campaign
Yeah I would NOT do this.

Plus, if you think about it, this incentivizes the client to root AGAINST you getting results. "If I don't get you results, you get your money back plus $1,000." "Oh, ok, I'll just hire you and sabotage the results and end up with $1,000 extra in my pocket."

There's no need for you to do anything of the sort.

The "Risk Reversal" part of your sales pitch has one function: to overcome objections.

The main objection to overcome is trust.

There are other ways to cultivate trust. One is social proof, and you already have that in the form of a testimonial. Great job! Another is your credentials, and there are lots of ways that you can communicate your credentials (i.e. all the learnings you got out of this course) to potential clients. Basically, just take the claims from the Guru's own sales pitch to sell the course, and tell the client that you went through a training that has helped many other students to get X results for clients like Y.

What I'm trying to say is, offering a financially lucrative risk reversal guarantee is not the only lever you have to pull. There are tons of other ways that you can improve your sales pitch to get clients to say yes.

Even more so, I don't have much time to set appointments and close appointments since I now have to go to work at a day job
The fact that you're setting appointments after hours is not necessarily a barrier. For small business owners who are busy, evenings and weekends may be the only time they can meet with you. Look for as many asynchronous ways to communicate as possible.

Thinking through the economics of your offer, though, I'm struggling to see how this is supposed to work.

You said you're charging $100 (your fee) for you to manage $200 in ad spend.

OK, so does that mean you would need 25 clients in order to make the $2500 per month that you're hoping for?

You going to have time for that?

Even if you did NOT have a full time job, I would think that managing ad spend for 25 clients would keep you busy.

Can you clarify the amount of time it's going to take you to handle each client and what they get for that $100? Seems super cheap. Especially if you do free work and give a refund to clients who don't get results.

as for paid ads, the coaches are telling me to spend at least $50 per day on ads for booked appointments.
No way. That's a lot of money. It's easy for the coaches in a guru's program to tell you to do something like this. It's not their money. And for all they know, you're plenty wealthy, since you evidently had thousands of dollars to spare to join the course in the first place.

Free way to do the same thing: Do the legwork to find the contact information of your target clients and reach out to them yourself. It takes more time, so it'll have to be your call to determine if money is more scarce than time. Try to systematize this so that you can get your ad in front of the same amount of leads as you would if you were paying $50/day in ads.

On a side note, they are starting me off at $13.20
So you got a raise from $8.00? At least that's something. Congrats!

Can you get another raise by changing jobs again? There's a lot of talk about companies who can't find workers. Not sure if it's the case in your area, but it might be worth looking around.

A) Attend a coding bootcamp with an ISA and get a higher paying job to fund the agency with paid ads
B) Freelance copywriting so I that I wouldn't haven't spend $ on software tools that I am not using because I am not getting enough booked appointments organically, I'm flushing dollars...
C) Do Drop servicing so that I can focus primarily on sales calls and not concern myself with fulfillment or software costs.
D) Continue with the agency even though most local businesses close by the time I get home to internet access for zoom calls and fulfillment of the service.
F) Choose another niche or online business model like Fox Web Design

All of these options look like a complete pivot away from the course of action that you've already invested some time and energy and serious money to develop. Unless you've fully concluded that you must walk away from this and eat the sunk cost (which may be the case - only you can make that decision), I would be looking at options instead for how you can get to the next step in this journey. For example:

A) Get a job as a media buyer in an ad agency so that you can further develop your marketing chops and your confidence in working with clients, while getting paid to develop your skills even more
B) Raise your prices to $1,000 per client for your fee and sell that. It's going to be just as easy (or just as hard) to sell it for $1,000 as it is to sell it for $100.
C) Do strategic partnerships with people who do related tasks to buying ads. For example, copywriters who write facebook ads or graphic designers who design facebook ads or affiliates who sell stuff using ads. Start conversations with them about how you do the actual work of running the ads. They might be happy to send clients your way who need ad management.
D) Develop your sales skills, poise and confidence, so that you are not losing potential clients just by virtue of the fact that they are reading "impostor syndrome" all over your body language.
E) Research the most profitable niches where people can afford to pay you well, such as dating, alternative health / supplements, and self help.

Hope this is helpful and provokes some thoughts and solutions!
 

Jeannen

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Yeah, so, either find a way to differentiate yourself or do something else than SMM
Not saying you can't do it, but most people who do this and make actual money got their clients before it was saturated

I do manage ads for my clients, and I found them through networking in 2018 in Belgium (usually 3-4 years behind in terms of marketing trends). No way I could do it now considering how saturated everything is. Companies get spammed every day with newbies trying to shill their things

I think the "everyone can be entrepreneur" market will reach its peak in some years and then slowly go back to the traditional job thing, that's how trends usually work.
Kinda like gold rush.
 
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BizyDad

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Consider that the more you promise people, the more you guarantee things, the less likely they are to trust you.

How good are you if you're only charging $100 for your service?
 

Onakosa

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I spent thousands of dollars of unemployment benefits during the COVID pandemic on courses that teaches you how to start a digital marketing agency so I wouldn't have to go back to the assembly line earning $8.00 per hour. I have no degree and really no marketable skills and even worse I have to head back to the assembly line. AND Facebook restricted one my business managers for about 70 days now...

I did managed to bring 7 new clients to a nail salon and got a video testimonial from a trial...I covered her ad spend of $100. She didn't want to stay on a retainer even though she got results. Since then I've been targeting broad niches and carpet cleaners. Posting on my profile that I'm looking for 2-3 owners that want 10-15 jobs guaranteed or that I'm looking 2-3 owners that want 7 customers in 7 days.

The offer for carpet cleaners is for a paid trial where $100 would go to my ad fee and $200 would go to the ad spend. I created a generic FB page and from lead forms, found that the average cost per lead was $18. I qualified people through messenger through a series of questions and told them that the guarantee if I fail is that I would refund them the $100, minus processing fees, and work for free for another week not including ad spend. AND I would do a google review and a reactivation campaign for social proof and help them get more sales from past customers. I've booked a couple of demos but got no shows. Only one showed up and he wanted me to work for free for a month. Some even wanted me to guarantee their free trial.

The gurus are telling me that saturation doesn't matter in a niche but I financially cannot come up with a better offer with the income that I earn nor attend the coaching calls since I must work. An example of such an offer is, get 30 booked appointments or your money back plus $1,000 for wasting your time. The only guarantee they want me to offer as a risk reversal is free work with a Google review campaign and reactivation campaign. Even more so, I don't have much time to set appointments and close appointments since I now have to go to work at a day job and as for paid ads, the coaches are telling me to spend at least $50 per day on ads for booked appointments. I commute to work by taking bus which takes almost 1 hour to and back.

I literally must get up at 5 am in the morning, get ready for the day, catch the bus and be at the assembly line from 7:15 am to about 4:30pm and arriving home at 6pm. On a side note, they are starting me off at $13.20 and occasionally they want us to work on Saturdays as well... feeling discouraged and wondering if I should either:

A) Attend a coding bootcamp with an ISA and get a higher paying job to fund the agency with paid ads
B) Freelance copywriting so I that I wouldn't haven't spend $ on software tools that I am not using because I am not getting enough booked appointments organically, I'm flushing dollars...
C) Do Drop servicing so that I can focus primarily on sales calls and not concern myself with fulfillment or software costs.
D) Continue with the agency even though most local businesses close by the time I get home to internet access for zoom calls and fulfillment of the service.
F) Choose another niche or online business model like Fox Web Design

The goal is to quit my day ASAP!!! A consistent $2.5k per month would be great!
First of all, congratulations on actually having some success right at the beginning! Most of us don't.

I'm an ads specialist and here are a few things:

Ads are only part of the marketing funnel. How much success those ads get is dependent on numerous things - including your client's customer service and product. I **NEVER** promise any specific results to a client for this reason. All I will tell them is that they will get the best possible service and product from me, as this is all that I can control.

The clients you're working with are the low end of the market - nail salons etc. We all start somewhere so, yeah, it's a good jumping off point. Clients at this end of the market are hard work. Seriously. They want everything but don't want to pay for it, and show you very little respect. Learn and move on as quickly as you can.

Doing a coding bootcamp is not a bad idea, but I would try and learn from free resources first. See if it's for you. You can spend 0000's on these things and come out with little to show for it. You can learn HTML and maybe CSS in a week if you put your mind to it and start getting a small portfolio together (it's what I did!)

Finally, if you're going to spend money on anything, I would spend it on a few books to help you with copywriting. This is the big one. There is absolutely no substitute for being able to write ad content ...

... same with graphics. I'm absolutely NOT a designer, so I tend to outsource mine if I have to. I have however learnt quite a bit from free tutorials e.g. Canva, and just by looking at other people's work. If I see an ad on FB I look at it and try and break down why I find it interesting and what made me stop and look.

The ads market is a little saturated, but if you're good you will always get work. It just might take a bit longer. Good luck (and, again, it sounds like you've had a good start!)
 

Talb

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I agree and everyone really is in the space... I had a conversation with my registered agent service and the rep said that he was also looking into creating a digital marketing agency. It's nuts
Hey Talb, great job on taking action! Please don't be discouraged. You've come a long way, and you have some skills, and you've gotten some wins.

The big question is whether you can harness all that into enough momentum to get the flywheel turning and build up enough trust to get the clients you need coming your way.

So your post raises a few questions for me.

Are you located in the US?

What is your assembly line skill? Can you transfer to a bigger / better company in that industry and get more pay? If you can improve your hours and bring in more income, you'll open up space to devote to freelancing.

What are your housing options? Would it be viable to move, say, within biking distance of work? This could help free up your time.


How did you land the nail salon as a client? Can you repeat those steps to land another client?

Also, why didn't you go after other nail salons? "Targeted broad niches and carpet cleaners." Why those? Your testimonial is from a nail salon. If you niche down to be the "client-getting machine for nail salons," you could have a nationwide clientele and not have to reinvent the wheel very much for each client's campaign because you're able to reproduce the same set of actions just about everywhere.


Yeah I would NOT do this.

Plus, if you think about it, this incentivizes the client to root AGAINST you getting results. "If I don't get you results, you get your money back plus $1,000." "Oh, ok, I'll just hire you and sabotage the results and end up with $1,000 extra in my pocket."

There's no need for you to do anything of the sort.

The "Risk Reversal" part of your sales pitch has one function: to overcome objections.

The main objection to overcome is trust.

There are other ways to cultivate trust. One is social proof, and you already have that in the form of a testimonial. Great job! Another is your credentials, and there are lots of ways that you can communicate your credentials (i.e. all the learnings you got out of this course) to potential clients. Basically, just take the claims from the Guru's own sales pitch to sell the course, and tell the client that you went through a training that has helped many other students to get X results for clients like Y.

What I'm trying to say is, offering a financially lucrative risk reversal guarantee is not the only lever you have to pull. There are tons of other ways that you can improve your sales pitch to get clients to say yes.


The fact that you're setting appointments after hours is not necessarily a barrier. For small business owners who are busy, evenings and weekends may be the only time they can meet with you. Look for as many asynchronous ways to communicate as possible.

Thinking through the economics of your offer, though, I'm struggling to see how this is supposed to work.

You said you're charging $100 (your fee) for you to manage $200 in ad spend.

OK, so does that mean you would need 25 clients in order to make the $2500 per month that you're hoping for?

You going to have time for that?

Even if you did NOT have a full time job, I would think that managing ad spend for 25 clients would keep you busy.

Can you clarify the amount of time it's going to take you to handle each client and what they get for that $100? Seems super cheap. Especially if you do free work and give a refund to clients who don't get results.


No way. That's a lot of money. It's easy for the coaches in a guru's program to tell you to do something like this. It's not their money. And for all they know, you're plenty wealthy, since you evidently had thousands of dollars to spare to join the course in the first place.

Free way to do the same thing: Do the legwork to find the contact information of your target clients and reach out to them yourself. It takes more time, so it'll have to be your call to determine if money is more scarce than time. Try to systematize this so that you can get your ad in front of the same amount of leads as you would if you were paying $50/day in ads.


So you got a raise from $8.00? At least that's something. Congrats!

Can you get another raise by changing jobs again? There's a lot of talk about companies who can't find workers. Not sure if it's the case in your area, but it might be worth looking around.



All of these options look like a complete pivot away from the course of action that you've already invested some time and energy and serious money to develop. Unless you've fully concluded that you must walk away from this and eat the sunk cost (which may be the case - only you can make that decision), I would be looking at options instead for how you can get to the next step in this journey. For example:

A) Get a job as a media buyer in an ad agency so that you can further develop your marketing chops and your confidence in working with clients, while getting paid to develop your skills even more
B) Raise your prices to $1,000 per client for your fee and sell that. It's going to be just as easy (or just as hard) to sell it for $1,000 as it is to sell it for $100.
C) Do strategic partnerships with people who do related tasks to buying ads. For example, copywriters who write facebook ads or graphic designers who design facebook ads or affiliates who sell stuff using ads. Start conversations with them about how you do the actual work of running the ads. They might be happy to send clients your way who need ad management.
D) Develop your sales skills, poise and confidence, so that you are not losing potential clients just by virtue of the fact that they are reading "impostor syndrome" all over your body language.
E) Research the most profitable niches where people can afford to pay you well, such as dating, alternative health / supplements, and self help.

Hope this is helpful and provokes some thoughts and solutions!

I live currently in the US in Erie, PA. My assembly skill is literally packing boxes of Red Barron pizzas into boxes. Not sure if I will ever buy those pizzas again.

I took your advice and looked for higher pay in the manufacturing industry and found open positions for a grinder in a foundry starting me out at $16.80 per hour with availability for overtime and weekly pay. Prior to COVID, I was working at a nonprofit at $15 per hour with 30 hour work weeks and the assembly job is at $13.20. A nice bump, and they want to give me a tour of the foundry tomorrow at 1pm so I am looking forward to that. It will most definitely be hard work but at least I will earn more than at the foundry and gain the skill of grinder. It's also 20-30 minute bike from where I live.

I found the nail salon in the Erie Entrepreneurs Facebook group. I posted a CFC (Call For Clients) which is, I'm looking to help 2-3 owners that want 7 more customers in 7 days or less, and that post was deleted and I was restricted from posting for quite some time.... even though other owners were allowed to post in group their promotional offers. Also my inquiry to join the ONLY co-working space in the city to learn from others smarter than me has been ignored and overlooked even though I posted results from the nail salon in the Erie Entrepreneurs FB group... looking to leave Erie as soon as I have the income to.

As for the offer, the $100 for my fee and $200 for the ad budget was for a paid trial but I see where you are coming from. The risk reversal of get "30 booked appointments or money back plus $1k for wasting your time" is what was taught to us from the course. I see what you are coming from when saying something like this is actually going against me. Gotta come up with a better offer and it's good to know that a lot of business owners can take my demos after normal business hours.

As for the media buyer for an agency, I've been looking online to find a position so I can learn and develop my skills. Also been researching a couple of niches where I can charge $1k per month on retainer. On a side note, I've been looking at online bootcamps for digital marketing and tech sales... I think that either bootcamp will be useful as an entrepreneur. They offer ISA (Income Share Agreements), which I'm fine with as long as I can find a job utilizing what I learned at the bootcamp.

Your advice definitely helps. Thank You!
 
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Talb

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Hey Talb, great job on taking action! Please don't be discouraged. You've come a long way, and you have some skills, and you've gotten some wins.

The big question is whether you can harness all that into enough momentum to get the flywheel turning and build up enough trust to get the clients you need coming your way.

So your post raises a few questions for me.

Are you located in the US?

What is your assembly line skill? Can you transfer to a bigger / better company in that industry and get more pay? If you can improve your hours and bring in more income, you'll open up space to devote to freelancing.

What are your housing options? Would it be viable to move, say, within biking distance of work? This could help free up your time.


How did you land the nail salon as a client? Can you repeat those steps to land another client?

Also, why didn't you go after other nail salons? "Targeted broad niches and carpet cleaners." Why those? Your testimonial is from a nail salon. If you niche down to be the "client-getting machine for nail salons," you could have a nationwide clientele and not have to reinvent the wheel very much for each client's campaign because you're able to reproduce the same set of actions just about everywhere.


Yeah I would NOT do this.

Plus, if you think about it, this incentivizes the client to root AGAINST you getting results. "If I don't get you results, you get your money back plus $1,000." "Oh, ok, I'll just hire you and sabotage the results and end up with $1,000 extra in my pocket."

There's no need for you to do anything of the sort.

The "Risk Reversal" part of your sales pitch has one function: to overcome objections.

The main objection to overcome is trust.

There are other ways to cultivate trust. One is social proof, and you already have that in the form of a testimonial. Great job! Another is your credentials, and there are lots of ways that you can communicate your credentials (i.e. all the learnings you got out of this course) to potential clients. Basically, just take the claims from the Guru's own sales pitch to sell the course, and tell the client that you went through a training that has helped many other students to get X results for clients like Y.

What I'm trying to say is, offering a financially lucrative risk reversal guarantee is not the only lever you have to pull. There are tons of other ways that you can improve your sales pitch to get clients to say yes.


The fact that you're setting appointments after hours is not necessarily a barrier. For small business owners who are busy, evenings and weekends may be the only time they can meet with you. Look for as many asynchronous ways to communicate as possible.

Thinking through the economics of your offer, though, I'm struggling to see how this is supposed to work.

You said you're charging $100 (your fee) for you to manage $200 in ad spend.

OK, so does that mean you would need 25 clients in order to make the $2500 per month that you're hoping for?

You going to have time for that?

Even if you did NOT have a full time job, I would think that managing ad spend for 25 clients would keep you busy.

Can you clarify the amount of time it's going to take you to handle each client and what they get for that $100? Seems super cheap. Especially if you do free work and give a refund to clients who don't get results.


No way. That's a lot of money. It's easy for the coaches in a guru's program to tell you to do something like this. It's not their money. And for all they know, you're plenty wealthy, since you evidently had thousands of dollars to spare to join the course in the first place.

Free way to do the same thing: Do the legwork to find the contact information of your target clients and reach out to them yourself. It takes more time, so it'll have to be your call to determine if money is more scarce than time. Try to systematize this so that you can get your ad in front of the same amount of leads as you would if you were paying $50/day in ads.


So you got a raise from $8.00? At least that's something. Congrats!

Can you get another raise by changing jobs again? There's a lot of talk about companies who can't find workers. Not sure if it's the case in your area, but it might be worth looking around.



All of these options look like a complete pivot away from the course of action that you've already invested some time and energy and serious money to develop. Unless you've fully concluded that you must walk away from this and eat the sunk cost (which may be the case - only you can make that decision), I would be looking at options instead for how you can get to the next step in this journey. For example:

A) Get a job as a media buyer in an ad agency so that you can further develop your marketing chops and your confidence in working with clients, while getting paid to develop your skills even more
B) Raise your prices to $1,000 per client for your fee and sell that. It's going to be just as easy (or just as hard) to sell it for $1,000 as it is to sell it for $100.
C) Do strategic partnerships with people who do related tasks to buying ads. For example, copywriters who write facebook ads or graphic designers who design facebook ads or affiliates who sell stuff using ads. Start conversations with them about how you do the actual work of running the ads. They might be happy to send clients your way who need ad management.
D) Develop your sales skills, poise and confidence, so that you are not losing potential clients just by virtue of the fact that they are reading "impostor syndrome" all over your body language.
E) Research the most profitable niches where people can afford to pay you well, such as dating, alternative health / supplements, and self help.

Hope this is helpful and provokes some thoughts and solutions!
Yeah, so, either find a way to differentiate yourself or do something else than SMM
Not saying you can't do it, but most people who do this and make actual money got their clients before it was saturated

I do manage ads for my clients, and I found them through networking in 2018 in Belgium (usually 3-4 years behind in terms of marketing trends). No way I could do it now considering how saturated everything is. Companies get spammed every day with newbies trying to shill their things

I think the "everyone can be entrepreneur" market will reach its peak in some years and then slowly go back to the traditional job thing, that's how trends usually work.
Kinda like gold rush.
I agree... it is definitely very saturated at this point. I will have to find an underserved market where newbies aren't pitching digital marketing services to. And if someone has figured out fulfillment for these niches, it is most certainly not all over the internet like chiros, roofers and dentists.
 

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Consider that the more you promise people, the more you guarantee things, the less likely they are to trust you.

How good are you if you're only charging $100 for your service?
The $100 was for my fee for a paid trial for 7 days. Some gurus say that instead of doing free work that it's actually better to do a paid trial instead so that's why I offered it. I'm not against free work if something comes out of it, like I mentioned before I paid for the nail salon ad spend and did her ad campaign for free.
 

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First of all, congratulations on actually having some success right at the beginning! Most of us don't.

I'm an ads specialist and here are a few things:

Ads are only part of the marketing funnel. How much success those ads get is dependent on numerous things - including your client's customer service and product. I **NEVER** promise any specific results to a client for this reason. All I will tell them is that they will get the best possible service and product from me, as this is all that I can control.

The clients you're working with are the low end of the market - nail salons etc. We all start somewhere so, yeah, it's a good jumping off point. Clients at this end of the market are hard work. Seriously. They want everything but don't want to pay for it, and show you very little respect. Learn and move on as quickly as you can.

Doing a coding bootcamp is not a bad idea, but I would try and learn from free resources first. See if it's for you. You can spend 0000's on these things and come out with little to show for it. You can learn HTML and maybe CSS in a week if you put your mind to it and start getting a small portfolio together (it's what I did!)

Finally, if you're going to spend money on anything, I would spend it on a few books to help you with copywriting. This is the big one. There is absolutely no substitute for being able to write ad content ...

... same with graphics. I'm absolutely NOT a designer, so I tend to outsource mine if I have to. I have however learnt quite a bit from free tutorials e.g. Canva, and just by looking at other people's work. If I see an ad on FB I look at it and try and break down why I find it interesting and what made me stop and look.

The ads market is a little saturated, but if you're good you will always get work. It just might take a bit longer. Good luck (and, again, it sounds like you've had a good start!)
First of all, congratulations on actually having some success right at the beginning! Most of us don't.

I'm an ads specialist and here are a few things:

Ads are only part of the marketing funnel. How much success those ads get is dependent on numerous things - including your client's customer service and product. I **NEVER** promise any specific results to a client for this reason. All I will tell them is that they will get the best possible service and product from me, as this is all that I can control.

The clients you're working with are the low end of the market - nail salons etc. We all start somewhere so, yeah, it's a good jumping off point. Clients at this end of the market are hard work. Seriously. They want everything but don't want to pay for it, and show you very little respect. Learn and move on as quickly as you can.

Doing a coding bootcamp is not a bad idea, but I would try and learn from free resources first. See if it's for you. You can spend 0000's on these things and come out with little to show for it. You can learn HTML and maybe CSS in a week if you put your mind to it and start getting a small portfolio together (it's what I did!)

Finally, if you're going to spend money on anything, I would spend it on a few books to help you with copywriting. This is the big one. There is absolutely no substitute for being able to write ad content ...

... same with graphics. I'm absolutely NOT a designer, so I tend to outsource mine if I have to. I have however learnt quite a bit from free tutorials e.g. Canva, and just by looking at other people's work. If I see an ad on FB I look at it and try and break down why I find it interesting and what made me stop and look.

The ads market is a little saturated, but if you're good you will always get work. It just might take a bit longer. Good luck (and, again, it sounds like you've had a good start!)
Thanks for the encouragement and yeah the low end of the market really doesn't respect what you have to offer and what you do. The good thing is that I got a video testimonial out of it so it's not all that bad.

It's also a very a good to do trial run to see if I actually would enjoy coding before I sign up for a coding bootcamp. Obviously my desire to sign up to something like stems from my desire to bring in more income. Interestingly enough, I've found that there are digital marketing bootcamps and tech sales bootcamps. Both of which are more entrepreneurial and will give more money if I find a job with these skills.

I'm looking more into copywriting as well. I even purchased Bob Bly's book on copywriting. I think that I am off to a good start.
 
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Justin K

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Yeah, so, either find a way to differentiate yourself or do something else than SMM
Not saying you can't do it, but most people who do this and make actual money got their clients before it was saturated

I do manage ads for my clients, and I found them through networking in 2018 in Belgium (usually 3-4 years behind in terms of marketing trends). No way I could do it now considering how saturated everything is. Companies get spammed every day with newbies trying to shill their things

I think the "everyone can be entrepreneur" market will reach its peak in some years and then slowly go back to the traditional job thing, that's how trends usually work.
Kinda like gold rush.
I have some experience in Facebook ads, mostly watching a ton of youtube videos and trial and error. After all of your experience, would you recommend paying Depesh for his executive coaching course, is it worth it even now with the IOS updates?
 

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I have some experience in Facebook ads, mostly watching a ton of youtube videos and trial and error. After all of your experience, would you recommend paying Depesh for his executive coaching course, is it worth it even now with the IOS updates?
A friend of mine took the coaching and he told me it was really disapointing

I do have his regular course tho, and it's pretty solid, but it's mostly made for people spending over $20 000/month on FB ads

Not updated yet for iOS14 tho
 

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Here’s something you can do :
Learn a skill(Eg: Coding, Marketing, Designing, etc)
Work at a small startup for a few months to get experience in that skill
Start freelancing on the weekends

and when you’re confident enough, find a way to turn that skill into a business.

This might take some time, but might be better for your future.
 

Justin K

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A friend of mine took the coaching and he told me it was really disapointing

I do have his regular course tho, and it's pretty solid, but it's mostly made for people spending over $20 000/month on FB ads

Not updated yet for iOS14 tho
Do you have a link for the course? Any way I can contact your friend or you could share my info with him?

Thanks so much, I really would love to find someone who took the course and hear what they have to say.
 

Jeannen

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Do you have a link for the course? Any way I can contact your friend or you could share my info with him?

Thanks so much, I really would love to find someone who took the course and hear what they have to say.
The course itself is good, but for the coaching my friend told me that its not depresh who do it, it’s one of his employee, he only come to shoot content for the public group lol

If you have question about the course itself you can DM me if you want
 
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