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Putting out Content daily - let's see what happens

Pat D. Rick

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So this is my first thread on this forum, but I guess it's a good way to monitor my progress as a freelancer and at the same time give you some insights on what's going on.

Okay, first things first...

In September 2018 I started on the side as a freelance copywriter. With all the tipps from this forum I setup an Upwork account and got my first client by sending him the article he was looking for, for free. He was impressed and gave my more work for the next two months. This was a content writing gig however, so not too much money. But hey, you gotta start somewhere.

I setup another account on fiverr which was more about copywriting than content writing. When people pay you money for what you create out of nothing it is sweet. But to me the real ice cream is the 5-star reviews they left because it’s proof that they were actually happy with my work.

In November I designed my own website. Amazing what you can learn with the help of YouTube tutorials. Because it was so easy to setup a new website and I remembered Fox’s thread about webdesign, I thought that this is another chance to earn money while helping people in need.

Thankfully I have some old economy self-employed people in my family. First target was my stepdad who has 6 employees and little to no work in December. I offered to update his website because it was pretty bad at that time and drive some traffic via Google Ads to it. 3 weeks later he asked me to stop the campaign because he got more phone calls than he could handle. It’s hard to describe the feeling of satisfaction I had.

After that until now there was just another customer for a website and every now and then a small copywriting gig.

Make no mistake, I still struggle to find new customers and most of the money I still earn with washing dishes on the weekend.

Now I think weekly updates are the way to go for this thread and of course every time something cool happens I’ll post it here.

If there are any questions feel free to ask :)
 
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Well done. Those are some very valuable technical skills you’re picking up (content creation, copywriting, website design/build, Google Ads). Wrap them all up in a bow and sell it as a way for businesses to make more sales and get more revenue.

Check out the Inbound Braindump thread in my signature. It might help.

Diesel and coffee.
 

Pat D. Rick

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Oh yeah it's already time for a new update.

So last week was pretty fulfilling. A client of mine who I made a basic website for and run a Google ads campaign asked me if I had changed anything recently because he actually got some new customers in. Finally a positive feedback!
I tried to improve his landing page and ads constantly and finally he got some serious business with my help. In his own words "At first I was sceptical because nothing happened, but now that I got so many customers I'm convinced." Sounds like a testimonial :clench:
I love it when people get results because it shows me that I am doing something right.

Another client reached out to me through Fiverr. He is starting a subscription based business and asked me if I could write the copy for his landing page. Had a phone call and am absolutely sure that I can help this guy. This is a great opportunity for both of us because it might end up as a long term partnership.
It payed off that I read a lot about online marketing and that I'm constantly educating myself, so I can provide more value to my clients and see all the mistakes other people make.

Off topic:
By the way I ran a marathon on Sunday. It was my first (and probably my last) marathon ever. I know this has nothing to do with the business, but it was an important personal goal of mine for this year. So if anyone wants to know how to run a marathon with just 10 weeks of training and less than 4 hours of training per week, hit me up.
Anyway, here's a picture...
 
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Pat D. Rick

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Update for September & October:

Hey everyone,

I just noticed that it’s been 2 months already and time for a new update.
In September and October I made 24241 EUR (23798 USD), so a nice little increase compared to the last update.

What’s happened:
  • My first Linkedin event was a complete failure. I had the settings wrong and people needed a special link to enter, which of course nobody had. Just 2 people asked for the link so of 21 registered people only 2 asked for the link and showed up. Nonetheless it was a good Q&A session that provided a lot of video content.

  • I read Alex Hormozi’s book “$100M Offers” and it really shifted my perspective on how I want to take the next steps to grow my business. I digged pretty deep on my core offering and structured a new one that should be so good that people will feel stupid saying no. I’m currently putting it on a landing page on my website and then will communicate it to the market.
    The pricing point of this offering will be much higher - around 27000 EUR (26501 USD) for the first 5 months - than my current services because we offer much more value. I also pretty much already sold the first pilot project of this offering for 15200 EUR (14919 USD). Deal is just not completely gone through yet.
    I want to sell at least one more of this core offer at the full pricing point during this quarter.

  • I’m about to start my own podcast. Intro and cover is already made and the first 3 people (all current customers) already agreed to be interviewed. I’ll use the podcast to create more content for YouTube, audio and articles, but also to get in touch with people of my target market more easily. I’ve heard people are more likely to talk to you, when you offer them to be interviewed as an expert on their topic. So it’s a win for both sides.

What’s on my mind:
  • Yesterday 4 years ago today I started my own business. Naively thinking that everything will go super smooth, but reality interfered pretty quickly.
    I can honestly say that nothing has gotten me flying higher and eating more shit than having the responsibility of starting my own business (especially since employees have put their trust in me).
    And although I know that not everything will be rainbows and butterflies in the future, I'm already looking forward to everything that's to come.

Other than that, there is nothing more to add for this update.
 
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Pat D. Rick

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Check out the Inbound Braindump thread in my signature. It might help.

Thanks I already read the whole thread and immediately used some of it. I sent out messages to old clients telling them that I have some free time now if they need my skills. Just one replied so far and assured that she will think of me in the future.

I also reached out to some local online marketing agencys offering my adwords skills for small business owners. Already met with two of them in person. One of them told me that they were looking for a guy like me the exact day my email reached them.

Guess there is some truth in this quote:
"The amount of good luck coming your way depends on your willingness to act."
 

Pat D. Rick

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Alright, as I'm starting to write this we've just passed the new year here in Austria about 15 minutes ago - so happy new year I guess.
This post is probably going to be a bit longer as it summs up the last month and year.

Let's first talk money:
December has been the same as the other months before. Around 1.100 Euros. So really nothing to brag about, but a lot more than a year ago when I was only starting out.

This month however was different. Something changed. Not only business-wise, but more on a deeper personal and emotional level.
It's hard to describe, but I'm gonna try it anyway.

You know when you hear something that makes totally sense to you, but still don't do it. Like eating healthy and working out to stay in shape. We all know that, but still a lot of us don't do it.
Then all of a sudden - maybe because you are in the right emotional state - it clicks. You knew all along that this thing made sense and would be good for you, but only now you get it on a deeper level and are going to live it. There is no looking back. (Maybe this is what people here call the FTE?)

After completing the book "They ask, you answer" (mentioned in my previous post) I knew that I had to commit to this marketing strategy and put out way more content then before. Which was easy because looking back at the last year I made almost no effort promoting myself.
I can't believe how naive and stupid this was. Not anymore.

I decided to publish 3 new articles on my website per week. To get the most out of every article I digged deep on SEO and I have to say, I actually really like it. Within the last 12 months I used to learn a bit about every major online marketing skill there is. Be it google ads, social media marketing or programmatic advertising, you name it. Now having to stick with SEO I realize, this comes in a way natural to me. Search engine optimization goes hand in hand with writing articles, which I get better at with every new piece I create.

The biggest problem with content marketing and SEO although is that it takes a very long time until you see real results. On one hand this is good because it teaches me patience and boy do I need to learn how to be patient. On the other hand it's bad because I might need faster results.

This is why I now leverage other platforms to bring people on my website. I interact on 4 different social media networks with people in my target audience. Don't get me wrong, I'm not spamming anybody.
I just hop on Facebook groups and share my latest insights with people. Ask them questions about their own businesses and comment on there posts to let them know that someone actually cares about the stuff they do.

The result?
Everyday I see now 2-3 people comming from social media onto my website. I know, this isn't a lot. But keep in mind that I'm only doing this for the last 2 weeks now - starting out with zero followers. And 2 people seeing my website is infinitely more, than what would see it if I didn't do all this stuff in the first place.

Furthermore I ordered a camera and other gear so I can start making videos. The videos again will only be informative content that I can share on various platforms.

Now, do I know if this strategy will work out?
No.
But I can tell you that the past 4 weeks have been more intense than any other month in 2019. I feel that this is right because things have stopped to be easy. A good sign for real progress.

I mean the fact alone that I'm sitting here on new years eve writing this update is kind of a sign (perhapsa sign of insanity).

Let me know what you all think of this update and if you get the feeling I was trying to describe.
 

Pat D. Rick

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Update for the last week:

Changed my strategy in approaching prospects a bit. After I read a thread here about the 80/20 principle I figured it would be better to focus more on the things that were already kinda working.
So I sent out more emails to various digital marketing agencys asking if they would like to work together. Some of them said they would come back to me, when they need my skills. Some of them don't want to cooperate and a lot of them didn't reply at all.

I like the idea of approaching people that are already looking out for you. So I'm now going after facebook business groups as well and try answering questions about PPC without directly selling to them. This way I can learn a lot myself on the way.

Upwork is another thing I'm going back after because of course companys there are obviously looking for people like me. Plus it's a good way for fast feedback. Only "problem" is that it's mainly a platform for the english speaking market and I'm not quite sure yet if my english skills are good enough.

Biggest Problem:
My biggest issue so far is my lack of patience. I know that this is kinda stupid but it's something I'm really struggeling with. I can't believe that already a week has gone by and I'm still have nothing to show for.

Any ideas on how to get more patient?
 

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Guess there is some truth in this quote:
"The amount of good luck coming your way depends on your willingness to act."

Reminds me of another good quote:

"The harder I work, the luckier I seem to get"
 
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BizyDad

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I'm kinda in an emotional downphase. Can't even explain why
When I get like this, and there's no inciting incident to cause it, I look at my habits. What have I eaten (or not eaten) that may be the cause? Am I getting the right mix of vitamins & minerals? Have I gotten enough sun? Do I need to exercise a little more? Have I been getting less sleep than I need?

Try journaling your daily food intake. That's how I was able to link certain foods (like pizza, which is one of my favorites) to a lower emotional state the next day. Now I'm much more conscious of the choice I make and if I do get down emotionally, I often have a clearer picture of why (cause I just can't quit pizza. Sometimes we're on a break, but I always go back...) It's also how I leanred that avocado, turkey, and green tea are emotion boosters for me. You can combine it with a sleep journal to figure out the "right" amount of sleep for you.

As for the tip, it's easier to keep the downs in perspective and power through when you know its temporary because of one of those issue above and easily addressed. Honestly, a long walk often resets my mood, especially if its around trees, but it could be just on a treadmill..

Hope that helps.
 
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Pat D. Rick

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Update for November:

Hey everybody,

In November I made 7.162 EUR (8.109 USD), another solid month.

I secured some very lucrative deals that I now have to deliver on, but nothing super special really.

I also found my first employee and she started with December 1st, but since it’s been only a couple days I think there is more to say with the next updates.

Actually there is not much to say for this update.
 
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Pat D. Rick

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Alright, it's time for a new update.

I've met with some new agencys and a few of them were interested in working together. Another guy who I met with needed my help with programmatic advertising, so he thought me all the necessary skills and even had some first clients for me. Finally I can see some money coming in.

Yesterday I've been on a business networking event with people from all different kinds of businesses. After I've announced that I'm doing Google Ads some of them approached me asking for my business card because they may need my service in the future. I was kinda flashed, but I'll make sure they won't forget about me.

Now I see that diesel and coffee basically pays itself!
 

Pat D. Rick

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Update for December:

This month I made 12.210€ in revenue. It’s my first five figure month, although some of the invoices aren’t paid yet.

It’s funny because in mid December one of my clients called me and said that he still needs to spend some money in 2020 or otherwise his company would have to pay too much taxes. So I sent him an invoice over 5.000€ and have to fulfill the job over the next months.

If it weren’t for that December would still have been a pretty good job. Because I’m on vacation from December 26th to January 9th and new jobs coming in quicker than I can handle them.

I really need to figure out how to outsource some parts of my work and fulfillment.

While I’m on vacation I don’t put out content on Linkedin as much. I really want to get some distance to it and then start again with some new creativity.

I hope you all had a happy new year and wish you all the best.

See you next month with the next update.
 
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Pat D. Rick

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Update für August:

Hi everyone,

In August I made 4.430 EUR in revenue, which is way below the numbers of previous months. Because it was vacation time some payments came in later.

In addition I was on vacation for a couple days myself and forced myself to not do work and enjoy the free time - I traveled to Milan, Italy (nice city).

Now at the end of August and the beginning of September I can clearly notice that vacation time is over since several inquiries rolled in during the past week alone.

I’ll be honest. Since business was running so smooth this year to date it feels harder to keep pushing myself. Surely I’m not the first person experiencing this, but I don’t know how other people stay hyped when things start to feel comfortable.

Have you had issues like this before?

If so please let me know how you solved it for yourself or how other people get over this.

My strategy on Linkedin changed a bit as well. I try to improve my messaging and speak about all the pain points of my target audience which I’ve learned about in all my calls during the last three months.

Also I’m using the Linkedin Sales Navigator (Linkedin’s premium sales tool) to find better leads and build a relationship with them and network my way to more business opportunities.

To be honest it’s kinda hard to write these updates because I’m not sure what kind of updates you want and what areas of my journey you are interested in. Some feedback about what insights I should add to my next monthly updates would be helpful.

Until then I will see you next month.
 

Pat D. Rick

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Hey everyone,
I just noticed that I haven’t made an update for the last three months, sorry about that.

Of course a lot has happened during those three months. First of all my first employee started working in December and she did a really good job. Unfortunately she will leave at the end of March to pursue her own self-employment, although in a very different business, so she won’t be a competitor or anything.
Now I have to find another employee because the last months made me realize how important it is to not do everything yourself as well as have someone to talk about your work (other than friends & family).

During the first few weeks I actually felt kinda useless because a lot of things that I used to do now were taken off my plate and I even started to fill my new time with unproductive things. Not very smart!
But then I came to my senses and thought, “Hey, now I have more time for the really important and valuable things for the company.” So my clear goal for this year is to develop marketing and sales to build a predictable pipeline of qualified leads to stop being overly dependent on LinkedIn and word of mouth.

My first step for that is a very thorough white paper I’ve created that explains the pains of my ideal customers and how my services help them solve their problems. The white paper is currently being professionally designed. When it’s done it will be offered for download in exchange for an email-address (nothing new here). But I will promote the white paper heavily and send it to ideal leads directly to get their attention.
I can also take some topics from the white paper to put in my own blog posts and strengthen the inbound channel. And I can turn every blog article into several social media posts, which gets the content machine going.

My qualifying and onboarding process for new clients is already pretty good. I usually start with a foot-in-the-door-offer that is a small win for both sides and builds the basis for monthly services in the future.
I've also decided to focus much more on my SEO Copywriting services only and won't take on any more customers that need one time projects or need any services outside this focused offering (like technical SEO audits). This makes it much easier to find the ideal customers who can benefit from this specialized offering. It also makes it easier in the long run to delegate my sales process to other people, so I don't have to do all the selling myself anymore.

There is actually a lot going on right now, and sometimes it feels like putting out multiple fires at once. But it is fun and we'll see how things are going to turn out in the end.

I will do my best to not forget the new update next month.
 

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Seems to me that Germany is a huge market for IT related , online sales , SEO , Marketing through social media etc.
Should you not look at this a s a potential short course.
What about Offering someone else course in German as a translated guide for instance.
That way both of ye increase your market and potential.
Most of the courses on here are English and ewould have a better following if translated.
Oh wait is that a fastlane idea.....ok nobody copy that just ignore I said it..... ;-)
 

Pat D. Rick

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Hey everyone,
November was pretty much okay.

All in all I made about 1.100 Euros, which is pretty okay to cover my expenses.
I also got back 566 Euros in taxes from last year which is pretty nice, although I don't count it as money I earned with my own skills.

Business is getting scarce so I thought about using Google ads to get some leads in and offer my service.

I'm bringing in some leads on Facebook for the real estate agent I mentioned above, but he didn't sell a house to one of these leads yet. So I keep tweaking the campaigns and hope that he will eventually sell a house to one of the leads so that I can finally get payed as well.

By the way:
I'm currently reading "They ask, you answer" by Marcus Sheridan (recommended read).
It's an amazing book about content marketing and inbound sales. In fact I'm already taking action on some of the points he speaks about.

By now it's been about ony year in since I started out with this journey and to be honest I am not half way of where I thought I would be. I guess I'm just the most impatient guy ever...

But there is one thing I noticed some days ago:
When I first started out I was way more insecure than I'm today. I learned a lot about different skill sets and with this came a lot of confidence.
At the beginning I thought that I'll never know enough to be of great help for anybody, but now I just know who I can provide value for.

It was pretty interesting to discover how your own personality can change for the better within just a couple months.

Maybe you can give me your thoughts and insights on the progress so far :)
 

Pat D. Rick

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Hey everyone,

February is obviously over which means it's time for a new update.

Had a slow start this month so I didn't put out quite as much content as last month. But still posting several pieces of content per day. I also dropped "Xing" as a plattform because there is zero interaction between users over there.

What excites me is that my daily posting seems to work, as I already secured two deals to do business with people just because they saw me posting a lot about optimizing websites (one on Linkedin and one on Facebook).
On an another ocasion I offered to analyse a website for free within a facebook group. The only condition was that I would be allowed to document the whole process on my own blog and they would get a backlink of course. A lot of people responded wanting me to analyse their website.
So I analysed the website of one company which ended in my longest blogpost ever. Next I postet my results into that facebook group so everyone could analyse their own website with the exact steps I provided.
The guy whose website I analysed was amazed and meant that he would come back to me in March to see if we can work together fixing all the errors I encountered.
Why in March? Because there is an election going on right now and he is one of the top candidates. It's a rather small election for the chamber of commerce. But still it's always valuable to get in touch in people who know a lot of other people.

Then there is another great idea that struck me. I can talk a lot about how to optimize website for search engines and all that stuff, but talk is cheap as we all know. So I came to the conclusion that I should start a new website and apply all my theoretical knowledge. The whole process will be documented on my current blog and social media channels.
This way I'm not just talking about the things that work. Instead I can show what works and what doesn't.

Moneywise this month was pretty much okay - I know I keep saying this for months now. But the good news is that I already some offers on the table for the next month. Looks like March and April are going to be a bit better as of now because I finally have some small MRR deals.
Of course I will keep posting and engaging with people to build my community.

That's it for this month's update.

Any quetions or feedback? Feel free to share your thoughts!
 
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Pat D. Rick

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Update for June:

Hey everyone. June went okay for the business.
Because there wasn't much for clients to do I focused on connecting with new people, putting out content and expanding my network.

Linkedin is starting to gain momentum. When I started posting the results I was getting for my existing clients I suddenly got more messages in my inbox asking for my service.
Obviously people love case studies. So I'm going to use them more often.

One day I made a post about how to delegate/outsource the part of my work where I suck at. One guy that I already met with in real life before the corona crisis reached out to me, asking what I need help with.
When I explained that I hate cold calling and hard selling he introduced me to somebody who might be able to help me.
Long story short, I met two times with this guy and he seemed to be pretty good at attracting new business.
I've got see their own processes for onboarding new clients and they really know their stuff. Since my skill set is still missing in their agency they are going to share their clients with me and get a commission. And the client gets more of a full service. A win for everybody.
We'll see how it turns out at the end.

One more thing.
I also publish new articles on my blog to get more attention. One day I decided to ask some other people in my network about their advice for my readers. I never met this people in real life, but they all agreed to share some valuable insights in my article - of course they got mentioned and a link to their website.
It's amazing how many people are willing to help if you just ask them.
But you have to build some sort of relationship first. I knew all this experts from my social media channels and were engaging with them regularly. Of course they were willing to help me out since they kinda knew me and I've never tried to pitch them something.
And when the article was done, everyone shared it on their own channels, which means that I got several times the attention of what I would have normally gotten.
Afterwards I sent those people a handwritten letter since I thought that nobody does this anymore. Well, they all were surprised in a really positive way.

That's it for this months update.
I'll let you know how the cooperation with the agency turned out and how many more fruits the Linkedin tree will bear next month.

Oh by the way, thank you @eliquid for your thread on PPC Advertising! I'm also currently reading the crash course on BuSo and the Blog on SERPWoo. It's helping me a lot.
 
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Pat D. Rick

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Update for November:

It’s been 4.108 EUR in November. Some invoices are out, but not paid yet so there will be additional revenue coming in from the November deals.
I also secured deals worth about 5k for December that I’m working on now.

Right now it’s kinda hard to manage all the work that’s coming in. I even had to postpone some deals to January because I can't work them off at the moment.

I’m starting to raise prices with every new client, but somehow they keep coming. In a Zoom meeting one client even said that I have to raise prices because he thinks I’m aiming too low. Nice thing hearing this from a client's point of view.

This month it also was the first time someone gave me negative feedback. And I don’t mean valuable negative feedback. It was more the negative attitude kind of feedback. The Guy wanted me to help with his website relaunch and writing copy that sells and also has a chance to rank well in Google.

No Problem. I made an offer, he signed it and I started to work. After a couple hours of work I sent him my first draft to get his feedback and adjust from there.

And then. Silence. No answer for a whole week.

Finally he sent me an email raging about my first draft. That somehow confused me since our initial video call was quite nice. Anyway I offered to write another version because revisions are always included. He raged again and wanted to stop working with me altogether.

But because he signed my offer and I already had put in some work I didn’t want to let it end that way. I convinced him that he would pay 50% of the amount and never have to see me again afterwards. He agreed and I had the money the next day.

My learning from that: New clients will have to pay at least 50% up front BEFORE I start working. This way there is way less risk involved.

All in all it’s starting to get really interesting. I'm excited to see how it goes on and what the next year will bring.

Next update will follow next month/year.
 

Pat D. Rick

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Update for February:

Hi everyone,

February was again a solid month with 6.263€ in revenue. Some invoices from the previous month will be going out this week.

On Linkedin things are kinda getting slower since I came back from my vacation in January. My posts lately don’t get as many views as they used to, but are still performing decently.

I also met with a startup, who came to me through Linkedin, last week and they really need my service. This would be a pretty good deal since they’d need help on an ongoing basis and I’m trying to get more clients on a monthly recurring basis.

Currently I have about 3.200€ on MRR and several one time projects, although I’m trying to convince the one time projects that they’ll need more help in the future. Which is true since I’m doing mainly SEO.

I thought it might also be a good idea to start posting on other places again as well as producing more content for my own website. Especially the latter suffered in the last couple months. Because of all the work I’m doing for my clients I didn’t take as much time for my own website.

But I consistently get traffic to my website (around 500 visits per month) from the articles I published last year - it’s starting to gain traction after all. Unfortunately it’s not really relevant traffic for business since the articles have more of an informational search intent.

Nevertheless it’s good to see things moving in the right direction.

For the next couple weeks I want to try some outbound marketing. I think it’s a good idea to not be dependent on only one marketing channel (which is currently Linkedin for me). Although I’m not really an outbound type of person I’d like to give it a shot and see the results of an strategic outbound campaign.

That’s it for this month's update!
 

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Update for November:

Hey everyone,

In November we made 6992 EUR (7357 USD) in revenue which is less than the previous months. But this is due to the fact that there are still 4260 EUR (4482 USD) in open invoices from November that are yet to be paid. So in total it will be 11252 EUR (11840 USD).

What’s happened:

  • I’ve already interviewed a couple people for my podcast, but I will probably launch it next year. What really caught me off guard was how close you are to certain people when you know how to network. For example I had a podcast interview with a consultant who introduced me to a recruiter in the life science industry. After my interview with the recruiter I asked if he as well could recommend some people who might be interested in giving me an interview. After some thinking he said that he knows the CFO of one of the most well-known game manufacturers in the world and that he could introduce me to him.
    So I’m really excited to see what will come out of that.

  • Subscribers on my YouTube channel are growing slowly but steadily. I’ve made some good experiences with in-feed ads so that my videos are displayed when people are searching for relevant terms. Right now I’m paying 8 EUR daily for those ads and within the last 4 weeks I got 15 new subscribers. Since this pays into my long-term organic content strategy, I don't think it's a bad investment. In addition, retargeting ads are displayed to people who have seen my videos.

  • I got an inquiry from a swiss company with more than 140 employees. Funny thing is that we were recommended to them by another guy who made their website and whom I’ve never met or known before. So I think our content was good enough to speak and sell for us so we get recommended by people I’ve never spoken to.

What’s on my mind:

  • I’ve decided to not sell and promote my new offer this year, but start with the new year instead. Because in our agency we have company holidays from December 20th to January 6th. Since most of our customers are also on vacation here and I'm never really away from work, it's the only time of the year when I can really switch off. And for these 3 weeks I don't want to do any more big advertising campaigns. Instead, I'll run more video ads to fill my retargeting list, which I'll later populate with conversion ads.

Other than that, there is nothing more to add for this update.
 
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Update for December 2022 and January 2023:

Hey everyone,

In December and January I made 30127 EUR (32607 USD) in revenue. A big portion came from the sale of the pilot project of our new offer, which I mentioned in one of the previous posts.

Like projected in the post in June we crossed the 100k line by the middle of 2022 so it was a nice feeling to cross that line. Looking forward to my first 100k in profit.


What’s happened:
  • Since I was away for like 3 weeks over the holidays and new years most of December was just about delivering all projects in time so we can go into our company holidays without stress. And boy I really needed the distance physically and mentally away from daily business to get the creative juices flowing again.

  • During holidays I had a discussion with one of my best friends who’s also running an agency (currently doing between 30k and 50k monthly) but in a different industry about how we could start a project together. Because he’s really good at selling while we are better at the fulfillment side, so we are a pretty good addition to each other's skills. We’ve always talked about starting something together and see how it’ll turn out.
    So we talked about a specific target audience and defined an offer for these people. The next couple weeks he’ll start calling the leads and start selling so we’ll have some validation on our offer.

  • I’ve started to use Linkedin Paid Ads to start promoting our new offer and also increased the budget for our YouTube Ads to 27 EUR per day. We get more subscribers now of course. Since we put out 2 videos per week I’m wondering how long it’ll take until we get some first sales from all these efforts.
What’s on my mind:
  • This week I got really nice feedback: One of our clients is a business consultant who also consults the window manufacturer I mentioned in the July & August update above. He told me this week that he had another workshop with the window manufacturer and somehow mentioned that he works with this SEO guy and the CMO of the window manufacturer says "Are you talking about Pat.D.Rick?" and he answers "Yes." and the CMO says "Oh great, we worked with him as well and from all the agencies with worked with in the past his delivered by far the greatest content!"
    So it was really nice to hear how our clients talk about our work when we're not around.
Other than that, there is nothing more to add for this update.
 

Pat D. Rick

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Well done on The Marathon.

Which country are you in and what do you mean by old economy when describing your fathers business?

Dan

Thanks man, I'm from Austria.

By old economy I mean anything that is completely offline. Construction is a perfect example for that because a lot of these guys have no clue of what's possible with a good online presentation of their company.
 

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Well done.


I don't know if you've seen this thread:

Yes, I've already gone through it.
The networking event yesterday was a good example. I asked people questions about their business, although I knew that my service wasn't interesting for them. I'm just interested in people and why they do what they do. I think this always makes a good impression.

One guy sitting next to me offering some industrial service I introduced to a friend of mine. There is absolutely nothing in it for me personally, but I knew they could profit from each other in the future.
 

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The networking event yesterday was a good example. I asked people questions about their business, although I knew that my service wasn't interesting for them. I'm just interested in people and why they do what they do. I think this always makes a good impression.

One guy sitting next to me offering some industrial service I introduced to a friend of mine. There is absolutely nothing in it for me personally, but I knew they could profit from each other in the future.
Excellent mindset--helping people even if there's nothing in it for you. (BTW, providing value to others even when there's nothing in it for you will actually produce results--maybe not directly from those folks, but from others down the road).
 
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Hey everybody,
Another good month. Well, at least workwise.

I've secured some deals that are:

1. New website for a hotel - 1.200€
Thing is that this client will pay me 100 Euros every month for 12 months because it's easyer for him to handle. It's not a big hotel so I am pretty much okay with that deal as I already knew him personally.

2. New website for a logistics company - 1.100€
This deal will be payed in two payments. It maybe seem like a bad deal for a new website, but it really isn't because it's a rather small and simple website. Something i could always do on the side.

3. Simple sales funnel - 800€

4. Content creation - 450€


The good thing is that I'm already through with most of the stuff. So around 3 weeks of work that'll bring in 3.550€ which is awesome.
But the best thing is that I already have some pretty big clients in the pipeline. These have even more potential and would pay me monthly.

Things are really starting to get interesting. I'll give you an update next month or if anything special happens.
 
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Hey everyone,
So October wasn't too bad, but could have been better.

The good thing is that I already got payed from most of my clients I mentioned in my previous post.
Another good thing is that I had an idea for a digital product (an online course) because I know that in this niche something like this course would be appreciated. I started to work on that course last week, but because this topic is so extensive it will take a few weeks until it's finished.
We'll see how good it will sell when it's time to hit the market.

The bad thing is that some of the clients I had in the pipeline don't need my skills at the moment, so I'm kinda out of work for now. Feels like I have to start from scratch again.

Oh yeah, there is one more thing going on.
I'm currently creating FB campaigns for a real estate agent. Thing is that he'll pay me a percentage of what he gets when he sells a house through my campaigns. I thought this is a fair deal for both of us, as we'll both only get paid when we are successful. On the other hand I never know if he sells a house through my ads or through his personal network. And trust isn't always the best factor when it comes to doing business.
What do you guys think about this?
 

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Alright, time for a new update.

January seemed like it would never end to me. I don't know if it's because I focus intensely on every single day to give my best or something else.

I made around 1.100 Euros. Still not a big jump, but this actually doesn't even bother me much. I worry much more on producing content that helps people with their website and maybe get me some new clients in the future.

I got 2 new clients who found me over Google ads. The good thing is that they need my help on an ongoing basis which takes some financial pressure off me.
And I already got some work in to secure next month's income.

So let's get to the more interesting stuff:
I pumped out between 550 and 600 pieces of content across 6 different plattforms.
That are:
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Xing
  • Linkedin
  • Tik Tok
I started basically at 0 on each network. Although organic reach is massively dropping on instagram, it's still the plattform I got the most followers during this first month (around 70 followers right now).
Because I'm in the B2B niche I don't even expect extremely big jumps on Instagram or Tik Tok.
Twitter is pretty much dead in the german speaking community, but that's not a reason to not go for it anyway.

Unfortunately I haven't gotten into Video so far because the moment I'm starting to produce videos I can also share them on Youtube or break them into smaller pieces for other plattforms.

Fine, but what are the results so far?
After just a single month of this process there really is not a lot of results so far. I guess the fact that some people are already reaching out to me on different networks is a bit of evidence that I'm on the right track.
(I also had my first "viral" video on Tik Tok with more than 23k views - not to brag)

Because I don't do much advertising on Facebook and Instagram there won't be thousands of more followers in an instant. I am aware of that and absolutely okay with it.
I'd much rather take small steps, figure out what works on each plattform and what doesn't and then scale it with paid media.

What's actually surprising to me is that I enjoy posting on these networks and forming real connections with my community. I always hated social media as a consumer. I really did.
But from the perspective of being a producer it's a whole different game.

To often it is forgotten, that Facebook and Linkedin were created for the purpose of networking. These aren't just some profile pictures. It's real human people on the other side of the screen and we get the chance to build a relationship. That's what excites me.

What does my process look like?
Simple. I write 3 articles on my Blog per week.
I break these articles down into smaller pieces and then post these smaller pieces of content on social media.
The longer articles on my blog are actually the most crucial part to me because over time they will get some traction in the Google search results and will consistently bring in new traffic.
Well, at least that's the plan. So far I didn't do outreach to gain relevant backlinks to my site. That's something I need to tackle within the next months.

That's it for this month's update. If you have any questions don't hesitate and ask them right away.
 

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