Hi guys,
I wanted to share my progress in the hope that my words will resonate with most of you, inspire some of you, and coax a few of you into helping me out!
I work in London at the moment, in B2B research, helping big companies understand how their performance compares to their peers, and identifying areas that they can improve. I'm pretty good at what I do, and I'm on a decent salary.
BUT I have zero flexibility. Last week I was about 30mins late for work because I went to breakfast with my gf. My boss asked me where i'd been, and told me to email him in the future if i'm going to be late. F**k that. If I have to work for someone else, I want to be able to roll in like Don Draper and no one ask any questions.
I've grown up talking about running my own business and I know what's possible when you break out of employment. My dad has been running his own company for as long as I can remember. He's not a millionaire, but he lives in a nice house and he works when he wants.
I put off reading books like TMF and 4HWW for a long time because I thought it sounded like BS, but once I actually read them, it was a revelation and changed the way I thought about business. Probably the most important thing i've learnt is to start small and start NOW.
Before you get excited about this being an amazing success story, it's not, but it's an honest portrayal of where I am today, where i'd like to be and the steps i'm taking to get there.
I've tried a few ideas, but haven't had any big hits yet. The important thing is that I learn each time, and I make a little more money.
Having taken some time out, I have shifted my mindset and have a new idea. I have shared some information on this already, but essentially, I am distilling my expertise in B2B research into an info product to help startups and small companies conduct awesome market research, without the need to commission a research agency.
www.StartupMarketResearch.com
I've outlined a series of steps that I need to take to make this project a success, some of which I've already implemented, some i've working on at the moment, some will come further down the line.
The thing that i've realised this time around it that you have to be patient if you want to see results. You can't really say the project has failed until you've tried all these steps, and if you haven't tried all of these steps it is only because you are LAZY.
This is how I see it, not necessarily in this order...
Buy a domain
Get a site up
write content
Get email set up
Drive traffic with Adwords
Test and iterate
Use the backlinking strategy that works
Comment on other peoples blogs (use Alltop)
Built a list of 100 people to email to promote your site
Email them
Email more people!!
implement a social media strategy (facebook, twitter etc.)
Post on forums!
Use HARO
Build an info product
give something away to collect email addresses
Install a payment mechanism
Plan a big launch
Sell your info product
Contact your mail list to see what they want
Make sure your info product is what they want
Start an affiliate scheme
Make videos, post on youtube
Use slide share
Keep doing the above...!
In terms of where I am right now. I've built the site myself with wordpress and very minor customization. I had a free Adwords voucher and i've used that to drive traffic to the site, and have iterated based on the results.
This is clearly an exaggeration of what I can really hope to achieve when I have a real product to sell (I don't at the moment), but it confirms that the idea has legs.
I am giving a FREE summary guide away at the moment, in order to get some sign ups and get some feedback on my writing. I have a list of about 65 topics that I am working through at the moment, that will form the basis of the book and the content marketing strategy.
I want to make my first sale by the end of Nov. (I'm planning on using eJunkie for payment)
Based on my current stats I think i'll need 100 hits to do this. To be conservative i'm aiming for 200 Non-Paid hits and I think i'll be able to get the following:
50 hits proper organic search
100 direct hits from emails
50 hits from referrals / forums / blog comments
I should be clear here as well that i'm not expecting this to make me rich overnight, i'd consider success to be making a few hundred dollars per month with minimal effort. I can then decide if I want to scale, or put that money into a new project!
I hope that the above overview will be helpful to people that are new and wanted a view of some of the steps they will need to take to start making an income online.
I'd love to get people's opinions on a few things...
I wanted to share my progress in the hope that my words will resonate with most of you, inspire some of you, and coax a few of you into helping me out!
I work in London at the moment, in B2B research, helping big companies understand how their performance compares to their peers, and identifying areas that they can improve. I'm pretty good at what I do, and I'm on a decent salary.
BUT I have zero flexibility. Last week I was about 30mins late for work because I went to breakfast with my gf. My boss asked me where i'd been, and told me to email him in the future if i'm going to be late. F**k that. If I have to work for someone else, I want to be able to roll in like Don Draper and no one ask any questions.
I've grown up talking about running my own business and I know what's possible when you break out of employment. My dad has been running his own company for as long as I can remember. He's not a millionaire, but he lives in a nice house and he works when he wants.
I put off reading books like TMF and 4HWW for a long time because I thought it sounded like BS, but once I actually read them, it was a revelation and changed the way I thought about business. Probably the most important thing i've learnt is to start small and start NOW.
Before you get excited about this being an amazing success story, it's not, but it's an honest portrayal of where I am today, where i'd like to be and the steps i'm taking to get there.
I've tried a few ideas, but haven't had any big hits yet. The important thing is that I learn each time, and I make a little more money.
- I started out with affiliate marketing, I built a site with about 5 pages and I made around $7 in a year.
- Then I started importing jewelry, I built a half decent website (www.angel-heart.co.uk) and I made £200 before deciding that it wasn't really fast lane and it wasn't worth the effort.
Having taken some time out, I have shifted my mindset and have a new idea. I have shared some information on this already, but essentially, I am distilling my expertise in B2B research into an info product to help startups and small companies conduct awesome market research, without the need to commission a research agency.
www.StartupMarketResearch.com
I've outlined a series of steps that I need to take to make this project a success, some of which I've already implemented, some i've working on at the moment, some will come further down the line.
The thing that i've realised this time around it that you have to be patient if you want to see results. You can't really say the project has failed until you've tried all these steps, and if you haven't tried all of these steps it is only because you are LAZY.
This is how I see it, not necessarily in this order...
Buy a domain
Get a site up
write content
Get email set up
Drive traffic with Adwords
Test and iterate
Use the backlinking strategy that works
Comment on other peoples blogs (use Alltop)
Built a list of 100 people to email to promote your site
Email them
Email more people!!
implement a social media strategy (facebook, twitter etc.)
Post on forums!
Use HARO
Build an info product
give something away to collect email addresses
Install a payment mechanism
Plan a big launch
Sell your info product
Contact your mail list to see what they want
Make sure your info product is what they want
Start an affiliate scheme
Make videos, post on youtube
Use slide share
Keep doing the above...!
In terms of where I am right now. I've built the site myself with wordpress and very minor customization. I had a free Adwords voucher and i've used that to drive traffic to the site, and have iterated based on the results.
- I've had 292 unique visits, and 15 unique page views on the "buy it now" page, so an indicative CR of 5.1%.
This is clearly an exaggeration of what I can really hope to achieve when I have a real product to sell (I don't at the moment), but it confirms that the idea has legs.
- I've also had 3 sign ups, which is indicative of a 1% CR, and means I have 3 potential customers for as soon as my product is ready.
I am giving a FREE summary guide away at the moment, in order to get some sign ups and get some feedback on my writing. I have a list of about 65 topics that I am working through at the moment, that will form the basis of the book and the content marketing strategy.
I want to make my first sale by the end of Nov. (I'm planning on using eJunkie for payment)
Based on my current stats I think i'll need 100 hits to do this. To be conservative i'm aiming for 200 Non-Paid hits and I think i'll be able to get the following:
50 hits proper organic search
100 direct hits from emails
50 hits from referrals / forums / blog comments
I should be clear here as well that i'm not expecting this to make me rich overnight, i'd consider success to be making a few hundred dollars per month with minimal effort. I can then decide if I want to scale, or put that money into a new project!
I hope that the above overview will be helpful to people that are new and wanted a view of some of the steps they will need to take to start making an income online.
I'd love to get people's opinions on a few things...
- Have I missed anything, or am I right in thinking that if I keep working though the above steps and iterate and refine my product i'll be successful?
- Any feedback on my site / concept
- If you are interested in market research, i'd love to know what things you are struggling with so that I can include it in the guide
- If you download the guide i'd love to get your feedback on that as well
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