Putting out Content daily - let's see what happens

[Andy Black]

1) So far all I did was inbound. People were approaching me because they either has been referred to me or because they followed my Linkedin posts.

Focus on what's working?

2) I haven't tried YT shorts so far, but would definitely give it try. I'm very sceptical with republishing my current videos as shorter versions on TikTok or Reels though because it's not native to the plattform at all. My videos aren't really for entertainment purposes.

Plenty of TikTok channels have non-entertainment content. Alex Hormozi has a channel. I was only on TikTok for a couple of weeks checking it out. I thought his videos were quite well done.

3) I'm currently running ads to promote the download of my white paper. Or do you suggest I should run ads just to get in front of more eyeballs?

Keep doing what's working. Check out Laurel's stuff. Her strategy would be to give away a great tip for free and mention an accompanying content upgrade. She'd tell people to reply if they wanted it and she'd then get into message conversation with them. It might be the content upgrade isn't the most appropriate thing to send them, so she'd send something else or end up on a call.

4) Thank you, I'll look into it asap!

You're welcome.

 

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[Pat D. Rick]

Update für June:

Hey everyone,

First 6 months of this year are over and I've made 57.718 EUR (60.194 USD) since the beginning of the year. With a nice new project I closed 2 weeks ago and my MRR I’ll pretty much cross the 100k mark this year for the first time.

Of course anything could happen during the next 6 months, but I’ll give my best and the second half of the year will go even better.

@Andy Black I’ve watched the video you posted last time and I’ve already taken Loriel Porties advice and recorded some videos that are currently being promoted via YouTube ads in addition to my regular YT content.

I really like her approach with not trying to convert cold leads right away, but rather reach them with "commercials" and then converting them via retargeting ads.


As mentioned above, two weeks ago I closed a nice project which was probably one of my easiest sales so far. Some number called me and the person on the other end told me they would need an offer for SEO services.

So we cleared everything I needed to know to make a good proposal. Two days later the deal was sealed. Best thing is they actually found us by searching online for the services we offer, so it wasn’t a recommendation or anything.

It turned out the company is part of a billion dollar global brand with more than 13.000 employees. Now after this first one time project I’ll have to look how I can offer them a monthly based service that would make sense for both sides.


I also took time to think about my tasks in the business, the things I’d like to do more of and the things I'd delegate sooner rather than later. So I've decided to increase my copywriter's hours so that she can focus more on creating content for our clients while I can focus more on our own content production.
After all, I want to stay true to the motto of this thread and as Andy already mentioned above "Do more of the things that already work well!"

In retrospect, content marketing brings us the most qualified leads. Also, with my own website, I want to be a role model for the services that we sell to our customers in the sense of "practice what you preach".

From now on I’ll publish one or two blog articles and two YouTube videos per week. All based on topics and questions that are important to existing and future customers.

It's some grind I admit, but in the long run I'll build some content assets with this strategy that should bring in more inbound leads that are also better qualified.

By the way: I just noticed the “HOT!” badge on this thread. What does this actually mean or which threads get this?

Let me know if you have thoughts on any of these topics.

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

 

[Pat D. Rick]

Update for July & August:

Hey everyone,

I’ve realized that I missed a monthly update so I now combine the update for July & August into one update. Not a lot of super exciting things going on anyway.

Both months combined I made 20.648 EUR (20.960 USD) in revenue.

Although it was summertime and a lot of people were on vacation (like myself) I still got some pretty qualified leads in. Like one of the biggest window manufacturers in our country is getting a new website and needed our serives for it. It’s acutally a rather small project on our side because they had very tight deadlines and we are already very full. But it's definitely a good reference for future inquiries.

In addition, I have received test projects from two very large well-known companies (sales in the billions), so that a cooperation can develop on a monthly basis. Apart from that, these companies are also good showcase projects because a lot of people in this country know their brands.

An interesting thing happened just this week to me when a potential customer declined and gave me the feedback that my offer was surprisingly cheap compared to the other offers he got for the particular project. Now of course I don’t know if I would have gotten the job if I had just increased my price, but it was certainly an important point.

I also just realized while writing this that I didn’t make an update on my efforts of how much content I’m putting out. So it’s very much like:

• 2 YouTube videos per week
• 1 Blog article per week
• 2-3 Linkedin posts per week

I’m also planning my first ever Linkedin Event, which will be an online free Q&A session where people have the option to ask me anything about my “craft”. This session will be recorded and then I have some more content to post online and can position myself as an expert because the users can experience me giving answers to other people.

Now I just have to get enough people interested in showing up at the event and asking questions.
But I can give a better update on how it worked out next month.

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

 

[Pat D. Rick]

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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[Mister]

Hey Pat, thank you for sharing your process over the years.

It is interesting to see your insights first and learn from them.
The biggest takeaway was for me that you started to publish content.

I didn't read if you are currently doing it, but I think it's worth looking in.
It's simply ranking for “SEO SERVICE “CITY”” but not for only for your hometown but also every other major/smaller city in Austria, Germany & Switzerland
Here is an example: https://www.noahlutz de/ (the point is missing between the z and the de)

 

[Pat D. Rick]

Hey Pat, thank you for sharing your process over the years.

It is interesting to see your insights first and learn from them.
The biggest takeaway was for me that you started to publish content.

I didn't read if you are currently doing it, but I think it's worth looking in.
It's simply ranking for “SEO SERVICE “CITY”” but not for only for your hometown but also every other major/smaller city in Austria, Germany & Switzerland
Here is an example: https://www.noahlutz de/ (the point is missing between the z and the de)

Thanks for the feedback.

Yes, we do rank for some search terms with "SEO service" + "city", but honestly there is not a lot of business coming from those pages and inquiries we get from these pages are not worth mentioning it.

The best clients come from recommendations and when people see and follow our content on various platforms over time until the feel their demand is strong enough and contact us.

 

[Pat D. Rick]

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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[Pat D. Rick]

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.

 

[knz]

Congratulations on the amazing progress over the years and crossing the 100k mark! I've just been through your thread from page 1 and loved seeing the improvements and pivots made over time to get you to where you are today.

How many employees do you currently have? I asked this question based on your feelings regarding the holiday you had. I wonder if you could get one or two more employees, therefore giving yourself more time and space for planning, creativity and structure. Less time working 'in' your business, more time working 'on' your business.

 

[Pat D. Rick]

Congratulations on the amazing progress over the years and crossing the 100k mark! I've just been through your thread from page 1 and loved seeing the improvements and pivots made over time to get you to where you are today.

How many employees do you currently have? I asked this question based on your feelings regarding the holiday you had. I wonder if you could get one or two more employees, therefore giving yourself more time and space for planning, creativity and structure. Less time working 'in' your business, more time working 'on' your business.

Thanks for the words, it's always nice to hear when someone enjoys this thread.

You have some very good points. Currently it's me and my copywriter. She does the majority of the writing so I have more time for the things you mentioned. So it's partly working on the business and partly working in the business. With the holidays it was more about being away in a completely different country. New employees will definitely come when more projects and liquidity come in.

 

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