Success has just fallen on my lap after failing hundreds of times trying to make a handful of strategies work throughout this year and it all started for me here in BHW so I want to give back.

First off I focused on offline IM, I wanted to work with local businesses. I started calling 200 businesses a day and going door to door for about 2 months. No clients but I got really good at dealing with rejection and gleaned a lot of information about the market in general, all I can say is it was a crucial experience for me.

This method is a little blackhat

Here's what I did:

First I found a service that takes VERY little effort on my part to produce, generates a nice monthly residual, I appear to give the service away practically for free(which I'm not) and it serves as a doorway for referrals and pricy upsells. Also the service is practically an industry standard yet the majority of businesses don't have it which means every company should have it. I won't name the service!

Second I found a way to literally have a sit down with the owner and bypass gatekeepers/resistance, you name it. What I do initially is I tell them I spoke to someone in their company last week over some of the marketing efforts of their company and was asked to pass by today. This either creates confusion or blind agreement to which if you maintain a confident, firm demeanor lets you slip through to the owner where you'll be greeted like if you've been expected 90% of the time(atleast for me).

Third I pitch ONE thing and that is that I will do something for them(the service) for the purpose of creating a RELATIONSHIP in business with them and if they loved what I did to talk about me to his friends and associates. If you do this effectively, combined with a practically freebie service to their eyes, literally any suspicion of there being a catch or something disappears.

Fourth I bring something, a binder filled with options so that THEY can choose what they want. They WANT to be part of the process, even if it is a sales process haha. I can't tell you how crucial it is. Sometimes as I'm handing the binder to them nonchalantly I can't help but realize how it's saved my ass from dealing with an undecided owner. Visuals!

Fifth I use Square. Business owners flip when I pop it out. And I laugh my ass off because they can't wait to try it. They want to see me take their money LOL!

After all that I make sure to try to get a possible referral and I'm looking at a modest monthly residual, a happy as pie client and a solid future candidate for upsells or referrals. What they think takes me a week to produce took me minutes and nothing more! These clients are also old and will probably be linked with me for a long time. I get their card info also to establish the monthly subscription. The Square is all show.

I'm getting about 5 clients everyday doing this and honestly it's making me hate weekends!

Any questions and I'll try to answer if I left anything out! Aside from the service I do.

I think you should reveal a little bit more about the service. Offline marketing is a huge area and I really doubt revealing your service would affect your sales but it would greatly add to your reputation here if it is a good method.

Also what are you referring to as "square"?

yes I too am curious about the term you used " square" . Are you referring to the "freebie" you spoke about in the beginning to make them think it's free? If so, what is it?

Square guys, Square.
Took me..let me not lie...Strg+C, Strg+T, Strg+V...7 seconds to find out what he means.

https://squareup.com
Accepting creditcards with your mobile. This is a great idea. Easy markable.

Sign up and we’ll mail you a free credit card reader.

Only question: Is it available in Germany? Actually, Yes AND No would be nice if you understand

But one question to OP. 2 months and you didn't got even 1 local client?
Seriously, not even 1? wtf? Do you look like Mick Jagger or what ?

I'm going to guess the freebie is one you can get for free through Google, as long as you have less than 10 people in your company who need it.

A quick google tells me that he probably means this by square:
https://squareup.com/

square? wtf?

im kinda interested in knowing what that freebie is

//MAF

Well op, it's a nice method but if nobody knows what's the freebie or at least you can do an example, it's a little change that someone on BHW that will watch this thread will also be in your town.

So imho there's no danger in your business

Sharing is caring !

Have a nice day

Yeah, OP said something, but practically said nothing, other than he is using a Square.

I appear to give the service away practically for free(which I'm not)

How do you manage to do this ?

there is no reason to hide any info in this thread, especially not the crucial!

anyway, the story is great, I respect what you did, many would give up after one week, but you didn't

Good story, but like everybody said, no specifics. It isn't a method. Its like saying, "Here's my method. Put Adsense on WP blog and make 3k a month!" But thanks for trying to share nonetheless.

i hope you give us more info on how you actually make money on your cool gimmicks.

Someone know if there's a version of Square which can be used in the UK??

I'm thinking the freebie is making a simple website for them?

Haha, there are so many people who do that, it's not funny.

Good you can get away with it, but it's bad business practice to do this IRL and can get you a bad reputation .

Alright I'm sharing it all, I'm basically selling the business owners websites and they just pay for the hosting and the domain. This method, going directly to each business is not the easiest judging from what I've read here on the forums these past few days but it WORKS.

Also if you're going to try this I'll say you might want to avoid dentists and doctors and or possibly even attorneys. Just don't waste your time. Accountants are great because they don't usually have that crappy reception wall so if they are there in their office you will see them and they can't hide LOL. I go for attorneys and accountants because they could become really good for referrals.

What I use to design the websites is homestead.com's reseller program. Simple html sites take about 5-10 minutes to make I have the owners choose a template they like and have them send me the text and images they want on their site thats it.

Awesome! I am a web designer and business has been declining ever since Godaddy and 1&1 have been advertising hardcore that anyone can build their own website easily.

i want the last 3 minutes of my life back.

Hi, I guessed that was what you were offering. I do something kind of similar (I hope I'm not hijacking your thread) - I offer businesses (who pay for advertising) without websites a website plus hosting and domain name for $49 a month. The awesome thing about this is that it gets business owners contacting me and they always ask about how to rank on Google, letting me upsell them my Google Places package and they love it because it is cheaper than buying a spot on a big local directory and makes them look better to have their own ranking website.

I found this method awesome because many business owners without websites only don't have them because it always seemed to expensive and complicated, meaning I get a great response rate for offering a fully featured site at a low monthly price, and then ranking it for far less tan a directory listing costs around here. Also, they tend to be pretty naive about online stuff so they are easier to convince than business owners who already think they know everything about online.

I design the sites using Wordpress just so I can give the clients a "content management system" and easily install any sort of feature through plugins. I got that whole idea from here a while back (can't find the thread now), and just thought I'd mention that I am seeing success with that whole approach. I think when you are starting out is a lot better to target very small businesses and offer great deals, as it's hard to sell on anything other than price if you have no previous clients to offer testimonials.

Glad the OP is making out. Between GoDaddy, 1&1, and even Dex most areas are burned out with cheap web sites and hosting.

The SEO side is probably a better earner, but that is getting saturated too.

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackha...0-dollars.html

similiar to this

Originally Posted by AngryBirdsFlock

Awesome! I am a web designer and business has been declining ever since Godaddy and 1&1 have been advertising hardcore that anyone can build their own website easily.

It's things like this and that ^ that are killing our market lol.

I did like 20 cold calls yesterday and 1/2 of the business owners liked their crappy GoDaddy / AT&T site that looked like it came from 2000...

Originally Posted by DavidG2

It's things like this and that ^ that are killing our market lol.

I did like 20 cold calls yesterday and 1/2 of the business owners liked their crappy GoDaddy / AT&T site that looked like it came from 2000...

Yea tell me about it!!! This sh*t is ridiculous. How are they happy with an ugly site that looks outdated. Come on man, some of them have contact pages with AOL emails listed!!!!!!! LOL