UPDATE
hi everyone its been a while since the last update, maybe a lot thought that the journey died but tbh i was into a lot and didn't have the time to write often about updates so here i come today exactly with insights and in detailed update about my SMMA journey how was the 1st year and hows its going right now.
Lets start from where i left with a little precap,
i started my journey with like a in total of $60-$70 last year November when i started my agency
bought domain+hosting, got some scrapping tools subscription most of them were cracked versions from local suppliers eg: apollo cracked version and others and my main outreach channel was cold calls via skype bought monthly subscription and international number and along with all of these wise investments my limited budget was over.
i was doing cold calls at first its not like my English spoken and accent is 10/10 or i am a pro at sales but i went for it cause its the only way to get clients a bit fast if the leads are good, i booked a few appointments somehow but couldn't close any some didn't showed up and some guys ghosted after meeting.
in skype i found a few problem like network issues, latency, daily limitation and most of the prospects had their voicemail on so found out its not an ideal tool for cold calls just good for international calls.
alongside i was doing fb cold dms from several niche related groups, a few groups were active and i got replies and eventually landed a client from facebook group which i didnt belived cause i never expected anything from there, i was doing LinkedIn, scraping leads from gmap and instagram where i had high hopes but didnt worked.
and by december 2023 my linkedin was starting to get a little fraction but got banned due to suspicious activity tried but couldnt recover that account no string attached but by the end of the december most of my tools subscription ended and i was left with $0 and an ongoing business.
now i was in a real pressure, no money in pocket had some ideas to test but that needs some initial $ to start too. at January first week saw a hiring post at someplace regarding a VA and applied instantly cause right now i need money i didnt thought about anything else and Alhamdulillah i got accepted and meet with a genius man i was assisting him with his works on hourly basis and getting paid saving money from that job.
by the time i was working hourly basis and researching about my business and planning what to try next, after a month or so i saved some money and went for a mail sending service from here meet a really good guy and started mail outreach but my mail copy was so bad (i didnt realized at that time) ended up with hard earned money burned.
took a break and continued working as a VA and the client i got form FB{unpaid} these are 2 works i was doing at the time and meanwhile i meet a guy with outstanding cold email experience and reputation so i asked him if he is good with a jv where he would handle the outreach and i would provide service and i insisted with a fair 50/50 on closed deals and a 20% monthly retention as long as the client stays we started happily but after a week guy ghosted me idk what changed his mind.
after that the client from fb faced an scam from his partner suffered a big loss and that ended up with no payment for me. but i did everything from scratch for his site like setting up each and every tracking templates through gtm ga4 and created + managed a few profitable google ads campaigns for him and what i did was created a case study from that and yeah it was a big thing for me cause after a gap this one was my first recent project history that i can show to new prospects.
but in the end i only had my VA job, some money in crypto and ultimately $0 from my agency.
was a bit desperate and overwhelmed by stress, was sending mails from my personal gmail, instagram, facebook dm tbh just doing generic stuffs even i saw some posts here at bhw and in under pressure i contacted them and ended up with warning from bhw moderation team in total i got 2 warnings in 2 timeframe which was the result of my desperate moves and i admit my mistake and am sorry for my behavior i know i wont get any result but yet i did these foolish acts.
now after all of these incidents i was kind of burned out and really feeling lost that's when i got a reply from a fb dm and got hired as a google ads media buyer for an agency in poland, signed a contract of $150 for each clients managed i know its not an amount you would wanna work but it was a lot for me based on my circumstances. worked there for 3 months and after that from mails i got 2 meetings and closed a guy with a decent monthly fees. but he didn't stayed long, the partners had some internal issues. I was doing VA job to get some money, researching about business, improving my outreach slowly and some prospects were coming and going this cycle was for like 4 months.
but meanwhile i was looking for knowledge everywhere, bought some e-books from bhw some were good, some were not my goal wasn't making money from these e-books i was just curious about the topics and these books weren't in my working field like ads and marketing i just have this bad habit of expenses like i wont eat out for 7-15 days to save money but if see something interesting i would buy it immediately same for crypto too.
after a certain time did my homework and started working on outreach system again, based on all pros and cons i went for cold email outreach.
about lead gen i am using a monthly subscription tool that scrapes leads then i filter the leads based on my requirements and using smtp server for sending emails. at first bought 10 domains the cheapest possible and started my cold email journey with a setup that looked like this at first,
per sender address - 50 mails {increased 2x after a certain time}
delay between emails - 600 seconds
email tracking - yes
email verification - no
my mail copy and subject was simple, opening rate was good, got some replies but after a month and a half i dont see any replies or any kind of signs and then i realized i fucked up. due to high bounce rate most of my mails were landing into spams and the domains were flagged due to various reasons, no email verification, same body in all the campaigns like i did some rookie mistake i couldn't believe i did this at this point. but as we learn from mistakes so i dumped all those bought new domains, subscribed to a email verification service, started working on my mail body included spintax in both subject line and full body, instead of tracking i started plain text which is a game changer and revised my known mistakes.
so with these and a daily limit of 30 emails i started my mail campaigns again and yeah alhamdulillah what i can say is i started to see some real results, i was at a phase where i was getting whacked non stopped i shared a post about that too but after changing my approach i saw massive change.
form landing into spam and getting whacked i started to saw some positive replies, booked meetings and i don't believe it yet but yeah i successfully closed 2 deals from my cold email campaigns, we signed our contract and hopefully gonna start working from January.
and in recent campaigns i got a few positive replies im attaching below,
Currently, my cold email ecosystem is working well, and my focus is on improving lead generation, alongside managing other ongoing tasks and factors in my life.
I have roughly made like $900 highest in a month from my SMMA in the first year. along with all my earning source at a time i hit like a maximum of $1600 a month that's my all time best till now, and some months were complete $0 so yes theres a long path ahead for me to earn $5K a month from only SMMA.
This is my current update i dont know when will i post a update again if anyone have any suggestions for me i would really appreciate it means a lot to me and yeah today is my birthday!
