My first attempt at offline marketing

[pinta1jr]

A couple years ago a colleague and I, fed up with the direction of our profession decided to start a small business. Somehow, with probably little thought, we settled on a t-shirt business, which we ran online through spreadshirt and made small dollars with (like a thousand dollars small). The only good thing with this business was that we invested only time. In hindsight I don't think there was really much potential, but at least I took a shot.

Fast forward a couple years and the climate in my profession has only gotten worse. I don't want to use the word desperate, but I think in a way I've become desperate for making something happen with regards to some sort of business idea. With my salary stagnant and my benefits in reverse I have set out to make some supplemental income. My search has led me to several forums (I won't list the others) but I keep coming back to BHW because its what I have found to be the most authentic and useful information. For the past month or two I've been reading a ton, trying to pick up anything I can. I finally decided to act on the sticky related to the 'dentist in <location>' post. I went with the dentist idea, as my local area was available and it has 1300 local searches a month. I've put together a website and have reached out to someone to provide some SEO through link building. One issue I have run into is my primary keyword has me ranked in the top 20 one day and then at other times it disappears. It ranks well on Bing (4th) and Yahoo (15th) for one primary keyword but those simply won't drive the traffic I need. I'm not sure what is going on with the Google ranking, but I hope it settles in when the back links are built. Once I achieve a stable top ranking (hopefully) I plan to reach out to local dentists to get them to advertise on my site.

I have no idea how this will all play out, but I do know that reading these forums has motivated me. I'm tired of feeling like I am powerless to the decisions of others. While I realize I have several weaknesses, I also know my strengths (driven/competitive, not a tech guru but tech savvy, and creative) and I believe I can turn these into something successful with an online and/or offline strategy. If there's anything you think a newbie should know I'd love to hear it. I'll keep everyone posted how my initial venture turns out. Maybe it'll crash and burn but I do think it's got potential. Also if anyone has tried this strategy and has some suggestions please let me know. Thanks for all the information provided on these forums, and I look forward to being a regular contributor and member of BHW.

 

[vineyard]

New currency... Small dollars.

 

[jonthewiz]

Your entire business relies on ranking highly on the big G. Obviously, you now face a balancing game:

More SEO

or

Less SEO

You see, if you push too hard, you get sandboxed. If you push too little, you won't get to the first page. It's a balancing game really, but don't lose heart! It sounds like you are currently in the Google Dance. Give it a few weeks, and see where you are ranked before you make your next move.

A couple years ago a colleague and I, fed up with the direction of our profession decided to start a small business. Somehow, with probably little thought, we settled on a t-shirt business, which we ran online through spreadshirt and made small dollars with (like a thousand dollars small). The only good thing with this business was that we invested only time. In hindsight I don't think there was really much potential, but at least I took a shot.

Fast forward a couple years and the climate in my profession has only gotten worse. I don't want to use the word desperate, but I think in a way I've become desperate for making something happen with regards to some sort of business idea. With my salary stagnant and my benefits in reverse I have set out to make some supplemental income. My search has led me to several forums (I won't list the others) but I keep coming back to BHW because its what I have found to be the most authentic and useful information. For the past month or two I've been reading a ton, trying to pick up anything I can. I finally decided to act on the sticky related to the 'dentist in <location>' post. I went with the dentist idea, as my local area was available and it has 1300 local searches a month. I've put together a website and have reached out to someone to provide some SEO through link building. One issue I have run into is my primary keyword has me ranked in the top 20 one day and then at other times it disappears. It ranks well on Bing (4th) and Yahoo (15th) for one primary keyword but those simply won't drive the traffic I need. I'm not sure what is going on with the Google ranking, but I hope it settles in when the back links are built. Once I achieve a stable top ranking (hopefully) I plan to reach out to local dentists to get them to advertise on my site.

I have no idea how this will all play out, but I do know that reading these forums has motivated me. I'm tired of feeling like I am powerless to the decisions of others. While I realize I have several weaknesses, I also know my strengths (driven/competitive, not a tech guru but tech savvy, and creative) and I believe I can turn these into something successful with an online and/or offline strategy. If there's anything you think a newbie should know I'd love to hear it. I'll keep everyone posted how my initial venture turns out. Maybe it'll crash and burn but I do think it's got potential. Also if anyone has tried this strategy and has some suggestions please let me know. Thanks for all the information provided on these forums, and I look forward to being a regular contributor and member of BHW.

 

[pinta1jr]

I've read about the Google Dance, which as you stated is exactly what it appears to be. As you said it definitely relies on my ranking on Google, which I'm hopeful I can achieve. Perhaps this is something that will take some months to develop but will pay off down the road. For new websites is there a recommended method of SEO? As you say, it's a balancing act so being a newbie I'm not sure what that line is between good SEO and being blacklisted. I realize a lot of this may be learn as a I go, but the more advice I can get to avoid the pitfalls the better.

 

[jonthewiz]

Methods are numerous, and don't trust anyone but yourself - a lot of BST sellers will promise X and Y, but at the end of the day they want your money. What I usually do (when I start a new site), is go to the BST forum and look for services that have numerous good reviews. You want a service that doesn't blast your website with a zillion-backlinks, but builds quality links over time (remember the balancing game?).

Lean toward whitehat services; quality press releases, guest blogging. Google wants to see that other websites are writing about your business because its a quality business! NOT because you bought them. The whole art of backlinking is disguising the backlinks to look like you didn't buy them (which is actually 'forbidden' by Google, or so they say). Unfortunately, if I relied just on word of mouth to promote my website, it wouldn't rank anywhere, any time soon.

 

[pinta1jr]

Thanks for the advice. I think I can infer what you mean by BST but what's that acronym mean? I'm with you on the reviews, but now it becomes important to even decipher those that have lots of good reviews. Part of what I'm doing right now is learning that balancing game, and figuring out what's a good number of backlinks and what's not. One thing I'm thinking about doing is looking into a JV, where I would try and acquire the clients and work directly on the sales end and find someone who is good with SEO to handle that part of the business. The incentive would be there then to do a quality job because we both would benefit from good work that can turn into repeat business and referral business. Thank you for taking the time to respond.

Methods are numerous, and don't trust anyone but yourself - a lot of BST sellers will promise X and Y, but at the end of the day they want your money. What I usually do (when I start a new site), is go to the BST forum and look for services that have numerous good reviews. You want a service that doesn't blast your website with a zillion-backlinks, but builds quality links over time (remember the balancing game?).

Lean toward whitehat services; quality press releases, guest blogging. Google wants to see that other websites are writing about your business because its a quality business! NOT because you bought them. The whole art of backlinking is disguising the backlinks to look like you didn't buy them (which is actually 'forbidden' by Google, or so they say). Unfortunately, if I relied just on word of mouth to promote my website, it wouldn't rank anywhere, any time soon.

 

[carlikito]

To be dickly honest I think you will not be happy with your results.

You are making it unnecessary hard on yourself by doubling the work.

First you need to rank for some keywords which won't be easy plus you have no idea how to do SEO.

Secondly after/if you rank those keywords you still need to find a client, agree on a profitable amount and after that you still need to keep on doing SEO and making sure your clients gets his money's worth. Keep in mind that just because you rank a site it doesn't mean you'll get him new patients.

What I'm saying is that since you're starting out, it'll be easier to sell a product versus a service. For example:

A website, mobile website, fanpage, social media management, etc. Those are products that you can sell and depend on yourself only, once the product is completed you're off the hook and get paid.
If you provide a service, in this case SEO, your service is dependent on Google. You can work and work and not see any results at all, yet you invested time and money.


I hope I made sense. Good luck.

 

[pinta1jr]

I appreciate your blunt nature and have no issue with you doing so, in fact I'm glad to get matter of fact opinions. I'll explain my positioning on this a bit more however, I do agree that I could easily be disappointed in the results. By no means do I think this is guaranteed, but I feel it is a worthy foray into some online/offline business. Here is why I am doing what I'm doing....

1) There is almost no overhead in what I am doing besides some time. I created a wordpress website, added some posts, created a mockup of what it would look for the client, etc... This time was minimal but none the less as the saying goes, time is money.

2) The area and niche I'm working on gets 1300 local searches monthly for the primary keyword I'm targeting, and that doesn't include some of the other keywords which also bring in several hundred searches.

3) The first page sites on Google are pagerank 1, a couple 2's and some zero's. None of them have many backlinks and their not very high quality backlinks.

4) Without doing anything but creating a website I'm at 18 for the primary keyword I'm targeting.

5) I've done research that I'm using to put together for a presentation. Based on information from the ADA dentists make on average over $400 from a new client and anywhere from $900 to $1200 on average over the lifetime of a new client. Delivering 2 or 3 new clients a month more than pays for itself, especially for the guy who doesn't know anything about SEO and has his website on page 4.

6) The reason I chose this model is simply the ability to create recurring income. I don't want to simply create and sell create and sell. That's just a job, I already have a job.

7) While my SEO skills are minimal I have a decent understanding of how it needs to work. Regardless, all that matters on this end is that I can find someone I trust to handle the SEO portion of the project. My father in law works in the home construction industry and does a lot of work for a multi billion dollar home builder. He will tell you flat out that not one person in upper management knows a damn thing about building a house. So while I'm well aware of the importance of SEO in this project I also know that I will get it done.

8) While I agree that there's no guarantee of getting clients by ranking well on Google, I do think there's certain cases where keyword searches are more likely to convert. Something like Dentist in New York for example is a very specific search. You don't search for that for fun, you do it because you need a dentist. Since this is highly targeted and specific audience I believe that even 30 visitors a month can translate into some serious cash.

Again, I thank you for your honest response, and I will certainly look into delivering product (perhaps that will be something I pitch alongside this as those are areas I feel comfortable with as well). Thanks for taking the time to respond.

To be dickly honest I think you will not be happy with your results.

You are making it unnecessary hard on yourself by doubling the work.

First you need to rank for some keywords which won't be easy plus you have no idea how to do SEO.

Secondly after/if you rank those keywords you still need to find a client, agree on a profitable amount and after that you still need to keep on doing SEO and making sure your clients gets his money's worth. Keep in mind that just because you rank a site it doesn't mean you'll get him new patients.

What I'm saying is that since you're starting out, it'll be easier to sell a product versus a service. For example:

A website, mobile website, fanpage, social media management, etc. Those are products that you can sell and depend on yourself only, once the product is completed you're off the hook and get paid.
If you provide a service, in this case SEO, your service is dependent on Google. You can work and work and not see any results at all, yet you invested time and money.


I hope I made sense. Good luck.