Business Directories? Any Luck?

Well, I've almost just finished having my wordpress site get a few custom things made. I don't know any coding at all so had to out source it all but now at least the site is working how I would want it to work.

Next step is to try and get some paying clients. Can't say if it is profitable enough, but the idea seems to me like it has potential to seriously work.

krzysiekz said:

Well, I've almost just finished having my wordpress site get a few custom things made. I don't know any coding at all so had to out source it all but now at least the site is working how I would want it to work.

Next step is to try and get some paying clients. Can't say if it is profitable enough, but the idea seems to me like it has potential to seriously work.

Click to expand...

I think the magic is the cold calling. I'm not familiar with cold calling so it will be an experience for me. I'm not sure if I should call or if I should hire someone.

if you want to do something right do it yourself, but if the response is good and you start scaling it up then hire someone.

great thread btw.

I agree. Try do some yourself only because you need to learn what seems to be working (ie - give away a month for free or just sign them up for a year straight away with no free month etc etc).

Once you got it down pat a little and have people signing up, you'd probably need to outsource or it would take a long time to do it yourself.

That being said, I am sure you can just hire someone on oDesk with neutral accent and get them to do it and ask them to improve the script a little where they see it might be better.

krzysiekz said:

I agree. Try do some yourself only because you need to learn what seems to be working (ie - give away a month for free or just sign them up for a year straight away with no free month etc etc).

Once you got it down pat a little and have people signing up, you'd probably need to outsource or it would take a long time to do it yourself.

That being said, I am sure you can just hire someone on oDesk with neutral accent and get them to do it and ask them to improve the script a little where they see it might be better.

Click to expand...

You think pay on commission or pay per hour is best?

Should I hire 1 English or 5 Indian to do the work?

Should I be cold calling or emailing? I'm not too familiar with cold calling so I want to talk to someone to get advice so I can lower my chance of being charged/sued.

Well, I am by no means an expert. Actually, much like you - the only thing I have on you is I have done some cold calling before and I have outsourced.

I don't think that payment by commission would work well because there are unlikely many people (on oDesk it seems at least) that would take you up on that. But you can find them for $3/hr to $5/hr should get you some decent ones. The really good ones can cost a bit more.

I would go for the ones with no accent rather than Indians. Not being racist here, but everyone pretty much knows its a telemarketing call when an unknown Indian says hello on the phone. Although it is a telemarketing call, you don't want to shoot yourself in the foot. Also, if you are making a directory for a limited amount of businesses in the area ( ie -1000 restaurants in your area only) then by getting Indians to do it you are wasting and throwing away a lot of potential 'yes' answers simply because people just want to get off of the phone right away. Use someone with no accent I would say.

As far as I know, you won't have any trouble as the do not call register ( I believe ) only applies to residential. You are calling strictly businesses so I don't think you'll have an issue as I don't think businesses can even be on the DNC register.

I've outsourced cold calling before but that was too long ago for me to remember anything.

Yeah, I was banned on oDesk then registered another one, forgot to use a proxy and they banned that. So I gotta register another email then try again with a proxy lol. As soon as I get the full version of my directory, I will outsource a cold caller or 2.

Macdonjo3