Our little gem for today is "&as_qdr=d4".
That is the answer to the question: How does someone find customers?
I'm working with a cat who does premium logos and he is asking how to generate more business. This post is written using his situation as an example but the info here is applicable to many others who have a product or service they wish to promote.
One way to get more business is to find those who are already looking for your service or product. The great thing here is there is little sales work as we know the person is already in the market and actively looking for a solution.
&as_qdr=d4 is, my friend, a rarely used Google time-based search parameter that finds webpages created within the last 4 days (change the 4 to a 2 and the search is limited to 2 days).
We need people who want our service today or yesterday, or as soon around that time period as possible. Thus we do a normal Google search and place it within a time-based period from today going backwards.
Here is how you do this.
1) First do a Google search for "need logo" (in quotes). This is not much help to us though, too many useless results.
2) Place your cursor in the address bar and tack the following onto the end of the url: &as_qdr=d4 (as shown in the image below).
3) Hit enter and run the search again. Now we're getting somewhere. Today I count no less than 6 people searching for a logo designer (and this does not include the freelancer.com entries), all within the past 4 days, and that is just page 1 of the google search.
4) Now run over to thesaurus.com and look up the word "need" to get some synonyms so you can run related searches. I can quickly come up with "want", "seek", "looking for", and "require". Now your search terms are "need logo", "want logo", "seek logo", "looking for logo", and "require logo" to use in combination with the time-based parameter mentioned above.
5) Now expand your searches again by tacking on the Google operator inurl:forum so your search term is now "inurl:forum want logo" and see what shows up (sometimes this works, sometimes not).
6) Now change the word "logo" to "graphics" and you double your search terms again (logo designers are graphic artists by trade in my book).
Yes, you have to sign up on the forums to reply to these people but it's worth it - they have money in hand and are looking for your product or service. No selling required.
You have to try different combinations of words with the time-based parameter to find out which searches work best in your industry. Then run those searches 3x daily to get to any new posts as fast as possible. You ultimately want to respond on the same day as a post is made where someone is wanting a logo.
Ultimately it will be through trial and error that you will find searches that list people looking for your product or service - you have to experiment.
After a short time you should have a pre-written response you can just copy/paste onto a forum post seeking a logo.
Phillip aka thedorf
P.S. This is just one method for finding customers. I'll post some other related methods shortly down the road.
