Any of you guys have experience moving into more traditional business (like small business) after doing some IM? I'm defining IM as affiliate marketing/blogging/monetized websites... on their own. Without selling your own good or service. After working with some local small businesses, I've noticed that IM tactics seem to be way more effective when you're actually promoting a tangible good/service. Maybe the trick is to treat IM like a real business... Just a thought I had.
True -- and I guess that's what I was going for. When I started out I had the wrong outlook, was thinking way too "small."
Would you mind sharing your experiences so others could learn from them? Also, what exactly are you thinking about? Some online/offline hybrid method or simply take what you've learned from IM and apply it to an offline business?
The unique way to treat IM as a real business is buy/rent an office, and go each morning to work to your own office like a boss. At least for me..
Started out with your usual blogging/PPC/affiliate marketing clickbank products. Had minor success -- few hundred bucks here and there (which was awesome as a younger teenager). Then things started to ramp up as I got more and more serious -- I started actually getting skilled at various aspects of IM. Started getting some bigger paychecks (honestly it was nothing magical, I just put in a lot of hard work and failed a bunch of times for the first few years) and then started realizing the potential for IM outside of traditional IM places. Over the summer wanted to get some experience for my resume in case I needed a strong resume in the future as a backup plan. Consulted/did some IM stuff for a large local business, and realized how much of an impact IM skills have on non-tech businesses. Seriously, this business was well in the millions for revenue per year, yet didn't have any online presence... at all. Imagine what you can do for a business like that -- even minor tactics have a huge impact. Totally agree -- this is something I really want to do in the near future.
When you start treating IM like a real business even if it is just adsense or smaller affiliate sites is when it can become a real business.
I haven't made real money in IM for that long, but once I started treating it as a business (i.e. realizing that I should invest money, do simple accounting, make plans of my project) my profits are much more consistent. I've gone from thinking of it as a hobby, with churn and burn and spam, to actually building value. IM is just as real as any other sales business (telemarketing, DM, knocking on doors) it is just the medium that's different.
Very Good Idea. I actually did the opposite of most people here and started out with my offline business which I sell a service. I was gettting crushed even though I was better than most. I realized it all came down to marketing so thats how I started. Went from almost going bankrupt to making very good money once I learned iM to help promote it...basically SEO. So ya to answer your question if there is a hole in a local retailer of service provider you can probably out rank them/out market them since most business owners know very little about marketing...especially online. Go for it.
Did you experience some sort of turning point? I mean was there a particular event that in retrospective you'd say was when you got serious about it? Or was it more of a fluent trend to getting more serious about it? I hope you don't mind me asking those questions, but right now I'm kind of struggling with finding my niche of business. I'm trying a couple of things out and I'd say I'm quite serious about it, but I haven't been able to reel any mentionable profit in, yet. See, I don't mind spending lots of my time in developing a project and improving my skills and myself, but I have on fear. I'm afraid of investing huge amounts of time in dead end projects or 'approaching things the wrong way' you know?
