Post: #51

(12-30-2014 10:22 AM)bojangles Wrote:  I've read this whole thread and I'm lost to be honest, I'm trying to understand how you get started in this industry and how you make money, there's a lot of knowledge on this around the forum but I have plenty of spare time so I'll invest that in reading here. I'm still confused going through what I've read as I keep seeing the same keywords - products, affiliates, lists. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but the key thing is to have a product first off right? You can't just jump in taking someone elses product?

There are a ton of ways to make money online. Some ways I wouldn't touch because they don't fit my personality or of no interest to me.

Others fit me nicely. I guess I am more of an entrepreneurial than a business man. I love creating cool stuff. I always have, so creating my own products is a great fit.

Others may not want to create their own products but rather send leads to people that have products for a percentage of a sale. Those are affiliates. You send a lead to Amazon and that lead purchases, you get a percentage.

Lists are simply email lists you build of people that you can promote offers too.

You can't take someone else product but you may be able to send leads to them as an affiliate. It isn't a bad way to start out. If you find you're making good money sending leads, there is nothing stopping you from creating a competing product and taking all of the money.

It can be overwhelming at first. I was lucky because I came into this type of stuff with a product already created and I needed to learn how to sell it. I was focused only on that and that has been pretty much my whole focus to this point.

Post: #52

I had a great question yesterday about getting affiliates to promote for you.

I don't think I answered well so I wanted to try and do that here and hopefully it helps others.

My main source of affiliates were through networking. Back in the day, I was looking for any information on how to sell a software program I had developed. I ended up becoming a part of a community that talked about those types of things and through networking met many people who ended up becoming affiliates for my products.

Networking is something I always recommend. I know internet marketing or doing business online or whatever you want to call it doesn't promote that type of interaction but that will be a key to your success, imo.

Things you can do:

Join forums like I did and start helping others. There will more than likely be other product creators or affiliates with lists that are keeping an eye on those forums for research or promoting their own stuff.

Write up some free articles for blog owners. Help them first and you will build up a reputation that can be trusted. Our buyers lists is gold. We protect them and only send them to products we feel are worthy. I hardly send my lists affiliate offers but will if I believe in the product or service.

Become an affiliate of their products first. If you can make sales for the person you want to promote you, then there is a good chance they will do the same. You want to get on their radar and making them money is a great way to do just that. Don't develop a us versus them sort of thing. You will make more money working together.

Just some random thoughts here. I don't think I answered the question very well so wanted to think about it and hopefully put something out that is helpful to some.

Post: #53

Thanks WWT, I'll look into this further.

Post: #54

Forney is hilarious. I read the text of that, he starts out saying avoid American Airlines for international flights, then he says all American airlines except maybe Canadian airlines, he quickly concludes to avoid all North American airlines hahahaha

Post: #55

Got another interesting question about branding. I figured I would post most of my response but left out the details.

This person was wondering how to brand a product they were about to start selling. Kudos to this person for thinking out of the box because he worked out a nice deal for a product that he can start selling.

My response without the details of his product:

Branding is something I don't suggest to people starting out unless they have a ton of cash on hand. Heck, I more than likely wouldn't recommend it even with a big budget. hah

I would suggest implementing more direct marketing styles. You can still build a brand but concentrate on getting a sale instead of brand recognition.

You will have to break down the possible niches that you can compete in. Look at competition. Review their sales pages, landing pages, sales processes. I would even purchase their products to see what happens afterwards.

Then copy what they are doing for your own. By copy I mean to duplicate the process but not copy the specifics exactly. Things like sales page layouts, points they used to make sales, what they are offering after the initial sale, etc...

Edited to add:

Direct marketing also allows you to measure response to actions taken. It's much easier to see what is working and what isn't besides allowing you to capture more data to hopefully target better traffic. Branding is hard to measure. I do like branding but feel the smaller guys without the big budgets should be looking at direct sales first while also branding.

Honestly, even with bigger budgets I don't see any reason to ditch the direct marketing methods.

For example: I do have brands but my focus is on the sale. Once my customers understand my products are great, then my branding kicks in so whenever they hear of my brand they immediately think of great products. My branding is secondary. Someone who isn't a customer more than likely have never heard of my brand unless one of my customers referred them to me which happens a lot.

Maybe some of our other experienced members can throw in their 2 cents.

Post: #56

Great thread, I've enjoyed it.

Post: #57

Damn, you guys are shooting me some really cool questions.

I was responding to one in pm but the user has their pm disabled. haha I will post the answer here without the specifics, of course.

This was from a programmer who had some specific experience. I think you can take that experience and learn other language easily. After you learn one language, it tends to come down to semantics when learning another.

Do you have an idea for an app or do you need to generate ideas?

If you have a market or idea then look around at who is in the market and what they are selling. Those are probably marketers and many need quality stuff like apps built. Even as a programmer, myself, I would rather partner with someone who has a killer app already built instead of building it myself. haha

I have more ideas than time right now. The only reason I have the ideas is because I am doing the same stuff that my customers are doing.

Same with my current product line I am finishing up. It was something I needed and there are a ton of people doing the same stuff as me so I know they could use this as well.

When I was a consultant, I had to go into a business and understand it better than many of the workers. I guess that carried on with me in my current business.

I tend to recommend that to other programmers whenever I see someone asking what to build. It isn't just knowing what to build but also understanding how it should work and how it should flow to make it as productive as possible.

It works best if you already have an interest in an area. Make sure it is a big market with lots of buyers.

How to understand the market enough to create software?

Now if you do know a profitable market, I would look into who is selling and what they are selling.

As a programmer, your job will be making stuff more automated or easier to track. There should be people selling courses or how to stuff. The good ones are really selling their systems. So if you were purchase some of these courses, go through the systems and I would bet there are plenty of things you could automate.

If you can automate a particular process, derived from a course, contact the course seller because he will be your next partner. No way will a person turn down free money. Software is scary to many people. People get ripped off all the time so having a already done product that works is gold to these people.

You could make a good living just doing that.

With enough experience, you will have more ideas than you can implement. A great thing to have.

Also, look at other software products out there and see how you can make it better.

I have one product line I did that has a unique twist to it. I used many different programs out there but they never really felt like they met exactly what I needed. So I built my own after trying roughly 5 or 6 of them. It turned out great and is part of my new line now because many of my target market uses the same programs.

You have some great skills for making a lot of money. Once you get over the what to build stage you probably won't have much time because of all the ideas. haha

Post: #58

Regarding all the talk of cheap labour in the philippines, has anyone ever used them for sales positions? I know they are good for CSR's but I would like to hire on 3-5 reps for my team and it is hard to find straight commission reps in Canada. Hiring Philippinos full time would give me a cost around $750 each including my call centre software (Ringcentral + Salesforce integration) and would net much larger returns over the long run... granted they are good sales people.

Thoughts?

Post: #59

(01-04-2015 06:09 PM)TravellingSoldier Wrote:  Thoughts?

Until I actually asked them, I had been assuming the filipinas on the call centers to be Canadian or American because of their accents. To that extent, you're not going to get people hanging up like they would with Indians. In fact I almost prefer their happy voices to the miserable Australian call center people.

I'm no expert, but I suspect it will depend a lot on your product. From the time I spent with people in the Philippines, I'd say the same of everyone in SEAsia - complicated, thinking-for-yourself tasks are not their strong point. But they do not lose morale because of having a simple or repetitive job either.

Hence if you're selling an engineering product to businesses, it sounds low-odds. You'll want some sales reps with insight. Even if you give them a bullet-proof Sales Manual, I suspect they'll still have difficulty.
If you're selling simpler products to consumers, I suspect it could work almost as good as using local sales reps.

Post: #60

(01-04-2015 06:09 PM)TravellingSoldier Wrote:  Regarding all the talk of cheap labour in the philippines, has anyone ever used them for sales positions? I know they are good for CSR's but I would like to hire on 3-5 reps for my team and it is hard to find straight commission reps in Canada. Hiring Philippinos full time would give me a cost around $750 each including my call centre software (Ringcentral + Salesforce integration) and would net much larger returns over the long run... granted they are good sales people.

Thoughts?

I couldn't help you with outsourcing in the Phils. I do know out of all places I would look to cut costs, sales would not be one of them.

Post: #61

Quote:Hence if you're selling an engineering product to businesses, it sounds low-odds. You'll want some sales reps with insight. Even if you give them a bullet-proof Sales Manual, I suspect they'll still have difficulty.

Thanks for your reply. I'm actually not selling a product. I'm trying, at the bare minimum just to do outreach basically for my website. It is a service and not something they will purchase immediately.

Would I be smarter to take that money and invest it into google adwords rather than a sales team? If you want to know exactly what my business is I can let you know in PM.

Quote:I couldn't help you with outsourcing in the Phils. I do know out of all places I would look to cut costs, sales would not be one of them.

I understand this completely. However I am torn... I am not looking to sell a product as I described. I originally thought that hiring sales reps would be more beneficial than using simply google adwords for customer outreach. I think this because my model will have a little bit of customer informing - what our business is and how we can help them/provide more value.

I realize it might be hard to make a judgement without knowing my exact business model. However let's take for an example:

There is discount superstore 1: Clothes and consumer products

There is discount superstore 2: Clothes, consumer products, groceries and a restaurant inside.

I would be discount superstore 2. Would I be smart to use a team to inform businesses of our services or simply target them with adwords? It's a hard decision.

Post: #62

(01-05-2015 10:48 AM)TravellingSoldier Wrote:  

Quote:Hence if you're selling an engineering product to businesses, it sounds low-odds. You'll want some sales reps with insight. Even if you give them a bullet-proof Sales Manual, I suspect they'll still have difficulty.

Thanks for your reply. I'm actually not selling a product. I'm trying, at the bare minimum just to do outreach basically for my website. It is a service and not something they will purchase immediately.

Would I be smarter to take that money and invest it into google adwords rather than a sales team? If you want to know exactly what my business is I can let you know in PM.

Quote:I couldn't help you with outsourcing in the Phils. I do know out of all places I would look to cut costs, sales would not be one of them.

I understand this completely. However I am torn... I am not looking to sell a product as I described. I originally thought that hiring sales reps would be more beneficial than using simply google adwords for customer outreach. I think this because my model will have a little bit of customer informing - what our business is and how we can help them/provide more value.

I realize it might be hard to make a judgement without knowing my exact business model. However let's take for an example:

There is discount superstore 1: Clothes and consumer products

There is discount superstore 2: Clothes, consumer products, groceries and a restaurant inside.

I would be discount superstore 2. Would I be smart to use a team to inform businesses of our services or simply target them with adwords? It's a hard decision.

A lot of direct marketing entails customer informing. It all depends on your sales funnel. Personally, if you are trying to do the sales at a discount you might be better off going the direct marketing way.

You don't necessarily need to do it through adwords.

Direct mail is awesome still depending on what you're selling. I did a lot when I was in real estate and it worked out well.

Take them into a sales funnel that helps inform them.

I would also test out having a sales force but not if you couldn't afford it.

Do you have sales training for new hires? If so, you should be able to translate that to online.