Post: #276

What industry are you thinking man? I have done it and still do it to a degree but the challenge is scaling it. In the space i was doing it in, the end client gets used to you as the face of the business and like dealing with you, thereby making it hard to extract yourself and hire someone to fill that role and free up time for other projects.

Louie G has a great thread on here somewhere about making a digital agency where he was basically the middleman but had more responsibilities which is a good primer. I think YMG had one too way back when about selling mobile-optimized webpages to small local businesses and outsourcing the development.

It is a good exercise to build up experience/skills on how to sell and negotiate. And once you learn those fundamentals you can basically become the middleman for all kinds of things and create various income streams from them.

Post: #277

Is anyone actually interested in joining an ecommerce group?

I'm thinking of setting one up for everyone to join. Would like to know who else is interested. I know it's been mentioned here.

Post: #278

(09-09-2016 05:10 PM)WeekendCasanova Wrote:  Is anyone actually interested in joining an ecommerce group?

I'm thinking of setting one up for everyone to join. Would like to know who else is interested. I know it's been mentioned here.

what does that mean?

Post: #279

(09-15-2016 11:09 PM)Off The Reservation Wrote:  

(09-09-2016 05:10 PM)WeekendCasanova Wrote:  Is anyone actually interested in joining an ecommerce group?

I'm thinking of setting one up for everyone to join. Would like to know who else is interested. I know it's been mentioned here.

what does that mean?

A mastermind chat group to discuss strategies and become more successful in our eCommerce projects. See here for more info.

Post: #280

(09-09-2016 05:10 PM)WeekendCasanova Wrote:  Is anyone actually interested in joining an ecommerce group?

I'm thinking of setting one up for everyone to join. Would like to know who else is interested. I know it's been mentioned here.

Can you PM me and give me some details please?

Post: #281

Has anyone ever looked into investing in a sensory deprivation/float/isolation tank business?

There's a ton of models but from what I'm seeing they can pay themselves with ~500 sessions. Relatively low maintenance, not much else is needed in terms of structural investment on the venue and (apparently) good returns. With the right training one could run the whole business alone until it picks up.

Post: #282

From experience when dealing with clients, what is the average expected response time. I am working a demanding full time job, so can't really be on the phone constantly, however can respond to emails within a 2-3 hour time frame. It may seem like a tedious question but I would like to hear from people with experience on whether this comes across as being professional or not.

Post: #283

Does anyone have experience with marketing on trade journals, newsletters, and magazines, and obtaining lists of qualified contacts on those sites? The kind where you look over its media kit with advertising rates, etc.

PM me.

Post: #284

In the end I gave up of mounting an online store.
Don't have the time and $ to manage stuff online these days short of quick web check ups and the business relies on personal interaction. So am sticking to the donation link if overseas people want postcards or custom art.
Am curious to see how this is going to work...

Post: #285

Been educating myself like crazy on web dev.

I have some ideas on some software tools.

Today I figured out how to get wordpress (which I am using through the dashboard interface) to accept custom javascript in a post. Got that to play nice with a javascript API that I hadn't used before.

Anyway, I can create "preview" version of tools that are embedded in the wordpress site and funnel that to a paid, subscription based tool. Seems like it's easy to locally develop a simple tool (in brackets) and then port it onto my wordpress blog. See what gets the most traffic and turn those into better tools that are pay to play.

Can create a bunch of different tools that will be active for a long time this way, and linger around the web. When I was playing around with Android, it was a PITA to go through authoring the apps and setting it up via google for distribution, etc. This way I have a lot more freedom.

I can do a user-only wordpress area with a subscription area. Or, I can host a separate server that is the pay for site that then has more social functions.

Just in the very early stages but I like this a lot better than Android-specific programming. I can get basic functionality to work across all web browsers that have javascript enabled. So, I don't need to worry about platform specific issues, just javascript/css/etc and what I use to build that. So I can then port the apps to whatever environment is most suitable to the problem.

Burned 4 hours on this straight before I got all the moving parts working together.

I believe this is a workable class of projects because I have a lot of experience in a certain area. The existing tools are extremely pricy or do not exist or are shit. And I have reference information that I purchased myself to many things that aren't that widespread or known, giving me an edge.

Post: #286

Any resources for a crash course in marketing, especially digital marketing?

Post: #287

ComebackKid,

What kind? Marketing is kind of a broad subject...even online marketing is huge.

Are you interested in free traffic: SEO, Content marketing, etc.?

Or are you interested in paid traffic, like Adwords, Media Buys, Facebook ads, etc.?

Post: #288

(09-25-2016 04:23 AM)Demandred Wrote:  ComebackKid,

What kind? Marketing is kind of a broad subject...even online marketing is huge.

Are you interested in free traffic: SEO, Content marketing, etc.?

Or are you interested in paid traffic, like Adwords, Media Buys, Facebook ads, etc.?

Thanks for reply.

Generic and paid traffic as well as social media.

I have 0 marketing knowledge and experience. All my business knowledge (and the topic that I was focusing on) is finance.

Post: #289

(09-25-2016 05:57 AM)ComebackKid Wrote:  

(09-25-2016 04:23 AM)Demandred Wrote:  ComebackKid,

What kind? Marketing is kind of a broad subject...even online marketing is huge.

Are you interested in free traffic: SEO, Content marketing, etc.?

Or are you interested in paid traffic, like Adwords, Media Buys, Facebook ads, etc.?

Thanks for reply.

Generic and paid traffic as well as social media.

I have 0 marketing knowledge and experience. All my business knowledge (and the topic that I was focusing on) is finance.

Ok, here are some resources. I think the best thing would be to figure out which one of these are you most interested in, then dive in that and specialize.

Free Traffic: SEO, Content Marketing, Social Media, etc.

https://www.quicksprout.com/2014/09/22/g...2-courses/

https://www.quicksprout.com/university/

https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

https://moz.com/learn/seo

http://my.copyblogger.com/

Paid Traffic: AdWords, Facebook Ads, Media Buying, etc.

Traffic Blackbook 2.0 (you can find it online)
A Complete Guide To Affiliate Marketing - Finch Sells
Google's official AdWords Training
Digital Marketer Lab (I haven't bought it, but I heard good things about it)

Keep in mind that this is only about getting traffic. Although there are several conversion optimization guides in there, that's a separate subject.

Then there is also funnel building a la Russel Branson (DotCom Secrets).

My advice to you is to determine what do you want to do online first, then learn skills needed for it.

Do you want to be an affiliate marketer? Finch's guide is a good start.

Do you want to do lead generation for local businesses? AdWords and Facebook ads are golden.

Do you have your own product you want to promote? First find places where your ideal customers are hanging out online, then buy traffic from there.

If you have any more questions shoot.

Post: #290

(09-22-2016 05:36 AM)Constitution45 Wrote:  From experience when dealing with clients, what is the average expected response time. I am working a demanding full time job, so can't really be on the phone constantly, however can respond to emails within a 2-3 hour time frame. It may seem like a tedious question but I would like to hear from people with experience on whether this comes across as being professional or not.

That's fine, within the same work day, at least. In my experience, a phone call once in a while saves a lot of emails.

Post: #291

Do you guys think there is a potential customer base for provicative trolling in the form of pins, magnets, mugs and/or stickers or even banners?

Its rather incompatible to sell together with my all-ages stuff but seeing as the US presidential Race turned memetic I thought it could have potential.
Then again it's the kind of thing that would mark you as a big "non - pc" néon banner so am not sure it's stuff people would Buy

Post: #292

Took an entire 3hrs to update and upgrade website.
It is amazing how much time is demanded by site Maintenance

Post: #293

(09-28-2016 12:58 AM)El_Gostro Wrote:  Took an entire 3hrs to update and upgrade website.
It is amazing how much time is demanded by site Maintenance

Indeed.

I really, really don't want to go over and get this temporary vacation rental I was managing all the way closed out, but fuck it, I'll grab a drink and go finish.

Gotta make that money so I can put some more $ soldiers on the front lines.

Post: #294

Been paying for web hosting for no good reason.

Exported/imported wordpress to a free space until I get traffic.

Figured out how to set up an AWS linux instance to start playing around.

Re-wrote a website's javascript that I had written a while back. It wasn't anything super difficult, but it showed me what I didn't know when I originally wrote it.

Starting to plan out first apps.

Post: #295

Here is some Ferengi Wisdom:

Post: #296

Seriously expanded my production and will probably start making magnets this week,it will be a test run to see how the public reacts.
So far I can say that regularity in one spot as a visual artist/peddler is a huge booster for another type of customer,the ones who commission work,that is.

Post: #297

Anyone familiart with html coding?
Im wanting to fix the donations in my site to a way that the user can type directly in the page before being taken to the payment step.

Post: #298

(10-06-2016 06:45 AM)El_Gostro Wrote:  Anyone familiart with html coding?
Im wanting to fix the donations in my site to a way that the user can type directly in the page before being taken to the payment step.

Doesn't sound like just html. What service is your site running on? (wordpress or something else?) It may need coding or an add-in depending on which.

Post: #299

Also:

Please be careful with asking for user input. I don't know what you're doing with it, but just adding a form on your site and storing it somewhere on your server opens you up to someone getting access to everything, including credit card #s, emails, passwords, you name it.

So it's best to have an existing solution via a plugin through wordpress that already has "input validation" on the server side. It strips out all of the naughty characters that are typeable and can hijack your machine.

Post: #300

(10-06-2016 06:45 AM)El_Gostro Wrote:  Anyone familiart with html coding?
Im wanting to fix the donations in my site to a way that the user can type directly in the page before being taken to the payment step.

That is quite a technical feet. As philosophical_recovery mentioned above you are prone to being hacked depending on what you do with it etc.

First thing you would do is get a secure certificate so that the info from your customers going to you is then secure. Then if you want to take payment on your site you should sign up with a payment processor that has an API interface. They process the payments but you can send the details to them in the background so your customer never leaves your site. They come back with a yes or no so you can handle each case i.e. a thanks very much page or a try again page. So interface with an API you will probably end up needing to know PHP if you are linux based and .net if windows based. The good thing about this solution is that you don't need to store the card info (just send it) so if you get hacked you won't be in too much trouble. You may or may not also need to grab some merchant status with a bank depending on who you want to process with etc.

All in all you need to have or have access to a lot of coding skills in lots of different languages.

Which makes something like a PayPal buy now button quite an attractive solution for getting something off the ground.