One of the problems of working with brick and mortar type businesses is continually having to work on things like SEO. Sure, you charge a monthly fee for the services, but that makes it harder to sell, too.
But what if there was a quick and easy way to make offline cash, AND generate a monthly recurring income, too?
One gal I know is doing just that. She makes excellent money upfront – generally $1,200 or more before expenses, and she gets a monthly recurring fee, too, paid to her automatically.
Here’s what she does:
She chose a niche – in her case, local contractors who work directly with homeowners – and focuses exclusively on that niche. However, she does this all over the country, not just in her home city. This way she never runs out of prospects.
When it comes to local contractors, she works with plumbers, electricians, handymen services, carpenters, yard care services, roofers and painters.
She’s looking only for contractors that homeowners hire one-on-one. This is important, because contractors that work mainly as subcontractors and get all their work through other contractors aren’t a good fit for her business model.
She picks a city and starts searching for each of the different types of contractors, looking for the ones that have a lousy looking website or even no website at all.
When she finds these contractors, she contacts them and offers them a ready-made website. Now here’s where it gets really interesting – when I say ready-made, I mean the site is already made. She’s already had it built, complete with the contractor’s info, photos, contact numbers and everything.
The contractor, who generally knows nothing about websites, is typically blown away. Here’s a gorgeous website complete with all his info, ready to go. All he has to do is pay for the site and it’s live within 24 hours, ready to send him new customers.
Now here’s the trick: The sites are all built using the same WordPress theme. And even more importantly, every site can easily be switched from one business to another.
So for example, if Bob the plumber doesn’t buy the site, it’s no problem. Simply swap out the photos, name and contact information to another plumber and offer it to him. It takes less than 30 minutes, and probably half that amount of time after you’ve done a few of them.
Let’s talk numbers:
How many contractors buy the website? Usually about 4 to 5 out of 10. This means you might have to contact 2.5 contractors to make one sale. Still, those are excellent numbers.
What should you charge for the website? Totally up to you, of course. It’s going to partially depend on the niche you choose, but $1,000 to $1,500 is reasonable. But even if you only charge half of that, you’ll do fine.
Outsourcing?
Yes, you can outsource the website building and the website ‘switching’ if a site doesn’t sell. Find someone who can turn these around quickly and pay a little extra – it’s worth it.
If you sell one of these a week, you can profit about $1,000, depending on what you charge and your outsourcing costs.
But of course, who says you should only sell one? Sell 20 if you like.
Residual income?
Yes, you can charge a monthly fee for hosting, and also for the URL if you own it. Keep the fee reasonable – $25 to $50 a month, for example. Sell 100 sites and you’ve got a $2,500 to $5,000 a month residual income.
Remember, what you charge is between you and the customer, and it’s negotiable, too.
How to sell a site:
If you’re comfortable calling on the phone, then simply call them up and let them know you’ve built a website for them. That will get their attention.
If possible, have them go to the URL while you are on the phone with them, and verbally guide them through all the features of the website, explaining how it will grow their reputation and business.
If you’re not comfortable on the phone, then you can use email. This isn’t quite as effective, but it can still work. Email them and let them know you built them a website, giving them the URL.
Be sure to put your phone number in there, so they can call you and you can get it transferred over to their domain. When they call, walk them through the website, explain the features and benefits and close the deal.
Third option: If you are one of those folks who HATES selling ANYTHING on the phone – and you know who you are – then you can visit them in person and show them the website on your laptop.
Fourth option: If you are one of those folks who just plain hates SELLING, then hire someone to do the selling for you. It should be someone already in sales who is looking to make a few extra bucks.
Obviously this won’t be a full time gig – not even close – but for every sale they make you’ll pay them $X amount of money.
If you go with this fourth option, I suggest the following: Build several sites at once for several different businesses. This way you can send your sales person several jobs to sell at once, making it much more lucrative for him or her.
And of course you will still repurpose the ones that don’t get sold, tailoring them for other businesses so nothing ever goes to waste.
Things to Know:
Adding 3 to 5 short articles makes the site even more powerful. For example, for plumbing you might have articles on ‘how to choose a good plumber,’ ‘how to know when you need a plumber and when you can fix something yourself,’ ‘how to do an easy plumbing job yourself’ and so forth.
The articles should be 90% helpful and at most 10% salesy. The point is to make the contractor look like the helpful, honest person he or she hopefully is.
Take photos from their current website and use those on the new website. Yes, it’s that easy. You can also throw in stock photos as well.
And of course if they don’t already have a website or a Facebook page, then you’ll need to use all stock photos.
Once you sell them a ready-made website, it’s easy to also sell them things like SEO if you want to.
Niches to consider:
Contractors, obviously. But restaurants are good, too. Any service industry is good – for example, massage therapists.
Some people will want to target chiropractors, lawyers, doctors, etc., but keep in mind that professionals who make a lot of money often already have great looking websites.
Your ideal market is one where the business reaches out to customers, not to other businesses. And where they often have lousy, out of date websites.
Now just imagine this:
You have your website builder make a dozen or more sites each week.
You or your sales person makes the calls to sell those sites, and 6 of them get sold at $1,200 each.
You pay your website builder $100 to $200 per site, and if you’re employing a salesperson, you pay them the same.
At the end of the week you have grossed a cool $7,200 minus fees paid to your website builder (and your sales person, if you use one.) Plus you have six or more sites already built that simply need to be switched over to new businesses.
Of course, you can always build and sell the sites yourself, in which case the entire $7,200 is yours.
The following week, you get 12 more sites ready, plus you have the six repurposed sites. Half of them sell – making 9 sales – which is $10,800 gross. Plus you have 9 more sites that simply need to be repurposed, and so forth.
And you’re also charging small monthly ongoing fees for hosting, too, which adds up over time.
Do you see the potential?
Of course your results will vary. You might only charge $1,000, or you might charge $1,500. You might sell 50% of your sites, or you might sell fewer than that.
Regardless of the details, this is a powerful formula for making excellent money in the offline world without having to sweat things like local SEO.
And of course once you build a relationship with your new customers, you can always sell the other services as well.
NOTE: Some of you might be wondering how difficult it is to sell a ready made website for a business at $1,000 to 1,500, so I’d thought I’d share what happened to me yesterday…
I was talking to this guy who is a professional manager. He wants to start a personal political blog (nothing to do with his regular job) and wanted to know who he could hire to build this blog for him.
I asked what his budget was, and I kid you not… he said he “knew” he would have to spend at least $1,000 to get someone to set up a blog for him. And he didn’t want to go higher than $1,500.
For a WordPress blog!
I told him I thought I knew someone… 😉
A suggestion:
Focus your energies on building this business, rather than working IN this business. Unless you are already super fast at building great looking websites, hire someone who is fast and very, very good.
You can use the same one or two WordPress themes over and over again to streamline the operation.
And pick one main niche to focus on. Don’t start out trying to build sites for chiropractors AND plumbers AND massage therapists… just pick one and get really good at it.
Then and only then do you branch out to other professions.
Take careful notes of what works and what doesn’t. Go back to your customers and ask what specifically made them buy the website. Also ask what made them hesitate, too. You want to find out their objections so you can overcome them before your next sales presentations.
Don’t sweat it when someone says no. You are going to get plenty of no’s, but as you do this you’re also going to get more and more yes’s. It’s just part of the sales game.
Don’t focus solely on your local area. You can build sites for any professional anywhere in your country. Don’t go outside of your own country, at least at first, because people tend to have a greater mistrust for anyone outside of their country.
Build a website for your business. Your website should explain who you are and have plenty of photos of you and your team.
Write short articles for your site that explains the importance of having a great looking, professional website if you’re a plumber, or massage therapist, or whatever profession you’re targeting.
Tips to building a great professional looking website:
Have a consistent brand identity. Use their logo throughout, as well using the same colors, fonts and so forth. Let them know you can change the colors, too, if they like.
Capture inbound leads. Many small business people still don’t know the importance of capturing leads, so place an optin form on every page. Then explain to the prospect why the form is there and how it will increase their business. If they choose to keep it, you can even maintain their list for them, for an additional fee.
Be mobile-friendly. This just about goes without saying, but we thought we better add it to the list. Your websites MUST look as good on mobile as they do on other devices.
Tell their story and make them the hero. Perhaps nothing will sell your sites faster than telling their story. Now of course, you might not KNOW their story, but you can certainly take a guess. “I became a massage therapist because I love making people feel great. And when they feel great, they can accomplish so much more. Their interactions with their family and friends are better and more loving, their…” You get the idea. Make your professional or small business person sound like a hero and you will sell the site.
Use as many photos of their actual business as you can. If they already have a website, pull photos from that, as well as their Facebook page and anything else you can find online.
Oddly enough, your first goal is to impress the person you’re selling the site to (your customer) and not their end user. If you keep this in mind, you’ll do fine. For example, use any motto, slogan or headline they already have, such as “McGuiver and Sons Plumbing, Serving Cincinnati Since 1984.” They’re proud of this and they want to see it plastered big and bold on their site.
If you find testimonials online for their business, copy and paste them onto the website. You might find these on any of the review type of websites, such as Google, Yelp, Yahoo and so forth. Obviously you will only use the positive reviews and not the negative ones.
If they have social media accounts, go ahead and link to those on the website.
Place a strong call to action on each page, such as “Call 800-555-1234 to schedule your consultation today.” When you talk to the future site owner on the phone, you can point out how this can increase their inbound calls.
Finally, keep it fairly simple and do it the same way each time. If you’re continuously having to invent a new website every time, it’s going to take too long.
Instead, spend time coming up with the perfect site, and then simply swap out the information each time for each site. Switch the info, the colors, the testimonials, the photos, etc., so that each site looks unique, yet it’s really the same ‘formula’ used over and over again.
This will keep it simple and fast for you or your website builder, and you won’t forget elements from one website to the next.
Now Let’s Make this Business Model Even MORE Lucrative:
I always like to have an upsell. Sometimes an upsell to my upsell, even.
But in this case, what I’m about to suggest can be used as an upsell OR even as a downsell.
For example, you contact a business owner and show them the groovy website you made for them. They decide not to buy. But hey, you’ve established some rapport with them, so…
You offer them something just as valuable, only cheaper. They may feel bad that they didn’t buy the website that you spent hours and hours building for them (hey, they don’t need to know it took your outsourcer 30 minutes to do it.)
Plus, you’re offering such a terrific value, it would be stupid for them to say no.
Or… they DO buy the website you built for them. They have visions of how their business is going to take off now because of the website. They’ve agreed to a low monthly hosting fee. They’re definitely in a buying state of mind, so why not offer them an amazing deal that doesn’t cost much, right?
Of course!
So what is this upsell / downsell I’m talking about?
Okay, first let’s assume that you are targeting only contractors, or only restaurants, or only massage therapists… in other words, you are focusing on ONE niche.
And let’s further say that you’ve done your research on this niche.
You’ve Googled their profession, learned all about them, and maybe even Googled “Contractor marketing advice” or “Restaurant marketing advice,” etc.
You’ve also developed (okay, this does involve some work) an online marketing membership site just for their niche.
For example, “Marketing for restaurant owners,” or “Marketing for massage therapists.”
Mind you, 95% of your marketing advice is going to be the exact same advice you would give to any business or professional. You’ll just be inserting their language and terminology, as well as tailoring it a bit to their niche.
You teach social media, list building, SEO, lead generation, etc. Most of your content can come from quality PLR sources; just remember to customize it.
Add a private Facebook page or forum where they can ask questions and network.
You sell this monthly membership for whatever you want. I recommend $47 – $97 a month, because it’s a good price point for a business. It’s not so much that they worry about it, but it’s big enough that you are making a good profit, even in the beginning when you only have your first handful of members.
You might even make them a deal where if they remain an active member for a certain length of time (a year?) then from that point on their membership is FREE.
What a deal!
You are teaching them everything they need to know about marketing their business at a price that is truly affordable. How can they say no?
Remember, you offer this to EVERY business person you contact, regardless of whether or not they buy the site you built for them.
So even if they don’t buy the site, if they take the membership offer at $97 for 12 months (and then it’s free) you’ve still made $1,164, which is probably close to what you’re charging for the sites.
Wow!
But wait, there’s more…
What if you approach offline marketers who deal with people in your niche, and let them act as affiliates for your membership site?
They make sales and you split the monthly residual 50/50 with them.
This move alone can put another 5 figures into your pocket each year.
And by the way, you can outsource the entire thing.
Yes, you read that headline right. In fact, you might even want to read it again.
You can totally get affiliates to PAY YOU for the right to send you buyers.
I ran across this a couple of years ago, and I have to say I was impressed. In fact, I just about joined this myself, and I’m a seasoned pro. This was done by a group of seasoned marketers, but there’s no reason why a new marketer or marketers couldn’t do it, too.
Last time I checked, this funnel I’m about to describe is still up and running and going strong. I don’t want anyone to actually steal their exact system, sales copy and funnel, so I’m going to just give you the highlights and you can fill in the rest:
First you start with a sales funnel. You’ve got a squeeze page offering a terrific little “how to do marketing” type of lead magnet. Once visitors grab the lead magnet, or even if they try to click away without picking up the lead magnet, they are then directed to a sales page for an online marketing membership site.
The membership site has several levels, with the lowest level being free to join. Of course they highlight the free level in the headline to keep people on the page, and then they extoll the virtues of the other levels. Each level has more and better content, better support and so forth.
The free level is fairly basic, but does give enough info for a newbie to make a start in making money online.
And of course each level is more expensive than the previous level, with the prices skewed a bit to encourage visitors to choose the highest level.
I’ll give you an example of that pricing to give you an idea of what I’m talking about:
Level 1: Free
Level 2: $29 per month
Level 3: $44 per month
Level 4: $49 per month
These aren’t the exact price points they used, but you get the idea. You see there is very little difference between level 3 and 4 in terms of price, but in terms of content there is a big difference.
This is a great psychological strategy, because it gets the prospect to study the differences between levels 3 and 4 while forgetting all about level 2.
And of course if they’re going to get a paid membership, they’re most likely to choose level 4.
The content is drip fed each week…
…and if you’ve been paying close attention, you’ve realized I haven’t really shown you anything new yet.
Here it comes, so hang on to your seat, because THIS is how you get affiliates to PAY you to send you a list of BUYERS:
(I love this bit!)
All of the levels offer a built-in affiliate program that sets the affiliates up to sell their own memberships for all of the levels they qualify for.
This means if they are a level 2 member, they can give away level 1 and sell level 2. If they happen to sell level 3 or 4, they still get paid, but not as much.
But if they are a level 4 member, they get to sell all four levels and KEEP ALL the money.
That’s right – they get to keep 100% of what they sell if they are level 4.
I hope this is making sense. It sounds complicated at first, but it’s actually fairly simple once you understand the concept.
Thus you’ve got affiliates paying (in our example above) $49 a month for the privilege of selling memberships and keeping all the money.
That’s a great deal for the affiliates, right? Absolutely. You can see why I almost jumped on it.
The affiliates don’t have to worry about hosting, fulfillment or any of that stuff, because the membership takes care of all of that.
The affiliate gets a unique sales page URL, squeeze page URL and membership area.
The content is automatically drip fed into that member’s area. The subscriptions are managed for them, the levels are managed for them… all they have to do is make sales by promoting their squeeze page URL.
The affiliate gets to build a list of prospects and buyers simply by promoting the URL, and of course they are earning residual monthly income, too.
The list of prospects and customers stays in the system and cannot be exported. Affiliates can only email their lists from inside the system. So if they drop out and stop paying their monthly fee, they lose their lists.
This can make for some very sticky affiliates who never leave.
Now for the icing… in the terms and conditions, it is made explicitly clear that the membership site operator(s) have access to all of the prospects and customers who sign up.
This means they can email prospects and customers any time they like, making any offer they like. PLUS the site owners can also place offers in the membership area as well.
Now think about what I just said… affiliates are paying you $49 a month (or whatever price point you choose) to be able to build you a list of prospects and customers.
And the affiliates are getting a terrific deal, too, getting 100% monthly commissions and the ability to email their customers and prospects from within your website.
It’s a true win / win for everyone involved, and done correctly it can yield a tremendous amount of prospects and buyers for you, as well as excellent monthly income to pay for a very nice membership site and have money left over.
When I heard about this, they were making five figures a month from the membership site fees alone. This doesn’t include what they were earning from mailing to their ever-growing email lists, or from the special promotions they continually placed in the members’ area.
Imagine if you were earning 5 figures from your membership site AND having a team of affiliates working hard to build your list of prospects and buyers. Sweet.
I wish I had started my first site this way – I’d probably be retired today.
And by the way, this is an advanced variation of the Skype slots technique taught earlier. You might start with that one, and then graduate to this one when you’re ready.
If you think about what’s living in the ocean, you’ll realize there’s everything from so-small-you-can’t-see-it plankton, to whales the size of apartment buildings.
The same holds true for people on your lists and in your funnels.
There’s the freebie seekers and tire kickers who will never become customers. Yes, I suppose you could say they’re the plankton. And they get directly or indirectly eaten by most everything else in the sea.
Working your way up, you’ve got tiny fish, bigger fish, crazy big fish, dolphins, small whales and HUGE whales.
Which is to say, you’ve got buyers who will buy the $7 ebook, ones who purchase the $47 product, some who buy the $297 course, and even a few who will spend thousands of dollars if you let them.
But if you’re not providing these big spenders with the opportunity to spend big money, then YOU are missing out. Big time.
So let’s talk about trust. Someone joins your list and doesn’t know you from the hairball your cat threw up last week.
But they read your stuff, like it, and buy that $7 ebook.
Wow, they’re impressed and they want more. They purchase that $47 product of yours, devour it, and want more.
So they buy the $297 product and they’re still happy. In their minds and hearts, you have progressed all the way from stranger-danger to THE ALL-KNOWING EXPERT, and they are looking to you for the answers.
So what do they want? Depends on your niche, of course, but let’s say it’s online marketing and they want to build a five figure a month funnel.
Think about that – five figures a MONTH. Very doable, but they need help.
They’ve purchased your comprehensive, A-Z course that tells them exactly what to do every step of the way. For this privilege, they’ve paid $297, or $497, or whatever you charge for your very best course – the one that is worth FAR MORE than what you charge.
Now then, you have identified them as being either a very big fish, or perhaps a whale. So what do you do?
99 out of 100 marketers at this point will try to sell them an affiliate product. Big mistake.
Remember, in their eyes YOU are the expert. So why are you trying to sell them somebody else’s course? It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to them at this point. Maybe in a couple of months if they haven’t purchased anything else, THEN you sell them on someone else’s product. But right now YOU are what they want.
So here’s what you do – immediately after the sale of your big course, you offer them your personal one-on-one help in building their 5 figure a month sales funnel.
Once a week they can jump on Skype with you for an hour and ask you ANYTHING. You will hold their hand, keep them accountable and help them to build that funnel FAST.
And for this one-on-one help, you will charge $2,000 a month. Or more or less, depending on how comfortable you are. I know major marketers who charge $3,000 to $5,000 for this exact type of coaching.
Of course, this is only going to appeal to people who are truly serious and also have the money to invest in their future. These are the same folks who can afford to outsource most everything on their funnel, as well as pay for advertising to immediately begin making real money.
If they don’t take your offer right away, you make the offer again in a day, and again and again over the next couple of weeks.
But you only take 10 or so clients at one time, because hey, you are investing your time into this and you only have so much time in your day.
Things to know:
This is an offer you make in-house only. No big launches, no affiliates. It’s only for the big whales on your list who know you, trust you, and are serious about getting real results fast.
Yes, $2,000 or more sounds like a lot. But for the right kind of client, it’s an outstanding investment. For example, $2,000 a month to build a five figure a month income? It’s a no–brainer if they have the money.
Clients who take your offer will naturally get better results and FASTER results because of your coaching, compared with those who go at their own pace with your course.
You are keeping them on track, keeping them accountable, and helping them overcome any obstacles they might face. Plus when people invest that kind of money, they get serious about what they’re doing.
Because you already have a step-by-step course, everything is already laid out for them. Thus you won’t have to worry about teaching a lot of detail on the calls. Instead, you’re focused on helping them make serious progress fast.
If you’re not comfortable starting at $2,000, then pick your own number. Get testimonials from your clients, and increase your fees accordingly.
If you took a poll of online marketers who make more than $100,000 per year, I bet you’d find that at least 4 out of 5 paid for 4-figure a month coaching when they were learning. That’s why they make six figures now.
One last thing: If you have 10 clients each month paying you $2,000 a month, that means you are starting each month with $24,000 of income. And that’s in addition to the rest of your marketing efforts.
Nice!
