This fucking economy
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NickRac
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I'm from Greenwich, CT - more or less the hedge fund capital of the US and it's a little scary to see whats happening...all the sudden the multimillion dollar men and their trophy wives are out of work and money.
Amusing but scary as shit
Amusing but scary as shit
I GUARANTEE you have more knowledge about SEO and internet marketing/PPC than 99% of the local businesses in your area. Local SEO is for the most part, wide open for pickings at the moment.
You may not be able to rank #1 for every term but you likely can rank on the first page for just about any "city" + "local service"
Here is an example that took me 1-min
"Indianapolis computer repair"
#3 ranking website is Computerhousecall.com with just 25 incoming links ... easy to beat that with a little work. How much do you think that would be worth to a local computer business??
Go talk to some business owners in your area and ask them how their online marketing is doing... I can tell you that most will be non-existent and won't even have a clue what PPC is or that you can control the keywords they rank for... and that around 50% won't even have a website.
Many advertise in the YellowPages and pay $500+ a month -- ask them how many calls they get per day from that?
You don't have to sling berries, grants and dating offers to make money online...
You may not be able to rank #1 for every term but you likely can rank on the first page for just about any "city" + "local service"
Here is an example that took me 1-min
"Indianapolis computer repair"
#3 ranking website is Computerhousecall.com with just 25 incoming links ... easy to beat that with a little work. How much do you think that would be worth to a local computer business??
Go talk to some business owners in your area and ask them how their online marketing is doing... I can tell you that most will be non-existent and won't even have a clue what PPC is or that you can control the keywords they rank for... and that around 50% won't even have a website.
Many advertise in the YellowPages and pay $500+ a month -- ask them how many calls they get per day from that?
You don't have to sling berries, grants and dating offers to make money online...
THANKS DAWGS
Lots of posts in this thread have excellent ideas that're fairly well outlined to keep you(me) on the right course to at least make a few bucks. Lots of the posts aren't heavy with lingo, since I'm new to this lingo that helped and at the same time there was just enough lingo to give me a lingo-understanding-base. Thanks for making this thread OP, I feel you on the economy. Thanks to everyone else for knowledge, it's power.
People will pay $500 for a skinned wordpress? I just crapped.
Lots of posts in this thread have excellent ideas that're fairly well outlined to keep you(me) on the right course to at least make a few bucks. Lots of the posts aren't heavy with lingo, since I'm new to this lingo that helped and at the same time there was just enough lingo to give me a lingo-understanding-base. Thanks for making this thread OP, I feel you on the economy. Thanks to everyone else for knowledge, it's power.
I'm just about ready to try this. Does anybody have experience with this kind of thing? I'm having a tough time coming up with categories other than 'computer repair', 'house cleaning', 'day care', etc.
EDIT: One other thing. Google has a big list of local results when I search for this kind of thing. Will people really shell out for SEO when they're on that list?
I hate giving advice for free.
I started off selling refurbished electronics to people who are looking for used shit...craigslist.
Cant go wrong selling top of the line used crap to people with 30 day money back guarantees because I had 90.
I started off selling refurbished electronics to people who are looking for used shit...craigslist.
Cant go wrong selling top of the line used crap to people with 30 day money back guarantees because I had 90.
The widely varied topics on this forum are pretty good evidence that there is no such thing as "The Economy" with a capital "E". All economy is individual. Individual person or individual business. Obviously, if you're approaching this from an employee standpoint, your personal economy will be affected by whether companies in your area or industry are hiring. But here on WickedFire, we have one person fretting over how to handle graduating college soon, and someone else who is having enough success they are going to join their friends backpacking through Asia.
Alexb, I say you shoot for putting yourself in a position where you are self-employed and pulling down enough money to support yourself.
Alexb, I say you shoot for putting yourself in a position where you are self-employed and pulling down enough money to support yourself.
Just go to Yellowpages.com and they have all the categories sorted for you by city
For example, I went to Indianapolis and they list all the business categories in alphabetical order ... there are over 100 business categories alone that start with the letter "A"
Browse Indianapolis Yellow Pages Directory - YELLOWPAGES.COM
I'll choose "Attorneys" -- there almost 4,000 attorneys listed
Now, you can refine this even more with different types of law -- Bankruptcy, Family Law, Estate Planning, Divorce, Personal Injury, etc
I just randomly chose "Divorce Attorney"
So go to Google and let's see what the competition is like for this phrase...
indianapolis divorce attorney
#2 ranked is this site Indianapolisdivorcelawyers.com
Now lets see how many backlinks they have... only 1 backlink!
You could easily take that over and get any one of these firms ranked on the first page for that term.
There are 264 divorce attorneys listed
Now just start going down this list and start contacting them one by one and I guarantee one of those firms would be interested in your help in getting ranked for that term and would be willing to pay you a nice chunk of $$$.
Pick up your local Yellowpages book and check out all the full-page, color advertisement placements attorneys are paying for at the moment... those are NOT cheap. No idea what the rates for in your area but I would guess each one costs at least $20k a year (a very small color ad usually costs $500 a month)
When you contact each of these divorce attorneys who have an ad listed, ask them how many calls per day they get from the phone book (I bet its not much these days)
Tell them you can get their website ranked on the first page of Google and explain how the majority of people are now searching online for local businesses and not using the yellowpages anymore.
There is no set prices for this kind of service but I will bet you could easily charge $5,000 and it would take you less than a few hours to complete the job. Remember the profit margins lawyers have ... just a few clients would pay for the $5k. Easy sell.
As far as the local map results, of course businesses will shell out money even if they are on that list. They want to be seen as much as possible... especially in this economy. We all know the more rankings you have the better chance a visitor will find your site.
So there you go. I just gave you an easy way to bank some easy $$$
Just go to Yellowpages.com and they have all the categories sorted for you by city
Bu the real question is: Can you just pay someone else to do the SEO work for you and bank the huge profit as the middle man?
It's actually an idea I've been courting for a year - I even bought the domain and started the site. Lots of small business, lots of money to be made...never enough time to get started, but maybe I will soon now that everyone is stealing my idea. LOL
Bu the real question is: Can you just pay someone else to do the SEO work for you and bank the huge profit as the middle man?
Of course... you can outsource any or all of the work.
The small and medium sized businesses in general have no clue or time to figure out SEO/internet marketing. For the most part they still rely on the yellowpages for their advertising.
Lot of good advice here - if you're motivated, aggressive, and not 100% socially retarded, you should have no trouble coming up with ways round up some cash quickly. The lawyer/local SEO idea is solid, and you can do the same thing with almost any industry locally.
If you do decide that you must get a job, though, definitely skip the career fairs. Those things are awful, desperate affairs where employers are bombarded with tons of people willing to do almost anything to get their resume out - and worse, most of the jobs really suck.
Try looking for e-commerce companies or ad agencies in your area instead and then create a plan of attack for getting to meet the owner. Most of these companies are filled with a bunch of poorly-trained new college grads and they're usually eager to get their hands on people who know anything at all about web marketing (just be careful not to give them the impression that you're just using them until you can do your own thing - no boss wants to hear that).
I realize you're not exactly located in Silicon Valley, but I guarantee there are plenty of opportunities you're missing out on. I live in the St. Louis area and I get at least one (unsolicited) local, e-commerce related job offer every month or two. There's always a need for it and once people in your area know what you can do, you'll have no trouble finding a job.
If you want one, anyway.
If you want quick cash, try flyers instead. First, make a list of nearby locations with reasonable foot traffic and the ability to post free flyers. Grocery stores, college campuses, community centers, some bus stops (these are GOLD for low-income/bad credit offers, btw), some independent restaurants, etc. Then, break them up by demographic (your best guess, anyway) and pick offers for each.
From there, buy easy-to-remember domains and i-frame the offers you'll be promoting. Create flyers and post them. Make sure your flyers have those tear-off tags, as people are really, really bad at remembering URLs. I tested flyers with and without and the difference was just ridiculous.
Once you get a bit of spare cash and you know which locations and offers work, it's really easy to scale/outsource this, too. Take your list of locations and break them up by neighborhood.
From there, just find some college kid (or any semi-computer literate person who needs spare cash, really) and have them distribute flyers every week or two. I prefer to bulk print and then mail over enough flyers for several months, as it tends to be cheaper than offering a paper/ink allowance and having people do their own.
Just make sure you hire someone to check up on everyone, too (or do it yourself if you have the time and inclination). Assign specific days for the postings and have your "inspector" visit a random set of locations the next day. If more than 10-20% of any person's locations checked are not found to have flyers, can them. You should also make sure that there's a different domain for each person and offer so you can see which neighborhoods are performing.
Yes, you'll almost definitely have to cut some of your less profitable locations once you outsource, but you'll be working less, too, so it balances out.
One more tip - come up with several offers per location. The marginal cost of having a couple more flyers/offers posted at each spot is low, so why not do it? Just make your flyers look very different from each offer so it's not totally obvious that one person is spamming the whole bulletin board.
If you do decide that you must get a job, though, definitely skip the career fairs. Those things are awful, desperate affairs where employers are bombarded with tons of people willing to do almost anything to get their resume out - and worse, most of the jobs really suck.
Try looking for e-commerce companies or ad agencies in your area instead and then create a plan of attack for getting to meet the owner. Most of these companies are filled with a bunch of poorly-trained new college grads and they're usually eager to get their hands on people who know anything at all about web marketing (just be careful not to give them the impression that you're just using them until you can do your own thing - no boss wants to hear that).
I realize you're not exactly located in Silicon Valley, but I guarantee there are plenty of opportunities you're missing out on. I live in the St. Louis area and I get at least one (unsolicited) local, e-commerce related job offer every month or two. There's always a need for it and once people in your area know what you can do, you'll have no trouble finding a job.
If you want one, anyway.
If you want quick cash, try flyers instead. First, make a list of nearby locations with reasonable foot traffic and the ability to post free flyers. Grocery stores, college campuses, community centers, some bus stops (these are GOLD for low-income/bad credit offers, btw), some independent restaurants, etc. Then, break them up by demographic (your best guess, anyway) and pick offers for each.
From there, buy easy-to-remember domains and i-frame the offers you'll be promoting. Create flyers and post them. Make sure your flyers have those tear-off tags, as people are really, really bad at remembering URLs. I tested flyers with and without and the difference was just ridiculous.
Once you get a bit of spare cash and you know which locations and offers work, it's really easy to scale/outsource this, too. Take your list of locations and break them up by neighborhood.
From there, just find some college kid (or any semi-computer literate person who needs spare cash, really) and have them distribute flyers every week or two. I prefer to bulk print and then mail over enough flyers for several months, as it tends to be cheaper than offering a paper/ink allowance and having people do their own.
Just make sure you hire someone to check up on everyone, too (or do it yourself if you have the time and inclination). Assign specific days for the postings and have your "inspector" visit a random set of locations the next day. If more than 10-20% of any person's locations checked are not found to have flyers, can them. You should also make sure that there's a different domain for each person and offer so you can see which neighborhoods are performing.
Yes, you'll almost definitely have to cut some of your less profitable locations once you outsource, but you'll be working less, too, so it balances out.
One more tip - come up with several offers per location. The marginal cost of having a couple more flyers/offers posted at each spot is low, so why not do it? Just make your flyers look very different from each offer so it's not totally obvious that one person is spamming the whole bulletin board.
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