Advice please from the masters
 

I design small flash intros for websites. They are placed at the beginning of the webpage.and can consist of your logo or whatever.My question for you is this.How would I begin to find the people who would be interested in this custom service?I'm not very good at marketing. I would like to offer this service for a very modest price and not gouge people.
Any suggestions and ideas would be greatly appreciated.Thanks.
Jim

Re: Advice please from the masters
 

Jim,

I'm no 'master'. But here's a few suggestions to get you started:

1. Put a link at the bottom of your posts (here on SowPub) and elsewhere. If your asking legitimate questions and responding with helpful answers, it's no problem putting a link at the bottom of each post back to your web site for more info.

2. On your web site make sure you have examples of your work. Anyone interested in your services will want to know what you can do.

3. When you say you don't want to 'gouge people' with your prices, I'm assuming you're still going to make a profit! Inexpensive is good... but make sure you build in a good and healthy profit on each project, or be able to sell additional products and services to your customers in the future.

In the marketing biz it's called 'lifetime customer value' - what your customer will be worth to you as they keep buying more and more from you.

And don't be shy about asking for money and making a good profit. That's the only way you'll stay in business ;-)

4. Do you have clients now? Make sure you get some letters from them or emails saying how much they value your work and how : 1) fast you were; 2) professional; 3) inexpensive ; 4) attentive to quality ; 5) helpful... etc...

Then put those letters on your site.

5. Give away samples of your work in an ebook and get people to download it.

6. Start a newsletter on how flash intro's can build customer relations, trust, sales, etc...

In other words if you can help your clients build their business through the use of flash intros and show them why they are effective, you'll have more business than you can handle.

Those are just off the top of my head... hope they help you!

Best wishes to you and success,

-Dave


THE Info-Product Profits Newsletter

Re: Advice please from the masters
 

Hi,

This has to be brief, I'm really rushed right now.

Bullet points:

- SE traffic will provide a lot of sales.
- Build an optimized site for your domain.
- Your domian should be something like flash-templates-free.com.
- On your site have recip links to at least 5 other flash templates sites (your strategy is draw in the freebie seekers and then sell them a premium service).
- Then set up about 30 other domains on the flash template theme, all of them yours and all of them linking to your main site.
- Set up another domain about flash web design, and on it have a link to your main site and your 30 other doamins. Hand submit this site to all the SEs. Submit it to DMOZ.
- Let the free template sites give away your samples (your samples have links to your main site). An example of a place to submit samples is http://oswd.org/ Open Source Web Design. I just noticed you can also submit templates to freelayouts.com. I guess this is the give out free samples tactic.
- Like I said your SE strategy is to draw in traffic looking for free templates and then upsell them like http://www.freelayouts.com/ does.
- If you want to have a dignified premium site you could bleed traffic into it from your free template site. This dignified site would be the one that you used Dave's advice and normal internet marketing tactics on.
- Exchange links with all the other template sites to bleed off traffic.
- Use Dave Vallieres's advice.
- Use the normal internet marketing tactics like article submissions.
- Yes, this is a lot of work, you're into the 110 hours a week level if you do this.

Disclaimer: these are just off the top ideas, and I welcome being shot down if they're not applicable to what you're doing. These ideas may not be applicable to you or anyone else and I offer no warranties of any kind.

Hope this was helpful.

Best,

- Boyd

I may be able to provide you customers...
 

Hi:

We will be releasing a new online software next week.

Without getting into specifics at this time, there is a very strong possibility that many of our clients will be wanting to use Flash and won't have the capability of creating their own Flash files.

If you would like to provide me your web site where I can see some samples of your work and prices, and, if I find your quality of work to be of the standard we would want to refer our clients to, as a service to our clients we would be more than willing to promote your service on our web site at no charge to you.

If you wish to reply by email rather than the board here, my personal email address within this posting is a valid and working email address that has been in use since 1996.

Cornell

You're welcome, Jim [DNO]
 

dno
> Hi,

> This has to be brief, I'm really rushed
> right now.

> Bullet points:

> - SE traffic will provide a lot of sales.
> - Build an optimized site for your domain.
> - Your domian should be something like
> flash-templates-free.com.
> - On your site have recip links to at least
> 5 other flash templates sites (your strategy
> is draw in the freebie seekers and then sell
> them a premium service).
> - Then set up about 30 other domains on the
> flash template theme, all of them yours and
> all of them linking to your main site.
> - Set up another domain about flash web
> design, and on it have a link to your main
> site and your 30 other doamins. Hand submit
> this site to all the SEs. Submit it to DMOZ.
> - Let the free template sites give away your
> samples (your samples have links to your
> main site). An example of a place to submit
> samples is http://oswd.org/ Open Source
> Web Design. I just noticed you can also
> submit templates to freelayouts.com. I guess
> this is the give out free samples tactic.
> - Like I said your SE strategy is to draw in
> traffic looking for free templates and then
> upsell them like
> http://www.freelayouts.com/ does.
> - If you want to have a dignified premium
> site you could bleed traffic into it from
> your free template site. This dignified site
> would be the one that you used Dave's advice
> and normal internet marketing tactics on.
> - Exchange links with all the other template
> sites to bleed off traffic.
> - Use Dave Vallieres's advice.
> - Use the normal internet marketing tactics
> like article submissions.
> - Yes, this is a lot of work, you're into
> the 110 hours a week level if you do this.

> Disclaimer: these are just off the top
> ideas, and I welcome being shot down if
> they're not applicable to what you're doing.
> These ideas may not be applicable to you or
> anyone else and I offer no warranties of any
> kind.

> Hope this was helpful.

> Best,

> - Boyd