Sometimes we in tech fields forget the momentum and the power of offline advertising. Even more so, we tend to forget about the social/networking circle that we work within on a daily basis.
Many times Ive found myself relying on what I all stranger traffic. Through methods of link building with others and numerous link spamming methods. Mainly, completely through online methods.
Then someone reminds me of just how easy things can be when you’re focused on a goal, and have a great, straight forward plan of attack.
I have a few examples.
#1 The travel website.
A friend of mine signed up for one of those (buy through us and save) travel site affiliate programs. He gets a nice chunk of a kickback from each airline ticket sold through this particular page.
What surprised me, was that this guy is simply not tech savvy. He took his old world knowledge, folded it into something that he didnt believe existed, and made it work. How did he do it? Simple. He has a lot of friends that travel. Through his everyday business dealings, he would mention his website. Tell them that its a great price, a recommendation as you’d say. They all know he travels alot himself, so they feel he is onto something. Bang. One sale after another. This guy is now adding an extra $2000 a month to his normal wage, without lifting a finger, but telling his friends about this ‘cheaper’ deal.
#2 The Gambling Site
Another friend of mine, is heavily into racing, horses, dogs, anything. He has been a successful gambler for years, and managed to make a living from gambling alone. Sure he’d hit some low points, and then some high points, but above all, this guy knows his stuff.
One day he wakes up, realising that he needs to look after his family, and decides that he needs a steadier income. So he pays through the nose for a programmer and website designer, to build him a website where he can put ‘on the fly’ tips up for upcoming races. His home designed analysis system, helps him by showing stats for winning and placing horses and their likeliness to win or place again, compared to the rest of the horses they are racing against. Easy job, he can sit around, watching his passion on the satellite tv, entering names and numbers, and taking in $50 per day per person, for use of his website. Last saturday, he pulled in $1100 worth of membership fees and he only put in the mornings races. How does he get his visitors? Simple, just as the case above, most of them are friends or business collegues of his, that have the same interests, and actually find his advice and website useful.
See these are people that simply are not technical, they cant program, if you asked them to design a website, they couldnt. They dont even know what a social bookmarking website is, they know nothing of forums, guestbooks, and arent particularly purturbed or bothered if they are even ever indexed in Google. But they took their real world business knowledge to see a niche, create a plan and simply MAKE it happen.
Sometimes we just have to step outside ourselves a little bit to make something work. There are massive opportunities out there in ALL industries. We just have to know how to take what we want, and make it happen.