Buy This Crap Podcast Course

There is no quick fix

That's it, that's the content. Thanks for listening!

Alright, I know I'm being a little facetious here but this situation is so distressing to me that if I don't act like that, I'll end up quitting work and becoming a hermit here in the hills of Yorkshire, only leaving my cave to test out new <£100 podcast microphones on YouTube.

When I started my first ever web design business in 2007 (ish) I loved a silver bullet.

This was the early days of SEO and of internet marketing as we know it today and I got into it. I spent time learning how to code websites and how to create content for them so that they'd rank well in the search engine listings.

I also spent a lot of time designing simple marketing funnels that would step-sell clients into spending a little more.

One Saturday morning I spotted an opportunity: I could create a simple web design and build package that also included some business cards & some other basic printed promotional materials and, with some nice patter, market that as a £297 starter package to new businesses.

It was a great package and, if I targeted new local businesses, I could get to know them, plus up-sell them a logo and some ongoing website updates on a recurring basis and do that via Direct Debit, which no one locally was offering.

I spent Saturday morning building a simple three-page website and targeted the search keywords around "web design Barnsley".

It worked really, really well.

My website became top of Google for those terms instantly and, although the search volume wasn't high, it was high-quality in its specificity - the leads were great and the enquiries were hot.

New businesses loved the package because everyone else was charging them thousands upfront and as a new business they simply didn't have that kind of money - they were young and scrappy and had a few hundred quid from their family or friends or savings and because I also had other, bigger clients I could afford to take a bit of a risk on them.

The website has been offline for years now, but remnants still exist if you're curious.

That Saturday morning netted me tens of thousands of pounds of revenue over the next few years, led to a contract worth over half a million pounds and built relationships that still exist to this day.

One morning of work.

A silver bullet.

Or...

Three years of learning to code.

Three years of learning how to "do" SEO.

Two years of working with clients to understand what they wanted.

Countless sleepless nights worrying about emails from clients or if I'd get paid on time.

But... it was only one morning of work!

Wrong. It wasn't. It was one morning of pulling together years of experience into the first idea I had for generating recurring revenue using a high-quality, relationship and skills-based marketing strategy.

The challenge as podcasters, then, is that we're often trying to emulate the success of others who have those years of experience, without putting the years in!

Two important lessons

I want to impart two important takeaways from this.

Firstly, recurring revenue is brilliant. 

You sell once and, as long as you do a good job, you keep making money on a predictable and value-led basis. I do good things for you and give you results and you keep paying me a bit each month.

Scale that and you have a nice business.

The type of business that everyone wants to build. Including online "entrepreneurs" & course creators - more on that later.

Secondly, I could package how to do that and sell you a...