Building

[superdave2u]

hey my name is dave. ive been a builder for as long as I can remember.

from a sandbox as a kid to fpv quadcopters in my late twenties i love building.

been hustling programming gigs for years as an outlet for my builder mentality but struggled to understand my value

i grew up and after learning the ropes of office politics I gained a salaried position and now i dont worry so much about day-to-day finances

but I confess, the idea of being dependant on this one stream of income is killing me

thats why im here

in the past ive always looked for the higher per-hour rate but with the paradigm shift to an owner mentality, a business process builder, i feel ive found a calling and i'm looking forward to the grind with you guys

 

[iam_mine]

Welcome, do you have experience in online marketing?

 

[superdave2u]

Most of my experiences come from being an employee in a company where my money wasn't at stake.. however, my most profitable effort turned out to be a Squidoo page I put up, forgot about, lost track of, then started getting checks from amazon every few months for like $50. I got three of those checks before the stopped coming and I wasn't able to track down why my article started to do any better.

My first experience with lead buying was with a debt settlement agency. I was calling on leads that were, resold countless times, unresponsive, etc. I was the new guy at the firm and only the vets got the better, exclusive, leads. This was around the time 'Chedda' made a lot of noise with the flog so I tried to emulate that with Debbie's Debt Settlement blog. My bosses didn't see the vision and I was barely making minimum wage so all the traffic I got to it was from craigslist or myspace. I got one conversion on my page but he wasn't qualified for our program.

My next role was in email marketing. I was cold calling execs, marketing vps, etc and offering them our lists to run their offers. I got a lot of sales training here and the shop had experience flipping almost every objection. I was still in a bad mindset around money and didn't do well as a sales rep "selling with my own pocket".. I struggled understanding that there we companies out there who would risk $1k on a 'test' when I was making $250/wk - while here I learned a lot about the industry, email delivery, phone sales. Still, I didn't see the forest. Even when I was given a 1M user list to manage I didn't 'get it' and just threw things up against the wall. I think through CPA offers to the list I made $10 ? Weak.

I started reading 4 hour work week, found warrior forum, later found wicked fire, and really started to understand more about the process of lifestyle design and how learning how to market to people online could 'free me' from the horrible corp lock I was in. This email place was not a healthy environment overall and I struggled with a lot of mental abuse. Eventually I moved on but through it all I was more focused with the company than on making my own path. It was hard but for me to stabilize I had to tell myself that I wouldn't split my attention with marketing until I could afford a budget for paid ads.

I was hired with a smaller shop that focused on building websites for small biz around the county. I excelled here as a developer and more or less, found my calling. We had a team of three: biz dev, marketing, me the wrench man. As I became more confident in what I brought to the table I also began to speak up about what I had learned in my various roles, as well as in my own 'studies'. I told myself that I wouldn't stress about marketing on my own time because I was happy as a developer and these two people I worked with were awesome. We had plans to grow the company to another state where I'd run the division and expand our team. It was awesome but my girlfriend at the time pushed me to understand my value relative to the industry. She pointed out that I was being taken advantage of with my wage and lack of benefits, compared to similar roles in the industry. I listened and started to seek work elsewhere.

I landed a developer position within a healthcare startup company and doubled my salary with the jump. Things have been rocky here with division managers and stakeholders having been found undermining the company so the time is better than ever to start supporting myself. For the first time in my life I've been able to live with a few months expenses saved up and now that I can say that I'm ready to invest in breaking away from the corp grind.