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The Poor Man’s Guide To Launching Your Web Agency

Updated January 11th, 2019

You’ve been researching, spending money and time on learning the newest strategies. You’re looking for quick answers on how you can get started, how to get sales and clients, how to truly be your own boss.

Sadly, you continue to end up at the same spot once the motivation and the excitement runs dry. A perpetual state of not getting started.

Sucks, doesn’t it?

There’s no better time than now, to get started. No more shiny object syndrome… if you follow this guide, you will be well on your way to your first client, maybe your first 10 clients!

In this post, you will learn:

  • How to get started with $500 or under
  • How to sync up your marketing for max conversions
  • A detailed plan with mimimal capital requirements
  • Tools and Resources you need along the way
  • And MORE!

Let’s get to it…

Why The Web Agency / Digital Lifestyle Is Popular

Before we really get into the meat here, you need to understand why this is something you’re interested in.

It’s cool to have spurs of motivation, but if that motivation doesn’t lead you to direct action and direct results, it’s just a waste of time.

When I got into this business, it wasn’t because I thought it would be cool, fun, or that I would have some sort of “freedom”. It was out of necessity. It was out of desperation.

I could either use my existing skill set and willingness to learn and hopefully generate an income, or I wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t have a place to live.

For you and most people nowadays, that’s not the reason you want to get in.

You want to get into this business because you don’t like to drive to work, or you don’t want to have to wake up by a certain time. Maybe it’s because you’re retired and you want to supplement your income because you didn’t save as much as you needed for retirement.

There’s a ton of different reasons people want to get into this business.

Before continuing, you should identify the top 3 reasons you want to get started.

What are they?

If those reasons aren’t strong enough motivators for you to follow through with whatever it requires to achieve your end goal, then hit the “x” button on this browser tab, and get back to whatever you were doing. Don’t waste your time.

If those reasons motivate you daily and deep down you really want this… then continue on.

Some of your goals are:

  • Being in charge of your income
  • Not having a boss looming behind you
  • Unlimited financial ceiling
  • Work less for more money (haha yeah right)
  • Supplement your income
  • Location freedom, work from anywhere
  • Set your own hours
  • Build something big, to leave for your kids.

Countless others as well… and most are pretty good reasons for wanting to get into this. If one of the reasons for getting into this, is because you think it’s going to be easy money with no work, you might as well stop right now.

Nothing worthwhile in life is easy.

You have to work very hard, and smart, in order to have “easy money”.

Don’t be scared though, successfully running your own company and being in charge of your destiny is one of the most fulfilling things in life.

RELATED: Start a Digital Marketing Company in 2019

Getting Started With $500 or Under

I’m going to assume a couple basic things. Probably bad to assume, but I’m going to assume you have a website. I’m going to assume you have a phone and internet (along with a computer).

If you have those things, then investing $500 in your future is very easy to do. Most of you have invested $500 already, in info products, tools, courses, etc. Why not invest it in a way that can immediately bring in revenue for you?

Step 1: You Need a Source For Business Information

As part of this $500 and under plan, you’re going to use a multi-pronged approach to generating leads to contact.

A while back, I wrote a post about the “Quadruple Marketing Threat” a method that uses 4 different tactics, complimenting each other and making sales much easier than any individual method.

It’s pretty much the same thing we’re doing here, except making it more cost effective and eliminating one of the methods.

You’re going to use your existing assets, phone, computer, website, etc. but you’re also going to be using email marketing and direct mail.

There are a couple different ways to gather business information.

  1. You can do it manually by searching Google
  2. You can sign up for infofree or other lead list services
  3. You can use a lead scraper tool to scrape leads whenever you want

My recommendation is Profit Renegade, get the basic product at less than $40 (see my demo here). I used to say to not buy into any of the upsells, but the way the software is evolving even in 2019, some of them are pretty good. Their all in one upsell is good, but if you’re on a tight budget you can probably skip that.

Step 2: Setting Up a Direct Mail Campaign

Seems daunting for beginners, but it really isn’t. It’s not difficult at all.

Since you have your source of business information, you will want to get some postcards designed.

Even if you have no knowledge of graphic design, you can go to upwork.com and find someone that will handle your design for pretty cheap. It shouldn’t cost you more than $20 to get something good enough to send. Eventually you’ll probably want to spend a bit more but the whole point here is to get started and generate some cash.

The next step here is to go to gotprint.com or another source for printing. I recommend GotPrint because they’re fast, high quality and one of the cheapest sources I’ve been able to find over the years.

You will want to make sure your designer is using their specs. Don’t worry, the templates are provided for free and pretty easy for any graphic designer to follow.

I suggest a run of 1,000 4×6 postcards. The printing will cost you around $60 with shipping.

Once you receive your cards, you will need to either use labels or hand write the addresses on the postcard. Some people say you should address them to the owner’s name, but I have found it doesn’t really make much difference.

Using the business name, and address is perfectly fine.

Now.. here’s the important thing. Since these are just 4×6 postcards, you don’t want to be sending these across the country. You’re better off focusing on a specific area, or state nearby.

For example, if you’re in Louisville Kentucky, you probably would want to send to kentucky, maybe tenneesee, illinois, indiana, etc. You don’t want to send your cards to California. Think regional, not nationally.

Postage is your main cost here, at $340 for the 1,000 cards.

So right now, we have:

  • Mobile Renegade – $40ish (or other lead source) 
  • Postcard Design – $20ish
  • Postcard Printing – $60
  • Postage – $340 

Total – $467

And we’re not done yet. 

There’s other things we’re going to implement for free!

Step 3: Sign Up For Your FREE MailChimp Account

You just went to the post office to send out all your post cards. Congrats!

The data you scraped with Profit Renegade or whatever other source you’re using, perhaps manually even, you should have some emails for a portion of the businesses you’re marketing to.

Mailchimp offers a free account for up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 total emails sent per month.

You’re going to import the emails you scraped, and start marketing to them before, during and after the postcards are delivered.

If you end up scaling this process, you will definitely want to look into my Ice Cold Email Gold guide, but for the amounts discussed in this post, you should be okay on your own!

The reason you want to add the email marketing to your start up strategy is because not everyone responds the same way to certain marketing techniques.

At the very least, your business becomes familiar to them when they receive other marketing messages or later down the road.

When you have emails imported, continue to send emails out weekly. There’s no sense in sending one time and forgetting about them.

My preference when sending cold emails, is to not try to sell them on the email, but instead, give them valuable information, tips, almost in the format of a short blog post to generate interest and build trust.

RELATED CONTENT: Why Your Email Outreach Might Suck

Step 4: Pick Up the Phone and Call!

Now when you’ve sent your postcards I recommend waiting a week before calling some of these businesses. That way you have a reason to call, or it makes the call less awkward if you’re the type that has phone anxiety.

Maybe you don’t want cold calling to be a strategy you want to use long term, and that’s fine. For the purpose of getting started though, it is relatively easy, can be effective, and these people have already received emails, a postcard, and they’re probably not going to be mad that you called them.

Don’t get hung up on scripts. Keeping it as simple as possible is usually your best course of action.

“Hey Mr. Business owner, my name is Nathan, I recently launched a web design and online marketing company and thought I would reach out to see if you’re in the market for improving your digital presence.”

That’s all it takes.

You don’t need a complex script or detailed spiel.

Additional Reading: 8 Cold Calling Tips To Get Some Success

The goal here is to have a conversation with those you’re marketing to. You don’t need to be intimidated by sales. Sales is just a matter of having conversations.

What Are The Expected Returns?

I can say that even if your postcard sucks. Even if your email marketing sucks. Even if you suck at talking to people on the phone… you will get sales out of these 1,000 businesses.

The postcard, even if the design is awful, you can expect at least 10 solid leads. If you only get 10% of the business’s email addresses, you may get a couple good leads from that, and from cold calling these people you will probably get at least another 5-10 strong leads.

But let’s low ball the returns, okay?

You’ve generated these leads from multiple channels.

Even if you are the worst person at closing sales, you should generate at least 3-4 sales from this.

If you’re selling web design services at $750, 3 sales would be $2250. 4 sales would be $3,000. You’re looking at a minimum 400% return on investment. Even more if you follow this process on a monthly basis.

That’s not even counting upsells, cross sells, or recurring income like hosting/maintenance (recommend a namehero reseller account), which I would hope you’re offering if you’re selling web design services!

A Couple Tips

Once you decide to follow this process, you will realize you need something more sophisticated than a notebook or excel in order to track your leads.

I recommend using a CRM like Nutshell or other free alternatives where you can keep track of the people you’re marketing to. Set up follow up calls for those that are interested but haven’t bought, and eliminate the ones that are not interested.

To add another channel of contacting these people as a supplement method, use LinkedIn to find the owners of each business and send a connection request.

The more you appear in front of your target audience, the better. Sometimes it takes 6 or 7 times that a main marketing message appears before the person buys. You being everywhere they are, makes that much easiest, and a shorter sales cycle.

Don’t forget to implement content on your website. A blog is great. You don’t need to worry about search engine traffic, you want to just leverage your content for the people you’re targeting. The more content you have, the better. You can use it to share on LinkedIn, in groups or in your stream. You can use it for lead nurturing your targets via email marketing.

It’s free and high impact.

Let’s Recap

Lead scraper / Lead Source like Mobile Renegade – $40ish

Postcard design – $20ish

Printing costs for postcards @ GotPrint – $60

Postage for 1,000 postcards – $340

MailChimp, LinkedIn – FREE

Cold (actually luke warm) calling – FREE

Total – $467 

Seriously, for $500 you can really get a head start in growing and scaling your business.

You even have money left over, which would wisely be invested in my Ultimate Web Agency Blueprint where I break down absolutely everything, for those of you that need a bigger picture of everything you should do.

For those go getters out there, this post should be enough of a guide to get you in the right direction!

Thoughts? Comments? Ideas? Would love to hear them in the comments below.

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