
How I Built a $5k/mo Side Project in 5 Months - mike2477
http://www.getsimpledata.com/blog/2015/8/28/how-i-built-a-5k-mrr-side-project-in-5-months
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fweespeech
I have really mixed feelings.

On one hand, I want to congratulate them on getting their dream....on the
other hand, as someone who regularly has to tell the receptionist to screen my
calls....

Yeah. This is really a tool to collect prospects to spam and cold call. I'm
sure it will last the OP awhile, possibly it'll be a project that survives
forever with different data sources, but at the end of the day "lead
generation" is really just a way to collect people's information to pester
them. This sort of marketing is, frankly, invasive and for every person you
get from this...you've also likely convinced a dozen or more people never to
have anything to do with you.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Some people _want_ to be contacted. If I need something and you have it, I'd
much rather you contacted me than I spend hours searching for it.

That's the point of targeted email/communications: don't waste time contacting
people who don't want what you're selling.

~~~
fweespeech
Yet, oddly, of the hundreds of people that contact me this way a year...

0 of them have something I want to buy.

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iokevins
I found each point illuminating; this one stood out, for me, as a good
description of market positioning: "When you hear Volvo what comes to mind?
Scandanavians, but more importantly you probably think “Safe car.” How about
Honda? Odds are “Reliable car” came to mind. This is the basic idea of
positioning. What comes to mind when people hear {company name}?"

~~~
mike2477
Thanks iokevins! Glad that was useful :)

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theworstshill
Congratulations, this is great.

"Whether you’re working on a startup, side project or contributing to a larger
company, the place where you work should be a place where you go to grow,
interact with people, and have fun. It should never be a place where you
derive unhealthy stress, anxiety or fear. "

Good perspective as well, hopefully once your side project grows into a real
company you'll recall this line for your own employees.

~~~
metalliqaz
Somewhere between 80-99% of people do not have that luxury.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
All the more reason the rest of us starting businesses should consider it a
goal.

~~~
collyw
Is the statistic that 90% of small buinsses fail? Odds are even worse, for
even more effort.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
100% of us die. Why bother doing anything at all, then?

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barryhand
Great read.

I found it very interesting in how this might scale for you. Is it possible to
continuously source, say 2000 leads/month for your clients?

Some further questions.

1\. What process do you go through to both source the contacts, and to verify
their quality (e.g UpWork team to scrape etc.)

2\. Have you any feedback on how successful this has been for clients (e.g
response rates)

Good luck with this, and really hope it works for you.

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pavel_lishin
That whole post is duplicated about five times - in entirety - in various
<meta> tags. Kinda weird.

The email he sent to the founder of Growth Geeks also appears to be missing
(after this sentence: "After receiving a couple marketing emails from the
company I sent this email to the founder:")

~~~
mike2477
Hey Pavel, the author here -- thanks for catching that! What do you mean by
the meta tags?

~~~
pavel_lishin
View the source of your blog post, and ctrl-f for (e.g.) "Monetize your brain"
\- you'll see that there's a bunch of meta tags in your <head> where the
entire blog post is duplicated.

<meta property="og:description"... <meta itemprop="description"... <meta
name="twitter:description"...

I'm kind of assuming that whatever blog engine/templating system you're using
just copies the entire blog post into those.

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gue5t
Passive income is the epitome of privilege.

~~~
sp332
Do you mean this how-to guide probably isn't useful?

~~~
gknoy
Maybe it's that I'm not confident enough, but "First, find a skill of yours
you can monetize..." sounds an awful lot like "First, find oil in your
backyard...".

I like what the author wrote about the subsequent advice -- pick a niche, go
with established competitoin, etc -- but it still feels like it's meant for
someone who has found the thing they do which is Special, and I don't yet feel
that yet about myself.

~~~
Hates_
If you have a job and get paid for it then you already have a skill that you
are monetising, just as active income.

~~~
bsaul
Exactly. People who've always been employees often forget that they're
actually being paid for doing something very special that brings value to the
company. And that this value has a cost, which is why they're been paid in the
first place. Not because your boss likes you, or that you've got a great
resume.

I would recommend everyone to spend some time freelancing, even on the side.
It completely changes your relation to your work and your client/boss. In a
very positive way ( less thinking about affect, more about skills and value).

