Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
Whilst I made some good money, had a lot of fun and gained some excellent experience - the bad has outweighed the good and I (more specifically my sanity) believe it is time to move on and join the 'real world'. Not that I really want to ;)
So now I am almost officially a 'job seeker' I have been searching through seek.com.au - Australia's largest job search site and I am faced with dealing with 'recruitment agencies'. It's hard enough finding an appropriate position within my city (Brisbane, Australia) without dealing with the further complication of these agencies. You don't know what they really want (too vague), who the company is you'd work for, or what the salary is. And it takes lot of time to look (time perhaps best spent elseware?).
I feel as if it would be easier chasing new clients, although I have almost exhausted that route, and time is money..
I am in a catch 22. Not enough work to go on and stay sain, too much work to sacrifice the clients/potential clients I have worked hard to build.
I am on the edge if cracking it, but this has also been the case for quite some time. I have had numerous new leads this year, however none have come to fruition - yet. It has been very frustrating and I really love what do which makes it just a little worse.
Have any of you been in a similar situation? How did you get through?
Also if there is anyone from Oz that knows a good IT recruitment agency in Bris, please sticky me. I would not mind working for a large Aus online company.
I have also been doing a lot of thinking about what I do and where I live. I am sure I'd be fine if I were in the states, or Sydney. However right now I have little choice but to live here.
My philosophy has always been to help out the most people rather than stuff my own pockets (yep, I know it depends on how your stuffing them). I have worked with affiliates, merchants and all sorts of other online businesses in a multitude of industries, but always for them not me. I want to have a larger 'net effect' and this is why I have chosen this slightly convoluted route.
One day I hope to head a large marketing firm (my own pref.) in July I am going to do a marketing degree at university and hopefully get some credit towards it from previous studies.
As you can probably derive from the above post I am also in several minds on where to from here! So chime in and give us a hand!
Hints and Tips greatly appreciated.
re business advice - are you a member of local business clubs networking groups? I use to get quite a few repeat business from them. Also trying to build regular income (by offering seo maintenance or hosting could be a good way of getting an additional income stream with little efforts
if you are skint, get a part time job to pay the bills. there is no disgrace in earning money on the side. it doesn't matter what the job is either. all that matters is that you make progress every day with your business.
most businesses fail because either there is no demand for what they do or they don't market enough. if you are sure there is demand for what you do then maybe you have a problem with your marketing. review it, find out how to do it better then fix it.
next time you are feeling down, close your eyes and imagine where you want to be in five years. a good range of interesting clients doing productive work for good money with nobody to answer to but your customers and yourself.
This might sound nuts but see if you can get some work with non profits. The pay isnt great but it sure helps with overall satisfaction, karma and stress reduction.
Another idea is to offer a referal program for your services. Get people selling your products. Pay perhaps 15% of the initial contract and 10% lifetime of the client.
You can do it stick with it mate.
An update.
Have pulled my finger out and have a few new leads cooking. Fingers Crossed.
I'm not being funny either, but, the first, the very first, thing I did was to enroll in the program that the "life coach" was hugely successful at selling to my potential clients!
On day one of selling the lesson was:
#1 rule.....you can't sell to someone without a desire to buy!
After 20 years of selling successfully:
#1 rule.....you can't sell to someone without a desire to buy!
You can create the desire, you can play the numbers, but, you will never sell to a mass audience that does't have the desire to buy.
If I stated the business I was in I would get 30 people sticky me wanting to buy in the next 24 hours. Every single one of them would convert to a sale.
You need to target your audience, and learn how to close deals. After that life is simple!
Are there any other sectors that you can move into, maybe you have expertise in other Internet or computer related areas? How about a package solution with marketing, SEO and webdesign in one? What I'm trying to say is don't shut down until you have checked through all the options.
I would guess 99% of firms who sell seo and internet marketing services have a few ad and affiliate sites out there. There is nothing wrong with that often you can tactfully market your services with the other sites. Use seperate c classes and publish useful high quality relevant content on each site, oppss rambling. See what I mean about productivity
Cheers mate
Anyways an update - Looks like a few buns in the oven.. Might be working remotely for a large travel company (you'd know em) in Sydney. Also some local leads and a rather large web agency in Syd wants a face to face meeting, so all very interesting..
And yes I should really be catching some domains and going hard for myself, who knows perhaps I should pull the finger out sleep v little and do both and a little outscorcing.
Cheers guys!
