#had to search up a new website they dont fucking make it easy to find bcos the old one stopped reporting data

[dullahandyke]

Looks at covid statistics and gets surprised when they are upsetting

[tauforged]

Do you have any tips/tricks on getting into warframe? I want to play bc the designs look cool and I'm sure the story is just as interesting!

(It is completely OK to info-dump!)

OH BOY OH BOY!!!!!!!!

ive probably said it better before, but cant find the posts because this website has the worst search function known to all mankind -_- so i will give you some bullet points that will not be all inclusive and i invite anyone else who wants to chime in to do so!!

while the devs are definitely trying to streamline new player experience, the story is uh. a lot! the game has like, what, 11yrs worth of content behind it by now? there's a lot! depending on your playstyle and how you progress through the game, it might take you a while to really get into the meat of it -- or you might speedrun all the main storylines in like a month. there are lots of side quests and secondary objectives you can dick around with as much as you like, which some people find fun and some people find annoying. i liek it :) but it can definitely be a lot

there have been a lot of time limited events and hidden lore entries that make some things pretty inaccessible to new players. they seem to be trying to get better about this but its still not ideal. the wiki is not always right (afaik, theyre still hung up on whether or not albrecht and loid were ~canonically~ together, which is literally just blatantly textual) but it can be a good place to find summaries of shit you've missed out on. ive never watched a single one of those 'warframe lore explained' videos so i cannot vouch for any of their accuracy. i dont really pay attention to the subreddit or the official forums either, but those might have information too? idk

i personally find that some of the quests are thrown at you wayyyyy earlier than they should -- heart of deimos is one that i strongly believe should be way more lategame than it is, since it builds on a lot of stuff that you probably won't know by the time you get to it unless youve been paying veryvery close attention or have been going wiki spelunking. i wouldnt stress about it too much if something seems to make no fucking sense, though. most quests are replayable if you want to go back to something with fresh eyes or different context

i have probably already spoiled you on a lot of the lategame stuff and for that im sorry! lmao this isnt really a game where spoilers will ruin something per se, but since ive been playing the game since like 2013 i went into everything blind as it was released and i always had a huge blast when the game dropped a bombshell on us, so i try not to rob anyone of that experience if i can help it -- not a huge deal though depending on preference

there's a lot of grinding and farming. i personally dont find it overly tedious as there's a lot to do and it's easy to mix things up and take breaks, but for some people it's a huge turn off, so just a heads up i guess. you can technically bypass a lot of the grind by buying new frames or weapons off the market if you really want to spend your money on that, but there's some things that are locked behind a reputation grind and such. and honestly, you dont Need to spend money on anything but some cosmetics

trying to play through everything solo might be fun if you enjoy a challenge, but i personally find it to be unsustainable. you're going to want to find a decent sized clan and you're going to want to either find friends to play with or hit up the recruiting chat for backup.

you can make platinum pretty easy by farming prime parts or rare mods and other such tradeable things and selling them to other players. i dont bother with this because im bad at keeping up on video game economies and it never interested me. but it makes being a 100% f2p player a lot easier when you need to buy inventory slots and such

there are over 50 warframes and countless ways to mod each one, and an absurd amount of different weapons -- there isnt really any one playstyle thats 'better' than any other. i perosnally pay next to no attention to the meta outside of keeping in mind what damage types are effective against which enemies. some people really enjoy minmaxxing the hell out of their shit. you can kinda just do whatever

don't buy plat without having at least a 50% discount login bonus unless it is an absolute emergency. the discounts are random but ive found they happen often enough that i can just wait around for one to pop up and replenish if i'm low. or dont bother idk i cant tell you how to spend your money im not your dad

mute region chat for the sake of your own sanity. nobody in there is as funny as they think they are. moderation is better in there than it used to be but it's still a wasteland

the most important part of playing warframe is having fun and being yourself :)

[jorrated]

Hiya Jo, sorry to come to you for this, but your post on Maya Knuckles was so cool I had to ask. You seem good at researching stuff, do you have any tips on looking for sources on specific groups of people? I've been struggling on finding good resources on indigenous groups from brasil... (I'm brazilian myself but i dont know where to start)

I wouldn't say I'm good at research, as I think I'm more insanely curious and just lucky LOL. A lot of times when I try to search for specific things I try absolutely everything until I stumble on whatever I was looking for!

But usually I start with a quick basic skim-read on whatever google gives you when you look up whatever your looking for. Most often then not it'll probably give a wikipedia page, some related news articles and some unsourced pages. A lot of times I won't use any of these, but it's a good way to get a feel for what you'll need to keep an eye for.

What I mean is that sometimes just looking for the main subject of the research wont actually give you what you're looking for. For example, when I was looking for Mayan stuff, it kept giving me Inca and Aztec info, which is cool, but wasn't what i was looking for. But since these 3 were usually grouped together, looking for Inca and Aztec books/resources actually helped me a bunch into finding what I was looking for, and more! So keep an eye out on how the subject you're looking for is COMMONLY described, what's usually associated to it, what people talk about the subject etc.

Then you can go actually searching for thing now, I recommend using DuckDuckGo! And always check if they got a source. Plenty of articles will say things that they've seen on other articles, which maybe are true! but then you always run the risk of getting incorrect facts. So always check, if it's not sourced, run another search with the info and see if another article has a source.

When you do find an article/book with a source THEN you can fall down the rabbit hole! No joke one sourced article can lead you to 5 sources, which most probably also have sources. So from there it's pretty easy to search up on references.

If you run into a dead end and still hasn't found what you're looking for I recommend checking what the wikipedia page is citing as sources. You might not be able to access everything there, but some links should be able to redirect you to somethings.

In terms of paywalled scientific articles, disabling javascript usually works (right click on the page -> inspect element -> find the gear on the top right of the window it just showed up -> scroll down until you see a checkbox saying "disable Javascript" -> and refresh page). But if that doesn't work, Sci-Hub is fucking amazing. Just put down your ref or DOI and voilá!

For books I recommend checking the Internet Archive! They usually have what you're looking for, but also half of the time you can just type "Book name PFD" and it'll usually come up after a few search pages. Just make sure you know how to download stuff without getting a virus in you PC.

Reverse image search can also be pretty useful if you find an image related to the subject, since you can link up to other articles/blogs.

If you're STILL running in dead ends, switching up languages can help (probably not your case since your brazilian and most likely already searching in portuguese but yknow). Google translate extensions can really help looking into pages with languages you don't know! It's not perfect but it might help you get a gist of it.

And lastly if you want to know more about Indigenous people from Brazil, I got a couple of reccomendations (most in portuguese btw)!

Centro de Referência Virtual Indígena

Probably the BIGGEST resource on historical and political information on Indigenous groups. It hosts around 2,3 million documents ranging from bills passed, to personal diary entries. (aaaaand can link up to a lot of other cool resources)

Observatórios dos Direitos e Políticas Indigenistas

Translated from their website: OBIND aims to obtain and systematize quantitative and qualitative data on territorialization processes, territorial management, interethnic conflicts, human rights and quality of life of indigenous peoples and populations in reserved areas or in urban contexts, in order to enable visibility, comparability, evaluation and guidance for indigenous policies and promotion of their rights, notably those pertinent to respect for their uses, customs and traditions and the exclusive enjoyment of the lands they traditionally occupy, recognizing for this the sine qua non condition of promoting indigenous autonomy and overcoming guardianship as assimilationist legacy.

Indígenas pela Terra & Vida

Youtube playlist about many different Indigenous people recounting their experiences and narratives.

GENOCÍDIO INDÍGENA E POLÍTICAS INTEGRACIONISTAS: demarcando a escrita no campo da memória

Book titled: INDIGENOUS GENOCIDE AND INTEGRATIONIST POLICIES: demarcating writing in the field of memory

[summonhouse]

im going to ramble abt art websites for a bit and its maybe going to be disjointed and potentially mean bc 1. i speak for myself im not here to convince anyone of anything so i dont care about sounding nice? and 2. im feeling a little offkilter lately BUT

these are no more good art websites and its a pain to see a new art website crop up every week and everyones like, thisll be the one guys! bc i dont think in this day and age its possible.

first; websites should not be profittable. ive been thinking abt this w like, twitter and tumblr and deviantart too where the problem is that people want to make more profit- they dont want to break even, theyre not trying to cover the cost of hosting and paying employees, they need an excess. it shouldnt be like this bc thats how we get the lower in quality, thats how we get this trying to appeal to third party money providers and not users and its always bad and more than that its just unnecessary. every art website that people love are the ones that remain stagnant because its reliable, people do not want continual updates to the ui of something they depend upon for posting and money. new experimental features esp on art websites are just.. useless unless theyre asked for and the garbage fed to us isnt what we asked for.

what makes a good art website? something you can post images, gifs, perhaps low quality videos on, have larger text posts for pinning and smaller text posts for status updates. id say an important feature is a gallery and featured page- profile customization is also important, at the very least have icons, text around a username, descriptions, and headers.

can you tell im thinking of deviantart? i think deviantart is the premium art website and i am so sad everyone left at eclipse- honestly not even that sad at eclipse. it was bad, it was broken, deviantart now has a fuck ton of little holes in it where pages just dont load right, ill get on the fucking new notification page and user profile later, but the way that, in the old days, it had huge spanning galleries, and it had “post type” search too! and it was annoying at the time, we hated this, trying to pick what kind of art your posts were, but it helped make searching for specific posts so much easier (now trying to find gifs on my old accs without it is impossible..). thumbs were good easy ways for ppl to spread content meant to be spread while immediately linking to the actual post- it stopped people from reposting art or using html linking the image itself without a hyperlink to take back to the post and credit, because the thumb was immediately easy to use and way easier than working around it. there was so much... community. like ok from 14-16 i was harassed hard fucking core by adults on deviantart because i was an annoying whiny kid that used dA as my support platform, because from 11-14 it really was! everyone was nice to me- my art was hot dog shit, but i dont think i EVER got a comment calling it bad. i got a LOT of comments telling me that it was good, and i really did believe that! being a preteen drawing dogs online and getting genuine support, often from other artists of my ilk but not uncommonly by artists who were immediately visually BETTER than me really really helped me get to where i am now- i never doubted myself because i was surrounded by people who were so happy to draw just like me, and people loved to see everyone elses work and characters- the joy for characters and stories is really what propelled popularity even when my art wasnt good enough to uphold this. i remember seeing a post a long time ago mentioning that like... sites like dA remained bc they werent just for visual artists which is a great point too- it hosted lurkers really well, artists were really friendly to people who commented on their stuff even if they didnt post anything, im p sure it did fairly well for people who wrote a lot of content, i know some people got popular just because they commissioned people a lot, not bc they drew anything but bc their characters and name got popular.

i miss the old dA notification page, it was SO GOOODDD the folders for where you could store old notifications, the way it was so perfectly set up to maintain a bunch of different notifications all categorized by type, the way that they took note to stop posts that were submitted in multiple groups from appearing again and again in your notifs, the birthday warnings, it was just.. so sweet! page customization too- it was just so fun finding cute little things to put on your page, and so versatile and useful too because you could get like, boundary or commission status or language stamps on there! and like, when i was 14 i had recoded my page a few times over myself, it got me interested in html coding! and now its all gone- for what? because the sleek look is modern, and modern things get more money from investors, and the platforms dont appeal to users anymore, they appeal to investors, because they want more money- they need more money. its a hole they dug for themselves, kind of- i feel like people down the line hosting THEM want more money and so it dominos.

i loved points too, ik people thought they were useless and the worth was hard for ppl to get but $1=100 points was SO GOOD like i know buying points w usd incures a fee and so ur not getting 2000 points if you spend $20 but trading between people for a lesser fee was SO FUN i got banned for doing this a few times LMAO but it really brings a community together. it encourages younger ppl without paypal to try and do commission artwork without breaking the law, and it wasnt as if points were WORTHLESS, because i know i traded usd for them!

and like, everyones like.. twitter is better. twitter is chock full of algorithm nonesense, theres ads between every post, video audio doesnt really work right (if you click on a video on mobile it just decides you will hear every video you pass now. which will be in between every normal post in the form of a fucking ad), images get compressed to hell and ive never heard any information as to how to avoid this, gifs turn into bad videos, you still cant post multiple gifs (i think youre supposed to but well it doesnt fucking work!), just fucking try and host pixel art on here, theres on way to say long form things to people easily- “use threads” real talk, as a user, if i see a thread i do not click it, its too much work if not offered to me. i am 1 person and i represent hundreds who see your tweets. if you scroll down onto any featured popular post you will see nsfw or violent bigotry. i used to report every bit of bigotry i saw and got fast reception, near immediate banning- since owner turn over, a post disparagingly saying faggot has not been responded to in the past 48 hours. the community is fucking insane and i cant blame them, its how twitter is built- there is no separation between official posts and casual posts, like on deviantart wher ethere was differences between journals and statuses- everything youd post as a status that would have gone under the radar is a big proper real post, every comment you make is a big real post as well, it forces a lot of passing commentary to the forefront of peoples attention which of course incurs drama. and ofc its an ALGORITHM BASED PLATFORM which means it REWARDS RECEPTION, inlcuding NEGATIVE- any of your posts that you intended to have as private and only for your 5 followers if it gets enough traction gets blown out of proportion and every single other user will see it only as the post itself, as a big number post which means its open for ridicule. i feel like it was host to more psyops than dA ever was? dA had a bunch of trolls but never any govt psyops like that drug minor one

anyways new art platforms dont work out bc they dont have enough people or draw- if you just are allowing people to post images and text posts, even if you have better page customization id just use twitter because despite its cons it has the major pro of, you know, having people using it- if you make a new art platform every week, theres no real point to pursue any of them, id just wait and see which one flourished- and because i dont participate, they dont get clicks, they dont continue to grow, and they ALL die. anyways moderation is impossible in the way people like- i know everyone wants to believe their niche discourse is clean cut and actually go to show deeper oppression but moderators on websites do not care- discourse is ever evolving and so heated that they cannot afford to throw out a guess and likely no one ever explains themselves, just say This ideology is something or other. and we all want it to be so simple that everyone has the Right opinion on pro/antiship, or fetishes, or terfisms, or mogai, but i promise no matter how easy it seems to you there are thousands who violently refuse and will make up their own buzzwords about how their side is right and the other is something or other. like aside from banning slurs or cruelty they really cannot do much and likely would not ban people who have a special word in their description that you and you alone recognize as a dogwhistle for x ideology. this is the problem i know a few art websites had where they had to say clearly what they would and wouldnt allow and NO ONE was happy. also to revisit that point on hosting a lot of people, an art website that is JUST an art website is like.. its not going to get community or that response i mention from other ppl. if i get on a website just to post art, why would i comment on anyone elses?

and like, dA i know it has like front page or new algorithm which spotlights a LOT of fetish content, but honestly like. you just have to accept that theres going to be fetish content, its an art website, if you want new unseen artists spotlighted you have to acccept that in the fallout of that theres going to be fetish content.

so uhmmm theres nowhere to go and nothing to do. get your asses back on dA eclipse was glitchy and sucked and showed dA didnt respect user opinion but it has not been that bad. its functional at the very least and its only ever dysfunctional because YOU all left. i cant get reception not bc dA is broken but because theres no one left to see it

[valideity]

[the original post that i’m replying to by @colorsinautumn is in the source link but basically it went like this:]

y’all, i feel like i need to remind y’all that there’s a huge difference between ignoring what’s going on, and taking a mental break because you’re exhausted with trying to keep up with the situation in the country right now. this shit is no joke and is weighing incredibly heavy on people such as myself and if you need to take a break from this and just log out, please do. please take care of yourself and don’t feel bad that you’re not keeping up with things at every second of the day.

god i keep reading the notes on this post about being privileged to take a break and i feel the need to explain a few things. one, a black man wrote this post. two, i clearly emphasized the point of ignoring what’s going on. I understand that non black people have the privilege of being able to “log out” and not be effected by this. black people like myself don’t have that privilege of just being able to log out. what i’m trying to say with this post is that you shouldn’t be feeling like shit all day and having anxiety attacks and generally feeling incredibly overwhelmed all the time. taking care of your mental health is not up for fucking debate and I don’t care what the color of your skin is, this applies to everyone. take care of yourself mentally and physically. i can’t believe I have to argue that people have the right to care for themselves amidst all the shit going on in the world today.

i’m a white person and bro, the shit going on in the US earlier in the year was a real catalyst to my first psych ward admission (not like police brutality against Black, Indigenous and people of colour, and other marginalised and multiply marginalised populations is a ‘new’ thing).

i felt completely powerless and like i had to prove my whole entire moral worth as a person via social media and while i learnt that the best thing to do was to amplify Black, Indigenous and people of colours voices AND to spread resources and awareness was the best thing to do in that situation, as well as show up to protests and educate ourselves, i just totally shut down as i couldn’t find the RIGHT posts to share, I didn’t want to spread trauma-porn to my BIPOC followers already suffering, and i couldn’t find something to do that seemed authentic and genuine (seeing as this was NOT a new problem), and in my mostly-white social media circles had barely even been addressed before George Floyd.

at one point, i didn’t even know whether we (whites) were doing this for solidarity or purely for reputation, and THAT thought fucks me up.

and i still dont know if my radio silence due to wanting to seem authentic and genuine during this time was more of a reflection of me and my personal faults and schemas and insecurities rather than a genuine desire to be more consistent and mindful in my awareness-spreading and a preference to have in-depth discussions with the people around me about what was and still, always, is going on in the fucked up world we live in

anyway, i still have a lot of guilt and regret over being so silent in that time and wish i could give out a billion of the sincerest apologies to Black, Indigenous and people of colour (and other marginalised identities), who may have seen my internet presence and thought of me as not an ally or safe presence to them. so, for what it’s worth and for whomever may see this, i’m so, so sorry.

i appreciate @colorsinautumn ‘s sentiment of looking after your mental and physical health despite your skin colour. it resolved me of a lot of the shame i’ve been carrying since that time. but i’m still fucking internally debating the quality of my heart (but that’s my own shit to deal with).

“...I understand that non-black people have the privilege of being able to “log out” and not be effected by this. black people like myself don’t have the privilege of just being able to log out. what i’m trying to say with this post is that you shouldn’t be feeling like shit all day and having anxiety attacks and generally feeling incredibly overwhelmed all the time. taking care of your mental health is not up for fucking debate and I don’t care what the color of your skin is, this applies to everyone. take care of yourself mentally and physically. I can’t believe I have to argue that people have the right to care for themselves amidst all the shit going on in the world today.”

since then, i’ve come across a few resources that i’ve found to be very accessible for people with ADHD and other learning disabilities who may struggle to read:

the first one is a documentary (with subtitles) on the continuation of Australia’s foul and disgusting treatment towards our First Nations peoples. it’s called Utopia, and you can access it for free here:

https://vimeo.com/168410495

the second one is a book called Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. If you have the money, I’d highly recommend purchasing the ebook, to support both the author and the publisher (Arsenal Pulp Press is very good and publishes lots of antiracist and queer content from authors with marginalised identities). If you can’t afford the book, https://gen.lib.rus.ec is a way you can get it for free. It’s about the intersectional Disability Justice movement, mutual aid, ‘care webs’ and life with neurodivergence (they have autism and other NDs) chronic illness and disability as a whole as a person of colour. It is an easy and accessible read, with essays in small chunks of writing, and using text-to-speech on iOS or mac, or, apps like Speechify and fonts like OpenDyslexic make it a lot easier.

the audiobook is available on the app/website Scribd if you’d like to read along with the audiobook.

this video is also an excellent starter for those who are interested in reading the book. it is also officially close-captioned (rather than auto-generated)

‘left-tube’ creators like philosophytube have a lot of content about police brutality, prisons, solitary confinement and racism to check out

if you want to read a book or get an introduction/discussion about it (with subtitles), searching youtube for the book title and author is bound to come up with something. Take Alex Vitale’s The End Of Policing (published by Verso, whom i highly recommend for both books and educational videos) for example:

or, Police: A Field Guide (a book about the history and abolition of the police) by David Correia and Tyler Wal (also published by Verso), brings up an interview with Vitale, Correia, and Wall:

or, this, an interview about the book and discussion:

, and, this youtuber has just started uploading the audiobook to youtube:

as well as The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.

so yes, there are accessible ways to educate yourself about this stuff, whether you have ADHD, dyslexia or another learning disability—it just took me a while to figure it out.

I hope this post was helpful to people like me who struggle to read and/or pay attention but want to educate themselves in the ways that Black people have recommended.

[mithranqueersmusings]

Before This Dance Is Through V

Chapter: 5/16

Rating: M (Smut Warning)

Summary: Ringo's being going through a dry spell for the last year or so and when he regretfully tells his best friend John, he insists on taking them to an all-male strip club for some "fun". Ringo isn't sure whether it's the alcohol, his desperation or a mixture of the two but he thinks he might be falling in love with a stripper.

Tags: AU - Strippers, Modern Setting, Smut, Slow Burn

Pairings: George Harrison/Ringo Starr, John Lennon/Paul McCartney

AO3 link here / Fic masterlist here

Despite what John had suggested, Ringo didn't go back to The Helter Skelter the following week; he'd considered it when John sent him yet another late night text but ultimately decided it wasn't the best idea. Spike had been playing on his mind daily and Ringo wasn't sure he was prepared to face him again. Instead he focused on his drumming and searched for a few more students to teach, which were fairly easy to find. Usually Ringo enjoyed his time off, he understood he was lucky that he didn't have to work a 9-5 job just to get by, but recently he wanted his fill his time up as much as possible, to distract himself.

One of his new students seemed incredibly interested in him, they'd spent an hour just chatting in his living room before they'd even moved over to the drum kit. Ringo wasn't too fussed, he was getting paid by the hour so wasting time was beneficial to him but he didn't want to give the guy the wrong impression. He was a little bit older and attractive enough but Ringo simply wasn't interested.

"Why didn't you just go for it?" John had asked him when they next met up.

"I dunno..." Ringo mumbled, but a part of him knew very well.

He'd given the guy another lesson since then and it became clear that the guy's interest in him wasn't going away any time soon. Ringo felt bad about the whole thing, wasn't he just doing exactly what Spike was doing to him? He tried to act as professional as possible the second time around in attempt to get the guy to back off, considering he hadn't heard from him since he was hoping it had worked. What was wrong with him? Was he really going to make himself suffer like this all because of one guy? And not just any guy, a stripper who had shown absolutely no interest in him at all. It was ridiculous, he kept telling himself, but no matter how much he tried to convince himself that he had to get over Spike, he would still think about him every day without fail. Trying to distract himself with clients had been working somewhat, but it had been difficult, especially when his best friend was John Lennon.

       youre gonna love me

The text came through when Ringo was sat in a café getting some lunch. He'd finished with one of his younger students, a sweet girl who's parents had tried to convince her to try a more 'ladylike' instrument but she had promised only to give up the drums if she was awful; much to her delight, and Ringo's for being able to prove the stereotypical parents wrong, she was pretty good. Seeing her always put Ringo in a good mood, the parents mostly stayed away partly due to the noise but mostly due to disappointment, which meant they could joke around together. Ringo could tell she admired him and he welcomed it gladly, one of the best things about teaching was inspiring others, at least for him it was.

        do i not already?

        well yes         but youre gonna love me EVEN more

        what have you done

        well i happened to stop by the club last night

        oh god what did you do

        wow is that how little you trust me

        can you blame me

        suppose not         ANYWAY i got talking to paulie

        surprise surprise

        do you want the good news or not???

        fine fine sorry

        AS I WAS SAYING i was talking to paulie         and he told me that your special little someone has an onlyfans account

        first of all fuck you for calling him that         second of all wtf is onlyfans

        oh sorry i didnt realise you werent living in the 21st century

        ......         care to grace me with your knowledge?

        basically its a website where you can post exclusive stuff for ONLY FANS to see         its not a porn site or anything but its basically where people sell their nudes         MEANING spike has an account so you can totally see loads of raunchy filthy perverted pics of him

        but i have to pay?

        well weve all gotta make a living

        i can basically see him naked for free

        but this way you wont get all freaked out and embarrassed         well you will but nobody will know at least         so do you want the link or not???

Ringo paused for a few moments, he was gripping his phone tightly in both of his hands as he unblinkingly looked at John's words. If his mind was going to decide to make him suffer by enabling his intense interest in Spike, he may as well get something out of it.

        fine

        where are your manners richard??

        can i please have the link to the strippers nude photos please john please

        alright calm down         let me know if its worth while i might have a look

        idk if im even gonna look at it         paying for porn is a little dated

        treat yourself ringo         id offer to pay but im broke

        if youre broke why were you at the strip club last night?

        well SOMEONE had to go

        they really didnt

        im supporting my local economy

        i dont think thats how that works

        sure it is         anyway here you go

Ringo stared at the link for a while, his eyes even began to blur, he didn't want to risk opening it in public even though he knew there was little chance of anyone seeing. He finished his lunch in a hurry and headed home quickly, only when he was in the privacy of his bedroom did he dare open it. First he had to make an account, when he saw the screen loading up asking for an email address and password he just turned his screen off and put the phone down. This was far too much effort for something he shouldn't really have been doing in the first place. But it only took a few minutes for him to pick the phone back up and begin signing up, he used an old email as it felt less seedy that way and he didn't want to risk his name cropping up anywhere for Spike to see. Now he could load up the link properly and take a proper look at Spike's profile.

Just looking at the small profile picture was enough to startle Ringo a little, the dark eyes looking into the camera with that unreadable glimmer behind them. He was shirtless in the picture, Ringo wondered why that didn't catch his attention first, with the frame cutting off just before it showed anything too explicit. The header was a photo taken from the club, showing him in tight, leather pants and tassels on his nipples which matched the whip he held in his hand. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. He'd spent so much time and effort trying not to think about this man, attempting to keep him out of his mind as much as possible. Ringo knew that if he went through with this all that progress would be lost, he'd be giving in to whatever strange obsession he'd developed for Spike, one that no doubt wasn't going to lead to anything good.

Ringo kept staring at the screen as though it was going to tell him what he should do. Spike's profile had no description, which wasn't very surprising, and it dashed any hope Ringo had of discovering something new about him. Right before he was about to put his phone down again, it vibrated.

        howd the wank go??

        john i dont care how long weve been friends asking how my wank was will always be weird

        youre right sorry         so how did it go???

        if you must know         i havent had a wank         i havent even paid for entry

        now whos the one being inappropriate??

        ha ha

        why havent you???

        feels weird

        oh i see         youll consume a bunch of unethical porn for free but god forbid you actually give sex workers any actual money

        you are the last person who can lecture me about unethical porn

        hey now watch yourself         ringo if you dont get a subscription I WILL

        go ahead

        and ill tell you every day what sexy sexy pictures hes posting         ill tell you EVERY SINGLE TIME i have a wank over them

        every time? i dont think youve got enough data for that

        im not joking

        neither am i         you wank A LOT

        ringooooo just buy it i swear to god         if its not worth it or you regret it or whatever ill give you the money back

        on top of the money you already owe me?

        have you always been such a capitalist

        youre not doing a very good job of convincing me

        fine         spikes cock         now are you convinced???

        maybe

        naked pictures of spike whenever and wherever you want them all for the low low price of 10 quid a month         convinced??

        fine fine         if itll shut you up

        im starting to think thats code for 'i really wanna do this but im too embarrassed to admit it'

        i hate you

        now that DEFINITELY code for 'john youre right'         anyway theres no time to be telling me how right i am all the time youve got dick pics to look at         even i wont stand in the way of a good wank         so dont bother replying to me until youve paid for that subscription young man

        im older than you

        DONT BOTHER REPLYING

Ringo let out a sigh and rested his head against the bedroom wall from where he was laying on the bed. He opened up the link again and his thumb hovered over the subscription button, why couldn't he just do it? The money wasn't an issue, it could've cost half as much or be double the price and he'd still be debating it all the same. Somehow it felt like an invasion of privacy, after all Spike hadn't told Ringo about it himself, but then again that didn't necessarily mean he didn't want Ringo to see it. After all it was like John said: everyone has to make a living somehow. Sometimes Ringo wished he could turn off that part of his brain that was so empathetic, so concerned about how everyone felt and what they were thinking. He knew that he wanted this, so why wasn't he allowing himself to have it? Ringo could see that he was being ridiculous, as he was with almost anything involving Spike, and after lying there for a while pondering and debating he decided to flip a coin. Heads would mean he got the subscription, tails that he didn't. He watched the coin spinning through the air after he flicked it upwards, then snatched it and slammed it down onto his forearm before slowly moving his hand away: it was tails. What a relief. Ringo chuckled to himself for being so foolish, settling down into his bed; it was still only around midday but he didn't have anywhere he needed to be.

So why didn't he feel relieved in the slightest?

This whole thing was getting tiring, the constant debate between what he believed he should do and what he wanted to do, and it seemed like it wasn't going to be ending anytime soon. Apparently he was in this for the long run, whatever that meant, but if he was going to turn down relatively attractive guys practically throwing themselves at him, he may as well go all the way. While he was putting in his credit card information, he stopped to think around three of four times, but once he'd finished and the images became accessible to him, his brain was barely able to conjure up a coherent sentence.

"Jesus..." Ringo breathed out as his eyes flicked across the plethora of pictures loading up on his screen.

There was a lot of them, and a lot of Spike was on display. Most of them were pictures taken at the club, either from a professional photographer in the audience or photos he'd taken himself in the mirrors backstage - Ringo could even see glimpses of Paul in the background of some of them. The ones that caught Ringo's eyes the most were those that seemed to be taken in his house, these also happened to be the ones in which Spike tended to be fully naked. It was very different experience to see him like this: a static image that he'd intentionally taken of himself and posted for so many people to see, an image that couldn't look back at Ringo and make him feel that strange mixture of excitement and shame. He began scrolling down the feed which only revealed more and more enticing photos. Ringo began to feel himself hardening, he suspected it had been happening for a while now but he'd been far too distracted to notice. He felt like a teenager discovering porn for the first time, it was difficult to remind himself that this wasn't anything new. Seeing Spike naked shouldn't have excited him so much, and yet it did.

One picture in particular drew Ringo's attention: Spike was stood in front of a bathroom mirror with a loose black tie lying against his bare chest, one hand was holding a phone and the other gripping his cock. He had dark eye make up on and his hair was messy. Ringo wasn't sure exactly what it was about this photo that was so enticing but he couldn't take his eyes off it. The prominence of his collarbones, the faint curls of his dark hair, how his slim fingers wrapped around himself. Slowly Ringo slid his own hand under the waistband of his boxers as he stared at the picture. At first he hesitated, his fingers stopped right above the base. It's not like this would've been the first time he'd touched himself while thinking about Spike, it would've been far from the last he imagined, but this was different. It was more concrete, more of an admission. Nothing felt quite as real when it's only being imagined, the haziness of lust fuzzing up the mind as it so often did, but now with a very real photo of Spike in front of him - which he'd paid to see - the feeling was far more tangible, far harder to ignore.

He'd come this far, he told himself as his hand sunk lower until his fingers were running along the length of his semi-hard cock, he may as well go all the way. To begin with Ringo stayed looking at this single picture as he slowly pumped himself, but as his lust began to grow he perused through more and more pictures: Spike kneeling naked in front of a mirror with a loose cigarette hanging from his lips, lying in the bath with bubbles only just about covering his nakedness, spread out on the bed with a gag in his mouth, handcuffs forcing his slim arms behind his back with his cock throbbing. None of this was anything Ringo hadn't seen before, like most people in this day and age he'd searched through the darker corners of the internet - sometimes willingly, sometimes John was to blame - but to see Spike in such a way was like an entirely new rush. Each picture drove Ringo further and further on, at times he almost dropped his phone with how sloppy his movements were becoming. Who took these photos? Ringo figured it was best not to think about it, the possibility that Spike had a boyfriend who took all these pictures of him would've been the quickest way to kill his erection.

Ringo began moaning and cursing wantonly as he got closer and closer to his orgasm, he had to stop flicking through the pictures because he could hardly concentrate on what his other hand was doing, so he settled on a final one to help him finish; it wasn't particularly strategic but he was definitely grateful that he selected the one that he did. In it Spike was looking directly into the camera, allowing Ringo to gaze longingly into the rich brown of his eyes and how his dark lashes curled beautifully around them. He was shirtless with nothing but a necklace on, the same necklace that Ringo had seen him wearing in the record store and Ringo couldn't help feeling a sense of satisfaction that he'd seen it with his own eyes, as though it meant something. Deep down he knew that it didn't but his inebriated mind was latching onto it. The nudity in the photo was hardly interesting Ringo by this point, although it would be wrong to say that he completely ignored the flatness of his stomach or the faint shadows of his ribs beneath his pale skin, it was the personal aspect which truly affected him.

This wasn't just lust. Lust Ringo could understand, he could compartmentalise it and give into it without much shame or a second thought. If this was just lust, he would've bought the subscription without a care and touched himself looking at the nakedness of Spike's body as though it meant nothing more than a way to get off. Yet here he was on the brink of orgasm looking into another man's eyes, eyes that felt like they were looking straight back at him as though they were sharing this moment together. It wasn't hard to imagine Spike's hand in place of his own, those deep eyes watching Ringo come undone piece by piece. Ringo's hip began to stutter, his leg twitching a little as he had to drop the phone down onto his lap as his head fell back against his pillow as his orgasm approached. It wasn't the image of Spike's naked body that filled Ringo's mind as he came, it wasn't his arse or his cock or even his chest, it was his face, his voice, it was him.

Ringo lay breathless on his bed for a while, the clarity that arrived as his orgasm subsided wasn't welcome in the slightest and he was reluctant to pick his phone back up to see Spike's eyes looking at him once again. There was no use in feeling ashamed about it, no point in trying to deny it any longer: his feelings for Spike were more than a mere passing fancy, that was clear. Exactly what he was meant to do about these feelings was far from clear but that wasn't something Ringo could figure out right now with cum on his stomach and the daylight seeping through his bedroom curtains.

When he'd picked up his phone he'd closed all the apps immediately, doing his best not to catch a glimpse of what he'd been so eagerly looking at before. Just as he was about to step into the shower to clean himself off, his phone buzzed; he almost couldn't hear it over the music he was blasting out. It alerted him for a moment as though it was going to be a message from Spike stating he knew exactly what Ringo had just done - it wouldn't have really surprised him had that been the case, Spike's face almost always looked like he knew something that nobody else did - but fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, it was John.

        sooo how did the wank go

         who knows          but on a totally unrelated note im about to get into the shower

         well before you do that i have even more good news 

         can it not wait?

         NO because you might cum just at the thought of it and then youd be wasting a good shower

         well arent you considerate          and unnecessarily graphic

         thats me          anyway im taking you to the club next tuesday whether you like it or not

         im still waiting for the good news

         well if youd let me FINISH          next week theyre doing a special event and we just have to go          youll never guess what it is

         what is it?

         guess

         you just said ill never guess

         youre no fun

         WHAT IS IT

         alright alright keep your hair on          its a crossdressing event          high heels make up probably a few wigs all that good stuff

         im still waiting for the good news

         OH COME ON youre telling me you dont want to see spike in heels and fishnets with some lovely lipstick on

Ringo gulped. It wasn't a difficult image to conjure up his mind, considering he'd been staring at photos of Spike for the past twenty minutes and it excited him to say the least. He did want to see that, very much indeed.

[haeroniel-doliet]

gah another 5 am post eh fellas

fuck i really wanna do ballet. i really rarely become obsessed (if ever) with anything, but for once i’m so so so so soso wanting to do ballet. so bad. i know i might hate it bc im fucing not musical at all, so not in shape, so not comfortable or etc. but at least im 18,(wait fuck 19 now)  and not 45 trying to get in it all stiff and stuck and i think based on all the sweet positivity to adult ballet starters beginners and sure i wont perform professionally but fuck man i dont think i need that. i just want that grace and flexibility and elegance and gah itd be fabulous. i mean even now im pretending to look for turn out and walk around the house like they do in point shoes and i try fix my posture tothe advice by a ballet dancer youtuber who ive been watching so much of. i just i really wanna do it. 

saddest fucking thing is guys, that i could’ve had the chance to go to the fucking royal ballets adult absolute beginner classes. in london. i could have. fuck. u wanna know what happened? i found out about it like a month or two ago and was fucking psyched bc its one of those things that just is too good to be true. the best company in uk?? w adult classes? while im in london?? yeah id have to miss a few weeks bc. whoops i gotta go back up to do my exams,but i couldve at least done a few weeks, come back and done a few last so i’d have had the best opportunity to give this a go in the best environment and then have a kindling to go off with to other available ballets. and not start with some barely managing person in a shitty studio thing. idk. sure so i tell my parents so fuckin excited bc look! its possible! but yeah its expensive, wouldve been abt 90 pound w me being a student and id have to miss 3/10 classes. but still! thin of it gah its making me so sad happy. sad bc guess its now sold out. of fuckin course it is. i told my mom and she just was uhmm ohh i dunno i dunno, oh its adults i could do it, and thinking that maybe getting her involved would mean i have a better chance of going, dont care much for her company but if shed take it as a bonding thing hell, i’ll probably do better than her in class and minor confidence boost as well as if they all others are old old i wont be alone. and she could pass over what they learned when im up in scotland. Guess that was a fuckin mistake. she got all nervous and self concious and put it off with a we’ll see we’ll see about it im thinking. and making it a whole thing like instead of me wanting to go so bad and offering for fun that shed join me, as if im trying to pressure her into doing it and would only go along to make her feel better. uh.... fucking wrong! im so mad actually. bc of course, no matter how often i mentioned it she wouldnt take it seriously to even consider booking me in! no no of course not we’ll see. and then i check before im coming back, dreading and being right that yep. theyre fucing sold out. of course they are its such a fanstastic opportunity! my only fucking opportunity! when ever again am i going to live in london with weeks free to go participate in that? when ever again? never. theyre moving out of london this summer and fuck. just doing some research and the scottish ballet is in fucking glasgow. yes i was supposed to get there if i hadnt been so shit with studying for my exams. (sure i wouldnt be doing archery and wouldnt have all the other wonderful things i now enjoy in aberdeen but fuck its frustrating) and ofc. aberdeen seems to have: one shady dance company that offers ballet fusion. not adult ballet classes. another shady school that practices at robert gordons that have no website nothing. no info how to sign up or if they have adult classes or when its so stupid and weird. maybe ill have to contact them directly idk. sure my uni has a what seems to be a thriving dance society that i have a glitched out membership for. (its 50 pound a year and i have cerrainly not paid that) and i guess they do ballet on the side. but again from a glance around, looks its only intermediate. not beginners. dont think theres that many uni age girls who just wanna start ballet now. 

so it looks bleary. even in finland, i cant understand body parts in finnish so that might just be frustrating if i could even find a place that offers it. not that i’ll have long at all in finland. ill be there barely a month before heading back to uni and i come back holidays. if i wanted to take one of these eleven week courses, i think id have to geta fuckin liscence and a car and drive to glasgow 3 hrs both ways for a class once a week and that sjust stupid. im so fucking mad about this missed opportunity. like my muscles are itching and aching to do it. my legs want to work out in ballet positions. they just rly do. yeah maybe ill have to start doing barre at home from videos to try ease that, but its not gonna be the same and ill do it all wrong bc i have no teacher to direct me or anything. correct either. sure if i had done it and loved it i might still be mad that i have no opportunities to continue like i want to, but at least id have that expereince and could keep practicing at home based off of it.  i am genuinely upset okay. upset betrayed disappointed sad twitchy and ugh. sure tickets go on sale today to swan lake after exams. and by fuck will i go see it. and ill get all the background before it and know it inside and out before i see it (already kinda do) and i will love it. ill bemaybe more upset and more twitchy that i cant do it, that i cant be lie them and that rly sucks. i really really wish by some miracle the school would offer summer courses so that i could just, get myself after exams into one. also another frustrating thing not quite so pressing on my mind is how my dad wants me to get summer jobs, maybe even two. one here and one in finland. sure it should theoretically be easier getting it here, esp. since im 19 now and yeah. i could work in a cafe or store just to get money and have smth to put on a cv thats not 2 weeks. but i dunno i dont particularly want to, i was hoping in london i could get the most of it culturaly (considering ive been a pouting and sad whailer whos not done anything for the last two years) then again i have p much no friends here so if i did go work somewhere theres a slight chance thered be someone i get along with and could hang out w. or visit if i needa back in london. i dunno. things are weird. sure i could try get an admin job w nhs like some lady suggested but its one of those too much responsibilty things, consdiering im shit with work i kinda would prefer to do some physical job like stacking shelves in a shop bc im good at that. but thats not gonna help me in the future. money yes, but cv building or careers wise? nah. i should owrk in hospitality or smth i dunno even i can barely get thru my work to pass rn so  i dunno about job searching. im jsut a mess am i not. regardless maybe i should look if theres other ballet schoolsin london. be desperate, get a job and a ballet class going over summer and do art on the free time i guess. 

okay so fer now ive found a course for like fucking 156 pound thats a 2 day full days course that looks mad cool for having different classes to learn vocab and etc and then a bit of fucking swanlake like yooo.. best thing its in like july but thats also possibly bad bc its july 28-29 and july 30 we move out. man it could be cool tho. then they offer there as well a taster session p much every other week and then a full 8 weeks of class p near by to me. sure this is specifically taught by a man and id prefer a woman but, i guess. since its ideal timing and place. and i got wondering why thats 150 and the national ballet wouldve been abt 90 and i guess there i get concession and it wouldve been only 6 classes considering the dates they had off. i should rly ask if they do do concession bc 150 is a bit steep still. for 8 classes thats almost 20 pound for 75 mins. its kinda insane. theres probably more companies i havent looked at but there is one other thats like a drop in thing 10 pound cash each class and thats a 90 mins so it might be better. ofc. obv. fault being that its drop in so being an absolute beginner w likely a lot older adults idk how id fit in or keep up or get hte most of it. i think ill go try it once regardless. then when back in abdn ask around for taster sessions and beginner ballet. worst comes to worst i wait another 4 years till i get to a big enough city that they have a nice ballet company and somewhere i can live like an adult but also get in on adult ballet and enjoy myself. maybe my industrial placement city will have  a ballet company idk. 

all i know is that im a bit obsessed and everyone says to go for your dreams etc. and as much as i enjoy archery (slowly gonna dedicate to it) and aikido (though training can be frustrating and training with old men isnt that fun) and ice skating is another less of a dream but in the same realm as ballet. that im gonan get new skates for and give it a better try. i just think ballet could  be so fucking rad and im sad that its not so easy rn. and that my mom fucked me over. for that one course that couldve been cheap and amazing and mindchanging. to go to the ballet knowing what some of it feels like would be great. sure id love  a chance to do some after as well u know. ofc it sucks it might cost a couple hundred over summer to these hobbies and i feel iffy spending 180 on a quality waterproof jacket. sure. they spend it but, im v concientious and dont wanna spend much of their money esp cus im not making my own. i guess logically, i should put a bunch of effort to getting thru this term rly well without lies and get a sumemr job. that way, i could theoretically take loan from my parents  and pay back with summer job money w some left over to do as i like with (yeah i should save it for sensible shit but idk) also considering how nice i am my dad might not even want me to pay back. look i dunno. thats an idea. be good, be rewarded w ballet classes and an unstrained relationship w my parents, joyously move back to finland and start next term w a clean slate, hopefully more help and new determination into hobbies. maybe i wanna do 4 sports since i never did much as i was younger. tho sure, i did aikidos cousin taekwondo. ive shot a bow and arrow whenever i had a chance. ive skated since literally like 3 yrs old. and i used to take a form of dance a alot younger. sure no musicality but i think the exercises would be great for my knees and legs and butt and torso and posture. htese are fun sports since i dont like to work out. and since im not comfortable enough in myself to go swim. 

[kyloknightofren]

You’re Sure It’s Not Spelt Hucks?

So for the @verymerrykylux shindig that I’m totally late for, I got to write for @gingerbitch-hux. I’m so sorry it’s late. I have no excuses. I’m a lame dude. Anyways! I hope you like it. Thanks to @sithofren and @kyloren-sithlord for reading through this and giving it the polishing it needed!

There is something to this newfangled Facebook thing that Han is simply unable to wrap his mind around. Leia insists -- in that endlessly annoying Leia way of hers -- that he needs to get it in order to stay current with ‘this generation.’ Whatever that's supposed to mean. Han’s never met a computer he couldn't work his way around, but this god damned, imbecilic blue-and-white website of death is testing him in new and inspired ways.

He hates it.

His first friend, surprisingly, is Luke. He didn't even realize Tibetan monasteries had wifi, but proof to the contrary is staring him right in the face. Lando and Leia tie for second, because he can't find the little button that looks like a horribly mutilated and bleached upper body for a solid ten minutes while Leia sends him a series of increasingly concerned and illegible texts, using literally anything on the keyboard save actual letters, until he finally cedes defeat and calls her to ask for help.

She rolls her eyes at him but helps all the same. She's sweet like that -- burn and salve all in one.

It takes him a month to realize that he's missing something, or perhaps more accurately, someone. Han had simply assumed -- evidently wrongly -- that Ben would search up his name, click the little white face and their relationship would repair itself. The accident smoothed over, or perhaps even ignored; Ben’s attempts at running from the guilt that Han had no small part in exacerbating, resolved.

Searching ‘Ben Solo’ comes up with frustratingly little -- ‘Ben Organa’ produces even less. The internet is supposed to connect people, and all it’s left him with is the taste of palpable bitterness.

Leia gives him a knowing look over what could generously be considered spaghetti and spinach salad that night. She’s never been much of a cook, and Han himself can’t do much in the kitchen beyond opening the wrapper of a granola bar. The house feels empty with just the two of them, and Han can’t even fathom how much emptier it must feel when he can’t take anymore of acting domestic, when it’s just Leia.

“He’s not on there, you know,” she starts, apropos of nothing after too many minutes of uncomfortable silence.

Han grunts in response, digging into his pasta with renewed vigour. Perhaps if he just doesn’t respond, this conversation can simply stop. Of course, Han knows that’s a losing battle.

“I try looking, every few months. Perhaps I’m just not cut out for this internet crap. But -- I happen to know someone. He’s rather good with technology, always getting me out of a bind when I need it.” She smiles at him -- it’s small, but significant. Like everything about her. Han can’t remember the last time he saw her smile like that.

“Is that so?” he asks, the beginnings of a smirk playing about his mouth. “I suppose I could take another look for you, princess.”

“My hero,” she says, rolling her eyes with something he hopes is fondness.

The next days are spent in a fevered state, scrolling through the blue-and-white screen of death. He’s always worked best when he has some sort of task to complete, some goal to reach for.

It seems unlikely that Ben simply isn’t on the internet — he’s a young man, after all. Or at least, that’s how Han remembers him. It’s been close to ten years. Things can change.

Still, no matter how hard he works, there’s no tangible results to give to Leia. no gold medal to award for a job well done. Google refuses to cooperate with him — all of the results pulled up relate back to the accident. One particular news site has the gall to refer to it as a tragedy, which is frankly absurd.

Han resorts to means he never thought he’d use — calling Luke’s daughter and praying that she doesn’t tell Leia. Rey insists that she hasn’t heard from her cousin in at least five years, which is still somehow better than Han himself.

But, she does give him a name, someone he was apparently seeing when they last ran into each other (in a coffee shop of all confounded places). Hucks. Which can hardly be the real name of a human being, but Han supposes that if Rey can be married to someone named Finn, then who is he to judge?

Hucks turns up...nothing. Well, not nothing exactly, but unless Hucks lives in the Bahamas and is a very busty sixty year old retiree whose given name is Pamela, Han probably has the wrong person. Still, he’s not here to judge Ben or his life choices (much), so he sends a link to Rey via email and waits for confirmation.

What he gets in response is a series of -- what are they? Emogicons? -- that indicate someone crying from laughter. Or at least, Han thinks that’s what it is. Rey sends another email to follow up, informing him that he’s spelt Hucks wrong, which is hardly his fault. Who the hell assumes it’s spelt ‘Hux’?

Idiots, that’s who.

Hux is apparently a very well-off lawyer with a strange fixation with ginger cats and a child that Han assumes is his own, given the bright shock of red hair and what Han can only consider to be most morose pout he’s ever seen on a toddler. He apparently doesn’t have a first name, and might be the most boring person Han could have ever conceived of.

His relationship status isn’t publically listed, and as he scrolls through pages and pages of Hux’s very tame Facebook history, he can’t help but be disappointed that there’s nothing on his wall from Ben Solo-Organa-whatever.

There is, however, a lot from a person named Kylo Ren, whose profile picture looks like a hunk of metal garbage in a white room. Leave it to uppity rich folks like Hux to be friends with modern artists. At the very least, this Kylo Ren character has good taste in animal pictures -- Han is a particular fan of the one with the cat holding onto a railing with the caption ‘Hang In There!’.

Han debates, for the better part of fifteen minutes, when is the appropriate time to send a friend request to someone you’ve never met before. He texts Leia for a second opinion and she replies with a series of thumbs up and the weird hands that look like they’re straight out of a televangelist gathering. Which probably means something like ‘go for it’, but Han has never been very good at figuring out what Leia’s trying to say without making a giant mess of everything.

At 3:02, which is probably a very respectable time for lawyers to get tired of working and go on their phones, Han sends his request.

It takes a week and three days for him to get a response from Hux, during which time Han alternately frets that this entire thing is a waste of time and curses Hux’s name for making him wait for so long.

<< Who the hell is this?

There’s a moment of clarity when Han realizes that yes, of course Facebook has a private messaging system. No wonder Leia kept teasing him about posting things onto Luke’s wall. Damn stupid website.

<< Hello? I’m very busy and I don’t have all day to sit here and wait for decrepit old men to figure out how to use the internet. I don’t want whatever it is you’re selling.

>> hi no dont go my name is han

>> i think u knew my son

>> ben

<< Jesus fucking Christ.

>> thats not my name but ill take the compliment

>> i just want to talk to ben

<< We’re all very happy without you and your miscreant ways, thank you very much.

>> wat does that even mean

<< “Ben” has told me all about you. We aren’t interested.

Han is...puzzled, to say the least. He knows he wasn’t the ideal father, knows the accident was his fault, but he doesn’t think that that qualifies him to be treated like the literal scum of the earth. But still. Ben knows this man.

>> wat do you mean “ben”

>> his name is ben

<< Perhaps it used to be, yes. That’s no longer what he goes by.

>> y not?

>> ben is a perfectly good name

>> its a family name

<< Yippee for that. It’s still not his name.

<< Look, I could spend all day arguing about what name my incredibly asinine husband prefers to go by, but that would be a) pointless, and b) a waste of everyone’s time, but most importantly mine.

>> i just want to make sure hes ok

>> wait

>> husband???!?!?!?!??!?!

<< Fuck.

<< Fine.

<< If I answer all your questions, will you promise not to try to contact “Ben”? He’s very . . . delicate, about things like this.

>> but i want to see him

<< Good for you. Those are my terms. Take them or leave them.

>> ok

There’s a brief negotiation, mostly steamrolled by Hux, where they discuss where to meet. They settle on a coffee shop in downtown which Han assumes must be close to Hux’s office. He’s never heard of it before, but -- it’s something.

Han hates the downtown core with all of his being. Where the hell is everyone supposed to park? It’s damn ridiculous. He circles around the block where Hux’s chosen coffee shop is for the better part of twenty minutes before finally finding a spot, squeezed in between two cars that independently are probably worth at least five times what the Falcon is.

He’s wearing his finest jacket — the one with only one grease stain — and a pair of probably clean brown corduroys. Definitely not because he wants to impress his...son-in-law? He’s still not fully able to wrap his head around the concept, no matter how hard he tries. He has a son-in-law, and that son-in-law has a child. Does that make him a grandfather? Does he even want to be a grandfather?

He hasn’t told Leia about this meeting, mostly because he doesn’t want to get her hopes up. Han has spent the better part of twenty years disappointing her, and there’s something about how tenuous their relationship is at the moment that tells him that if he well and truly fucks this up, there might not be any going back.

Hux is easy to spot — he’s the only one with ginger hair and a frown in the whole damn place. He’s sipping fancy coffee, which is to say, coffee that didn’t come from the McDonald's drive through around the corner from his garage.

He claps Hux on the back as he comes around, sliding into the seat opposite with a gruff “Hello.” Hux gives the watch on his hand a cursory glance before glaring up at Han.

“You’re seven minutes late.” His voice is clipped, accented in a way Han wasn’t expecting. It reminds him of Luke’s Uncle Ben, of the Arizona desert and his old smuggling routes.

“Yeah, well, you try parking around here and see if you can get anywhere on time, son.” Hux rolls his eyes, seemingly unimpressed.

From what Han can gleam, Hux is always seemingly unimpressed.

“Yes, well, that’s all well and good but I have a meeting I need to be at in thirty-three minutes, so if we could simply cut to the proverbial chase, I would be most appreciative.” Hux taps a finger on the cup of his fancy coffee, which seems to be more white fluff than actual coffee. The motion draws Han’s attention down, towards the ring gleaming on his hand.

“So — you really — you and Ben?”

“Me and Kylo, yes. If you want to have this conversation, the least you could do is make an attempt to call him by his preferred name.”

“Wait — you mean the Kylo Ren who posts all the cat pictures on your Facebook?”

“Oh my fucking — yes. Of course. Obviously. That Kylo. Your spawn, Kylo.”

“Oh.” Han stares down at the table, at Hux’s hand again. The ring is gold, plain and unadorned but clearly polished regularly and meticulously. There’s something about it that makes Han wish he’d worn his own wedding ring, if only to prove that he’s not a bad husband as well as a bad father. “Are you — happy?”

The question contorts Hux’s face into something more closely resembling a sneer -- it’s clearly not often that he considers happiness as something important, a metric to be closely observed. “I — yes. I suppose we are.”

“That’s good.”

“Indeed.”

They sit in silence — awkward, uncomfortable silence — for what feels like an eternity but is more likely only a minute or two. “He’s an artist, you know,” Hux starts, clearly trying to reach for any topic of conversation that the two of them might have in common. “He has his own studio, and — well, I suppose he doesn’t do as much now because of Cillian, but still. He’s very well known within art circles, if you go in for that sort of thing.”

“Cillian?” Han asks, desperate for anything to cling to in the hopes of continuing the conversation.

“Yes, Cillian. He’s rather brilliant, for a four year old. Kylo is — well, he’s much better with him than I am, but that’s perhaps because Kylo still has the mind of a child locked inside the body of a giant.” The words are harsh, but they’re said with the barest hint of affection — the first actual sign of emotion Hux has displayed throughout the entire conversation.

“And he’s — yours?”

“Ours,” Hux corrects quickly. It’s evidently a conversation he’s had before, if the rapid way he replies is any indication. “He’s ours, no matter who’s biology he’s got in him.”

“Right, yeah.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance of Leia or me getting to spend some time with Be-Kylo?” Han knows what the answer is most likely going to be, but he can’t help but ask anyways. For Leia’s sake, if not his own.

“I -— look. You seem like a nice guy, sort of. Kylo’s told me all sorts of absurd things about you that might be true, but given his proclivity towards grandiose exaggeration, probably aren’t.” Han nods along, waiting for the definitive ‘no’ that he’s expecting. “But I can’t speak for Kylo personally. It’s not my place.”

Hux reaches into his breast pocket, pulls out a business card in matte black with the name ‘Kylo Ren’ emblazoned in plain white font. “Send him an email. Don’t bother calling because he doesn’t answer his work phone and he has no idea how to check voicemail, no matter what he says to the contrary.”

“Thanks, kid,” Han says, taking the card and putting it in his pocket like it’s a winning lotto ticket. In some ways, it is.

“Don’t mention it,” Hux says, standing up and straightening his suit. “Really, don’t. I sleep on the couch enough as it is.”

Han chuckles, sliding out of his chair. “Yeah, his mom’s the same way. They’re always making you think they hate you when it’s the damn opposite.”

Hux makes a face, something between pained and affectionate, before looking down at his watch. “Well, this has been — something. I ought to —”

“Yeah, yeah. Go on, kid.” Hux glares, but offers his hand to Han anyways. The shake is firm — surprising, given Hux’s relatively willowy figure.

“Have a good day,” Hux says, by way of closing remarks. Han smiles and thinks that, for the first time in the better part of a decade, he actually might.

[makironata-blog]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 219

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Click on the video above to watch Episode 219 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Adam: Welcome everybody to Hump Day Hangouts, the Semantic Mastery public Q&A. This is episode 219. 219 episodes. Today is the 16th of January, 2019. I am gong to go down really quick say hi to everybody before we get started with all of the good stuff. On my left hand side I’ve got Chris. Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Been good. Happy to be here. Exciting times as always good to be on a Wednesday. How are you doing?

Adam: Not bad. You know, something you talked about at POFU Live, and something I just scheduled had to do with planning. I’m going to ask you a little honest spot question, but do you do yearly planning, number one and number two, when do you do the yearly planning?

Chris: Well, I rarely do yearly planning. Pretty much as we all do in a [inaudible 00:00:56] day plans. So I pretty much do those things when the [inaudible 00:01:02] iteration or if you want to call it that way that might not be on the first January. It is whenever it is for me.

Adam: Sounds good. Alright.

Chris: I have yearly plan still, and five year plans as well. It’s just like a break down to pretty much what’s important in the moment, what needs to be down right now and course correcting on a weekly basis.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. Alright. I was curious and I figured other people might want to know how it’s done on the inside. Just figuring that. Hernan, how are you doing, man?

Hernan: I’m doing good, actually. I don’t plan shit. I’m just kidding. We do. Yeah, we do a lot of planing, actually. I do the same with Chris. I do three months sprints, and a yearly plan a yearly idea of rough objectives and then three months. Nobody asked me, but I’m telling you guys three months.

Adam: We’re going to edit this out.

Bradley: We all have to acknowledge his hair cut.

Adam: Yeah. Look at that. He’s looking … You’re looking pretty smooth.

Hernan: Yeah, I look like a person now, like a business …

Bradley: Believe it or not that you look younger, man.

Chris: You’ve got a second one, respect.

Bradley: Hernan is the youngest of us, and he looks even younger now so he’s making me feel old.

Hernan: Sorry man, let me click …

Adam: That’s alright Bradley, we’re showing white in our beards so I think [crosstalk 00:02:26]. Marco, how are you doing man?

Marco: Man, what’s up. A warm hello from 82 degree and sunny Costa Rica. Fuck all of you.

Bradley: Yeah, this is what I got for you buddy. That’s for you.

Marco: It’s so beautiful, come join me. It’s so good.

Adam: Man, Bradly. Last but not least, are you guys getting slammed? I thought I heard something about the north east getting pummeled.

Bradley: We got hammered a few days ago, we still got snow on the ground. We got, here in Culpepper, probably about six inches maybe. Which was pretty good. Believe it or not my daughter’s 13 and I have never had a chance to play in the snow with her. This was the first time, I had her this past weekend, and we got the snow on Saturday so Sunday it was great because it was the first time in 13 years, or ever, that I’ve been able to play in the snow with my daughter.

It just so happened that every time we had ever had snow before wasn’t a weekend that I had her so this was, it was a lot of fun. We got to run around and do snowball fights and make snow angels and sledding and all that stuff. It was a lot of fun.

Hernan: That’s awesome.

Adam: That’s really cool, man. Well, before we get into it. We’ve got a few things we want to share with everybody. First of all if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, thanks again for watching. Whether you’re watching us live, whether you’re checking it out on YouTube and watching the replay. In case you don’t know you can always go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask ahead of time and watch the replay.

We know whether it’s time zones or you’ve got client meetings or you’re working, whatever it is, you might not be able to be here live but that shouldn’t stop you from asking questions and getting answers. A follow on to that, a lot of people ask, “Well, okay, I’ve been watching your videos. Where should I start with Semantic Mastery, what should I do?” The place to always start is the battle plan.

Okay, just go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com, repeatable processes. It’s SEO, it’s digital marketing and it’s the way to get started and have that firm foundation so that everything you build up is on that solid foundation. If you’re already passed that point and you’re looking for the peer community, you’re looking for advanced strategies, you’re looking for networking then that’s why you would come join the Mastermind.

That you can find at mastermind.semanticmastery.com. Also, again if you’re watching on YouTube, hit the subscribe button. Obviously, you’ll see these videos and stay up to date with anything else new we put out there. Real quick, speaking of the Mastermind I believe we had some training coming up, right Bradley? I forget what it was exactly you’re going to be covering coming up in the next week or two.

Bradley: Yeah, next week on Thursday for our Mastermind webinar I’m going to be doing some training on using Google Ads. Specifically, or primarily, we’re going to be … I’m going to be walking through a set up of how, I’ve been talking about this on Hump Day Hangouts for a year and a half now at least. But how I use Google Ads for YouTube to rank videos, local videos in search, in Google search.

But it’s more than just that. Recently, I mean I still do that all the time anyways for helping videos to rank, but I’ve also found that Google Ads platform, including the display network and YouTube ads have gotten a lot better. They’re targeting options have gotten so much better in the last year, it’s incredible and because of that I found that when I was … Before what I was just doing was setting up ad campaigns specifically to generate local IP, or local views to a video within a specific geographic targeting area as well as, if possible, finding a good, what’s called an in market audience or life event audience.

Which are audiences that Google has determined that the users within those audiences are in the market for a particular product or service. If you can find a category that would fit then that traffic ends up not being just good for helping the video to rank, but it ends up being like relevant traffic that ends up at, sometimes it’s not a lot, but at least with the campaigns I set up. But some of those end up … Forgive me for a minute, I’ve got a call coming in. Stand by guys.

That traffic ends up coming in … Ends up being possibly good traffic for leads. In other words, you can use these campaigns for lead generation. You can also use these campaigns for branding. If you’re doing any remarketing, which is really powerful and I’m going to touch on that as well next week. Then you can build a remarketing list that way and also remarket to people that have interacted with either your video or if they click through to your website or a landing page, or whatever. You could remarket to those people, so those are people that took action and actually clicked through.

I’m going to be walking through all that and then I’m also going to be talking about how to set up remarketing campaigns in the Google display network because I’ve been doing a lot of remarketing stuff and display ads recently for a client of mine that does a lot of ad spend in Google and I found that just recently the Google display network is so much better than it used to be. It used to be a real pain in the ass to set up display ads because you had to get a graphic designer to design the banner, whatever banner it was, and then have that banner created in multiple sizes.

Leaderboard and 350 by 250 rectangle. All those, the standard sizes and if you wanted to split test ads you had to get the graphic designer to create different ad sets for you. It was a real pain in the ass and that’s why I stopped doing display network ads for a long time. But within the last year or so, and I don’t know when exactly, but Google has changed to where now you create what’s called responsive display ads and all you do is upload images, there’s a square version and a rectangular version and specific dimensions that you need to upload or within a range of specific dimensions.

Anyways, you just upload a square image and a rectangular image, it’s pretty much the same image, and then logos. Rectangular and square versions of logos and then you add up to five headlines, a long headline, one long headlines, and then up to five descriptions. What Google does is it will just grab one of the images, a version of the logo, and one of the headlines and descriptions and create an ad out of that. What it does, is overtime, it will automatically optimize the ads based upon the images, the headlines, and the descriptions and which combination produces the most click-throughs and that’s what it will start to show more.

Again, it just became super easy to set up ads in the display network. What used to be a pain in the ass and because of that I want to do some specific training on that for remarketing as well as for cold traffic. Basically in two weeks from tomorrow, or excuse me a week from tomorrow, I’m going to be doing a full two … We usually go two and a half or three hours on Mastermind, training on specifically how to use Google Ads. Just YouTube ads and the display network ads.

Adam: Nice. Nice, and speaking of webinars, Marco you just had a webinar didn’t you?

Marco: Yeah, I’m glad that Bradley’s doing this training because we talked about entities on Monday, right? I mean, almost everyone stayed until the end but we talked about how you create them, how to verify them, validate, solidify and then we talked about the art of ART. Which I’m always talking about. Activity, Relevance, Trust and authority. Relevance is just you make sure that your content stays relevant and that you do, you write your silos.

They have to be Semantically related. The Semantic relevance has to be kept within the silo, you don’t want to break that and so we talked. I’m glad that Bradley’s doing this training because what better way is there to validate your entity then to go and pay Google for some ads and run them to your stuff because it’s traffic and what’s the first part of ART, Activity. Without activity you’re ship is dead in the water no matter what you do.

I mean, you have to do so much work in order to get it to start getting traffic and what Bradley does, what Bradley’s going to show is how to kick start that traffic, how do get that traffic flowing anywhere you want, basically, so that you can validate. You can get all of the … If you have all of these things in place prior, right? The creation, verification, and then you’re ready to validate and solidify and work into the endgame which is ART. The art of ART, then there’s absolutely no better way because you’re paying the great validator, the great solidifier which is Google.

Fuck Google, by the way, but that’s what you’re doing and there’s nothing better. For anyone who wants to watch those, guys I have the rotary club the [inaudible 00:11:18] valley, it’s in Washington state right? The rotary club of [inaudible 00:11:29] valley is matching any donation, 50 dollars or more, which is incredible. They’re willing to match anyone donating 50 or more will get a match, and then anyone donating 500 now because it used to be 1,000, but 500 gets two hours of my time.

Of course, anyone who’s willing to donate that 5K you get business in the box from me. What I talked about on Monday, we will do all of that so you can just pop that right in, in whatever niche you want. Now, local niche or whatever, affiliate, whatever it is that you want to do and we’ll get that puppy going and it’s … I think you can’t get a better offer than that, so there you go. Thanks everyone who donated. Guys we’re killing it. We have enough to send about 40 kids, well 50 now. 50 kids to school this year, which is fantastic.

Adam: Awesome, awesome. Yeah, thanks to everybody who donated throughout the webinars and then this is a pretty awesome offer so thank you Marco. Alright, I think that’s going to do it as far as what we’ve got to cover. Real quick just want to remind people we do have, ooh, no it is going. I just about stuck my foot in my mouth, but the flash sale I believe is still going on at MGYB.CO for [dunfee 00:12:51] services, we’ve got a deal on press releases as well as syndication networks. I’ll put that on the page. If you’re watching the replay, I’m sorry, but you’re probably not going to get it unless you get to it real quick after Hump Day Hangouts. But with that said, let’s get into it.

Do You Use Vumber Or CallFire And Reroute Those Calls To AnswerConnect Service For Your Lead Gen Properties?

Bradley: Okay, I guess I’ll have to stop looking at other stuff [inaudible 00:13:11] screen. Alright, here we go. Not a whole lot yet. Guys, I hope you start engaging here soon or we could just long wind all these answers. Will’s up first, he says, “Bradley do you use Vumber or Call Fires virtual numbers and then reroute those calls to your answer connect service to provide support to your lead gen properties?”

Yes, Will, that’s what I do and just to be clear I’m using Call Rail right now. I mean, I’ve got dozens and dozens of phone numbers with Call Fire but call rail is a much, much better platform guys. I talked about Vumber too, if you were just doing a handful of numbers or a couple of assets or something like that then Vumber is a pretty cool, it’s a great service actually. But if you’re going to be doing at scale, which is what we’ve been preaching for the last few months ala the local lease pro method, then I would highly recommend that you go with Call Rail as your virtual phone number provider.

There’s a ton of really, really good features in there. Not that you need them all, but I’m just saying there’s a lot of really cool stuff that you can do. They call, call workflows or something like that, is what they’re called where you can set up automations and all kinds of really cool stuff. It’s just like a drag and drop workflow or automation builder. There’s just a ton of really cool things that you can do there. It’s inexpensive. I just really, really like the platform.

But, yes, I’m rerouting, and by the way, I know I mentioned this at some point. But I thought Call Rail had a live answering service too, like AnswerConnect, but they don’t. I researched that because just last week, or it might’ve been two weeks ago now, I had to set up a new account because one of my location clusters has started to generate calls consistently and I had the phone, the virtual phone numbers just forwarded to the contractor directly.

He contacted me, he’s like, “I’m getting hammered with spam calls.” He was getting some valid leads too, but he was also getting hammered by Home Advisor, a ton of marketing companies and all that shit because there was a whole bunch of new GMB assets. They were all funneling, were all redirecting the phone to him. Guys I’ve talked about this many times on Hump Day Hangouts, but I’m telling you if you’re doing lead generation guys, one of the things that’s going to separate you from potential competitors is if you set up … Well, it depends on the industries you’re dealing with.

But I’m talking about for contractors, or really for any industry for that matter, unless if you’re redirecting the phone calls directly to your client or your service provider. Unless they have a receptionist, somebody that’s going to answer the phone, like that’s their job to answer the phone, then I would recommend you don’t send calls directly to them and instead set up a call service, a call center, an answering service. Does that make sense?

The reason why I’m saying that is because, guys, over the years every time I’ve created lead gen assets and then forwarded the calls directly to the provider, in my case contractors, I ended up losing … Well, first it would piss the contractor off because they would have to field all those spam calls which were solicitations from marketing services mainly. That would piss them off, number one, because it would be a shit ton of wasted effort on answering calls.

Number two, a lot of those contractors will, you know my service providers which are contractors, are working contractors. In other words, they may be the business owners but they also work out in the field with their tools where they manage projects or whatever, and so a lot of the times they wouldn’t be available to answer the phone. If they wouldn’t answer the phone, that’s a lots lead, especially if I was charging on a pay per lead basis, or on a revenue share model because calls that don’t get answered are leads that are wasted.

They go out into oblivion and that’s money that I lost. Then, lastly, even if they did answer the phone, like even the contractor answered the phone most of the time, what happens is because of the solicitation calls and the barrage of calls that come in, they would eventually stop answering the call and screen them because of that. What I ended up doing with tree service companies way back in 2012 was I got hooked up with Answer Connect. Answerconnect.com, I get no credit for that guys, it’s just a really good service for me to mention it.

I got hooked up with them and set up a call center and the call center answers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. It’s always available, so every time somebody calls one of my lead gen sites for tree services, it gets answered no matter what time of day or night it is. It’s a live person answering the phone that asks a very shot call script asking what the callers calling about and then some basic contact information, the property address, that kind of stuff. Then they forward that, as soon as the call is done … Well, it depends on the arrangement I have with the particular contractor.

But the vast majority of them, as soon as the call is done, the call gets … The data, the lead data gets forwarded or sent to the contractor via email as well as text message. It goes directly to their phone and I get an email copy of it, so I get an email of the lead and then I set up a Zapier for each client so that it will, because it goes to my email. Zapier will grab, I set up a filter that says, “If an email comes in from this address or with this subject like,” or whatever it is that I use to identify which email it is, “Then send it to a spreadsheet.”

A Google sheet. What I do, is I end up having, like this is all automated, and then once a month, or once every two weeks, or once a week depending on what the frequency is that I go over leads with potential service providers, I’ve got a spread sheet there that shows all of the leads and it’s real simple for me to just open up and look at it. Anyways, like I said, I thought answering … I thought, excuse me, Call Rail had an answering service but it does not. Answer Connect is still my go-to source and I just set up another account, like I said, last week or maybe two weeks ago now for one of our location clusters that’s generating now.

What I’m saying, guys, is that’s going to differentiate you from other lead gen provides. Is, first of all, exclusivity of leads, right, that’s something I’ll always pitch to a potential service provider or a prospect. I say, “Look, any lead that I generate is going to go 100% exclusively to you. That means I’m not selling it to three to five other contractors.” That’s what Home Advisor does guys. Home Advisor sells leads to multiple contractors so it’s a race to the lowest price point.

In other words, all the contractors will show up at a damn residence, sometimes at the same time. I know because I’ve gotten a lot of tree service clients that way, guys. They would literally … A tree company would be pulling into a driveway and another tree company would be pulling out, you know what I mean, because Home Advisor sold that same lead to as many as five different contractors that I’ve been able to verify. All those contractors end up bidding for that job and they lowered their price so it’s a race to see who can bid the lowest to get the job.

That sucks, nobody wants that. Contractors don’t want to have to get in a bidding war with other contractors to get a job. Exclusivity of leads, that’s huge, number one. Number two, if you offer a call center then that means the only time that your service provider is going to get notification is when it’s a valid qualified lead. How do you know it’s qualified? Because it went through the screening process that the answering service provides.

Don’t get me wrong, some of my contractors still get … Like for example, Yelp, absolutely relentless. Yelp will call over, and over, and over again. Three times a week. Different Yelp representatives to the same lead gen asset saying, “We’re the new Yelp rep and we’re just calling to …” It’s always to sell advertising services and so they’ll still leave a message and that message will get transmitted to the service provider and I’ll get a copy of it too.

But I understand that, that’s going to happen from time to time. What I’m saying is, though, the notifications only get sent when the caller has completed the call with the answering service and filled out, answered the required amount of questions, okay. Obviously, like a Yelp call wouldn’t be a billable call, but valid lead data would. That’s huge because that prevents the contractor from having to answer the phone. It prevents spam calls from ever reaching them and it also, it ends up being to where they just get the lead information when it’s convenient for them, they can call back.

Obviously, I recommend they do it as soon as they get the information but that way they can still manage their projects or have their tools on and they’re still getting the lead. Whereas before, the lead would just go off into the ether, into oblivion, and we’d lose the lead. When I implemented that Will, with my tree service stuff, and this was way back when I was still kind of, you know had a fledgling business at the time. I was hesitant at the time to pay for the answer connect service because, I think, when I started out I started with like a 300 dollar a month plan.

Which allows a certain amount of minutes and blah, blah, blah. At the time, when I was new to this, 300 dollars a month was painful for me to give up. I didn’t want to commit to 300. There’s not a contract, it’s just month to month, but I didn’t want to commit to 300 dollars a month when I was barely making money at that time. You know what I’m saying? I mean, I was making money, but still 300 dollars a month was a big commitment for me at the time. But what was interesting is as soon as I implemented that, my revenue went up 30%.

My net revenue went up 30%. That means even after subtracting the expense of the call center, and it was because now a lot of calls that were getting missed before were not being answered and the leads would end up, they got followed up on by my contractors which ended up, a percentage of them closed in the jobs. My revenue went, minus the … And I don’t remember if it was really 300 dollars a month or whatever guys, but whatever the expense was at that time I ended up having a 30% net increase in revenue on a monthly basis because of that.

Ever since then, that has been how I developed my lead gen business. Is I always provide just, or I always set up call centers. When I have assets that start producing consistently. Like, initially I might have the calls directed to directly to a service provider or even to just a voice mail while I’m optimizing or getting the asset to produce. Once it starts producing fairly consistently, then I’ll set up a call center for that so that we have somebody actually answering the phone and then that’s when I’ll pitch that service to monetize it to potential service providers. Okay.

That was a great question and I appreciate you asking that because I get that question a lot, even from more experienced members and our Mastermind. I’m telling you guys, I know a lot of people do lead gen and just forward them directly to the contractor, but trust me, especially if you have multiple locations that you’re all forwarding to the same number, every one of those locations is another spam point. Another solicitation target or magnet, I should say. Another solicitation magnet.

If you’ve got 6, or 8, or 10 locations in a metro area that you’re forwarding all to one company, they’re going to get barraged. Like, literally hammered with solicitation calls guys and you’re going to piss them off. They’re not going to want your services anymore, so again, I would recommend that you do that. Set up, guys, it will make … You can charge a premium for those leads because they’re exclusive, and because they’re all pre-screened leads. The call center being the pre-screener. It was a great question though, Will. I appreciate that question.

How Verify A GMB If It’s An Online Business in a Service Area Market?

Elena, “I’m working on a niche that is considered a service area business. However, we are collecting leads of consumers that are seeking this type of service via a website that captures their personal info, sort of like a lead gen site.” Okay. “When trying to verify the GMB I’m getting pushback from Google saying that this type of business doesn’t meet the guidelines for verification being that this is an online business that doesn’t meet customers at their locations or we visit customers at their place of business. Do you have any recommendations on how to get a GMB verified when the business happens to be an online business and a service area market?”

“According to the LLP or Local Lease Pro training, we only need an NAP and the requirement that this be for a surface area business to get the GMB verified. In other words, wait until the GMB is verified and then pile it up with all the custom optimization we talked about in training.” Okay, I’m not real sure what the … The first question, the primary question is: can you get GMB assets set up for that type of business? I don’t know because I’ve never done that. However, like I’m not sure what … Exactly what type of business you’re talking about so I don’t know.

I’ve never experienced that sort of a warning or restriction, or whatever, from Google because I’ve never tried to set something like that up. However, I may not be correct about this so Marco please feel free to interject, but our GMB verification service could likely get that for you. Am I right Marco?

Marco: Yeah. Well, what do you call it, if it’s available. If it’s in one of the categories, or any of the categories in Google My Business approximates whatever it is that you’re doing, we can get it. We can get it. Except if it’s one of those, here, we just can’t do a 24 hour locksmith. We can’t verify that, period. Some of them are more difficult so you will be charged more for that service simply because it might be just a small area or it’s one of those that Google police’s really closely so it takes a lot more work to get it verified.

But if it’s in there and it’s not one of the categories that’s just absolutely no way that it can be verified, yeah we can verify it.

Bradley: Yeah, so I mean, there you go Elena. Like, honestly, I don’t try to verify my own listings anymore because we have a service that does it. I don’t even know how it’s being done. I honestly don’t care. I just want the result so that’s why I’m suggesting that potentially is because … Now here’s something else you may want to try if you’re trying to do this on your own. I don’t know that this will work either, but perhaps try to create the GMB listing under a different category and then once you have it confirmed, or verified, then update the category to whatever your real category is.

That might be something that you could do. It could just be because of whatever category you’re trying to set it up to create the listing under is a category that Google doesn’t like based upon whatever it is that you’re trying to do. Again, I don’t know that, that’s going to correct it, but what I’m saying is try it. If you’re adamant about doing this on your own then try it and see if you could verify it under a different category type and then once it’s confirmed or verified then go in and change it.

It may, I don’t know that it would. My experience with after verifying a profile is that you can do a lot of changes to it now without it triggering a reverification. Now I’m not, again, don’t quote me on that. I’m not saying that it won’t trigger a reverification, I’m just saying that I have been able to make some pretty drastic changes to GMB assets recently and they didn’t trigger a reverification. That might be something you want to try as well. As a last resort, like I said, contact us. See if we can do it.

How Do You Track And Delegate Tasks For Your Virtual Assistants?

We might be able to get it done for you too. I guess it just depends on what the category is, that your category. Then, once again, we may very well be able to get it under a different category and then just change the category once verified. Okay. Alright, moving on. Frankie. What’s up Frankie? He says, “What’s up guys? Much love from you guys from Miami Beach.” He’s down there where it’s warm. “My question is: when hiring VA’s how do you keep track of their hours? I’m in the midst of hiring VA 40 hour a week and curious of how you guys do the billing and tracking in the event that you don’t keep track of their hours, Time Doctor, et cetera, then how do you make sure they are working full time and not BS-ing half the time?”

Okay, so that’s a really good question Frankie. There are some really good time tracking apps like what you’re talking about. Time Doctor’s one, another one Chris P. one of my partners mentioned. I haven’t used it though, it’s called Hub Staff I think. Hubstaff.com, maybe. You can look it up. But, yeah, something like that is a great way to do it. Especially to start with, guys. Now, I typically don’t monitor my VA’s like that because I work very closely with the VA’s that I train initially because, especially now, because I’m teaching my VA’s more complex procedures so they’re working a lot more in direct contact with me on a daily basis.

At least initially while they’re getting trained. Then, because I’m familiar with the … Because usually, I create all the process docs that I train my … Process docs and training videos that I train my VA’s with. It’s usually directly from me and so I understand about what, how long it takes to complete the task that I’m giving to them because I’ve done it myself in order to create the training. Obviously I give them leeway up front while they’re going through the training and learning the procedure.

I give them leeway, in other words I allow them a lot more time than what it takes me. But then after training, which for us Semantic mastery, whenever we hire a VA full time they go on salary. But we pay them 75% of their salary for the 30 days because they’re in training. Then, provided that they’ve … And that’s also a probationary period. At the end of that 30 days, if they performed well and I was satisfied with their work and that kind of stuff, then they go up to their full salary.

Then typically by then I just assign them tasks and if the tasks, if the tasks aren’t being completed in a timely manner then I’ll question what they’re doing and if they can’t give me a good reason or a believable reason as to what’s taking them so long, like present me with some problems they’re running into. Process issues or software, or application issues, or whatever the case may be. If they can’t present me with something that’s believable and a valid excuse, then that’s when they go on probation again, or they’ll potentially at that point I would add them to a time tracking app.

Or they’d just flat out get fired if I catch them in a lie, or whatever. Yeah, that happens from time to time, but personally, for the teams that I manage, I typically do not track using time tracking software. I did when I first got started guys but I’ve gotten really proficient at managing VA’s so I don’t really see that, for me personally, necessary. But, again, I do recommend especially if you’re just starting to outsource guys that you use something like a time tracking app. Time Doctor’s a good one.

Marco: I can tell you how it’s being done in MGYB.CO because we’ve got a bunch of them. It’s not mandatory for them to be on from 10:00 p.m. to midnight their time, which makes it convene in eastern time, in my time, so that we can communicate. We need to know the tasks, what they’re up to, what they’re doing, what they’ve done. Any problems, anything because they’re constantly going to MGYB fulfilling. There’s a lot of client involvement, Rosale needs to know, Justin needs to know, Chris needs.

There’s a whole lot of communication that takes place that Rob and I, or Rob or I need to see. Then we also have a project manager, she’s the one that’s just hands-on, just moving all of the pieces around so that now Rob and I only get the higher level stuff that can’t be solved by our project manager. When they come on, they go on 90 days probation and they have to know that they’re going to get, as Bradley says, 75% while they’re training.

After the first 30 days they go into their full salary, but they’re still on probation.

Bradley: Yes, correct.

Marco: They’re being tracked. We have Work Snaps, it’s called, worksnaps.net which works really well because they have to be there to click and take that screen grab. They have to be there, they have to be present at the computer, and then we’ll know what it is that they’re doing. Now, after the probationary period what happens is then they go on a split shift. Which means six hours they have to work whenever they want, as long as they clear it with the project manager.

But they have to work the six hours. Once we know that we can trust them and we can give them enough work and you’re right about that. You have to give them enough work that you know it’s going to fill up their time, and so we know we’re doing that. We have the project manager that’s on top of everything during the day in the Philippines especially. She’s giving them assignments and if there’s anything going on then we have the reports. I mean, we just have a whole system in place so that we track whether our VA’s now are being as productive as possible.

Now here’s another thing. If you have a rockstar that’s producing whatever it is that you need produced and you’re making a whole bunch of money with that VA’s help, then is it work tracking that VA? I would say, “Hell no.” I mean, by all means, do whatever the fuck you want to do and keep making me money. Where you run into issues is if you’re not getting the work you expect completed. If you are and it’s just superstar work and that’s your rockstar, that’s your future team manager, team lead, project lead.

Whatever the hell you want to make that VA, that’s where that comes from because then they know your business, they know what you’re doing, and they can train other people for you. That’s how we do it at MGYB. We always promote from within whenever possible and pay them well Frankie. Give them raises. Praise them, praise them. Say, “You guys rock. You guys are the best. You’re doing great work,” because I mean, who … Think about how badly many of these people are treated.

Just a kind word is going to get them to just totally loyal and just totally working for you the way that they’re supposed to.

Bradley: Yeah, I just want to … I’m pulling something up just quickly because I’m not going to share … I mean, I’m not going to read this and stuff to you guys but, damnit, come on. This is one of my VA’s Hazel here. She’s on my GMB team and here you see this long post she just sent, guys. That was just a couple of weeks ago now and anyways, just the Readers Digest version of that post that she sent me in Slack was, she was just saying how appreciative she is of the fact that she gets to work from home.

She’s in the Philippines and she lives in a rural town, and in that post she was talking about how appreciative she is of the fact that she’s able to work from home and provide for her family. She’s been working with me for three years now. Again, I’ve only got two people on my GMB asset building team right now. Joe and Hazel, and they’re both rockstars. Anyway Hazel posted that to tell me how appreciative she is of the fact that she gets to work from home because most of the jobs, economic opportunities in the Philippines are centered around the cities.

That makes sense, there’s a lot of that in the United States too. Most of the jobs and everything are available in the cities and in the rural areas there’s very little work and so there’s a lot of poverty. There’s not very much opportunities. She said she was basically asking, she’s a very ambitious girl, which is great. I love it when a VA has ambitions to climb the ladder because think about it. We’ve got a lot of VA’s that all they want to do is show up to work every day, be told what to do, and go home and collect their checks.

That’s perfectly fine, those are very valuable assets as well. But every now and then you’ll get a VA that wants to grow their business, and wants to expand, increase their knowledge and take on more responsibility. What she did is she posted and said, “Hey, look, I want to create my own company in the Philippines and offer a virtual staffing service.” She wants to create a company and provide job opportunities to people that live in her rural town because they can work remotely, and because of Semantic Mastery and all the stuff we’re building with MGYB and everything that we do for our own businesses guys we’re turning into processes.

Outsourcing it, so first of all, we don’t have to do it anymore, but then second of all so that we can also provide you guys with the same services that we use for our own businesses. She basically reached out and said, “Look, I’d like to create my own company and hire virtual assistants right here in my local town to where they show up to an office space.” She’s going to start it in her own. She’s got an extra room in her home. She’s going to start it there and then as it grows she wants to move into an office space.

She was saying because we can provide … Because of her job with us, Semantic mastery, she knows that there’s opportunities for other people in her town that don’t have much opportunity to also work. She says she’s had a lot of family and friends ask her like, “Hey, is there any opportunity to work the company that yo work for?” That’s why she reached out to say, “Is there any opportunity for expansion, if so, I can provide the workers for you.” I was so proud of her and I sent her a message and we ended up having a Skype … Excuse me, a Slack chat appointment or meeting earlier this week on Monday to discuss.

It worked out. I’m so proud of her because she’s not only been really good VA anyways, but because she wants to grow and she wants to provide opportunity to people in her area. For us as a company, it’s a great … It’s very promising because I found that me personally managing VA’s other than when I’m working with them really closely like I am right now. When it comes to managing a team, that’s more difficult to do remotely in my opinion.

At least for me it is. I’m not the best manager in the world, okay, but having a team that she can manage in person. Be in the same room with them to help with any issues, to help with training, all that stuff to also just monitor their activity, that’s a much better way to manage a team. Especially, at least, initially in my opinion. She’ll be able to handle the management aspects that I would typically be doing as remotely. She’ll be able to do that in person.

Anyways, we’re pursuing it with her and I think it’s just really, really great. That’s what, guys when you have VA’s that are good VA’s and you’re going to have some that are good, and you’re going to have some that are bad. The ones that are good, make sure, do exactly what Marco just mentioned and that’s treat them well. Give them raises, praise them often. Encourage them because that will help them to become better workers for you and it will improve the quality of their life too.

Absolutely do that, guys. We’ve gotten, I mean, we’ve got VA’s that have been working for us for years. I mean, I’ve got stories I told at the POFU Live event about VA’s and some of the messages or letters that I’ve received from VA’s that are talking about how much it’s improved their quality of life and blah, blah, blah. The opportunities it’s provided for their family and that kind of stuff, guys. We really are doing a service. All of us. We’re all entrepreneurs, so we’re providing a service and enriching other people’s lives when we do that, when we offer jobs.

Marco: Talking about a VA getting to POFU, [Dedia 00:41:41] attended POFU Live.

Bradley: Yup. Dedia’s our link building manager and has been for … Well, he doesn’t work for us anymore. He’s not on salary, he’s a contractor. He owns his own company now, which is amazing. He’s one of my favorite stories of all time. He came to work for me. He had a full time job and he was working as a freelancer on UpWork as part time, like moonlighting, doing link building. We’re talking five or six years ago now. I hired him part time, and then over time my workload increased.

I kept giving him more and more work and eventually he approached me and asked me, “Hey, would you hire me full time so I can quit my job and work from home?” At the time, I wasn’t ready to pay a link builder full time but I did it anyways because I had a really good feeling about Dedia. He was just great to work with and blah, blah, blah. I did. I said, “Okay, yeah.” Even though, like I said, it was painful for me at the time, I gave him a full time job and within just a couple of years when we opened up Semantic Mastery and then we started selling links on our own first.

Then we went to search space and so on and so forth, he ended up growing his own company and bought a house, and not even on salary with us anymore because he’s a contractor and his business is thriving. He came to the POFU Live event all the way from India. I mean, that’s crazy guys. Like, it’s just amazing, and some of the stories that he’s told about over the years is just great. You guys, it really is important. As business owners we offer opportunities. We hire people first to help us, right, but at the same time it’s to help them and to help their families and everybody around them as well.

It’s a great question Frankie, thank you for that. Quint [inaudible 00:43:23] says, “Good day gents, I noticed GMB they’re encouraging … Excuse me. They’re encouraging you to run ads. When you run ads can you make the GMB the landing page?” Yes you can, however I would recommend that do not use the ads service that they prompt you with inside of GMB because that’s the Google My Business, or the Google Ad express service which gives you like, literally, no control over the ads.

Google does everything for you and I don’t recommend that. Now, I haven’t tested that. Again, the Google Ads platform has improved leaps and bounds over the last year, year and a half. The Google express ads may very well be a lot better, but several years ago when I tested the Google express ads they sucked, they were terrible. I could manage an ads campaign manually way better and get much, much better results than I could from the Google Ads express platform.

I just, again, I haven’t tested any of that in at least two years now, guys. It may be very much better but I highly recommend that you would manually manage your campaign instead of letting Google do everything for you. Google will spend your money rather quickly if you let them. Okay. But, yeah, you can use the GMB website as your landing page. Guys, you can use a damn Google doc as the desk …

Marco: No, no, no, no, no, no.

Bradley: What do you mean, “No, no, no?”

Marco: Don’t give that away.

Bradley: Why not?

Marco: Because that’s in [inaudible 00:44:52] academy reloading.

Bradley: So what? You can use a YouTube link, you can use any link for an ad basically, as long as it meets the compliance regulations. Which is actually funny because in that case there wouldn’t even be a privacy policy. What I’m saying is, Google doesn’t really care what you’re directing traffic to as long as it has the recommended or whatever, the required stuff. When it’s the landing page, like a self-hosted landing page, they want contact information, privacy policy, terms of service. That kind of stuff.

At least links that lead to that and a way to contact. But you can go to a YouTube video, for example. You can go to a Google doc. A GMB website, a maps listing. You can even add your just GMB map share URL in there. Okay. Keep in mind though, if you’re doing that, the only reason why I wouldn’t want to do that guys is because, and I’ve thought about this, too, recently is you can’t add remarketing to a GMB website, for example.

You can’t add a remarketing pixel or even the Google Maps page itself. The profile itself, you can’t add so it’s very difficult, and how do you track conversions on that too? Think about that. I mean, obviously if you have a tracking phone number, if somebody calls you could always look at your call reports and that would be considered a conversion but it’s not going to track as a conversion. Well, I guess if you added the number at like through call only ads and stuff you can probably do that.

What I’m saying is, think about, there’s reasons why I don’t recommend running adds directly to a GMB website. Not like search ads, I mean, because it’s awfully expensive. YouTube ads, yes. Display ads, yes, because you can get those a lot cheaper. Remarketing ads even, but for like straight cold traffic search ads, I would not recommend pointing them directly to a GMB asset because that’s, there’s no way to really track that and you could end up spending a lot of money on it. It’s just too expensive to do it in my opinion.

From search ads, I mean. Okay. But yes, you can absolutely link to that. Alright Jim’s up, he says, “Hello gents, I just realized today’s the 16th.” Marco did you answer this one for him?

Marco: Sorry, I was muted.

Adam: Yeah, I think the beginning of the webinar answered that so if you missed it just check out the very beginning and check out Marco’s link right below your comments here. Actually right above it.

Bradley: There you go. Okay, “Where should I subscribe to the emails again?” Okay, there you go. You answered that. Wow, we’re almost out of time. Well, we can wrap it up early guys. Elena says, “Do you have a valid discount coupon that I could use for GMB verification then? Thank you.” I’m not sure what you’re asking for Elena. If we don’t have a sale going on right now, then no.

Marco: No, we don’t have a coupon right now.

Are You Offering VA Connections?

Bradley: Well, then no. Sorry, Elena. We may run a sale again soon and when we do you can wait until then if you’d like. Okay, John’s up. He says, “Are you guys offering VA connections?” Ooh. John, in the Mastermind possibly. Adam, you want to chat about that?

Adam: Yeah, definitely. We brought that up and we were definitely looking. We hooked up a couple people who were interested and I guess now’s a good time to see if anybody listening, you’ve heard us talk about VA’s. Most of the people who subscribe and listen to Semantic Mastery understand that, that’s a great way to offload a lot of your work so you can grow in scale. We can answer questions about how to use VA’s effectively how to manage them and make sure you get the good ones. We also, of course, offer training on how to do that at more of an advanced level.

We realize that some people going through that process of finding those good VA’s and connecting with them is a problem. It can take a lot of time and since we do it at scale we talked to some Mastermind members about that. They took us up on the offer and so I’m just curious if anyone is watching or you’re checking this out on the replay, let us know, because if there’s enough people out there who think this is a valuable service will be willing to set this up where we’ll even crank up our volume a little bit, do the hard work for you on the back end, and then do something like connect you with two VA’s you can interview and either take both or take the best one for some set fee.

Now probably, I’ve got this written down somewhere just for my own time, but that would save you at least several hours of work and depending on what tools you use potentially a couple hundred bucks.

Bradley: Yeah. Yeah, and I’ve been doing Mastermind calls for the last two weeks now. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays I do two half an hour calls per day with just Mastermind members that have scheduled with me. One of, almost unanimously. I’m not going to call anybody out by name. But almost unanimously, everybody I’ve spoken to said that one of the things they know they need to do more of is outsource. Many people have been, have avoided it because they have either been burned by hiring shitty outsources in the past, or they just don’t want to put all the time and effort into setting up hiring funnels and going through that whole process of screening applicants and everything else.

Which is what we teach in Outsource Kingpin, it’s the exact same method that we use, guys. We’ve put the time in to do all that though and I understand why people don’t want to do it. My only poin to that is if you do stuff in your business over, and over, and over again all the time, that takes time like client reports. Whatever, repetitive tasks in your business that you do over, and over, and over again but you don’t want to put the work in to hiring the outsourcer, it doesn’t make sense to me because you have to repeat that process again. Over and over again every single time.

Again, I’m just going to use client reports as an example and, guys, I outsource stuff for years and I still did my own client reports until January of 2018, so a year ago is when I finally outsourced my client reports. What I’m saying is the reason why is because in order to generate the client reports the way that I had always done it, I knew it was going to take me two or three days of, literally, two to three days of recording the process for how to do it because I’ve got different types of reports go to different clients.

That may be my own fault, I probably should’ve made everything universal or templatized, or whatever. But, it is what it is, and so I had to spend a couple days and I never wanted to do it. It took me a day to do client reports every month. It would take me a full day to do client reports every single month, and sometimes depending on if I was distracted throughout that process, it would take me a day and a half because other things would come up or whatever. A day to a day and a half every single month and I just, I hated it.

But I never wanted to take two to three days to complete all the process training to train somebody else to do it. Well finally I got smart and I finally did that, and last year in January I outsourced that and, yeah, it was painful because it took me almost three days to complete all the processes but now I get, every single month, I get an entire day back. Well, let me rephrase that. Now I have a VA that generates all the reports, consolidates them into one sheet text file, and then she sends it to me. Then I have all the reports and everything available to me right there in the notepad file and I can just copy and paste into an email to my clients.

Then I always inject my commentary. Sometimes it’s via video email where I’m going over the reports and I talk about where progress was made, where I found new opportunities. Perhaps where some things went wrong, that kind of stuff. I often send an email, a video email along with the reports or I’ll just send some text. Like, “Here’s your local rank report. Here’s key takeaways. Here’s your citation report, key takeaways. Analytics report, search console report.” Those kind of things. Again, something like that guys, it takes forever to create a process to do it and I understand why people avoid it.

I’ve done that stuff. Like, “I don’t feel like doing a process. Well, it’d just be quicker for me to do it. Just be quicker if I did it.” But the problem is that time comes around again a month later or a week later, two weeks. Whatever it is. It comes around again and then you’re back in the same boat again. You have to do it again and, “I could develop a process or I could just get it done now and it’d be much faster if I just do it myself.” You guys get what I’m saying.

That’s why, again, the Mastermind calls almost unanimously everybody that I’ve talked to have said, “I know I need to do more outsourcing but I just don’t have the time,” or, “I don’t want to put in the work,” and blah, blah, blah. We realized that there was an opportunity there for VA matching service. In other words, we do all the application screening and all that stuff, put them through a series of tests to make sure that they can follow instructions and all that stuff.

Finally, the ones that end all the way through our funnel system, those are good candidates that are ready to be interviewed. That’s something that, again, speaking with the Mastermind members that I’ve been speaking with on the phone over the last week and a half now, or almost two weeks, is like I’ve said. I’ve told them about that and I think there’s a real opportunity for VA matching service just within our own Mastermind but potentially externally, too, for our other audience members. Very cool. It’s a great offer … Adam, I’m pretty sure that’s something we’ll end up proceeding with.

Alright, “Did I miss Adam talking about having VA’s trained that are ready to be hired, please say yes.” Well not necessarily trained yet, although we are talking about doing that. Right now we were just talking about the VA matching service. Like prescreening and all that kind of stuff to where that we know they’re qualified and then it would be up to you to interview and then train them and all that stuff. However, there’s potentially, we are discussing maybe in the future also providing fully done for you trained VA’s.

In other words, we hire them, we put them through our training processes and then make them available to you once they’re fully trained. Literally turn key, they’re ready to go to work. If that makes sense. That’s something that we’re talking about but that’s not anything that’s going to happen right away, guys, I can tell you that.

How Do You An LED Controllable Lights As A Drummer-Influencer In Charleston, South Carolina?

Alright, Quinten says, “Hey, love guys. I’m a drummer/singer living in Charleston, South Carolina. I just got sponsored by a drum light company. Basically, put they specialize in LED controllable lights. The company is called Galaxy Lights. They hired me as an influencer for their brand.”

That’s awesome man. That’s really cool. “I’m going to do drum videos promoting their lights. What’s my best angle to get their product seen? Should I run ads for drummers specifically? Is there a better way?” That’s a really good question.

Hernan: Love that.

Bradley: Hernan you’re the paid traffic expert, what do you say?

Hernan: Yeah, I’m rereading the question. LED controllable lights, as an influencer. Yeah, like what you could do. The fact that you are doing this, it makes a lot of sense because there’s a niche that it’s like really, really sexy. You know what I’m saying? You can actually put out a lot of valuable content. You can put out a lot of valuable content like how to use those LED lights and whatnot, and maybe just film yourself drumming and whatnot, playing the drums and doing that type of stuff. Then you can retarget those people with an offer.

That’s easily done by, with Facebook for instance.

Bradley: You can do it on YouTube too.

Hernan: Yeah, you can do this on YouTube, too. 100%, you can do video SEO like try to rank your YouTube videos but I’ve been doing it on Facebook a lot and it works really well. In terms of getting their product out, if you want to put some money behind your videos that would be faster. If not, you can just try to rank them on YouTube. But, yeah, in terms of the actual targeting that you could do, for instance, on Facebook. You can target specific, like you can target specific brands that are for drummers only.

For instance you can target Yamaha, for instance as a drums brand. But the problem with that, is that a lot of people will like Yamaha. You know what I’m saying? You can go out there and try to find these boutique brands like Tama or CPN or Paste. Those type of brands that would be related to drummers only and people will like … People that like those brands will be drummers. You know what I’m saying?

Cymbals type of brands and whatnot, then Bradley’s doing something that is great, which is drumming, drummers magazines and forums, and all that stuff. That will give you some idea of what to target, who to target on your videos and what kind of chatting is around that. That’s what I would do.

Bradley: Yeah, and that’s why I pulled this up because like this is a website here and just go to Google and search drummer blogs. That’s what I just did, and here’s one from Feed Spot which is the top 50 drum and percussionist websites out there. Right there’s a placement list. In other words, if you understand Google Ads … Well, I’m saying Google Ads.

Hernan’s the Facebook guy. I don’t even run Facebook ads, I don’t know how. But I do Google Ads and that would be, right there is a placement list. In other words, just scrape all those domains and this just 50 here but I’m sure you can do some research and build a really good placement list of drumming publications, and websites, and blogs and things like that, that you can specifically place your ads on those.

That’s called a placement list. You could also do audience targeting if you can find, there probably is. I haven’t done anything in the music niche, but there probably is a sub category within the musician targeting categories that for drummers and percussionist. You could use Google’s audience targeting that way. You could also do topic targeting by adding, well selecting a topic and then adding keywords as an additional layer.

That’s something else that you could do, and then YouTube marketing. I know for sure that YouTube has got a lot of music type videos and stuff like that on that so you could actually target via placements just like you would here. Create a placement list for YouTube videos that are known videos with a lot of traffic around drumming and percussionism and stuff like that.

Also, you could do topic targeting and audience targeting there as well as remarketing and all that stuff. Yeah, there’s a lot of options there for paid traffic guys. A lot of options.

Hernan: Yup.

Bradley: Alright guys we need to wrap it up. Okay, cool no more questions. Beautiful. Right on time too. 5:00 on the money. That happens rarely, so everybody we appreciate you all being here. Mastermind webinar next week, not this week. Anything else we got to do this week guys? We’re good.

Adam: Sorry, if you’re not a part of the Facebook group. Go join, we’re going to have a great webinar coming up on Monday with Catherine Jones of CF design school and she’s gong to be talking about building seven figure funnels.

Bradley: Awesome, sweet. Cool. Alright everybody, we’ll see you all next week. Thanks everyone.

Marco: Bye everyone.

Nguồn chia sẻ:

Nguồn chia sẻ: http://bit.ly/2FcxtnQ

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 219

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Click on the video above to watch Episode 219 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Adam: Welcome everybody to Hump Day Hangouts, the Semantic Mastery public Q&A. This is episode 219. 219 episodes. Today is the 16th of January, 2019. I am gong to go down really quick say hi to everybody before we get started with all of the good stuff. On my left hand side I’ve got Chris. Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Been good. Happy to be here. Exciting times as always good to be on a Wednesday. How are you doing?

Adam: Not bad. You know, something you talked about at POFU Live, and something I just scheduled had to do with planning. I’m going to ask you a little honest spot question, but do you do yearly planning, number one and number two, when do you do the yearly planning?

Chris: Well, I rarely do yearly planning. Pretty much as we all do in a [inaudible 00:00:56] day plans. So I pretty much do those things when the [inaudible 00:01:02] iteration or if you want to call it that way that might not be on the first January. It is whenever it is for me.

Adam: Sounds good. Alright.

Chris: I have yearly plan still, and five year plans as well. It’s just like a break down to pretty much what’s important in the moment, what needs to be down right now and course correcting on a weekly basis.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. Alright. I was curious and I figured other people might want to know how it’s done on the inside. Just figuring that. Hernan, how are you doing, man?

Hernan: I’m doing good, actually. I don’t plan shit. I’m just kidding. We do. Yeah, we do a lot of planing, actually. I do the same with Chris. I do three months sprints, and a yearly plan a yearly idea of rough objectives and then three months. Nobody asked me, but I’m telling you guys three months.

Adam: We’re going to edit this out.

Bradley: We all have to acknowledge his hair cut.

Adam: Yeah. Look at that. He’s looking … You’re looking pretty smooth.

Hernan: Yeah, I look like a person now, like a business …

Bradley: Believe it or not that you look younger, man.

Chris: You’ve got a second one, respect.

Bradley: Hernan is the youngest of us, and he looks even younger now so he’s making me feel old.

Hernan: Sorry man, let me click …

Adam: That’s alright Bradley, we’re showing white in our beards so I think [crosstalk 00:02:26]. Marco, how are you doing man?

Marco: Man, what’s up. A warm hello from 82 degree and sunny Costa Rica. Fuck all of you.

Bradley: Yeah, this is what I got for you buddy. That’s for you.

Marco: It’s so beautiful, come join me. It’s so good.

Adam: Man, Bradly. Last but not least, are you guys getting slammed? I thought I heard something about the north east getting pummeled.

Bradley: We got hammered a few days ago, we still got snow on the ground. We got, here in Culpepper, probably about six inches maybe. Which was pretty good. Believe it or not my daughter’s 13 and I have never had a chance to play in the snow with her. This was the first time, I had her this past weekend, and we got the snow on Saturday so Sunday it was great because it was the first time in 13 years, or ever, that I’ve been able to play in the snow with my daughter.

It just so happened that every time we had ever had snow before wasn’t a weekend that I had her so this was, it was a lot of fun. We got to run around and do snowball fights and make snow angels and sledding and all that stuff. It was a lot of fun.

Hernan: That’s awesome.

Adam: That’s really cool, man. Well, before we get into it. We’ve got a few things we want to share with everybody. First of all if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, thanks again for watching. Whether you’re watching us live, whether you’re checking it out on YouTube and watching the replay. In case you don’t know you can always go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask ahead of time and watch the replay.

We know whether it’s time zones or you’ve got client meetings or you’re working, whatever it is, you might not be able to be here live but that shouldn’t stop you from asking questions and getting answers. A follow on to that, a lot of people ask, “Well, okay, I’ve been watching your videos. Where should I start with Semantic Mastery, what should I do?” The place to always start is the battle plan.

Okay, just go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com, repeatable processes. It’s SEO, it’s digital marketing and it’s the way to get started and have that firm foundation so that everything you build up is on that solid foundation. If you’re already passed that point and you’re looking for the peer community, you’re looking for advanced strategies, you’re looking for networking then that’s why you would come join the Mastermind.

That you can find at mastermind.semanticmastery.com. Also, again if you’re watching on YouTube, hit the subscribe button. Obviously, you’ll see these videos and stay up to date with anything else new we put out there. Real quick, speaking of the Mastermind I believe we had some training coming up, right Bradley? I forget what it was exactly you’re going to be covering coming up in the next week or two.

Bradley: Yeah, next week on Thursday for our Mastermind webinar I’m going to be doing some training on using Google Ads. Specifically, or primarily, we’re going to be … I’m going to be walking through a set up of how, I’ve been talking about this on Hump Day Hangouts for a year and a half now at least. But how I use Google Ads for YouTube to rank videos, local videos in search, in Google search.

But it’s more than just that. Recently, I mean I still do that all the time anyways for helping videos to rank, but I’ve also found that Google Ads platform, including the display network and YouTube ads have gotten a lot better. They’re targeting options have gotten so much better in the last year, it’s incredible and because of that I found that when I was … Before what I was just doing was setting up ad campaigns specifically to generate local IP, or local views to a video within a specific geographic targeting area as well as, if possible, finding a good, what’s called an in market audience or life event audience.

Which are audiences that Google has determined that the users within those audiences are in the market for a particular product or service. If you can find a category that would fit then that traffic ends up not being just good for helping the video to rank, but it ends up being like relevant traffic that ends up at, sometimes it’s not a lot, but at least with the campaigns I set up. But some of those end up … Forgive me for a minute, I’ve got a call coming in. Stand by guys.

That traffic ends up coming in … Ends up being possibly good traffic for leads. In other words, you can use these campaigns for lead generation. You can also use these campaigns for branding. If you’re doing any remarketing, which is really powerful and I’m going to touch on that as well next week. Then you can build a remarketing list that way and also remarket to people that have interacted with either your video or if they click through to your website or a landing page, or whatever. You could remarket to those people, so those are people that took action and actually clicked through.

I’m going to be walking through all that and then I’m also going to be talking about how to set up remarketing campaigns in the Google display network because I’ve been doing a lot of remarketing stuff and display ads recently for a client of mine that does a lot of ad spend in Google and I found that just recently the Google display network is so much better than it used to be. It used to be a real pain in the ass to set up display ads because you had to get a graphic designer to design the banner, whatever banner it was, and then have that banner created in multiple sizes.

Leaderboard and 350 by 250 rectangle. All those, the standard sizes and if you wanted to split test ads you had to get the graphic designer to create different ad sets for you. It was a real pain in the ass and that’s why I stopped doing display network ads for a long time. But within the last year or so, and I don’t know when exactly, but Google has changed to where now you create what’s called responsive display ads and all you do is upload images, there’s a square version and a rectangular version and specific dimensions that you need to upload or within a range of specific dimensions.

Anyways, you just upload a square image and a rectangular image, it’s pretty much the same image, and then logos. Rectangular and square versions of logos and then you add up to five headlines, a long headline, one long headlines, and then up to five descriptions. What Google does is it will just grab one of the images, a version of the logo, and one of the headlines and descriptions and create an ad out of that. What it does, is overtime, it will automatically optimize the ads based upon the images, the headlines, and the descriptions and which combination produces the most click-throughs and that’s what it will start to show more.

Again, it just became super easy to set up ads in the display network. What used to be a pain in the ass and because of that I want to do some specific training on that for remarketing as well as for cold traffic. Basically in two weeks from tomorrow, or excuse me a week from tomorrow, I’m going to be doing a full two … We usually go two and a half or three hours on Mastermind, training on specifically how to use Google Ads. Just YouTube ads and the display network ads.

Adam: Nice. Nice, and speaking of webinars, Marco you just had a webinar didn’t you?

Marco: Yeah, I’m glad that Bradley’s doing this training because we talked about entities on Monday, right? I mean, almost everyone stayed until the end but we talked about how you create them, how to verify them, validate, solidify and then we talked about the art of ART. Which I’m always talking about. Activity, Relevance, Trust and authority. Relevance is just you make sure that your content stays relevant and that you do, you write your silos.

They have to be Semantically related. The Semantic relevance has to be kept within the silo, you don’t want to break that and so we talked. I’m glad that Bradley’s doing this training because what better way is there to validate your entity then to go and pay Google for some ads and run them to your stuff because it’s traffic and what’s the first part of ART, Activity. Without activity you’re ship is dead in the water no matter what you do.

I mean, you have to do so much work in order to get it to start getting traffic and what Bradley does, what Bradley’s going to show is how to kick start that traffic, how do get that traffic flowing anywhere you want, basically, so that you can validate. You can get all of the … If you have all of these things in place prior, right? The creation, verification, and then you’re ready to validate and solidify and work into the endgame which is ART. The art of ART, then there’s absolutely no better way because you’re paying the great validator, the great solidifier which is Google.

Fuck Google, by the way, but that’s what you’re doing and there’s nothing better. For anyone who wants to watch those, guys I have the rotary club the [inaudible 00:11:18] valley, it’s in Washington state right? The rotary club of [inaudible 00:11:29] valley is matching any donation, 50 dollars or more, which is incredible. They’re willing to match anyone donating 50 or more will get a match, and then anyone donating 500 now because it used to be 1,000, but 500 gets two hours of my time.

Of course, anyone who’s willing to donate that 5K you get business in the box from me. What I talked about on Monday, we will do all of that so you can just pop that right in, in whatever niche you want. Now, local niche or whatever, affiliate, whatever it is that you want to do and we’ll get that puppy going and it’s … I think you can’t get a better offer than that, so there you go. Thanks everyone who donated. Guys we’re killing it. We have enough to send about 40 kids, well 50 now. 50 kids to school this year, which is fantastic.

Adam: Awesome, awesome. Yeah, thanks to everybody who donated throughout the webinars and then this is a pretty awesome offer so thank you Marco. Alright, I think that’s going to do it as far as what we’ve got to cover. Real quick just want to remind people we do have, ooh, no it is going. I just about stuck my foot in my mouth, but the flash sale I believe is still going on at MGYB.CO for [dunfee 00:12:51] services, we’ve got a deal on press releases as well as syndication networks. I’ll put that on the page. If you’re watching the replay, I’m sorry, but you’re probably not going to get it unless you get to it real quick after Hump Day Hangouts. But with that said, let’s get into it.

Do You Use Vumber Or CallFire And Reroute Those Calls To AnswerConnect Service For Your Lead Gen Properties?

Bradley: Okay, I guess I’ll have to stop looking at other stuff [inaudible 00:13:11] screen. Alright, here we go. Not a whole lot yet. Guys, I hope you start engaging here soon or we could just long wind all these answers. Will’s up first, he says, “Bradley do you use Vumber or Call Fires virtual numbers and then reroute those calls to your answer connect service to provide support to your lead gen properties?”

Yes, Will, that’s what I do and just to be clear I’m using Call Rail right now. I mean, I’ve got dozens and dozens of phone numbers with Call Fire but call rail is a much, much better platform guys. I talked about Vumber too, if you were just doing a handful of numbers or a couple of assets or something like that then Vumber is a pretty cool, it’s a great service actually. But if you’re going to be doing at scale, which is what we’ve been preaching for the last few months ala the local lease pro method, then I would highly recommend that you go with Call Rail as your virtual phone number provider.

There’s a ton of really, really good features in there. Not that you need them all, but I’m just saying there’s a lot of really cool stuff that you can do. They call, call workflows or something like that, is what they’re called where you can set up automations and all kinds of really cool stuff. It’s just like a drag and drop workflow or automation builder. There’s just a ton of really cool things that you can do there. It’s inexpensive. I just really, really like the platform.

But, yes, I’m rerouting, and by the way, I know I mentioned this at some point. But I thought Call Rail had a live answering service too, like AnswerConnect, but they don’t. I researched that because just last week, or it might’ve been two weeks ago now, I had to set up a new account because one of my location clusters has started to generate calls consistently and I had the phone, the virtual phone numbers just forwarded to the contractor directly.

He contacted me, he’s like, “I’m getting hammered with spam calls.” He was getting some valid leads too, but he was also getting hammered by Home Advisor, a ton of marketing companies and all that shit because there was a whole bunch of new GMB assets. They were all funneling, were all redirecting the phone to him. Guys I’ve talked about this many times on Hump Day Hangouts, but I’m telling you if you’re doing lead generation guys, one of the things that’s going to separate you from potential competitors is if you set up … Well, it depends on the industries you’re dealing with.

But I’m talking about for contractors, or really for any industry for that matter, unless if you’re redirecting the phone calls directly to your client or your service provider. Unless they have a receptionist, somebody that’s going to answer the phone, like that’s their job to answer the phone, then I would recommend you don’t send calls directly to them and instead set up a call service, a call center, an answering service. Does that make sense?

The reason why I’m saying that is because, guys, over the years every time I’ve created lead gen assets and then forwarded the calls directly to the provider, in my case contractors, I ended up losing … Well, first it would piss the contractor off because they would have to field all those spam calls which were solicitations from marketing services mainly. That would piss them off, number one, because it would be a shit ton of wasted effort on answering calls.

Number two, a lot of those contractors will, you know my service providers which are contractors, are working contractors. In other words, they may be the business owners but they also work out in the field with their tools where they manage projects or whatever, and so a lot of the times they wouldn’t be available to answer the phone. If they wouldn’t answer the phone, that’s a lots lead, especially if I was charging on a pay per lead basis, or on a revenue share model because calls that don’t get answered are leads that are wasted.

They go out into oblivion and that’s money that I lost. Then, lastly, even if they did answer the phone, like even the contractor answered the phone most of the time, what happens is because of the solicitation calls and the barrage of calls that come in, they would eventually stop answering the call and screen them because of that. What I ended up doing with tree service companies way back in 2012 was I got hooked up with Answer Connect. Answerconnect.com, I get no credit for that guys, it’s just a really good service for me to mention it.

I got hooked up with them and set up a call center and the call center answers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. It’s always available, so every time somebody calls one of my lead gen sites for tree services, it gets answered no matter what time of day or night it is. It’s a live person answering the phone that asks a very shot call script asking what the callers calling about and then some basic contact information, the property address, that kind of stuff. Then they forward that, as soon as the call is done … Well, it depends on the arrangement I have with the particular contractor.

But the vast majority of them, as soon as the call is done, the call gets … The data, the lead data gets forwarded or sent to the contractor via email as well as text message. It goes directly to their phone and I get an email copy of it, so I get an email of the lead and then I set up a Zapier for each client so that it will, because it goes to my email. Zapier will grab, I set up a filter that says, “If an email comes in from this address or with this subject like,” or whatever it is that I use to identify which email it is, “Then send it to a spreadsheet.”

A Google sheet. What I do, is I end up having, like this is all automated, and then once a month, or once every two weeks, or once a week depending on what the frequency is that I go over leads with potential service providers, I’ve got a spread sheet there that shows all of the leads and it’s real simple for me to just open up and look at it. Anyways, like I said, I thought answering … I thought, excuse me, Call Rail had an answering service but it does not. Answer Connect is still my go-to source and I just set up another account, like I said, last week or maybe two weeks ago now for one of our location clusters that’s generating now.

What I’m saying, guys, is that’s going to differentiate you from other lead gen provides. Is, first of all, exclusivity of leads, right, that’s something I’ll always pitch to a potential service provider or a prospect. I say, “Look, any lead that I generate is going to go 100% exclusively to you. That means I’m not selling it to three to five other contractors.” That’s what Home Advisor does guys. Home Advisor sells leads to multiple contractors so it’s a race to the lowest price point.

In other words, all the contractors will show up at a damn residence, sometimes at the same time. I know because I’ve gotten a lot of tree service clients that way, guys. They would literally … A tree company would be pulling into a driveway and another tree company would be pulling out, you know what I mean, because Home Advisor sold that same lead to as many as five different contractors that I’ve been able to verify. All those contractors end up bidding for that job and they lowered their price so it’s a race to see who can bid the lowest to get the job.

That sucks, nobody wants that. Contractors don’t want to have to get in a bidding war with other contractors to get a job. Exclusivity of leads, that’s huge, number one. Number two, if you offer a call center then that means the only time that your service provider is going to get notification is when it’s a valid qualified lead. How do you know it’s qualified? Because it went through the screening process that the answering service provides.

Don’t get me wrong, some of my contractors still get … Like for example, Yelp, absolutely relentless. Yelp will call over, and over, and over again. Three times a week. Different Yelp representatives to the same lead gen asset saying, “We’re the new Yelp rep and we’re just calling to …” It’s always to sell advertising services and so they’ll still leave a message and that message will get transmitted to the service provider and I’ll get a copy of it too.

But I understand that, that’s going to happen from time to time. What I’m saying is, though, the notifications only get sent when the caller has completed the call with the answering service and filled out, answered the required amount of questions, okay. Obviously, like a Yelp call wouldn’t be a billable call, but valid lead data would. That’s huge because that prevents the contractor from having to answer the phone. It prevents spam calls from ever reaching them and it also, it ends up being to where they just get the lead information when it’s convenient for them, they can call back.

Obviously, I recommend they do it as soon as they get the information but that way they can still manage their projects or have their tools on and they’re still getting the lead. Whereas before, the lead would just go off into the ether, into oblivion, and we’d lose the lead. When I implemented that Will, with my tree service stuff, and this was way back when I was still kind of, you know had a fledgling business at the time. I was hesitant at the time to pay for the answer connect service because, I think, when I started out I started with like a 300 dollar a month plan.

Which allows a certain amount of minutes and blah, blah, blah. At the time, when I was new to this, 300 dollars a month was painful for me to give up. I didn’t want to commit to 300. There’s not a contract, it’s just month to month, but I didn’t want to commit to 300 dollars a month when I was barely making money at that time. You know what I’m saying? I mean, I was making money, but still 300 dollars a month was a big commitment for me at the time. But what was interesting is as soon as I implemented that, my revenue went up 30%.

My net revenue went up 30%. That means even after subtracting the expense of the call center, and it was because now a lot of calls that were getting missed before were not being answered and the leads would end up, they got followed up on by my contractors which ended up, a percentage of them closed in the jobs. My revenue went, minus the … And I don’t remember if it was really 300 dollars a month or whatever guys, but whatever the expense was at that time I ended up having a 30% net increase in revenue on a monthly basis because of that.

Ever since then, that has been how I developed my lead gen business. Is I always provide just, or I always set up call centers. When I have assets that start producing consistently. Like, initially I might have the calls directed to directly to a service provider or even to just a voice mail while I’m optimizing or getting the asset to produce. Once it starts producing fairly consistently, then I’ll set up a call center for that so that we have somebody actually answering the phone and then that’s when I’ll pitch that service to monetize it to potential service providers. Okay.

That was a great question and I appreciate you asking that because I get that question a lot, even from more experienced members and our Mastermind. I’m telling you guys, I know a lot of people do lead gen and just forward them directly to the contractor, but trust me, especially if you have multiple locations that you’re all forwarding to the same number, every one of those locations is another spam point. Another solicitation target or magnet, I should say. Another solicitation magnet.

If you’ve got 6, or 8, or 10 locations in a metro area that you’re forwarding all to one company, they’re going to get barraged. Like, literally hammered with solicitation calls guys and you’re going to piss them off. They’re not going to want your services anymore, so again, I would recommend that you do that. Set up, guys, it will make … You can charge a premium for those leads because they’re exclusive, and because they’re all pre-screened leads. The call center being the pre-screener. It was a great question though, Will. I appreciate that question.

How Verify A GMB If It’s An Online Business in a Service Area Market?

Elena, “I’m working on a niche that is considered a service area business. However, we are collecting leads of consumers that are seeking this type of service via a website that captures their personal info, sort of like a lead gen site.” Okay. “When trying to verify the GMB I’m getting pushback from Google saying that this type of business doesn’t meet the guidelines for verification being that this is an online business that doesn’t meet customers at their locations or we visit customers at their place of business. Do you have any recommendations on how to get a GMB verified when the business happens to be an online business and a service area market?”

“According to the LLP or Local Lease Pro training, we only need an NAP and the requirement that this be for a surface area business to get the GMB verified. In other words, wait until the GMB is verified and then pile it up with all the custom optimization we talked about in training.” Okay, I’m not real sure what the … The first question, the primary question is: can you get GMB assets set up for that type of business? I don’t know because I’ve never done that. However, like I’m not sure what … Exactly what type of business you’re talking about so I don’t know.

I’ve never experienced that sort of a warning or restriction, or whatever, from Google because I’ve never tried to set something like that up. However, I may not be correct about this so Marco please feel free to interject, but our GMB verification service could likely get that for you. Am I right Marco?

Marco: Yeah. Well, what do you call it, if it’s available. If it’s in one of the categories, or any of the categories in Google My Business approximates whatever it is that you’re doing, we can get it. We can get it. Except if it’s one of those, here, we just can’t do a 24 hour locksmith. We can’t verify that, period. Some of them are more difficult so you will be charged more for that service simply because it might be just a small area or it’s one of those that Google police’s really closely so it takes a lot more work to get it verified.

But if it’s in there and it’s not one of the categories that’s just absolutely no way that it can be verified, yeah we can verify it.

Bradley: Yeah, so I mean, there you go Elena. Like, honestly, I don’t try to verify my own listings anymore because we have a service that does it. I don’t even know how it’s being done. I honestly don’t care. I just want the result so that’s why I’m suggesting that potentially is because … Now here’s something else you may want to try if you’re trying to do this on your own. I don’t know that this will work either, but perhaps try to create the GMB listing under a different category and then once you have it confirmed, or verified, then update the category to whatever your real category is.

That might be something that you could do. It could just be because of whatever category you’re trying to set it up to create the listing under is a category that Google doesn’t like based upon whatever it is that you’re trying to do. Again, I don’t know that, that’s going to correct it, but what I’m saying is try it. If you’re adamant about doing this on your own then try it and see if you could verify it under a different category type and then once it’s confirmed or verified then go in and change it.

It may, I don’t know that it would. My experience with after verifying a profile is that you can do a lot of changes to it now without it triggering a reverification. Now I’m not, again, don’t quote me on that. I’m not saying that it won’t trigger a reverification, I’m just saying that I have been able to make some pretty drastic changes to GMB assets recently and they didn’t trigger a reverification. That might be something you want to try as well. As a last resort, like I said, contact us. See if we can do it.

How Do You Track And Delegate Tasks For Your Virtual Assistants?

We might be able to get it done for you too. I guess it just depends on what the category is, that your category. Then, once again, we may very well be able to get it under a different category and then just change the category once verified. Okay. Alright, moving on. Frankie. What’s up Frankie? He says, “What’s up guys? Much love from you guys from Miami Beach.” He’s down there where it’s warm. “My question is: when hiring VA’s how do you keep track of their hours? I’m in the midst of hiring VA 40 hour a week and curious of how you guys do the billing and tracking in the event that you don’t keep track of their hours, Time Doctor, et cetera, then how do you make sure they are working full time and not BS-ing half the time?”

Okay, so that’s a really good question Frankie. There are some really good time tracking apps like what you’re talking about. Time Doctor’s one, another one Chris P. one of my partners mentioned. I haven’t used it though, it’s called Hub Staff I think. Hubstaff.com, maybe. You can look it up. But, yeah, something like that is a great way to do it. Especially to start with, guys. Now, I typically don’t monitor my VA’s like that because I work very closely with the VA’s that I train initially because, especially now, because I’m teaching my VA’s more complex procedures so they’re working a lot more in direct contact with me on a daily basis.

At least initially while they’re getting trained. Then, because I’m familiar with the … Because usually, I create all the process docs that I train my … Process docs and training videos that I train my VA’s with. It’s usually directly from me and so I understand about what, how long it takes to complete the task that I’m giving to them because I’ve done it myself in order to create the training. Obviously I give them leeway up front while they’re going through the training and learning the procedure.

I give them leeway, in other words I allow them a lot more time than what it takes me. But then after training, which for us Semantic mastery, whenever we hire a VA full time they go on salary. But we pay them 75% of their salary for the 30 days because they’re in training. Then, provided that they’ve … And that’s also a probationary period. At the end of that 30 days, if they performed well and I was satisfied with their work and that kind of stuff, then they go up to their full salary.

Then typically by then I just assign them tasks and if the tasks, if the tasks aren’t being completed in a timely manner then I’ll question what they’re doing and if they can’t give me a good reason or a believable reason as to what’s taking them so long, like present me with some problems they’re running into. Process issues or software, or application issues, or whatever the case may be. If they can’t present me with something that’s believable and a valid excuse, then that’s when they go on probation again, or they’ll potentially at that point I would add them to a time tracking app.

Or they’d just flat out get fired if I catch them in a lie, or whatever. Yeah, that happens from time to time, but personally, for the teams that I manage, I typically do not track using time tracking software. I did when I first got started guys but I’ve gotten really proficient at managing VA’s so I don’t really see that, for me personally, necessary. But, again, I do recommend especially if you’re just starting to outsource guys that you use something like a time tracking app. Time Doctor’s a good one.

Marco: I can tell you how it’s being done in MGYB.CO because we’ve got a bunch of them. It’s not mandatory for them to be on from 10:00 p.m. to midnight their time, which makes it convene in eastern time, in my time, so that we can communicate. We need to know the tasks, what they’re up to, what they’re doing, what they’ve done. Any problems, anything because they’re constantly going to MGYB fulfilling. There’s a lot of client involvement, Rosale needs to know, Justin needs to know, Chris needs.

There’s a whole lot of communication that takes place that Rob and I, or Rob or I need to see. Then we also have a project manager, she’s the one that’s just hands-on, just moving all of the pieces around so that now Rob and I only get the higher level stuff that can’t be solved by our project manager. When they come on, they go on 90 days probation and they have to know that they’re going to get, as Bradley says, 75% while they’re training.

After the first 30 days they go into their full salary, but they’re still on probation.

Bradley: Yes, correct.

Marco: They’re being tracked. We have Work Snaps, it’s called, worksnaps.net which works really well because they have to be there to click and take that screen grab. They have to be there, they have to be present at the computer, and then we’ll know what it is that they’re doing. Now, after the probationary period what happens is then they go on a split shift. Which means six hours they have to work whenever they want, as long as they clear it with the project manager.

But they have to work the six hours. Once we know that we can trust them and we can give them enough work and you’re right about that. You have to give them enough work that you know it’s going to fill up their time, and so we know we’re doing that. We have the project manager that’s on top of everything during the day in the Philippines especially. She’s giving them assignments and if there’s anything going on then we have the reports. I mean, we just have a whole system in place so that we track whether our VA’s now are being as productive as possible.

Now here’s another thing. If you have a rockstar that’s producing whatever it is that you need produced and you’re making a whole bunch of money with that VA’s help, then is it work tracking that VA? I would say, “Hell no.” I mean, by all means, do whatever the fuck you want to do and keep making me money. Where you run into issues is if you’re not getting the work you expect completed. If you are and it’s just superstar work and that’s your rockstar, that’s your future team manager, team lead, project lead.

Whatever the hell you want to make that VA, that’s where that comes from because then they know your business, they know what you’re doing, and they can train other people for you. That’s how we do it at MGYB. We always promote from within whenever possible and pay them well Frankie. Give them raises. Praise them, praise them. Say, “You guys rock. You guys are the best. You’re doing great work,” because I mean, who … Think about how badly many of these people are treated.

Just a kind word is going to get them to just totally loyal and just totally working for you the way that they’re supposed to.

Bradley: Yeah, I just want to … I’m pulling something up just quickly because I’m not going to share … I mean, I’m not going to read this and stuff to you guys but, damnit, come on. This is one of my VA’s Hazel here. She’s on my GMB team and here you see this long post she just sent, guys. That was just a couple of weeks ago now and anyways, just the Readers Digest version of that post that she sent me in Slack was, she was just saying how appreciative she is of the fact that she gets to work from home.

She’s in the Philippines and she lives in a rural town, and in that post she was talking about how appreciative she is of the fact that she’s able to work from home and provide for her family. She’s been working with me for three years now. Again, I’ve only got two people on my GMB asset building team right now. Joe and Hazel, and they’re both rockstars. Anyway Hazel posted that to tell me how appreciative she is of the fact that she gets to work from home because most of the jobs, economic opportunities in the Philippines are centered around the cities.

That makes sense, there’s a lot of that in the United States too. Most of the jobs and everything are available in the cities and in the rural areas there’s very little work and so there’s a lot of poverty. There’s not very much opportunities. She said she was basically asking, she’s a very ambitious girl, which is great. I love it when a VA has ambitions to climb the ladder because think about it. We’ve got a lot of VA’s that all they want to do is show up to work every day, be told what to do, and go home and collect their checks.

That’s perfectly fine, those are very valuable assets as well. But every now and then you’ll get a VA that wants to grow their business, and wants to expand, increase their knowledge and take on more responsibility. What she did is she posted and said, “Hey, look, I want to create my own company in the Philippines and offer a virtual staffing service.” She wants to create a company and provide job opportunities to people that live in her rural town because they can work remotely, and because of Semantic Mastery and all the stuff we’re building with MGYB and everything that we do for our own businesses guys we’re turning into processes.

Outsourcing it, so first of all, we don’t have to do it anymore, but then second of all so that we can also provide you guys with the same services that we use for our own businesses. She basically reached out and said, “Look, I’d like to create my own company and hire virtual assistants right here in my local town to where they show up to an office space.” She’s going to start it in her own. She’s got an extra room in her home. She’s going to start it there and then as it grows she wants to move into an office space.

She was saying because we can provide … Because of her job with us, Semantic mastery, she knows that there’s opportunities for other people in her town that don’t have much opportunity to also work. She says she’s had a lot of family and friends ask her like, “Hey, is there any opportunity to work the company that yo work for?” That’s why she reached out to say, “Is there any opportunity for expansion, if so, I can provide the workers for you.” I was so proud of her and I sent her a message and we ended up having a Skype … Excuse me, a Slack chat appointment or meeting earlier this week on Monday to discuss.

It worked out. I’m so proud of her because she’s not only been really good VA anyways, but because she wants to grow and she wants to provide opportunity to people in her area. For us as a company, it’s a great … It’s very promising because I found that me personally managing VA’s other than when I’m working with them really closely like I am right now. When it comes to managing a team, that’s more difficult to do remotely in my opinion.

At least for me it is. I’m not the best manager in the world, okay, but having a team that she can manage in person. Be in the same room with them to help with any issues, to help with training, all that stuff to also just monitor their activity, that’s a much better way to manage a team. Especially, at least, initially in my opinion. She’ll be able to handle the management aspects that I would typically be doing as remotely. She’ll be able to do that in person.

Anyways, we’re pursuing it with her and I think it’s just really, really great. That’s what, guys when you have VA’s that are good VA’s and you’re going to have some that are good, and you’re going to have some that are bad. The ones that are good, make sure, do exactly what Marco just mentioned and that’s treat them well. Give them raises, praise them often. Encourage them because that will help them to become better workers for you and it will improve the quality of their life too.

Absolutely do that, guys. We’ve gotten, I mean, we’ve got VA’s that have been working for us for years. I mean, I’ve got stories I told at the POFU Live event about VA’s and some of the messages or letters that I’ve received from VA’s that are talking about how much it’s improved their quality of life and blah, blah, blah. The opportunities it’s provided for their family and that kind of stuff, guys. We really are doing a service. All of us. We’re all entrepreneurs, so we’re providing a service and enriching other people’s lives when we do that, when we offer jobs.

Marco: Talking about a VA getting to POFU, [Dedia 00:41:41] attended POFU Live.

Bradley: Yup. Dedia’s our link building manager and has been for … Well, he doesn’t work for us anymore. He’s not on salary, he’s a contractor. He owns his own company now, which is amazing. He’s one of my favorite stories of all time. He came to work for me. He had a full time job and he was working as a freelancer on UpWork as part time, like moonlighting, doing link building. We’re talking five or six years ago now. I hired him part time, and then over time my workload increased.

I kept giving him more and more work and eventually he approached me and asked me, “Hey, would you hire me full time so I can quit my job and work from home?” At the time, I wasn’t ready to pay a link builder full time but I did it anyways because I had a really good feeling about Dedia. He was just great to work with and blah, blah, blah. I did. I said, “Okay, yeah.” Even though, like I said, it was painful for me at the time, I gave him a full time job and within just a couple of years when we opened up Semantic Mastery and then we started selling links on our own first.

Then we went to search space and so on and so forth, he ended up growing his own company and bought a house, and not even on salary with us anymore because he’s a contractor and his business is thriving. He came to the POFU Live event all the way from India. I mean, that’s crazy guys. Like, it’s just amazing, and some of the stories that he’s told about over the years is just great. You guys, it really is important. As business owners we offer opportunities. We hire people first to help us, right, but at the same time it’s to help them and to help their families and everybody around them as well.

It’s a great question Frankie, thank you for that. Quint [inaudible 00:43:23] says, “Good day gents, I noticed GMB they’re encouraging … Excuse me. They’re encouraging you to run ads. When you run ads can you make the GMB the landing page?” Yes you can, however I would recommend that do not use the ads service that they prompt you with inside of GMB because that’s the Google My Business, or the Google Ad express service which gives you like, literally, no control over the ads.

Google does everything for you and I don’t recommend that. Now, I haven’t tested that. Again, the Google Ads platform has improved leaps and bounds over the last year, year and a half. The Google express ads may very well be a lot better, but several years ago when I tested the Google express ads they sucked, they were terrible. I could manage an ads campaign manually way better and get much, much better results than I could from the Google Ads express platform.

I just, again, I haven’t tested any of that in at least two years now, guys. It may be very much better but I highly recommend that you would manually manage your campaign instead of letting Google do everything for you. Google will spend your money rather quickly if you let them. Okay. But, yeah, you can use the GMB website as your landing page. Guys, you can use a damn Google doc as the desk …

Marco: No, no, no, no, no, no.

Bradley: What do you mean, “No, no, no?”

Marco: Don’t give that away.

Bradley: Why not?

Marco: Because that’s in [inaudible 00:44:52] academy reloading.

Bradley: So what? You can use a YouTube link, you can use any link for an ad basically, as long as it meets the compliance regulations. Which is actually funny because in that case there wouldn’t even be a privacy policy. What I’m saying is, Google doesn’t really care what you’re directing traffic to as long as it has the recommended or whatever, the required stuff. When it’s the landing page, like a self-hosted landing page, they want contact information, privacy policy, terms of service. That kind of stuff.

At least links that lead to that and a way to contact. But you can go to a YouTube video, for example. You can go to a Google doc. A GMB website, a maps listing. You can even add your just GMB map share URL in there. Okay. Keep in mind though, if you’re doing that, the only reason why I wouldn’t want to do that guys is because, and I’ve thought about this, too, recently is you can’t add remarketing to a GMB website, for example.

You can’t add a remarketing pixel or even the Google Maps page itself. The profile itself, you can’t add so it’s very difficult, and how do you track conversions on that too? Think about that. I mean, obviously if you have a tracking phone number, if somebody calls you could always look at your call reports and that would be considered a conversion but it’s not going to track as a conversion. Well, I guess if you added the number at like through call only ads and stuff you can probably do that.

What I’m saying is, think about, there’s reasons why I don’t recommend running adds directly to a GMB website. Not like search ads, I mean, because it’s awfully expensive. YouTube ads, yes. Display ads, yes, because you can get those a lot cheaper. Remarketing ads even, but for like straight cold traffic search ads, I would not recommend pointing them directly to a GMB asset because that’s, there’s no way to really track that and you could end up spending a lot of money on it. It’s just too expensive to do it in my opinion.

From search ads, I mean. Okay. But yes, you can absolutely link to that. Alright Jim’s up, he says, “Hello gents, I just realized today’s the 16th.” Marco did you answer this one for him?

Marco: Sorry, I was muted.

Adam: Yeah, I think the beginning of the webinar answered that so if you missed it just check out the very beginning and check out Marco’s link right below your comments here. Actually right above it.

Bradley: There you go. Okay, “Where should I subscribe to the emails again?” Okay, there you go. You answered that. Wow, we’re almost out of time. Well, we can wrap it up early guys. Elena says, “Do you have a valid discount coupon that I could use for GMB verification then? Thank you.” I’m not sure what you’re asking for Elena. If we don’t have a sale going on right now, then no.

Marco: No, we don’t have a coupon right now.

Are You Offering VA Connections?

Bradley: Well, then no. Sorry, Elena. We may run a sale again soon and when we do you can wait until then if you’d like. Okay, John’s up. He says, “Are you guys offering VA connections?” Ooh. John, in the Mastermind possibly. Adam, you want to chat about that?

Adam: Yeah, definitely. We brought that up and we were definitely looking. We hooked up a couple people who were interested and I guess now’s a good time to see if anybody listening, you’ve heard us talk about VA’s. Most of the people who subscribe and listen to Semantic Mastery understand that, that’s a great way to offload a lot of your work so you can grow in scale. We can answer questions about how to use VA’s effectively how to manage them and make sure you get the good ones. We also, of course, offer training on how to do that at more of an advanced level.

We realize that some people going through that process of finding those good VA’s and connecting with them is a problem. It can take a lot of time and since we do it at scale we talked to some Mastermind members about that. They took us up on the offer and so I’m just curious if anyone is watching or you’re checking this out on the replay, let us know, because if there’s enough people out there who think this is a valuable service will be willing to set this up where we’ll even crank up our volume a little bit, do the hard work for you on the back end, and then do something like connect you with two VA’s you can interview and either take both or take the best one for some set fee.

Now probably, I’ve got this written down somewhere just for my own time, but that would save you at least several hours of work and depending on what tools you use potentially a couple hundred bucks.

Bradley: Yeah. Yeah, and I’ve been doing Mastermind calls for the last two weeks now. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays I do two half an hour calls per day with just Mastermind members that have scheduled with me. One of, almost unanimously. I’m not going to call anybody out by name. But almost unanimously, everybody I’ve spoken to said that one of the things they know they need to do more of is outsource. Many people have been, have avoided it because they have either been burned by hiring shitty outsources in the past, or they just don’t want to put all the time and effort into setting up hiring funnels and going through that whole process of screening applicants and everything else.

Which is what we teach in Outsource Kingpin, it’s the exact same method that we use, guys. We’ve put the time in to do all that though and I understand why people don’t want to do it. My only poin to that is if you do stuff in your business over, and over, and over again all the time, that takes time like client reports. Whatever, repetitive tasks in your business that you do over, and over, and over again but you don’t want to put the work in to hiring the outsourcer, it doesn’t make sense to me because you have to repeat that process again. Over and over again every single time.

Again, I’m just going to use client reports as an example and, guys, I outsource stuff for years and I still did my own client reports until January of 2018, so a year ago is when I finally outsourced my client reports. What I’m saying is the reason why is because in order to generate the client reports the way that I had always done it, I knew it was going to take me two or three days of, literally, two to three days of recording the process for how to do it because I’ve got different types of reports go to different clients.

That may be my own fault, I probably should’ve made everything universal or templatized, or whatever. But, it is what it is, and so I had to spend a couple days and I never wanted to do it. It took me a day to do client reports every month. It would take me a full day to do client reports every single month, and sometimes depending on if I was distracted throughout that process, it would take me a day and a half because other things would come up or whatever. A day to a day and a half every single month and I just, I hated it.

But I never wanted to take two to three days to complete all the process training to train somebody else to do it. Well finally I got smart and I finally did that, and last year in January I outsourced that and, yeah, it was painful because it took me almost three days to complete all the processes but now I get, every single month, I get an entire day back. Well, let me rephrase that. Now I have a VA that generates all the reports, consolidates them into one sheet text file, and then she sends it to me. Then I have all the reports and everything available to me right there in the notepad file and I can just copy and paste into an email to my clients.

Then I always inject my commentary. Sometimes it’s via video email where I’m going over the reports and I talk about where progress was made, where I found new opportunities. Perhaps where some things went wrong, that kind of stuff. I often send an email, a video email along with the reports or I’ll just send some text. Like, “Here’s your local rank report. Here’s key takeaways. Here’s your citation report, key takeaways. Analytics report, search console report.” Those kind of things. Again, something like that guys, it takes forever to create a process to do it and I understand why people avoid it.

I’ve done that stuff. Like, “I don’t feel like doing a process. Well, it’d just be quicker for me to do it. Just be quicker if I did it.” But the problem is that time comes around again a month later or a week later, two weeks. Whatever it is. It comes around again and then you’re back in the same boat again. You have to do it again and, “I could develop a process or I could just get it done now and it’d be much faster if I just do it myself.” You guys get what I’m saying.

That’s why, again, the Mastermind calls almost unanimously everybody that I’ve talked to have said, “I know I need to do more outsourcing but I just don’t have the time,” or, “I don’t want to put in the work,” and blah, blah, blah. We realized that there was an opportunity there for VA matching service. In other words, we do all the application screening and all that stuff, put them through a series of tests to make sure that they can follow instructions and all that stuff.

Finally, the ones that end all the way through our funnel system, those are good candidates that are ready to be interviewed. That’s something that, again, speaking with the Mastermind members that I’ve been speaking with on the phone over the last week and a half now, or almost two weeks, is like I’ve said. I’ve told them about that and I think there’s a real opportunity for VA matching service just within our own Mastermind but potentially externally, too, for our other audience members. Very cool. It’s a great offer … Adam, I’m pretty sure that’s something we’ll end up proceeding with.

Alright, “Did I miss Adam talking about having VA’s trained that are ready to be hired, please say yes.” Well not necessarily trained yet, although we are talking about doing that. Right now we were just talking about the VA matching service. Like prescreening and all that kind of stuff to where that we know they’re qualified and then it would be up to you to interview and then train them and all that stuff. However, there’s potentially, we are discussing maybe in the future also providing fully done for you trained VA’s.

In other words, we hire them, we put them through our training processes and then make them available to you once they’re fully trained. Literally turn key, they’re ready to go to work. If that makes sense. That’s something that we’re talking about but that’s not anything that’s going to happen right away, guys, I can tell you that.

How Do You An LED Controllable Lights As A Drummer-Influencer In Charleston, South Carolina?

Alright, Quinten says, “Hey, love guys. I’m a drummer/singer living in Charleston, South Carolina. I just got sponsored by a drum light company. Basically, put they specialize in LED controllable lights. The company is called Galaxy Lights. They hired me as an influencer for their brand.”

That’s awesome man. That’s really cool. “I’m going to do drum videos promoting their lights. What’s my best angle to get their product seen? Should I run ads for drummers specifically? Is there a better way?” That’s a really good question.

Hernan: Love that.

Bradley: Hernan you’re the paid traffic expert, what do you say?

Hernan: Yeah, I’m rereading the question. LED controllable lights, as an influencer. Yeah, like what you could do. The fact that you are doing this, it makes a lot of sense because there’s a niche that it’s like really, really sexy. You know what I’m saying? You can actually put out a lot of valuable content. You can put out a lot of valuable content like how to use those LED lights and whatnot, and maybe just film yourself drumming and whatnot, playing the drums and doing that type of stuff. Then you can retarget those people with an offer.

That’s easily done by, with Facebook for instance.

Bradley: You can do it on YouTube too.

Hernan: Yeah, you can do this on YouTube, too. 100%, you can do video SEO like try to rank your YouTube videos but I’ve been doing it on Facebook a lot and it works really well. In terms of getting their product out, if you want to put some money behind your videos that would be faster. If not, you can just try to rank them on YouTube. But, yeah, in terms of the actual targeting that you could do, for instance, on Facebook. You can target specific, like you can target specific brands that are for drummers only.

For instance you can target Yamaha, for instance as a drums brand. But the problem with that, is that a lot of people will like Yamaha. You know what I’m saying? You can go out there and try to find these boutique brands like Tama or CPN or Paste. Those type of brands that would be related to drummers only and people will like … People that like those brands will be drummers. You know what I’m saying?

Cymbals type of brands and whatnot, then Bradley’s doing something that is great, which is drumming, drummers magazines and forums, and all that stuff. That will give you some idea of what to target, who to target on your videos and what kind of chatting is around that. That’s what I would do.

Bradley: Yeah, and that’s why I pulled this up because like this is a website here and just go to Google and search drummer blogs. That’s what I just did, and here’s one from Feed Spot which is the top 50 drum and percussionist websites out there. Right there’s a placement list. In other words, if you understand Google Ads … Well, I’m saying Google Ads.

Hernan’s the Facebook guy. I don’t even run Facebook ads, I don’t know how. But I do Google Ads and that would be, right there is a placement list. In other words, just scrape all those domains and this just 50 here but I’m sure you can do some research and build a really good placement list of drumming publications, and websites, and blogs and things like that, that you can specifically place your ads on those.

That’s called a placement list. You could also do audience targeting if you can find, there probably is. I haven’t done anything in the music niche, but there probably is a sub category within the musician targeting categories that for drummers and percussionist. You could use Google’s audience targeting that way. You could also do topic targeting by adding, well selecting a topic and then adding keywords as an additional layer.

That’s something else that you could do, and then YouTube marketing. I know for sure that YouTube has got a lot of music type videos and stuff like that on that so you could actually target via placements just like you would here. Create a placement list for YouTube videos that are known videos with a lot of traffic around drumming and percussionism and stuff like that.

Also, you could do topic targeting and audience targeting there as well as remarketing and all that stuff. Yeah, there’s a lot of options there for paid traffic guys. A lot of options.

Hernan: Yup.

Bradley: Alright guys we need to wrap it up. Okay, cool no more questions. Beautiful. Right on time too. 5:00 on the money. That happens rarely, so everybody we appreciate you all being here. Mastermind webinar next week, not this week. Anything else we got to do this week guys? We’re good.

Adam: Sorry, if you’re not a part of the Facebook group. Go join, we’re going to have a great webinar coming up on Monday with Catherine Jones of CF design school and she’s gong to be talking about building seven figure funnels.

Bradley: Awesome, sweet. Cool. Alright everybody, we’ll see you all next week. Thanks everyone.

Marco: Bye everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 219 posted first on http://beyondvapepage.blogspot.com

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 219

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Click on the video above to watch Episode 219 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Adam: Welcome everybody to Hump Day Hangouts, the Semantic Mastery public Q&A. This is episode 219. 219 episodes. Today is the 16th of January, 2019. I am gong to go down really quick say hi to everybody before we get started with all of the good stuff. On my left hand side I’ve got Chris. Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Been good. Happy to be here. Exciting times as always good to be on a Wednesday. How are you doing?

Adam: Not bad. You know, something you talked about at POFU Live, and something I just scheduled had to do with planning. I’m going to ask you a little honest spot question, but do you do yearly planning, number one and number two, when do you do the yearly planning?

Chris: Well, I rarely do yearly planning. Pretty much as we all do in a [inaudible 00:00:56] day plans. So I pretty much do those things when the [inaudible 00:01:02] iteration or if you want to call it that way that might not be on the first January. It is whenever it is for me.

Adam: Sounds good. Alright.

Chris: I have yearly plan still, and five year plans as well. It’s just like a break down to pretty much what’s important in the moment, what needs to be down right now and course correcting on a weekly basis.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. Alright. I was curious and I figured other people might want to know how it’s done on the inside. Just figuring that. Hernan, how are you doing, man?

Hernan: I’m doing good, actually. I don’t plan shit. I’m just kidding. We do. Yeah, we do a lot of planing, actually. I do the same with Chris. I do three months sprints, and a yearly plan a yearly idea of rough objectives and then three months. Nobody asked me, but I’m telling you guys three months.

Adam: We’re going to edit this out.

Bradley: We all have to acknowledge his hair cut.

Adam: Yeah. Look at that. He’s looking … You’re looking pretty smooth.

Hernan: Yeah, I look like a person now, like a business …

Bradley: Believe it or not that you look younger, man.

Chris: You’ve got a second one, respect.

Bradley: Hernan is the youngest of us, and he looks even younger now so he’s making me feel old.

Hernan: Sorry man, let me click …

Adam: That’s alright Bradley, we’re showing white in our beards so I think [crosstalk 00:02:26]. Marco, how are you doing man?

Marco: Man, what’s up. A warm hello from 82 degree and sunny Costa Rica. Fuck all of you.

Bradley: Yeah, this is what I got for you buddy. That’s for you.

Marco: It’s so beautiful, come join me. It’s so good.

Adam: Man, Bradly. Last but not least, are you guys getting slammed? I thought I heard something about the north east getting pummeled.

Bradley: We got hammered a few days ago, we still got snow on the ground. We got, here in Culpepper, probably about six inches maybe. Which was pretty good. Believe it or not my daughter’s 13 and I have never had a chance to play in the snow with her. This was the first time, I had her this past weekend, and we got the snow on Saturday so Sunday it was great because it was the first time in 13 years, or ever, that I’ve been able to play in the snow with my daughter.

It just so happened that every time we had ever had snow before wasn’t a weekend that I had her so this was, it was a lot of fun. We got to run around and do snowball fights and make snow angels and sledding and all that stuff. It was a lot of fun.

Hernan: That’s awesome.

Adam: That’s really cool, man. Well, before we get into it. We’ve got a few things we want to share with everybody. First of all if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, thanks again for watching. Whether you’re watching us live, whether you’re checking it out on YouTube and watching the replay. In case you don’t know you can always go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask ahead of time and watch the replay.

We know whether it’s time zones or you’ve got client meetings or you’re working, whatever it is, you might not be able to be here live but that shouldn’t stop you from asking questions and getting answers. A follow on to that, a lot of people ask, “Well, okay, I’ve been watching your videos. Where should I start with Semantic Mastery, what should I do?” The place to always start is the battle plan.

Okay, just go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com, repeatable processes. It’s SEO, it’s digital marketing and it’s the way to get started and have that firm foundation so that everything you build up is on that solid foundation. If you’re already passed that point and you’re looking for the peer community, you’re looking for advanced strategies, you’re looking for networking then that’s why you would come join the Mastermind.

That you can find at mastermind.semanticmastery.com. Also, again if you’re watching on YouTube, hit the subscribe button. Obviously, you’ll see these videos and stay up to date with anything else new we put out there. Real quick, speaking of the Mastermind I believe we had some training coming up, right Bradley? I forget what it was exactly you’re going to be covering coming up in the next week or two.

Bradley: Yeah, next week on Thursday for our Mastermind webinar I’m going to be doing some training on using Google Ads. Specifically, or primarily, we’re going to be … I’m going to be walking through a set up of how, I’ve been talking about this on Hump Day Hangouts for a year and a half now at least. But how I use Google Ads for YouTube to rank videos, local videos in search, in Google search.

But it’s more than just that. Recently, I mean I still do that all the time anyways for helping videos to rank, but I’ve also found that Google Ads platform, including the display network and YouTube ads have gotten a lot better. They’re targeting options have gotten so much better in the last year, it’s incredible and because of that I found that when I was … Before what I was just doing was setting up ad campaigns specifically to generate local IP, or local views to a video within a specific geographic targeting area as well as, if possible, finding a good, what’s called an in market audience or life event audience.

Which are audiences that Google has determined that the users within those audiences are in the market for a particular product or service. If you can find a category that would fit then that traffic ends up not being just good for helping the video to rank, but it ends up being like relevant traffic that ends up at, sometimes it’s not a lot, but at least with the campaigns I set up. But some of those end up … Forgive me for a minute, I’ve got a call coming in. Stand by guys.

That traffic ends up coming in … Ends up being possibly good traffic for leads. In other words, you can use these campaigns for lead generation. You can also use these campaigns for branding. If you’re doing any remarketing, which is really powerful and I’m going to touch on that as well next week. Then you can build a remarketing list that way and also remarket to people that have interacted with either your video or if they click through to your website or a landing page, or whatever. You could remarket to those people, so those are people that took action and actually clicked through.

I’m going to be walking through all that and then I’m also going to be talking about how to set up remarketing campaigns in the Google display network because I’ve been doing a lot of remarketing stuff and display ads recently for a client of mine that does a lot of ad spend in Google and I found that just recently the Google display network is so much better than it used to be. It used to be a real pain in the ass to set up display ads because you had to get a graphic designer to design the banner, whatever banner it was, and then have that banner created in multiple sizes.

Leaderboard and 350 by 250 rectangle. All those, the standard sizes and if you wanted to split test ads you had to get the graphic designer to create different ad sets for you. It was a real pain in the ass and that’s why I stopped doing display network ads for a long time. But within the last year or so, and I don’t know when exactly, but Google has changed to where now you create what’s called responsive display ads and all you do is upload images, there’s a square version and a rectangular version and specific dimensions that you need to upload or within a range of specific dimensions.

Anyways, you just upload a square image and a rectangular image, it’s pretty much the same image, and then logos. Rectangular and square versions of logos and then you add up to five headlines, a long headline, one long headlines, and then up to five descriptions. What Google does is it will just grab one of the images, a version of the logo, and one of the headlines and descriptions and create an ad out of that. What it does, is overtime, it will automatically optimize the ads based upon the images, the headlines, and the descriptions and which combination produces the most click-throughs and that’s what it will start to show more.

Again, it just became super easy to set up ads in the display network. What used to be a pain in the ass and because of that I want to do some specific training on that for remarketing as well as for cold traffic. Basically in two weeks from tomorrow, or excuse me a week from tomorrow, I’m going to be doing a full two … We usually go two and a half or three hours on Mastermind, training on specifically how to use Google Ads. Just YouTube ads and the display network ads.

Adam: Nice. Nice, and speaking of webinars, Marco you just had a webinar didn’t you?

Marco: Yeah, I’m glad that Bradley’s doing this training because we talked about entities on Monday, right? I mean, almost everyone stayed until the end but we talked about how you create them, how to verify them, validate, solidify and then we talked about the art of ART. Which I’m always talking about. Activity, Relevance, Trust and authority. Relevance is just you make sure that your content stays relevant and that you do, you write your silos.

They have to be Semantically related. The Semantic relevance has to be kept within the silo, you don’t want to break that and so we talked. I’m glad that Bradley’s doing this training because what better way is there to validate your entity then to go and pay Google for some ads and run them to your stuff because it’s traffic and what’s the first part of ART, Activity. Without activity you’re ship is dead in the water no matter what you do.

I mean, you have to do so much work in order to get it to start getting traffic and what Bradley does, what Bradley’s going to show is how to kick start that traffic, how do get that traffic flowing anywhere you want, basically, so that you can validate. You can get all of the … If you have all of these things in place prior, right? The creation, verification, and then you’re ready to validate and solidify and work into the endgame which is ART. The art of ART, then there’s absolutely no better way because you’re paying the great validator, the great solidifier which is Google.

Fuck Google, by the way, but that’s what you’re doing and there’s nothing better. For anyone who wants to watch those, guys I have the rotary club the [inaudible 00:11:18] valley, it’s in Washington state right? The rotary club of [inaudible 00:11:29] valley is matching any donation, 50 dollars or more, which is incredible. They’re willing to match anyone donating 50 or more will get a match, and then anyone donating 500 now because it used to be 1,000, but 500 gets two hours of my time.

Of course, anyone who’s willing to donate that 5K you get business in the box from me. What I talked about on Monday, we will do all of that so you can just pop that right in, in whatever niche you want. Now, local niche or whatever, affiliate, whatever it is that you want to do and we’ll get that puppy going and it’s … I think you can’t get a better offer than that, so there you go. Thanks everyone who donated. Guys we’re killing it. We have enough to send about 40 kids, well 50 now. 50 kids to school this year, which is fantastic.

Adam: Awesome, awesome. Yeah, thanks to everybody who donated throughout the webinars and then this is a pretty awesome offer so thank you Marco. Alright, I think that’s going to do it as far as what we’ve got to cover. Real quick just want to remind people we do have, ooh, no it is going. I just about stuck my foot in my mouth, but the flash sale I believe is still going on at MGYB.CO for [dunfee 00:12:51] services, we’ve got a deal on press releases as well as syndication networks. I’ll put that on the page. If you’re watching the replay, I’m sorry, but you’re probably not going to get it unless you get to it real quick after Hump Day Hangouts. But with that said, let’s get into it.

Do You Use Vumber Or CallFire And Reroute Those Calls To AnswerConnect Service For Your Lead Gen Properties?

Bradley: Okay, I guess I’ll have to stop looking at other stuff [inaudible 00:13:11] screen. Alright, here we go. Not a whole lot yet. Guys, I hope you start engaging here soon or we could just long wind all these answers. Will’s up first, he says, “Bradley do you use Vumber or Call Fires virtual numbers and then reroute those calls to your answer connect service to provide support to your lead gen properties?”

Yes, Will, that’s what I do and just to be clear I’m using Call Rail right now. I mean, I’ve got dozens and dozens of phone numbers with Call Fire but call rail is a much, much better platform guys. I talked about Vumber too, if you were just doing a handful of numbers or a couple of assets or something like that then Vumber is a pretty cool, it’s a great service actually. But if you’re going to be doing at scale, which is what we’ve been preaching for the last few months ala the local lease pro method, then I would highly recommend that you go with Call Rail as your virtual phone number provider.

There’s a ton of really, really good features in there. Not that you need them all, but I’m just saying there’s a lot of really cool stuff that you can do. They call, call workflows or something like that, is what they’re called where you can set up automations and all kinds of really cool stuff. It’s just like a drag and drop workflow or automation builder. There’s just a ton of really cool things that you can do there. It’s inexpensive. I just really, really like the platform.

But, yes, I’m rerouting, and by the way, I know I mentioned this at some point. But I thought Call Rail had a live answering service too, like AnswerConnect, but they don’t. I researched that because just last week, or it might’ve been two weeks ago now, I had to set up a new account because one of my location clusters has started to generate calls consistently and I had the phone, the virtual phone numbers just forwarded to the contractor directly.

He contacted me, he’s like, “I’m getting hammered with spam calls.” He was getting some valid leads too, but he was also getting hammered by Home Advisor, a ton of marketing companies and all that shit because there was a whole bunch of new GMB assets. They were all funneling, were all redirecting the phone to him. Guys I’ve talked about this many times on Hump Day Hangouts, but I’m telling you if you’re doing lead generation guys, one of the things that’s going to separate you from potential competitors is if you set up … Well, it depends on the industries you’re dealing with.

But I’m talking about for contractors, or really for any industry for that matter, unless if you’re redirecting the phone calls directly to your client or your service provider. Unless they have a receptionist, somebody that’s going to answer the phone, like that’s their job to answer the phone, then I would recommend you don’t send calls directly to them and instead set up a call service, a call center, an answering service. Does that make sense?

The reason why I’m saying that is because, guys, over the years every time I’ve created lead gen assets and then forwarded the calls directly to the provider, in my case contractors, I ended up losing … Well, first it would piss the contractor off because they would have to field all those spam calls which were solicitations from marketing services mainly. That would piss them off, number one, because it would be a shit ton of wasted effort on answering calls.

Number two, a lot of those contractors will, you know my service providers which are contractors, are working contractors. In other words, they may be the business owners but they also work out in the field with their tools where they manage projects or whatever, and so a lot of the times they wouldn’t be available to answer the phone. If they wouldn’t answer the phone, that’s a lots lead, especially if I was charging on a pay per lead basis, or on a revenue share model because calls that don’t get answered are leads that are wasted.

They go out into oblivion and that’s money that I lost. Then, lastly, even if they did answer the phone, like even the contractor answered the phone most of the time, what happens is because of the solicitation calls and the barrage of calls that come in, they would eventually stop answering the call and screen them because of that. What I ended up doing with tree service companies way back in 2012 was I got hooked up with Answer Connect. Answerconnect.com, I get no credit for that guys, it’s just a really good service for me to mention it.

I got hooked up with them and set up a call center and the call center answers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. It’s always available, so every time somebody calls one of my lead gen sites for tree services, it gets answered no matter what time of day or night it is. It’s a live person answering the phone that asks a very shot call script asking what the callers calling about and then some basic contact information, the property address, that kind of stuff. Then they forward that, as soon as the call is done … Well, it depends on the arrangement I have with the particular contractor.

But the vast majority of them, as soon as the call is done, the call gets … The data, the lead data gets forwarded or sent to the contractor via email as well as text message. It goes directly to their phone and I get an email copy of it, so I get an email of the lead and then I set up a Zapier for each client so that it will, because it goes to my email. Zapier will grab, I set up a filter that says, “If an email comes in from this address or with this subject like,” or whatever it is that I use to identify which email it is, “Then send it to a spreadsheet.”

A Google sheet. What I do, is I end up having, like this is all automated, and then once a month, or once every two weeks, or once a week depending on what the frequency is that I go over leads with potential service providers, I’ve got a spread sheet there that shows all of the leads and it’s real simple for me to just open up and look at it. Anyways, like I said, I thought answering … I thought, excuse me, Call Rail had an answering service but it does not. Answer Connect is still my go-to source and I just set up another account, like I said, last week or maybe two weeks ago now for one of our location clusters that’s generating now.

What I’m saying, guys, is that’s going to differentiate you from other lead gen provides. Is, first of all, exclusivity of leads, right, that’s something I’ll always pitch to a potential service provider or a prospect. I say, “Look, any lead that I generate is going to go 100% exclusively to you. That means I’m not selling it to three to five other contractors.” That’s what Home Advisor does guys. Home Advisor sells leads to multiple contractors so it’s a race to the lowest price point.

In other words, all the contractors will show up at a damn residence, sometimes at the same time. I know because I’ve gotten a lot of tree service clients that way, guys. They would literally … A tree company would be pulling into a driveway and another tree company would be pulling out, you know what I mean, because Home Advisor sold that same lead to as many as five different contractors that I’ve been able to verify. All those contractors end up bidding for that job and they lowered their price so it’s a race to see who can bid the lowest to get the job.

That sucks, nobody wants that. Contractors don’t want to have to get in a bidding war with other contractors to get a job. Exclusivity of leads, that’s huge, number one. Number two, if you offer a call center then that means the only time that your service provider is going to get notification is when it’s a valid qualified lead. How do you know it’s qualified? Because it went through the screening process that the answering service provides.

Don’t get me wrong, some of my contractors still get … Like for example, Yelp, absolutely relentless. Yelp will call over, and over, and over again. Three times a week. Different Yelp representatives to the same lead gen asset saying, “We’re the new Yelp rep and we’re just calling to …” It’s always to sell advertising services and so they’ll still leave a message and that message will get transmitted to the service provider and I’ll get a copy of it too.

But I understand that, that’s going to happen from time to time. What I’m saying is, though, the notifications only get sent when the caller has completed the call with the answering service and filled out, answered the required amount of questions, okay. Obviously, like a Yelp call wouldn’t be a billable call, but valid lead data would. That’s huge because that prevents the contractor from having to answer the phone. It prevents spam calls from ever reaching them and it also, it ends up being to where they just get the lead information when it’s convenient for them, they can call back.

Obviously, I recommend they do it as soon as they get the information but that way they can still manage their projects or have their tools on and they’re still getting the lead. Whereas before, the lead would just go off into the ether, into oblivion, and we’d lose the lead. When I implemented that Will, with my tree service stuff, and this was way back when I was still kind of, you know had a fledgling business at the time. I was hesitant at the time to pay for the answer connect service because, I think, when I started out I started with like a 300 dollar a month plan.

Which allows a certain amount of minutes and blah, blah, blah. At the time, when I was new to this, 300 dollars a month was painful for me to give up. I didn’t want to commit to 300. There’s not a contract, it’s just month to month, but I didn’t want to commit to 300 dollars a month when I was barely making money at that time. You know what I’m saying? I mean, I was making money, but still 300 dollars a month was a big commitment for me at the time. But what was interesting is as soon as I implemented that, my revenue went up 30%.

My net revenue went up 30%. That means even after subtracting the expense of the call center, and it was because now a lot of calls that were getting missed before were not being answered and the leads would end up, they got followed up on by my contractors which ended up, a percentage of them closed in the jobs. My revenue went, minus the … And I don’t remember if it was really 300 dollars a month or whatever guys, but whatever the expense was at that time I ended up having a 30% net increase in revenue on a monthly basis because of that.

Ever since then, that has been how I developed my lead gen business. Is I always provide just, or I always set up call centers. When I have assets that start producing consistently. Like, initially I might have the calls directed to directly to a service provider or even to just a voice mail while I’m optimizing or getting the asset to produce. Once it starts producing fairly consistently, then I’ll set up a call center for that so that we have somebody actually answering the phone and then that’s when I’ll pitch that service to monetize it to potential service providers. Okay.

That was a great question and I appreciate you asking that because I get that question a lot, even from more experienced members and our Mastermind. I’m telling you guys, I know a lot of people do lead gen and just forward them directly to the contractor, but trust me, especially if you have multiple locations that you’re all forwarding to the same number, every one of those locations is another spam point. Another solicitation target or magnet, I should say. Another solicitation magnet.

If you’ve got 6, or 8, or 10 locations in a metro area that you’re forwarding all to one company, they’re going to get barraged. Like, literally hammered with solicitation calls guys and you’re going to piss them off. They’re not going to want your services anymore, so again, I would recommend that you do that. Set up, guys, it will make … You can charge a premium for those leads because they’re exclusive, and because they’re all pre-screened leads. The call center being the pre-screener. It was a great question though, Will. I appreciate that question.

How Verify A GMB If It’s An Online Business in a Service Area Market?

Elena, “I’m working on a niche that is considered a service area business. However, we are collecting leads of consumers that are seeking this type of service via a website that captures their personal info, sort of like a lead gen site.” Okay. “When trying to verify the GMB I’m getting pushback from Google saying that this type of business doesn’t meet the guidelines for verification being that this is an online business that doesn’t meet customers at their locations or we visit customers at their place of business. Do you have any recommendations on how to get a GMB verified when the business happens to be an online business and a service area market?”

“According to the LLP or Local Lease Pro training, we only need an NAP and the requirement that this be for a surface area business to get the GMB verified. In other words, wait until the GMB is verified and then pile it up with all the custom optimization we talked about in training.” Okay, I’m not real sure what the … The first question, the primary question is: can you get GMB assets set up for that type of business? I don’t know because I’ve never done that. However, like I’m not sure what … Exactly what type of business you’re talking about so I don’t know.

I’ve never experienced that sort of a warning or restriction, or whatever, from Google because I’ve never tried to set something like that up. However, I may not be correct about this so Marco please feel free to interject, but our GMB verification service could likely get that for you. Am I right Marco?

Marco: Yeah. Well, what do you call it, if it’s available. If it’s in one of the categories, or any of the categories in Google My Business approximates whatever it is that you’re doing, we can get it. We can get it. Except if it’s one of those, here, we just can’t do a 24 hour locksmith. We can’t verify that, period. Some of them are more difficult so you will be charged more for that service simply because it might be just a small area or it’s one of those that Google police’s really closely so it takes a lot more work to get it verified.

But if it’s in there and it’s not one of the categories that’s just absolutely no way that it can be verified, yeah we can verify it.

Bradley: Yeah, so I mean, there you go Elena. Like, honestly, I don’t try to verify my own listings anymore because we have a service that does it. I don’t even know how it’s being done. I honestly don’t care. I just want the result so that’s why I’m suggesting that potentially is because … Now here’s something else you may want to try if you’re trying to do this on your own. I don’t know that this will work either, but perhaps try to create the GMB listing under a different category and then once you have it confirmed, or verified, then update the category to whatever your real category is.

That might be something that you could do. It could just be because of whatever category you’re trying to set it up to create the listing under is a category that Google doesn’t like based upon whatever it is that you’re trying to do. Again, I don’t know that, that’s going to correct it, but what I’m saying is try it. If you’re adamant about doing this on your own then try it and see if you could verify it under a different category type and then once it’s confirmed or verified then go in and change it.

It may, I don’t know that it would. My experience with after verifying a profile is that you can do a lot of changes to it now without it triggering a reverification. Now I’m not, again, don’t quote me on that. I’m not saying that it won’t trigger a reverification, I’m just saying that I have been able to make some pretty drastic changes to GMB assets recently and they didn’t trigger a reverification. That might be something you want to try as well. As a last resort, like I said, contact us. See if we can do it.

How Do You Track And Delegate Tasks For Your Virtual Assistants?

We might be able to get it done for you too. I guess it just depends on what the category is, that your category. Then, once again, we may very well be able to get it under a different category and then just change the category once verified. Okay. Alright, moving on. Frankie. What’s up Frankie? He says, “What’s up guys? Much love from you guys from Miami Beach.” He’s down there where it’s warm. “My question is: when hiring VA’s how do you keep track of their hours? I’m in the midst of hiring VA 40 hour a week and curious of how you guys do the billing and tracking in the event that you don’t keep track of their hours, Time Doctor, et cetera, then how do you make sure they are working full time and not BS-ing half the time?”

Okay, so that’s a really good question Frankie. There are some really good time tracking apps like what you’re talking about. Time Doctor’s one, another one Chris P. one of my partners mentioned. I haven’t used it though, it’s called Hub Staff I think. Hubstaff.com, maybe. You can look it up. But, yeah, something like that is a great way to do it. Especially to start with, guys. Now, I typically don’t monitor my VA’s like that because I work very closely with the VA’s that I train initially because, especially now, because I’m teaching my VA’s more complex procedures so they’re working a lot more in direct contact with me on a daily basis.

At least initially while they’re getting trained. Then, because I’m familiar with the … Because usually, I create all the process docs that I train my … Process docs and training videos that I train my VA’s with. It’s usually directly from me and so I understand about what, how long it takes to complete the task that I’m giving to them because I’ve done it myself in order to create the training. Obviously I give them leeway up front while they’re going through the training and learning the procedure.

I give them leeway, in other words I allow them a lot more time than what it takes me. But then after training, which for us Semantic mastery, whenever we hire a VA full time they go on salary. But we pay them 75% of their salary for the 30 days because they’re in training. Then, provided that they’ve … And that’s also a probationary period. At the end of that 30 days, if they performed well and I was satisfied with their work and that kind of stuff, then they go up to their full salary.

Then typically by then I just assign them tasks and if the tasks, if the tasks aren’t being completed in a timely manner then I’ll question what they’re doing and if they can’t give me a good reason or a believable reason as to what’s taking them so long, like present me with some problems they’re running into. Process issues or software, or application issues, or whatever the case may be. If they can’t present me with something that’s believable and a valid excuse, then that’s when they go on probation again, or they’ll potentially at that point I would add them to a time tracking app.

Or they’d just flat out get fired if I catch them in a lie, or whatever. Yeah, that happens from time to time, but personally, for the teams that I manage, I typically do not track using time tracking software. I did when I first got started guys but I’ve gotten really proficient at managing VA’s so I don’t really see that, for me personally, necessary. But, again, I do recommend especially if you’re just starting to outsource guys that you use something like a time tracking app. Time Doctor’s a good one.

Marco: I can tell you how it’s being done in MGYB.CO because we’ve got a bunch of them. It’s not mandatory for them to be on from 10:00 p.m. to midnight their time, which makes it convene in eastern time, in my time, so that we can communicate. We need to know the tasks, what they’re up to, what they’re doing, what they’ve done. Any problems, anything because they’re constantly going to MGYB fulfilling. There’s a lot of client involvement, Rosale needs to know, Justin needs to know, Chris needs.

There’s a whole lot of communication that takes place that Rob and I, or Rob or I need to see. Then we also have a project manager, she’s the one that’s just hands-on, just moving all of the pieces around so that now Rob and I only get the higher level stuff that can’t be solved by our project manager. When they come on, they go on 90 days probation and they have to know that they’re going to get, as Bradley says, 75% while they’re training.

After the first 30 days they go into their full salary, but they’re still on probation.

Bradley: Yes, correct.

Marco: They’re being tracked. We have Work Snaps, it’s called, worksnaps.net which works really well because they have to be there to click and take that screen grab. They have to be there, they have to be present at the computer, and then we’ll know what it is that they’re doing. Now, after the probationary period what happens is then they go on a split shift. Which means six hours they have to work whenever they want, as long as they clear it with the project manager.

But they have to work the six hours. Once we know that we can trust them and we can give them enough work and you’re right about that. You have to give them enough work that you know it’s going to fill up their time, and so we know we’re doing that. We have the project manager that’s on top of everything during the day in the Philippines especially. She’s giving them assignments and if there’s anything going on then we have the reports. I mean, we just have a whole system in place so that we track whether our VA’s now are being as productive as possible.

Now here’s another thing. If you have a rockstar that’s producing whatever it is that you need produced and you’re making a whole bunch of money with that VA’s help, then is it work tracking that VA? I would say, “Hell no.” I mean, by all means, do whatever the fuck you want to do and keep making me money. Where you run into issues is if you’re not getting the work you expect completed. If you are and it’s just superstar work and that’s your rockstar, that’s your future team manager, team lead, project lead.

Whatever the hell you want to make that VA, that’s where that comes from because then they know your business, they know what you’re doing, and they can train other people for you. That’s how we do it at MGYB. We always promote from within whenever possible and pay them well Frankie. Give them raises. Praise them, praise them. Say, “You guys rock. You guys are the best. You’re doing great work,” because I mean, who … Think about how badly many of these people are treated.

Just a kind word is going to get them to just totally loyal and just totally working for you the way that they’re supposed to.

Bradley: Yeah, I just want to … I’m pulling something up just quickly because I’m not going to share … I mean, I’m not going to read this and stuff to you guys but, damnit, come on. This is one of my VA’s Hazel here. She’s on my GMB team and here you see this long post she just sent, guys. That was just a couple of weeks ago now and anyways, just the Readers Digest version of that post that she sent me in Slack was, she was just saying how appreciative she is of the fact that she gets to work from home.

She’s in the Philippines and she lives in a rural town, and in that post she was talking about how appreciative she is of the fact that she’s able to work from home and provide for her family. She’s been working with me for three years now. Again, I’ve only got two people on my GMB asset building team right now. Joe and Hazel, and they’re both rockstars. Anyway Hazel posted that to tell me how appreciative she is of the fact that she gets to work from home because most of the jobs, economic opportunities in the Philippines are centered around the cities.

That makes sense, there’s a lot of that in the United States too. Most of the jobs and everything are available in the cities and in the rural areas there’s very little work and so there’s a lot of poverty. There’s not very much opportunities. She said she was basically asking, she’s a very ambitious girl, which is great. I love it when a VA has ambitions to climb the ladder because think about it. We’ve got a lot of VA’s that all they want to do is show up to work every day, be told what to do, and go home and collect their checks.

That’s perfectly fine, those are very valuable assets as well. But every now and then you’ll get a VA that wants to grow their business, and wants to expand, increase their knowledge and take on more responsibility. What she did is she posted and said, “Hey, look, I want to create my own company in the Philippines and offer a virtual staffing service.” She wants to create a company and provide job opportunities to people that live in her rural town because they can work remotely, and because of Semantic Mastery and all the stuff we’re building with MGYB and everything that we do for our own businesses guys we’re turning into processes.

Outsourcing it, so first of all, we don’t have to do it anymore, but then second of all so that we can also provide you guys with the same services that we use for our own businesses. She basically reached out and said, “Look, I’d like to create my own company and hire virtual assistants right here in my local town to where they show up to an office space.” She’s going to start it in her own. She’s got an extra room in her home. She’s going to start it there and then as it grows she wants to move into an office space.

She was saying because we can provide … Because of her job with us, Semantic mastery, she knows that there’s opportunities for other people in her town that don’t have much opportunity to also work. She says she’s had a lot of family and friends ask her like, “Hey, is there any opportunity to work the company that yo work for?” That’s why she reached out to say, “Is there any opportunity for expansion, if so, I can provide the workers for you.” I was so proud of her and I sent her a message and we ended up having a Skype … Excuse me, a Slack chat appointment or meeting earlier this week on Monday to discuss.

It worked out. I’m so proud of her because she’s not only been really good VA anyways, but because she wants to grow and she wants to provide opportunity to people in her area. For us as a company, it’s a great … It’s very promising because I found that me personally managing VA’s other than when I’m working with them really closely like I am right now. When it comes to managing a team, that’s more difficult to do remotely in my opinion.

At least for me it is. I’m not the best manager in the world, okay, but having a team that she can manage in person. Be in the same room with them to help with any issues, to help with training, all that stuff to also just monitor their activity, that’s a much better way to manage a team. Especially, at least, initially in my opinion. She’ll be able to handle the management aspects that I would typically be doing as remotely. She’ll be able to do that in person.

Anyways, we’re pursuing it with her and I think it’s just really, really great. That’s what, guys when you have VA’s that are good VA’s and you’re going to have some that are good, and you’re going to have some that are bad. The ones that are good, make sure, do exactly what Marco just mentioned and that’s treat them well. Give them raises, praise them often. Encourage them because that will help them to become better workers for you and it will improve the quality of their life too.

Absolutely do that, guys. We’ve gotten, I mean, we’ve got VA’s that have been working for us for years. I mean, I’ve got stories I told at the POFU Live event about VA’s and some of the messages or letters that I’ve received from VA’s that are talking about how much it’s improved their quality of life and blah, blah, blah. The opportunities it’s provided for their family and that kind of stuff, guys. We really are doing a service. All of us. We’re all entrepreneurs, so we’re providing a service and enriching other people’s lives when we do that, when we offer jobs.

Marco: Talking about a VA getting to POFU, [Dedia 00:41:41] attended POFU Live.

Bradley: Yup. Dedia’s our link building manager and has been for … Well, he doesn’t work for us anymore. He’s not on salary, he’s a contractor. He owns his own company now, which is amazing. He’s one of my favorite stories of all time. He came to work for me. He had a full time job and he was working as a freelancer on UpWork as part time, like moonlighting, doing link building. We’re talking five or six years ago now. I hired him part time, and then over time my workload increased.

I kept giving him more and more work and eventually he approached me and asked me, “Hey, would you hire me full time so I can quit my job and work from home?” At the time, I wasn’t ready to pay a link builder full time but I did it anyways because I had a really good feeling about Dedia. He was just great to work with and blah, blah, blah. I did. I said, “Okay, yeah.” Even though, like I said, it was painful for me at the time, I gave him a full time job and within just a couple of years when we opened up Semantic Mastery and then we started selling links on our own first.

Then we went to search space and so on and so forth, he ended up growing his own company and bought a house, and not even on salary with us anymore because he’s a contractor and his business is thriving. He came to the POFU Live event all the way from India. I mean, that’s crazy guys. Like, it’s just amazing, and some of the stories that he’s told about over the years is just great. You guys, it really is important. As business owners we offer opportunities. We hire people first to help us, right, but at the same time it’s to help them and to help their families and everybody around them as well.

It’s a great question Frankie, thank you for that. Quint [inaudible 00:43:23] says, “Good day gents, I noticed GMB they’re encouraging … Excuse me. They’re encouraging you to run ads. When you run ads can you make the GMB the landing page?” Yes you can, however I would recommend that do not use the ads service that they prompt you with inside of GMB because that’s the Google My Business, or the Google Ad express service which gives you like, literally, no control over the ads.

Google does everything for you and I don’t recommend that. Now, I haven’t tested that. Again, the Google Ads platform has improved leaps and bounds over the last year, year and a half. The Google express ads may very well be a lot better, but several years ago when I tested the Google express ads they sucked, they were terrible. I could manage an ads campaign manually way better and get much, much better results than I could from the Google Ads express platform.

I just, again, I haven’t tested any of that in at least two years now, guys. It may be very much better but I highly recommend that you would manually manage your campaign instead of letting Google do everything for you. Google will spend your money rather quickly if you let them. Okay. But, yeah, you can use the GMB website as your landing page. Guys, you can use a damn Google doc as the desk …

Marco: No, no, no, no, no, no.

Bradley: What do you mean, “No, no, no?”

Marco: Don’t give that away.

Bradley: Why not?

Marco: Because that’s in [inaudible 00:44:52] academy reloading.

Bradley: So what? You can use a YouTube link, you can use any link for an ad basically, as long as it meets the compliance regulations. Which is actually funny because in that case there wouldn’t even be a privacy policy. What I’m saying is, Google doesn’t really care what you’re directing traffic to as long as it has the recommended or whatever, the required stuff. When it’s the landing page, like a self-hosted landing page, they want contact information, privacy policy, terms of service. That kind of stuff.

At least links that lead to that and a way to contact. But you can go to a YouTube video, for example. You can go to a Google doc. A GMB website, a maps listing. You can even add your just GMB map share URL in there. Okay. Keep in mind though, if you’re doing that, the only reason why I wouldn’t want to do that guys is because, and I’ve thought about this, too, recently is you can’t add remarketing to a GMB website, for example.

You can’t add a remarketing pixel or even the Google Maps page itself. The profile itself, you can’t add so it’s very difficult, and how do you track conversions on that too? Think about that. I mean, obviously if you have a tracking phone number, if somebody calls you could always look at your call reports and that would be considered a conversion but it’s not going to track as a conversion. Well, I guess if you added the number at like through call only ads and stuff you can probably do that.

What I’m saying is, think about, there’s reasons why I don’t recommend running adds directly to a GMB website. Not like search ads, I mean, because it’s awfully expensive. YouTube ads, yes. Display ads, yes, because you can get those a lot cheaper. Remarketing ads even, but for like straight cold traffic search ads, I would not recommend pointing them directly to a GMB asset because that’s, there’s no way to really track that and you could end up spending a lot of money on it. It’s just too expensive to do it in my opinion.

From search ads, I mean. Okay. But yes, you can absolutely link to that. Alright Jim’s up, he says, “Hello gents, I just realized today’s the 16th.” Marco did you answer this one for him?

Marco: Sorry, I was muted.

Adam: Yeah, I think the beginning of the webinar answered that so if you missed it just check out the very beginning and check out Marco’s link right below your comments here. Actually right above it.

Bradley: There you go. Okay, “Where should I subscribe to the emails again?” Okay, there you go. You answered that. Wow, we’re almost out of time. Well, we can wrap it up early guys. Elena says, “Do you have a valid discount coupon that I could use for GMB verification then? Thank you.” I’m not sure what you’re asking for Elena. If we don’t have a sale going on right now, then no.

Marco: No, we don’t have a coupon right now.

Are You Offering VA Connections?

Bradley: Well, then no. Sorry, Elena. We may run a sale again soon and when we do you can wait until then if you’d like. Okay, John’s up. He says, “Are you guys offering VA connections?” Ooh. John, in the Mastermind possibly. Adam, you want to chat about that?

Adam: Yeah, definitely. We brought that up and we were definitely looking. We hooked up a couple people who were interested and I guess now’s a good time to see if anybody listening, you’ve heard us talk about VA’s. Most of the people who subscribe and listen to Semantic Mastery understand that, that’s a great way to offload a lot of your work so you can grow in scale. We can answer questions about how to use VA’s effectively how to manage them and make sure you get the good ones. We also, of course, offer training on how to do that at more of an advanced level.

We realize that some people going through that process of finding those good VA’s and connecting with them is a problem. It can take a lot of time and since we do it at scale we talked to some Mastermind members about that. They took us up on the offer and so I’m just curious if anyone is watching or you’re checking this out on the replay, let us know, because if there’s enough people out there who think this is a valuable service will be willing to set this up where we’ll even crank up our volume a little bit, do the hard work for you on the back end, and then do something like connect you with two VA’s you can interview and either take both or take the best one for some set fee.

Now probably, I’ve got this written down somewhere just for my own time, but that would save you at least several hours of work and depending on what tools you use potentially a couple hundred bucks.

Bradley: Yeah. Yeah, and I’ve been doing Mastermind calls for the last two weeks now. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays I do two half an hour calls per day with just Mastermind members that have scheduled with me. One of, almost unanimously. I’m not going to call anybody out by name. But almost unanimously, everybody I’ve spoken to said that one of the things they know they need to do more of is outsource. Many people have been, have avoided it because they have either been burned by hiring shitty outsources in the past, or they just don’t want to put all the time and effort into setting up hiring funnels and going through that whole process of screening applicants and everything else.

Which is what we teach in Outsource Kingpin, it’s the exact same method that we use, guys. We’ve put the time in to do all that though and I understand why people don’t want to do it. My only poin to that is if you do stuff in your business over, and over, and over again all the time, that takes time like client reports. Whatever, repetitive tasks in your business that you do over, and over, and over again but you don’t want to put the work in to hiring the outsourcer, it doesn’t make sense to me because you have to repeat that process again. Over and over again every single time.

Again, I’m just going to use client reports as an example and, guys, I outsource stuff for years and I still did my own client reports until January of 2018, so a year ago is when I finally outsourced my client reports. What I’m saying is the reason why is because in order to generate the client reports the way that I had always done it, I knew it was going to take me two or three days of, literally, two to three days of recording the process for how to do it because I’ve got different types of reports go to different clients.

That may be my own fault, I probably should’ve made everything universal or templatized, or whatever. But, it is what it is, and so I had to spend a couple days and I never wanted to do it. It took me a day to do client reports every month. It would take me a full day to do client reports every single month, and sometimes depending on if I was distracted throughout that process, it would take me a day and a half because other things would come up or whatever. A day to a day and a half every single month and I just, I hated it.

But I never wanted to take two to three days to complete all the process training to train somebody else to do it. Well finally I got smart and I finally did that, and last year in January I outsourced that and, yeah, it was painful because it took me almost three days to complete all the processes but now I get, every single month, I get an entire day back. Well, let me rephrase that. Now I have a VA that generates all the reports, consolidates them into one sheet text file, and then she sends it to me. Then I have all the reports and everything available to me right there in the notepad file and I can just copy and paste into an email to my clients.

Then I always inject my commentary. Sometimes it’s via video email where I’m going over the reports and I talk about where progress was made, where I found new opportunities. Perhaps where some things went wrong, that kind of stuff. I often send an email, a video email along with the reports or I’ll just send some text. Like, “Here’s your local rank report. Here’s key takeaways. Here’s your citation report, key takeaways. Analytics report, search console report.” Those kind of things. Again, something like that guys, it takes forever to create a process to do it and I understand why people avoid it.

I’ve done that stuff. Like, “I don’t feel like doing a process. Well, it’d just be quicker for me to do it. Just be quicker if I did it.” But the problem is that time comes around again a month later or a week later, two weeks. Whatever it is. It comes around again and then you’re back in the same boat again. You have to do it again and, “I could develop a process or I could just get it done now and it’d be much faster if I just do it myself.” You guys get what I’m saying.

That’s why, again, the Mastermind calls almost unanimously everybody that I’ve talked to have said, “I know I need to do more outsourcing but I just don’t have the time,” or, “I don’t want to put in the work,” and blah, blah, blah. We realized that there was an opportunity there for VA matching service. In other words, we do all the application screening and all that stuff, put them through a series of tests to make sure that they can follow instructions and all that stuff.

Finally, the ones that end all the way through our funnel system, those are good candidates that are ready to be interviewed. That’s something that, again, speaking with the Mastermind members that I’ve been speaking with on the phone over the last week and a half now, or almost two weeks, is like I’ve said. I’ve told them about that and I think there’s a real opportunity for VA matching service just within our own Mastermind but potentially externally, too, for our other audience members. Very cool. It’s a great offer … Adam, I’m pretty sure that’s something we’ll end up proceeding with.

Alright, “Did I miss Adam talking about having VA’s trained that are ready to be hired, please say yes.” Well not necessarily trained yet, although we are talking about doing that. Right now we were just talking about the VA matching service. Like prescreening and all that kind of stuff to where that we know they’re qualified and then it would be up to you to interview and then train them and all that stuff. However, there’s potentially, we are discussing maybe in the future also providing fully done for you trained VA’s.

In other words, we hire them, we put them through our training processes and then make them available to you once they’re fully trained. Literally turn key, they’re ready to go to work. If that makes sense. That’s something that we’re talking about but that’s not anything that’s going to happen right away, guys, I can tell you that.

How Do You An LED Controllable Lights As A Drummer-Influencer In Charleston, South Carolina?

Alright, Quinten says, “Hey, love guys. I’m a drummer/singer living in Charleston, South Carolina. I just got sponsored by a drum light company. Basically, put they specialize in LED controllable lights. The company is called Galaxy Lights. They hired me as an influencer for their brand.”

That’s awesome man. That’s really cool. “I’m going to do drum videos promoting their lights. What’s my best angle to get their product seen? Should I run ads for drummers specifically? Is there a better way?” That’s a really good question.

Hernan: Love that.

Bradley: Hernan you’re the paid traffic expert, what do you say?

Hernan: Yeah, I’m rereading the question. LED controllable lights, as an influencer. Yeah, like what you could do. The fact that you are doing this, it makes a lot of sense because there’s a niche that it’s like really, really sexy. You know what I’m saying? You can actually put out a lot of valuable content. You can put out a lot of valuable content like how to use those LED lights and whatnot, and maybe just film yourself drumming and whatnot, playing the drums and doing that type of stuff. Then you can retarget those people with an offer.

That’s easily done by, with Facebook for instance.

Bradley: You can do it on YouTube too.

Hernan: Yeah, you can do this on YouTube, too. 100%, you can do video SEO like try to rank your YouTube videos but I’ve been doing it on Facebook a lot and it works really well. In terms of getting their product out, if you want to put some money behind your videos that would be faster. If not, you can just try to rank them on YouTube. But, yeah, in terms of the actual targeting that you could do, for instance, on Facebook. You can target specific, like you can target specific brands that are for drummers only.

For instance you can target Yamaha, for instance as a drums brand. But the problem with that, is that a lot of people will like Yamaha. You know what I’m saying? You can go out there and try to find these boutique brands like Tama or CPN or Paste. Those type of brands that would be related to drummers only and people will like … People that like those brands will be drummers. You know what I’m saying?

Cymbals type of brands and whatnot, then Bradley’s doing something that is great, which is drumming, drummers magazines and forums, and all that stuff. That will give you some idea of what to target, who to target on your videos and what kind of chatting is around that. That’s what I would do.

Bradley: Yeah, and that’s why I pulled this up because like this is a website here and just go to Google and search drummer blogs. That’s what I just did, and here’s one from Feed Spot which is the top 50 drum and percussionist websites out there. Right there’s a placement list. In other words, if you understand Google Ads … Well, I’m saying Google Ads.

Hernan’s the Facebook guy. I don’t even run Facebook ads, I don’t know how. But I do Google Ads and that would be, right there is a placement list. In other words, just scrape all those domains and this just 50 here but I’m sure you can do some research and build a really good placement list of drumming publications, and websites, and blogs and things like that, that you can specifically place your ads on those.

That’s called a placement list. You could also do audience targeting if you can find, there probably is. I haven’t done anything in the music niche, but there probably is a sub category within the musician targeting categories that for drummers and percussionist. You could use Google’s audience targeting that way. You could also do topic targeting by adding, well selecting a topic and then adding keywords as an additional layer.

That’s something else that you could do, and then YouTube marketing. I know for sure that YouTube has got a lot of music type videos and stuff like that on that so you could actually target via placements just like you would here. Create a placement list for YouTube videos that are known videos with a lot of traffic around drumming and percussionism and stuff like that.

Also, you could do topic targeting and audience targeting there as well as remarketing and all that stuff. Yeah, there’s a lot of options there for paid traffic guys. A lot of options.

Hernan: Yup.

Bradley: Alright guys we need to wrap it up. Okay, cool no more questions. Beautiful. Right on time too. 5:00 on the money. That happens rarely, so everybody we appreciate you all being here. Mastermind webinar next week, not this week. Anything else we got to do this week guys? We’re good.

Adam: Sorry, if you’re not a part of the Facebook group. Go join, we’re going to have a great webinar coming up on Monday with Catherine Jones of CF design school and she’s gong to be talking about building seven figure funnels.

Bradley: Awesome, sweet. Cool. Alright everybody, we’ll see you all next week. Thanks everyone.

Marco: Bye everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 219 posted first on your-t1-blog-url

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Day 3:End of the week, won't be calling this weekend. Very excited for the improvements I'm going to make to my system and about the changes I've made in just 2 days.Previous posts:Day 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/6x35up/calling_businesses_for_the_first_time_web/Day 2:https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/6xbsu7/calling_businesses_for_the_first_time_web/SCRIPT:Hi, I found you on the yellowpages, and noticed you dont have a website. I work with omnius web development in Toronto, and am wondering why you don't think you need a website.CHANGED TO THIS BECAUSE OF CALLS MADE TODAY:Hi, I found you on the yellowpages, and noticed you dont have a website. I work with omnius web development in Toronto, and was wondering if you've ever thought about getting a website done.HAVE SO MANY CHANGES I WILL MAKE FOR NEXT WEEK AFTER ALL THE FEEDBACK I GOTCall 17:solar-had a website but took it down-and if you want to sell me your service we dont need it thank you-can i ask you a quick questionhangs upCall 18:solar-receptionist said the manager was in a meeting, but to email himEMAILCall 19:solar-we have a website (even though on yellowpages it didnt show)-I stumbled and didnt sound confident, when I call I have to be completely focused (I was doing other stuff at the time) and give it my full energy. This is also in order to give a good impression for the follow up email)Call 20:nothing good(all these solar companies weren't serious at all)Call 21:market garden-idk I just work here-oh ok, you're not the owner-no hes in and out, idk where he is-ok, can you give me his email-sure give me one secondhangs up(I guess I need to sound more authoritative. I may be young but I have a deep voice, I just need to use tone and pitch better)Call 22:gardenjust asked if the owner of manager was there and said no (i think he was because she left when I asked for his email and came back and gave it to me- so she must have asked him if it was ok)EMAILCall 23:garden market-actually had a website but had to call them so sort of made this up on the spot- said "I found you on the yellowpages, I'm the owner of Omnius Web Development based in Toronto, and I was wondering if you wanted to talk about potential imporvements made to your site" (looking back on it what I said was terrible, but I'll make a script with a good hook for companies with websites this weekend)-I have a lot of customers in my store now so just send me an emailEMAILCall 24:welding-Yeah we were thinking of getting a website done, but it doesn't seem to be that important nowadays-Well actually I see websites as online business cards, so if you have a way to drive traffic to your site, like with fb ads or google adwords, then the visitors you get will judge you based on how professional your website looks. A website that looks professional and has organized information builds trust in potential customers, and lets you charge more per customer, and will probably get you new customers also.-Ok yeah-So let me get your email and ill send some information overgives email-So where are you located*I give him a street in toronto where I used to live (in my dorm haha)-Ok good cause we want a professional company-Perfect-How much do you charge btwAbout 1000 but that all depends on your requirements (fucked up here by starting with price because I was really winging it- should have had a script) But ill send info on this through the email and we'll find out how much it will cost you (my wording was more awkward than that. It was awkward the whole time, I really need more practice, and some sort of script- it doesn't have to be word for word from start to finish, but I need great answers to common questions)lesson: MAKE A SCRIPT FOR WHAT TO SAY ONCE THEY SHOW INTERESTCall 25:Walk in medical centre*Sounded like a receptionist so I said:-I'm guessing you're the receptionist-yes-well I'm calling because I noticed you guys don't have a website and I'm actually part of Omnius Web Development in Toronto-im sorry what are you calling for-web design (thhrew me off guard with that question, maybe the call quality was bad or maybe I just need to really explicitly say I'm calling to design your website haha)-Oh well we don't need one-How do you know you don't need one-Well my office manager is here, and we got calls from web design companies often-Wow ok (also threw me off guard- is web design becoming too saturated, or was she just saying that to get me off the line? Either way, those other web design companies aren't as persisitnat as I'm going to be. Read the Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes guys!)-Yeah is that all (i could tell she was pissed but shes used to being courteous)-Well actually I have a question, about how many calls do you get per month from web design companies (Sitting down to call is hard for me to do, but once I'm in the call, and especially once I get a no, I enjoy myself)-That is an irrelevant question-well OkCall 26:solarLeft a voicemail for the hell of it. Stumbling and rambled on for a minute. If I do leave voicemails I should just say something to get their attention- like a headline, and then tell them to text me back saying they got the message (very easy to send a text back, and I might not answer some phone calls)Call 27:tanning studio-guessing you're the receptionist-I'm sorry couldnt hear you(I think it might be my call quality that's bad- I'll call some friends and ask them if I sound okay. If it is a problem on my end I'll definitely have to get that fixed)-I'm guessing you're not the owner or maanger-Oh yeah I'm just an employee-Ok well i found you guys on the yellowpages and noticed you don't have a website, and i'm actually a part of Omnius Web Development in Toronto and was wondering who I could talk to about that (bit awkward- I guess I need a script for receptionists too)-Managers in from 10-6 tomorrow-Ok perfect ill call then-ok thanksEnded early (only 10 calls) because I didn't have any calls to businesses that aren't ideal (like dry cleaners) to make that didn't have websites. Figured searching for more (outside of the list I already had) isn't really worth it- I'll be back next week calling businesses that are perfect for me (my Dream 100).Lessons learned:-Say I'm calling local competitors in intro, especially to receptionists-Focus on education based selling, use surprising facts and numbers which they can't argue with. Then when they retreat from the logical arguement and enter emotional territory, I'll have my objection-handling script to take them by the hand and show them its a great investment-Call places twice, if they dont answer, probably not worth it-But call in the morning, between 9-11, as those are the times that people feel fresh and open-Will only call the right business for me starting next week (dream 100)Lessons learned from previous posts or millionaire fastlane thread:Speak slowlyDevise a hook with facts and numbersMUST DO:Make email template to send to businesses once I get their emails. I have a script for calls, so I need one with emails. Luckily I've been studying copywriting (bought a book by ogilvy among others)Fix call qualityDevise a hook with facts and numbers- make that the focus of the scriptMake script for receptionists, and one for those with websites. As well as common objectionsQuestions:Is it best to sound like a customer at the very beginning so they don't tune you out right away? I've been saying, I found you on the yellowpages and noticed you don't have a website (took out the "is that correct"), and then I hit them with, I'm actually part of Omnius Web Development in Toronto...