Featured Money Maker Of The Month:
Learn the techniques I used to make over $4,000,000 in affiliate commissions! Check out my Free Affiliate Marketing Guide and learn the "how to" for Facebook Ads, PPC Affiliate Marketing, PPV / CPV Affiliate Marketing, And Media Buying!
Local internet marketing is when you generate leads for local businesses. It's similar to affiliate marketing in that it's a performance based marketing plan.
Local internet marketing is something that I have tried before. I've read Shoemoney's posts and guides about how he's made a ton of money doing it and thought, if he can do it so can I!
So far my local internet marketing efforts have not been as good as planned. Really, it's a lot more work than I expected (or maybe I am just used to the ease of affiliate stuff.) Jacob and I spend weeks preparing and really nothing major ever came out of it. I suppose, moving into the unknown always takes a bit more effort. Just like anything, you have to keep pressing forward until it becomes easier for you.
I've decided to pick it back up and give it another shot. This time I'm much more prepared and feel like I can make it more successful and worthwhile by modifying my business model a little.
First, I won't charge on appointments anymore. I had a dentist as a client. Being my first client, I wanted to give them great results. The problem was how to track the results. See, I tried to make it based on actual client reservations instead of on a call/lead basis. Doing this really made things difficult. Not recommended.
I was recently re-inspired to try out local internet marketing after reading a REALLY great post / case study on local internet marketing Adhustler's blog.
That post has great information and is worth checking out.
Anyone have some experience in Local internet marketing? I would love a guest post. 
Hey Jonathon,
Check this service out
http://www.voicestar.com/solutions-lead-generation-firms.htm
They provide a way to track calls just like they were mouse clicks. They give you a special number that prospects call that then is routed to your customer (ie people call the number and are routed to the dentist). You have an admin panel where you can track the calls, and your customer can too (the admin portal is private labeled).
I haven’t used this myself yet, so I can’t vouch for it, but conceptually it looks perfect for local affiliate marketing.
I thought I heard Google was providing a very similar service for free.
Local internet marketing can be very profitable, but it isn’t much different than other internet marketing. I agree that it can be very tough to work out terms based on commission. Certain businesses just have very poor conversion rates.
Why even bother with the money you are making in affiliate marketing?
I want to hit $20 million / year. LAM is a lot easier to produce long term contracts that don’t get ripped or copied as easily.
We have been in the local “affiliate” marketing space over the past few months or so. Same deal as you, read Shoemoney and thought we could replicate it. I would say things are going ok, but not amazing like the stuff I read with Adhustler or Shoemoney. From my experience, I would stress that there is plenty of hard work that needs to go into it, money, and most importantly, need to work with the right people in the right industry. If you don’t understand these concepts, you will be spinning your wheels.
I would be open to a guest blog post depending on what you are looking for. I don’t really have a case study I could share, though maybe in the coming months.
Do it by call basis. I use google voice to track calls.
Try ifbyphone.com for call tracking. you have to buy 800 #’s for about $5 a month and recycle them once you know something is working. you could also use a call center to make appointments, decide how much a lead is worth and charge accordingly
Jonathan,
Local is what our company specializes in! And even still we find it’s tough– largely because there is a heavy client interaction portion (while affiliates are used to just running traffic and not needing to talk to people)– and because you MUST be multi-channel. In other words, use PPC, SEO, email marketing, landing page optimization, call tracking, and analytics. Not many folks have sufficient mastery over all those skills.
I’d love to collaborate with others who are managing local clients. The folks who are claiming easy success are perhaps not mentioning the significant barriers that it actually takes. Brandon is one of the rare exceptions– of folks who actually do it and are honest about it. The other folks primarily “claim” to have done local or aren’t being honest about what it takes to be successful. Time will come.
Valuable thoughts and advices. I read your topic with great interest.
[...] posts cropping up left and right about local affiliate marketing. There have been good ones and bad ones and then all the guest posts by Dennis Yu. All of that aside, if you are an affiliate blogger [...]
Admitting that something didn’t work out as well as you had hope is very good for your credibility. Authors that always right about their successes lead people to assume they are exaggerating most of the time.
I did the whole local marketing for a few months and realized doing the “per lead” method just wasnt going to yield good enough results to make it worth my time. Rather, I approached it on a more structured approach.
I had a one time $250 “set up fee” where I set up their campaigns. Also included a one hour phone conversation with them to identify their goals of the marketing campaign, and any special areas they wanted to go hard one.
After the setup fee, I would charge a $50/month maintenance fee where I would basically give them a consolidated report of their expenditure and where they are getting their traffic from.
The catch is, every single client eventually wanted the “SEO” package that I offered them on a case by case basis. Many of them wanted to be top 3 organic listings for extremely uncompetitive keywords that would take very minimal effort on my part. The SEO package was the money makers, as most local companies see it as a long term investment worth the money. Building relationships is key in the business. The more relationships you have, the more work will come your way.
I eventually gave it up as I realized that nothing in the world is as easy and lucrative as the standard PPC marketing promoting products from affiliate networks. The beauty of the business is that so little amount of people can be considered “experts” in PPC Marketing, that there is more than enough opportunity to make good money.
Thanks for the mention brotha. I appreciate it!
Thank you guys for letting me know about local internet marketing. Looks like i am gonna start from today.
Yeah local when starting out is good, I had around 50 clients for SEO just in Bangkok alone, then you want concentrate on Global once that picks up!
Hi your post is amazing, It’s incredible and Man, this thing’s getting better and better as I learn more about internet marketing. Also as part of my ongoing mission to find the absolute best tools to make money, this is without a doubt at the top of my list. Everything happened so fast!