As the owner of a client driven business, it’s you’re job is to meet people… particularly other business owners.

Here’s why…

Anything that puts you in contact with business owners gives you a chance of getting hired… even if you don’t pitch your services right away. An introduction today might turn into an extra income stream a few months later.

So start thinking of creative ways you can meet other business owners. After you’ve gotten to know them better, you can explain how your services might help them…. as a friend.

This is your best chance to get more business.

The next step is to go out and meet other business owners. And it’s perfectly normal to have questions when you’re getting started.

How is it done? Where do you find business owners? And what the heck do I say to them once we do meet?

How you meet each client is different. But there are some techniques that have been proven work over time. But for these techniques to work, you’ve got to be willing to try first.

1.) The easiest way to get started from zero is to talk to people and business owners you already know. Ok, this one is sort of a cop-out answer, but seriously it’s a smart place to start.

Ask everyone you talk to who they know that might benefit from your services because referrals are the easiest people to convert to paying clients.

If you take away one point from this course, it should be this: Referrals are the easiest people to convert into paying clients. Yeah, they’re really that important for your business.

Make it part of your daily mantra to systematically ask from every living breathing person you know for referrals when you’re starting out. (Trust me, it will get easier and a lot more fun after a couple paychecks.)

2.) Go to business networking meetings and any meetings and groups where business owners congregate.

Getting involved with a charity or two that has a lot of business owners can make these owners more interested in trying to help you in your business. (It might make you feel good too.)

At business networking meetings learn to ask questions and listen.

3.) Speak at as many business group events as you can.

Being the speaker for a business networking group gives you instant credibility and business owners will usually come up and talk to you even if you’ve given a mediocre presentation. I see it happen at every conference or meetup I’ve ever attended.

A smart place to start speaking publicly is the local Chamber of Commerce. Nothing but owners there. Also, try your local MeetUp.com to get comfortable speaking in front of a group.

Next email, we’ll tackle some ways you can use e-mail and the telephone to introduce potential clients to your services.

Until then, strike up some casual banter with a business owner in your area. It just might pay off for you later.

Has Tommy Smith lost his mind? A lot of his college buddies probably thought so when he booked a ticket from New Hampshire to Japan in the thick of a recession here in the United States.

But while his old classmates were back home grinding it out for tips at the bar or hoping to land an entry-level office job, Smith was giving presentations, coordinating with lawyers and accountants, signing deals and building a business for himself Taiwan.

Now at the ripe old age of 24, Smith is launching his second business: a full-service digital agency called ClickShark.com.

Smith has an incredible story about what can happen when you throw caution to the wind to get what you want.

Tell us a little background about yourself and how a kid that’s
originally from New Hampshire ended up in Taiwan?

Well, I graduated from the big university in New England. It was really trendy and cool to go down to New York and get a job at one of the big banks or a hedge fund. I remember putting in my application for Lehman Brothers the day before they went bankrupt. Graduating with a finance-related degree at the start of the recession was hilariously bad timing.

So, rather than bartending and waiting tables in New Hampshire like so many of my friends did during the recession, I decided to move to Tokyo, Japan to teach English. My intention was to make it a hybrid of working and backpacking. Japan was awesome, really an incredible country. It’s a tough place to start your “career” that’s for sure, as I was going to probably 10 hours of classes every week, and all of a sudden was working 50-60 hours a week in Tokyo, teaching everyone from 6 year olds to 70 year olds. Some of the friends I made in Japan are just amazing, and I’ll definitely be in touch with them for the rest of my life. Japanese people have a kindness to them that you won’t find anywhere else in the world. And Tokyo, you really have to see it to believe it. Absolutely incredible.

A good friend of mine from high school came out to visit me during his Christmas break, and we decided to backpack around Asia for 2 weeks. In planning our trip, we were trying to find the cheapest flight from Tokyo to Bangkok, and it so happened to include a layover in Taipei, Taiwan. I had no idea where Taiwan was, and I thought it was part of China, but I was down to check it out. When we landed, I was extremely impressed. The people were so friendly, the city was very busy and exciting, and everyone spoke English quite well. It was a much cooler, vibrant and exciting than I had anticipated.

So Donny and I had decided that Taiwan was supremely underrated, and we wanted to start a business there. We were trying to think up ways to profitably let the world know Taiwan exists, and came across medical tourism, the idea of leaving the country and traveling abroad for lower cost surgery. It’s very successful in Thailand, India, and Singapore, and other Southeast Asian countries are getting on the bandwagon as well.

So I quit my job in Japan, and moved to Taiwan, where we started FormosaMedicalTravel.com, Taiwan’s first medical tourism agency. It was an incredible experience, from incorporating in Taiwan, to creating our business processes, developing our website, giving presentations, signing contracts with hospitals, finding accountants and lawyers, negotiating through translators, and marketing in two languages, it really was my alternative to paying for an MBA.

When we took a look at the medical tourism market, we decided that it existed primarily online. There weren’t agencies with big corporate headquarters in New York and LA, or people setting up satellite offices everywhere. All a company really had to show for themselves was their website. So the premise was that we were going to create a web startup that worked in facilitating Americans travelling abroad to Taiwan for surgery, and our marketing focus was solely online. This was my first professional look into the world of SEO.

I recently left FormosaMedicalTravel.com, and I’m happy to say that they’re growing rapidly. I’ve since moved to Singapore a few months ago, where I’ve started an energetic new digital agency, ClickShark.com.

So you moved to Taiwan to start a business. Were there any unique challenges that went along with starting a business in another country?

Tons of unique challenges! Taipei, the capital city, is quite developed. Lots of young people speak English, and they are a little more internationally minded than the rest of the country. However, when you go farther south, and into the more remote areas of the island, you’ll find communication a bit more difficult. In Taiwan, you have what they call 關係, or “Guanxi”. It roughly translates to “relationships”. At a party, this would translate to “Who do you know here, bro?”

It was very difficult at first to gain any traction, but once we met a few key people in the business and government space, it opened up a lot of doors. Contracts that had previously taken months to sign, took weeks. Meetings that were taking us weeks to book, took days. Once you’re a friend of a friend in Taiwan, things get a lot easier. Networking is important in any country, but in Asia it’s everything.

Now that you’ve been living abroad a few years and have left your previous business, what made you decide an SEO business was the right next step?

The short answer: Digital marketing is where it’s at, and it’s not going away anytime soon. I’m 24, and my family got our first computer when I was in 3rd grade (shoutout to AOL Kidspace!), so for me this industry is a no-brainer. For older generations, it might be tougher to see this coming, but everyone my age knows that the first page of results on Google for any term is going to be the “right answer” for that term. “Cheap Car Wash Portland Oregon”, “Best Hotel Budapest Hungary” – what Google says (ok fine, Yahoo and Bing too) is going to dictate a larger and larger portion of where dollars go. Additionally, I’m very good at it, I keep my ear to the ground and most importantly, I really enjoy it.

What advice do you have for anyone who’s considering starting a
business abroad? Would you recommend it to others looking back on what
you know now?

Yes, I would absolutely recommend it. In fact, I can’t recommend it enough. As a person born in an English speaking western country, you have no idea how blessed you actually are. This is our time! People all over the world are taking English classes, applying for visas, and learning about how western culture works. They’re doing the hard work, all you have to do is show up!

Here in Singapore, they call it an “international” business environment, but really it’s just everyone conforming to western standards. If you haven’t left the country yet, you are absolutely wasting this opportunity to go abroad. With an American/Canadian/British passport, English as a first language, and your cultural upbringing, you don’t even realize how many doors have already been opened for you.

As for advice, there is only one piece of wisdom I can give that will create any traction if you’re going to start this journey: buy the plane ticket. Don’t make a business plan, don’t “save a little more money”, don’t wait for your 2 year lease to run out, don’t wait for the recession to end, just buy your one way ticket. It’s going to be messy, you’re going to make mistakes, things will go awry, but just get out there and do it. Even if you don’t have an idea yet, even if you don’t have a clue. Personally, I take a very “American cowboy” attitude towards my life and my business. I just pull the trigger. Just show up! Pack your bags, buy the one way ticket, and get out there! You’re going to live, stop worrying about that! Go! Right now! Kayak.com! Maybe get drunk first and do it, I don’t care! Hurry!

I admit it. I’ve got a pro membership to SEOMoz that I use to check backlinks, monitor client’s rankings and what not. There are a lot of cool tools available for generating client reports, which is why I continue to give them $129 every month.

But sometimes, I wonder if I really need it. Especially when so many similar SEO tools are available for free at MetaFever.com.

So this week I decided to conduct a little test. Could I really create a professional client report using only free tools? I was about to find out.

Anatomy of an SEO Report

My goal was to create a simple client analysis report. This is the first report sent to a potential client by most SEO companies to peak a prospect’s interested in optimization.

Since this report is created for prospects. I want it to be quick and easy to put together. No use wasting time on people who might never pay for your services.

Here’s what my (quick) client analysis report needs:

1.) On-Page SEO Analysis

2.) Off-Page SEO Analysis (AKA: Backlinks)

3.)Competitive Landscape Analysis

4.)Rank Checker

1.) Conducting the on-page SEO analysis is ridiculously easy on MetaFever.com. The Free SEO Report feature is the most comprehensive, all-purpose tool I’ve seen for a website analysis anywhere.

The Free SEO Report evaluates a lot more than just H1 and title tags. It dissects robots.txt files, page links, total page size, and XML sitemaps with the click of a button.

You could run this report and hand it straight over to SEO prospects if there were an easy way to download the information. Until then, you’ll need to rely on copy and pasting the information or taking screen shots. Still even with this inconvenience, this tool finds plenty of ways to save you time.

2.) Off-page SEO analysis: The off-page SEO analysis tool, called the Backlink Checker at MetaFever.com, uses Yahoo’s link data and displays the total number of links pointing to a domain. You can easily copy and paste this data into any type of report you like.

Pro Tip: Use the Backlink Checker to analyze some of your client’s competitors backlinks. Identifying competitors with better rankings and more links can help you explain where the prospect is weak online.

3.) Competitive Landscape Analysis: Anytime you’re creating a client report, pit your prospects against their competition. If a potential client feels like they’re losing customers to a rival, they’re a lot more likely to use your service. MetaFever.com’s Multiple Compete Rank Checker lets you do just that. This tool uses data from Compete.com’s rank.

4.) Rank Checker: No SEO report would be complete without a good old fashioned ranking report—or Search Engine Position Checker as it is referred to here. Just enter the domain, the keywords you want to check, and viola, updated rankings for Google and Yahoo are presented. I’ve found that SERP rankings can be easily copied and pasted into an Excel spreadsheet or Word document. Nice!

At the end of the day, I’m impressed with MetaFever.com’s enormous selection of free tools: backlink checkers, ranking report, and crawl tests all in one place and for a price you can’t beat.

I’ll admit, transferring data from the Free SEO Report tool to a Word doc was difficult. But it is possible to provide clients with professional reports from a single source.

Is it a replacement for SEOMoz? Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be canceling my $129 a month subscription any time soon. But for a quick and easy analysis of a client’s website, MetaFever.com goes above and beyond what you’d expect from a free site.

The traditional agency is almost dead as a new pay-per performance SEO business model has begun to gain favor among SEOs and clients alike.

Be one of the first to embrace this model and you can offer guaranteed results, charge only per performance, and remove the barrier of an initial client investment that can discourage customers reluctant to hand over a paycheck for unknown results.

The beauty of this SEO business model is that the client can finally pay based on clicks; The same way they pay for PPC. In fact, you’ll use that same simple logic to sell your service.

Stop Getting Paid For Work. Start Getting Paid Per Click.

A lot of companies get stuck in the rut of delivering a certain amount of work on a client’s website per month. i.e. Twenty five links, two new blog posts, 50 meta descriptions.

Common sense says the more work you do the better a site will perform. While the more sweat equity you put into a website the better it will perform (usually), this is a killer for stretched SEO companies with small staffs. Especially when there’s 1,000 other SEO companies willing to do more work for less money.

How to flip the old SEO business model on its head and get ahead of the curve.

The old SEO business model says you get a client, give services, and get paid a (hopefully) generous monthly fee.

• In the new model, you’re paid-per click just like Google. No setup fees, no charges until your client gets the traffic. Don’t set up any unnecessary barriers between yourself and the client before getting started.
• Get it in writing: In your contract, identify what you will be paid per click for organic search traffic. Charging just a 10th of a cent per click can generate enormous profits if search volume is decent in the client’s industry. You can’t buy traffic from Google for that price, which is very appealing for clients. Just make sure the client is contractually obligated to remove the your pages if the business relationship is terminated. When the website starts capturing a high-volume of traffic, this makes it very difficult for a client to leave you… ever.
• Require site wide links on the client’s website to your new seo pages. These links could be placed in the footer or in the main navigation site wide. This will allow you to leverage the Page Rank of the clients existing website so your pages get indexed and ranked faster.
• Set up a new sub domain or folder structure where you’re new optimized and keyword targeted pages will live.   For example, yourseopages.clientwebsite.com or clientwebsite.com/yourseopages/XXX (Don’t name these directories and folders Your SEO pages obviously.)
• Segment Traffic: Use Google Analytics to segment organic search traffic that landed on your new pages. Since theses pages are capturing traffic that previously would have been missed, you’ll get paid per click for each new visitor. (You shouldn’t charge for any of your client’s brand related searches that arrive on your pages.)

This model is simple but it works. Best of all, you can finally guarantee results and differentiate yourself from all the other SEO agency’s.

So let me know what you think of this business model the comments: Does it have legs? Or am I just full of crap?

A link packet is a step-by-step plan for building backlinks.

The cool thing about link packets is that they’re really specific. As opposed to the typical generalized link building advice you might get from a forum or blog post: “Hey, submit to a bunch of directories.” or  “Make sure to comment on do-follow blogs.”

Stuff like that can help. But it’s usually easier to have a clear plan of action. Especially when you’re just getting started.

That’s where link packets can help.

There are a lot of people that actually sell these link plans online. You can check out a popular service called Paul and Angela’s Backlink Service here. (Not an affiliate link.) For a packet on how to acquire 30 backlinks, they charge $57.

But if spending money for stuff online isn’t your thing, or if you’ve already exceeded your yearly budget for info products, feel free to take advantage of this Freemium link packet for yourself…. or better yet, hand it over to a virtual assistant and have them build backlinks for your clients.

No cost. No email address to hand over. Just pure, link juicy goodness.

This packet breaks link building into a 6-day process so you don’t worry about burn out. Finish each step and you’ll have fresh links from blogs, directories, and social media sites by the end of the week.

This will crush the time you’d typically spend lurking for high-authority links.

So let’s do it.

Day 1: Free Directories – Just complete the required fields and hit submit.

http://www.boardse.com/submit.php PR 4

http://www.shane-english.com/submit.php PR 5

http://www.cuber.net/submit.php PR 5

http://www.codeclassic.net/submit.php PR 5

http://www.pegasusdirectory.com/submit.php PR 5 (Hit return after clicking this link.)

Day 2: Do-Follow Comment Spam – Make sure you add something relevant to the conversation.

http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/ PR 3

http://foolswisdom.com/ PR N/A

http://lifecruiser.com/ PR 3

http://www.raproject.com/ PR 4

http://andybeard.eu/ PR 5

Day 3: Social Media – Yep. They’re are all do-follow.

http://www.mister-wong.com/ – PR 8

http://www.linkagogo.com/ – PR 5

http://www.faves.com/ – PR 5

http://www.linkatopia.com/ – PR 4

http://www.givealink.com/ – PR 4

Day 4: Forum Profile Links – Join these forums, contribute, and start building do-follow backlinks.

http://www.chatcheaters.com/forum/ PR 4

http://www.cardinalempire.com/forums/ PR N/A

http://www.chasingthefrog.com/forums/ PR 3

http://www.cgfocus.com/forums/ PR N/A

http://www.chicagoimprov.org/ PR 3

Day 5 – Article Links – Grind out a 400 words on your topic and submit to these sites.

http://www.goarticles.com/ – PR 4

http://www.articledashboard.com/ – PR 5

http://www.articlerich.com/ – PR 3

http://ezinearticles.com/ – PR 6

http://articlewarriors.com/ – PR 2

Day 6 – Press Releases – Again, grind out 400 words on something great about your website and hit submit today.

http://www.prlog.org/ – PR 6

http://www.free-press-release.com/ – PR 5

http://www.1888pressrelease.com/ – PR 5

http://www.prfree.com/ – PR 4

http://www.onlineprnews.com/ PR 5

If you decide to try this free link packet, I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments. Also, if you’ve used services like Paul and Angela’s link packets, what type of results have you seen?