I would be delighted to speak with you as co founder and angel investor for M&A firm Amieva Mack Capital in London these are exactly the types of opportunities we partner with and I personally would be very interested to speak with you. I can guarantee you that the value I could add to what you have will be unprecedented.

It will surely depends on where you are located. In Canada, you can ask the 2 employees/contractors to provide you a bill like any company does when they sell services to customers and you can pay them by check. The employee/contractor would need to be registered as a company (incorported or registered on their names, it doesn't matter). Expect to pay sales taxes if you go this way but you won't have any "employee paperwork" to do. Regards, Erik

Find organizations that are already sponsoring or buying gamification for their online marketing, and approach them. If you make gaming apps, look at who is already promoting their products or services through similar means. You have a common issue here which is this: for most prospects, you'll have to make TWO sales. I dislike this situation and avoid it whenever I can. First, you must sell them on the *idea* of your solution ("This game will help you increase customer involvement and retention, and convert into more sales".) Second, you must sell them on the idea of *you* as the solution provider. I look for situations where there is only the one sale to be made: you as the solution provider. If you have to sell them on the original idea, it's too much work. If they're already using these media to reach their target market, they already know its value. You don't have to sell them on that. You just have to get their attention and assure them that you will get them results.

You need to make referrals a condition of doing business with you and do it upfront. Also, automate the referral ask. More details on "how to" below. To do this: During your first interactions with a client (NOT after you have delivered or closed the sale, that's a rookie mistake), you can tell them.... "Listen, it's our job to treat you guys so well that you'll not only come back to us over and over again when you need help...it's our job to treat you so well that you'll feel comfortable with us enough to send your friends and colleagues our way when they need our help. Does that make sense?" When they say "Yes" (and they won't say no) you say, "OK great, the way we do that is through referrals. So once you're happy and successful with us, we'll occasionally ask you for a referral. So, you get great work from a team you know and trust and you also get to connect people in your network to a service that you know works well so you look like a rockstar to your network.I want to make sure we can agree to that upfront? This is how we do business here and it holds us accountable to you and makes sure we deliver the absolute best product/service you've ever seen. So once you're happy will you send us referrals?" Once they agree, you now have permission, and a verbal contract that they will send you referrals. Now, treat them like gold with this mentality that you not only want to give them a great finished product, but you want them to refer you. That should drive the work. Once you've delivered...ask for the referral. Don't make the rookie mistake and just say one-time "hey do you know anyone that you could refer us to?" That will rarely work. Instead, ask "Hey, do you remember when we started this project and we both agreed that if we delivered and made you both happy and successful that you would refer us to people in your network?" Pause, shut up and listen, and let them say "yes". Ask them first "So are you happy with what we've delivered?" Pause, shut up and listen, and let them say "yes". If they hesitate at all, they aren't happy and won't refer. Don't hold back and dive-in deep here. Say "I sensed a little hesitation. What's up? What are we missing? I want to help." Figure out what's wrong, fix it, then ask them if they are happy. Then say, "well I've been looking at your connections on LinkedIN and I noticed you are connected to (enter 2 names and company names here). Can youintroduce us so we could have a conversation and get to know them?" The above means you have to do the research. You have to do the work. But the work upfront is much easier than dealing with a cold prospect. Most salespoeple/organizations just don't respect referrals enough to make them a priority. It's their loss and your gain if you follow this simple process. It's work. Just do the work and you might also find you get to know people and enjoy it. These are your customers. Treat them like people. Take care of them and they'll take care of you. Once you make the ask, continue to mine referral leads and ask once a month. Follow-up until they answer. Follow-up until they tell you to stop. Phone is best but email works too. Use it as an opportunity to maintain and develop the relationship. Truly care about your clients and they will never tell you to stop following up. It will be like talking to an old friend and often this process leads to more sales from your past clients as you stay top of mind. Want to automate this process... FULL DISCLOSURE FIRST: I co-founded www.referralriver.com If you want to automate the referral ask, try ReferralRiver. It's free and uses artificial intelligence to automatically research who is in your client's network and make the referral ask at the right time every month. It reduces your work significantly while you just Cc'ed on an email from your existing customers to new referral leads. It's freaking magical. There are other services out there as well like LeadDyno (more of an affiliate program). You should try it all but the truth is that you have to make the agreement upfront and you have to get serious about making referrals a priority. Book a call with me if you want to ask me any questions. Happy to help.

Consult a tax accountant; I am not an accountant or an attorney and this is not "professional advice." I do have to ask a question about the wording here. Are these partners as in shareholders of the business, or are they working for it? That will make a difference in how you go about paying them. If you are telling them what to do and when to do it, they are employees and you cannot 1099 them. 1099 means you say "here's what I need done", but when they do it and how they do it is up to them. So if you require them to be on site from 9-5 for example, they're employees. If they are owners alongside you, that's different. However you pay them must follow the matching principle of accounting. Their revenue from the camp has to match how they're involved. If they're part owners, they get a dividend check and they must report that as corporate income. If they're working for the camp, my guess is that they are employees and you must go through the hassle of reporting and paying them as such.

Yes, if you are going to have employees in CA.

Did you get denied? Or have you not been approved *yet*? I'm not sure how Twitter is working through the application process, but from what I can tell it is roughly in order based on follower account with a big focus on who they are and how much their name or personal brand are attached to why people follow them.

Hello, My name is Erik and I'm a Call Center Expert and Senior Analyst Programmer. I've been working on employee/leaders productivity since more than 15 years. I suggest prior to establish an evalutation form, you must align clear revenues and profits goals and also layout your top social values. By splitting those objectives by executive, and then by employees, you will end up having an evaluation form that is aligned with your revenues/profits objectives with a combinaison of respect with the company's values. I will be more than happy to help you with this and please feel free to schedule a call so we can have this evaluation form for all employees and leaders up and running! Regards, Erik

Yes, you can send FB ads to anywhere you want (landing page, webpage, whatever). You just need to have a business FB page to advertise.

If you take less money out than the fair market value of your time, it's a hobby. If you can pay yourself a fair market wage, you own a job. If your business had profit beyond your fair market wage, it's a business. There is a section on this in my book; How To Sell My Own Business. You see, I often direct hobby and job owners to auctioneers when it comes time to sell their 'business.' Hope that helps to clarify things. Cheers Dave

Hello! This is a great question and I wish many more asked just like you. My name is Humberto Valle, I'm a strategic marketer with almost 10 years of service with some of the most innovative teams in the world. Here are my thoughts; I would ask for a bit more information, don't be afraid or shy to share more about your company, goals, mission & vision statement. The tag line can be a simple as 2 words or as long as a sentence as long as it makes sense to your target market. If you pay attention, there are a lot of companies which taglines don't even mention the service or product but instead focus on empowering their mission statement or core experience from using the product specially if your company name, logo, or website already mention the product you can drive your goal home with the tag line. Example: having a playful company profile and the name Paperless Wiring, inc. you could go with a playful tagline like: Easy Messaging Galore or Hand Picked Just For You. But if your profile and core is more professional and buttoned up, then your tag line should match that and help drive that style home with your clients; examples: Reliability at its best, tailored services just for you. if you are a local company trying or wanting to leverage your origin consider using slang or accents that emphasize that. I think it was the KFC slogan that's a good example of this with their lickin' good.

Hi there, The options are the same as buying many traditional businesses. You can obviously use your own funds, raise funds from friends and family, use personal lines of credit, crowdfunding/investment or seek personal loans from financial institutions. Any wise investor in your venture should require -- and you should have prepared -- financials for the online business you are purchasing. Does the online brand have tangible assets? Inventory? Existing sales/AR? What about long-term purchase orders or contracts? Where I see most entrepreneurs stumble is buying too much into "blue sky" value, that is, believing the sellers opinion of what future value the brand/company may have. You have to take that into consideration, but it should not be "the" deciding factor. If the business is truly a cash cow, as many buyers would want you to believe, why are they selling it? Do you see opportunity for growth? What skill set or leverage do you have that will accelerate that growth or expand the market of your acquisition? Again, funding options are generally the same between traditional businesses and online businesses. Investors/lenders will require the same due diligence and financials to establish an assess the level of risk. All the best, -Shaun

Obviously I don't know your situation but you might be running across an issue with expecting one person to do the job of many. There are so many aspects to SEO that its near impossible for one person to be an expert in every area. Content, social media, on-page optimization, user experience optimization are all vital components to a successful digital marketing plan. At best, a "genius" SEO can only be great at one or two, but not all. It might be time to invest in a team. That might mean hiring an agency, but you truly do get so much more experience with a team than one person.

probaly not

Hi... :) There are many ways in which you can generate leads, from Passive Marketing Tactics such as: Direct Mail, Advertisements, Industry Directories, Yellow Pages (in some places they are still working), TV, Newspaper, or you can try one on one with the prospect (Active Marketing Tactics) such as Cold Calls, Sales Visits, Client Interviews, Demos, Seminars, etc... 80% of the effectiveness will be determined on who is your perfect client for each one of the services you provide, that way you can define exactly were to find them and then how to market your services... There's no easy answer to your question, anyone who helps you needs to go deeper into your agency. If you need anything else I'll be glad to help.

I would be able to advise you better if I saw your website or knew what your niche was but there are two broad principles you should follow: 1) Optimize what you are already doing You are already getting leads. So, it's not a traffic problem as much as it is a conversion problem. Keeping this in mind here are some of the things you can do to improve lead quality: a) Improve the copy on your website. Your positioning and your USP should be such that the right people are attracted and more importantly, the wrong people are turned off. Focus on what your ideal clients look like, and then write the copy around their pain points. b) Nurture your leads better Do you have a lead nurturing system in place? If the lead asks for a price, do you ask them to submit a form where you attempt to get more context and insight into their business challenges? Do you run an autoresponder campaign where you highlight the issues your potential customers might face if they dawdle over the transaction? Sometimes, people might have the budget but they might not have the talking points to sell you to their bosses. It's your job to give them that ammo. 2) Once you have optimized your current processes, you will need to find out new ways to get leads. You can target a number of channels depending on how much your customer acquisition costs are and the projected customer life time value is. I would be glad to work out a lead acquisition strategy for you and help you execute it if you can give me some more details.

Hello, my name is Erik and as a Senior Analyst Programmer in marketing I had the opportunity to build targeted leads list for sales agent, witch is quite similar to your goal with this question. You are on good track with your suggestion of using multiple models to determine your "customers" potentials by areas, internet availability, etc. We can also think of people age, specific area's health problems, etc. There's multiple trends we could find by managing all the information in a structured database. If you are interested to develop this idea combined with data mining/analysis skills, I will be happy to help you. I look foward to help you on a call and don't hesitate to send me a message if you have questions. Regards, Erik

I'd be happy to make an intro - just shoot me a message.

Many popular social media platforms have advertising platforms that can be zeroed in pretty well. For example, Facebook would allow me to select, "People traveling in this location" and then India as a country or specific cities within the country. I wouldn't just assume that Facebook is the end all be all answer for your question though. You should do some research on which social platforms are popular in India right now and then explore those for advertising opportunities. For example, I came across this article that you might start with: http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/10-most-popular-social-networking-sites-in-india-357564/

It wouldn't be easy, quick, or super accruate, but you could create a bunch of different facebook profiles, and then use each one to do searches for certain things on facebook, certain companies profiles, etc. Make each profile a different age, different sex, different income (it guesses income based on education level and job title). Then see which ones see ads, and which don't.

You're not the only one that struggles with this. Pricing can be tricky for any industry really, but in digital marketing especially so because many still don't understand the value in it. When you can sell the value, then you can sell the price. When it comes to setting a price for anything you can look at it one of two ways, you are either selling value or you are selling your time. When you sell value you have to be at a price that the buyer agrees on the cost of the value being received. If you're selling your time, then you need to determine how much you need for that time and hope the buyer agrees that's what it's worth. With that, you can provide a quote or you can estimate a total cost based on the number of hours you think the job will take. The downside to a quote is that there is often scope creep, that is the client requesting things that you never really intended to be part of the project, or them expecting a certain result and suggesting you have to do whatever it takes to get that result. This is especially important in web marketing because because there is always something more to do to. Many people shy away from hourly work because they don't want to be "nickel and dimed" on every little thing and for the project to end up costing much more than they anticipated. I have found a mixture of the two to work. Provide an estimate based on a certain number of hours per month. Outline what that estimate includes but be flexible if you need to do things that were never included in that estimate. Just make sure the client knows that you stop at whatever hours you agree too each month. Any solution will have issues. You just need to find the one that works best for you and your clients.

Hello, hope you are doing well. If you do not have contact with any current employee, I would suggest trying linkedin, or the companies website. Try contacting the HR dept directly, a phone call would be the best, ask them to indicate where you can send your resume. You can also try calling a local headhunter to get higher exposure. Good luck with your search, Ignacio.

The easy answer is Yes! You must review results on a consistent basis to hold yourself accountable but to also analyze what went well and what did not go well. Too many times business owners fail to make adjustments based on the feedback they are receiving. Having a mentor or peer you can discuss these results is ideal but if do not have that luxury getting a expert in your industry as a free lance coach/consultant on the phone once a month is a option to consider.

I am not sure that I understood your question entirely but based on my interpretation I would suggest taking a deep look at Teamwork. (https://www.teamwork.com/) Teamwork is a software platform designed to help organize a company and help it manage tasks and projects. The Teamwork package consists of 3 products. Teamwork Chat - This similar to slack minus a few features. Teamwork Chat includes a direct integration with the rest of the Teamwork system. This allows members of your company to communicate in real-time, create rooms, and share project details all in a permanently recorded environment. Teamwork Desk - This is a great ticketing system that allows external parties to have tracked email communication with reps. This may be the avenue where you deposit incoming inquiries. Your brand management reps could get the inquiry via desk and then turn it into a variety of tasks for various departments in Teamwork Projects. As tasks are completed they can use Teamwork Desk to communicate back to the customer. This software includes a portal where these reps can log-in and see their entire account/request history with the organization and a help desk that would allow you to create self service help docs for your products/services/store if necessary. Teamwork Projects - Teamwork Projects is a project management software that allows you to create users, departments, and even allow client access into the system. You can develop projects, tasks, timelines, and calendars based on those elements. You can easily send tasks into Teamwork projects from desk and then route communication back to desk as projects are completed. Overall, it sounds like this would be a great combination of tools to help you manage your products and brand. I am not a representative of the company nor do I get paid for this recommendation, in fact, I pay them as a user and I use these tools to accomplish something very similar at my company. They have some great videos. Check it out and see if it would be a good fit.

Like any other design project, you can charge on an hourly basis or a fixed amount depending on the scope and how much time the process will take to complete. I would start by setting delivery stages for the project, with that, calculate the amount of time it will require you to complete each phase. Define how much you want to get payed for each hour. Add up the total amount of hours and analyze from there if the total cost of the project is a reasonable amount that your client will be willing to pay.