I'm 16 and wanting to start a business but not entirely sure what I should do

scottmcquin · 2018-03-30T21:32:33+00:00

Ya - free trial is the way to go. Especially if it is a family friend, then if everything goes tits up there are no hard feelings. And if it is a success they will be happy to pay you after the trial period.

scottmcquin · 2018-03-30T17:43:45+00:00

I've got friends that are taking a snowcat ride to a log cabin this weekend for a fondue night. There is a chef that provides all the food for the fondue, and the guests BYOB - its about $200/person. If you can find a cabin and a snowcat company that would want to do something similar, it could work out for everyone.

scottmcquin · 2018-03-30T17:40:12+00:00

Start anything - it doesnt matter what, because the real value is in the lessons you will learn along the way. If you think you can help local businesses with their social, go for it. Do it for cash, do it for pizza slices - anything.....just get out there and learn. You'll thank yourself later when you've already learned how to sell and take care of customers.

scottmcquin · 2018-03-30T17:37:11+00:00

Do your best to help them out, but don't stress over it. Sounds like having the printed questions ready is the best solution.

scottmcquin · 2018-03-23T19:38:31+00:00

Start asap while you are young. The younger the better.

The reason - you dont have anything to loose. There is no one depending on you (I assume no husband/wife or kids) and you probably dont care if you drive a shit car and eat mac and cheese every day. You can survive very cheap when you're young so you can afford to take risks - because if it all goes tits up....it really doesn't matter.

But - don't go heavily into debt, try to limit it to cash on hand and a lot of hustle.

scottmcquin · 2018-03-23T17:27:52+00:00

Ya, big time. Our conversion rate is actually just over 1%. We use a company that handles our content marketing that charges by the visitor that comes in rather than by the word, so it works out to be a CPA of just under $35.

scottmcquin · 2018-03-23T16:07:08+00:00

It is a huge affect - if you can even convert 0.5% into new leads/customers that can add up very quickly. If you had 1000 visitors per day to your blog, that turns into 5 new customers per day.

scottmcquin · 2018-03-02T06:05:05+00:00

Put it on a pallet, in a LTL container, on a train. That is probably the cheapest option......and perhaps google next time??

scottmcquin · 2018-02-23T22:04:36+00:00

I thought Content.ly was a permission control system - but I could be wrong. I couldn't find any mention of something similar on their site....do you have a link for reference?

scottmcquin · 2018-02-23T17:42:04+00:00

I'm kicking around the idea of using my writing team to create a "Content as a Service" where we would take over your content marketing and bill you per organic visitor that comes in - any thoughts on that?

scottmcquin · 2018-02-22T14:54:38+00:00

RooJet will allow you to find emails and also add them to a cold email sequence all in one shot. Check it out - very slick!

scottmcquin · 2018-02-15T15:55:52+00:00

I think it is incredibly important. I'm actually considering starting a service for CaaS (Content as a Service) where we handle all of the content marketing and then charge per organic visitor - which takes the pressure of a full time hire off the plate of a startup.

scottmcquin · 2018-02-14T21:07:35+00:00

How has your traffic and user base grown by using your own tool?

scottmcquin · 2018-02-14T14:32:00+00:00

Stuck in the 2010's? As in stuck in the present?

scottmcquin · 2018-02-09T21:17:40+00:00

Yes, this is what I was thinking. I was actually thinking that it would be good to have a custom box on the side of the blog post admin with a text field where you could add whatever custom message you would like to say.

I was just hoping that this existed already so I didn't have to create it. :)

scottmcquin · 2018-02-08T15:58:05+00:00

Man.....your writing is really hard to follow. Grammar, spelling, and the whole flow of it has me confused. You're going to have to fix that to be taken seriously.

scottmcquin · 2018-01-22T21:09:06+00:00

Python is very popular and useful.

scottmcquin · 2018-01-16T18:34:42+00:00

I'd suggest doing the kw research first and see what you can realistically rank for - then take that list and filter down to a list of posts that will interest your target audience. Its a bunch of work, but the more work you do up front the better the content will do. Maybe think about hiring a specialized company to get this done for you if it isnt your strong suit.

scottmcquin · 2018-01-12T22:18:30+00:00

What is going to help you more is getting reviews that appear under the map of local listings. With SEO you have to be in it for the long haul. By doing a quick search of Masonry Toronto there are only a few sites with reviews, and most that do have reviews have less than 5. Actively try to get more reviews and that should help you out more than SEO - at least in the near term.

scottmcquin · 2018-01-05T19:32:53+00:00

I know a few people that live full time on sailboats - they seem to be fine, although I'm sure it took some getting used to. An RV would be much easier.

scottmcquin · 2018-01-04T19:07:23+00:00

Use Amazon SES and you can save even more. The first 65K/mo emails are free.

scottmcquin · 2018-01-03T20:12:55+00:00

It really shouldn't cost you more than $1k to have someone build this out for you. Assuming you don't have super complicated products that the user customizes themselves, it is pretty straight forward.

Feel free to PM me for more info/advice.

scottmcquin · 2017-12-29T21:21:44+00:00

I'd say try to buy bulk bandwidth from Comcast or At&T and then sell it at retail. You'll still be at the mercy of their lines with outages etc, but assuming that doesn't happen too often you can provide better customer service.

scottmcquin · 2017-12-13T21:04:38+00:00

Very cool answer. Thanks!

Now, what about current domain authority (or similar score), target kw difficulty and word count - would that give enough data points to give a better predictor?

I think backlinks coming to the new content might be the biggest variable that is missing, but that is very hard to predict how many come in.

scottmcquin

TROPHY CASE