Helping Local Businesses = $800K Per Year

Daniel Thompson is a co-founder of Vancouver-based Saltwater Digital 🇨🇦

They provide “digital marketing solutions for small businesses” … so services like web design, SEO, paid ads, etc.

💬 In a recent interview, Daniel reveals…

We generated $800,000 in revenue and ~$150,000 in net profit in 2023.

Might not seem like a ton of profit, but that’s likely after paying the salaries of the 2 founders, plus they have several employees and contractors.

Daniel again…

My partner and I got started in 2011 building niche sites. We would rank websites, put affiliate links on them, and earn a commission.

But…

In 2014, we made the switch to start serving local businesses.

The main reason, it was a lot easier to rank a local business than it was for lucrative affiliate terms.

I’m sure that still holds true for most places. Might be worth doing some keyword research for your local area, see what you could rank for 👀

Daniel reckons local businesses are always looking for help…

Most businesses need some form of digital marketing. Trying to find solid providers at a reasonable cost is difficult. Bigger agencies tend to be very expensive and working with freelancers can be a coin flip in terms of quality.

🤑 How Saltwater got their first client…

In 2013, we signed up our first client who was a referral from a friend. I think we charged him $400/month, and I spent a ton of time working on his campaign. And we grew from there.

He adds…

The beautiful thing about service businesses is they are incredibly simple to launch. There are virtually no upfront costs outside of our own time.

Plenty of services you could try this with 👇

• Web design
• SEO
• Paid ads
• Google My Business listing
• Social media management
• Email marketing / Newsletter service
• Etc.

Last words from Daniel…

Starting a side gig has never been easier. There are so many good ways to make money and learn a new skill or two. And once you start you never know where it’s going to take you. I never imagined that learning SEO would lead me down the path I’m currently on.

My first site sucked, and whatever you do at first also won’t be very good. But you just need to start and start practicing.

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