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Alright. Hey, guys. Let's get started.

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Welcome to webinar Wednesday, the place to be for tips to grow your online

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community.

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Thank you everyone for joining us today.

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We have a new face with us today.

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If this is your first time with us, that's me, Jason there on the left.

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We're lucky to have a new face with us today, Rick Martinez, who's one of the support specialists,

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here at Brilliant Directories.

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I think one of the the more experienced support specialists, so we're lucky to have Rick with us today on the webinar.

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And, of course, Patrick Brunel, who has some of the best advice, tips, and strategies

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to hack and grow your way to a successful and profitable

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online directory website. So guys, thanks for taking the time to join us today in the webinar.

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Always a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Jason.

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Thank you, Jason. Good to be here.

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Alright.

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And I always like to mention, if you haven't already done so, please just take a moment, thirty seconds right now to join our Facebook group.

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You can go to brilliantdirectories.com/Facebook.

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It's a great place to continue the conversations after webinar Wednesday is over.

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So much participation in there, lots of great discussions, ideas,

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and it's just really nice to see that there's so much activity coming from everyone and and the amazing ideas that everyone's sharing.

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So you can go to brilliantdirectories.com/facebook,

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and we can carry the conversations there after the webinar.

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And if this is your first time joining webinar Wednesday, maybe you're new to Brilliant Directories, maybe you've been with us for a while and just got one of our reminder emails to join, Welcome.

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It really is great to be with you guys here today.

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Webinar Wednesday is created to help you guys achieve success with your online

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directories.

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Now a lot of that could be during setup and and configuring your site, but in in webinar Wednesday,

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we cover that a little bit, but we wanna have a stronger focus on helping you market your site,

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helping you convert website visitors, increasing traffic,

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identifying revenue opportunities

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that's that's right for your industry and ripe for your industry as well.

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And I really like to talk about search engine optimization

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topics,

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and a lot of things actually

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fall into the category of improving

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your website's navigation, the user experience,

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how they interact with your site.

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It's amazing how simple and small changes can change your conversion rates from zero,

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all the way up to a %.

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So have if you have questions on how to improve your site,

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maybe you're looking to enhance your site or you're coming across some hurdles,

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save those questions and we'll take them towards the end of the webinar.

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And also with that as a reminder,

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you always have the brilliant directory support team behind you if you're having issues with your site or stuck or something's not working.

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Those are great times to contact the Brilliant Directories support team,

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and just know that that we're here to help you.

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You can email support@brilliantdirectories.com.

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And if you have how to questions or you wanna report a known issue,

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it's just a way to help you guys out and also make the software better for everyone.

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And

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if you joined us last webinar, we had two pages

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of BD Lab updates,

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to cover.

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This webinar, we're gonna dive right into, the tip of the week, and this was actually Pat's recommendation.

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We were talking about the benefits of giving, you know, free member accounts, and we started snowballing into a conversation about just freemium plans and freemium models

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in general.

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So, Pat, I was hoping maybe you could tell us a little bit about the the tip of the week and what we're probably gonna cover today.

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Absolutely, Jason. Yeah. I'm I'm definitely an advocate of this.

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It definitely depends on the type of directory business that you're running, but you can do a little bit of out of the box thinking when you're looking at applying a a freemium strategy.

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And, basically,

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a freemium strategy, of course, is allowing somebody

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to experience what it is you have to offer them and not having to pay for it, either ever or initially,

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or giving them a trial.

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We'll go into some different examples of what freemium plans are, and then we'll get very specific at the end and and actually give you guys some specific examples of freemium strategies you can use with a directory,

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business.

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And just before we get into the presentation, by a show of hands, if you wanna use your the raise your hand feature, how many of you are already familiar with what a freemium model is, or or maybe you're using a freemium strategy on your website?

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If you just wanna raise your hand there, I can kinda get a quick count

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of, how many people are familiar or are using a freemium model.

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I see Hima's raising her hand and Jacob and Esther.

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That's great. And Rick. So I'd say about 25%

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of of us here, know what a freemium plan is or are using a freemium plan.

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So that's pretty good because we have a lot to share with you as far as educating you about the benefits and how you can apply it to your website.

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So let's dive, right into it here. So, Patrick,

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what does freemium mean? Because, basically, to me, it sounds like I'm not gonna make any money.

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So how does this benefit my website?

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Yeah. So, basically

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basically, freemium is is giving somebody an opportunity to experience

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something,

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before you ask them to give something in return.

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It's definitely in line with this entire inbound marketing strategy,

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which means that you're gonna show your value before you ask somebody to give you their credit card.

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Almost all the mark online marketing companies now are going in that direction.

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They realize there's so many choices out there. There's so much competition out there.

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If your website is pay to play right from the get go, and that's where the conversation starts,

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it's very difficult to enter a new market if you haven't been around and it's a start up and you're just launching.

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That can often be the sticking point in people leaving your website and not willing to give you their credit card information,

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pay to try out what you have to offer. So the freemium basically gives somebody an opportunity

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to, take it out for a spin.

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And how would this apply to Brilliant Directories websites? Are there ways to

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give things for free?

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I know you can make a free membership level, but is that the only thing that that that comes to mind?

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There's lots of things that you can give away for free. You can give services away for free.

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When it comes to the Brilliant Directories platform itself,

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you can give features for free.

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So there can be premium features that you give somebody an opportunity to try out that at a later time, they they have to use they have to pay to use, or perhaps you can give away leads or business or different, different, tools such as such as those.

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Awesome. Alright. Let's dig a little deeper here and peel this onion, back a bit more.

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So again, like like I like I mentioned, Pat, when I hear freemium, it sounds like

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I'm not gonna make any money. So

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what exactly are the benefits of a freemium model?

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So yeah. So by by offering if you can kind of visualize what a funnel looks like,

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the first thing that freemium does is it makes that initial funnel much, much wider, meaning you capture

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a lot more emails

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if you make the point of entry

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easy to start with, meaning that it's free. The moment you,

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you make the point of entry more complicated by adding a credit card form and collecting credit card information

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or charging.

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At that point,

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basically, you you've reduced your your your lead funnel, and, basically, you're only attracting customers.

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So you'll never know how many potential customers you may have been able to sway by allowing them to come in for free.

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So you're increasing

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the amount of people that are gonna sign up,

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and you're also increasing

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the the confidence that they're gonna have in your brand. Because

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if if I'm so confident what I have to offer is great and I let you try it for free, where I give you access to some really good tools free out of the gates, then I'm showing you that I'm so confident what I have to offer that I can afford to give you some free services.

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Because if if that experience is a good one, imagine what the paid premium experience would be like.

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The one that stands out for me on this list is number three is the increase of word-of-mouth.

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Because as the title says here, it helps make your job easier because when something's free to try, obviously inherently more people can can give it a a spin.

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And if they're having a good experience with the product and there's no pressure of having to pay, they're more likely to tell friends, families, and colleagues about the product or service that you're offering.

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So they're doing a lot of the marketing work for you, and that actually saves you money over time.

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So I can definitely see how even though you're giving something for free,

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one,

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it will eventually lead to more paying members, because as you mentioned there's more people coming in from that top funnel.

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But once they're in the funnel, they start doing some of the legwork for you to promote your brand and your service.

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So I see a lot of value with with number three here.

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Well, that that's a great one for sure.

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Alright. So

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it's it's one of those things where I think we've all only 25%

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of people raise their hand that they know what a freemium model is or using a freemium model, but probably freemium models are around us everywhere.

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Is that right?

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I would say once you once you start recognizing the business plan, you you realize that, again, almost all online services offer some form of freemium services.

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Let's take a look at a couple of these.

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I I know a lot of us are familiar with Yelp, where you can search for businesses.

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Yelp has a business model where they charge businesses to get additional visibility on their site and become like a sponsored listing or a featured

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but it all starts with and let me toggle over to my web browser here.

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Let's

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see. You had sent

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me a link, Pat. I think that I've closed it, but let's just say sign up for

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Yelp

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business account,

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and here we go, biz.yelp.

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With their with their essentials plans. Correct. Perfect. So if we scroll down,

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now I know Yelp makes a lot of money, especially with when when you get reviews, you wanna reply to reviews and things like that.

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You need access to features. But,

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here's the free tools and the essential

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tools,

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and I think that's free for life. Is that right, Pat?

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That that's correct. So they they give you the essentials for free.

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You're able to do those very basic, functionalities.

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And when you're looking basically, when you're looking

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to turn it into a marketing tool, when you're looking to attract

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more customers, like they say turn visitors into customers,

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that's the part where they're gonna start charging you because now they're bringing you it's an investment that you're making.

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They have a strategy in place to turn your investment in Yelp into dollars for you.

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And that's basically what every business owner thinks about when they're looking to pay for something.

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They're seeing it as a business investment.

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Their money can go in a lot of different places, and they wanna see if they spend the $50 here, how much business they could potentially attract.

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So their strategy is to get everybody in through the essentials,

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get you to claim your profile, get you to add some content, engage with the site, and then, of course, their marketing team goes to work and nurtures you and educates you, offers you free webinars,

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shows you some tips that some premium members are doing, gives you a couple case studies, and they slowly turn you onto these upgrades, and advertising opportunities and and educate you on on those services.

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You know, as I'm reading the features here, like upload photos,

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respond to reviews,

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even things like add a call to action button,

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I'm noticing a lot of similarities

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and and I didn't realize this before the webinar, but a lot of similarities between their features and and brilliant directories.

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And let me just let me just show you guys. If we go to

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manage products in the admin

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and we edit a membership level,

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We have additional settings like show social media links,

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on the listing,

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show their website link, show their phone number.

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So you can mix and match

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different tools and features to make the freemium model

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still have value, but the paid version just becomes a no brainer if you really wanna churn business and and drive business your way using the website.

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Even this one, the the respond to member reviews, I think that's a that's a feature here.

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Member can reply to reviews.

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So even with a multi billion dollar website with Yelp, you do get a few of the key features here with your Brilliant Directories website to help you create those tiered membership levels,

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that make the freemium plan worth it and worthwhile signing up, but make the paid plans

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definitely have super high value.

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So that's one good example with Yelp. There's another one.

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Shopify is a great website if you wanna create a dedicated e commerce store, and let's just check out Shopify.

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I think they do a great job of creating a what's called a frictionless

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sign up experience.

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You essentially put your email address in, and you start building your online

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store,

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and what they offer is a fourteen day free trial as their freemium model.

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It's a freemium time period,

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and they let you sign up in this case with no credit card.

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So you can spend fourteen days building your site testing the product.

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Let's just put a sample email email in here and see what, what the next step is.

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Okay. So now they wanna do a password. That's fine.

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Oh, store name.

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Awesome store.

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Nine nine nine. Alright. That store name is available.

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So it looks like I'm gonna go to the process of creating a store, and they're letting me know that it's a fourteen day free trial here.

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So they've essentially acquired me as a user at this point. Right, Pat?

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Yes. They have. Now you've officially entered their funnel.

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As long as it's a real email, at that point, that they they've accomplished what they're hoping to accomplish here.

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Awesome. So here's an example of a fourteen day free trial. We can toggle out of Shopify.

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Then there was another one which was interesting similar to Yelp.

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It was the Ecwid shopping cart, and I have that open here, Pat.

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Ecwid is similar to Shopify or or lets you put a shopping cart on your on a third party website on your own website.

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Is that correct?

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That that's correct.

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And and this is actually a really cool tool for anybody that's selling tent plans or 10 products or

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less on their directory websites, and they wanna have a storefront,

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so to speak.

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So this integrates with a lot of different payment processors, but they have an incredible embed tool.

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So it's really easy to add products to how to at a store, and you just put the embed code in a brilliant directory's widget, and it works phenomenal

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with with the brilliant brilliant directories platform.

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Gotcha. So even if you're using one of the paid plans, you so you're saying with Ecwid,

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you can

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you basically manage everything in the Ecwid interface, and then they give you the like a embedding a YouTube video almost, and you put that on your website?

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It's exactly. It's exactly. And the entire store is there. It's it's phenomenal. It's flawless. And,

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and then they even have the little shopping cart icon at the bottom so you can add stuff to your bag.

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Again, this works really well if you're looking to just have your an official store with your directory where you're the owner and you control

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the products and services that you sell. And what I like about their model

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is they're not necessarily pay to play, meaning that you don't have to pay so you can start collecting money.

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They actually allow you to charge credit cards and connect to payment gateways.

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They understand that's the core functionality, but what they do is volume.

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So they say, hey.

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You can add this many products into the store, and as long as you don't have more than 10 products to sell, you're not gonna have any issues.

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Yes. There's other really cool features if you upgrade to a paid plan,

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but the free feature I actually use a couple different, accounts of this product, and I've never upgraded to a paid plan.

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So they they they give enough quality for the free plan to be worth it, and I do like that.

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And it really gives their their goal is to allow you to grow your store, and the end goal is to have a a large store.

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So they want you to succeed. They want you to generate revenue.

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They make it easy to use the product.

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And as you grow, as revenue increases or you look to add more functionality, then at that point, you can move up to those paid tiers.

229
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Yeah. I I really like this.

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The the main thing that they're limiting besides some some other bells and whistles are how many products,

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you can publish. So, yeah, for for small needs, this is great.

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Let's go back to to brilliant directories.

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Some things that you can limit for your members are how many categories they can select.

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Sometimes if you have the add on, how many additional locations they can select,

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and we're actually enhancing some things with the post publishing, but when members have the ability to publish coupons and events and articles, you can actually limit how many,

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they can,

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publish at a certain time.

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So there are some quantitative limits that you can put on a member's profile,

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and the goal here is they want more visibility.

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So if you put a limit on certain things,

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and they want that on things that would eventually give them visibility,

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they'll eventually upgrade if they want additional visibility for those things that are being limited.

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So that's a good example of a forever free plan, and you still get enough to get you started and and to get your feet wet without risking a monthly payment or anything like that.

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And then this one came up to us at the end as we were chatting is Gmail.

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Let's see, with a show of hands who has a Gmail email account? If you raise your hand here.

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Alright. See the hands going up quick.

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Blair, and Barry, and Brian, or maybe you have a Hotmail or a Yahoo account as well,

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if you wanna raise your hand.

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So about 50% of us here are raising our hand. Well, the thing is, although Gmail is free,

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they you have a free user account, but once you want to start using some of the enterprise features that they offer,

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that's when you start paying money. So,

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you can have a business account, and they offer data storage,

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and managing business email addresses and and things of that nature.

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So after you've outgrown using Gmail for your personal use or maybe you bootstrap

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bootstrapped your business and you need to stop using jason@gmail.com

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and you need to start using jason@brilliantdirectories.com,

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that's when Gmail's,

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enterprise features,

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come into play.

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But having a free user account is how you get your feet wet and familiar with the platform

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for getting started.

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So there are freemium models all around us, and we may or may not realize that we're signing up for them as well.

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And

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I think this is the actionable slide where you guys can actually start thinking of

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value in a freemium model and what the next paid product would be to make paying for the products worthwhile.

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But Patrick and Rick actually put this list together and I think it's pretty creative,

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with creating some type of freemium plan or feel or model.

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Can you tell us a little bit about these, Pat?

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So the the first one is is obviously the one that's most, that's most used, which is the free member listing.

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Oftentimes,

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the strategy that people utilize is

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limiting functionality.

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I see that the most how whether or not you can post a coupon,

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how many locations you can pick, how many categories you can pick. So, basically,

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they offer a lifetime free membership level,

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and

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they they restrict the the feature similar to the to the Ecwid model that we just saw.

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So if that's something that you're doing, you're probably utilizing the most common strategy out there.

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It may not be my personal favorite, but, again, it depends on the the directory model whether or not that's the that's the right strategy to use.

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One that I really like is the first post is

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free. This in particular

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for when your directory focuses on one type of content.

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Let's say it's a coupons website, an events website, a classifieds website.

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You have a specific piece of content that dominates what your directory is about.

285
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When you make the landing page in the offer to try

286
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whatever the primary piece of content is, if the focus is around classifieds,

287
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it's easy for the end user, the eventual member to understand

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why they should be joining your website.

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They're gonna say, oh, well, I do wanna post a job, and, oh, my first job posting is free.

290
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You know what? I'm gonna post a job and see if anybody applies. I'm gonna experience the website

291
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by posting posting one for free. So I really like that model,

292
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particularly when it's a a feature specific website.

293
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Yeah. So we're we mentioned in the previous webinar, we're coming out with the pay per post.

294
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I'm anticipating,

295
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the October,

296
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and what you'll be able to do is

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define how many free posts they get.

298
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Maybe they don't get any free post, but you could set that to one or two, and then the price they pay for posts after that.

299
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So I think that that's gonna be a new,

300
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channel for revenue for everyone here.

301
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And then the Yeah.

302
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There are a lot of directory owners that are that are using that particular model.

303
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It's a bit of a manual process right now, so they are

304
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absolutely ecstatic that this is going to be automated now, and you're not gonna have to move people from one membership level to the other in order to release more posts.

305
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So so I think of all the features

306
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you could release, that's probably one of the most powerful ones that that that BD will be releasing.

307
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I I agree. I agree with that.

308
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The first month free is always a good one or,

309
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a free trial period.

310
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So what you can do is with our with the coupon codes add on, you can give someone a % off their first payment.

311
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So it could be the monthly payment or the yearly payment, but it would take the first payment down,

312
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discounted a %, which in effect makes it $0,

313
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or with the free trial period add on kind of like how we saw with Shopify,

314
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you can offer,

315
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a certain amount of days to trial

316
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the service,

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and then the member will be charged if they don't cancel after those days.

318
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So you can set a trial period for five days, seven days, fourteen, twenty one, thirty days.

319
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You can give sixty days free if you wanted to. You set the number.

320
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And during that trial period, you wanna really make sure that they fall in love with the software because once the trial period ends, that's when you'll you'll have you'll would have had to convince them to make a purchase to upgrade to a paid plan.

321
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So you're buying yourself time to really demonstrate the value to the potential paying member.

322
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And then And I know, Jason, I'm jumping to the last I'm jumping to the last number here, number six, but it's it's it's in line with what you're talking about.

323
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And that's why I this is my personal favorite.

324
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Although there's a little bit of manual work that goes with it,

325
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a lot of people do a good job at giving them a one month for free,

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or a thirty day free trial.

327
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But I think a lot of people on this webinar can relate.

328
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They get that person to sign up, but they're not delivering.

329
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Right?

330
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What you what Jason has bolded there, you must your value must be greater than what the user gives you.

331
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So whenever you put a a a ticking clock

332
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on what it is they get and it's going to expire, you're basically

333
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telling the customer

334
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that you're confident

335
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that you'll prove the value in that time. Give me thirty days, and I will show you.

336
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You will make money off of this in thirty days or you will accomplish this in thirty

337
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days. So the when you're offering the first lead for free,

338
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when your model is get the first lead for free, basically, you're planting in their brain,

339
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one,

340
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I'm gonna make money with this site, leads, customer, your first customer is free. Wow.

341
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Who wouldn't wanna sign up for that? That sounds a lot more enticing than the first month is free.

342
00:24:33.105 --> 00:24:35.285
My first new customer is free.

343
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Or the other thing it does, two, is it's not time based. If for those of you that are starting out,

344
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try don't add all that extra pressure of building an onboarding series, a webinar,

345
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making sure that you're driving leads, making sure that you're giving them the value.

346
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If you've just recently launched or you're launching soon,

347
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I love this first lead free because if it takes two months, if it takes three months, however long it takes for them for you to give them the value that you're asking in return, you're basically guaranteeing you're gonna deliver them something.

348
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And now me, as the directory owner, I'm motivated to get you that business.

349
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So I'm gonna go on my social media page. I'm gonna promote your post.

350
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I might even boost it, drive traffic to it, find out where your locality is, and target a specific geographical,

351
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location.

352
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I'm gonna go to work for you.

353
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The sooner I can get you that lead or that new customer, the sooner I've proven the value.

354
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And since I'm on it's not time based, I can I can upgrade you?

355
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I can call you and move you up to the premium level and see if you'd like to continue with your account and continue receiving more business from us.

356
00:25:39.950 --> 00:25:44.085
So, sorry for jumping ahead, but I thought that that was the perfect time not to introduce that one.

357
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Are you kidding me?

358
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I think that is one of the most that that's one of the best ones on the list because the other ones are basically letting them try the service.

359
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Number six is, look, I'm gonna give you I'm gonna give something that's gonna actually make you money.

360
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So definitely number six I think is one to highlight

361
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and basically what you can do is for your free membership levels,

362
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people who sign up for free, just make the lead price $0.

363
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And after you notice they've received a couple leads from you, go ahead and call them and tell them it's time to upgrade to the paid member.

364
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Do you like what what our site is doing for you?

365
00:26:17.505 --> 00:26:26.544
And that's the manual process is seeing who got a free lead, maybe following up with them with an email or a phone call, and then seeing if you can upgrade them to a paid plan.

366
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But giving them business is the most valuable thing you can do for a company or an individual.

367
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Exactly.

368
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And Sal just wrote a comment saying it's all about the traffic that's coming to their listing, and and and he's right.

369
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When you go the first month free or the free trial, if your directory is not getting a lot of organic traffic, if there's not gonna be organic leads,

370
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you're you're you're you're fighting an uphill battle to generate to hope to cross your fingers that they signed up, and they're gonna get something in return.

371
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But if you actively

372
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try to generate leads for your members that sign up, and that's the cutoff point is when they get that first lead or that first customer,

373
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use the directory owner. You're gonna be a lot more motivated as well.

374
00:27:05.450 --> 00:27:09.230
You especially if you're starting out. Right? You gotta Starting out especially. Yeah.

375
00:27:09.975 --> 00:27:13.755
You have to hustle. You have to make phone calls. You have to work for your customers.

376
00:27:14.375 --> 00:27:17.575
Yeah. I think that's a good like, for example, Shopify is established.

377
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They can do the fourteen day free trial and cut you off if you don't sign up at that point.

378
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They have, you know, thousands and millions of people using their service.

379
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But if you're starting out,

380
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you know, cutting them off after thirty days might not be the best business model or freemium model for you at that particular stage.

381
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What I wanna do is I wanna take it to the to the attendees here. I'm gonna lower everyone's hands.

382
00:27:39.154 --> 00:27:47.815
If you have questions about how one of these six work or if you're using these six, one of these six on your website, we'd love to take a look, maybe provide some additional

383
00:27:49.159 --> 00:27:53.340
tips for you. So if you if you have questions about these six tips,

384
00:27:54.200 --> 00:27:57.980
these strategies, let me unmute Vincent here. How are you, Vince?

385
00:27:59.159 --> 00:28:02.700
Good. How are you? Excellent. How are you today? You're in Houston. Right?

386
00:28:03.895 --> 00:28:06.635
I'm in Dallas. Dallas. Sorry. For work. Sorry.

387
00:28:07.095 --> 00:28:08.075
How you doing today?

388
00:28:09.015 --> 00:28:14.375
Good. Good. You know, I I absolutely love your sites. They absolutely I've got this,

389
00:28:15.095 --> 00:28:19.340
part site in Dallas that is generating leads. I just cannot get the

390
00:28:19.880 --> 00:28:21.020
the parts people

391
00:28:21.400 --> 00:28:22.940
sign up and buy the leads.

392
00:28:23.960 --> 00:28:27.660
You can't get You have any ideas? Yeah. Can we take a look at your site?

393
00:28:28.280 --> 00:28:32.620
Let's see. OEM parts Dallas. OEM parts Dallas. Alright. Just give me a second here.

394
00:28:33.554 --> 00:28:40.215
So you're able to get leads from consumers who need car parts, but you're not able to get the suppliers to to join.

395
00:28:42.115 --> 00:28:42.835
Right. It's,

396
00:28:43.475 --> 00:28:47.815
you know, there's two types of suppliers. There's, like, the the the Ford dealerships

397
00:28:48.195 --> 00:28:48.695
where,

398
00:28:49.120 --> 00:28:53.539
you know, parts guy who's getting the lead has no ability to make a decision.

399
00:28:53.919 --> 00:28:56.980
And then there's the small kinda auto wrecking brokers

400
00:28:58.000 --> 00:28:58.480
who,

401
00:29:00.240 --> 00:29:03.779
are also they're they'll they'll try to find the parts for the customer.

402
00:29:04.425 --> 00:29:07.005
I get a lot of calls for, discontinued

403
00:29:07.305 --> 00:29:07.805
parts.

404
00:29:10.345 --> 00:29:11.405
Gotcha. So,

405
00:29:12.585 --> 00:29:15.085
in this I'm not too familiar with this industry.

406
00:29:15.545 --> 00:29:17.725
So let's use Acura as an example.

407
00:29:20.500 --> 00:29:25.480
Who who would the suppliers be? Like, let's say, for a steering wheel or, like, a car seat?

408
00:29:25.700 --> 00:29:30.020
Just like like any part. Like and again, there people search under two things.

409
00:29:30.020 --> 00:29:34.520
They search under OEM part, which is like a new part, and you have to get that from the manufacturer.

410
00:29:35.095 --> 00:29:37.515
Okay. Then they tend to be expensive.

411
00:29:38.055 --> 00:29:39.675
So then there is,

412
00:29:40.215 --> 00:29:42.555
you know, used parts or aftermarket parts

413
00:29:42.855 --> 00:29:43.255
that,

414
00:29:44.535 --> 00:29:45.815
people often want.

415
00:29:45.815 --> 00:29:50.235
They want a price from the, you know, the real Acura dealer, but then they want a used part price.

416
00:29:51.190 --> 00:29:53.930
And, so where where are these I mean, I'm getting hundreds

417
00:29:54.390 --> 00:29:58.470
I'm getting hundreds of phone calls. I'm sick of the phone calls. Wow.

418
00:29:58.470 --> 00:29:59.930
I'm sick of people calling me.

419
00:30:00.630 --> 00:30:04.185
So where where are these suppliers currently advertising? Where are they getting

420
00:30:11.545 --> 00:30:12.365
some companies

421
00:30:12.985 --> 00:30:13.485
that,

422
00:30:14.505 --> 00:30:18.870
are showing up all these Let me interrupt you. Do they sell directly to consumers? Another question.

423
00:30:19.110 --> 00:30:20.650
Yeah. Yeah. They do. Absolutely.

424
00:30:22.070 --> 00:30:26.070
So where One more one more question. Just just just for fact finding purposes.

425
00:30:26.070 --> 00:30:32.490
I'm I'm just looking here, and I'm seeing hundreds of leads coming into your get match form, and none of them are being matched

426
00:30:32.855 --> 00:30:35.115
to any members. Is there a reason why

427
00:30:35.575 --> 00:30:37.755
none of your because I'm seeing hundreds of them.

428
00:30:38.135 --> 00:30:40.315
How do I I don't know. How do I,

429
00:30:41.815 --> 00:30:45.435
send those to the different like, let's say, a Toyota These look like

430
00:30:45.919 --> 00:30:51.440
these look like great leads, and that that might be one reason why they're not buying them if they're not being matched to your members.

431
00:30:51.600 --> 00:30:56.960
They they look like phenomenal leads. They're all very specific to exact parts and car makes.

432
00:30:56.960 --> 00:31:04.035
And and looks like, like you said, it's it's doing a good job of generating those leads, which is the biggest challenge for most directory websites.

433
00:31:04.035 --> 00:31:05.975
That's that's something to celebrate.

434
00:31:06.115 --> 00:31:11.554
But, yeah, I just I was just curious while Jason is is assessing your strategy here. Okay. Right.

435
00:31:11.554 --> 00:31:13.815
And then there's there's lots more that call.

436
00:31:15.770 --> 00:31:18.429
Oh, automatic lead matching is turned off.

437
00:31:20.970 --> 00:31:22.190
But I don't have anybody

438
00:31:22.890 --> 00:31:24.350
that has agreed to pay.

439
00:31:25.770 --> 00:31:29.149
Gotcha. Do you so who are the members who have joined your site?

440
00:31:31.034 --> 00:31:32.335
These these I built

441
00:31:33.835 --> 00:31:37.135
yeah. I built those are the different people that either

442
00:31:37.515 --> 00:31:41.934
have an auto repair facility or a collision facility that would need parts.

443
00:31:43.034 --> 00:31:45.375
So there's two people involved here. There's the person

444
00:31:45.980 --> 00:31:49.980
that wants the parts, which, obviously, the the system has worked perfect for that.

445
00:31:49.980 --> 00:31:52.880
But now I'm having a problem with how do I find

446
00:31:53.340 --> 00:31:58.160
how do I get the person to say, okay. I'll buy the part, leads or whatever.

447
00:31:58.460 --> 00:32:03.515
Okay. We've had a few I've had a few people starting out with the similar similar challenges,

448
00:32:03.895 --> 00:32:10.315
and what they do is they just have the leads go out as paid leads, and they send it out to a very large volume

449
00:32:10.935 --> 00:32:12.455
of providers that are in there.

450
00:32:12.455 --> 00:32:16.370
So if you have 3,000 members, you can send it out to a hundred people

451
00:32:16.750 --> 00:32:21.250
and see if anybody buys them, have them indicate an interest. When they can see

452
00:32:21.629 --> 00:32:25.870
the exact part that they're selling, right, and saying, yeah. I want I wanna buy that lead.

453
00:32:25.870 --> 00:32:26.850
That's worth it.

454
00:32:27.309 --> 00:32:33.345
You can in the email template, let them know that if if you they buy the lead, they're gonna be the only one that gets deleted.

455
00:32:33.345 --> 00:32:35.925
It's exclusive to them, and they're not gonna have any competition.

456
00:32:36.225 --> 00:32:39.505
So, basically, if they wanna make that sale, they can purchase it.

457
00:32:39.505 --> 00:32:42.660
That's that's one option that that you might wanna to look at.

458
00:32:42.740 --> 00:32:46.900
And let's circle back to the the theme of the, the freemium model here.

459
00:32:47.460 --> 00:32:53.480
So these are your plans for the suppliers. Right? $10 per month, etcetera, etcetera?

460
00:32:55.715 --> 00:32:58.375
Right. And what generally happens is people,

461
00:32:59.715 --> 00:33:02.935
you know, this is the, you know, the model kind of that you do. But basically,

462
00:33:03.795 --> 00:33:07.170
different companies have called me and said, look. We want those leads.

463
00:33:07.250 --> 00:33:12.470
And now they want all the leads, and they just pay a flat monthly fee to get all the leads first or whatever.

464
00:33:12.930 --> 00:33:18.550
So I I have been able to, you know, pick up a few, clients on a temporary basis.

465
00:33:20.625 --> 00:33:21.125
But,

466
00:33:21.905 --> 00:33:27.025
the, you know, the parts are from all different parts and it's and, like, the Toyota guy only wants Toyota stuff.

467
00:33:27.025 --> 00:33:27.765
And the

468
00:33:28.305 --> 00:33:30.945
the Acura guy only wants Acura stuff. You see?

469
00:33:30.945 --> 00:33:35.285
But then the brokers and the records, they want all the all the leads. Okay.

470
00:33:36.440 --> 00:33:43.660
What I would recommend is this because it seems like the suppliers are the ones who are gonna pay you money, as far as for the leads right now.

471
00:33:44.600 --> 00:33:45.900
Very very simply,

472
00:33:46.440 --> 00:33:51.260
the get listed today button and I know you service automotive repair shops, but I would put

473
00:33:52.255 --> 00:33:52.995
part suppliers.

474
00:33:54.815 --> 00:33:57.875
I would say join our network free or something like that.

475
00:33:58.735 --> 00:34:00.195
Okay. At the top,

476
00:34:00.655 --> 00:34:02.515
can I can I update that real quick?

477
00:34:02.975 --> 00:34:05.700
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I'm I'm all open. I,

478
00:34:06.179 --> 00:34:08.820
I am just shocked at how well this works. It's just

479
00:34:09.540 --> 00:34:10.040
unfortunately,

480
00:34:11.460 --> 00:34:16.359
it, it was a lot harder to to kinda line up the clients than I thought there would be.

481
00:34:19.255 --> 00:34:21.034
So we could do, parts

482
00:34:21.335 --> 00:34:21.835
suppliers.

483
00:34:25.574 --> 00:34:27.195
You could just say join our network,

484
00:34:30.135 --> 00:34:30.635
or

485
00:34:34.010 --> 00:34:35.050
we'll just keep it like that.

486
00:34:35.050 --> 00:34:39.050
We can we can play with the words a little bit more, but what you're doing is first

487
00:34:40.650 --> 00:34:46.109
now you're targeting the parts suppliers. Now you know that you want them to sign up to your site.

488
00:34:47.465 --> 00:34:52.364
Yeah. And I could just I could turn off that automotive repair shop thing and just concentrate on

489
00:34:52.824 --> 00:34:53.864
trying to find,

490
00:34:54.665 --> 00:34:58.605
people that wanna, you know, that want an arch lead. That seems to be

491
00:34:59.500 --> 00:35:01.340
the the the site produces lead.

492
00:35:01.340 --> 00:35:04.480
Not only does it produce them in Dallas, it's producing across America.

493
00:35:04.940 --> 00:35:10.780
Right. So, I'm gonna revert back to something we did on our interior design demo site.

494
00:35:10.780 --> 00:35:14.335
We've used this example. It's just a dummy site we've made for demonstration

495
00:35:14.715 --> 00:35:15.215
purposes.

496
00:35:16.474 --> 00:35:19.855
What we've done is we and we have this landing page in our,

497
00:35:21.355 --> 00:35:22.255
in our documentation

498
00:35:22.555 --> 00:35:26.095
area. We basically create a a simple landing page

499
00:35:26.430 --> 00:35:27.490
with some benefits

500
00:35:27.790 --> 00:35:29.630
of why it just says generic.

501
00:35:29.630 --> 00:35:34.050
This is a great reason to join our site of why parts supplier should join your website.

502
00:35:34.750 --> 00:35:36.050
You know, so get get,

503
00:35:36.589 --> 00:35:37.730
exclusive access

504
00:35:38.030 --> 00:35:41.329
to hot buyer leads or whatever you wanna call it.

505
00:35:41.615 --> 00:35:46.674
And then what you do is you send them to directly to your free sign up page.

506
00:35:47.454 --> 00:35:52.755
Okay. Got it. And you get them registered. So you basically have one page that gets them excited

507
00:35:53.055 --> 00:35:53.795
and motivated.

508
00:35:54.174 --> 00:35:56.515
And then instead of showing them

509
00:35:57.000 --> 00:35:57.500
three

510
00:35:57.800 --> 00:35:58.300
plans,

511
00:35:59.320 --> 00:36:04.200
get them into the free sign up and and just and just get them registered in your system.

512
00:36:04.200 --> 00:36:08.620
And you could figure out That's great idea. You can figure out what to do with them,

513
00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:10.140
after they're registered.

514
00:36:10.200 --> 00:36:13.375
Whether you wanna charge them for leads or give them, let's go back to the slides.

515
00:36:13.375 --> 00:36:13.975
If you wanna give them,

516
00:36:15.134 --> 00:36:18.734
their first leads for free, just give them some leads and and then say, okay.

517
00:36:18.734 --> 00:36:21.474
Now you guys gotta pay for leads because you got five for free.

518
00:36:22.494 --> 00:36:24.600
But what what you wanna do is that That's correct.

519
00:36:24.840 --> 00:36:28.460
Mentioned is open up that top funnel and make the sign up process

520
00:36:28.840 --> 00:36:29.340
frictionless

521
00:36:29.720 --> 00:36:30.220
for

522
00:36:30.600 --> 00:36:32.460
your your potential members.

523
00:36:34.360 --> 00:36:36.600
So, so you can get them signed up for free.

524
00:36:36.600 --> 00:36:42.994
And after they sign up for free, this could be something that they see later on in their journey of working with your service.

525
00:36:45.214 --> 00:36:45.714
Okay?

526
00:36:47.454 --> 00:36:48.515
So yeah.

527
00:36:49.935 --> 00:36:52.015
I wanna I wanna ask a favor from Rick.

528
00:36:52.015 --> 00:36:58.750
If you can look up the landing page that we have for this, I know it's in the documentation, and we can share a link in the chat here.

529
00:36:58.990 --> 00:37:01.970
I'll put a link to this sample join page here

530
00:37:02.750 --> 00:37:05.630
in the chat. So this is what you would do. You would change that,

531
00:37:06.510 --> 00:37:09.650
sign up to this, and then they would just sign up for free?

532
00:37:10.805 --> 00:37:15.445
Exactly. And and what I would do is let's just check out your your membership plans here.

533
00:37:15.445 --> 00:37:17.305
Do you have a free option right now?

534
00:37:19.045 --> 00:37:22.745
Yeah. You got this you got a free account. So let's just go to the

535
00:37:24.039 --> 00:37:24.859
sign up page.

536
00:37:25.160 --> 00:37:27.660
What you wanna do is you wanna name it something clever,

537
00:37:28.279 --> 00:37:28.779
like,

538
00:37:29.559 --> 00:37:32.539
instead of saying all this stuff, you you could say, like,

539
00:37:35.240 --> 00:37:36.779
registers Forget hardly.

540
00:37:41.015 --> 00:37:43.994
Yeah. Register something something to that effect.

541
00:37:45.655 --> 00:37:49.194
Register to receive auto just make that the name of the membership level.

542
00:37:50.210 --> 00:37:59.109
And that's what they'll see when they come to the sign up page, and it's kinda gives them instructions and also gets them excited about filling out this form a lot more than create account does.

543
00:37:59.170 --> 00:38:01.990
So again, just by changing some simple text around,

544
00:38:02.895 --> 00:38:07.475
you can make the sign up process more appealing to potential of and prospective members.

545
00:38:09.215 --> 00:38:10.915
Alright? That is your thing.

546
00:38:11.615 --> 00:38:13.555
Thank you, Rick. Yep. I see

547
00:38:14.460 --> 00:38:16.700
yeah. You guys should see a a link in the chat there.

548
00:38:16.700 --> 00:38:24.880
It's if you wanna recreate this, join page, we have some simple instructions that you can follow to get something to this effect, on your own website.

549
00:38:25.500 --> 00:38:29.655
So thank you, Vince, for sharing your site there. Thank you. Yeah.

550
00:38:29.655 --> 00:38:33.435
And something else just to add on top of that that people don't really take into consideration.

551
00:38:34.055 --> 00:38:38.475
When you're offering the free lead, like, right now we just looked at hundreds of leads that,

552
00:38:38.935 --> 00:38:41.655
Vincent Slaus hoping he's not even matching anymore. Right?

553
00:38:41.655 --> 00:38:43.590
Because they're not willing to pay for the leads.

554
00:38:43.750 --> 00:38:47.450
That's a hundred your your customer's customers are your customers.

555
00:38:47.990 --> 00:38:52.570
Right? Those users that came to your website and filled out that lead, they're experiencing

556
00:38:52.870 --> 00:38:53.610
your website.

557
00:38:53.990 --> 00:39:01.944
And if they're not getting contacted with anybody, if they're not getting any sort of results, if nobody's reaching out to them, they're definitely not coming back to your website.

558
00:39:01.944 --> 00:39:05.224
They're not gonna share it with their friends. They're not gonna say, man, I went to this site.

559
00:39:05.224 --> 00:39:08.125
Check it out. I found this part. I couldn't find it anywhere else.

560
00:39:08.240 --> 00:39:12.980
So if you're giving the initial leads for free with such a large amount of members in your database,

561
00:39:13.520 --> 00:39:17.760
at least your end users, the ones submitting the forms, they're getting some replies.

562
00:39:17.760 --> 00:39:19.380
They're getting a good user experience.

563
00:39:19.760 --> 00:39:28.704
And then the idea is that you cut off the freemium model at some point, and you find out which ones they're willing to pay, and they should be more willing to pay if their experience was a good one.

564
00:39:28.765 --> 00:39:32.845
And worst case scenario, you're gonna get on the phone with them, and they're gonna say, hey.

565
00:39:32.845 --> 00:39:37.405
It didn't really turn out into a sale. This and this is happening. And then guess what you can do?

566
00:39:37.405 --> 00:39:38.704
You can use that feedback,

567
00:39:39.069 --> 00:39:43.089
and you can improve your process. You say, okay. I'm gonna redo my category structure,

568
00:39:43.549 --> 00:39:47.890
and it's gonna be by membership level. It's gonna be by the type of car, if it's Honda or Ford.

569
00:39:47.950 --> 00:39:53.055
And that you sign up for the Honda or you sign up for the Ford, and the leads are just gonna go to that one car make.

570
00:39:53.055 --> 00:39:55.714
Maybe that's what I'm gonna do based on the feedback I'm getting.

571
00:39:55.855 --> 00:39:58.434
And you make an adjustment because building a business

572
00:39:58.815 --> 00:40:00.194
is about getting feedback,

573
00:40:00.734 --> 00:40:04.895
making adjustments, throwing it back out there, collecting more feedback, and improving the process.

574
00:40:04.895 --> 00:40:13.230
But if you're not matching the leads and using this freemium model to at least start all that that entire process, then then it's unlikely to see improvements.

575
00:40:13.850 --> 00:40:16.510
And there's something to say about giving away free stuff.

576
00:40:16.970 --> 00:40:21.825
Early times when someone is starting a new project, they're already counting the potential money in their head.

577
00:40:21.905 --> 00:40:25.685
And everything is about where can I charge for this and where can I charge for that?

578
00:40:26.625 --> 00:40:34.964
There's there's an inherent value to creating a free ex a free marketplace for a period of time and exactly what you said, providing people with a good experience.

579
00:40:35.490 --> 00:40:40.869
So as you mentioned on Vince's site right now, those people who submitted leads didn't get matched with,

580
00:40:41.730 --> 00:40:44.710
parts suppliers. So they, in effect, had a bad experience.

581
00:40:45.250 --> 00:40:49.430
So there's something to say and there's and there's something to be gained from

582
00:40:50.655 --> 00:41:00.335
creating a free experience that leads to a good experience for potential customers because it makes your brand useful or your service useful even if you're offering the service for free.

583
00:41:00.335 --> 00:41:00.835
So,

584
00:41:01.295 --> 00:41:05.130
thank you Vince for sharing that and very true statements what you're saying there Pat. Thank you.

585
00:41:06.170 --> 00:41:06.670
Alright,

586
00:41:07.049 --> 00:41:08.650
let's continue on if,

587
00:41:09.210 --> 00:41:17.470
if you haven't already done so think about ways where you could add a freemium model to your website it'll help do a lot of the heavy lifting and work,

588
00:41:18.009 --> 00:41:18.750
for you.

589
00:41:19.965 --> 00:41:24.145
And I just wanted to mention this one more time, just shifting gears a bit.

590
00:41:24.765 --> 00:41:29.425
Last webinar we gave a free ebook out, and it's a 25,

591
00:41:29.965 --> 00:41:33.665
blog article ideas that you can write for your

592
00:41:33.990 --> 00:41:39.130
city directory or really any online directory, and it talks about the value of publishing

593
00:41:39.430 --> 00:41:47.690
good shareable content, and it gets the juices flowing on some ideas that you can write for your specific area or industry

594
00:41:47.990 --> 00:41:48.970
that you're serving.

595
00:41:49.325 --> 00:41:54.865
You can go to brilliantdirectories.com/125-ideas,

596
00:41:55.245 --> 00:41:59.345
and it should take you to the page where you can download the free ebook.

597
00:41:59.805 --> 00:42:07.089
The only reason I'm mentioning it is I got a lot of great feedback from everyone about this, and I saw some great articles that were written that were inspired from the recommendations

598
00:42:07.630 --> 00:42:13.569
in this ebook, so I think it'll be super helpful for you guys, if in case you missed it in the last webinar.

599
00:42:15.645 --> 00:42:16.145
Alright,

600
00:42:17.165 --> 00:42:24.225
and we have a showcase winner today, and I think an all star with the brilliant directories

601
00:42:24.525 --> 00:42:26.145
community and platform

602
00:42:26.525 --> 00:42:27.025
altogether.

603
00:42:28.109 --> 00:42:32.529
Esther, you are our showcase winner. Let me unmute your microphone here.

604
00:42:33.549 --> 00:42:35.730
Alright. You with us, Esther? How are you today?

605
00:42:37.230 --> 00:42:38.910
I'm good. How are you? Awesome.

606
00:42:38.910 --> 00:42:43.935
Thank you for joining with us and allowing us to showcase your web your website today.

607
00:42:45.355 --> 00:42:46.335
Oh, thank you.

608
00:42:47.675 --> 00:42:52.415
Now I know just, in things that you've mentioned in the Facebook group, this was an existing,

609
00:42:53.194 --> 00:42:55.615
community that you had. Correct? And

610
00:42:58.020 --> 00:43:01.000
it and you migrated to the Brilliant Directories platform?

611
00:43:03.060 --> 00:43:05.320
Yeah. So I started with my company,

612
00:43:05.700 --> 00:43:10.120
actually ten years ago, and it was kind of like a hobby that grew into a business.

613
00:43:11.255 --> 00:43:11.495
And,

614
00:43:12.295 --> 00:43:13.995
and I've gone through a lot of different

615
00:43:14.535 --> 00:43:15.515
website platforms,

616
00:43:17.415 --> 00:43:19.835
and just recently, I switched to billing directories.

617
00:43:19.895 --> 00:43:25.355
And so far, it's, like, way better than what I had most recently, which cost me, like, three times as much.

618
00:43:25.820 --> 00:43:27.900
Awesome. That's great. Well, the site looks nice and clean.

619
00:43:27.900 --> 00:43:30.880
You're serving the Saint Petersburg, Florida area?

620
00:43:32.540 --> 00:43:33.040
Yes.

621
00:43:33.420 --> 00:43:36.480
Got you. And you're doing something unique. You're not just listing

622
00:43:36.860 --> 00:43:41.119
all businesses. You're you're listing, like, mom and pop and and

623
00:43:41.984 --> 00:43:45.605
small business, like, not corporate businesses on the site. Is that right?

624
00:43:46.944 --> 00:43:50.644
Right. So they all need to be based in the St. Petersburg area.

625
00:43:51.345 --> 00:43:51.845
Gotcha.

626
00:43:52.385 --> 00:43:57.125
What inspired this this idea for you to to have a focus of that on your site?

627
00:44:00.089 --> 00:44:04.270
Well, I started because I I just like, personally, I like shopping at local businesses,

628
00:44:04.650 --> 00:44:06.089
because I used to live in Fort Lauderdale.

629
00:44:06.089 --> 00:44:08.990
And when I first moved there, there were, like, a ton of little local businesses.

630
00:44:09.485 --> 00:44:13.805
And by the time I left, it had changed so much. It was all, like, all the chain stores, and,

631
00:44:14.525 --> 00:44:16.065
the whole vibe was very different.

632
00:44:16.285 --> 00:44:20.065
So when I moved to Saint Pete, I loved that it it still had the mom and pop vibe.

633
00:44:21.325 --> 00:44:24.625
And, at the time, I was working at local newspaper.

634
00:44:25.700 --> 00:44:30.599
And when my parents did business with me and I was at work, they would always just go to the mall.

635
00:44:30.660 --> 00:44:34.760
So I would get home and I'm like, hey. What'd you guys do? And they're like, oh, we went to the mall

636
00:44:35.619 --> 00:44:39.835
because they're like, we don't know where the cool local shops are. Right.

637
00:44:39.835 --> 00:44:41.355
So where it's easy because they want

638
00:44:41.995 --> 00:44:46.475
Gotcha. So I started making a list on a piece of paper, and then I I put the list on Facebook.

639
00:44:46.475 --> 00:44:48.495
And when Facebook was first getting started,

640
00:44:48.955 --> 00:44:52.980
and it just all kind of came from there. Like like, when I started, I wasn't thinking of

641
00:44:53.540 --> 00:44:54.440
building anything.

642
00:44:54.900 --> 00:44:55.960
It kinda happens.

643
00:44:56.820 --> 00:45:00.500
The and do you have a relationship with some of the businesses that are part of your website?

644
00:45:00.500 --> 00:45:03.960
Like, do you do you know them by first half basis and things like that? Yeah.

645
00:45:04.260 --> 00:45:06.580
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Most of them, I know them pretty well.

646
00:45:06.580 --> 00:45:08.760
We we have a monthly networking meetings.

647
00:45:09.245 --> 00:45:14.365
We do a lot of events. We have a big festivals that we do. So it's very it's, it's not like a

648
00:45:15.165 --> 00:45:18.865
my goal is not to have, like, 20,000,000,000 members. It's to have,

649
00:45:19.885 --> 00:45:21.025
a a close community.

650
00:45:21.680 --> 00:45:25.440
But then I wanna have it that's why I added the free listings I didn't have before.

651
00:45:25.440 --> 00:45:27.460
Because I want the directory to have

652
00:45:27.840 --> 00:45:30.580
make it easy for consumers to find whatever they need.

653
00:45:31.600 --> 00:45:36.980
But as far as my paid members, I would rather have fewer who are more active and and

654
00:45:37.455 --> 00:45:38.995
participate in more of our decks.

655
00:45:40.015 --> 00:45:43.055
That's that's awesome. Yeah. Makes sense? Yeah. Yeah. It it totally makes it.

656
00:45:43.055 --> 00:45:47.855
Just being on this website, I feel like I'm already part of of the Saint Petersburg community.

657
00:45:47.855 --> 00:45:50.275
You see smiley faces. You see crafty images,

658
00:45:51.130 --> 00:45:53.790
and things like that. What would you say was,

659
00:45:55.050 --> 00:45:59.310
one of the biggest hurdles when first registering new businesses in this directory?

660
00:46:02.010 --> 00:46:04.155
You mean on the on the Berlin Direct? No.

661
00:46:04.155 --> 00:46:15.775
In What's applying Well, since you since you started, like, when you had to when you had to pitch businesses to join your your directory list or whatever list you were creating, was it was it very straightforward or did you have were they scratching their heads?

662
00:46:17.540 --> 00:46:17.860
No.

663
00:46:17.860 --> 00:46:25.000
So so because when I tried, like like, I wasn't really thinking business, and I and I had, like, another job, so I wasn't really concerned about money or anything.

664
00:46:25.940 --> 00:46:31.935
So it was more just kind of being out there talking to people, and then other businesses would refer each other.

665
00:46:31.994 --> 00:46:34.875
So it it really grew very dynamically. Like, we didn't have, like,

666
00:46:36.395 --> 00:46:40.395
That's awesome. Really sales pitches or anything. So we started doing a lot of events.

667
00:46:40.395 --> 00:46:42.335
Like, we participated in a lot of events,

668
00:46:42.660 --> 00:46:44.680
like, other people's events, like community festivals,

669
00:46:44.980 --> 00:46:47.319
and we also organize a lot of our hours.

670
00:46:47.619 --> 00:46:51.380
That's fantastic. Lot of time people would join. They wanna they wanna be a part of our events.

671
00:46:51.380 --> 00:46:53.720
They wanna be a vendor at, like, one of our events.

672
00:46:54.725 --> 00:46:55.465
That's fantastic.

673
00:46:55.605 --> 00:47:01.365
So so based on what you're saying is when you first started out, you were just asking people if they wanted to participate for free.

674
00:47:01.365 --> 00:47:02.185
Is that right?

675
00:47:03.285 --> 00:47:06.185
If they just or were you charging from the start? Yeah.

676
00:47:07.059 --> 00:47:11.079
No. In the very beginning, it was free, and then I and then I added paid options.

677
00:47:12.020 --> 00:47:13.960
Gotcha. Took away the free because

678
00:47:14.339 --> 00:47:16.119
the problem I was having is that

679
00:47:16.500 --> 00:47:20.740
a lot of it was built during the recession here, and a lot of businesses were going out of business.

680
00:47:20.740 --> 00:47:22.119
So a lot of my free listings,

681
00:47:23.265 --> 00:47:24.085
were outdated.

682
00:47:25.744 --> 00:47:28.385
You know? Right. Right. Right. You know, they closed

683
00:47:28.785 --> 00:47:31.444
they didn't think, oh, I'm gonna go, you know, close my account.

684
00:47:31.984 --> 00:47:34.805
So so I decided to stop offering three listings.

685
00:47:36.130 --> 00:47:36.770
But now I'm

686
00:47:37.810 --> 00:47:44.150
now now I have the resources that I can, you know, hire somebody to, like, follow-up with all the three people, like, maybe every six months Mhmm.

687
00:47:44.370 --> 00:47:47.985
To make sure there's still under us. So now I'm adding three of those things again.

688
00:47:48.945 --> 00:47:52.165
Yeah. I think, like, I get the feel that your site is established.

689
00:47:53.585 --> 00:47:54.885
I like that you're using

690
00:47:55.425 --> 00:47:58.885
free options around your site. And normally, my recommendation

691
00:47:59.585 --> 00:48:03.960
when a site is first starting out is to limit how many membership levels they have.

692
00:48:03.960 --> 00:48:06.940
But in your case, because I I even feel that it's established,

693
00:48:07.400 --> 00:48:12.060
I can act and it's very clearly written some of the benefits here, and it's not just like,

694
00:48:13.240 --> 00:48:18.540
it's things that actually matter to a business. So I think although you have four membership levels,

695
00:48:18.905 --> 00:48:21.005
it's the price points are nice, and,

696
00:48:21.945 --> 00:48:29.464
you've laid out everything really well, and I actually feel comfortable browsing this page and taking my time to decide which one I want to choose.

697
00:48:29.464 --> 00:48:32.925
So I wanna commend you on that with this nice pricing page here.

698
00:48:33.960 --> 00:48:34.940
Oh, thank you.

699
00:48:35.560 --> 00:48:37.500
I had one technical

700
00:48:37.800 --> 00:48:41.980
recommendation for you that I wanted to give you a helping hand with, and I think it's good advice,

701
00:48:42.359 --> 00:48:44.700
for everyone here that's that's listening today.

702
00:48:45.480 --> 00:48:48.060
I did a quick speed check on your homepage,

703
00:48:49.105 --> 00:48:49.605
and

704
00:48:50.305 --> 00:48:54.325
I noticed that the page size is 18 megabytes.

705
00:48:54.705 --> 00:48:56.325
So there's 18 megabytes

706
00:48:56.625 --> 00:48:57.285
of data,

707
00:48:58.465 --> 00:49:02.085
that needs to download before the the page is completed rendering.

708
00:49:02.550 --> 00:49:03.050
Normally,

709
00:49:03.350 --> 00:49:05.610
a good page size would be one to three,

710
00:49:06.950 --> 00:49:11.210
megabytes in including all the images, and the images are the ones that

711
00:49:11.750 --> 00:49:13.290
take up the most space.

712
00:49:14.645 --> 00:49:22.025
So if I wanted to maybe just update one or two of your images and show you how you can optimize it, I think that would be good for for everyone here,

713
00:49:22.405 --> 00:49:27.065
as well. So you want to help make sure the page size lower and and the main value

714
00:49:27.365 --> 00:49:28.825
is not really your desktop

715
00:49:29.310 --> 00:49:33.090
at home computer users, but people who are on their mobile phones.

716
00:49:34.430 --> 00:49:43.125
And also Google is giving more value to websites that load quicker and that are more mobile friendly as well, and that includes the the size of the images and things like that.

717
00:49:43.445 --> 00:49:46.905
So I can I show you a couple, recommendations that I would have for that?

718
00:49:48.485 --> 00:49:49.225
Yeah. Definitely.

719
00:49:55.045 --> 00:49:57.945
Okay. Great. So I noticed that you're using,

720
00:49:58.630 --> 00:49:59.369
the category,

721
00:50:01.830 --> 00:50:03.450
images here. Is that correct?

722
00:50:05.190 --> 00:50:08.090
Yes. Okay. So if we go to member categories,

723
00:50:10.485 --> 00:50:10.985
and,

724
00:50:11.365 --> 00:50:14.885
these are the images here. You're you have six of them.

725
00:50:16.725 --> 00:50:20.105
So let's just see what's what sizes are actually rendering here.

726
00:50:20.565 --> 00:50:22.085
Let's look at the view image info.

727
00:50:22.085 --> 00:50:30.609
So we're actually loading an image the image is 3,000 pixels wide, but it's being resized about 10% of that to 360.

728
00:50:31.390 --> 00:50:34.450
So this it's just this three megabytes just for this image.

729
00:50:34.750 --> 00:50:36.690
So what I'm gonna do is actually download

730
00:50:37.070 --> 00:50:39.410
download this image and make it the size that,

731
00:50:39.995 --> 00:50:43.295
is being rendered on the the page, which is 360

732
00:50:43.515 --> 00:50:44.015
pixels.

733
00:50:45.675 --> 00:50:51.215
Let's just download. I'm just gonna, copy this image, and I opened up Photoshop beforehand.

734
00:50:52.440 --> 00:50:57.260
If you guys don't have, Photoshop, there are I'm just getting a little finicky here.

735
00:50:58.040 --> 00:50:58.540
Okay.

736
00:50:59.080 --> 00:50:59.980
Copy image.

737
00:51:01.960 --> 00:51:02.859
Okay. So

738
00:51:03.400 --> 00:51:07.420
big image here, and I'm gonna change the, image size

739
00:51:08.454 --> 00:51:09.655
to 360

740
00:51:09.655 --> 00:51:10.155
pixels.

741
00:51:13.494 --> 00:51:13.994
And

742
00:51:14.535 --> 00:51:17.415
so this is basically what's what's being loaded there.

743
00:51:17.415 --> 00:51:21.675
I see that you added white space to account for the, the toggle here,

744
00:51:22.530 --> 00:51:23.030
But,

745
00:51:23.810 --> 00:51:31.430
I I don't it's the image gets stretched to fit the, the area, so I'm I'm just gonna get rid of that area Oh, okay.

746
00:51:31.810 --> 00:51:34.710
Of the image. It should still have the, the same effect.

747
00:51:35.525 --> 00:51:36.425
So let me

748
00:51:37.845 --> 00:51:38.345
just

749
00:51:39.765 --> 00:51:42.185
crop this one image and let me save it.

750
00:51:47.890 --> 00:51:48.390
And

751
00:51:48.930 --> 00:51:50.869
generally, there's different photo qualities.

752
00:51:51.410 --> 00:51:51.910
Very

753
00:51:52.530 --> 00:51:54.950
if you're using Photoshop or there's tons of

754
00:51:55.490 --> 00:51:59.730
free tools to crop images and things like that, you really don't need the maximum level.

755
00:51:59.730 --> 00:52:02.205
Your eyes can't see the difference, it just takes up more.

756
00:52:02.365 --> 00:52:09.585
But very high, or about 80% quality is is, is good enough when you're rendering things on mobile phones and and desktops.

757
00:52:11.085 --> 00:52:13.025
So let me just save this image here,

758
00:52:15.020 --> 00:52:17.200
and let's see what you called this image.

759
00:52:19.420 --> 00:52:20.480
Arts and crafts,

760
00:52:20.780 --> 00:52:22.320
let's call it the same thing,

761
00:52:24.460 --> 00:52:26.000
and we'll save that image.

762
00:52:27.265 --> 00:52:28.005
Now here's

763
00:52:28.305 --> 00:52:32.645
where I wanna do something interesting. I found this image optimizer tool

764
00:52:33.025 --> 00:52:35.665
that can actually I'm gonna share the link here.

765
00:52:35.665 --> 00:52:40.244
You can upload an image here, and it will actually compress it even further.

766
00:52:41.640 --> 00:52:44.700
Now for those of you that want to nerd out and try to maximize

767
00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:45.900
the minimize

768
00:52:46.200 --> 00:52:49.400
the size of your images on your homepage, you might want to use this tool.

769
00:52:49.400 --> 00:52:51.660
I'm just gonna share this link here in the chat.

770
00:52:51.720 --> 00:52:57.635
I don't think it's necessary if you're already saving your image at a normal quality like 80% or 70%,

771
00:52:58.015 --> 00:53:00.255
but if you wanted to nerd out a bit, you could do that.

772
00:53:00.255 --> 00:53:02.655
So what I'm gonna do is I'm still gonna choose the highest,

773
00:53:03.055 --> 00:53:04.115
file size here.

774
00:53:04.415 --> 00:53:05.475
This is a JPEG,

775
00:53:05.855 --> 00:53:07.715
and I'm just gonna choose the artist

776
00:53:08.990 --> 00:53:11.329
folder here, and it's gonna optimize that image

777
00:53:11.630 --> 00:53:12.450
for me.

778
00:53:14.109 --> 00:53:17.010
And let's just give that a second, and that's done

779
00:53:17.310 --> 00:53:17.810
now.

780
00:53:18.750 --> 00:53:24.565
So that one took, that was 61 before it. It made it down to 51. So let's let's save that.

781
00:53:25.184 --> 00:53:28.724
So what I wanna do now is actually change this photo here.

782
00:53:32.385 --> 00:53:35.184
And then I just wanna do one more photo on your site, Esther.

783
00:53:35.184 --> 00:53:38.230
It's the background photo, the the super wide one,

784
00:53:38.530 --> 00:53:43.270
this one. And Okay. Because that one is actually the biggest image on your entire home page.

785
00:53:43.569 --> 00:53:45.510
So let me upload this image here,

786
00:53:48.130 --> 00:53:49.349
and we'll go back,

787
00:53:50.735 --> 00:53:53.235
and we'll select, this image here,

788
00:53:53.855 --> 00:53:55.395
and we'll save the changes.

789
00:53:59.295 --> 00:54:00.195
Okay. Great.

790
00:54:01.055 --> 00:54:04.035
And let me just do this last, image here.

791
00:54:05.619 --> 00:54:10.359
View background image. So this is the image that's on your home page. If we zoom in,

792
00:54:10.820 --> 00:54:15.140
it's a pretty huge image. No one's gonna really need the image to be this, large.

793
00:54:15.140 --> 00:54:17.000
So let me, download this,

794
00:54:17.700 --> 00:54:18.200
image,

795
00:54:20.415 --> 00:54:24.755
and I'll open it with Photoshop, and I'll do something similar. For a wide image like this,

796
00:54:25.055 --> 00:54:27.555
you really just need it to be about 2,000 pixels

797
00:54:28.655 --> 00:54:29.155
wide.

798
00:54:30.095 --> 00:54:34.170
So let's see what it is right now. It's about 7,500.

799
00:54:34.790 --> 00:54:38.790
So what I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna we wanna keep the height. The height is fine on that.

800
00:54:38.790 --> 00:54:40.170
I'm gonna make it 2,000,

801
00:54:43.590 --> 00:54:44.090
and

802
00:54:45.350 --> 00:54:48.330
just gonna shrink it down a bit, and then I'm gonna,

803
00:54:51.635 --> 00:54:52.375
fit it.

804
00:54:53.795 --> 00:54:58.455
Oh, excuse me. I did the wrong thing. I take everything back. Let me, minimize this.

805
00:54:58.755 --> 00:55:01.735
What I wanna do is change the canvas size. Excuse me.

806
00:55:07.270 --> 00:55:08.090
Okay. Great.

807
00:55:11.030 --> 00:55:14.730
Let me just see one thing here. I wanna make sure it still looks good on your site.

808
00:55:17.510 --> 00:55:18.010
Okay.

809
00:55:20.645 --> 00:55:24.585
Sorry to be so finicky with this. Just wanna make sure we do a good job for you.

810
00:55:26.484 --> 00:55:26.984
Thanks.

811
00:55:28.244 --> 00:55:29.765
I'm gonna increase it just a little bit.

812
00:55:29.765 --> 00:55:33.445
It's just such a it's such a wide image, and I wanna get some of the important parts of it.

813
00:55:33.525 --> 00:55:37.040
Normally, I would go like 2,000 by 800, something like that,

814
00:55:37.420 --> 00:55:39.760
but I'll keep it keep it like this.

815
00:55:41.900 --> 00:55:42.400
No.

816
00:55:43.660 --> 00:55:47.520
I'm still not getting what I want here. I wanna get some of these trees here for you.

817
00:55:48.140 --> 00:55:51.675
Okay. I'm gonna go against my better judgment. I just wanna shrink down the image a bit,

818
00:55:52.395 --> 00:55:54.015
and we'll go ahead and save that.

819
00:55:58.635 --> 00:56:02.175
Just gonna do this. The height, I'm gonna bring down to,

820
00:56:03.275 --> 00:56:04.975
700. There we go.

821
00:56:09.490 --> 00:56:13.670
Alright. Oh, look. How do we know what size to save everything else?

822
00:56:13.970 --> 00:56:14.470
So

823
00:56:14.849 --> 00:56:21.915
with with with a background image like this, it's a little bit of trial and error, because you see the image is getting cut off a bit

824
00:56:22.635 --> 00:56:26.175
to fit the screen. Mhmm. For these images, it's pretty straightforward.

825
00:56:26.635 --> 00:56:28.415
If you just right click on an image,

826
00:56:28.875 --> 00:56:30.655
and click on view image info,

827
00:56:31.355 --> 00:56:36.175
it'll tell you if it's being scaled down. So now we can see that this one is not being scaled down.

828
00:56:36.609 --> 00:56:39.750
It's the actual dimensions. Let's look at the the other one here.

829
00:56:40.770 --> 00:56:44.550
This one's being scaled down from 3,000 down to three sixty.

830
00:56:44.770 --> 00:56:48.630
And also another thing, when you're scaling your images up or down,

831
00:56:49.490 --> 00:56:52.390
they can't they might have a tendency to become blurry.

832
00:56:53.465 --> 00:56:56.045
So when you put the exact size that it should be,

833
00:56:56.505 --> 00:56:57.405
it you're

834
00:56:57.705 --> 00:57:03.405
reducing the chance of having blurry images, whether they're being stretched or shrunk shrunken down.

835
00:57:05.980 --> 00:57:10.060
They should all be the three 60 x 2 eighty eight? For for these ones. Yeah.

836
00:57:10.060 --> 00:57:11.260
So I'll leave those ones up to you.

837
00:57:11.260 --> 00:57:17.920
And then I just wanna change this background image, and, let me use the image optimizer again for this new background image.

838
00:57:18.845 --> 00:57:21.825
And then we'll add it to your site. Go to your design settings.

839
00:57:21.885 --> 00:57:27.744
And what I wanna do is run the Pingdom test again and see how much the page size has gone down.

840
00:57:44.315 --> 00:57:46.175
K. And we'll save the changes.

841
00:57:48.395 --> 00:57:52.975
Like the cropping I was doing, it's a little trial and error on yours, and it's gonna be different on different screens.

842
00:57:54.475 --> 00:57:58.255
But generally, 2,000 is a good width for your background homepage image.

843
00:57:58.980 --> 00:58:02.120
So let's go to Pingdom now, and let's run this test again.

844
00:58:02.500 --> 00:58:04.200
Let's open this in a new tab,

845
00:58:06.500 --> 00:58:08.440
and I'll just start a new test.

846
00:58:13.085 --> 00:58:14.464
That should just take a moment.

847
00:58:15.724 --> 00:58:17.585
And this is really important because

848
00:58:18.204 --> 00:58:22.464
if you're uploading images to your site and they have really large file sizes,

849
00:58:22.765 --> 00:58:26.045
it's it's gonna take a lot long time to load on on mobile devices.

850
00:58:26.045 --> 00:58:29.190
So we've cut down your page size by about 30%

851
00:58:30.050 --> 00:58:32.210
just by updating those two two images.

852
00:58:32.210 --> 00:58:37.590
It went from 18 to so that's why I wanted to do that background image because I knew it was one of the larger images on your site.

853
00:58:38.994 --> 00:58:44.195
Twelve twelve megabytes. And let's let's actually look at what the what the image looks like.

854
00:58:44.195 --> 00:58:45.655
Let me refresh the page.

855
00:58:49.635 --> 00:58:51.575
So this is with the new image,

856
00:58:52.089 --> 00:58:56.089
and this is with the old image. So what you could do is you could play around with it.

857
00:58:56.089 --> 00:58:59.550
Maybe you wanna cut the tree off more here and show more of the left side.

858
00:58:59.930 --> 00:59:05.055
But you can play with it, and you could figure out the right positioning for the bikers and and things like that.

859
00:59:05.295 --> 00:59:07.855
But basically, all you need to do is crop crop it a certain way.

860
00:59:07.855 --> 00:59:10.994
But that's gonna that's gonna help your search engine rankings

861
00:59:11.615 --> 00:59:15.875
and provide a better and you're gonna get better experience from your users visiting the site.

862
00:59:17.950 --> 00:59:20.770
So what about, like, when, like, our users add photos?

863
00:59:21.150 --> 00:59:21.870
So our system

864
00:59:22.430 --> 00:59:26.050
so that's a good question. So, like, when people are publishing events,

865
00:59:26.590 --> 00:59:27.810
our system automatically,

866
00:59:28.430 --> 00:59:29.570
optimizes it.

867
00:59:30.905 --> 00:59:36.345
So the these images are this is just see this it's not showing that it's being scaled down.

868
00:59:36.345 --> 00:59:38.205
It's it's the correct image size,

869
00:59:38.744 --> 00:59:40.285
and it's 42 kilobytes.

870
00:59:40.585 --> 00:59:48.940
So a good rule of thumb is you wanna try to get images as low as possible, but definitely you want your images under 100 kilobytes, not megabytes,

871
00:59:49.240 --> 00:59:49.740
kilobytes,

872
00:59:50.920 --> 00:59:52.380
even your larger images.

873
00:59:55.720 --> 00:59:58.540
So here are some some images you're using here.

874
00:59:59.415 --> 01:00:03.115
This one's being scaled to fit the slider, but but not actually,

875
01:00:03.495 --> 01:00:05.675
it's looks like it's using the thumbnail version,

876
01:00:06.615 --> 01:00:07.175
of your site.

877
01:00:07.175 --> 01:00:13.620
So you wanna make sure you're uploading images that are at least seven sixty four by 400, the ones that are using in the slider here.

878
01:00:14.020 --> 01:00:17.640
So these are being stretched to fill the space, although they're smaller.

879
01:00:18.740 --> 01:00:20.340
So you wanna make sure you're uploading,

880
01:00:20.820 --> 01:00:23.720
this image size here seven sixty four by 400,

881
01:00:24.180 --> 01:00:27.315
for the for the slider images here. And I think when you're adding images

882
01:00:27.954 --> 01:00:32.775
to the slider, we do recommend that as the image size when you're when you're creating a new featured article post here.

883
01:00:34.755 --> 01:00:35.255
Okay.

884
01:00:36.435 --> 01:00:39.415
Pat, do you have any final feedback or anything for Esther?

885
01:00:40.850 --> 01:00:43.510
Think that when you say it's good for SEO,

886
01:00:43.810 --> 01:00:44.630
it's because

887
01:00:45.250 --> 01:00:49.670
Google one of the things that they care about the most is how fast your site loads.

888
01:00:49.890 --> 01:00:52.070
Because if they send somebody to your website,

889
01:00:52.415 --> 01:00:55.795
they want it to be they want it to load in two seconds or less ideally.

890
01:00:56.415 --> 01:01:00.755
They're very, very picky because they're all about delivering the best user experience on Google.

891
01:01:00.815 --> 01:01:08.590
So if they see that your homepage is 18 megabytes and it's taking four seconds to load and it's your home page, you kind of get a lot of negative points.

892
01:01:08.590 --> 01:01:18.275
And when somebody does a a a Google search, even though you would normally be ranking for organic because your SEO is good, your content's good, your website's good, the amount of users is good.

893
01:01:18.494 --> 01:01:28.095
But if your website's loading too slow because the images are too large, that can start hurting those organic results because Google's not gonna want to publish your site as one of the top results.

894
01:01:28.095 --> 01:01:31.875
So there's a there's a lot of benefits, especially because your site is matured.

895
01:01:32.520 --> 01:01:35.260
You get a you have a lot of users. You have a lot of great content.

896
01:01:35.720 --> 01:01:42.700
The type of of optimization that Jason's doing now is is the type of optimization you should be focusing on, which is just doing slight improvements,

897
01:01:43.160 --> 01:01:45.420
to to improve those overall scores.

898
01:01:46.685 --> 01:01:49.665
Okay. And what did you say, like, optimal loading time is?

899
01:01:53.005 --> 01:01:54.305
The SEO optimization?

900
01:01:56.445 --> 01:01:59.265
For loading time, like, what is considered good?

901
01:01:59.589 --> 01:02:04.390
It's under three. Under Any I go ahead, Pat. Yeah. Under three. Yeah. Yeah.

902
01:02:04.390 --> 01:02:07.670
It could be between two and three depending on how much how much content is on there.

903
01:02:07.670 --> 01:02:13.045
Anything under two is phenomenal. Right now, Pingdom has yet two, which is pretty pretty good.

904
01:02:13.045 --> 01:02:14.745
And I'm I'm assuming if you keep,

905
01:02:15.125 --> 01:02:19.545
reducing the rest of those images, you're gonna be under two, which should be, lightning fast.

906
01:02:20.885 --> 01:02:22.825
Okay. Cool. Yeah. I'll definitely do that.

907
01:02:23.445 --> 01:02:26.220
Alright, Esther. Esther. Well, thank you for sharing your site with us.

908
01:02:26.220 --> 01:02:27.660
I just did one small change here.

909
01:02:27.660 --> 01:02:32.480
I I I centered the, the bikers here so they shouldn't be covered by the text. There you go.

910
01:02:33.020 --> 01:02:37.020
Oh, perfect. Yeah. That's fine. So that looks really nice. Still got all the palm trees.

911
01:02:37.020 --> 01:02:39.825
Everyone wants to visit Saint Petersburg, Florida now.

912
01:02:39.905 --> 01:02:43.204
If you're looking for places to shop, you know where to go now, guys.

913
01:02:45.185 --> 01:02:49.525
Great work, Esther. And and, thanks to Patrick for all the work you've done on my side.

914
01:02:51.345 --> 01:02:53.285
Hey, my pleasure. Thank you so much.

915
01:02:54.220 --> 01:02:57.980
Alright. Good stuff there from Esker. It's great to see an established organization.

916
01:02:57.980 --> 01:02:59.900
In her case, she migrated her site,

917
01:03:00.300 --> 01:03:03.680
from several other platforms and then finally landed on brilliant directories.

918
01:03:04.140 --> 01:03:07.600
Looks like it's working well for her. I hope she sticks around with us for a while.

919
01:03:08.634 --> 01:03:11.454
And to be honest guys, she's kept it very

920
01:03:11.755 --> 01:03:12.255
simple.

921
01:03:12.795 --> 01:03:22.174
You know, a lot of people, and I and I wanna mention this, they go for our all in one directory theme, which is basically our demo showing you all the different types of content you can post.

922
01:03:23.710 --> 01:03:29.090
But it's a catch 22. When you add coupons, jobs, all the galleries, photos, videos,

923
01:03:30.030 --> 01:03:31.570
audios, property listings,

924
01:03:32.030 --> 01:03:36.850
you're tripling, quadrupling the amount of work you need to do to fill those different areas

925
01:03:37.285 --> 01:03:40.185
of your site. What's really nice if you want to choose,

926
01:03:40.885 --> 01:03:45.545
two, three, or four features to have on your site, in her case she has the local businesses,

927
01:03:46.085 --> 01:03:47.225
events, and news,

928
01:03:48.325 --> 01:04:02.140
of of as far as content that you can search and and there's some more stuff but that's what's being highlighted and featured here and she's able to add a lot of high value to those areas of her site rather than spreading herself thin and having to fill content,

929
01:04:02.680 --> 01:04:04.920
in all sorts of different places of her site.

930
01:04:04.920 --> 01:04:10.565
So again, I wanna commend you on the way you've structured the navigation of your site, you're offering to your members,

931
01:04:10.865 --> 01:04:15.025
and also the value you're bringing to your community. So I applaud you, Esther.

932
01:04:15.025 --> 01:04:16.325
Very good job on this.

933
01:04:17.520 --> 01:04:19.200
Also, I'll add one more little detail.

934
01:04:19.200 --> 01:04:25.360
Another thing that that I really love, and and this is good advice for anybody that's starting their first online business.

935
01:04:25.360 --> 01:04:28.420
So let's say you're getting out there and you're saying, I'd like to run a directory.

936
01:04:29.120 --> 01:04:30.160
I'm gonna give it a shot.

937
01:04:30.160 --> 01:04:34.285
I'd like to to have just like just like Esther, it started small and turned into a business,

938
01:04:34.745 --> 01:04:38.365
which is what a a lot of us are hoping we can do with with our online,

939
01:04:38.665 --> 01:04:39.165
directory.

940
01:04:39.625 --> 01:04:43.065
And what she did is she started local. Right? She's in the local area.

941
01:04:43.065 --> 01:04:44.925
She got to know the local business owners.

942
01:04:45.385 --> 01:04:49.910
And a lot of people get started, they want a national directory or they want an international directory.

943
01:04:50.369 --> 01:04:58.310
And it's it's it's definitely possible, but if you're doing it on the side part time and you wanna be a global or a national directory,

944
01:04:58.770 --> 01:05:00.690
it it's a more challenging task.

945
01:05:00.690 --> 01:05:07.865
It can be done, but it's definitely gonna be an uphill battle if you have limited resources and it's your first time trying it out.

946
01:05:08.005 --> 01:05:10.025
I love taking the local approach,

947
01:05:10.325 --> 01:05:14.585
getting your feet wet, talking to business owners, doing live demos,

948
01:05:15.150 --> 01:05:15.890
getting feedback,

949
01:05:16.349 --> 01:05:17.630
and blowing a small

950
01:05:18.109 --> 01:05:19.410
growing a small community,

951
01:05:19.869 --> 01:05:22.609
succeeding at that. And I've seen some people

952
01:05:22.910 --> 01:05:27.089
franchise it out. So, basically, they get people to run different local directories.

953
01:05:27.515 --> 01:05:32.975
And I've had people actually just launch a second directory and a third directory and manage those directories.

954
01:05:33.595 --> 01:05:38.975
But experiencing a success out of the gates by going small and focusing on your locality,

955
01:05:39.995 --> 01:05:45.020
is is definitely a fantastic approach for for those of us that are starting out for the first time.

956
01:05:45.560 --> 01:05:49.560
I think that's sound advice and we and we covered that a lot in in last,

957
01:05:50.040 --> 01:05:52.540
webinar with when David was on with me there.

958
01:05:52.920 --> 01:05:55.580
So good themes that are are recurring and resonating

959
01:05:55.960 --> 01:05:58.135
with looking at these directory websites.

960
01:05:59.315 --> 01:05:59.815
Alright.

961
01:06:00.355 --> 01:06:11.655
If you guys liked what you saw and you'd like your site showcased in the next webinar, maybe it's ready to launch, maybe you're still working on it, we'd love to take a look at it and showcase your site in the next webinar.

962
01:06:11.940 --> 01:06:14.359
Go ahead and take a second right now and email

963
01:06:14.900 --> 01:06:18.260
events@brilliantdirectories.com.

964
01:06:18.260 --> 01:06:24.885
We'll notify you before the next webinar if you've been chosen, and we'll also feature you on our Facebook page.

965
01:06:24.965 --> 01:06:30.805
So if you like your site featured and showcased in the next webinar, just take a second right now to email events@brilliantdirectors.com,

966
01:06:30.805 --> 01:06:36.585
and please make sure you include a link of your website's URL in that email. Thanks guys.

967
01:06:40.300 --> 01:06:45.440
Alright. Now the floor is yours. We're here to answer your questions,

968
01:06:46.380 --> 01:06:46.880
Patrick,

969
01:06:47.580 --> 01:06:52.480
Rick, and I. So I'm gonna lower everyone's hands. If you guys have questions, we can unmute

970
01:06:52.944 --> 01:06:53.684
your microphone.

971
01:06:53.984 --> 01:07:00.085
If you don't have a microphone, you can chat in your questions, and we'll be looking at that and reviewing the chat, and we'll,

972
01:07:00.545 --> 01:07:02.405
read your question out loud.

973
01:07:03.664 --> 01:07:06.540
Alright, let's go let's go to our good friend, Sal here.

974
01:07:06.700 --> 01:07:11.600
Sal, I'm trying to unmute your microphone, but it says that you've self muted your own microphone.

975
01:07:12.380 --> 01:07:15.200
Can you hear me? Yes. We can. How are you, Sal?

976
01:07:15.980 --> 01:07:18.960
Not too bad. How are you? Not too bad. Not too bad.

977
01:07:19.500 --> 01:07:21.760
How is the webinar today for you so far?

978
01:07:22.994 --> 01:07:28.454
Yeah. It's good. It's good. There's not many that I've that I've missed, so I enjoy most of them.

979
01:07:30.434 --> 01:07:30.934
We

980
01:07:32.035 --> 01:07:33.654
we struggle to get new,

981
01:07:34.835 --> 01:07:36.934
or should I say to get people to,

982
01:07:37.770 --> 01:07:38.590
to pay.

983
01:07:39.050 --> 01:07:43.870
You know, we we have a large we have to be national because we're the SME

984
01:07:44.490 --> 01:07:45.870
Association of Australia.

985
01:07:46.730 --> 01:07:47.230
And,

986
01:07:48.170 --> 01:07:51.275
we have, you know, quite a lot of listings.

987
01:07:51.575 --> 01:07:53.195
A lot of them are claim listings.

988
01:07:54.055 --> 01:07:56.315
But we receive about a hundred,

989
01:07:58.215 --> 01:07:58.875
a hundred

990
01:07:59.734 --> 01:08:00.234
new

991
01:08:02.375 --> 01:08:03.195
free listings,

992
01:08:04.135 --> 01:08:04.795
a week.

993
01:08:05.859 --> 01:08:06.180
And,

994
01:08:07.780 --> 01:08:14.340
the thing is, the the challenge that we have it is a challenge, but it's also an opportunity later too, is that,

995
01:08:15.140 --> 01:08:20.120
we're a not for profit, so so I'm I'm the only one that's working full time in here.

996
01:08:20.944 --> 01:08:22.385
We get $10,000

997
01:08:22.385 --> 01:08:24.725
a month from Google for free AdWords,

998
01:08:25.505 --> 01:08:27.845
and we still can't make this pay.

999
01:08:29.185 --> 01:08:29.925
Got you.

1000
01:08:31.585 --> 01:08:33.229
So I see what you're saying.

1001
01:08:33.229 --> 01:08:39.170
So the good news is that people see value in in listing on your site, so you get a lot of high traffic.

1002
01:08:39.710 --> 01:08:44.449
I'm gonna share a workshop video that I did. It's another webinar, but it's basically how to create,

1003
01:08:45.469 --> 01:08:47.569
I'm gonna share this link with everyone actually.

1004
01:08:48.604 --> 01:08:53.585
These are some these are hour to two hour long webinars that we did on specific topics.

1005
01:08:53.885 --> 01:08:59.344
So proven ways to convert website visitors into paying members, tons of value in that webinar.

1006
01:09:00.205 --> 01:09:04.199
I like this one, creating awesome content to boost website traffic.

1007
01:09:05.460 --> 01:09:12.520
It also talks about how to create value propositions on your website to make signing up and for a free or paid account appealing,

1008
01:09:13.060 --> 01:09:17.865
mainly for a paid account. I'm gonna share this link with you, Sal, and everyone in the chat.

1009
01:09:18.025 --> 01:09:20.045
Check out these premium webinars here.

1010
01:09:21.385 --> 01:09:31.245
And the way I got here in case you wanna know is I went to the, Brilliant Directories website under the community drop down, we have our free workshop videos including all of these webinars.

1011
01:09:31.800 --> 01:09:39.579
So the webinar Wednesdays are all in the first tab here, and they go all the way down to 46, but in the second tab are the premium workshops, they're free to watch.

1012
01:09:40.040 --> 01:09:41.739
I'll just click on one right now.

1013
01:09:42.439 --> 01:09:44.059
And they also include

1014
01:09:44.359 --> 01:09:48.495
strategy guides, you can download the PDF, the slides, the PDF slides.

1015
01:09:48.495 --> 01:09:50.835
There's some worksheets, so you can do some homework.

1016
01:09:51.614 --> 01:10:04.610
But Sal, I'm gonna recommend watching some of those videos in your free time, and I'm pretty confident that you'll be able to pull some ideas on how to convert this good traffic that you're getting into something meaningful as far as, revenue for you.

1017
01:10:04.610 --> 01:10:07.110
So thank you Sal for, sharing your site with us.

1018
01:10:08.530 --> 01:10:13.909
And then I'll just add one more tip that just came to my mind, Jason, and and what Sal has is credibility.

1019
01:10:14.210 --> 01:10:16.310
It takes time to get that credibility.

1020
01:10:16.755 --> 01:10:19.415
I know we talked about turning off the freemium model.

1021
01:10:19.795 --> 01:10:26.435
I think perhaps what he want what he might wanna try is to convert the pricing page into an application process.

1022
01:10:26.435 --> 01:10:30.675
Say, listen. We're the nonprofit organization. We represent 3,800

1023
01:10:30.675 --> 01:10:32.980
businesses. Here are the benefits that you get.

1024
01:10:32.980 --> 01:10:44.600
But in order to join our network, you must apply, and it's a form that end that starts the fall that would basically educate them on the benefits so that he can he can nurture them and explain why they wanna join and pay.

1025
01:10:44.659 --> 01:10:47.145
And, again, just have that paid membership plan

1026
01:10:47.545 --> 01:10:49.885
moving forward. But since he is a nonprofit,

1027
01:10:50.585 --> 01:10:53.485
and he's, he seems to be a a credible association,

1028
01:10:54.505 --> 01:10:57.245
business owners will see an an application

1029
01:10:57.625 --> 01:10:58.125
process,

1030
01:10:58.505 --> 01:11:03.560
right, saying, hey. I need to apply to join. I'm curious to see if they're going to accept me.

1031
01:11:03.780 --> 01:11:07.159
Just that mental edge of seeing that they're accepted or not,

1032
01:11:07.780 --> 01:11:12.580
will have them, opening up that next email that you send them and saying, good news.

1033
01:11:12.580 --> 01:11:13.880
We reviewed your application.

1034
01:11:14.775 --> 01:11:16.935
Everything looks good. There's just one missing step.

1035
01:11:16.935 --> 01:11:20.875
You need to pay this fee to join, and, again, you get all of these different benefits.

1036
01:11:21.574 --> 01:11:31.760
I've seen that work well in similar situations, and I think if I were to recommend one strategy that's kind of a a short strategy to implement, I'd probably give that one a shot, if I were style.

1037
01:11:32.940 --> 01:11:35.199
Yeah. Whatever the Better Business Bureau does,

1038
01:11:36.060 --> 01:11:37.420
you might be able to pull some,

1039
01:11:37.980 --> 01:11:40.800
some, notes from what they do as far as a business model.

1040
01:11:41.715 --> 01:11:51.415
I know they have reviews and complaints about businesses as well, and businesses are keen to sign up and pay to take care of those reviews and complaints that they might be receiving.

1041
01:11:52.034 --> 01:11:55.800
So again, that's that's another model that you might want to

1042
01:11:56.119 --> 01:12:04.380
approach or pivot towards, because the Better Business Bureau kinda I know you guys are different, but it's it's kinda reminds me of what you guys are doing as well.

1043
01:12:04.679 --> 01:12:08.619
Alright. Let's take a couple more questions here. Doing good on time.

1044
01:12:09.425 --> 01:12:10.485
Alright. Brian.

1045
01:12:10.945 --> 01:12:13.205
Brian, I've unmuted your microphone. How are you doing?

1046
01:12:14.945 --> 01:12:17.285
Oh, hi. Are you talking to sorry.

1047
01:12:18.545 --> 01:12:23.845
I'm doing great. And the what we've learned today is, awesome, and I can't wait to get my

1048
01:12:25.050 --> 01:12:30.110
my website up. I've been it's been years in the making, but we're we're getting

1049
01:12:30.890 --> 01:12:34.910
closer. Well, the thing was we're busy in my existing business.

1050
01:12:35.050 --> 01:12:38.350
And, I've actually got my daughter here, and we're starting

1051
01:12:39.514 --> 01:12:40.735
to work full time

1052
01:12:41.275 --> 01:12:46.094
on the, the business directory. So I'm really excited to hear it. And Yeah.

1053
01:12:46.795 --> 01:12:48.474
Yeah. You've inspired me again.

1054
01:12:48.474 --> 01:12:52.735
And I and it's been in the background, but my existing business has been pretty hectic.

1055
01:12:52.955 --> 01:12:58.690
I just haven't had the time. So we're about to, as I said, work full time on it. Excellent.

1056
01:12:58.690 --> 01:13:00.469
So we'll be in contact with support.

1057
01:13:01.090 --> 01:13:04.070
Okay. We'll be waiting for you. Do you have any questions for us today?

1058
01:13:06.050 --> 01:13:08.790
I've just gotta go back to square one and,

1059
01:13:09.969 --> 01:13:12.285
just, you know, start to reorientate

1060
01:13:12.745 --> 01:13:13.245
myself.

1061
01:13:13.945 --> 01:13:14.445
I'm,

1062
01:13:15.385 --> 01:13:20.505
yeah. We're just yeah. Well, Madhur and I are just sort of sitting here watching it, going good.

1063
01:13:20.505 --> 01:13:23.485
This is a this is was a great first in, immersion.

1064
01:13:24.190 --> 01:13:26.610
I listened to some of these, you know, a year ago,

1065
01:13:26.989 --> 01:13:32.030
but we're the time is now, and so we're about to, get stuck into it.

1066
01:13:32.030 --> 01:13:36.030
So I guess we just have to go step by step and then just,

1067
01:13:36.429 --> 01:13:36.929
start

1068
01:13:37.515 --> 01:13:39.215
start the process of building.

1069
01:13:40.635 --> 01:13:43.935
Yeah. So my main actually, what my conclusion was

1070
01:13:44.475 --> 01:13:48.255
is that we were just going to start building some content,

1071
01:13:49.435 --> 01:13:50.495
to to,

1072
01:13:51.850 --> 01:13:58.510
yeah, to as a starting point, just get a bit of a structure going and start building content and then 1 x 1,

1073
01:13:59.130 --> 01:14:00.430
you know, add customers.

1074
01:14:01.210 --> 01:14:01.690
And,

1075
01:14:02.170 --> 01:14:06.344
so yeah. That's all I have to. Absolutely. Well, thank you for sharing.

1076
01:14:06.344 --> 01:14:08.025
I wish you the best of luck on your journey.

1077
01:14:08.025 --> 01:14:14.284
It's great that, you've kinda reignited this idea, and I hope to see you in the future webinars with some of your progress, Brian.

1078
01:14:15.224 --> 01:14:19.085
Oh, you will. We're excited for it. Awesome. Have a great day. Thank you.

1079
01:14:19.929 --> 01:14:21.230
Appreciate it, bro. Thank you.

1080
01:14:21.610 --> 01:14:25.210
Alright. Good stuff. They're getting started. My only piece of advice always is,

1081
01:14:25.929 --> 01:14:29.210
try to keep things simple. Try to use the built in features.

1082
01:14:29.210 --> 01:14:34.429
Try not to get too elaborate with letting your mind go into the imagination of of the possibilities.

1083
01:14:35.575 --> 01:14:37.275
Get a working model online

1084
01:14:37.655 --> 01:14:49.115
quickly, get users to sign up and and participate in your community, and that's the best way to number one feel good about the work that you're putting into your site, but also see steady and stable growth over time.

1085
01:14:49.719 --> 01:15:00.540
There's nothing worse than starting a large customization and you don't even know how you even ended up there and six months later thousands of dollars you don't even know where you're at and and everyone is frustrated.

1086
01:15:00.599 --> 01:15:05.575
So keep it simple and work within the parameters. They're they're there for a reason to guide you.

1087
01:15:05.575 --> 01:15:06.215
Alright, guys.

1088
01:15:06.695 --> 01:15:10.715
We'll we'll cut it there. Thank you so much for joining us for another,

1089
01:15:11.415 --> 01:15:15.335
action packed and fun filled webinar Wednesday. Lots of good information here.

1090
01:15:15.335 --> 01:15:18.120
Let's just backtrack a little bit about what we covered here today.

1091
01:15:18.280 --> 01:15:26.280
If you'd like your site showcased in the next webinar, go ahead and take a moment and email events@brilliantdirectories.com.

1092
01:15:26.280 --> 01:15:29.900
We'll notify you prior to the webinar if your site has been selected.

1093
01:15:30.360 --> 01:15:36.035
And a big thank you to Esther for sharing her beautiful site, localshops1.com.

1094
01:15:36.575 --> 01:15:39.775
Commend you and applaud you for the work that you've done serving the community.

1095
01:15:39.775 --> 01:15:41.635
It's your true value and,

1096
01:15:42.415 --> 01:15:53.210
the the work you've done migrating to Brilliant Directories, that's not an easy task coming from another platform especially when you're established so you've done a wonderful job and I just want to applaud you for that.

1097
01:15:53.989 --> 01:15:57.050
Don't forget to download our special ebook,

1098
01:15:57.350 --> 01:16:00.765
it's adding tremendous value for people looking for ideas on

1099
01:16:01.165 --> 01:16:07.345
content to post on their site that's going to attract visitors to your site, you want to attract people to your site and you're

1100
01:16:07.725 --> 01:16:11.165
battling against your competition, so go to brilliantdirectories.com

1101
01:16:11.165 --> 01:16:12.845
forward slash 125

1102
01:16:12.845 --> 01:16:15.265
hyphen ideas and you can download the ebook

1103
01:16:15.610 --> 01:16:16.110
free,

1104
01:16:16.730 --> 01:16:17.790
and just to backtrack,

1105
01:16:18.570 --> 01:16:32.145
the value of a freemium model and hey you know what we talked about the the value of not having a freemium model, today too, so it really depends on the stage that your business is in, and what your business model is and also the industry that you're serving.

1106
01:16:32.145 --> 01:16:34.804
So there's lots of considerations, but hopefully this adds

1107
01:16:35.105 --> 01:16:37.204
some value to those of you out there.

1108
01:16:37.744 --> 01:16:38.645
And lastly,

1109
01:16:39.905 --> 01:16:43.905
if you haven't already done so please take a moment to join our Facebook group.

1110
01:16:43.905 --> 01:16:47.570
You can go to brilliantdirectories.com/Facebook.

1111
01:16:47.630 --> 01:16:49.170
We can continue the conversation

1112
01:16:49.550 --> 01:16:50.530
there together.

1113
01:16:50.909 --> 01:16:56.350
So on behalf of myself, Jason, thank you so much Rick for joining us today and Patrick for all your help.

1114
01:16:56.350 --> 01:17:02.070
We wanna wish you the best of luck with your directory websites, and the next webinar will be in two weeks.

1115
01:17:02.070 --> 01:17:06.230
Thank you so much, guys. We hope to see you there soon. Alright. Have a brilliant day, everyone.

1116
01:17:06.230 --> 01:17:07.850
Thank you. Thank you, guys.