So here I was making some decent money with Local Website Flipping.
I could see myself eventually moving entirely away from custom web design and doing only this.
But there was still one problem.
The amount of money I could make was still directly tied to me building these directory websites.
I thought about building a small team of overseas contractors to build the directories for cheap so I could just focus on running the business...and I almost did that.
But again, the universe works in mysterious ways in helping us get what we want.
At the time I was a member of an internet marketing discussion forum called “The Warrior Forum”.
This was back before Facebook groups became a thing and people still used discussion forums.
The Warrior Forum was the go-to place for learning about internet marketing and making money with an online business.
And one of the most popular sections on that forum was a section dedicated to “Offline Marketing”.
In other words, doing internet marketing and building websites for local (offline) businesses.
I joined this forum when I was a newbie and learned a lot about starting my agency by reading the posts and asking experienced members for help.
Another very popular section of that forum was called the “Warrior Special Offers” or “WSO” section for short.
This is where members who were making money could pay a small $20-$40 advertising fee and sell eBooks and video courses to other newbie members about how they were making money in their business.
So, the newbies would always be in the WSO section looking for the latest strategies from the more experienced marketers.
At its peak there was always around 5,000 people viewing the WSO section at any given time.
This meant, if your product was good, and you were good at writing sales copy, you were almost always guaranteed to make at least a few sales.
But if you’re stuff was great, you could make hundreds even thousands of sales in a day.
I watched one of my friends on the forum release an online course where he taught his unique method for making money with affiliate marketing, which was a hot topic at the time.
His course was priced cheap at $47.
But he sold around 1,000 copies and made around $40k all within a week’s time.
Then I realized it would have taken me a year of hustling like a mad man to earn that much in my agency.
Yet it only took my friend a few weeks to build and release this course and start making sales from it.
Then once the course was done, he could sell it over and over again without lifting a finger.
In fact, he was even making sales while he was sleeping.
The idea that you could put in the work to create something once then make money from it over and over again without much additional effort obviously got my attention.
I thought, “What if I created an online course where I taught others how I was flipping local websites?”.
I opened Microsoft Word and just began writing about my Local Website Flipping strategy.
In the end I had a 50 page PDF eBook and 10 screencast videos that made up my course.
I decided to name it “Local Flip Formula”.
It took me nearly 4 months just to finish the darn thing because I procrastinate so much.
I was so afraid that I’d put all this work in and no one would buy it.
Or maybe I was afraid of what would happen if it became too popular and I couldn’t handle the success?
When it was finally done, I reached out to one of the more experienced WSO sellers who I admired named “Jamie”.
Jamie had launched at least 20 products in the WSO section and had built up a pretty big audience of buyers in the process.
This meant that whenever he released something, he could just send an email to his customers announcing it and make hundreds of additional sales on top of any that would naturally come from listing it in the WSO section.
I was one of his customers and bought everything he released.
So I sent an email to Jamie thanking him for his great products and told him how they helped me start my local marketing agency.
I also told him about my unique method of Flipping Local Websites and that I had created a course about it.
I sent Jamie access to the course for free and asked if he’d mind checking it out and letting me know if he thought it was good enough to release.
To my suprise Jamie replied the very next day and said my course was amazing.
He also said that he was interested in sending a few emails to his customers about it.
The only catch is he wanted 50% of all my profits from the first 4 days.
I agreed and about a week later I released Local Flip Formula in the WSO section.
It was an instant success.
Sales rushed in, one after the other throughout the day and all through the night.
For the first time ever I had finally experienced what it was like to actually make money while I slept.
We sold around 150 copies in the first week and generated a little over $5,000 in sales.
I also built up a list of buyers of my own which I could leverage over and over again for future products.
I sent Jamie his cut and looked at the $2,500 or so left in my PayPal account in awe.
I couldn’t believe my eyes about what had just happened.
My life was changed forever.
At this time I was still pretty young and inexperienced in business.
So I didn’t really know what to do after all this to keep the sales coming in.
I had a short term mindset and just wanted to keep making money.
So I listed the website and rights to my online course for sale on Flippa.com.
It sold for $5,000 to a dude in Australia and brought my total revenue for that month up to over $10,000 for the first time ever.