Donalson, did you watch that show you were telling us about? Did you learn any thing usefull that was not already discussed on this forum? If so what?

I did not get to watch it I was working at the time it came on.

wasn't super great... show was more about direct marketing via infomercials... had tony danza on there (gazzelle long haired guy), guy who runs the company who makes the magic bullet ect... and the ginsu knife guy who was the father of "and wait, theres more" portion of infomercials haha.

it affirmed that joe sugarman was more of a geek then i already thought he was :)... he was like the 1st person to start direct selling pocket calculaotrs in the 60's or so... he was also the 1st person to sell via the 30 min commercial IE infomercial back in the 80s... apparently before the regan administration there was a time limit on commercials... he sold the blueray sunglasses or something like that, i rember the commercials from when i was a kid in the late 80's haha...

IMHO worth watching but not much applicable to CCing marketing :-/

i've started DVRing all those shows though... neat show... last night they did "million dollar voices" had elmo's voice guy on there... and of corse had elmo...

thanks for the update. Have your fliers got you any more jobs? Good luck, every one says the first year is the hadest.

no more jobs still :(... going to send out some letters to reality/apartment places offering 1/2 off on the 1st cleaning... hopefuly that'll yeild some jobs... talking with guy at our church who's in charge of the cleaning and going to talk to him about getting the CCing job, hopefuly get a demo scheduled this week on that.

have 2 bookings at the end of the month for friends/fam 3 hrs away in panama city... also have some more local family i need to chat with, they wanted a cleaning but haven't seen them in a little while.

overall it's starting slow... but it's bound to pick up with a little more marketing...

also from some reading I'm thinking i'm going to shoot for a few commercial jobs fairly soon

thanks for asking though :)
mark

Donalson, just a thought, instead of delivering pizzas on the side, you might consider looking for a job as a food server. This is what I do part time, I meet alot of people that I get to talk to and can tell about my buisness, I just messed this up though because I switched to vallet more money and I can work late night leaving my days open for my buisness. Next to word of mouth this has been my best advertizement, and is also what started my word of mouth. If you do try this do not bring it up let it just slide into the conversation so it seems more friendly then a salesmen. It is sad I have spent about 3 to 4 thousand dollars on advertizment and my best sdvertizement has been free. I advertized in 3 yellow books, local penny saver, on citysearch.com and spent about 400 dollars on 5000 door knob hangers, still waiting on 2 phone books and need to still pass out 2500 door knob hangers (second round in the same neighborhoods. Plus I just advertized with the company that produces the counties maps for the chamber of commerce and realitors, it is produced quarterly and is a exclusive advertizement that you have to be recommended for I was recomended by a realator, that will come out in about march, I was first on thier list then stanly steamers, so I do think we can compete with the big companies it just will take time. People have to hear and get familiar with our name. The reason I am spending so much (at least to me it seems like alot, I am poor)is to try and brand my name, I want to get my name out as much as possible as soon as possible, it is a little risky if it dosnt work cuz to me its a lot of money, so I am always looking for cheap advertizement even if it does not get me a job right away it will make people familiar with my name, thinking about a street sign but not sure yet. It is going to take time we have to give it at least this first year. Good luck talk to you later

unfortunatly hi'm no server... everyone has their nice... pizza is mine haha... just can't deal with the people when it comes to serving... although if i ever hire somone it would be likely that they where somone that gave me great service (i love having to call the manager to complament a server... although it freaks the server out every time when you tell them you want to talk to the manager haha)

Thanks for sharing all of that Jon. I've had a similar lack of success through recent advertising methods also. I think much of it is the time of year. My postcards last Spring looked like crap and I was getting 3-4 calls per 100 cards, and now I'm getting 1 call per 2-300 cards. I also invested a lot of $$ in a yellow pages book that comes out next month, so we'll see if that helps.

ok finaly read the rest of your post ;-) sorry watching the kiddies this morning, both are sick and home with me :(

I've pretty much come to accept that i'm just branding myself at the moment also... i've got a nice 5 week rotation planned out for my fliers... about 1000 fliers a week... also still tweaking my fliers and looking at things i can change to them as i'm printing them on a week by week basis.

thankfuly a fairly large income tax return will tide me over till spring... come spring i'll be on my 2nd, 3rd and 4th fliers to these same 5000 homes... somone HAS to take notice by then haha...

side note... read on another forum guy mentioned he doesn't even bother advertizing in the winter anymore as he's spent so much in the past with so little response...

I'm hoping to build a pretty decent customer base both resi and some commercial, and come holiday season try to get into the resi homes for a open area pre-holiday cleaning type of thing... and hopefuly have enough trickle in work to suffice in the rest of the winter doh.

but 1st job is to get slammed busy right now :)