How We Are Making Money From Home, For Real No Gimmicks

Hey what’s up it’s me Mateo. This is a the first blog post on how my wife and I have been able to make money from home with our laptop and home computer. We wanted to share a brief breakdown of what we do that pays us, who pays us, and how we got started. We will share more details of our day and new job opportunities over the next few weeks.

Traci makes her income from two online companies. She is able to do 99% of her work from her laptop. The other 1.0% of the time is an occasional phone call with the two different companies she works for to check in, go over upcoming projects and sometimes just to catch up!

Job #1 mahalocases.com

Traci handles e-mail customer support. She helps customers with their phone case orders they have made online. The daily job tasks can range from confirming an order number, responding to unhappy customers, placing re-orders, or even explaining why it takes more than two days for an order to get to Kazakhstan. The job is actual work, with customer service skills, and compassion involved. The great part of the job is she can do it from her laptop wherever and whenever she wants. She does not have a set schedule on when the job needs to be done, as long as it’s done and the inbox is never backed up. It’s typically 15-20 hours per week of billable hours. Mahalo Cases treats her well, respects her as a team member and she truly enjoys helping people get their awesome phone cases.

Traci applied for this job via upwork.com She applied for several jobs, had the customer service experience and interviewed well for the position. It started out as a temp position through upwork, but it turned into a direct contract position with Mahalo Cases.

A Positive Customer Experience, Thanks To Traci

Job #2 is SiteJabber For Business

Traci is the community manager. She helps businesses with their customers reviews, and manages the Twitter account for sitejabber4Biz. This job is able to be done 100% via e-mail and through biz.sitejabber.com She helps businesses respond to customer reviews and maintain their online reputation on SiteJabber. SiteJabber is a review site for web based businesses, kinda like Yelp for the web. Traci typically has be available from 9-12 daily to respond to customer requests and then check the inbox again late in the afternoon for anything that may need immediate concern. This job is about 20-25 hours per week. Traci loves the way they make her feel a part of the team. She enjoys doing this job and is excited about more work from this company in the future.

Traci applied for this job on Angel List. She had the experience with Mahalo Cases, and they gave her a positive recommendation. Traci interviewed for this position and it was about a two week hiring process.

Traci taking a pic from her work station!

beNICEmedia

I make money from a few different jobs. Social Media Management, Small Marketing Projects, Web Design, Fiverr Gigs and Advertising.

Social Media Management

I post themed content, build a targeted audience and engage the businesses community on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google + and LinkedIn. Managing these accounts takes me a few hours a week per business. This is my main source of consistent income. It’s fun to do and I love helping grow their social media brand. Clients pay $150-500 monthly depending on how much they need and what services are included. Services include e-mail marketing campaigns, website updates, blogs or additional advertising with beNICEmedia.

These jobs were created by staying in touch with my previous clients and referral partners from my mortgage business. My first few clients were Realtors, Loan Officers, Title Companies and Appraisers. I currently have people reach out to me on Social Media to find out what we do, and this starts a conversation about Social Media Marketing.

Projects

Another way I make money is doing quick projects for sales people and small businesses. These projects range from creating a Facebook page, setting up an e-mail marketing campaign, or organizing a database. These jobs usually take less than an hour or two to complete. I attracte new clients weekly, and have repeat requests from clients. The price for these services range from $50-300 depending on the time involved and the job completed.

A few of the projects started from referrals of a few of my social media management clients. Once I complete a project for a client I stay in touch with them on Social Media and E-Mail. They usually hire me for additional work or send me a couple referrals.

Love Working With These Clients!

Web Design

I also make money setting up simple web pages and landing pages for sales professionals and small businesses. Most of these are created thru Wix.com. A few of them are hosted on a server by the client or others stay on my free Wix network. I do 2-3 of these a month, with fees varying from $75 to $300 depending on what the client wants and time involved.

Fiverr Money

Fiverr Gigs are another way I earn money online. Fiverr is an online platform where businesses can find quality services at an amazing price. These services include social media requests, viral campaigns, Twitter and Facebook marketing. The gigs start at $5 bucks but my average sale is around $10 per gig. Most gigs take less than 30 minutes to complete. I’m currently doing about 20 Gigs a month.

Positive Reviews Are The Key To More Gigs

Fiverr has a built-in audience of businesses that need help with their marketing. I have received gigs from people searching on Fiverr and seeing my positive reviews. I also share my Gigs on Social Media with the positive reviews included in my posts.

HERE IS A FREE GIG for anything on Fiverr

Advertising

I also make a little money from advertising. I receive $50-75 per month to share or mention a business or product on my social media platforms or websites. These are typically sales professionals or start ups looking for a little Social Media Boost. Google AdSense and Youtube has been earning about $8-9 per month as well, it’s small but grows every month.

As you can read above none of these jobs are get rich schemes or jobs that for no effort you get a paycheck. There are ways to make money online or working from home, but it happens the same way as a traditional job. Start a job search, present your skills in the best way, interview for the position, get hired, show up when required, get the job done and get paid. Instead of working for one company we work for several.

It is possible to work from home, make a living and be happy with what you do. There are thousands of opportunities to use your skills, help yourself and earn money in a more flexible environment if you choose to do so. If working from home or earning a living online is a goal of yours I want to let you know that it’s real. Unfortunately there is not a book to buy or online course that can be purchased and just collect monthly earnings. Making a living online takes effort and hard work.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Would you be interested in a blog about ways to get started on your own? or How to get your first Fiverr gig? or How to stand out when applying for work at home jobs?

Are you earning income with a part time or at home job? I would love to know your story! Leave a comment or send me an e-mail. – Mateo

DIY Business Tools When You’re Broke!

Hey there I hope all is good! I’m doing awesome in case you’re wondering ; ) What I love most about the internet and technology is there are so many free tools available to build your business. No longer is it required to spend money on an office space, phone system, accounting, business cards or hire your own marketing firm to launch a business. In today’s world anyone can launch a business or grow a business with no start up cost or budget. What is required is passion, time, effort and hard work. These are 7 free tools I use daily to grow my business on little to no budget.

1) Bufferapp

bufferapp.com

I’ve written about buffer before, but I cannot tell you how valuable buffer has been to growing my business via social media. Bufferapp is a social media scheduling application. We all get busy updating our social media posts or it’s just a bunch of random sales pitches hastily created. Buffer is an easy and simple way to schedule a few posts in advance for your social media pages. Take 15-30 minutes to create 10 social media posts. Mix the posts up with your own business content along with interesting, informational or entertaining content your audience will appreciate. Once you’re done schedule the posts to go out at the perfect time for your audience to see right within Buffer. Buffer App’s basic option is FREE to connect up to 4 social media profiles, schedule up to 10 posts in advance, and provides free analytics for social media posts. It’s easy to see what posts are getting link clicks and engagement.

Buffer also has an image sharing tool called Pablo along with a super cool GIF sharing tool. Create beautiful social media image posts for your profiles. ( A Future Blog Post)

2) Mailchimp

mailchimp.com

There are several database and newsletters options available I use Mailchimp because it’s free! Mailchimp’s FREE option allows an import of 2000 contacts in your “List”. List’s can be segmented into groups; prospects, previous customers or e-mail subscribers. Once you have a list create awesome newsletters, promotions or even birthday cards to e-mail to your list! When an e-mail campaign is created and sent out Mailchimp tracks your e-mail opens, link clicks, unsubscribes, and even keeps the e-mails in compliance with SPAM laws. Create your own subscribe form to add on your facebook page or an e-mail sign up on your website. These leads will import directly into your list in Mailchimp. All of this free for under 2000 contacts and if you send under 12,000 E-mails in a month.

3) Join Me Meeting

join.me

Join Me Meeting is a cool way to share your screen quickly with a sales prospect or even a co-worker. When it’s not possible to meet face to face to demonstrate a product or service and not enough time to set up a webinar, Join Me meeting is a great option. Go to http://www.join.me to start a meeting instantly. A link is created that can be instantly shared with up to 8 people to join a meeting. All they have to do is click the link sent to them via e-mail and within moments your prospect or client can easily see your screen! This is a quick easy way to demonstrate your product or service without having to download a program or schedule a webinar. This can be done right on the phone while you are talking to a prospect. Join Me meeting does have paid options to have permanent meeting link and have more people join meetings!

4) Wunderlist

wunderlist.com

Wunderlist is an online to do list on steroids. Wunderlist is an easy and old fashioned way to keep organized daily with To Do Lists. Create a list for whatever you like. A Wunderlist “bucket list” chores for the kids, grocery lists, or hot prospects to follow up with! Our business creates a list for each client. This list includes tasks to be done daily, weekly and monthly on each of their social media profiles. We keep notes within the lists keeping track of content deadlines, networking opportunities, passwords and even content files for each client. Wunderlist To Do Lists can be shared with clients and co-workers. This is a great way to keep everyone in the loop on projects or assign certain tasks to team members to complete. The best part is the notification of accomplishment that Wunderlist makes when you check of a task on your list! “Ding”

5) Headtalker

Headtalker.com or Start a HeadTalker with beNICEmedia

Do you wanna go viral? HeadTalker is a free application to help make your message go viral! HeadTalker shares 1 message with unlimited people at once for free. Create a campaign on HeadTalker and get others to support the campaign. Once supported instead of 1 social media post on your page, hundreds or even thousands are sharing your social media post across multiple platforms. This is a great application for launching a product or crowdfunding campaign. Create a HeadTalker for anything! Start one today and we will help support!

6) Crowdfire

crowdfireapp.com

This is a great application to build a targeted Twitter and Instagram following. Sign into Crowdfire with Twitter or Instagram. Once signed in Crowdfire identifies who your Twitter and Instagram followers are. Are you following someone who has not tweeted in months? Crowdfire will find out who and if you choose you can unfollow them. Are you a local business and want to connect with Twitter users in your area? Crowdfire allows you to copy followers of other Twitter accounts. If the local news station has 50K Twitter followers it’s likely a majority of these followers live in the area. These people may buy your product or service if they knew about you. Crowdfire will show you which ones do live in your area, and go for it follow them, they might follow you back. The basic Crowdfire service is free, the app will occasionally tweet out Twitter stats via @crowdfire. Crowdfire paid options will not do this.

7) Paypal for Business
(Kinda Not Free)

paypal.com

Starting a business bank account can be tough especially when you do not have any income yet, money in the bank or even customers. Typically to open a business bank account there are minimum deposit amounts, balance minimums and let’s not forget about monthly fees regardless if the account has money in it or not! Paypal allows you to start receiving and using your funds right away. Easily create invoices with your logo and contact information to e-mail to clients. Clients can pay you via check or immediately via Paypal or credit card. Get a PayPal button on your website to receive payments. Is the client 30 days past due easily e-mail a reminder. Review your income for the month track expenses all online for free. Paypal even has a business debit MasterCard and credit line options for qualified accounts. Easily link your current checking or savings account to receive Paypal funds. Creating invoices, tracking expenses and using your money in your PayPal account is free. What is not free is receiving funds electronically via Paypal when a client pays by credit card. If a client pays you via credit card PayPal does receive a percentage of the payment you received. This varies on the amount of payment. Please review all Paypal information online for your own education. Regardless of the fees associated with receiving credit card payments the service is a good value and convenience. As your business grows there are numerous banking options but PayPal does let you start with nothing!

Are you ready to start growing your business without spending any money? Or get that at home business started? There are hundreds of free tools to increase sales and grow your business. These are some that I use. Which ones are your favorite? What tools and applications do you use? I would really love to hear from you.

If I can help you with any questions or you are interested in getting started with Social Media Marketing let’s chat! Have a wonderful week! Let’s Chat!

Mateo Garcia
President
beNICEmedia
480-386-2122

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5 Awesome Twitter Tips

Hi it’s me Mateo How’s it going? Are you on twitter? If you are let’s connect @mateomedia, if not here are a few tips that can help you get started. Let’s get to it.

This one is simple that I’m not even including in my 5 Tips. Take time and complete your twitter profile. Be sure to include complete bio information, profile, cover photo and if you are a business indicate what you do and how you can help. Take a look at a few other twitter profiles for inspiration. Don’t worry about getting fancy or over thinking it, but it does have to be complete. If you are a business you can make the profile picture your logo, but in my opinion make it a personal picture this way twitter followers can put a face with the twitter handle. Twitter also has an option to upload a cover photo go ahead and do this as well. This information can always be changed and updated later, even your twitter user name. Be concerned with being complete, not perfect.

1) Compose a few tweets.

Twitter has a “This is my first tweet” that can be sent when your account is first set up. Go ahead and send this. Compose 2-3 tweets of your own like “Just setting up my twitter” or “How does all of this work?”. Don’t be afraid, especially if it’s a new twitter account only your followers will see your tweets. If you don’t have any followers nobody will see the tweets anyway except you. Having a few tweets on your timeline will show other twitter users that you are trying to be active and want to be on twitter.

2) Start following some Twitter Peeps.

Identify what your goal is for twitter, Fun?, Business? Both? If you are on twitter to grow your business and connect with others start following some twitter accounts of people you want to do business with and connect with. Take my business for example, Social Media Management and Marketing. I look to follow and network with small businesses, start ups, and crowd funding campaigns. The reason? These are people I want to network with and these are the businesses that need social media and marketing help. If there is a need in the future to use our services or if they might know someone that may need our services we are connected and interact on twitter. I’m always sure to check in with these connections on twitter and offer any marketing and social media advice. Twitter does not have to be all about business. I follow celebrity accounts, local news accounts and sport accounts, my guilty is pleasure account is @TMZ for all of my celebrity news and gossip. ; )

3) Tweet often

It’s up to you on how often to tweet but twitter is not like Facebook. People on twitter will not always see your tweets in their timeline. Your tweets happen live so if your followers are not scrolling through their timeline when you tweet they will not see it. A follower can go to your twitter account and see what you have been tweeting today, but they will have to search for your account. It’s a good idea to spread out your tweets throughout the day to reach your followers. There is a lot of back and forth on how much is too many tweets and how often you should tweet. I typically send at least 10 tweets a day that show up in my followers timeline. I will also RT (Re-Tweet) content I find interesting, entertaining, educational or informative that I believe my followers might like as well. Additionally I’m sending direct tweets to new followers to thank them and tweets to followers that I’m interacting with. These tweets do not show up in anyone else’s twitter timeline. If you start a tweet with the @ (twitter name) that tweet will just go to the person you are tweeting to. If you start a tweet with a sentence like “ Hey @ (twitter handle) how are you today?” this tweet will show up in your timeline as a tweet. Your followers will see this tweet, the twitter user that you mentioned will see this tweet and the twitter followers of the person you @ mentioned will also see this tweet. In some cases you want to do this if you want others to see your tweet and conversation. If you compose 8-10 tweets throughout the day that is providing value to your twitter followers in my opinion that is not too much. Others may disagree, but that is up to your followers to decide. If a follower does not like your tweets they can simply un-follow you. To summarize, if you tweet often and are active you will gain more twitter followers compared to sending a tweet one or twice a week.

4) Twitter Lists

Twitter can get overwhelming quickly once you start following others and others begin to follow you. One easy way to keep track of your twitter followers and who you are following is to create lists. When you follow someone or they follow you can add them to a list. You can create lists on twitter and name the list whatever you want. I have a few lists that identify who the twitter profiles are; such as Arizona Peeps, Potential Leads, Friends/Family, Influencers etc. This is an easy way to keep up with what is happening with your twitter community. Your twitter timeline shows all the tweets of who you are following. This can get overwhelming if you are following a few hundred people or more. Simply add your twitter followers and who you are following to a list to help keep track of who you are following into categories. Once you go to this list on twitter you will see the tweets of that list only. This is a great way to stay up to date with your important connections on twitter, stay in touch with your friends and family or even localize a list to your favorite restaurants on twitter. Lists can be named whatever you want. These lists can be private or public.

5) Thank, RT, and Mention.

When someone follower you on twitter you can send them a tweet thanking them for the connection. ” @______ thank you for following me, looking forward to connecting more” is an example. Re-Tweeting information from your followers or people you are following or tweets you believe your audience will like will gain you more followers. If you come across a tweet you enjoy RT it to your followers. The person that you RT will get a notification that you Re-tweeted them. This is a great way to get an influencer or potential lead to notice you. Mention or include others in your tweets as well. If you send a tweet that you want someone else to notice or possibly see, you can mention them in the tweet by adding @ (their twitter name) in your tweet. When this happens they will get a notification that you mentioned them on Twitter. Here is an example; “Hey @mateomedia I think you would like this story on benicemedia.com“

There are so many cool things that you can do via twitter to network and grow your business. The above examples are just a few things. What do you do on twitter to network and grow your business? I would love to know some of your tips. I hope you have an awesome day, and as always feel free to ask me a question or let’s connect online.

Mateo on Twitter

Optimize Your Personal Facebook Page

Be Sure to Link up your personal Facebook Page with your Business Facebook Page, Join Groups and Add your Website Links to your Personal Page.

benicemedia1@gmail.com

Content Marketing Tips

Hi there it’s me Mateo how are you doing today? Just want to give a few tips on content marketing for social media. The world of marketing and advertising is changing. It’s no longer as simple as running a TV, Radio or Newspaper ad or even paying the search engines for keywords to get leads for our business. The world of Social Media where and why consumers choose a product or service has changed. The internet has given the power to the consumer to research products and services very simply on their own. Social Media provides a direct connection between company and consumer. Unhappy with a product or service, tweet at the company or leave a Facebook Comment it will get noticed. Happy with a product or service brag about it on your Social Media profile it will get noticed. The smart phone and Social Media applications is now the key to our next customer relationship. Our customers have Social Media applications on the home screen of their smart phone, not our business website or phone number. We have to be active on these social platforms because that is where our next client is hanging out, spending time and getting information. If you are like me I comment, like or share content I find entertaining, interesting, inspiring or educational. Creating content that fits within these parameters is the key to success marketing on Social Media. Creating the right content mix will insure that when our audience is looking to make their next purchase or choose a service our business is top of mind. Here are a different content formatting tips via Hubspot we can include in our social media strategy.

Don’t get overwhelmed with having to do all of these. Choose the best content format that will most benefit the Target Audience and easiest to implement. Let’s try to put ourselves in a position of a potential client when we are on Facebook or our favorite social media platform. When creating a post for business let’s ask, Would I click on this? Would I like this? Would I share this? Is this interesting?

Social Media Marketing is not about pushing every single link or website promoting our business in front of a consumer. Social Media marketing is about creating micro content that would fit into the entertainment, interesting, informational, educational or inspire category. It’s ok to brag about accomplishments every once in a while. Some of our audience wants that, but do we really like someone who talks about themselves all the time and how great they are? Once a decision has been made on what content formatting is best do the following.

1) Identify target audience

2) Map out a clear strategy

3) Create Content

4) Optimize content for each social media platform. (A post will look different on all platforms.)

Every post is not going to be perfect, but if there is a meaning and purpose behind each social media post it will improve results. Networking and marketing on Social Media is not going away anytime soon, let’s embrace it.

I hope these tips are helpful, if I can ever help in anyway it would be my pleasure.

Mateo Garcia
480-386-2122
benicemedia1@gmail.com

Marketing Tips for 2015

How was your first week of 2015. Do you have some of these tips in your plan for this year?