Owner To Owner Podcast

Blake Hutchison from flippa.com on smart ways to get digital

Episode Summary

Blake Hutchison, CEO of flippa.com explains why it's critical that small business owners own their digital real estate. And he gives us a host of smart ideas to make it happen.

Episode Notes

Blake Hutchison, CEO of flippa.com explains why it's critical that small business owners own their digital real estate. And he gives us a host of smart ideas to make it happen.

Before being CEO @ www.flippa.com he ran www.luxuryescapes.com.au and worked in a senior role at www.xero.com.au (small business accounting software in the cloud).

Flippa is a marketplace to buy and sell digital assets or digital real estate including #eCommerce businesses #contentsites #blogs, #fbabusinesses backed by Amazon #Amazonstores #Amazonassociates #contentsites #apps. All of it is #digitalrealestate.

And all these assets can be bought or sold on #flippa.

In our discussion we talk about;

how important it is to be digitally up to speed
how without a digital presence today you are really limiting opportunities because it is the way that consumers, either business or in consumers, individuals, will now first engage with a brand and more often than not, it is their pathway to choosing a business be that the local cafe all the way through to the local landscape architect, all the way through to an Etsy shop selling handmade furniture. So, you have to be online
how digital is now more accessible than ever before to consumers
why it is also a lot easier than ever before for first-time digital entrepreneurs to either get started or to accelerate growth in their business through a first-time digital presence. And that is because everyone from #Google to #Facebook to #Amazon to #ATT, #YouTube to #WooCommerce to #WordPress have made these platforms readily accessible at a good price
why it makes sense for an offline traditional #rick-and-mortar or #servicebusiness to acquire a small digital asset to complement their #useracquisition
why your website is your best way to appeal to people who have never heard of you, and then advertising channels like Facebook and Google are your best and most cost-efficient way to get people to that website and then funnel them through to your brick-and-mortar offering and so what that boils down to is #audiencetargeting
how and when to best use the following 3 #platforms which are all affordable and available to anyone. And you do not need to be too technically savvy to get any one of those up and going.

#Shopify if you are looking to trade online, or
#Squarespace if you are looking to just have a footprint online that people can move to and find out more about your business address, your phone number, a little bit about what you are servicing, and what you provide, or
#WordPress to set up a blog if you are going to write some columns and about the services you provide

the good news for the less #techsavvy - you can outsource that work to someone very very cost-efficiently and you can do that through platforms like #Fiverr #Elance #oDesk and other platforms like them
why you should study your #competitors to help with running your business and getting the best #ROI on your outsourcing investment by #stackranking the ones that you think are best and the ones that you think best represent what you are trying to achieve. Drop those by way of a brief onto one of these freelancing platforms and get someone to deliver that for you
acquiring customers with budgets as low as $10 a day on a Facebook or Google to see what works for you
how to buy the right #digitalassets by using tools like the #SEMrush module on www.flippa.com - it helps to assess domain authority in the eyes of Google i.e. is it a credible website, getting credible traffic and with credible traffic
the value of #organictraffic where people want to read the content
why you absolutely want to own your own real estate. Facebook is a great engagement platform, but it is not yours. You do not own it. The quicker you can get a customer from that environment into your own, the better off you will be long-term
key trends in the buying & selling of digital assets;
- why you are better off buying than you are starting. With the failure rate of a startup so high you can assess the success of a business that has a trading history, so therefore it it can be a safer opportunity for many people.
- #unemployed looking to get into the digital economy for the very first time
- #sophisticatedinvestors entering the space to buy micro assets - @blakehutchison has never seen anything like it! #privateequity and other #sophisticatedinvestors are amassing and aggregating small digital assets. So they are no longer looking for things that are $5, $10, $50, or a hundred million dollars to buy. Many of them are buying supporting businesses to bolt on to existing assets.