Discosloth
Search marketing company
It's been a crazy two years, but our first full-time employee is about to complete her probationary period.
Hiring a full-time employee was a huge step for us, since we've prioritized cash flow since day one and it is a big investment. However, adding an entry-level specialist to the mix has freed up time for us to focus on the creative & sales side of the business rather than just doing necessary tasks.
I feel confident that we'll be able to continue to scale this way, especially as we continue pivoting from a services consultancy to a product (software) business.
We launched our free guide to pay-per-click advertising (focused on Google and Bing) and thanks to some amplification by a handful of respected folks within the marketing world, we gained over 10,000 readers within a month. The guide is still our most popular content on the site. Crucial to success, I believe, was providing something totally free - not even an email signup needed - which took us months of work to produce!
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For any interested, the link: https://www.discosloth.com/beginners-guide-to-ppc/
At the end of Discosloth's first calendar year, we had acquired 64 clients and passed $500,000 USD in managed ad spend. This was gained over the course of nine months of networking and sales, low overhead and a focus on converting clients to long-term retainers.
Around 5 months after we started, Discosloth revenue passed how much we were making from both of our full-time positions. Our original goal was simply to reach $1000/mo to prove to ourselves the market was there. By the time we could resign from our positions, it was more profitable than our actual jobs.
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Congratulations on the milestone! 5 months from zero to more than full-time is quite the achievement.
If you are able to disclose this information, can you detail what were the top strategies you've applied, leading to such growth?
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Thank you! We focused on niching down & acquiring quality clients that would translate into long-term retainer consulting, rather than quick sales. That milestone was almost two years ago and the growth pattern has been fairly consistent since then!
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Thank you for taking the time to respond. Also, thank you @SpellJammer for the follow-up. Great question!
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This is amazing. I just read your last blog post, about remote work, it's very interesting too.
Congrats to you and your team.
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Thank you very much, I appreciate it!
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Awesome stuff. Congratulations!
To follow up on the question from @mihai_iova above - perhaps you could focus on the how you went about acquiring the first few customers? Would be useful for indie hackers considering an agency model.
Thanks a bunch either way, and love your site. You seem like a cool and talented team :)
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Thanks for the congrats. Our first few customers were referrals (networking from our careers) but the vast majority of our clients come to us via branding. I write a lot of content, and we published a book (Becoming A Digital Marketer) as well.
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Congrats man 🎉. Living the dream! How did you come up with the name? It makes me chuckle.
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Haha thanks. Basically we were tired of folks taking themselves entirely too seriously, and wanted something easily brandable. If someone doesn't like the name, we probably don't want to work with them anyway!
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from someone that doesn't come from PPC world , what does it do ?
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PPC is pay-per-click marketing, so basically (in our niche) Google Ads and Bing Ads. We've packaged services and created some automated reporting that helps us efficiently build and manage campaigns for clients.
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It took around six weeks before Discosloth had our first paying customer. We made $76, and to be honest I wasn't feeling too good about the prospects. Thankfully my cofounder is far more patient, diligent, and persevering than I am, so we kept on going.
Split a bottle of wine, thought up a highly professional name designed to evoke instant respect, purchased a domain & started spinning up the company on the side. Our goal was to commit to Discosloth full-time once we had reached $1000/mo in revenue.
1 Comment
Love your branding!