We’re continuing to share a different story each week of how a past student has been able to significantly grow their freelance business by applying the concepts they learned from Double Your Freelancing (check out last week’s with Franz Sauerstein).
If you feel your story would be a good fit, share why. We’re now looking for features for June, so apply today!
Jeff Bronson is the man behind eCommerce Warriors, a solo eCommerce strategy and conversion consulting company. Jeff launched eCommerce Warriors three years ago, but was able to give his full attention to growing it at the beginning of 2015. He’s no stranger to eCommerce though – he served this industry for almost 11 years prior!
“I expect my income per project to raise 175% as a result of using a productized service, priced on a ‘generic” quantified financial upside.”
What got you into freelancing? Was it what you expected?
While working a full-time job as Director of Digital Strategy for an agency, I started up a freelance site ‘on the side.’ I did semi-productized jobs here and there, but it wasn’t focused and too difficult to also work full-time and have a life.
This is on the tail end of having spent over eight years running an eCommerce shop, while also working full-time. I then quit my job at 40, sold my stuff and moved to Asia to jump in full-time.
“My overall goal is to ‘own my time,’ and ditch the 9-5 grind I’ve done for 22+ years.”
What’s been most challenging thus far?
For me, it was making the free time (when I had a full-time job) for strategically positioning and planning out what the entire business funnel should look like in a way that wasn’t subject to changing market fluctuations, industry changes or outsourcing.
Did you ever want to quit or give up?
Back in 2004, while sitting in my horrid phone sales job cubicle at 29 years old, I made the decision to make a change and fight for self employment and time freedom, no matter the cost. Finally now at 40, I’ve accumulated the income cushion, knowledge, experience and methods to progress in a sustainable way, which also supports the ‘time freedom’ type of lifestyle I crave.
This came at great sacrifice to having a social life and essentially blowing my 30’s, however I believe you have to take risks in order to reap the rewards.
“Hence, I’m now doing this interview from Thailand.”
What were you struggling the most with when you ran into Double Your Freelancing Rate?
Before Brennan’s course, I had about five services on my site, which weren’t fully defined in a systematized way for production and client delivery. I struggled with spreading myself too thin, even though all of the services were related. Now, I’ve condensed into one fully defined productized service, that in the future may incorporate a few other pricing tiers and options.
The course also helped focus my lead capture funnel, in terms of creating a 14-part email course, with the goal of scheduling a 15-minute free phone call to discuss which lesson impacted the reader most.
What are some big successes you’ve had recently? Did you do anything different?
When I recently lived in India (in a grass hut on the Arabian Sea), I unexpectedly got a client job (I was taking time off). While running to Internet cafe’s during power outages, I managed to make $2,500 USD that month, which allowed me to cover the cost of my time there, plus bank over $1k.
I packaged up my proposal into a ‘product’ (rather than $100 hourly), but it wasn’t yet fully productized.
What are some specific tactics, strategies or pieces of advice that have really helped you grow?
Quantifying the financial upside in direct relation to pricing has really helped.
I focused my audience to ‘lifestyle brand’ online retailers selling at least $200k annually. Using this minimum annual revenue, I propose (based on cited industry research) that 33% of abandoned shopping cart recovery triggered emails convert into a sale.
Meaning if a shop is selling $20,000/monthly and converting lower than industry average (25%) for order saves, they would make an extra $60,000 that year.
“A small investment compared with my project price of $3,495.”
This is just ONE conversion point of a 150+ attribute strategy.
The other specific strategy is the free course itself, as an educational tool and lead generator. I adopted this strategy to create a free 14 lesson advanced course for retailers, to do the same.
What are you most excited about for your business in 2015?
Continuing to refine processes and gaining feedback about what works well (and not so well).
Jeff Bronson is the founder of eCommerce Warriors, which helps lifestyle brand online retailers improve conversions from existing shoppers through focused strategies and strengthened brand perception.
Jeff recently released a free two week course called 14 Advanced Lessons For Online Retailers, inspiring shop owners with a strategic shift in thinking. Being location independent, Jeff is also the author of Nomad40.com, where he was most recently spotted living in India and Thailand.
In his spare time, he enjoys impressionist painting and playing a Djembe drum around bonfires in the forest. Feel free to connect with Jeff on Twitter or LinkedIn.