With Harrison Gevirtz, founder of Ringba, at the Lead Generation World Conference
At the Lead Generation World conference, I recently met with Harrison Gevirtz, founder of Ringba, the call-tracking solution provider and arguably the smartest man in the internet marketing space who sets the highest standards for himself and his team.
We discussed the pay-per-call space and his company.
Pay-per-call space continues to grow and evolve. People have been buying leads for 20 plus 30 years.
Why buy a lead when you can buy an engagement; when a warm, hot lead is on the phone, ready for you?
When Harrison Gevirtz first started Ringba, people would go, “Calls? Nobody picks up. Nobody calls.” However, people now realize that’s not the case. People are calling way more, and while the call space is growing, the lead space is declining because they see the value in those warm, engaged, ready-to-purchase customers.
Factors Behind Ringba’s Growth
First and foremost, credit for the growth goes to their ambitious team, who always tries to find new clients to become part of the Ringba community.
They have a huge trade show presence and built their business around sponsoring and participating in these trade shows around the country and in different categories.
When you’re a new software company and go to a trade show, the first year, everyone walks past your booth. No one’s interested. The second year they go, “Oh, they’re still in business. That’s interesting.” And the third year, they go, “Maybe I’ll talk to them next year.”
And after three years, when people want to come on board and see what you’re doing, now.
Ringba has been around for six years and has almost become a money gun.
So, if you own a software business, you can’t just judge one trade show when you’re looking at the revenue you generate from the show.
Harrison Gevirtz’s response: “Thank you for the sweet gift Dennis Yu Too much fun.“
A money gun, also known as a cash cannon or money blaster, is a device that shoots out paper currency or confetti, typically in a party or entertainment setting. For example, they can be used by performers, nightclubs, or other businesses to create a festive atmosphere. They can also be used as promotional tools to draw attention to a business or event.
Harrison Gevirtz shooting me with the machine gun!
They are designed to hold and dispense large amounts of cash and typically use compressed air or a spring-loaded mechanism to shoot the cash out.
The Pay-Per-Call Software
The pay-per-call industry is growing because it allows businesses to generate leads and increase revenue through targeted advertising. With pay-per-call, businesses only pay for the calls they receive from potential customers rather than for ad views or clicks that may not result in a sale.
This gives businesses a better ROI and more control over their advertising budget.
Pay-per-call can be more effective for certain businesses, such as local, legal, medical, or financial services. It also allows for a more direct and personal engagement with potential customers, as it’s a call, not just a click.
The industry is expected to grow as technology evolves, making it easier for businesses to track and analyze their pay-per-call campaigns.
Ringba, owned by Harrison Gevirtz, has developed pay-per-call software. Similar to Callrail, but performance oriented and with enterprise features for companies with sophisticated lead gen teams.
They are the #2 player in the industry.
The Ringba Software
Ringba specializes in pay-per-call marketing. It was founded in 2013 and is based in San Diego, California. The company provides a platform for businesses to manage and optimize their pay-per-call campaigns.
The platform includes call tracking, number optimization, advanced routing, reporting, and analytics.
Ringba’s clients include businesses in various industries, such as legal, medical, and financial services.
The company aims to provide a comprehensive solution for the pay-per-call industry and to help businesses optimize their campaigns for better results. The company serves many clients, from small businesses to large enterprises.
Ringba’s platform can be integrated with other marketing platforms to deliver a seamless experience to its clients.
Conclusion
The pay-per-call industry is growing, and the Ringba software is like providing a money gun for its users. Harrison is, in fact, making it rain with his pay-per-call software, Ringba.
Ringba provides a comprehensive solution for the pay-per-call industry, including call tracking, number optimization, advanced routing, and reporting and analytics. As a result, it helps businesses optimize their campaigns for better results.
A colleague and I were discussing “leadership” and what that truly meant. We came up with this analogy, which I hope you’ll enjoy.
Imagine you move rocks for a living. The more rocks you move, the more you’re paid. You don’t move rocks, you don’t get paid. Thus, you understand the direct linkage between putting in time and compensation. This is the hourly wage model– some rock movers get paid more than others, whether flipping burgers, working in a big corporation, or drilling teeth. The more teeth you can drill, the more you’re paid. Are you a corporate wage slave or someone who is paid piecemeal? This was me for twenty years of my life– a prostitute selling my time for money. Whether I billed $5 per hour or $250– it was the same thing. One day in the proverbial quarry, you decide that moving more rocks to get paid more was not the right answer. At best, you might move 20% more rocks than the other guy in a particular day, but it wasn’t sustainable. So you leave the quarry for 7 days, much to the surprise of your fellow laborers. In that time you move no rocks and make no income.
THE SHIFT
But when you come back, you are driving a bulldozer. Now, in one day you are able to move 100 times what a single laborer can do. But to get that bulldozer, you had to temporarily earn nothing– plus spend money to buy the vehicle and spend time learning how to drive the thing. Your fellow laborers, noses down, continue to keep movingrocks— they don’t look up to see you in the bulldozer. They have heard about bulldozers in the magazines, but never thought it was something possible for them.
You hang out with the other guys driving bulldozers. You have newfound wealth, which is fleeting, since the crowd you run with also enjoys the same standard of living. You’re right back in the middle of your peers. It feels great to be 100 times more productive than you were before, but you’re not quite fulfilled.
ANOTHER SHIFT
So you leave the quarry again and disappear for 7 days. In that time you move no rocks and make no income. And when you return, you are back with 100 bulldozers and 100 other eager new bulldozer operators. You’ve opened a bulldozer training school! Flocks of manual laborers who used to move rocks now come to be trained by you. And you make a commission on the rocks they move, since these laborers didn’t have enough money to buy their own bulldozers. These laborers are now moving 100 times what they did before, but given the costs of training, equipment, and your profit, they only make 10 times what they did before. Still, they are happy.
And you are temporarily happy. With 100 bulldozer operators moving 100 times as many rocks as a single man can do, you’re at 10,000 times your earlier productivity. Your lifestyle has changed, too. You have have a Granite Card by American Express and have a new mansion in Boulder. People admire you–you’re a ROCK star. They think that the secret to your success is getting stoned.
But it’s not enough– something inside you is not quite satisfied. You can only train so many new bulldozer operators per day. You’re still movingrocks in a sense, just mass quantities. Growth in your bulldozer school is directly related to the amount of time you’ve put in. So one day you close the bulldozer school. The press thinks you’ve gone mad– that you’ve lost your marble.
SCALE UP AGAIN
You disappear for 7 days. And when you return, you’re holding a brochure in your hand– “How to Open Your Own Bulldozer Training School”. You’re created a franchise model, where you are training up other school owners. You have first hand experience in training new bulldozer operators, so new school owners can rely on your experience. You now have sold 100 franchises, each one with a happy owner training 100 bulldozer operators, who in turn do the work of 100 laborers. That’s 1 million times leverage.
THE LESSON
You would not have been able to pull this off unless you had personal experience movingrocks, driving bulldozers, training bulldozer operators, and running a franchised business. You were able to take your knowledge and multiply it. If you didn’t intimately understand each aspect of the business, scaling up would have just multiplied losses.
Now examine your life and what you do. Are you movingrocks or are you multiplying? Writing software is a multiplication process. You can write one copy and sell it an infinite number of times. You could hand-build a single PPC campaign for a client or perhaps write a campaign management tool that can do it over and over in an automated fashion. But just like the rock moving analogy, if you aren’t a practitioner with hands-on experience in managing campaigns, your automation won’t be effective. There are lots of guys selling software that builds websites, manages PPC campaigns, creates SEO reports, sends out emails, and any variety of tasks.
If you want to create massive value, consider the rocks that you are moving. Can you write software or processes that can make life easier for others– or perhaps do some task faster, more effectively, or at lower cost? Everyone has something they know exceedingly well. What is that skill for you? You don’t have to be able to write code. Software is nothing more than rules for machines, just like processes are rules for humans.
McDonalds is a software company that just happens to make burgers. People go to McDonalds not because it has the most delicious burgers, but for the consistency of the food and the experience. You can take pimply-faced teens all over the world, minds distracted with their latest relationship dramas, speaking different languages, skilled or not– and still turn out that same value meal each time. That’s process for you.
NOW IT’S YOUR TURN
BlitzMetrics is about empowering individuals to become entrepreneurs– we provide the tools and process to allow folks who know little about internet marketing, but are eager and willing to learn, to perform like experts. Our analysts are trained to help small business owners grow their practices. We’re about the little guy helping the little guy. Do you want to be a part of our team? Contact me to find out more.
I got this note below, which shut down the BlitzMetrics affiliate account on Amazon as of March 8th because of the new Colorado Affiliate Tax (HB 10-1193). Read it below:
Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate:
We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to “voluntarily” collect Colorado sales tax — a course we won’t take.
We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states.
There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.
You may express your views of Colorado’s new law to members of the General Assembly and to Governor Ritter, who signed the bill.
Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010.
We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.
Best Regards,
The Amazon Associates Team
Update: Perhaps with some Denver medical marijuana, the Colorado legislators might ease up a bit.
In the game of Monopoly you roll the dice, land on property, buy un-owned property, pay rent, develop property, collect rent and pass go. The problem many people have with this game is that they leave the game to luck and many hate the game because they rely on luck.
“I hate Monopoly, it’s all about luck.”, “It’s about the dice and buying the property first.”
If you feel that way about Monopoly, then I’m sorry, but you are missing some key elements and you are focusing on the wrong things and you will most likely lose.
Get a property.
Fortunately the online game of marketing removes some of those barriers for you. Online you have similar opportunities to buy property and develop property. Luckily you don’t roll a die to buy a property! But if someone else got there first then you are out of luck. Game over. Pack up. Go home. …OR, get the whole picture. The property, while key, is only one element. When I play Monopoly I typically don’t even go for Boardwalk, I go for the two brown ones right after GO. What you can’t recall the names of the cheap brown properties? That would be Mediterranean and Baltic, in the classic version. Internet Branding isn’t everything. There are plenty of people making money off of “Free” wordpress blogs, ebay, squido pages, Blogger Blogs, and so on.
Don’t really wholly on luck. If you really wholly on luck then you will lose when your luck runs out.
Develop your property.
The only way to make money in Monopoly is by collecting rent from visitors and passing Go… okay, minus the chance beauty pageant. FAT CHANCE! There are more beautiful people in the world then there are actors, models, and superstars combined. To collect rent you have to get visitors. To collect more rent you have to develop your property, i.e. target those visitors, direct visitors to goal. Ask Tim Ash about directing visitors, or just read his book. Targeting visitors can be the hunting portion. PPC and SEO fall under targeting practice. Directing visitors is getting them to buy, sign-up, call, or convert. If you don’t have a goal then you are not playing the game. It may be repetitive, but I am going to say it again, “Do you want visitors or do you want customers?” Yes, there is the argument that you must have visitors to get customers… Blah, Blah, Blah, …And what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Clearly you must have visitors to your property to collect rent. But if you are not watching the game and they move on before you collect rent then you lose. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR VISITORS IF YOU WANT TO COLLECT RENT. That’s really what Landing Page Optimization is all about. It’s “Listening to your Customers.” Every great company listens to their customers. …Okay, there are “nice players” that will pay you rent even when you don’t ask them to. So, you can leave your property undeveloped and wait for those nice people that will pay you on occasion. And most people aren’t that nice! So we are not talking about domain squatting here; we are talking about developing your property by optimizing your site.
Make Money: Win the Marketing Game
Never lose site of the whole picture. Don’t get too caught up in a few small details. A sports car is made up of thousands of parts working together. All playing a role. All important. But to go off on just how important the exhaust is and only work on the air flow out, while ignoring air flow in, will only make you look ignorant and or arrogant. So can make money by, speeding around the board in your sports car, or by building your property to collect more rent, or sell later.
Some key elements to Monopoly Strategy.
1- Get a monopoly.
2- Cash flow.
3- Negotiate.
Most people that rely on luck or think Monopoly is all about luck only see the first element and totally miss the second two. How often do the two losers join forces to beat the big guy? That’s negotiation. The two little guys are negotiating. Asking for 3 free stays on their properties to cover their rent, may be better than letting them sell out real cheap to the other players.
Creating a Monopoly Online
Creating a monopoly online usually requires you to find a monopoly waiting to be had and dominating it before it ever appears on the radar. These obviously are rare and like the cheap brown spots, often not worth as much. Take for instance Austin Scorpion Control. Many websites will have more visitors an hour then that website will have in a month. But, it will be hard to take over their positions on Google. And while the positions where cheap when they were undeveloped and unnoticed, the cost now is a bit higher. Not to mention the fact that you would need an exterminator that actually wants and likes to take on scorpion problems. Most exterminators don’t specialize in scorpion control. The second way to gain a monopoly, NEGOATION. Have you tried searching “cheap domain name” online lately? Godaddy and its affiliates own most of the first page of Google. That’s a monopoly. Or you use Godaddy’s other tactic to gain a Monopoly…MONEY. Big super bowl ads. Lots of Money. Big SEO campaigns, lots of money. Going for a monopoly on Atlanta Pest Control is a lot harder than a monopoly on Alpharetta Pest Control, a North Atlanta, GA suburb. Therefore the money required to get there is a lot more. But what about the Negotiation? Hey, if you have a valuable piece of a monopoly that I want and I have a piece of a monopoly that you want, then let’s negotiate. Make a deal and trade. I could care less if you create a monopoly for home security systems in Chapel Hill. All I care about is bug control. I want a monopoly for Pest Control in Raleigh. What do know, we share matching properties… Chapel Hill, NC and Raleigh-Durham, NC. So I help you get your monopoly and you help me get mine. The catch is you have to be willing to let go of your property and link juice in exchange for the monopoly you really want.
There are powers that be that control small monopolies online in Direct TV, local locksmiths, unique travel accommodations, do-it-yourself pest control products, and chicken coops. You laugh, but that chicken coop guru is laughing all the way to the bank!
Some affiliates are losing millions per month, I’m told, as a result of my TechCrunch post. And Shoemoney has not been shy about his willingness to write blog posts for money. If someone is about to ‘topple an industry’ (highly unlikely), one strategy is to trash his credibility and scare him into not writing anymore. But what I didn’t expect was that folks like Jeremy Schoemaker would be out for blood, misstate facts, and even email our advisory members. I reached out to him, to give him a chance to explain why he would go so far out of his way– so far, no response.
Let’s clear a few things up:
Scott Richter does not have ownership in BlitzMetrics. Yes, we were in his building. No, his dad never threatened to sue any of these gossipers– he’s got more important things to do. Yes, Scott has paid for many meals and entertainment. No, Scott did not cover Jeremy’s travel and lodging to come see us– that was 100% paid for by Blitz, including the loan we made him at Affiliate Convention in Denver when he had no money.
Gillian Muessig has no ownership in BlitzMetrics and is not employed by the company. She is a friend, colleague, and mentor– since she knows how to navigate the waters in building fledgling companies to industry leadership. She is the President and co-founder of SEOmoz and Rand Fishkin is her son. SEOmoz is her baby and she has said so quite plainly– why wouldn’t she take this company all the way? I respect her deeply for her insight and integrity, which has carried her company to where it is today.
I’ve written a lot of articles. You’ve probably read some of them, maybe without knowing, as I wrote under other people’s names. For example– a number of ad serving posts, as well as most of the ShoeMoney Xtreme guides. Look at the examples referenced in the articles and compare the writing styles if you’re not sure.
We’ve been burned a number of times: This is common in affiliate marketing. What’s not as common is someone that I’ve had deep respect for and trusted, such as Jeremy, do that to us a couple times, then claim the reverse. He is a prominent blogger and a lot of folks look up to him– therefore, he should be careful as a role model. Yes, the Facebook whitelisted account was his. He called me up while at Facebook and agreed to a 50/50 revshare, so I assigned 2 full-time employees to that account. After a ton of Russian brides and dating ads, and a few hundred thousand dollars in revenue, BlitzMetrics was left with no earnings and Shoemoney took 2 employees. We lost a lot of money, which hurt a small business like ours, but we did not pursue him. His recollection is different, although the email trail and IM chat logs of these employees tell another story.
I’m owing up to all the spam (or call it by whatever name you want) that I’ve done in the past. The TechCrunch article was part of that– and there are more articles coming. Facebook has done a commendable job in shutting down loopholes– but there are many, and the players are so clever. Are these players still making money? Certainly. Could we have? Perhaps, but we didn’t. And whatever money we did make was spent on building our local platform– let me tell you that the road to scaling up real clients, especially in local, is hard. We don’t have much money.
I would be naive to think that I have enough power to shut down an industry– I am just one guy and BlitzMetrics is a tiny company. Would you ever fall for a MyLuvCrush ad? The folks who read this blog do Internet marketing for a living, and I know you’re not falling for it. At the same time, don’t fall for a hate-motivated piece– examine their motives and then check the facts to see if things add up. Jeremy mentioned that the reason the picture of sheep is the default avatar on his blog is that most will blindly follow whatever he says and not think for themselves.
One thing that has surprised me is the amazing support we’ve received from white hat folks, small businesses, industry friends, and the press. How folks have reacted to events of the last two weeks clearly define if they’re black or white hat. If you’re an affiliate running deceptive stuff, you know that profits are hit-and-miss and that there’s often high school drama involved. We did some consulting for the FTC– a nice surprise, as they promised not to sue. The local and agency work is steady, the people are easier to work with, and you can feel good about what you’re doing. Ironically, we’re helping build a new form of affiliate marketing– it’s the local space. If you define an affiliate as someone who gets paid to promote someone else’s product or service, then you’d likely believe that Russian brides is out and local is in.
There’s two sides to every story, so consider the facts and make your own decision. Meanwhile, I’m getting back to focusing on local. If you want to build a real business with local clients, I’d love to hear from you.
