It was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I was a full-time contract software/Access developer in the early 90s until about 2001. At the time I had a PC hardware/service business. I had 12 employees at one point and I got most of my development gigs from existing customers. "You just bought a bunch of new computers? How about some nice custom software to go with that? Oh, need to train your staff on Word and Excel? OK." I did it all. While my staff mostly handled the hardware and service, I took care of the database development and some of the high-end training (Access, etc.) You can read all about my first business here.

I marketed that business with a faxed newsletter. Yep, that's right. Once a month, I had a printable newsletter called ComputerFAQs that I would fax to about 30,000 businesses in the Western New York area. This was well before they had laws preventing "fax blasting." We would add any fax number we could find to our list. I had my secretary pouring through phone books (remember those?), business directories, etc. If people complained, we'd remove them, but by far people loved it. I'd get complaints from folks if they didn't get their newsletter that month.

That was 100% of the marketing I was doing at one point. I tried everything else: phone book ads, TV, radio. Nothing brought in sales like the fax newsletter. I had a bank of 8 computers on 8 phone lines doing nothing but sending faxes 24/7. Of course, that's impossible to do now. But then again, we didn't have the Internet then like it is today.

Now, I get almost 100% of my business from YouTube. That's where you found me back in 2015. I've been putting content online there since 2006, I believe. Now I've got over 172,000 subscribers. I get a little bit of money from advertising revenue and memberships each month, but by far the bulk of my income is from people liking my free lessons and then buying full courses from my site. It's a good business model: I give away my knowledge for free and in exchange people come back to me for paid lessons. Win/win.

I've tried other advertising with this business too: Google Ads don't work well for me for some reason. I absolutely HATE Facebook and will not spend another dime with them (I tried FB ads. They were awful). I've had a tiny bit of success with Twitter ads. Not worth it. LinkedIn doesn't do squat for me. So, for my business the best ROI is with YouTube. I take an hour or so every other day to post my TechHelp videos (at least 3 or 4 a week) and that's been bringing in business lately. As best as can be hoped for during the pandemic when a lot of people are cutting back on discretionary spending.

Thank you, sir! I appreciate that information! Thats very interesting about the faxes. I would not have guessed that. That is true; way back in 2015 I found the love and addiction I didnt know I needed: Access. I appreciate you taking the time to answer and for the regular Tech Help videos I now look forward to!