5 Steps To Getting Paid To Build Bots
I recently asked my community of 2500+ School of Bots members, bot experts, and evangelists:
What advice would you give someone who just found out about Facebook Messenger bots and wants to get paid to build them?
Here are the 5 steps they came up with:
Step 1:
Choose a niche.
“It sounds extremely simple, but seems to be more relevant to bot building than anything else I’ve done online.
Bots can be solution providers for several industries… [If you try] to be the problem solver for every industry, [you’ll] stifle your ability to scale.
Pick an industry you enjoy and go solve their problems.
Create a 💬 FAQ bot, 🗓️ appointment bot, 👥 lead generation bot, 🎉 event bot, or 🔁 all of these combined.
Building bots for an industry you look forward to engaging with makes your job fun.
When work becomes fun, it’s no longer work… And innovation comes easier, making you a true expert over time.”
Step 2:
Anyone can build a chatbot with enough effort and practice.
Few can create a solution to peoples’ problems.
✏️ “Before building, understand the pain points of your client. Only then should you put those bot building skills to work.”
~ Alex Aguirre, School of Bots Member
✅ “Research [your potential client’s] weakness in marketing and pitch the solution.”
~ Princy Jain, School of Bots Member
📊 “Then, figure out how you can take key data acquired from the bot and send it to their email marketing platforms, spreadsheets, etc.”
~ Nicky Scott, School of Bots Member
💰 “Remember that a chatbot doesn’t run on software — It runs on money. A free bot can be good for almost all uses… But to make it great, you need research & development, and coded software.”
Step 3:
Approach chatbot copywriting as you would a text conversation with your friend.
Every conversation you have ever had — online or offline — is unique. It will never happen again in the exact same way. 😯
As humans, we go off on tangents halfway into a conversation and interrupt or respond to the other person when it feels right.
Your chatbot’s copy needs to feel right to the user.
👉 How do you accomplish that, you ask?
Write a shitty first draft, then go back in several times until the conversation feels natural.
Have friends and your target audience go through it.
Add slang. Add emojis. Keep it simple. Make it feel real.
🕸️ “[When building bots], you can’t think in linear terms of a normal conversations. You need to think of conversations as a web of possibilities.”
Step 4:
📲 “A chatbot is a [new] piece of the puzzle to be added in a client’s online and offline strategies.”
~ Livio Langella, School of Bots Member
It’s not just a way to get more leads or get high open/click rates.
Sure, marketing is the most popular appeal for businesses wanting to add a chatbot to their channels.
Every business needs more leads — the more qualified and cheap, the better, too. 💰 👥
However, a chatbot can be implemented holistically into a business. As John mentioned in Step 1, bots can do a variety of things for just one industry.
Imagine how a chatbot could support, grow, and optimize a business’ marketing, sales, and operations.
Customer retention could go up. ⬆️
A whole new revenue stream could start flowing. 💸
50% of customer inquiries could be automated. 🤖
Yes, let your imagination run wild. Endless possibilities. Fo’real.
“Give equal weight to the strategy of the bot as you do the technical development. You can always fix chatbot features, but if you miss the proper marketing and strategy, it will be much harder to fix.”
Step 5:
Practice what you preach.
“Use bots to sell your own chatbot services.”
~ Matthew Walker, School of Bots Member
It’s so true. Use your bot wherever you can in your bot client sales pipeline.
🙌 It will sell them even more on your services (even if you’ve already closed the deal) and potentially give them more ideas about how to use the bot for their business.
Here’s a little hack for you from one of our star students in the Master Messenger Bots Program (Credit: Henry Burton). ⬇️
- Create a demo chatbot for your target industry (e.g. real estate agents).
- Send your leads to the demo chatbot.
- Have the demo chatbot follow-up with all users after a certain period of time to remind them to 🗓️ book an appointment with your agency.
It’s simple, but brilliant.
A unique touchpoint that most other service providers just don’t have yet in their sales pipeline.
If you’re just getting started with Facebook Messenger chatbots, or are starting to grow your chatbot agency, we hope this was helpful for you 👍
Which step was most insightful for you? Let us know in the comments! ⬇️
And, as a thank you for reading this, below are some bot goodies!
👉 Get access to our Chatbot Starter Course for just $57 (usually $97).
Use code x5STEPS40x and click here to join.
👉 Click here to get four free chatbot templates from us (in Chatfuel).
*Create a Chatfuel account first*
👉 And if you’re hungry for more…
Click here to get access to weekly Live interviews with movers and shakers of the bot world, access our bot agency resource vault (for free), and more here.
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