First Project got traction. Starting another venture.

[Magnus]

When I first joined this forum I told everyone I was starting a site geared toward millennials and how they can make money etc. Started way too broad, then I narrowed it. After posting some high quality articles within the niche it appears i'm already starting to get a little bit of following. Affiliate companies have been joined, ads are up and I've already made a few pennies here and there. Feels good brah. If I can make $100 a month, I can make $10,000 a month.

At this point it's just about building the community over time, and slowly increasing monthly earnings. I'm okay with that. I'm happy with that. Because to be frank, I was among the thousands if not millions of people who try to make money online but jump from secret sauce to secret sauce, never putting more than a month into any venture and simply CAN NOT succeed that way. It took me 3 months of 7+ hour days of fuking up, going down the wrong path, picking the wrong niche, finding my audience, improving my writing before I found any sort of traction. So with that I want to say thank you to this community for the crash course, the support (even if it has been a bit frank at times), you all have been great. Cheers. And with that said...




Starting a clothing line. I may have mentioned in a thread or two how i've been eyeing the shopify/oberlo stack that people seem to be doing to sell niche products on facebook. I just can't bring myself to simply resell cheap shit from china. Then it dawned on me... I live in the fashion capital of the world. I don't have to sell sht. I'm targeting people who wear Kith (https://kithnyc.com/collections/apparel), and Fear of God (https://fearofgod.com/collections/the-wardrobe) with a brand that will start off with shirts and sweaters for millennial men and women. I have met two individuals over coffee and recruited a SHUT DOWN team to get on board with my idea. The graphics designer did internal graphic creation at Louis Vuitton (look books, invites, prints) and the clothing designer did 4 seasons designing with Givenchy. We're creating logos and initial designs now to get look books, and initial product demos complete by London Fashion week in February.

I will continue to add content to my blog and grow that asset. Want to thank the whole community here and looking forward to an exciting 2017.

 

[chanilla]

I'm kind of in the same position as you with a new project I started, and saw an opportunity mid-stride to bring another venture in alongside that's semi related. However, I ultimately decided against it, and unless I get the first project to the point where I can live off it if everything else I do goes belly-up, I won't go hard at the second venture.

My reasoning: it's hard enough to get a decent size win out of the first, and I'm not in a position to scale, leverage money, or have access to pre-trained personnel. (it would require a huge time investment to train outsourcers to do exactly what I want, how I want it done. It makes more sense to grind short term, personally train ONE employee, and then get them to train the rest... But doing so by reinvesting working capital without commingling existing income, which is what I'd have to do right now to pull that off)

My question: is there some reason or source of income that puts you in a position where you don't have to go all in on your main squeeze? (day job, investment income, other projects, etc...?)

Just wondering if I'm being shortsighted about this in some way. In my experience thus far, it's a struggle like a mofo WITHOUT having split focus. I'm hoping just talking this out will further cement one direction or the other, or at least bring up points I haven't thought of, and hopefully be useful to someone else as well...

Has anyone else kind of had shiny object syndrome after beginning a project, where you successfully were able to manage both and succeed with both? Even just starting a little niche site project seems stupid when you compare long term value... Although still attractive at times! (<---- the trap, me thinks.)

The other thought that comes to mind is, why not get cheap access to capital and buy a semi-performing asset that I know I can bring value to, and drastically speed up my timeline? (when it comes down to it, I think it's just fear... It's uncomfortable having a note on something digital. An apartment building I can see, feel, and touch "feels" much more tangible...)

I'd love for someone to chime in on this even if your situational experience may be a little different, and add to the conversation...

 

[Magnus]

My question: is there some reason or source of income that puts you in a position where you don't have to go all in on your main squeeze? (day job, investment income, other projects, etc...?)

Just wondering if I'm being shortsighted about this in some way. In my experience thus far, it's a struggle like a mofo WITHOUT having split focus. I'm hoping just talking this out will further cement one direction or the other, or at least bring up points I haven't thought of, and hopefully be useful to someone else as well...

Has anyone else kind of had shiny object syndrome after beginning a project, where you successfully were able to manage both and succeed with both? Even just starting a little niche site project seems stupid when you compare long term value... Although still attractive at times! (<---- the trap, me thinks.).

I'm in a unique position not like the majority of the people that want to make money online. I got into IT about 6 years ago for the money and the money alone. I worked my way up through the ranks until I was hired on by a company that allows me to work 100% from home. For a lot of people, c'est tous. That's the dream job by far. They would kick their feet up and try to retire on that. The thing is, at the end of the day I still have an employer, I still have a boss asking me where projects are in their timeline, I'm still in a career i don't give two shts about, and I could still be fired. i LOVE being able to work from home, but if all my eggs were in this basket and I was fired I'd be right back to having to set an alarm, waking up 6 and sitting in traffic contemplating seppuku.

I started the quest of making money online based on that knowledge. I can absolutely never go back to working in an office again. Keep in mind i've attempted it off and on for 3 years. This project I started in september was the first one I ever made a dime from. I can currently pay my phone bill with the site, cool. But now it's just growing and scaling. That can't exactly be rushed (with a few exceptions).

I also want to tell you that:
- I started this project with one domain name and brand, hated the topic.
- Broadened it to another domain name and brand then was told by users that the content was too broad.
- Kept the domain and brand but trimmed away categories until I had a true niche, and THEN found success

That's 3 bullet points, but what you don't see is the hours i spent writing content, the hours i spent adjusting content until i was all green on yoast seo's optimization of my page. The hours trial and erroring the site to learn how pages, categories, and tags work to have my page displayed properly. And then of course learning i had a bloated theme which made me have to tear down the site and reformat about 16 articles in a new theme. Hours of watching youtube on seo and market advice, reading the crash course, and improving my site.

If i had to start over today. I could do the entire thing in a week, but that whole trial, error, and learning phase was EASILY two months of 0 traffic grind, just to make a measily 100some bucks. The owners of this forum are upfront and frank about that in the crash course. Unfortunately I've been a user of warrior forum since 2012 and never made a dime because no one tells you about the grind. All they promise is a sales funnel to this "great program" for making "$3000 a month from home", so I'd dedicate my life to one shiny object for a month and quit, another shiny object for a month and quit since I wasn't even making $20 much less $3000.

Making money online is marketing and sales. That's it. If you can market you can make money with anything. If you can't market no niche or idea is going to save you. At least that has been my experience. So to answer your question, I'm able to start this clothing line because I have a strong paying day job (that's really a night job since it's in the states and I'm in europe) AS WELL as an online asset that makes me $100+ a month

My advice. Stay with project one until you've banked two or three months in a row of a couple hundred dollars so you KNOW you know how to market, thhen you can venture into something else.
_________________

 

[Ryuzaki]

If you understand the psychology of people buying those $200 dollar sweatpants and $450 t-shirts, then have at it. Nothing wrong with pivoting or killing off a project if you TRULY aren't giving up or chasing the silver bullet. If you're calmly calculating and have found a better move, then take it. Time is all we have and we're leaking it constantly.

With that being said, most of the time this is the wrong move. You have to be radically honest with yourself. It might be the right move too.

It's hard to finally settle on a vertical, but once you do, you can pivot and chase down ideas that remain in the vertical and can continue to be built under the same Brand and domain. Then everything strengthens itself and it's not a wasted move.

The best thing to do if you want to build a lasting business is to find the one that has high value products or services, that you care enough about to stay energized, and that other people care about. And you need to be good at it and know about it, not just like it. Or you need the cash to be consulted or hire employees that do know and are good at it.​

Once you're there, you need a fundamental ground game that never stops and earns the bulk of your profit. From there you can start chasing extra ideas to expand the same brand. Jumping to unrelated ideas is like getting halfway up a mountain and going back down to the bottom to try a different climbing trail because you got bored. All the trails take the same amount of effort.

 

[turtle]

Jumping to unrelated ideas is like getting halfway up a mountain and going back down to the bottom to try a different climbing trail because you got bored. All the trails take the same amount of effort.

Well said. It all boils down to this. The sooner you get it the better.

 

[Samedi]

"It's hard to finally settle on a vertical..."
Truer words have rarely been spoken.
I wonder if Magnus is just reaching for lower hanging fruit or the next shiny object?

The thing about ballers? It's the FOCUS. They all put everything they have behind their LOVES & their STRENGTHS.

 

[Magnus]

Forgot to check back itt. I don't understand the problem of trying a completely different vertical if you're already getting traction with one? I'm still posting, creating content for my original site and driving traffic.

Just now, instead of maybe 85% of my time going toward setting up the site properly, writing articles, and deciding on what time of subscribe product I want to use. I'm just writing quality artickles, leaking traffic on various forums, and reviewing traffic at the end of each week to find out what is the best source to pursue.

There's only so much analysis, seo schema markup, social media plugging you can do that will benefit a site less than 6months old or am I wrong?

 

[Michael]

I don't understand the problem of trying a completely different vertical if you're already getting traction with one?

Because that's all you have at this point "traction". Why start a project, get traction, then when things are starting to work, split your time elsewhere else? Go balls deep on that one project.
I know this has been said 100x over, but if you've found something that works, you need to scale it up to the very end. I'd say when you're at the point of having a team of writers writing for you on autopilot, the outreach outsourced and traffic leeking outsourced then you should move onto the next project.

 

[SEOSpidey]

When I first joined this forum I told everyone I was starting a site geared toward millennials and how they can make money etc. Started way too broad, then I narrowed it. After posting some high quality articles within the niche it appears i'm already starting to get a little bit of following. Affiliate companies have been joined, ads are up and I've already made a few pennies here and there. Feels good brah. If I can make $100 a month, I can make $10,000 a month.

At this point it's just about building the community over time, and slowly increasing monthly earnings. I'm okay with that. I'm happy with that. Because to be frank, I was among the thousands if not millions of people who try to make money online but jump from secret sauce to secret sauce, never putting more than a month into any venture and simply CAN NOT succeed that way. It took me 3 months of 7+ hour days of fuking up, going down the wrong path, picking the wrong niche, finding my audience, improving my writing before I found any sort of traction. So with that I want to say thank you to this community for the crash course, the support (even if it has been a bit frank at times), you all have been great. Cheers. And with that said...




Starting a clothing line. I may have mentioned in a thread or two how i've been eyeing the shopify/oberlo stack that people seem to be doing to sell niche products on facebook. I just can't bring myself to simply resell cheap shit from china. Then it dawned on me... I live in the fashion capital of the world. I don't have to sell sht. I'm targeting people who wear Kith (https://kithnyc.com/collections/apparel), and Fear of God (https://fearofgod.com/collections/the-wardrobe) with a brand that will start off with shirts and sweaters for millennial men and women. I have met two individuals over coffee and recruited a SHUT DOWN team to get on board with my idea. The graphics designer did internal graphic creation at Louis Vuitton (look books, invites, prints) and the clothing designer did 4 seasons designing with Givenchy. We're creating logos and initial designs now to get look books, and initial product demos complete by London Fashion week in February.

I will continue to add content to my blog and grow that asset. Want to thank the whole community here and looking forward to an exciting 2017.

Hi,
Awesome story man. Sounds much more genuine and heart-felt. I mysf and trying to get my project off the ground with some IM. Best of luck for you new venture and keep posting updates.

Thanks

 

[kyescontent]

I've been writing content and copy for websites for six years now, and I can tell you that every one of my clients who have stayed in the game for 3+ years have one thing in common: they focus on just one or a couple of big projects. Marketers who hop from project to project rarely stay focused long enough to become an authority in any niche. If you find something that actually generates reliable results and you aren't into churning and burning, going back to the drawing board isn't an efficient use of your time.

That having been said, a lot of people can juggle more than one project successfully. You have to ask yourself what your resources are in terms of time, energy, and focus. The only "right" answer is whatever is profitable for you.

 

[Zipix]

Go balls deep on that one project.

This. Not saying that you have to stick with just one project for life, but if it picks up and it starts making money, focus your attention on that project. In the world of Internet Marketing and SEO, high 4 figures (yes $XXXX/month) can be achieved with pretty much any type of niche site.
And hitting the 5 figures mark is a matter of just extending your niche a bit or adding your own digital product, e-commerce store, membership section or new affiliate products. It is so much easier to go from $1000 to $10000.

I understand that you don't like the topic of your project. Despite all the preaching of "start a project about something that you like", I am on the other site. Your projects should be focused on the stuff that makes money, shit load of money. Then you can spend that money doing the things you really LOVE, not the things you like.