Introductions Thread

Ryuzaki said:
Welcome, @PulseOften. Part of what makes BuSo great is that, while other sources try to give you everything you need to know (and fail at doing that because it's not really possible), here on the forum you can ask anything you want from specifics to generalities and get answers from professionals actually doing it successfully, and not just selling course subscriptions and info products. We don't spoon feed but any question asked that's not a time waster gets an answer. You can't beat that.

I hope all is well and that you find the success you're looking for through hard and smart working habits!
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Thank you. Yes, I like how in most of the threads I view here, even on topics unrelated to the OP, I'm getting the "nuggets" of info that just make sense for me, and, now that I've restarted, can actually test and apply.

Got a whole new article style to look into from just reading some of the Intro threads, too! :smile:
 
Ryuzaki said:
Welcome, @BHopkins, glad to have you aboard and finally posting rather than lurking. I've been pondering what the newer AI content creation stuff means for text-based websites. I think for a while it may be contained to stuff like financial newsletters and whatnot, but eventually it'll make it's way out to articles-at-large and that's going to mean a major shift for the internet (and huge monetization opportunities for brands that don't exploit AI content). Also, video content will benefit greatly from the barage of spam that is undoubtedly incoming.
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Thanks @Ryuzaki! AI has made leaps forward in the last two years. Check out Jarvis.ai for a sample. There are other good ones, but that's my favorite so far.
 
I found this forum on a recent reddit thread. Having browsed some of the sub-forums and case studies, this seems like a great forum for people building monetised websites. It sort of reminds me of how a certain subreddit used to be, before it began dying due to poor moderation a few years ago.

I run a few websites, mostly focusing on high value B2C affiliate offers. I still have a few US Amazon sites from when they used to be worth promoting, and I do some digital marketing consulting.

I'm just beginning to start a new site at the moment, but I'm on the lookout for new ideas. I would like to have a display ads site one day, since most of my revenue relies on a handful of terms on each site, given I only typically publish about 100k words over the life of each website. I really struggle with scaling hired writers and publishing large volumes of content.

I'd also like to start publishing case studies on here eventually, it seems like the Laboratory forum is the best place for that, once my account is approved.
 
Hey, welcome to BuSo!

I would be interested in following along with your new site in a Lab thread. Do you have anything in mind yet, or is the idea for a new site still pretty fresh? Are you looking to do something similar to your other sites?
 
Potatoe said:
Hey, welcome to BuSo!

I would be interested in following along with your new site in a Lab thread. Do you have anything in mind yet, or is the idea for a new site still pretty fresh? Are you looking to do something similar to your other sites?
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Thanks, I will consider doing that when/if I get access to the forum. Basically my main successful site was started a few years ago and it's been a long slog to get links. This new one is my first build on an expired domain, so we'll see how it goes. Currently trying to push out as much content as possible before going live with it, the skeleton of the site is done. Similar in terms of strategy - high value affiliate offers, not going too crazy with the amount of content published.
 
1,5 years ago my girlfriend and I started with youtube. Just to share our private videos and out of interest in video editing and photography. The blog came along and we started to document our projects. We are doing some pretty unique DIY projects that don't exist yet. We are thinking of solutions that are achievable with normal means. The projects can take up to 3 months from idea to completion.
Insight 1:
If you do research on a topic, it can be recycled on your channels - blog post, video, Pinterest for us.
Our 3 (!) DIY posts got traffic after a while last year (about 500-1000 visitors / post / month) and after monetising through affiliate, the revenue increased from $30 in May to $100 in December 2020.
Insight 2:
This really works. People are grateful, donate, buy through our links.

In December, we made our annual plan and set ourselves the goal of making $4,000 with the blog and YouTube, plus a total of 24 blogposts and 24 YTB videos.
Youtube monetisation was reached after 15 months in May 2021. At the end of May we recycled a blog post and published our first video after the monetisation - in the first month it ran normally, after 30 days it became (semi) viral by our standards.
Status now. We currently make $250 with affiliate marketing and about $250 by adsense/youtube and about $50 with donations.

In May, I became aware of BuSo via income school, then r/juststart and r/seo and that opened my eyes. I should have started earlier.
I'm a JS developer with a UX and graphic design background, my girlfriend is a specialised graphic designer and we can do practically everything professionally ourselves, even print. It's a shame that we totally ignored SEO and internet marketing until now. Better now than too late.

Insight 3: Our December target was far too low.
We will see. This also changes our FIRE targets. We want to reduce our 9-5 jobs to 4 and then 3 days as soon as our incomes are balanced in order to have more time for our "hobby".
 
Welcome aboard, @marekkeramek, glad to have you. You’ve achieved more already than most have or will. Goes to show you that nothing replaces showing up and doing the work. Good job. I hope you’ll stick around and keep growing with us.
 
Hey welcome :smile:

I love the idea of being able to work on something with your partner, that you both enjoy, that draws from both of your skillsets. I think that's a really cool lifestyle to be creating for yourself. Forging your own path like that, to me, is what it's all about.

Looking forward to hearing more about it and seeing your channel grow!
 
Hello, everybody!
I'm a finance, investment, and business writer with over 20 years experience in the trade. Finally making the jump into niche site building/publishing and entrepreneurship.

Well, I've been self-employed for many years, but selling my work to other people.

After years of working for other people... some of whom have built and sold very successful sites themselves, I realize I have a vast amount of finance and business-related writing and research that can be quickly reworked, re-angled, and updated and used to create equity and passive income for me and my wife on my own site.

I'm not new to blogging. In 2003 I started what became one of the more prominent military/War on Terror blogs in the Sphere, getting 10,000-30,000 hits/day. But did not have the marketing or tech knowledge to properly monetize that effort. Back again with more experience and more focus.

I just found out about this community this evening. I must say, I'm very appreciative of the veterans here who have shared their experience and expertise. Looking forward to learning more, and as my own experience deepens, contributing to the forum as well.
 
@Bucksfu, you're absolutely right. With your experience, at this point it would make zero sense to not create recurring income with your own projects. You know how it's done, you've seen others do it successfully with your writing. You can do it.

I'd maybe transition to 50/50 where half of my time is for clients and half is for me. And since you can't really afford to spread yourself thin, I'd focus on one project of my own.

The danger with finance and investment is that Google is now doing their YMYL (your money, your life) stuff in the algorithm where they've really tweaked the dials on trust and links (EAT as they call it: expertise, authority, and trust). It's very difficult (insanely difficult even) to compete in these verticals. I'd look up which ones fall under the YMYL umbrella and possibly avoid it. If you can break through that's one thing, but it's a huge uphill battle against sites and companies with 20 year head starts and million dollar annual budgets.
 
I know! In many cases, I could be competing with my own writing!

That said, I'll be looking for ways to re-purpose or re-angle content where I'm not directly competing with current or recent clients at all. I take care of my people. :-)
 
I am so glad I stumbled across this fantastic site. Thanks for the wealth of information but I am now a kid in a sweet shop consuming instead of writing! Shiny object syndrome and procrastination are hard task masters in my journey.

I have an internet and mobile background from back when AOL was a thing and before mobile did video or had open internet...yes that's old.

Looking for a career change so I can work different hours and grow something myself.

I have started a site last November and have posted nearly 200 posts. I took a couple of months off with burnout but as soon as I started getting a bit of traction it spurred me on.

I currently get over 1000 - 1500 sessions per day so I am really pleased with the progress so far.

I have made some poor choices with paid theme being slow but it looks nice! Also I have used elementor on all pages and post and this makes the slow and doesn't work well with Ezoic.

I am trying to ignore some of the tech and reach my goal of 50k to get into mediavine as it's just a rabbit warren I get sucked into and don't really commit as scared I will mess it up but soon i will...probably.

I would really like to hire a VA to speed up getting posts out following a template and process for collecting some data uploading etc so i can use my time more wisely and stop procrastinating on the boring stuff but I would like some advice so I don't make mistakes or get scammed as i have read about on here.

It feels good to find a place like this as there is only so many youtube videos and podcasts you can listen to before you need place that feels more real world (albeit still virtual!)

Thanks for all the great information and time given here I am working my way through it eagerly.
 
Hello everyone

I own a site that's just celebrated its 18 month birthday and now doing around $1000 a month. I have also partnered with someone and we are in the process of launching three more sites with a strategy to front-load them with about 20 pieces of content each and letting them marinate in Google.

We are also in the process of launching a SaaS growth newsletter - which is very exciting. There seems to be have been a resurgence in newsletters recently, and many people are absolutely killing it with what seemingly is far easier than a traditional authority or niche site. So we thought we could get in early and try and get a piece of that pie.

I love to lurk in places like this and ask questions when something either fascinates me or confuses me, so very much looking forward to being a part of the communiity. And I'll be honest, I'm usually both fascinated and confused in equal measure!!

-Chris
 
Hi everyone,

Saw this forum mention on /r/juststart. Been in the internet marketing space for years growing sites for other people.

Deciding to get serious about growing my own finally. Cheers!
 
Hey guys,

Found y'all through a popular subreddit and dayum, some of the threads here are pure gold.

Currently trying to scale my website from $120USD monthly > $1,000 monthly.

Literally read and applied the 'avalanche method (by @CCarter) to my website. Did a quick content audit and found that the theories there held true - Daily SV correlates to rankings for the keywords monthly SV.

I did find that internal linking/soloing with low comp/KGR keywords can massively boost your tiers too.

Excited to start scaling using this methodology, will be applying many of the lessons here ASAP!

Glad to be here!
 
Welcome, happy to have you here @Reapzy. How long have you been involved with internet marketing? Is this your first site and/or first meaningful success? What's your story?
 
Ryuzaki said:
Welcome, happy to have you here @Reapzy. How long have you been involved with internet marketing? Is this your first site and/or first meaningful success? What's your story?
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Thanks @Ryuzaki! Been reading your 'The Eternal Grind' case study and it's been a big motivator!

I've been dabbling in Digital Marketing since 18 (now 23) after reading Dotcom Secrets.

I started my first "legit" site January last year (after many failures due to laziness and lack of discipline but I didn't get serious with Affiliate Marketing till September last year when I became jobless. (Quit my job to initially to self-learn and pursue web design / development).

Up until this point my website was floating around 50 - 60 posts due to sporadic moments of laziness and motivation, so it took me almost a year to hit 80 posts.

But I finally decided to go "all in" this year when I hit 80 posts and got my first Amazon Affiliate commission in January.

Was able to start ranking fast for low comp key terms as soon as I post them and I was able to scale it to $120 monthly, currently hovering around 95 posts.

Been ramping up my efforts in terms of project management and actually turning it into a real business, and have finally implemented a solid marketing plan for the rest of the year, going to focus on mass producing high quality content and implementing a solid backlinking strategy.

Really the avalanche method seems like the final piece of the puzzle, so I'm extremely lucky to come across the method here, and I'm keen af to see where I can take the site to within the next 6 months!
 
Hey everyone!

My name is Matt. I'm new here. After reading some threads, I decided I wanted to stick around and participate.

I've been working online since early 2009. I started as a freelancer writer in the online gambling space, and did that until almost exactly a year ago today when I took a job with the company I was writing for. I now manage a small team of writers -- assigning content briefs, doing a bit of keyword research, and editing and optimizing content.

The reason why I'm here is because I'm not an employee or a freelancer (not long term anyway). Am I an entrepreneur? I dunno, nor do I really care what the right label is. All I know is that I need to be running my own thing.

I've built a couple of sites in the past. Nothing major. One of them got hit by Panda in 2011 (or was it Penguin?). Another one was part of a partnership, of which I sold my equity in. It's still earning a bit of money every month like clockwork (and has since 2012 when I built it).

I've struggled a bit over the last few years due to indecision. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do or how I wanted to do it. Do I want to freelance? Switch to coding? Make my own product? Do I really want to do this authority site thing?

Ultimately, after talking to my wife and realizing that I wasn't ever going to find the perfect thing that ticks all the boxes for me, I decided that I'm going to build (authority) websites.

From what I can tell, that path will create the leverage needed to give me what I want most - freedom. I like and want to work, but I want to call my own shots. This business model seems like a good way to do that, as well as to not have to worry much about overhead, needing to be in one location, have employees (unless I want to), etc.

I have a site now that I started a little while ago. I'm having some challenges there, but it might be better to save all that for a different thread/post.

Anyway, that's a little bit about me and what I'm doing here. I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone and participating in the forum.

-Matt
 
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Welcome, @mgeer, thanks for the high quality introduction.

Indecision, in my experience, comes from a lack of confidence in any one thing and worrying about what's being excluded when I choose to focus on the one thing. Early on I tried out a lot of things, not because of shiny object syndrome but because I needed to map out the landscape and really understand what options were available.

I did settle on authority sites and never looked back. If SEO is your thing, then authority sites are the model that take advantage of all of Google's peculiarities and ticks off all of it's "high quality brand" desires to block out spam. At a certain point you become darn near invincible.

It's a good choice. Is it the best? I don't know. Depends on your skills, your cash flow, etc. I know guys cleaning up in SEO and I know them knocking it down in PPC and I know them killing it in providing a service, and so forth. All I know is getting somewhere in any way is better than getting nowhere in every way. The jack of all trades is the master of none, and mastery in a specialization is what makes you gobs of money in this world.
 
Ryuzaki said:
Indecision, in my experience, comes from a lack of confidence in any one thing and worrying about what's being excluded when I choose to focus on the one thing.
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100%.

There definitely has been a lack of confidence there, for sure. I also struggled with indecision because some things just sound "neat."

Who doesn't want to build a huge brand that's well-known, helps people, makes a difference, etc.?

But when I stop and think about what some of those other things entail - dealing with customers, product, payment processing, a large team, etc., I realize it doesn't mesh with what I want from life.

SEO doesn't tick EVERY box for me, but it ticks enough. It's in the golf niche, and I'm a golfer, so I enjoy the topic. Plus, I can write well and quickly, as well as optimize content, build/train a team, create systems, etc. So, there are plenty of skills there to justify going this route.

I think it'll lead to the lifestyle I want too, which is the most important to me.

Plus, any of the things I'm not a fan of I'll one day outsource or hire people for when my budget can handle it. I can also take up other hobbies or start ANOTHER business if I so choose to satisfy any other cravings I might have.

I just need to stick with this long enough to get to a point where I have those options.

Ryuzaki said:
All I know is getting somewhere in any way is better than getting nowhere in every way.
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This is probably one of the best quotes I've seen. I agree with this 100%. In fact, I'd go as far as to say it's tattoo-worthy.
 
Ok, quick update:

It's going slow but for the best of reasons: My freelance writing clients are placing orders and have me working at my full rate or above. Which takes a bit of the urgency off. Not much - I'm a former infantry officer and my bias is strongly toward action.

I've got the domain up. Domain email established but not configured yet. Theme selected. Went with Divi. I know, I know, a lot of folks prefer other things. But a lot of the design and non-content-related stuff will be relegated to the Wifey. And she was attracted to the shiny shiny stuff.

Plus, she's starting a chicky-type site of her own at the same time, and the lifetime access supporting multiple sites wasn't a terrible thing. Found a nice backdoor discount and pulled the trigger.

General Patton wrote that the best is the mortal enemy of the good enough. A decent plan violently executed NOW is better than a perfect plan next week. If two candidate courses of action were so similar that it required agonizing deliberation, the best thing to do is have the balls to pick one, and execute violently. You've got to do the prep and reconnaissance, and put your logistics in order. But succumbing to paralysis by analysis is a non-starter. You lose more by waiting. CCarter is right about that stuff. Dan Pena and George Patton were both maniacs about execution.

Another sergeant major I worked with used to say "everything you do, you gotta do with a big d*ck."

He was right about that.
At the same time, I'm cognizant that some courses of action can paint you into a corner. So you gotta balance careful preparation with violent and maniacal execution. So I must execute as fast and as soon as possible, but not sooner.

So anyway, I gave myself a day to pick a theme and builder, get some candidates in front of the Wifey who will have to have her nose in them, so I gotta keep her motivated, and pull the trigger on the debit card.

Anyway, my clients have me swamped, but in a good way. Theme will be installed shortly, and then the content will start going up.

My wife's site won't be under the YMYL/E-A-T umbrella most likely. Mine probably will, if I'm not smart about it, but I have some workarounds, I think.

My overall strategy is to provide the best possible content for the user and not worry too much about getting cute. I saw what happened to my dumber clients years ago, when Panda came out. The ones who were giving me detailed instructions about 3% keyword density and other such garbage quickly went out of business. My clients who took my advice about sticking to quality content and serving the reader came out just fine.

Seriously, how idiotic do you have to be to demand a 1000 word article have Custom Hats for Cats stuffed into it not less than 30 times and think Google's not gonna smack your weewee con mucho gusto as soon as they get wise to that?

I'll be collecting emails from day 1 and leveraging printables and custom e-books repurposed from old material while I wait out the sandbox period, and build E-A-T maybe by having former and current clients with letters after their name crosslink and provide guest posts (I may be ghostwriting them a little bit, but then I do that anyway.)

Will execute like a maniac and flood the zone early with old but repurposed and fully updated content, especially those that don't fall directly under the YMYL shadow. I've got thousands of pieces out there, so once I'm engaged on that side should be able to get stuff up at a pretty good pace.

Any revenue that does come in for a good while I expect I'll reinvest by delegating out the rewriting and updating to some less experienced writers (who have lower hourly rates than I do!) and a VA (I love my Pinoy friends!!!) and focus on quality control, and managing the posting and cross-media process.

Come on, you Devil Dogs, let's take this f***ing hill!

By the way... some of the sites with those million dollar annual budgets are paying me to write their content for them. It works out. I hope their budgets get even bigger! :-)
 
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Hello, everyone,

this is Michael Hilliard. I am struggling to get my first site setting up, as English is not my first language, so topic research and culture are not what I know the best, but this community provides me much inspiration and information to go on my biz, thanks very much.
 
Hey.

Heard good things about Builder Society so thought it’s time to join a top community in SEO and niche building.

I started my first actual niche site back in late 2020, and despite facing lots of struggles with my niche; I’m still powering on.

Really looking forward to having more smart minds to share ideas with and to learn from. Currently working my way through the crash course to see what things I’ve missed in my SEO journey so far (already found some gold).

Cheers!

- OS
 
Welcome, @OtterSock, glad you're here and glad to hear you're working on a project. Hands-on activity in the trenches is the best way to learn, for sure. Are you seeing revenue yet? If you have any questions about anything please don't hesitate to ask on the forum. It's what we're all here for, to discuss internet marketing and rise up together.
 
Hey @OtterSock, welcome to the club.

What are some of the struggles you've faced, and are any of them ongoing? If you drop the top 2 or 3, maybe we can get those sorted out for you real quick.
 
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