Introductions Thread

Hey @Ryuzaki. Yeah, I kind of shuffled around priorities in the past, which is why not much has been happening with the site. I don't regret it though. I've learned tons of stuff in different areas, but I just haven't really gotten got at any of them. Over the past year or so, I dabbled in SEO, design, web development and design, creative writing, music all kinds of stuff.

Now, I always kind of came back to SEO and building my own website. Anyways, that's the backstory, now to your question:

At the beginning, before I even bought a domain etc., I wrote a batch of about 20k words. Once I figured out how to even set up a website I realized the content wasn't really at the quality I would want it to be anymore. The keyword research was bad, I was lacking structure a bit and added too much fluff.

I scraped all that and started writing new articles. Right now the website is at around 30-35 pieces of content, all targeting low competition keywords. Regarding structure, length, etc. I've got roughly the same process as @shaunm , but I like to break up my paragraphs more.

This is due to mobile readability, as large blocks of text are not really comfortably readable on a phone.

I always run every piece of content through Wordtune. I don't know, if you've heard of it, but it helps me create a more "native-speakerish" language. As english is not my main language (as you might have noticed) it enhances the reading experience, as it just sounds more natural. I mark a sentence, it gives me other variations of that sentence, 30% are trash, but the rest is pretty good most of the time.

Monthly traffic for the past 30 days has been 116 organic sessions, and I decided not to turn on ads yet. I had them on for a while with Ezoic, but didn't create good placeholders yet, so I turned them back off again to focus on content, before traffic is even nearly there.

Sorry for going off topic a bit.
 
I'm currently hosting my Hugo blog on Google firebase for free. Once you cross 5-6k monthly views Google will start charging per gb used. But it works out to be like $0.10 - $5 when your site really gets going. Google firebase comes with free ssl and cdn.

It's more of a learning curve and there are trade offs but the speed is crazy. I either get 99 or 100 on the lighthouse test for both mobile and desktop.
 
I'm relatively new to SEO. I built my first niche content/affiliate site in 2020 on the heels of my previous SaaS startup. I'm mostly full-time, but I do some freelance writing on the side to pay the remaining bills.

I come from a tech/data startup background, so I tend to bring those biases with me. I am big on rapid iterations, testing, and customer validation for all of my creations.

I'm looking to connect, gain some experience, and hopefully bypass some obvious pitfalls.
 
Hello Buso!

I figured that in order to introduce myself on the forum, I would share my small fumbling story of how I landed in here.

Note: I am not entirely sure, if this is how I actually got here, but I will write what I happen to remember...

When I was a really clueless beginner… I was searching for alternative ways to get traffic, rather than doing SEO elsewhere. Then in a moment of calling my subconscious for ideas. I had typed the term “traffic leaking” in the search engine, (I guess I already knew about the traffic leaking techniques presented in the crash course), but back then I didn’t understand much.. and that’s how, without realizing, I discovered Buso.

I did not understand what I was consuming, nor understood what I was really doing... And later on I dropped whatever I was doing.

I kept the forum saved, along with 9/10 parts of the course for a loooong time, because the information was so compelling to read. So I went through the course a couples times, over the months and not in a 30 days read fashion.

However, I had never really applied the information, because 1) lack of understanding, and 2) Always divided about what I wanted to do.

But there’s one thread that caught me on mentally and I have applied with about 70% of accuracy. Not an easy thing to do sometimes, but I am practicing.

https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/stop-fucking-around.525/

Why I decided to join

Much later on, when I gained clarity of this world of IM, I decided to skim through the forum, to see what’s being discussed and was pretty much amazed at the knowledge being shared.

The stuff you guys put out is very enlightening. Resembles being inside of one those fantasy frozen caves with tribe illuminated words, exploring the arts of the avatar gods. So I wanted to be apart of it. :smile:

Fantasy-Landscape-Cave-Entrance.jpg


And.. That’s pretty much my small jumbling experience to Buso. I hope I don’t come off as some alien to you guys..
(I might be a little untrained).

It’s a pleasure to be here.
 
Hi all,

A good buddy referred to me to this community. After reading a few cool posts, I'm looking forward to getting involved. Here's my intro post:

Current projects:
- Got 3 clients for search marketing, cold calling + referrals
- Got 8 niche sites, with full-time writer pumping content
- Working full-time job as search marketing manager (B2B)

Plans/ambition:
Hit $10k revenue with clients, maybe less, then quit my job. I want to automate the client work, then invest further into niche sites. I'm curious about SaaS after all this. Flipping sites is also on mind. We'll see what happens.

What I'm looking for here:
Mostly accountability + feedback. Might do case studies to knock off both. We'll see!
 
Sounds like you have a plan. I would definitely replicate my day job income first and then get 6-12 months of savings together (should be easy on a double salary) and in that time you'll also get to see how stable the 2nd client-based income is. If it's stable you can safely and securely make the jump. This would do well for your stress levels and make you more productive with your niche sites, as long as you can stay disciplined.

How are the niche sites doing? 8 of them is quite the handful. I'd assume 1 or 2 of them are doing much better than the rest? That's how I always saw it go when I tried to have a lot of sites in the past.
 
Ryuzaki said:
Sounds like you have a plan. I would definitely replicate my day job income first and then get 6-12 months of savings together (should be easy on a double salary) and in that time you'll also get to see how stable the 2nd client-based income is. If it's stable you can safely and securely make the jump. This would do well for your stress levels and make you more productive with your niche sites, as long as you can stay disciplined.

How are the niche sites doing? 8 of them is quite the handful. I'd assume 1 or 2 of them are doing much better than the rest? That's how I always saw it go when I tried to have a lot of sites in the past.
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Thanks for path forward. Savings not an issue, so I'm good here fortunately. Key detail is needing the job for decent mortgage. Looking forward to buying a home.

Niche sites at early stages, showing signs of life. 1 has potential. 2 are getting trickles from Google. The others I barely remember. Today, have lots of content and some backlinks. Need to optimize, restructure a few things + get more backlinks.
 
Hi There,
I am an affiliate marketer from Bangladesh.
I got to know about this community from one of my friends.
After browsing some threads, I can say that I am at the right place. As I have built a couple of niche sites for me and my clients, now I am here to explore the current trends.
As all you know, Google is continuously bringing updates and making our lives more complicated, so It's important to be a part of an active community where we can share the strategy and find the solutions.
I hope it will work well for me. And I also try to contribute as much as I can.
Cheers!
 
Hi,

I have discovered this awesome Forum and hope to become part of it. I am a full time Affiliate and SEO since about 9 years. I got hit by several updates, managed to recover some sites and still struggling with some others.

I guess this was me learning what works and does not in SEO. Besides doing some regular content publishing and Guest Post link building I have been trying out almost anything from PBNs (which I built quite a lot a few years ago) to automatic link building, stacking, ctr manipulation and mass pages.

Now I think it is time for me to go back to basics and build quality brands that can last (at least some time) longer than the next core update.

Happy to be here!
 
Welcome, @axibert. Your story is just like mine. Went through all the various ways to sabotage myself with links among other things. Really learned the ins and outs of the whole game, and then it finally clicked for me. Like you said, going back to basics and keeping it simple and scaling were the keys to my success. Glad to have you around.
 
Yes welcome, you sound like me, before I found BuSo.

Now is a great time for creating brands and good content and your vast experience in getting slapped will allow you to be a discerning linkbuilder/linkbuyer in today's market. We're due for some link crashes imo.
 
Hi all,

I'm from the UK but living in the Philippines at the moment. I specialise in SEO for escort agencies, mostly in the UK. Looking for advice and the main reason for joining is the marketplace.
 
I had a chuckle. The only SEO I've ever seen in my 18+ years of doing this that comes out of the Philippines is either escorts or "hire some VAs". Which is even more funny that you're doing SEO for escorts in a different country.

Hope you're doing well and I'm glad you joined us, @MarblePars
 
Hi,

I am collaborating with a solidarity ecommerce to help children with different mental disabilities. This store donates the profits of its sales to different Spanish foundations.

I know the basics about SEO and marketing and I add to this forum to try to learn how to improve the different aspects of this project and increase the donations as much as possible.

Thanks
 
BusyBee said:
I wrote an intro post, but it was moved here, so I writing a brief intro post again. :smile: Basically I am in my mid-30's and used to SEO and affiliate marketing but burnt out, took some time away and now I want to become a freelance full stack javascript dev and an affiliate marketer. Great to be here. :cool:
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Its definitely worth the investment, with JavaScript you can do so much. My advice would be to stick to learning JavaScript first and understanding the programming concepts before moving onto frameworks like React/NextJS, or even NodeJS frameworks like Express. You'll see how much easier it becomes! (Of course this is assuming you haven't already)
 
MrMedia said:
Welcome!

In regards to affiliate networks - what is the preferred publisher tracking platform these days?

Back in the day I believe Cake was the go to from memory?
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A delayed response here.

We built our own BI system which is integrated by the affiliate network APIs.

I recently discovered Affluent.io, a solution created (or bought?) by Impact. Seems quite nice, but I haven't tried it.

Cake looks decent. There seem to be a lot of similar solutions these days.
 
Hello all,

I stumbled across this forum and after lurking for a little while decided to join. My digital marketing and SEO journey started about 10 years ago and I quickly became obsessed. I was sick of the corporate grind and I've always been entrepreneurial so decided to venture out on my own about 8 years ago.

I've been involved in and sold many different projects and services over the years, ranging from specialty niche service websites, a little bit of local client web design and SEO, and pay-per-lead services.

5 years ago I had the opportunity to start a local service business with 3 other partners. I brought digital marketing, lead gen, and SEO expertise to the table. When you start a business, especially bootstrapping it the way we did, you end up wearing many hats, and digital marketing/lead gen is the least of what I did since we started. It took a while for my partners to understand that I needed to get out of the operational side of the business and focus on the digital marketing side of things if we wanted to reach the growth we had all envisioned. This was further confirmed when COVID has all but killed off our other forms of traditional marketing.

I've gotten more time to devote towards our digital marketing efforts the past couple of months even though there's still a lot that brings me back into the operational side on a weekly basis, but we're making progress. This is getting my digital marketing juices flowing again, which is exciting as that is where my professional passion is.

Current projects:
-The day job (Just redesigned our website, need to reoptimize a number of outdated pages. Going to order more content to target some low comp KWs, local areas and to beef up the site more. Need to reoptimize some Google ad landing pages. Tons of other stuff on the backburner...)

-New lead gen partner. Been a few years since I've taken on a lead gen partner as I've been focused on my other business but they were a referral and I wanted a side project from some extra income. Currently building out the site and getting content written. May also run some ads initially to get some early leads through the door.

Near future project(s):
-I want to venture into affiliate and niche sites monetized with display ads. I am wanting to diversify my income and had started some affiliate sites in the past but they ended up falling by the wayside as I became busy with other things. The concepts have always fascinated me.

Possible future projects:
-I recently built out a quoting website for our salespeople to use in the field. I wasn't able to find anything at a reasonable price in the market or that could do what we needed exactly. After getting feedback from our sales team on how easy it was to use and how much they liked it, it may be something that I could sell on the side. I still need to do more in-depth market research to see if it would be viable but based on my previous search trying to find something for our company to use, it has a strong possibility.

What I hope to get out of this forum:
I've seen some incredible value and gold nuggets shared on this forum. Some things I've seen so far will definitely make me rethink some of the strategies I've previously used and will be the basis for future testing. I do have some experience and would like to contribute where appropriate but most of all I love to learn and expand my knowledge.

I've grown tired of the SEO and marketing groups on Facebook, and forums always have a better sense of community. I used to frequent forums quite a bit in my younger days before social media so there definitely are some nostalgic feelings there. I hope to maybe share some of my journeys for some accountability as well since I've struggled with focusing in the past.

For anyone that takes the time to read all of this, thanks!

-Luke/UFO
 
Great introduction, @UFO, thank you for taking the time to write it out. You know, "the grass is always greener on the other side". I used to want to diversify by having more projects of more types, but I always ended up spreading myself thin. It was when I got rid of most of my projects and focused on the few that things really took off for me. That's especially important in SEO, even with a team, I think. The more fuel you can pour onto any fire that's proven itself, the better. More food for thought
 
morpheusbrah said:
Hello all, its a pleasure to be able to be apart of this community - lots of valuable information here as I've been looking through some of the threads.

With that being said, I want to come here to make my first post in regards to the new journey I will be embarking on in the business coaching/consulting route. I am graduating school within the next month and I have no jobs lined up so I figured this is my opportunity to start my own online business after a few small endeavors in the past. During school, I helped start a crypto based firm that lasted for about a year and did not work out in the end as well as starting a copywriting agency with little success. I recently found out how the business coaching route works and it is my calling without a doubt. I love to motivate people and help them work through their issues and I love interacting with people.

This post will act as my public commitment to make this business profitable within the next 3-4 months. I want to be held as accountable as possible and will be checking back with progress updates on a bi-weekly basis.

Thank you for the read and drop any comments/thoughts you have that you think will help me in any fashion
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Whats up guys been a while since I posted in here...

Brief update I've gotten into sales recently and have been getting by reps in. Anyone got any good tips on closing/presenting to prospects? Appreciate the feedback and hope everyone in here is killing it.
 
@Ryuzaki thanks for the reply and the insight. I will be the first to admit that I've been guilty in the past of spreading myself too thin. As I've grown a little older, I've taken a step back to reflect on where I fell short and what I need to do to correct that going forward. I've made some hard rules for myself, like following through on things before starting something new. It's a constant battle but one that I know I will eventually win.
 
Another fan of little green men and Tic-Tacs I see. Are you over at r/UFOs ?
 
@Tucky browsed a couple times but not consistently. I've had to severely limit my Reddit usage or it starts to take over.
 
Hi! My name is Gleb, I'm from Europe and since 2020 I have been trying to make my own startup. I'd tried to do:
  • Mobile App to count for subscriptions. Failed because of unit economics.
  • VR game arena. Failed because of covid.
  • Entertainment media service. Failed because I didn't know how to attract and retain users.
  • Several types of HR chat bot. Failed because all version were useless.
  • Offline project for kids. Failed because parents don't need such service.
  • Career guidance online school for schoolkids. Failed because nobody really need career guidance on a large scale.
Now I'm trying do a new startup so I decided to register on Builder Society to see what other marketers do and find some usefull things for myself.
 
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