Introductions Thread

Hey everyone,
Long-time lurker here. Been soaking it all in for quite some time now. Still working on my first site.

I started at the beginning of 2020 by creating a site based around my job at the time. I thought it might help me land a new job or better yet, not even need a job. It worked. It helped me land a new job. Still working on the not needing one portion.

To start my site I cranked out 17 posts and promptly burned out. Over the next year I watched as I slowly gained traffic. When it came time to renew my hosting at the start of 2021, I realized I need to make a decision.

I decided I would go for it.

Over the last year I have added 100,000 words and grown my site to 15k sessions a month. Not huge in either regard, but I'm getting there. Lately I have been working harder to create procedures and ramp up some of my efforts. It ain't easy being a one man show. I have outsourced some content, but I am in a fairly technical niche which makes finding writers more challenging.

My current goal is to get enough traffic to hop on Mediavine. I'm earning with Amazon and Adsense currently. I tried Ezoic at one point and it was a royal pain, I do not plan on trying again. Also, I am setting up some new, more lucrative affiliate relationships currently.

Mediavine isn't the end goal though. Honestly, I'm not sure what the end goal is. All I know is I plan to stick to the rather simple motto that has guided me thus far.

"Get money"
 
Good work! Imagine where you’d be if you hadn’t pooped out for a year. Time is such a huge factor in the SEO game. I’m glad you committed and are well on your way to your next milestones and beyond.
 
Ljc2424 said:
Hey everyone, I've been a casual browser for MONTHS but figured it was about time I actually posted something :smile:
I'm currently running 6 sites, 2 on MV and hoping to get all 6 on there at some point in 2023... We'll see!
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Looks like you got a nice portfolio there. Looking forward to hear your experience in the IM journey.
 
Stoked to have discovered this community tonight! I've got an e-com site that I've had for 15 years and I've let it die the past 5 years and am ready to resuscitate it. I've been studying the dramatic change in SEO that has taken place since 2018 and I have so much work to do on my site.
 
Hey welcome to Builder Society.

I'm really interesting in seeing how the site bounces back.

What are some of the dramatic changes you've observed?

Heya, welcome to BuSo!

Most of my redidt bans came from being super toxic in sports threads or saying bad words that get you auto-snuffed.

What lead you down this rabbit hole, are you doing any spammy type things? It seems to me, and I could be wrong, unless you're like posting the same site over and over in a bunch of subs and nothing else, it takes quite a bit to get the light switched off?

@Umber Hey welcome, sorry didn't see this sooner, slipped through the cracks. I hope you're still around!

I think there are some folks here who could benefit from your services, have you considered opening a thread in the Marketplace?
 
Really glad to be here, learnt a lot just from reading some of the posts before I joined.

I'm a relative newbie to the game, though not so new as I have been reading about IM for several years now, but only actually got around to diving in one and half years ago.

I had a project (content site) I started on an expired domain about 1.5 years ago, but wasn't really serious with it. Despite my relative unseriousness, it grew, got it up to just under $1000 a month income last November, however I had somehow lost motivation already and didn't really work on the site for almost a year, and the site's income has been dropping consistently every month, now down to double digits monthly.

I'm now ready to be serious with it as I think it has a lot of potential if executed properly. (Hopefully it's not too late in Google's eyes).

Want to revive it back, and I think I'll learn a lot from here to help me along the journey (and contribute my quota here too).

I guess I've learnt my lessons from lack of execution, hence my choice of moniker Execute- to remind me to keep the focus on executing constantly, in the right direction.

I guess I'll start a progress thread soon, so I can share my journey and how it's going, and others can learn from my mistakes and successes too.

Once again, glad to be here, hope to contribute my bit to the forum growth too.
 
Thank you for sharing and having an eagerness to contribute back, too. You can get the site going again. Perhaps small updates to your existing content before adding more would be a good idea to get the crawlers visiting more and refreshing your freshness scores. Good luck. You’ve done it before, you can do it again and go much further.
 
Ryuzaki said:
Thank you for sharing and having an eagerness to contribute back, too. You can get the site going again. Perhaps small updates to your existing content before adding more would be a good idea to get the crawlers visiting more and refreshing your freshness scores. Good luck. You’ve done it before, you can do it again and go much further.
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@Bolded, yes, exactly what I'm doing now while I'm lining up true hobbyist writers to start creating fresh content.

Thanks for the encouragement, much appreciated.
 
$1,000/mo is really nice as supplemental income. Here's hoping you can revive the site back to where it was and grow from there.

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Hello from Thailand. I've had some great times in your country, Kuala Lumpur is awesome.

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Good luck in your journey. Just keep grinding and making sure you have a clear path of what to learn. I agree with DotMatt's advice, learn vanilla js and then grow from there.

I took the same path last year at 36 years old and it's paid off greatly.
 
Hello everyone

I'm a Front End and Python-dev. I've been looking to get into affiliate marketing for quite some time. I now have 2 blogs under my name that I very much enjoy writing for. Still a mega noob though!
 
Hello everyone!
I’ve been roaming the forums for quite some time, with and without and account.

When I first started my journey in SEO, my first forum was Digital Point (I know right), this was a few years back and I joined various forums after that. I have to say that BuSo is so different, everyone here seems to be extremely mature and knowleagble, which is awesome.

When I first began, my journey into SEO I was reading everything under the sun and creating a bunch of notes. But I wasn’t taken much action or jumping around too much and not concentrating on one project.

Fast forward to recently and I sold my first successful site for 5 figures (nothing special but I feel accomplished lol) , I am working on my new website and boy is it so much easier the second time around.

I still have a TON to learn, I feel like being part of this community is going to help me achieve my long term goals. Nice to be here and I am hoping to learn from everyone and hopefully I can help some as well!
 
A warm heya from Manila! Happy and excited to be here! :smile:

Heard good stuff about this community. And no, that's not a kiss-ass lie. :wink:
• Just visited WickedFire. After an 8-year absence.
And guess what? I was told to check BuSo out. :smile:

Since this is an intro thread, I'm here to bore you about myself. Along with my past and current projects.
• Don't worry though — I'll try not to go on a long-winded story about my 17 years of experience as a completely blind entrepreneur, technology developer and disability advocate. :wink:

But if you want to get to the quick of it, then the way to go is the slideshow video that I shared a few minutes ago in the "Bragging" forum ...

Anyway, I've been completely blind for the past 19 years.
• A sick SOB gunned me down while I was buying food. And that left me totally blind. Permanently ...

But I built a business, a digital marketing agency, barely a couple of years after that happened.
• Without any significant fiscal resources. I just used a computer, dial-up Internet, and a spare bedroom at my house ...

And I went on to employ more than 140+. A little more than a year after starting out.
• 80% of my manpower then were PWDs (persons with disabilities).
• So our national government gave me the 2008 Most Inspiring Entrepreneur of the Philippines award ...

I then expanded to the multi-lingual telesales and Web dev industries.
• That then led to my business expanding once again to tech dev shortly thereafter ...

—> Apparently, pivoting is a really helpful skill.
• These expansions were mainly caused by contract losses due to a lot of things. Last decade's global financial crisis, Google Penguin and stricter gov't telesales policies, to name a few ...

And in tech dev, I created a wearable proof of concept prototype for blind people.
• I showed it to our gov't's science and technology minister. They gave me a 2-year R&D grant.
• I also entered it in a number of global competitions, including Intel's OpenCV Spatial AI Competition, Awesome Foundation's monthly grant, and San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind's Holman Prize, among a few others (including local tournaments) ...

—> And in every competition, my entry got to the semi-finals, finals, and won.

Many got stuck in the semi-finals though.
• That's because a tech company in Sydney floated me an offer I couldn't refuse, primarily because the role gives me the chance to work with the top minds in the field and the required resources to achieve our common goal for blind people ...

And that's my story. I'm Marx. Mathematician by degree. Entrepreneur at heart. Deep Learning engineer. Computer Vision researcher. Crypto enthusiast exploring quantitative trading since last month.

And I just happen to be blind.

Thanks for your time! :smile:
 
Well that was quite the text wall.
Welcome.
Good to have you.
Drop us and epic journal thread. Seems like you got lots of interesting words in you.
 
Marx_Melencio said:
[SNIP]But if you want to get to the quick of it, then the way to go is the slideshow video that I shared a few minutes ago in the "Bragging" forum ...[/SNIP]
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As I said above, there's a 40-second slideshow presentation that I posted an hour ago in the "Bragging" thread for those who don't have time to read. But I can't post links yet though. :D
 
That's freaking awesome Marx!

I don't know how to like yet (not sure if I am even able), lol so just wanted to reply to your intro.

You're a true legend and a great example of anything you set your mind to is achievable.

Your intro is truly inspirational to me, thanks a lot for sharing it with us. (No, that's not a kiss-ass lie, I truly mean it.)
 
You are fully blind like you see black basically right? How do you even get on the computer I don't get it? How does the computer work for you? Do you have special settings or something? How do you function when it comes to typing things and seeing things on the screen??

How did you find and land your first clients for your digital agency business? What service did you offer? Where did you learn it?
 
freshpeppermint said:
You are fully blind like you see black basically right? How do you even get on the computer I don't get it? How does the computer work for you? Do you have special settings or something? How do you function when it comes to typing things and seeing things on the screen??
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Yes. I'm totally blind. And to answer your questions:

• PC: If you use Windows, open the run command through ctrlWinKey+r, type narrator and press Enter.—> Now that's a screenreader. It echoes all the keys you type. And reads all text in the application on focus. New versions bundled with Windows 10 and later are able to read Web pages. Including text, alt text, button labels, radio / checkboxes, dropdowns and so on;
—> But I use a more powerful screenreader called JAWS for Windows. It's payware. But there's also freeware called Non-Visual Desktop Access (NVDA). And it's open source;
—> Though sometimes, I cycle through all 3 of these for certain applications and sites; and
—> As for Linux / Debian distros, including Jetson Nanos and RPis, I SSH into these machines from my Windows laptop ...

• Mobile: If you use an iPhone, go to Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver. Enable it. That's also a screenreader. And in Android, their screenreader's called Google Accessibility Suite (formerly Talkback).
—> And it functions just like a desktop screenreader. But for touchscreens. I use both; and
—> I also use an Apple Watch. It also has VoiceOver (Apple's screenreader) ...

• Reading text in the wild, i.e. In physical documents, posters, digital images are done through apps with OCR (optical character recognition).
—> There are also apps that describe scenes, detect object names along with their XYZ locations, among others. And these are just some of what I'm doing at my Deep Learning engineering and Computer Vision research roles ...

freshpeppermint said:
How did you find and land your first clients for your digital agency business? What service did you offer? Where did you learn it?
Click to expand...

• After I became completely blind, I applied for a tech content writer job at a local business process outsourcing firm here. After 3 months, I convinced my employer to give me 3 shifts for 3x the salary in exchange for a contract to work from home. And soon enough, the company became my first local client.
—> While building my remote team for this local client, I signed up clients for content writing services at DigitalPoint;
—> And that's where I met my business mentor, Will Spencer of MemeBridge, Tech-FAQ and Netbuilders fame, who also happens to be the owner of Network Systems Architects, Inc. in the U.S;
—> And I learned technical SEO from him and his team; and
—> Soon enough, I was closing small short and long-term contracts for content writing, digital marketing campaign and remote workforce management, including SEO / SEM and PPC / PPA consulting, mainly from Web forums like the WaFo, WickedFire and DigitalPoint ...

• I then decided to go for the "big" guys, so to speak, considering the size of my mini team at that time.
—> So I directly contacted North American software companies with recently launched products in the retail software industry; and
—> And that's where I closed my biggest contract at that time with a Canadian retail software company, which required us to build a remote team of 80 digital marketing assistants, SEO agents and content writers; and
—> Discovering my "niche", I explored further. And managed to close several contracts with North American and European retail software firms. At this time, my workforce was 250+. I operated my company (some of our clients required us to register with the SEC and not just the Department of Trade & Industry of our country) 100% remote.

• And at the time of the global financial crisis, which was almost simultaneous with Google Panda and Penguin, I needed to pivot;
—> In a financial crisis, I learned that many companies spent more on product dev instead of marketing. They want new products that can allow them to sell at lower pricepoints to their existing customers (convert them to repeat buyers despite the crisis, as this is also cheaper than acquiring new customers); and
—> So I expanded (pivoted but didn't close our marketing teams) my company to the Web dev industry, and later on to software dev ...

• And that's also the time when I started exploring the multi-lingual telesales industry (2013).
—> I reckoned companies wanted to expand to other viable niche markets outside their original target geos, but didn't have language skills available locally;
—> And because I focused on countries with native speakers and lower labor rates than the native countries of those languages for sourcing remote talent, i.e. Here in Clark (Ph) for Japanese instead of Japan, Poland for German instead of Germany, and so on, I had some success at that, too; and
—> BBC News published a feature story about what I was doing, entitled "Blind Filipino Entrepreneur Building a Call Center Empire". It's in the slideshow video that I posted in the "Bragging" thread here ...

• As of my habit of exploring new things, I learned Machine Learning, Deep Learning, edge hardware assembly, 3D printing, crypto, building and optimizing multi-GPU crypto mining machines and others thereafter.
—> And that's how I started accessing gov't R&D grants here in the Philippines, and now, through the tech company that floated me an offer after my entry won at Intel's global OpenCV Spatial AI Competition, R&D grants from the AU gov't ..; and
—> BBC News published another feature story about what I did, entitled "I Have a Vision to Help the Blind See", which is also in the slideshow at the "Bragging" thread ...

• I do my tech dev work now simultaneous with acquiring new clients for my multimedia marketing business.
—> Especially because we lost a lot of contracts from the beginning of the pandemic. :(

As you can see, I wear a lot of hats.
And that's the only way I know how to do stuff. :D
 
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you pussies cant do it? and this homie over here is doing it blind.... LOLOLOLOL some Rick James shit going on here.... lolz

Welcome, at the least this will be an interesting read, welcome to the forum Marx. I appreciate you.
 
The excuse line starts behind this guy... Welcome @Marx_Melencio I worked with several visually impaired employees back in the early 2000s when JAWS for Windows and hardware like Braille and Speak was cutting edge. I hope technology has continued to evolve, there wasn't a lot of interest in accessibility back then and I'm glad to see there be much more of a focus on it to the point where Google regards accessibility focused navigation as a significant metric. Also nice to see a fellow dev here. Nice to have you here!
 
Hey everyone, I'm never really sure what to put into these things but I've decided the time has come to get started.

I'm a nurse in the UK and a few years ago I had the idea to start an online business of somekind as a nice sideline to my day job... and then COVID hit and I my fairly straightforward days became crazy! I had to put the notion of my own business aside and work.

Now COVID has calmed down and I've had chance to recover from the burnout I'm ready to start looking into things again.
 
Thanks @DevMystic - it seems there are a few Brits here and I've even seen a thread from one guy in my city (judging by the accent)!
 
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