Introductions Thread

I am a writer at heart. Built my first 286 from scratch with 3 ½ & 5 ¼” floppies. But I am not up-to-date on tech like I once was.

Have had a couple of personal-interest/memoir type of sites over the years. Collected a mail list one time. Never considered IM until about a year ago and that’s when I started following all the major boards. Have read a lot from the major players here. I don’t really belong on the same page with them but I want to learn.

Ran date ads on POF earlier this year for about 6 months. Did not enjoy it but I learned a lot. Targeting, HTML, Pixlar, made my own LPs. Working on a couple of different sites at the moment. Pretty much don’t know shit.

Thanks for putting up this site and allowing me here!
 
You ran POF ads for six months... sounds like you were making it work out. PPC is something I need to master ASAP. Did you do a lot of split testing on your landers and ads? If so, were you able to make a huge impact on your bottom line that way?
 
I was at less than break-even after six months after investing about 150/week or slightly more. Depending. Some might say I was right there, where it was about to really happen. Here’s the thing, I enjoyed it and learned volumes in those months then one day just like out of air the desire to succeed there left me and I quit. I don’t know if it’s a hunch that the traffic was not converting or I just didn’t man up. But I didn’t want POF anymore and it wasn’t fun for me.

I was very overwhelmed most of the time with all there is to learn. It was exciting to be that much out of my comfort zone. My testing was kind of like this: run an add though 1000 impressions, watch it convert less than 1%, tweak it, watch it do the same then wonder if Prosper was working right. There are so many variables. The offer, the traffic, Me, the customer, getting scrubbed. To really know what the problem was, was beyond me at the time.

I learned how to use an HTML editor, how to actually make a LP from scratch and upload it, how to zero in on tartgeting. It was the best thing in the world for me at the time. POF was always very affiliate friendly to me and everybody I talked to yet oddly enough, they no longer offer accounts to new affiliates. You have to buy somebody’s old one.
 
Last edited:
Ryuzaki said:
The homepage lists a notification when you join that tells you that you can only post in the Orientation room until you've achieved 3 posts and 3 likes. Then it disappears and your limitation goes away. Thanks for joining. I hope you are the next Bill Gates!

What are you currently working on, or planning on?
Click to expand...

I'm currently 'getting into it', so to speak. After having researched the different ways people make money on line, and been convinced that "it's actually a real thing", I've decided to focus on software-related avenues. I was writing software as a kid, and my previous job was engineering hardcore C++ RTOS software for machines (a language I now hope to never use again). So I'm now migrating towards more consumer-oriented software development (e.g. html/css/php/javascript for web, java for apps, setting up websites, developing web app software and mobile app software).

I have a few ideas which have a software core (I think of software as 'the most difficult-to-produce content'), but I'm currently just working on a practice app, just to get to know the ropes and get fluent in this new type of software development.

Currently my biggest difficulty is just putting in the work every day. I've spent my whole life taking orders and being told what I have to do, that doing 'unasked for work' by my own volition for a long-term goal is a real up-hill battle. I'm not sure if it's because I have no built-in instinct for this, or that it's been beaten out of me from all the years of taking orders, but any advice in how to foment this instinct wold be appreciated.
 
Thank you all for the warm welcome - I am soaking up the info here on this forum, and thoroughly enjoying the insights to the 30-Day Crash Course. I am sure I will begin posting soon. Thanks again!
 
Happy New Year Fucker

  • hGwc4eC.png

tumblr_mfs3r0xYia1ry1nejo1_r1_500.gif


Have a Happy New Year. To a more productive and joyful year. Have the strength to win all your internal battles. Cheers.

​
 
I think POF closed new advertiser registration because they were recently bought by Match.com
 
They closed the platform a couple of months (March I think) before they announced the sale. During that time Cindi left and en mass campaign approval/rejections took place. From what I gather people are still making money there and Ben is upfront and affable with everybody as he always has been.
 
Hello... It's me....

I signed up so that I can journal my progress through the crash course. So as soon as I get a like on this post I can get started :wink:.

I've been at this for a while with some hits and some misses. I'm really good at a few things and need to step up my game in some other areas. By the end of the year I plan on being a beast. Right now I'm just a lion.

Roar.
 
That's really cool.
I respect that, would love to hear more about it.
How do you generate electricity for the servers, and how much did it cost to get the set up for your home ?
 
Hi everyone. Name is Cory. I'm 27 and have been trying this whole business thing since I was nine but haven't made shit for money. The reasons for this are many but listing them benefits no one and I'm not bout dat life anymore. Recently, I had an idea for my own product, made it, launched a site, got people to go to the site, sold a bunch, got around 80 affiliates, etc etc. It took me all of 5 weeks. As a result of this, I now believe for the first time ever that I CAN actually do this and NEED to hit it hard. So I'm going through the crash-course to bring this thing to the next level.

I feel it necessary to explain that the only thing that has changed in my behavior is that I stopped screwing around and daydreaming; dropped the A.D.D bullshit behaviors, sacked up, and worked through the not-so-fun stuff.

I should also point out that over the years of lurking and dicking around, I have stumbled upon and saved several awesome resources/tutorials/links/UserNames etc. That's how I found BuSo. @CCarter had some nifty posts all over WF and I had saved the Usernmame with a note to read at a later date. Well, I noticed that a lot of the posts were now moved to a paid section and I decided to rebel and see if I couldn't find the posts elsewhere. Kaboom baby. Here I am.

Anyway, who wants to make a buck? First one to tell me what my Avatar is gets a dollah dollah bill ya'll!

I'll give another dollar to one randomly selected user who tells me in the comments below how they stumbled upon this site. Go time.


C.
 
Capillary Bowl. Reverse Image Search, baby.
Sometimes knowing SEO, destroys the fun :(
Welcome to BUSO
 
Klayne,

Sneaky sneaky! Great job, you like your money green in hand or all digified via PayPal? Thanks for the welcome btw, I appreciate it.
 
Cory said:
Klayne,

Sneaky sneaky! Great job, you like your money green in hand or all digified via PayPal? Thanks for the welcome btw, I appreciate it.
Click to expand...

No need Cory. Put it away for your BUSO Pro, so you can give back to the people who created and put together this wonderful community.
 
Klayne said:
How do you generate electricity for the servers, and how much did it cost to get the set up for your home
Click to expand...

We don't run servers in house as the infrastructure is not up to it we rent them in data-centers that use green electricity. We have servers in Europe and America but Iceland is our greenest data-center as their whole country operates on hydro and geothermal energy. Its hard to find a data center that uses green energy and is not run by some unethical company its very important to us where our money goes no point it preaching if your not going to live it.

Home/Office setup around €40k
It consists of a large deep cycle battery bank that gets charged by solar panels (yes even in Ireland) and one of our own wind turbines.
The DC battery electricity gets converted to AC so we can run normal appliances and it's all backed up by diesel generator that hasn't been used in over a year.

We have been living and working like this since 2002. Why :happy: well its fun and interesting with a huge learning curve.
 
Hello everyone,

I'd like to take a moment to introduce myself. I'm a web and graphic designer that was working at a high volume agency in the Vacation Rental industry. While I was there (15 months) I really learned a lot and my eyes were opened to SEO and marketing. It intrigues me and I really want to learn more.

A friend of mine introduced me to BuSo about a month ago, just before the 30 Day Crash Course was released and I've kinda been lingering around since then.

Now that I've been let go, I have plenty of free time to devote to side projects and learning more so this is the first place (other than Reddit) that I am turning to.

I look forward to meeting and learning from all of you!

Cheers,

I worked with @Stu_B_PPC at the same agency. He really knows his stuff when it comes to PPC and we can all learn a lot from it.

Hi Stu, and welcome!

That's awesome @Eirbyte, welcome and I look forward to learning with you. I am new to BuSo as well.

Hi @Cory, welcome to the BuSo. I am new here as well and look forward to learning some new stuff with ya. Don't give up!

Hi @Roy, it was a pleasure to read your short into. A writer is one thing I am not but definitely something that I will be working on.

Welcome to BuSo, I look forward to learning with you and seeing you around the threads.

Hi @Klayne, it was a pleasure to read your introduction. Your avatar is a bit deceiving, I wouldn't have guessed you were a dude without reading this post. I think there is a lot I could learn from you as well as we can all learn together here at BuSo.

See you around!
 
hey @Jitsiereveld , saw that you know design, so you'll have a step on a lot of people there.

When I was cranking out a lot of words it was fiction and memior/1st person-type stuff. So while I might be in tune to the swing and swirl of words as they tangle with human emotion, I have a lot to learn when it comes to writing a sales page and calls to action.

I was in Steamboat for 2 months of winter a couple of years ago. Bit too cold for me!
 
SO...
The whole "introduce yourself" thing is hard for me; always has been.
It's a combo of physiology & personal experience.
( ADHD, ASD & LOTS o' water over my bridge )
I'm a "process guy".
Theory, hypothesis, experiment, results...
(Data, data & data, yeah? )
Followed a lead here, like so many others.
I've benefited from what some of you've offered and I'm intending to give back.
 
Is your intention to find another job or to make these "side" projects into "main" projects?
 
It's pretty cold right now, I'm originally from Michigan which I feel is even colder, but my roommate here in Colorado says we've probably got more snow so far this year than they have in quite a while. The mountains make it worth it.

I hope that I have found my new job and can turn some of them into main projects. Here is a list of the side projects I have going to give you a better idea.
  • Two portfolio sites:
    • One to promote an artists work so she can gain more work.
    • The other for an artist to show and sell their work, (this is helping me learn how to setup an eCommerce site)
  • An EDM Festival reviews website. It was one of my first ideas and I think I may have got in a little over my head and didn't have the right amount of time to devote to it and get it to where it needed to be. I'm holding on to the idea but I need to learn and research a little more before I do. I would love to turn this into a main project.
  • A website to promote a Twitch stream. This one is one that I recently started to help support a hobby of mine, streaming video games. I'm intrigued by the amount of money those kids make streaming so I'd like to give it a shot and at least see if it really is possible. This one is going to be a work in progress because I definitely need different equipment if I want to setup the proper stream and I don't have the extra money to pour into it at this time. This will remain a side project until I gain more knowledge and have the extra time and money set aside to stream on a schedule.
  • The last one is my personal site, which I am rebuilding into my portfolio/resume website.
I'm ready to dive in and get down to business. It's time for me to pursue my dreams of being able to work for myself. And I will do my best to not let anything get in my way of learning what I need.
 
@Jitsiereveld Which one of those "side projects" is actually going to generate you revenue the fastest? I hate the term 'side projects' BTW cause it conveys they are not serious projects and a frontal focus. Either there is a single focus or not. Side projects never get off the ground, hence why all the failed SEOs have dozens of side projects on a perpetual backburner. I'd choose one, the one that's going to generate you direct money into your pockets as soon as possible rather than have scattered projects, otherwise you have no serious focus, and will run between projects when obstacles get thrown at you, instead of taking them head on.
 
That's a great point @CCarter, and I think I may have described them wrong. Two of them are sites for clients, the portfolio sites for the artists. They aren't in a rush and I wait on them for their content and images so I don't have to spend much time on them.

Really thinking about it and breaking down the best possible vertical to put money in my pocket the quickest will be the EDM site. But, I'll need to broaden the spectrum and not focus solely on festival reviews but Electronic Dance Music as a whole. There's tons of small niches within this vertical and it would be stupid to restrict myself to one and hope to expand on other areas later on. Especially when there is already sites that focus on festival reviews.

I think what I need to do here is put EDM Crush as my frontal focus and leave the other projects to the side as fun ideas that I could come back to but I don't need to.

My portfolio site can be setup in a day, which I will probably get back to working on after this post. But once it is done, I won't have to add to it until I finish the next idea. I can definitely set aside the streaming idea since it is just something I like to do and I wouldn't want to waste a bunch of time trying to get into a tough niche and fail when it is just something that I enjoy.

Either that or I really need to think about things and do some more brainstorming and market research.

Such a great way to put it, really made me think and re-read your post.
 
Hello BuSo Community,
I'm really glad to be here. There are so many valuable information here that gives true value. Here is some bio in short from me. I'm 20 years old, been doing SEO for 5 years, mostly CPA and Affiliate stuff. I have been ranking in past mostly with GSA SER and SAPE in foreign niches, but as this new updates kept rolling and google releasing new Animals crew, I been forced to start making PBNs along as well.

There is so many bullshit information out there in SEO world, and really glad that CCarter created this forum because it will be definitely something true and bullshit free for many newbies. Where they can learn actually something real and not get promises from "Gurus" that they can rank with 1 month and make 6 figures along. Because that's not gonna happen like EVER, only people that will get rich there is THEM, those you can't do they will teach. Having ability to make 6 figures a month and selling some course for $200, must be legit :D

Anyway, for newbie guys my recommendation is to learn all fundamentals like with programming languages, once you know all of these basic stuff such as what is on-page/off-page/link building/how to make and set your website online, you are ready, then just keep testing and practicing on your own to get data, because that's the best and ONLY thing to dominate truly in SEO world and become 6 figure a month baller. Really glad to be here once again and I will try to contribute in this great community as well as best of my ability! :smile:
 
Glad to have you hear as well.

While spamming and burning sites is certainly not unwelcomed here, we definitely have a focus on building legit businesses, not even necessarily hyperfocused on SEO. If you haven't considered building long-lasting assets alongside your spamming efforts, I recommend it. This way, another 5 years down the road, you won't be 10 years down the road with nothing to show for yourself (of course, other than the phat stacks you're making spamming).

I agree that guru's are generally full of it. I had the pleasure of learning about another guru who exposed himself to someone in my inner circle. It's all a sham and always will be. As you said, if you're putting down six figures a month, you're not going to be selling the method for $7.99 per ebook.

There seems to be a misconception that @CCarter is responsible for creating BuSo, and I blame that on the privacy that @TheEngineer desires, but in fact TheEngineer is the creator and operator.

Welcome!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back