Introductions Thread

Nice to see a new face. What's your background in business? Do you do a lot online, offline?
 
I own and operate several. Brick and mortar, and online. Was on wickedfire.com since 2011 and recently discovered Jon abandoned the site. See a few familiar names on this site. Would appreciate being part of.
 
Brick and mortar, and online.

Wow. Are they tied together or separate? If separate, which makes more cash? If together, what percentage of the online work do you think you can attribute to your bottom line?
 
Very separate. BM=more. 10%.

Prolly do better in the market than the online thing on the side. Would love to retire the business and trade.
 
Hi all, thanks for this great site! I found BuSo from reddit/r/workonline a couple of months ago, and I have decided to start learning about IM. I'd like some tips on how to learn efficiently, and hopefully this information will help other newbies as well down the line. First, some background on myself and my plan:

Background:
  • Business Analyst at a 9-5 in my mid-30s.
  • Skills include business analysis, business process improvement, application development (Agile), requirements analysis, etc. I was also a Windows systems admin for several years, so I'm fairly tech-savvy. In addition, I played/coached online poker semi-professionally between 2005-2010 (3 million hands of no-limit holdem cash games on Pokerstars, FullTilt, etc.)
  • Weaknesses: Internet Marketing and Graphics Design are the main ones, but I'm sure I'll discover plenty more. I'm completely new to IM other than what I have read from Days 1 - 4 in the Crash Course.
  • Goal: Devote 15-20 hours a week making extra income, with the eventual goal of doing it full-time. IM is interesting and appealing to me and I'm prepared to put in the work.
Plan:

Here is where I can use some advice - does this sound like a good plan? Are there other resources you'd recommend a newbie to get good faster?
  • First, read the BuSo 30-day crash course. Takes notes on important concepts and start a backlog of things I need to research/do later. Brainstorm angles/verticals and learn how to analyze whether they are potentially good ideas. Choose a type of site (or two?) and get started.
  • Become familiar with some of the SEO and competitor analysis tools that relate to my niche and type of site.
  • Do work!
Again, thank you, and I look forward to helping others once I know a bit more!
 
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Your skills like "business analyst" and "business process improvement", plus all of your other technical backgrounds are going to make this an easy pursuit for you. If you don't already know it, HTML, CSS will be a piece of cake if you want to customize things on your site. As well as keyword research and backlink profile research.

In regards to your plan... normally we would suggest to build and focus on one single project. That's not the typical advice that you find out there, most will say spread your eggs into tons of baskets. What this does is spread your attention and time too thin to do anything effective.

In your case, there's a part of me that thinks you should start two sites. One of them should be one that you really care about and are motivated about that you should treat like its' your first born child. Never compromise it ever. You'll be very happy with yourself years down the road when you have a 3+ year head start on an authority site. Only publish unique high quality content, and only obtain high quality and legit backlinks for now.

The other site, I'd create something in a micro-niche that you're willing to lose. The entire goal should be to experiment and learn. This is where you can get risky without having to go all the way back to ground zero. With your one big site in the bag that will eventually be a long-term, consistent earner, that's isolated and safe, you can start messing around on less important sites to learn what's effective, for how long it's effective, and if it ends up sabotaging you. You'll learn which tactics you can transfer to your main site to keep it safe yet effective.

This second site, I'd consider keeping it small so that it can reach a state of "completed." This will give you experience in building a site, writing content, dealing with on-page SEO, keyword research. Then you can move on to backlinking and play it a little risky and figure out what's what on that front. Of course, I'd spend time learning as well since you're new, but don't get stuck in reading without actually doing either. You'll find most of the info out there pales in comparison (and people keep their secrets too) compared to what you'll discover by doing.

The Digital Strategy Crash Course definitely is the best resource to take you to a reasonable depth regarding these topics and introducing them in a logical order. That's your bird's eye view of the industry. You'll discover questions you didn't even realize you should ask as you're reading that. Definitely read your way through that first.

Welcome aboard! You remind me of a friend I have in real life who works with Six Sigma doing business and process improvement. He's a sharp cookie and could slay internet marketing if he'd commit to dive in full force. Dive on in! We're here to answer any questions and share knowledge and learn as much as we can from you as well. Thanks for joining.
 
Ryuzaki,

Thanks for the encouragement! I particularly enjoyed what you wrote on Day 2 and 5 of the crash course, even though I noted certain paragraphs to revisit later because it contained some terms and concepts that I am unfamiliar with such as "link juice" (LOL). I trust that the later days will cover them in more detail though.

My work and personality drives me to seek high ROI for the effort that I put in, so I was explicitly looking for a guide written by veterans to get started. The fact that the course was tied to this community is a huge bonus.

I like idea of potentially starting two sites based on your reasoning. It will definitely be a consideration once I know a bit more. Thanks for the tips, and glad to be here.
 
What's up Builder Society, Finally made it over here to never never land thanks to peter-pan aka Ccarter. I knew it existed all along. A little about myself, I've been doing this digital marketing thing for about 7-8 years now. I'm actually trying to start a small digital marketing company primarily geared towards local businesses in my area. I've learn a shit tone from guys like ccarter, guerilla, ,lukep and eliquid. You guys are the reason for my modest success; just want to say thanks. I'm looking forward to learning , sharing and building with the community.
 
I've always felt like it'd be cool to gather up a solid 5-10 local people in the game and have them work for me under an agency for local (or non-local as well) clients. Content, website building, app building, promotion, PPC, link-building, etc. Then when there's ups and downs and gaps in time, have some random client that's not actually a client but it's just me pushing work through the system, having this team building and promoting a giant authority site for me and me alone. Double dipping.

Thanks for joining, looking forward to learning from another veteran!
 
I've always felt like it'd be cool to gather up a solid 5-10 local people in the game and have them work for me under an agency for local (or non-local as well) clients. Content, website building, app building, promotion, PPC, link-building, etc. Then when there's ups and downs and gaps in time, have some random client that's not actually a client but it's just me pushing work through the system, having this team building and promoting a giant authority site for me and me alone. Double dipping.

Thanks for joining, looking forward to learning from another veteran!

Although I've been in the industry for awhile I'm far from a seasoned vet. I appreciate the complement though.:D . Thanks for the welcome guys.
 
Welcome here !

I've always felt like it'd be cool to gather up a solid 5-10 local people in the game and have them work for me under an agency for local (or non-local as well) clients. Content, website building, app building, promotion, PPC, link-building, etc. Then when there's ups and downs and gaps in time, have some random client that's not actually a client but it's just me pushing work through the system, having this team building and promoting a giant authority site for me and me alone. Double dipping.

It can be sucessfull, I know some guys doing like this, but managing a team is a complete other story if you are working alone actually. You need to put less time on what you work and more on team management, training them, and be able to trust your guys so they can actually make your work and more.. managing a team is definitely a complete other (fulltime) job.
 
I agree with you thespy , managing a group would be a lot harder then being a one man show. But it's differently something I'm going to have to look into real soon.

Welcome here !
It can be sucessfull, I know some guys doing like this, but managing a team is a complete other story if you are working alone actually. You need to put less time on what you work and more on team management, training them, and be able to trust your guys so they can actually make your work and more.. managing a team is definitely a complete other (fulltime) job.
 
Hello fellow builders. I hope you are all good, and I'm sure some of you are doing really well. I stumbled on this forum a few weeks ago when I was carrying out some research into how to run traffic arbitrage with native advertising. I came across a very insightful post on the builders society site, which practically explaind a strategy, but then noticed I had stumbled on something much more valuable than just a post. A community of like-minded folks all grafting for success and freedom. I guess this is what I believe this community is about.

I've been doing IM for approx. 6-7 months now with most of that time working in PPV traffic and CPA offers. Prior to full time IM I was building and managing websites for clients, graphic design and print. I got tired of continually having to deal with clients and manage freelancers. Basically burnout. I accidentally stumbled upon the term CPA marketing in a webinar that a friend was watching, and was made aware of the fact that people are banking HARD online in IM. I had also dabbled with IM in the past and had personal projects that I had worked on, but I didn't know anything about getting traffic so they Just fizzled out when I lost interest. I also thought that IM was not a realistic way to make an income, although at the back of my mind I knew I wanted to make my income online. Never the less around November 2015 I had an idea light bulb moment. I realised that I do have some of the skills that people are using to make $$$$ online from IM, so why not add to this and leverage. I also had a client who I had developed an e-commerce site for, turnover 7 figures from their store in less than 18 months, and another client in the same niche had turned over half a million in less than 6 months. I know this because I maintained the sites and every now and again I would go in and check stats ( I still manage one of the sites) So, I concluded to get into IM. Now here I am 6-7 months later.

I will update with another post about my thoughts about IM so far and what I have learnt on my journey.

Thanks for reading this far and wish you all the best.

Mikey B
 
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Glad to have you aboard the gravy train. What I like about anything that's "Pay Per" and "Cost Per" is that it can scale quickly if you can throw the cash at it for data. What I like about building sites like the eCommerce you're talking about and authority sites is that you can actively chase traffic to turn a buck while growing an asset that will eventually dominate the search engines as well. That can also explode into massive wealth very fast too (fast only after you dominate, which can take years).

It'll be great to have your perspective, experience, and wisdom added to the community!
 
My analysis so far of IM, it can be a lonely road if you haven’t got a team or a partner, it is definitely a grind, there is so much to know, in fact too much to know, people are trying to make money off you. Paid forums are trying to make money off you too, you cannot push a button and money just starts coming. Everybody has a claim about how much they are making and how you can do the same if you just follow their system. I hate watching webinars. You can alienate yourself from the wider world if you're not careful.

On the positive side, making money online works. There are a lot of different things to explore, you can fully express creativity, the sky is the limit financially, there are so many different angles there are so many opportunities, it is like a strategy game that you have to figure out, you set your own terms for how you work and how you want to earn, you can work to your strengths. The feeling of getting something to work is amazing, can become addictive, If you can crack it you can be financially set.

In rounding up, my instincts tell me that discovering the Builders society is perfect timing, a collaborative community where I can pitch my IM tent and build (again no pun intended). In my next post I will try and summarise where I am at with operations, my approch and what I am currently working.

Thanks for reading this
MikeyB

I will briefly outline where I’m at with things. I mentioned in a previous post that I was doing PPV. I switched to native advertising arbitrage because I realised with PPV I was chasing $$ and wasn’t really utilising my strengths. My strengths include building websites ( CMS WordPress/ Magento/ ), graphic design, managing projects and freelancers, getting things done, generating results. I came to this conclusion after auditing what I've been doing during the firs quarter of the year. I’m now at the stage where I'm trying to generate regular recurring income from IM. My immediate short term goal is to simply get to $100 profit per day consistently. It may seem small, but this is a milestone I need to achieve.

If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won't be honest with greater responsibilities. :Luke 16:10

To get to this milestone my planned approach is to build websites that monetize through native advertising arbitrage and paid traffic. This was my idea before I discovered BuSo. I planned to monetize through Adsense, some other ad and content discovery networks, Amazon and CPA offers. I built a site and have started running some small tests with paid traffic. The site simply aggregates viral, and popular content from across the net. Not really in a niche of my passion, just something I've seen been done successfully. I plan to use this site to learn and have it ongoing on the side as I progress. I consider it as a means to help me test and grow. I do however have ideas for at least another 3 niche specific sites that I’m itching to start building. I also have an eCommerce site as a side project that I launched with a partner a few months back, but I will discuss that in another post.

I've been through the threads on BuSo, which are quality by the way, and I have realised that majority contain information about SEO, although I have seen an in-depth breakdown about paid traffic in the 30-day crash course. Finally, as we draw closer to the half way point of the 2016 my aim for the next six months include the $100, Learning how to get organic traffic like the way some of you guys are doing it as well as Making the most $$ possible from paid traffic.

Thanks for reading this far

MikeyB
 
I've purchased traffic via Facebook but I've also given thought to buying traffic via Native ads eventually. So will be interesting to watch your thread.
 
We do talk a lot about SEO, but it's definitely not the sole focus. We welcome discussion regarding anything with online or offline business building.

For instance, if you've read the term "Traffic Leaks" or "traffic leaking" around the internet, @CCarter is the person who coined the phrase and philosophy, which disregards SEO entirely. We also have some serious social media heavy weights and PPC guys with crazy spends (7 figures). And of course we have the entire DevOps section for development, scripting, and the like.

Heads up with the arbitrage... I'm pretty sure Adsense doesn't approve of their ads appearing on exclusively non-unique sites and I'd bet other networks have problems with it too. It's the content aggregation that worries me. I think you could add a paragraph at the top or bottom and possibly skate by, but this is the reason guys like Scott from Viral Nova were spending the time re-writing the content. Definitely make sure you're reading and abiding by the terms of service for all these various networks.
 
Hi everybody!

I'm doing SEO for around 8 years, now both in agency and in my own company. Years ago I took bad decision to focus mainly on clients projects (easy money) instead of mine, and therefore traded my freedom for having many bosses. Then I hired people too late which significantly slowed my growth. Right now I earn like 3-5 times average salary in my country (in Europe), but I know I'm small fish here, know my mistakes, and where are my goals - a lot of money making internet properties and building my ecommerce site with cosmetic equipment (I built some offline contacts here, tested in battle).

I first discovered BuSo around 1-2 years ago when I was stalking CCarter in astral.. I mean, looking for more of his/their/it's/her posts. I quickly saw there are many ancient wise men here including Ryuzaki, eliquid and others, with many quality threads.

Nevertheless I'm not a kind of guy that reads forums all the time, as work (usually) won't make itself. Of course I don't want to sound like a bullshit-20h-a-day-grinder - for years I act in sequences: several month of hard work, then several months of slowing, looking for new motivation and goals, then again several months of pushing, and so on.

All in all, I look forward to learning and building together.
 
Did you hang on to any old projects that stayed live and aged real good?

Glad to have you on board. The more experienced and knowledgable people, the better!
 
I have some websites with stable income but mostly I did SEO for others. Now I'm in the process of setting up new network of quality websites and trying to figure out the best way for scaling it with only several employees.
 
Hey guys, A friend from Skype referred me here and told me that the guys here are way a lot better.

Anyways I've been in the industry as a part time worker/Freelancer since 2010 and I'm a full time banker of Wells Fargo. Have 3 Daughters and a son. Suggestions about leaving my work is impossible until I get an equal level of my Salary. I got kids to feed, payment for school and bills on a bi-monthly basis. But keep in mind, that I'm here because I'm willing and It is my long term goal.

As they say to have to start somewhere and this is how I chose to start my life with BuSo :smile: Good PM guys

Thanks for the Warm Welcome guys. Looking forward to achieving success with the forums and I will contribute and give back as well to the community!
 
Welcome to BuSo :smile: You mentioned you have done freelancing - is this mainly writing or something else?
 
Hi BuSo,

This is awesome! No, seriously, I browsed this forum for just a couple of days and I don't know what I've been doing all those years! So much knowledge is being dropped here.

For almost three years I've been building (pretended to be building) various websites, all during my free time. None of those I managed to bring to real profitable assets and they just died slowly. This happened “project” after “project”. After one, I turned to next, and so on.

I never really looked at any forums like this before. I just thought I knew enough.

Then accidentally I found one post somewhere from a successful marketer, which was interesting and inspiring at the same time. Going deeper I found WF - I even pay their miserable fee to read the "enlightened" threads :smile: And finally I landed here :smile:

Now I see that I didn't know a shit about internet marketing. Yes, I've figured some things out myself, but the level at which it could have been executed is incomparable to a current status.

What shocked me that I have fallen in the very known traps. It's all discussed here: procrastination, multiple projects at a time, lack of focus, chasing next big thing - you name it. I remember spending hours developing publishing process - working locally using vagrant boxes, then created nice scripts for syncing changes, uploading/downloading files, also tracking changes with git… I managed to do it till perfection. Don't get me wrong, this stuff is useful, I'll create a post about it here, just to share some knowledge. But the problem was that I was spending time on these side issues and was not focusing on earning money. To me it felt like I've been doing real work - developing a process, but in fact, do you know how much I earned during that time - zero. Now I understand that I'm not the only one, and I know the diagnosis of it - procrastination. Thanks, BuSo.

But in general, I understood that the biggest mistake was treating it as a hobby, not as a real business. Damn!

I intrinsically knew something was wrong, because I didn't see the desirable results, but only know, after reading all this clearly laid out, I can understand my mistakes. The fact that others fall into the same traps as well should make me feel better. But it doesn't.

So, time for rework. My plan is to read as much as I can for a few weeks, then accumulate everything and decide which way to go.

Pros:
• I know some programming, so PHP, CSS is not a problem.
• I have some experience with freelancers, and already have a couple with whom I will continue to work with.
• I have some cash to invest, like $500/month or so - this is not a big deal, but still something.

Cons
:
• Can only spend 2-7 hours a day, most likely not even daily. This is currently my biggest concern. I wonder if this could drastically limit my capabilities to achieve something substantial or not.
• I'm too pedantic, I can't move on until I fixed this tiny bit. I need to learn to worry less about tiny details, and just go after things bringing in cash.

So that's about it for now. It was supposed to be a small intro, but I felt I need to add some background and say thanks to this great community.
 
Welcome to the forum!

I'm sure you'll enjoy all those golden nuggets dropped in this forum.

On a side note, do you recommend paying for WF?

Thanks!
 
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