Introductions Thread

Creating systems is definitely the best way to scale in this game. I'm still at the stage of doing everything myself due to lack of funds, and growth is so slow.

Looks like you've had a lot of success already, good luck!
 
Few questions.

1) CAN I POST IN ALL CAPS?
2) Is this WickedFire?
3) Is CCarter real?
4) Do PBNs work?
5) Can I buy some Reddit upvoters here?

Shoutout to my WF and BHW connects, I figured I'd come over here too...

A
 
bhw died 10 years ago.

Its now become like digital point was 10 years ago, full of Indian 'internet marketing gurus'
 
Autumn 2003 I typed in the MMO keywords in Google and have spent the past 14 years or so seeing a multitude of fads / techniques / methods come and go, whilst spending a fairly significant chunk of change on shiny objects – experiencing the odd success here and there, but never putting solid ‘roots’ down, before moving on to the next shiny object.

From Google cash to MFA sites; spending 1k on John Reese’s Traffic Secrets (and Stompernet) not long after; building and selling Wordpress sites (using PLR content), building pages with Traffic Equalizer; trying to get my head around LFE (was a WF member c2009) – I’ve seen (and spent) a lot.

Unfortunately I am eloquently summed up by @Ryuzaki in this post at Girl Builder Log (unable to post a link yet):

“Perfection is for people who aren’t busy enough and have enough money to waste their time on it”.

In the past a slight bump in the road has been met with “maybe this isn’t working as it should, but this new offer I’ve seen sounds like it’s going to work” attitude, before plonking more money down and ‘moving on’.

I’ve taken the past year or so ‘off’ and just recently started looking at IM again – I’ve been given notice that I am to be made redundant by my employer – fortunately I’ve been offered a good severance package and my employment isn’t due to be terminated for another 12 months – but I want to have something up, running, and earning by that time – hence here I am.

I’ll be creating a journal in the Lab shortly, as soon as I’ve completed the Digital Strategy Course and asked a couple of q’s in @Astro's Newbie Question(s) thread.

Cheers,
Si
 
Welcome aboard.

1) Plz don't.
2) We accept refugees on a merit-based system.
3) Who? The Ghost in the SSHell?
4) Yeah, until they don't.
5) I don't think you can afford THIS upvote, stud.

(We're an old connect, but you'll never know. I've gone through so many aliases now, I don't even know who I am any more. Sometimes all an ancient wants is peace from prying eyes.)

-----

It seems like you've come to realize two things about Internet Marketing and SEO that holds true for most people...
  1. Focus is the supreme dictator of success
  2. Schemes and tricks don't get you very far
If you can not fall back in that pattern, you're guaranteed success. Stay away from spam, build quality, do real marketing, and you win. You obviously know how and aren't afraid to work. Now it's just time to do the right things and do them right.

Welcome, looking forward to your journal!
 
Hi All,

Was looking for a a good place to join to discuss making money online, settled on BuSo.

Been online since the days of Altavista, been in digital for 10 years mainly in other companies and agencies. My background is SEO.

Been making decent money here and there, but never anything consistent. Finally had a break last year, with some decent income, hoping to focus on the same website to do it again this year and create a couple of new websites to diversify my income.

Looking forward to contributing and learning.

S.
 
Hi guys, first post and introduction, finally. Glad I found you all. And glad I found a forum full of like minded individuals. I can't even recall half the forums I've learned and moved on from. But this group reads the most solid with a healthy dose of ass kicking when needed.

Time to start over and build something better. I've got still got questions on taking advantage of traffic from previous crapola sites and blogs I've built (don't want to let any traffic go to waste), but I want to take my skills to the next level.

I say Icarus because there was a time a few years ago that were the glory days for my brother and I. We spammed web blogs like madmen and they ranked and banked. I remember a warm summer day drinking beer in his pool and watching our Clickbank accounts make sale after sale. It may not have been the amount some of you hustlers make, but for us it meant no job and freedom. Google crushed those dreams, as they should have.

My Wordpress skills aren't expert, but they are pretty damn solid. I've built a solid number of client websites and have many happy customers, but I would like to either earn more from these clients by having better upsells on the backend. I would also like to work on a property that is my own that allows me to really learn advanced traffic, marketing, funnels, etc.

Thanks for the links to Ryan Stewart on Youtube. Love his videos and I've got Google Tag Manager rocking now. And I hope to expand on his ideas and lessons. Anyway, enough with the wall of text. I look forward to growing my empire by my interaction with you all.
 
Welcome, Iceman10.

Altavista, Excite, Dogpile, Hotbot, Lycos, Infoseek.... I'm glad those days are gone. I wish I was trying to make money online back then though. Every single vertical was wiiiide open for the taking.

You have a decade of experience. Combined with the info we toss around here, you'll be slaying it in no time. Glad to have you around and look forward to seeing you around the forum.

-----

Icarus is one of my favorite myths and symbols. As you're saying... been there, done that, in SEO and in other places in life. It gives you a great frame of reference. You get to see really high, close to the sun, and then learn where the absolute bottom is the next day.

Fast money is fun and exhilarating but it never sticks around. Easy come, easy go. Building long-term projects is what excites me now, but I do keep one or two small projects with the intention of selling them around.

Glad to have you around and look forward to learning from and sharing with you.
 
I think the greatest takeaway was that it IS possible. Making money online can be a fact of life. People spend their hard earned money on digital products or should I say, solutions.

Ryuzaki, how do you find the time to respond to all these posts? Your interaction rate blows my mind. OK, off to the Orientation room for a question.
 
Infoseek

Now that's a name I didn't think I'd ever hear again.
 
Ryuzaki said:
Welcome, Iceman10.

Altavista, Excite, Dogpile, Hotbot, Lycos, Infoseek.... I'm glad those days are gone. I wish I was trying to make money online back then though. Every single vertical was wiiiide open for the taking.

You have a decade of experience. Combined with the info we toss around here, you'll be slaying it in no time. Glad to have you around and look forward to seeing you around the forum.
Click to expand...

Sad thing is whilst i was online, i wasn't making money online, more getting to know this thing we call the Internet. If only i had started then, surely would've been a billionaire by now!

My first ever website was a wwf (now wwe) when it used to be good, on a free geocities website.

How times have changed...
 
Hilarious. Mine was on Geocities too. I did an anime site before anyone in the US knew what it was. Then one about aliens. Too bad they aren't still around. They'd make some killer parasites and easy to rank pages for affiliate offers.
 
Ryuzaki said:
I did an anime site before anyone in the US knew what it was.
Click to expand...

Knew it.
L-ryuzaki-death-note-33978899-299-169.jpg

​
Ahhh, I remember the days with Geocities...good times.

But not to derail this thread...

Welcome to BuSo @Iceman10. Great to have you on board.
​
 
I'm a seo consultant and fan of CCarter from Italy.

Congratulations for your all your work, Serpwoo and your great guides.

Hope to read and share some useful tips in this forum :-)
 
Hi All,

Long time lurker around different communities, first time introducing myself.

First of all, loving the value of the Crash Course and the forum in general. Hoping all this would be preserved going forward, especially considering how the so called 'last fortresses of IM' have been infiltrated by extremely low quality stuff. Good to see some old faces from WickedFire, too.

About me - pretty much self taught, been into the industry for over 6-7 years now. Perhaps lacking on the tech side but applying marketing basics to everything I do has helped me achieve good results overall. Both agency and freelancing background, mostly in SEO despite currently managing paid activities for a solid portfolio of large travel brands.

Thanks,
D
 
Welcome, I'm glad we could pull you out of lurker mode. You sound like you have a lot of experience we can all learn from and hopefully return the favor.

What size PPC / Media Buy budgets do you manage? This is a goofy question since there is no context surrounding it, but do you have an opinion on what a minimum budget would be before it's worth your time jumping into PPC, seeing as how you have to buy data before you can optimize.
726 x 188​
 
Hi, guys and gals!

I just stumbled upon some excellent reads here and decided to join this great community.

About me: I am 30+ years old guy trying to make a living online :smile: Maybe sounds familiar?
Have tried almost all ways of earning online from around 8 years - CPA, SEO, Affiliate Marketing, Ads but never had success. Reasons i have failed for are numerous. Most important from my point of view is that after trying something and either not get the passion for continuing doing as it gets boring (SEO) or as I am one of the guys with Zero budget - most of the interesting for my things (as paid advertising) were limited in budget.. A lot of wrong thinking and wrong steps.

Now I am starting a new online journey for which I have the passion for - to start creating digital products and selling them.

Little by little will get to the level of SaaS as it is the future. For now - web automation programs running on Windows, like clickers, scrapers, etc.. will open separate thread once my first program is ready to brag/share experience and get advice.

cheers!
 
Welcome, Vrve. Sounds like you've been around the block of tactics!

Boring... limited budget... giving up to soon... These are all barriers almost everyone faces. They have to be overcome or you'll find yourself in the same spot in 8 more years.

Each one has a fairly simple and obvious solution too. At your age and experience level you should have defeated these demons, but haven't. I'd guess with my arm-chair psychology that the real issue aren't these excuses but not having a good enough reason to overcome them.

We all need a deep reason that touches your soul and provides an absurd dedication to winning. Do you feel like you have one?

For me, wanting money and freedom for myself simply wasn't good enough. Sadly, I can be content with menial income as long as I have an internet connection and a functioning computer. So that never lit the fire for me. Eventually I found my true reason, and part of it is providing freedom from stress for others I care for that I see try just as hard, albeit at the wrong things in the wrong way. But the real reasons are fairly philosophical and metaphysical. But that's the lever it took for me to reeeeaaaallly want it.
 
Thanks, Ryuzaki.

We currently manage a portfolio of around $800k - 850k monthly spend across multiple accounts, with a projection to grow this by the end of the year.

Indeed, providing a single meaningful answer to that is a bit tricky. Regardless of budget, I always like to see all channels in the marking mix working in a symbiosis. Use of paid is purely based on goals and expectations, although it never ceases to amaze me how businesses are not aware of their KPIs, or how to measure those properly.

We're proactively chasing the brand awareness to brand traffic bidding model, where we would really like to see small companies starting on a low-mid $xxx for visibility purposes. Of course, this varies largely on verticals, offering, etc.

For the sake of providing an answer to your question, we've failed to see any measurable results delivered for budgets less than $1k - 1.5k, unless they are only intended for data & keyword mining purposes.
 
Ryuzaki said:
For me, wanting money and freedom for myself simply wasn't good enough. Sadly, I can be content with menial income as long as I have an internet connection and a functioning computer. So that never lit the fire for me.
Click to expand...
This is something I am also struggling with. I take just enough freelance gigs just to pay the bills and try to spend the rest of my time on product.
The enthusiasm I have while working on freelance gigs which offer immediate rewards is not the same as working on my own products which may help me on the long run.
 
Thank you for the replies! Also thanks to mod for moving my post to the right forum section, I just saw there is also a great course for product developers and action takers inside the forum.

Did not respond yesterday as had to think about @Ryuzaki post.

First, fully agree I did things the wrong way, but I never had a mentor neither the support from my family into doing online business. Had to learn the bad&good the hard way - by experience. And as you say - never had a motivation to overcome my limits and broader my thinking process. My reason was born three months ago, and he is my inspiration.

I have thought a lot about the part of the motivation for 'helping others' but unfortunately my deep need to help others had put me into the current situation - whole my life have trying to help my friends or people I met for the first time. Long story short - after helping people and when they get what they need at the moment, they forget me.

Which is one of the main reasons I got demotivated in general. Just a little example, I have helped a friend of mine to build his online shop, advertise and market it but without making any contract. His online shop is doing now around 300k of revenue per year, he does not answer my phone calls and totally ignores me. And this was a good friend of mine - we were more than ten years together almost every day. I do not want to sound like whining, I do not hate the guy or envy him as this is not part of my inner nature to hate people. I know we (people) are in different levels of thinking, empathy, etc. , just want to explain my way of thinking since this is the introduction thread :smile:

After a long thought yesterday I could not add "helping people" to my list of motivational factors - because my understanding of life is that when you give someone, you also takes from someone.
@infotech - I understand you bud, same thinking was here, but the only thing we have is Time. This is why this time I have decided to finally get to the new level with things which excite me - to do product, website, sales funnel, advertising, the whole concept around it. I personally never liked to work as a freelancer as it is a short-term investment, but also had to pay bills sometimes.

My short plan is - build a Windows software that is targeted to low-level web marketers and newbies, to start to advertise it among forums where such people are talking + SEO, and when there is a success (budget from sales) - to start paid advertising with banners and Facebook ads. In the meantime to add all clients to my list. Let`s see if I can make it with a 100$ budget, average marketer skills, and basic knowledge of coding.

Thanks again for your attention, I will keep working on my product and once it is ready will post more at the forum as for now I can only talk about my life`s point of view which is probably not very valuable to the community.
 
Welcome.

Thanks for sharing. Most of us are raised to be kind and give back. And, it definitely feels good to help out and give back, which is why I'm on the board of a local non-profit and volunteer for community events as time allows. It's always good to help out a friend as well. It really sucks when you get stung like that with helping your friend become successful and then shuts you out. I've had one or two of those before.

But, at some point, we need to focus on ourselves and look out for ourselves first. Just like when you travel on a plane, they tell you if the plane starts diving to put your mask on first and then put your kids' masks on. For the longest time I thought it was backwards but I figured out it you're not going to be any help if you're unable to function yourself.

Glad you're able to focus, especially with your son being born. Congrats man. Being a parent is a great thing.

Vrve said:
My short plan is - build a Windows software that is targeted to low-level web marketers and newbies, to start to advertise it among forums where such people are talking + SEO, and when there is a success (budget from sales) - to start paid advertising with banners and Facebook ads. In the meantime to add all clients to my list. Let`s see if I can make it with a 100$ budget, average marketer skills, and basic knowledge of coding.
Click to expand...

Is this a Windows only platform? I read your OP and wasn't sure if you're running a subscription based program where people log into your website or having people download them. If so, are you going to make it cross platform?
 
@propipper Hi, and thank you for the kind words and the cheer up!
I did not explained myself well in the previous post because it got too long and i lost the focus while writing it - Helping others is a think i do by default, just as you say now for me is the time to focus on my things. For sure i plan to help people, but not trough my business for now. I have 2 educational projects (free) for youth waiting for me to start them.

About the application i am building - it will be subscription based and will run only on Windows, as i only know how to code things for Windows OS. It is not some very marvelous application, i do it mainly to get some experience with the whole process of building application and building the funnel.
It will be successful for sure as i did my marketing research already. Need to see how things will turn out on the end and if there would be big demand for cross-platform version. When there is demand and budget, will be able to hire better coder because my current skills are not enough.

It is not much about the skills.. i can learn how to do it, but i have major issues with health recently and can stay up to 5 hours per day on PC.

Will start a journey thread soon :smile:
 
Vrve said:
@propipper Hi, and thank you for the kind words and the cheer up!
I did not explained myself well in the previous post because it got too long and i lost the focus while writing it - Helping others is a think i do by default, just as you say now for me is the time to focus on my things. For sure i plan to help people, but not trough my business for now. I have 2 educational projects (free) for youth waiting for me to start them.

About the application i am building - it will be subscription based and will run only on Windows, as i only know how to code things for Windows OS. It is not some very marvelous application, i do it mainly to get some experience with the whole process of building application and building the funnel.
It will be successful for sure as i did my marketing research already. Need to see how things will turn out on the end and if there would be big demand for cross-platform version. When there is demand and budget, will be able to hire better coder because my current skills are not enough.

It is not much about the skills.. i can learn how to do it, but i have major issues with health recently and can stay up to 5 hours per day on PC.

Will start a journey thread soon :smile:
Click to expand...

Good luck with the educational projects. I tried a couple of educational services back in the day which fell flat really quickly. I think the concept was good but there was 1 or 2 major players and it would've taken a lot of work and time to get it up and running and I just didn't have that at the time. Glad you're doing things to help out for educational purposes. Very noble.

I just started a journey thread myself. The main thing with getting things accomplished is holding yourself accountable to set goal/benchmarks and achieve them. If not, you're constantly procrastinating. Hope it works out for you mate.
 
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