Introductions Thread

dopeideas said:
I made the mistake of getting a college degree instead of solely focusing on my business ventures, and it's definitely hindered my growth.
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I had great things going before college too, and everyone around me made acted as if I had no choice but to go to college. So off I went and lost 4 years of progress. For being a kid who was headed in the right direction, I didn't really have the self-awareness or fortitude to assert myself and not see the "game" that was being played on me, even if everyone thought it was for the best, so I can't really complain. Who knows where I'd be if things had been different. It might be better or a lot worse.

dopeideas said:
I have a tendency to pursue too many projects at once
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You won't have that problem here, if you're willing to listen. Because people never stop saying it. The advice back in the Wickedfire days was to spread your eggs into as many baskets as possible, but that's not remotely how the Google landscape plays out any more, and it's not how the regular business landscape ever played out. This isn't some index fund investment and I'm not sure why any one ever saw it that way.
 
dopeideas said:
I made the mistake of getting a college degree instead of solely focusing on my business ventures, and it's definitely hindered my growth.
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Welcome to the forum.

You did not make a mistake going to college. I know the fashionable advice in communities like these is to say skip college and build a business, but that doesn't make them right.

If you look at the stats you'll find that you're in good company having a college degree and being an entrepreneur.
 
New builder reporting in from the UK. Not really sure where I want to go this so I'm hoping the crash course will inspire me!

Looking forward to getting stuck in!
 
Hey all!

Just found the forum via some link somewhere on the interwebz (Reddit I think). Signed up and am finding it freakin' awesome I have to say.

A little bit about me.

Cut my teeth doing Adsense sites in 2009 after spending a fair bit of time on the Warrior Forum. The good old days of 500-word posts and bolded keywords etc.

Anyway, I was living in Australia back then, moved back to the UK in Nov 2010 with an income of around £2800 per month from Adsense and Amazon.

Missed out on the Google penalties of Feb 2011 wich wiped so many sites out, but in mid-June that year I got hit, plummeting from those lofty heights to, er...bugger all over a few weeks.

I was pissed and just gave up, worked on some other online stuff in the meantime, but now I finally realised building sites (1 site actually for now) is what I really want to do, to provide for myself and my family and have a great life, free from worry.

So, I started a site 2 months back, have 60 articles up on it now. Some long 5K word ones, some 3-4K best of type posts, and some informational stuff too, ranging from 1k - 2k words.

The intention is to build the site to 100 posts in the next 6-8 weeks, then aim for 200 posts. No income from it yet but I am seeing some of my longtail keywords rising, with a couple of search terms in the top 10, and around 23 in the top 30.

Traffic from Google is only a few per day, seems to be starting to rise a little, and also a bit from Reddit etc. Nothing crazy, 40 - 50 sessions per day right now.

I bought the domain in a GoDaddy auction, ran it through Wayback Machine and some of the domain history sites, doesn't look like it was ever used. I put WP up and ran a couple of giveaways in April 2017 and then did nothing.

I haven't done any link building yet other than a handful of blog comments etc, but have harvested a lot of competitor keywords using a 30 day free trial of SEMRUSH.

Anyhow, that is where I am at. I have picked a pretty broad niche that I could deffo add so many categories too, the site is never going to run out of keywords to target. I'm trying to stay focused and build out 10 or so articles on 3-4 categories from now on, then keep building to 25-50 before moving on. Trying to get authority in certain areas rather than taking a scattered approach (a definite weakness I have)

Great to be here, some excellent discussions, and wow, the free course is incredible...big thanks.
 
Welcome from a fellow Brit, what part of the UK are you at?

Do you have any experience of IM or the digital space, or are you coming into it brand new?
 
Welcome aboard!

Jasper68 said:
Cut my teeth doing Adsense sites in 2009 after spending a fair bit of time on the Warrior Forum. The good old days of 500-word posts and bolded keywords etc.
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I remember around that time on the Warrior Forum, before they sold to Freelancer and let it become a free-for-all of trash posts and signature spammers, where all of the highest level people on there were focused on 'article marketing' using the methods you're talking about. 300-500 words, bold / underline / italics your keywords, then copy and paste them to every article directory on the internet with a link back to the original.

People were pumping out so much content. They'd brag about hitting 1000 posts on EzineArticles. So many people were parasiting on Hubpages and Squidoo and those where you could get a revenue share. Then they all got wiped out too because they gave someone else control of their work, and they cut the faucet off.

Taking advantage of other platforms is smart. Building your house on someone else's sandy property isn't.

Jasper68 said:
Missed out on the Google penalties of Feb 2011 wich wiped so many sites out, but in mid-June that year I got hit, plummeting from those lofty heights to, er...bugger all over a few weeks.
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Sounds like Panda got you. I danced past Panda, was very meticulous and perfectionist about my on-page builds. But I was sloppy with off-page in terms of spammy links and got absolutely demolished by the first round of Penguin like most of the aggressive old-timers did.

I'll tell you, those were some stressful days. Having one site you treat right and watching it sail through the updates is great. Eventually you stop worrying about the trauma of being demolished. Of course you'll win some and lose some as metrics are re-weighted, but it's never anything drastic that wipes you out. Just fluctuations you overcome.

Jasper68 said:
I'm trying to stay focused and build out 10 or so articles on 3-4 categories from now on, then keep building to 25-50 before moving on.
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That's how I do it, too. I try to flesh out each existing category to a certain threshold number of posts before I add another. Then I cycle back through and bump that number back up in all categories before introducing another. I do have a target set of categories where I'll stop expanding horizontally, then it'll be a free-for-all on depth, because each category will have enough content to not feel remotely thin at that point.
 
Hey, thanks for replying.

Yeah, twas the pesky Panda for sure. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I often think that if I had just brushed myself down, regrouped (on my own!!) and started over with those lessons fresh in my mind, where would I be now.

Certainly not working in a crappy gym for almost minimum wage, but probably sitting on an online empire, or at least making 6 figures per month.

But experience is a great teacher, I think it has taken me to get to this point to know I MUST do it again, albeit with the black and grey hats left atop the wardrobe.

I know what I have to do, and why I must do it. I'm still full of doubt about my abilities, but I learned last time round that keeping going is often the barrier to entry that keeps most of us from success.

Good execution is ideal, but any execution should see results of some sort, positive I hope.

Cheers, excited to have found you all.

Oh, the days of Build My Rank and Unique Article Wizard... thems was the days indeed!! :-)
 
Hey guys

It's a pleasure. I'm a full-time SEO manager for a multinational clothing retailer from the UK.

I kind of fell out the game a bit, back in the day I was making about $500 a month selling clickbank weight loss products and my career just kinda took over. But, recently I'm getting sick of the daily grind...

... working to make someone else's dream come true.

Getting back on the horse with affiliate sites, amazon maybe, and making money online.

I've been out the game a bit, so any advice would go far!

Best
Alan
 
Glad to have you, Alan.

What would you say are some of the biggest differences between doing SEO for an enterprise level, national brand and a small SEO arbitrage site?
 
Definitely the technical side of SEO. I see myself as being more of a technical guy than link builder or content specialist.

When you’re dealing with a site with 100,000+ pages you have to be a lot more focused on technical things like 404s, proper 301s, canonicals, duplicate content etc.

Even more so if the site targets multiple countries.

Cash Builder said:
Welcome from a fellow Brit, what part of the UK are you at?

Do you have any experience of IM or the digital space, or are you coming into it brand new?
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Im from the UK as well, Glasgow.

What about yourself ?
 
I was here for a while about a year ago (lost my old login details). I didn't focus on working (traveled too much, drank too much etc)... on reflection I was probably in a bad place. I got nothing done and did not make any money.

Well, I decided to sign-up again and focus on one review-based website which will be monetized using the Amazon affiliate program. This time I will focus and put in the time no matter what.

One of the biggest problems for me is worrying about Google algorithm updates, Amazon banning me etc and therefore not wanting to put the time in at the beginning since I could be just wasting my time. Any advice from the pros would be awesome!
 
How did you come up with your handle for the forum?

Just kidding.

I try not to tell people what they can do, because there are always outliers to every situation.

However, with what I know, are you ready to spend 12-18 months on this site potentially making $0 dollars? That's not to say you won't make ANY income, but $10 or less a month is pretty much $0 to me.

I won't get into why I just made that comment, but when you look at CONTROL for this new venture you have very little since you will be dependant on both Google and Amazon for various things such as traffic and revenue.

If I add in some other factors such as what I know about SERPs and authority, you will be waiting a long time to get ranked well. At least with a ranking that matters to bring in income.

I could be wrong though. Maybe you're a magical wizard that can get rankings in Google in 12 weeks instead of 12 months for a new site focused on competitive terms with a buying intent. Maybe you know se9 while we are all on se0. You might have a large PBN backed by SAPE fill of aged domains with a gift of PR and traffic leaks just waiting to explode on Google's face.

However, if you have done nothing trying to get out of a bad place AND you are already worried about Google and Amazon and the control they will have over you, I would suspect that maybe this project wouldn't be the best one for you to focus on unless you know you can dominate an Amazon review site on top of Google, actually keep and hold the rankings to be worth a damn ( obtaining them and then losing them 4 days later would only depress you maybe ), and make serious bank with it.

If this is just a side project for you.. disregard what I said.

If this is something serious and you are depending on it, I'd probably focus elsewhere in your situation.
 
eliquid said:
However, with what I know, are you ready to spend 12-18 months on this site potentially making $0 dollars? That's not to say you won't make ANY income, but $10 or less a month is pretty much $0 to me.
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The plan is to get a 9 to 5 job and work on this every other minute that I am not sleeping or working. I've done SEO since the early 2000's but took a break from in the past few years and it seems a lot has changed, but a lot is still the same. I think I am fairly good at SEO and I will be able to make low $x,xxx per month profit after 12 months... in the meantime I will just work a 9 to 5.
 
OK.

Knowing that, I want to tell you to skip this project.

If you're working a 9-5, I respect that. But unless you want to stay up all late ( or pour a lot of money into this ), you will have limited time to work on it, after your job.

With that, and as someone who was in the same shoes, I'd tell you to spend that precious time on something that can 100X your potential return.

If you're willing to wait 12 months to make money and you only have MAYBE 4-6 hours a day to do it in, I'd be working on a much larger goal than an Amazon review site.

Hope you can see what I'm saying here in my advice.

That's just my advice. Someone else here might tell you to go for an Amazon review site though as your project. However, it takes the same amount of work to make $20k a month as it does $2k a month for many many things. The real question becomes, which project has the higher ceiling for revenue potential?
 
My other plan was to use my spare time to learn how to code and then become a freelancer. See the amazon review site/coding is a way to leave the 9 to 5 and go back to traveling (digital nomad). I would be happy with $2k per month from an amazon site if it is passive and relatively stable. Can sell it for $50k+ later on too. I cannot think of any other business I can do though... I tried FB ads + shopify and found ecommerce is hard work! Building a SaaS is spoken about as the holy grail, but it is not easy (cannot code yet and have no ideas). Getting subscribers to a SaaS is not easy either!
 
Focused said:
My other plan was to use my spare time to learn how to code and then become a freelancer. See the amazon review site/coding is a way to leave the 9 to 5 and go back to traveling (digital nomad). I would be happy with $2k per month from an amazon site if it is passive and relatively stable. Can sell it for $50k+ later on too. I cannot think of any other business I can do though... I tried FB ads + shopify and found ecommerce is hard work! Building a SaaS is spoken about as the holy grail, but it is not easy (cannot code yet and have no ideas). Getting subscribers to a SaaS is not easy either!
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I feel like I’m in the same spot tbh. Amazon seems like the only way to get started
 
Focused said:
I would be happy with $2k per month from an amazon site if it is passive and relatively stable.
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Focused said:
relatively stable.
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Focused said:
relatively stable.
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Nothing in SEO is stable. For instance, I'm realizing that I'm taking quite the hit this month from just a handful of terms slipping from the Top 3 down into the Top 10. It's really a zero sum game and not much protects you from the algorithm deciding to value something your competitor has going for it that you don't (usually age and everything that comes along with it).

That doesn't mean you can't pull it off, but you'll need to hit a very high level of earnings so that your lowest dip on the rollercoaster still exceeds your needs, and that you're saving cash. Even then, you may be better of selling the asset for a big lump sum, using some of it to get the next piece of cash flow rolling, and rinse and repeat that.

It's a long road. I'll tell you this.... if you can manage it, find an old ass site with a good bit of content on it and a good bit of links to it. It may not get a lot of SERP visibility because there's no on-page optimization, but it'll have everything else going for it. Then you can start adding new content for your Amazon stuff that's optimized and piggyback off the old posts, going back and interlinking to the new content. You can take a huge shortcut if you can find the right site to buy for cheap, if you can convince someone to let go of it. They're usually pretty attached where no price will be right for their baby, though.
 
Focused said:
My other plan was to use my spare time to learn how to code and then become a freelancer. See the amazon review site/coding is a way to leave the 9 to 5 and go back to traveling (digital nomad). I would be happy with $2k per month from an amazon site if it is passive and relatively stable. Can sell it for $50k+ later on too. I cannot think of any other business I can do though... I tried FB ads + shopify and found ecommerce is hard work! Building a SaaS is spoken about as the holy grail, but it is not easy (cannot code yet and have no ideas). Getting subscribers to a SaaS is not easy either!
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So I wanna break this down, because that's what I do as an INTJ.

This is nothing against you personally. Heck I don't know you. I'm looking at this objectively so don't take this personal as it's not about you. Just follow along and look at what Im about to say as a 3rd person...

Focused said:
See the amazon review site/coding is a way to leave the 9 to 5 and go back to traveling (digital nomad)
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Cool, you have a goal. +1 for you because most people don't

Focused said:
I would be happy with $2k per month from an amazon site if it is passive and relatively stable. Can sell it for $50k+ later on too.
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OK, you must be single and not have many needs to be happy and to travel on $2k monthly PRE Tax. Maybe you're not a US citizen. IDK. I'm having to make assumptions here so if I get something wrong don't kill me over it. BUT>>>>>>>

You assuming a few things:
  • You can get to $2k a month initially
  • You can rank at SEO without having done it recently ( not a crack at your skills, just saying this )
  • You can keep it at $2k a month once you get to it
  • It's passive
  • It's stable ( relatively )
  • Someone would buy it for $50k in the next 12-24 months because it's still doing well afterward

Where the hell you gonna travel on $2k? I paid off my house so I have no mortgage. Both cars paid for, I have no bills other than utilities, groceries, and misc crap like cell phone and internet. I couldn't get by on $2k pre-tax monthly and I have not a single ounce of debt.

Focused said:
I cannot think of any other business I can do though
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Ok, but I can think of many. Either you are not realizing it or not thinking hard enough.. or you underestimate other biz models and ideas.

I was making $2k a month via Paypal selling lists of spam URLs right from SER and Scrapebox that ran on a VPS 24 hours a day. I worked like 1 hour a day on it.

I was making $2k a month freelancing with PPC for 1 client. Took me 5 hours a month.

I know people ( my uncles ) who buy cars at $500 at the auction, clean them up and sell them for $1500. Sure there is a little cost to clean and sale, but that's $1k basically. Do that twice, that is $2k. Sometimes they finance the cars at $3k and make more.

I can think of a hundred more.

Thinking it will sell for $50k in 12-24 months is counting your chickens before they hatch though. Thinking you can maintain it for months and make $2k monthly is the same.

And $2k is nothing. What if you get it to $2k, quit the job, and 6 months later it fails? There is no way you saved enough on $2k + traveling to have a buffer to get by on another 6 months. You're gonna freak out and land another job and complete the cycle again.

You need something making you $10k a month so when shit hits the fan in month 6, you got a buffer of cash without reacting to getting a job again. You can't have a buffer at $2k a month, that the bare min to live in grandma's house!

This is why the plan needs to be bigger. All you're doing is aiming for the bare min.

Focused said:
I tried FB ads + shopify and found ecommerce is hard work! Building a SaaS is spoken about as the holy grail, but it is not easy (cannot code yet and have no ideas). Getting subscribers to a SaaS is not easy either!
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I don't have a nice way to say this, again not personal though. What you basically told us is X is too hard, so you aren't doing X. You don't want to work. You're afraid of the hard in hard work. You want to do the easy, you want the passive easy, you want the stable easy. You just want the easy. If you don't want to do the hard, but you got 12 months runway.. then by default you want the easy.

Do you think you are really going to do anything great in life with that mindset?

Do you think any of this mindset of doing the easy is what got you back into a 9-5? You might be able to point to an event instead and say this event + more lead to it, but somewhere not facing the hard had some to do with it too I bet. I've been around the block some.

I tell you what's hard work....

Having some mouth breathing son of a bitch mother fucker tell me when and where I will piss and eat lunch and how long my vacation is. To tell me what I'm worth salary wise and when I get a increase at 2%. To tell me when he can pay me and when he can let me go over some mistake the VP made 6 months ago in the marketing budget and plan when it failed and now Im fucking getting laid off?

And that's just the first fucking week bro.

Good luck going through the motions another 51 weeks just to get your Amazon site to 4th in Google and then tank 30 days later after you give your notice and you're back to no site and no income and nothing to sell on Flippa either.

Make that fucking goal of yours bigger son.

Savior the hard work, because you will thank me later if you do.
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Great to see so many other Brits here.

I'm an adopted Mackem having recently moved to Sunderland from North Yorkshire.

@Cash Builder I'm a web developer by trade but recently started reading more about online business and marketing.
 
Focused said:
I cannot think of any other business I can do though... I tried FB ads + shopify and found ecommerce is hard work! Building a SaaS is spoken about as the holy grail, but it is not easy (cannot code yet and have no ideas). Getting subscribers to a SaaS is not easy either!
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Doing anything worthwhile isn't easy.
A little snippet from The Millionaire Fastlane book.

The Commandment of Entry states that as entry barriers to any business road fall, or lessen, the effectiveness of that road declines while competition in that field subsequently strengthens. Higher entry barriers equate to stronger, more powerful roads with less competition and less need for exceptionality. Low-barrier-entry businesses are weak roads because easy entry creates high competition and high traffic, all of which share the same pie. And where there is traffic, there is no movement.
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Don't be put off if something seems hard, put the work in, do the research and reap the rewards.
 
eliquid said:
So I wanna break this down, because that's what I do as an INTJ.
I was making $2k a month via Paypal selling lists of spam URLs right from SER and Scrapebox that ran on a VPS 24 hours a day. I worked like 1 hour a day on it.

I was making $2k a month freelancing with PPC for 1 client. Took me 5 hours a month.
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Hi @eliquid that as amazing thanks .....

Could you think more ideas like that and post here? :cool:
 
@bbbyet - some ideas are posted in almost every podcast at serpwoo except the last 2.

I use to give these out, no one ever did them. So I stopped.

Im keeping them to myself for now though mostly.
 
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