Introductions Thread

Hi. My name is Varaya from Thailand. Now I sell my coloring book in Amazon Kindle. And my new project is teach Thai on Udemy.
If you come to Thailand and would like any suggestion please feel free to contact me. If you want to learn Thai or Chinese too I can teach you guys. I'm Thai- Chinese. My E-mail.: nangougou@yahoo.com
 
Welcome to the board. Glad you signed up! (Anyone reading this, Varaya and I know each other in real life).

Can you give some details on how you started with selling your coloring book on Amazon? Any tips for people who are brand new and want to start selling booking on Amazon Kindle?
 
Varaya said:
Now I sell my coloring book in Amazon Kindle.
Click to expand...

That's sweet. How do you color on a Kindle though? Is there some coloring app?

I thought about that kind of thing as soon as adult coloring books hit the scene. There's so many sub-niches that can still be targeted. Garden, Music, Fantasy, etc. Seems like something really easy to produce too (on paper at least, not sure about the coloring apps).

Welcome aboard!
 
Ryuzaki said:
That's sweet. How do you color on a Kindle though? Is there some coloring app?

I thought about that kind of thing as soon as adult coloring books hit the scene. There's so many sub-niches that can still be targeted. Garden, Music, Fantasy, etc. Seems like something really easy to produce too (on paper at least, not sure about the coloring apps).

Welcome aboard!
Click to expand...
Thank you for your answer. I have made digital file and Amazon do paperback for me. For me I research first which kind of coloring book get more search. But for the other step I have to learn about marketing. Please treat me kindly
 
Dear everyone,
Thought I'd say hello. I recently found this forum from a Charles Floate video on YouTube and I was shocked to see the helpfulness and respect that people seem to show eachother here. I realised it must be something special, so I had to join.

I've been hoping to make a living from working online for around 3 years now but I've not quite made it just yet. I ran a FBA business last year and it saw some success but in the end I just decided that it wasn't for me and I just wasn't enjoying it, so I sold up and looked for the next challenge. I have a day job which provides a financial safety net for now, until I can secure my income online. I'm not a big spender so I am looking to make £1k profit a month then I can go full time in my online work. That's the dream anyway!

As for skills, I'm lucky to have a good technology background and I'm not the worst writer in the world either. I am so excited to get started on creating new businesses online, there's nothing better than getting creative and I want to help solve peoples problems.

Hopefully I can get a bit of help along the way, in my online income journey. I know I need it. I'm ready to learn and hopefully one day I can repay the favour to a newbie like me! Thanks for reading.
 
We're here for any discussion you want to have! Glad to have you on-board. Fulfillment by Amazon seems like an exciting journey. We have some people here doing that that are showing incredible results. I've got a few products related to my main project that I could definitely do FBA for. So many ideas, so little time!

If you're okay with your day job, I'd hang on to it for a while and get a huge savings buffer (you never know what may happen with your projects), and then I'd hang on a little longer and use it to fund quicker growth. It's a slow process if you can't afford to pay for help (content writers, virtual assistants, web design, etc.).

Definitely stay involved. Check out the Digital Strategy Crash Course too and see what you can find there. We're here to help anyone willing to contribute.
 
Ryuzaki said:
We're here for any discussion you want to have! Glad to have you on-board. Fulfillment by Amazon seems like an exciting journey. We have some people here doing that that are showing incredible results. I've got a few products related to my main project that I could definitely do FBA for. So many ideas, so little time!

If you're okay with your day job, I'd hang on to it for a while and get a huge savings buffer (you never know what may happen with your projects), and then I'd hang on a little longer and use it to fund quicker growth. It's a slow process if you can't afford to pay for help (content writers, virtual assistants, web design, etc.).

Definitely stay involved. Check out the Digital Strategy Crash Course too and see what you can find there. We're here to help anyone willing to contribute.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply, I will definitely check out the digital strategy crash course (I had a quick scan through and it looks really good).

I've actually stopped doing FBA now and I'd like to concentrate on creating niche / authority sites and monetising them. FBA was awesome and I made some great friends and decent money doing it, but after a giving it a good go I wasn't really enjoying it anymore and I was looking at investing a lot more money to scale it up so I decided to go with my gut feeling and pull out and take my money before I started hating it. It has taught me so much though and I'll never forget my first sale, and the first time I logged in to my account to find I'd had a massive rush on a particular product. It's got me addicted to online income!

Yes, I think it's good advice and I will be definitely keeping my day job so I can mitigate the risk of it all. I'm really excited to start, I'm confident with web development, the writing and running the business but I've zero experience with SEO, marketing and monetisation of these websites, although I can't wait to learn. I have a bit of money from my previous business but I know from experience that it's easy to try and throw money at a problem, I want to take the time and learn everything from the ground up and hopefully with people's help and a lot of hard work become good and achieve my goal. Also I Forgot to mention before that I'm based in the UK.
 
Hi all,

Longtime site builder here. I started off building websites for clients - self taught. I made my first successful affiliate site around 2009. I downloaded the clickbank feed, used it to write semi auto reviews. Worked amazingly and for around 4 years that, combined with blog network spamming, made for a very successful number of sites.

Once all the Google changes hit though - penguin, panda and the like - that sort of site never really did so well again. I went back to doing primarily client work and nowadays my focus is on running more of a general marketing agency.

However, I still have a ton of sites hanging around, a couple of ebooks, scripts, scrapers, hosting accounts etc

I'd like to connect with people on here and get some advice on how to wind down the empire :-)
 
I Loved Thailand, such nice people and I don't think I had one bad meal in whole time I was there. The food was unbelievably good.
 
Welcome aboard. The client hustle, as much as I dislike doing it, is well worth the money because you see a direct return on your efforts and time, where as SEO is a complete gamble on ROI. I'd definitely keep doing that.

You're looking to get out of the game altogether? In that case, I'd take a look at all of my assets and see what they're worth based on earnings and/or potential earnings and start shopping them around. If your e-books are any good, someone in the niche might purchase the right to sell them or use them as list magnets. The scripts and scrapers are going to be more niche-oriented I bet and harder to offload. Hosting accounts you can just cancel and domains can expire.

But yeah, so much has changed since 2009. Google has evolved tremendously. All of the old methods either flat out don't work or only work for a very short period of time. If you want to keep a foot in this world, I'd suggest starting a "real site" in the sense that it's branded and exists to serve the users. Design it well, make a great user experience, make it fast, optimize every post, build some safe links here and there but mainly do legitimate marketing and let the links roll in.

The best time to start a site like this would have been years, but that doesn't mean you can't buy an established site and give it a face lift and keep it going. The future of SEO is will have very few of the old tricks associated with it. The industry is being forced to mature as Google gets their algorithm together more and more.

The method of affiliate flogs and all that can still work if you can fund the PPC campaigns. People are still cleaning up with diet offers and all of that, but a lot of that is becoming about connections, passing FTC regulations, and funding campaigns and baby sitting them all day, and pivoting every time a copy cat steals your lander and campaigns.

Anyways, there's still money in these hills, definitely with client projects, and still with your own projects. The game has just changed so much.

Another idea for sites you have around, if they're powerful to any degree (they're definitely aged) is to add a /guest-post/ page so you can be found in the SERPs and sell "guest posts" for as long as it lasts. That could be easy and honest money, since everyone knows whats up with paid links these days on sites with those searchable foot prints.
 
Hi Ryuzaki,

Thanks for the long and considered response!

Yeah, the more I think about it the more I'd like to just get out of the game. The clickbank sites are, somewhat amazingly, still ticking along but the headspace they take up I don't think is worth it. I'll take your advice, compile a list of them and what they're earning and see if anyone is interested in taking them over.

Interesting your thoughts on the "real site". I did, somewhat accidentally, pursue that option. A couple of years ago I setup a site and got a VA involved in creating weekly content. Other projects took over (as mentioned) but I left that one running with the VA and she's been creating steady content now for it for ages - along with YouTube videos. Not a single attempt made at getting a backlink! It's been very interesting to see the Google love for it grow gradually - very gradually!

U8VDT12.png


Not sure I would have the patience to use that technique normally!

I actually have listed that one on Flippa but as I haven't really made much of an attempt to monetise it, I doubt I'll make back what I spent on content with the VA. I do like the idea of the "Guest Posts" page - a nice monetisation technique.

Thanks again - I'll be back to see if anyone wants to buy my sites! :-)
 
andreint said:
shoot over the details of those sites you'd like to sell (via DM) and I'll take a look.
Click to expand...

Sure, will do ... just need to build up my DMing privileges first :smile:

I considered doing one of those adult colouring books too! Looked really fun to put together and quite easy to publish on CreateSpace to get a physical copy.

I also think childrens' colouring books could work too if you can get the right search terms ... you'll need to be a bit creative ... but I think something like "Fireman Colouring Book" could work and show for searches on "Fireman Sam colouring book" and the like
 
Update:

Rank and Rent

So far, my rank and rent site is the most lucrative, but we'll see how long that lasts. For December, it will earn around $1350. All going well in January this will be closer to $2000 with 4 businesses overall sharing different sections of the site. I have a suspicion that one will pull out though.

It's clear to me that generating leads for other businesses is not as easy as it seems. I can't guarantee leads, some leads will be timewasters, some businesses have terrible sales follow up, etc. Long term I do believe these businesses will get good value out of the agreement, but not all business owners understand that.

I can see that these types of sites can be very easy to maintain but in order to pull that off I'm thinking the value proposition needs to be so good the business can't say no. That may mean keeping "rental" prices the same and growing the site/number of leads, or dropping my price.

Affiliate Site #1

See this thread

Affiliate Site #2

I trialled some writing services for this site as I want to grow the amount of content on it quickly. I couldn't find any agencies that could manage it (it's technical content, you need to know it).

I've now found a writer who will do it for 5c per word. I'm working on getting them into an SEO/internet article format, and they're getting close.

Black Friday/Cyber Monday saw this site earn around $100 in commissions. It's a long way from where I want it to be, but is definitely some promise in the niche. Rankings are all over the place (seems to be the norm for many people right now), but the site is about to hit around 2000 users per month.

I think this website is going to be in the red for another year or so, but when it takes off it will be amazing. The market is huge and few people are building affiliate sites on this topic, probably because it's difficult to write on, and there are few affiliate programs.

My vague plan is to turn it into a dropshipping site once it's very established, or contact vendors to see if they'll setup affiliate programs for me.

Right now, all of the articles that we're writing are "best X for Y". I don't know if Google will hate on me for this. I'll be creating a user generated content form to encourage people to share their content as a different post type, but mingling that on the home page with the money content.

If they share their specs, I'll try and set up a system where we write 250 words or so talking about their setup, so it's almost like a featured editorial. Theory being this will help to get social shares as in my experience people are very proud of their shit.

How successful this will be I'm not sure.

Overall this site is one I'd like to get on autopilot ASAP. If I can get regular content posted, I'll ignore it then double back in a year's time.

Affiliate Site #3

A deal came up to buy a site that had just been hit by the August Google updates. I made a low offer as it was really uncertain what the future holds for this site, and as it turns out that was a good decision.

It's not earning much, but right now is about $400 a month when I'm ignoring it.

There's a lot wrong with it - which to me is promising. While in a completely different niche to Affiliate Site #1, it's monetized in the same way and gets traffic in the same way. My plan is to use the exact same theme layout/structure/system to manage it, just the branding will be different.

Conundrums

Right now I'm torn. Affiliate Sites #1 and #3 probably should be my focus, but I can't help and feel the Rank and Rent style of business may be a better model/easier to scale.

I am ready to make this (websites I own/operate) my sole income source, but don't really know which path to take yet.

I think I've also been thinking too small. More, smaller websites seems easier/faster than fewer, high earning sites. But from a maintenance point of view, I know 1-3 sites all earning a lot is much easier than 20+!

There is still a lot to work out, but I am making (slow) progress.
 
Hi!

I'm Paul, an Australian developer/producer based in Tokyo.

I wear a bunch of different hats (analysis, development, research, musician etc) and I've had a little success with some niche product development. I understand some elements of search marketing but I really want to understand more to help me spin up some other niche ideas. I've been doing some courses and came across this site while doing some research and was intrigued by some of the stuff I read so it was an insta join. Reading about this was funny: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-loopholes/278093/ (which I searched for after reading about it here: https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/spinning-unique-content.4058/post-41352 )

Looking forward to learning a lot, and hopefully helping out where I can.

Cheers, and Blueskies!
 
Last edited:
Welcome aboard. You were talking about taking some courses. Have you seen our Digital Strategy Crash Course? If not, you'll find a lot in there that you can apply, especially related to but not limited to SEO and search marketing. Glad to have you around and hope to see you posting frequently!
 
Hey Ryuzaki,

Thanks! I did come across the Crash Course while browsing through, and just started in on it.

It looks great, thanks to all for the hard work on that.
 
Hello everyone,

I'm n00b.

I actually found this place in August and spent maybe 3-4 days reading the Digital Strategy Crash Course but I didn't do anything cos I had just started a new job as a security guard.

As of right now I've zero income from the internet. I've made some money online over the last 10 years lol... maybe around $2500 to $3000. But have spent around $10k buying websites, domains and courses. So you can say I'm shit. :smile:

My guess is I'm the odd one out here being already in my 40s, yeah. I came from a poor family and have never even touched a computer until I was in my 20s. That was when I bought my first pc to play Championship Manager 3. I am computer illiterate and still type with one finger and eyes staring at the keyboard.

I'm now back to start and complete the Digital Strategy Crash Course this time around.

I'm in a very bad spot now but I'm sure you have no interest in reading about how tragic my life is and it would make this post a total troll one. Thanks for reading.

Specials thanks to everyone that has made this place such a wonderful resource, I'm very grateful. Cheers.
 
Welcome mate, I very much remember Championship Manager 3, it was all my friends and I could talk about the first year in high school (that and girls).

I was also in a very bad spot when I found BuSo, financially, health wise, but now things are looking up for me. You can read my reporting in the Laboratory section.

I can vouch for the Digital Strategy Crash Course.
 
bernard said:
I was also in a very bad spot when I found BuSo, financially, health wise, but now things are looking up for me. You can read my reporting in the Laboratory section.

I can vouch for the Digital Strategy Crash Course.
Click to expand...

Happy for you. Thank you.

ps yeah spent much of my life being "Manager" :D
 
Hi all, just came across this forum today and can't believe I didn't find it sooner.

I have been in affiliate marketing for over almost 2 years, full time for about 3 months. Currently travelling through Europe and at the same time trying to get my online businesses to a level where they can fully support me by the time I return home at the end of next year.

Looking forward to learning from and contributing to this community!

Also, I'm going to check out the Digital Strategy Crash Course and I'm sure fill in many gaps in my knowledge. Maybe I'll report back with my key takeaways
 
Welcome aboard bro, this is a great place, if not so active always (busy people!).

Where are you travelling in Europe?
 
Thanks bernard. Currently in Sicily, off to Spain at the end of January.
 
That's nice, how's the weather at this time of year in Sicily?
 
Not too bad as it's pretty far south, highs of around 17c at the moment
 
How are you?

My name is Jordan... I have been doing various things online over the past 6 years in the hopes of making money. Usually I have done methods that lean more towards grayhat which means I make a decent sum of cash quickly, but then the method dies off.

Lately I have been taking a more slow approach based around building blogs and email lists in niches that I am passionate about in the hopes that I can make it a more long term thing. The fast money is fun, but it is not really sustainable.

I found this site on a reddit r/juststart thread and figured I would join up. Always good to network with other like minded people!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back