Introductions Thread

Thanks Ryuzaki
When adwords first started it was like the first year of FB ads for those few early adopters hitting it hard (it didn't take part).
The good thing was that Adwords lasted a few years, eventually google found a way to make sure they got their bigger cut as did FB.
Instagram seems to be the new trend but that ship may have also sailed.
 
Hello everyone,

My name is David, I'm 25 and I'm from Romania. Let me tell you my story of how I got into Internet Marketing. 2 years ago I was introduced to freelancing by a freelancer friend. After exactly 6 months of extra grinding when I got home from my 9 to 5 at a gas station, I was able to go full time as a virtual assistant.

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This is a picture with me in the middle and my bosses before I left. It was at the end of August that year.

I had two clients at the time, one was a Local SEO from the US and the other was building affiliates sites and he was from the UK. As a matter of fact, the latter recommended me this forum.

I managed to gather some money and I moved to another town, something that I really wanted to do for a while.

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That's almost $1.000 there which was enough for me to do that.

Sorry for the low quality pics, I didn't have a good phone at the time.

I was living in a really small one room motel before, the kitchen was a shared kitchen and overall it wasn't that great.

I finally got myself a nice two rooms apartment like I wanted for quite a while.

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This is the living room where I was usually working.

Things have slowly gotten better and better, I had ups and downs but the downs weren't actually downs, they were a part of my growing process. I changed clients due to a lack of synergy, I had moments when I was overburned, things that didn't go as planned but all in all I was definitely learning and getting better, professionally and as an individual.

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Overall I'm doing great. I managed to pack enough value as a professional that I earn the minimum wage in the US, which isn't that great but neither a small feat looking through the lens of my fellow people. I know that with my skills, knowledge and my worth I can find a new client in less than a week. I actually did this a couple of times with ease. By this I mean that I never have worries that I won't be able to find a client, worries that I had in the past and once I actually had to rely on a 9 to 5 again for a couple of months until I got back up.

I'm still doing VA, Admin support and stuff like that but I specialized myself in SEO so I'm a very SEO friendly assistant. It just happened that many of my clients needed or was in SEO. There is always a big need for it and I genuinely like it so I decided to walk this path. I won't call myself an SEO, even if some clients do, I know what I need to achieve in order to allow myself to use that title. Build an affiliate site from 0 that earns at least $1.000 per month. This is what it means for me at least. Be able to rank something on your own and actually make it profitable.

This is also why I'm here, I'm feeling that my days as a freelancer are getting to an end and it is time for me to start doing my own things. I have great plans for that, actionable plans but the one that's most relevant to this discussion is a niche site project that I'm currently undertaking. I decided to start using my account on this forum more actively and tap into the power of communities to ask for guidance and help.

This is my introduction, my motifs and my intentions. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. It is a pleasure to meet you all, I can't wait to get to know you all better and hopefully I can too contribute back to the community sooner or later. I've read the rules but if anyone has any other advice and tips for me about this forum or in general I'll be glad to hear them. Cheers!
 
Hi David, good to see you here. Sounds like you are at the stage that a lot of us have been through when you start to question why you are making money using your skills for other people when you could be doing it for yourself.

Of course, you have to be the right type of person to be happy doing your own thing - but I think if you have the urge to do it, it shows that you are and professionally you will never be happier than when you take that step.
 
ToffeeLa said:
Hi David, good to see you here. Sounds like you are at the stage that a lot of us have been through when you start to question why you are making money using your skills for other people when you could be doing it for yourself.

Of course, you have to be the right type of person to be happy doing your own thing - but I think if you have the urge to do it, it shows that you are and professionally you will never be happier than when you take that step.
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Exactly. To be blunt about it, yes, you're completely right about using my time and skills for me not someone else if I'm capable of doing that. I heard something once "Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs." Thank you for taking the time to write.
 
Welcome to BuSo, David.
In my experience, it's always a good sign when a non-english speaker is fluent in English anyway. The guys who made BaseCamp (the project management software), wrote in their book, Rework, that if they were in doubt who to hire, they always went with the person who wrote better. In their experience, it correlated the strongest with being smart and capable. I recommend that book actually ("ReWork"), I thought it was an excellent book and it is exactly about the kind of thing you do, outsourcing, building a location independent business and all that.
 
Great photos bro! Good luck with your projects and keep hustling. Don't overlook local opportunities - Romanian affiliate/lead gen/ecomm websites. I'm also from Europe and I wish my country was as big as yours.
 
bernard said:
Welcome to BuSo, David.
In my experience, it's always a good sign when a non-english speaker is fluent in English anyway. The guys who made BaseCamp (the project management software), wrote in their book, Rework, that if they were in doubt who to hire, they always went with the person who wrote better. In their experience, it correlated the strongest with being smart and capable. I recommend that book actually ("ReWork"), I thought it was an excellent book and it is exactly about the kind of thing you do, outsourcing, building a location independent business and all that.
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WoW, thank you for the encouraging words man. You really made me curious about that book. It's interesting how the hardcover is cheaper than the Kindle version. I invested time in my typing skills and I pay attention to the format. I also prefer all my books to be written in English, it enriches my vocabulary.

I won't be a hypocrite and admit that I use Grammarly but all in all, yes, I'm confident in my English.

Considering the profession, I saw the way I write as the impressive "handshake" you make when you first greet someone. I also prefer all my books to be in English, this enriches my vocabulary. Once again, thank you for the kudos and for taking the time to write.

Poplanu said:
Great photos bro! Good luck with your projects and keep hustling. Don't overlook local opportunities - Romanian affiliate/lead gen/ecomm websites. I'm also from Europe and I wish my country was as big as yours.
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I never take the country I was born in for granted. I live in a democratic state, there aren't people running in the streets gun blazing, I can get on a plane and pretty much go anywhere in the World and living here is pretty cheap.

Of course, there's some degree of corruption like in any place on this Earth. Some places might be better than this one from some points of view but it definitely doesn't deserve the hatred that it gets from most people that live here.

I believe that if people would resign the victim mentality and get off their butts and do something everybody would be a lot happier.

Thank you for taking the time to write. I appreciate it and wherever you're living look at the bright side, also if you're here you'll most probably earn more and could be living anywhere you want soon.
 
Welcome to BuSo. I used to do some consulting for a company in Bucharest -- so I was there a lot over a year.
 
Welcome, thanks for taking the time to post such a great introduction. Client work is a great asset to have, one that I still haven't let go of even after having been full time for over ten years with my own projects. As your skills and reputation grow you can be far more selective about which clients you take. I only offer high-priced, high-value offerings with unmatched communication. Successful people are happy to pay more to someone who doesn't waste their time or need hand holding. I think you'll do well with both your own projects and continued client work. We're here to help with anything and soak up your knowledge too. In that way, we all win.
 
Ryuzaki said:
Welcome, thanks for taking the time to post such a great introduction. Client work is a great asset to have, one that I still haven't let go of even after having been full time for over ten years with my own projects. As your skills and reputation grow you can be far more selective about which clients you take. I only offer high-priced, high-value offerings with unmatched communication. Successful people are happy to pay more to someone who doesn't waste their time or need hand holding. I think you'll do well with both your own projects and continued client work. We're here to help with anything and soak up your knowledge too. In that way, we all win.
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Thank you for the warm welcoming. Yes, exactly! I want to offer top notch services, overdeliver and exceed expectations. If generally people sell Bronze, Silver and Gold packages, I want to sell Diamond ones. Of course, for the fair price that it deserves.

I find it interesting that you still do client work after such a long time especially when having your own successful projects that I believe they do more than well, you wrote the whole 101 30 days on Affiliate Sites that I read when I first registered this forum. I believe you like client work or at least some part of it if you're still doing it.

Ryuzaki said:
We're here to help with anything and soak up your knowledge too.
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Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.
 
Hi and welcome.
Doing work for a variety of clients is the best learning experience.
It's also a way of keeping an ear to the ground for what's happening in industries other than your own.
I do work for others as well.
 
David Ionesi said:
My name is David, I'm 25 and I'm from Romania.
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Welcome David! Great to see more Europeans here. I'm from the Netherlands myself.

And I have to say: people that talk shit about Eastern Europe are dummies. I went to Poland, for example, and it was one of the most memorable trips I've ever been on. Romania, BTW, is on my bucket list! Can't wait to see it for myself.

David Ionesi said:
I decided to start using my account on this forum more actively and tap into the power of communities to ask for guidance and help.
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Good idea. I definitely recommend starting a journal in the Labs section so you can hold yourself accountable, learn from others and make progress more easily.
 
Hi,
I'm DIZ, a 27year old male with an affinity for SEO. I've been in and out of the web-dev world since I can remember. Have initially started learning HTML when I was 12 and continued on the web-dev path until 10 years ago, have been working as a freelance web designer for 10 years now but I'm kinda bored of doing the same stuff over and over so I quit making websites and started to go into ranking them. And this I like! Haven't been into the SEO world for a while now, almost 5-6 years, back then you would have won the SERPs by spamming GSA links to your website using the keywords you want to rank for and that was that. I've been reading forums for the past days and a lot has changed. Hopefully, I am here to pick up where I left off and help others do the same while I'm at it.
Skills: -html, css, php, javascript
-graphics/logo creation from drawing to animating(Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign)
What now?
I've just launched a few websites in the financial niche and I'm making decent money with just running ads.
I am planning to expand this to EU and maybe even further, in order to do this, I will need to bring my SEO and SEM skills up to date. Currently also experimenting with social media automation like Jarvee. So this is me pretty much. If you have ANY questions at all don't be shy and ask away.
 
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DIZ said:
I've just launched a few websites in the financial niche and I'm making decent money with just running ads.
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Are you running PPC ads since you say that your SEO skills are not up to date?

Finance is one of my interests (both personal and general), but it's too competitive for me at this point with SEO. I've been thinking about PPC though, just yesterday I saw a killer FB ad for eToro that actually got me to click through and check it out.
 
Janiform said:
Romania, BTW, is on my bucket list! Can't wait to see it for myself.
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I recommend you try Sibiu, Brasov, Transylvania generally. The mountains are breathtaking. Also, Constanta (The Black Sea in particularly) and try to visit some popular villages to get a feel for the cultural roots. Just type something like "popular villages in Romania" in Google and pick whatever you like or makes sense to visit. As a general rule, there isn't much to see in the north part.
 
Welcome @DIZ, I earn my income through SEO-driven affiliate marketing and web design projects for clients. I'm starting a new project soon that will still be SEO based but ultimately I'll be able to calculate an exact budget for PPC to get a positive ROI, and I'll go to town buying up traffic.

So many people are moving into SEO due to the seemingly passive traffic you can get, but that traffic-share is getting tinier and tinier and competition is increasing. Definitely do SEO, there's zero reason not to. It's free traffic. But keep those PPC skills going because if you can fund it and optimize the campaigns, you can bypass all of Google's algorithm changes. Of course you'll be dealing with other algorithms but getting converting traffic "now" versus waiting a year for SEO campaigns to kick in is hugely beneficial. Of course you can do "in the trenches" marketing for traffic too.

Anyways, welcome aboard!
 
Poplanu said:
Are you running PPC ads since you say that your SEO skills are not up to date?

Finance is one of my interests (both personal and general), but it's too competitive for me at this point with SEO. I've been thinking about PPC though, just yesterday I saw a killer FB ad for eToro that actually got me to click through and check it out.
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Yes, I'm currently running PPC but there is also a lot of organic traffic potential for SEO in my niche especially in the countries where I target so at the moment I'm losing somewhere ~20-50k search traffic and these would be just exact keyword matches if I start to rank for LSI keywords, long-tail ones and so on in the niche then the potential of this is insane.

Ryuzaki said:
Welcome @DIZ, I earn my income through SEO-driven affiliate marketing and web design projects for clients. I'm starting a new project soon that will still be SEO based but ultimately I'll be able to calculate an exact budget for PPC to get a positive ROI, and I'll go to town buying up traffic.

So many people are moving into SEO due to the seemingly passive traffic you can get, but that traffic-share is getting tinier and tinier and competition is increasing. Definitely do SEO, there's zero reason not to. It's free traffic. But keep those PPC skills going because if you can fund it and optimize the campaigns, you can bypass all of Google's algorithm changes. Of course you'll be dealing with other algorithms but getting converting traffic "now" versus waiting a year for SEO campaigns to kick in is hugely beneficial. Of course you can do "in the trenches" marketing for traffic too.

Anyways, welcome aboard!
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Thank you for the welcome @Ryuzaki. No website should miss out on SEO in my opinion that's just an insane opportunity wasted. I used to love doing SEO and competing, just bought a few expired domains to experiment, see if 301s still work and that kind of stuff. Have been lurking around reading but still have to catch up on so many updates. Anyway, glad to be here and thanks for the warm welcome.
 
Janiform said:
Welcome here and welcome back to SEO!
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Thank you!

Janiform said:
Where are you located? And do you have experience with expanding to EU?
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At the moment I live in the Netherlands since I work as an IT Specialist for some big corp, basically doing my business stuff from here and getting paid for it.
Don't really need any experience for expanding to EU, I guess, my website is just basically and indexer of some services that I affiliated with.

Janiform said:
Same here.
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I worked with promoting forex trades, binary options but never had almost any interest in the niche. I was just doing it for the money since it was paying a lot back then.
 
Hey everyone,

I have found what is easily the best SEO forum on the internet at the moment

A bit about myself, I have been building affiliate sites since 2008 and currently run a few in several niches as well as being in the premium domain name game and working as a manager at one of Australia's best agencies.

I came on here as I will be creating case studies with domains I will be acquiring then attempting to index it, outsource content which then ranks to drive affiliate commissions in the Australian market

Looking forward to becoming a long term member

P.s the Crash Course guide is amazing, particularly the day 14 mental strength section. I can relate on so many levels

Cheers,
 
Welcome supersheek! Are here many affiliate opportunities in Australia? I haven't checked for years but remember there were limited options.
 
jjj_ said:
Welcome supersheek! Are here many affiliate opportunities in Australia? I haven't checked for years but remember there were limited options.
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Hey jjj_

The affiliate opportunities have grown immensely thanks to Amazon Australia opening up its affiliate program and Commission Factory having a huge range of products available to promote

I feel it's only going to grow, there are quite a few associates of mine doing affiliate niches so there is no shortage of talent to take advantage aswell

P.s Moderator: Maybe this thread should be moved to the intro forums
 
Hi there.
The problem with Amazon Au is that there is not much available in terms of product selection.
The other problem is that serps are mainly dominated by .com and US sites.
 
Erayz said:
Hi there.
The problem with Amazon Au is that there is not much available in terms of product selection.
The other problem is that serps are mainly dominated by .com and US sites.
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Yeah I fully agree with that, considering its been around a year and there are only 25 million ppl in Australia vs the US (325 mil) I'm not surprised but if you know what your doing it is possible to rank for some great products.

As for the SERPs being dominated by .com and US sites I say it depends on the niche, quite a few Australian sites and coming up and Google is definitely recognising the importance to rank local content so times are changing
 
I have a habit of my mind jumping all around so hopefully I'm not all over the place.

I started doing affiliate marketing back in 07 or 08. I found out about this website called SourceKey from DatPiff. Found out most of the stuff they put up was copy/paste from IM bloggers. That's when I found out about WickedFire and that changed everything. I networked with a lot of people and really loved everything about marketing, well most of it. After some failed and some successful campaigns I eventually took it serious and registered an LLC for my company.

I never really got into SEO and focused mostly on PPC campaigns. I can get into further details but I'm sure everyone has heard about the same story. I did end up joining IMGrind at one point. I did enjoy doing lead gen and giving customers quality content and emailing new offers/opportunities instead of just selling the lead and be done with it. I also enjoyed this instead of doing some shady bizopp.

The only thing I did that was close to SEO was making blogs on a niche that I actually enjoyed. I remember writing a new blog post every day for like a year. I also developed a video website that was all customized, something similar to worldstar. But I found out it was hard to monetize a site like that.

Where did I fuck up? Well focusing on my company and working long hours I became less and less social and depression hit hard. My friend saw this and he gave me a perc 30 to "help" me get through my depression. By the way, I do not blame him. I made that decision and I could have said no. The worst/best decision I ever made. It was the worst because well I got addicted for 3 years, all my money was spent on 30s, and became even more miserable. The best because after I got clean it was the best feeling in the world. Getting your dopamine back and the pink cloud feeling is one of the best feelings I have ever felt. I became a better person, more out going, and I made so many new friends. Better friends, even. I try to look at it as a blessing in disguise. I just hit 2 years clean a couple months ago and it feels great.


I'm sure there are a lot of things I'm missing like doing mobile offers and what not. But I went on wickedfire and saw that place is no where near the place it used to be. I forget how I found this site but whoever is in charge, thank you. I do remember CCarter and having some chats with him back in the day, glad to see he's still killing it.

I'm looking to get back into running my own company again. I know I have to read up on a lot and have no idea where to start but I'm going to be reading a lot here while putting some stuff into action. I have a pretty good job and I love it but nothing beats the feeling of running your own business and hopefully in the future I can quit my job and focus on my business but that all depends on me. I plan on making a couple blogs again just to do something, anything, to get my feet wet while I read up. I forget a lot of stuff like tracking and which software is better now a days.

I feel like I wrote too much and I'm all over the place. Anyway, any suggestions are great and thanks for making this forum.

Wayne
 
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