When is it time to dive in head first?

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Like I said in my intro... I'm making a buck or two every day from ad clicks, and getting actual commissions on affiliate sales every week or so... If I can get 10x the traffic, is it safe to assume that I'll be making 10x as much? Realistically I need to make about 100x as much as I am right now to really justify this as a career. I'm still young.. just out of highschool.. so I've got plenty of time to build.

My heart is telling me to just GO FOR IT and see what happens. If I fall on my face then so be it, I can always go back to college later.

I'm so close to walking downstairs, telling my parents I've cashed in my savings account for education and that I'm going to use it to support myself and to invest into my website.

I see a lot of people saying "Guaranteed #1 google rankings for $297" selling links and stuff. So If I bought like 10 of those for my blog... I could rank number 1 for a lot of different keywords and get a lot more traffic. I guesstimate that I could earn back that $3000 investment in a few months but it seems too good to be true.

What's my next move, Builders...?
 
Shelsa, sounds like you're doing okay, and it sounds like you've been doing it the RIGHT way. Buying those link packages that promise you the moon are likely to make you very sad. They might have some good benefits in the present but they are likely to bite you in the butt later. Google is really attacking that kind of activity these days.

If you DO want to try something like that, just know the risks up front and go for one package instead of 10 of them at once. Always test the waters! Do lots of background checks on these sellers if you can. Talk to other people who've tried them. There's so much B.S. in the online SEO community. Be careful.

Congrats on your success so far!
 
I strongly advise against buying those types of link packages. Maybe start a new site and use them to experiment, but I definitely wouldn't point those at my main domain if I only had one site and I was really counting on scaling it.

It might POP for a few weeks, but then it could very likely start to fizzle away.
 
It might POP for a few weeks, but then it could very likely start to fizzle away.

Not to mention the millions of PBN's that just got deindexed and sites that got penalized for using them! Any other huge link package is going to be even worse spam.
 
Why would someone that can guarantee #1 for only $297 - sell that instead of making bank dominating any niche they want?

I'm not sure how you are getting traffic now, but you might want to figure out who your target audience is, what websites they visit and see if you can "traffic leak" that traffic to your own website. Whether it be slickly placing your link or engaging in the conversation. But overall if you think of the whole internet as a traffic source instead of just Google, everything opens up to you.

I wouldn't buy any packages that guarantee you top rankings, and definitely don't point all of them to your blog without knowing what links they consist of. Try to find new traffic sources - ones where your audience is and then study them. See how people are interacting there to drive traffic to their own website, then jump on after studying them for a week or two and engage and leak that traffic to your own site.
 
Yea like everyone said... avoid that stuff, you're better off doing things slow and steady in my opinion, at least unless you really know what you're doing (no offense, you've done great so far.)

Will I toss some bulk links on a new project to get it rollin asap? Sure. Will I get upset when it falls into obscurity a month or two later? Nah, it's all part of the game.
 
Unfortunately, learning how to scale and grow things usually requires some form of risk to be taken. And you're going to get negative consequences too. If you want to test and learn, do this on projects that are designed for that purpose so you don't mess up your good sites. You have to take risk, but apply it in a confined space so if it explodes everything else is safe but your time and money. Don't lose an asset over an experiment when you can just experiment on something else.
 
CCarter gave you a great advise.
Traffic is all around you, think the whole Internet.
You could start finding some forums in your niche, become a contributor and have some trust and later drop your link/banner in signature.
 
ShelsaBlogger, ask yourself this. What happens if that one site tanks tomorrow? I've known people before that have supported their entire family, although in a sparse manner, off of a SINGLE affiliate blog site. Talk about rolling the dice. That's like playing with fire.

I'm reminded of a quote from Warren Buffet, "Never depend on single income. Make investment to create a second source."

Look at your site as an investment with which you are looking to build a second source of income, while simultaneously working (education) towards a primary source of income. Maybe, at some point in the future you may have experimented and built the site or other sites to a stable and profitable position of generating a healthy amount of income, however transitioning into that becoming your single source of income is a very risky proposition that demands significantly greater thought and consideration. My recommendation would be to stay in school and keep building this on the side. You really have nothing to lose from staying in college while doing this, but potentially a lot to gain from doing so. Gain the knowledge and skills from school so that you can hopefully achieve a stable and healthy primary source of income.
 
Go to college while you still can without sacrificing family life or having to attend night school.

You can always work on seo in your spare time while making college your primary focus. College isn't just about the education but the experience.
 
Go to college, do IM in your spare time. If IM takes off you can always leave college to pursue your business. It will be a lot easier for you to attend now and leave then to not start at all and try to attend in a few years.
 
Your on the right track just keep in mind that failure is inevitable.
The secret to life & business is learning to deal with failure in a productive manner.
 
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