30 Day Productivity Challenge

Day 19
9 May 2015

I've done 6 SERP reviews and planned 6 link building campaigns. Good news: I'm better off than I thought. Yeah! Bad news? It'll take more than tomorrow to do the rest. It'll take all the way until Wednesday at this rate. Who cares, I'll do it.

Work wise, its nice having the house to myself.
 
Day 20
10 May 2015

I spent awhile writing an email to my employee. She's learning link building and doing buzz stream.

Day 21
11 May 2015

I'm 1/2 through the SERPs and am finding the same thing: Sites are ranking by DA, relevancy, and on-page SEO. I'm gonna save myself a few days of work by just focusing on finding a high PR domain 6+. Fuck making tons of links when you can just buy it.
 
Talk about the biggest BS day ever.

I was going through my SERP inventory and found a few competitors who just purchased high PR domains and leveraged the DA to rank. Fuck it, I'm joining them. I made a few bids on auction and I might win at least 1 of them. Its a PR6 but DA 30-40 (didn't see the DA when I made the bid since I used ahrefs which reported DR 50). $455 which is a big high for the DA IMO.

I really have no idea what the real value of a domain is since its my first time buying! haha. It will surely save me man hours building the PR though.

What else...

OH!

I got into an argument with security at my apartment. The manager (security's boss's boss) got mad at me since he's on a power trip and shut off my water. I can't get water until tomorrow morning since only the manager has the keys to the water riser's lock -_-. I called my owner and he did some calling and found out this manager's done it to other people too so we're all confronting him tomorrow, with an attorney, and on camera. Fuck this dude.

I've been waking up at 6:30 or 7 for the past 2 weeks. Now, I'm waking up at 10 and like it a lot better. First off, there's no post-lunch 70IQ period, Yeah! Maybe I'm just a night owl.

There is a problem with a 10am wake time: you just don't feel like a stud. Like, its too relaxed. Especially when I lay on the couch to work. I think I wasted a few hours just... doing nothing today.

Ok, back to planning the week hour by hour but, this time, with an 10am wake time.

C ya buso
 
Hate to be the mother fucker that comes and comments on the exterior details of your thread, but shit....

I've found wake up when you want. If you wake up dragging ass, not great. Wake up with a snap and an immediate hunger to go and you'll get it that day.
 
day 22
12 May 2015

@animalstyle Yeah, you're right, I'll keep this thread on topic.

Today I woke up to find out I won the auction. The metrics could be better but the name is *perfect*. With such a legitimate brand, getting links will be much easier.

Sat down and worked on the theme. That's about it.
 
day 23

The majority of the day was spent on that other pursuit.

I sat down and did some theme work on the new site. That's about it.

A lot of writing has came back from the writers, so I'll have to sit down and get back to work.

Waking up at 10 and working on the couch is just *too* relaxed. I'm all about being relaxed but, fuck man, you don't want to put extra effort when your day's about relaxing?

I'm waking up at 8 tomorrow. Hopefully that's the right amount of earliness to get the work day going while having the right amount of rest to avoid the PM drowsiness.

I also realize I have a bad habit of making a list of to-do items, sitting down to do it, then changing directions once half through. I rationalize it because I found out new things once I'm half through the list.

Yeah, that has to end. All that does is result in a cycle of half done items.

If I do something and it seems like its going bad or it'll be better to change it some way, who cares, I'm gonna finish it then decide once its all finished.
 
@Kevin meat and veggies. Sometimes rice. It might just be that I'm a night owl.

Day 24
14 May 2015

I read @built's whole thread. I realized here's where I fucked up: I set no goal for this 30 day challenge. All I said was I wasn't gonna be a slob anymore but WHY? for what purpose?

I'm gonna finish the rest of this 30dc and do round2, with better goals.

As for today, I finished uploaded content to 1 site (~30 pages), built some links to it, and sent out some orders.

My girlfriend and her friends will be back tomorrow so the morning will be spent cleaning the house (lol) and at noon they'll arrive. She hates it when I work when we're together so it'll be a few days off for me.

Compared to Built's thread, my thread lacks his drive. Probably because I've made money before and feel "full." Plus I know that spending 100% on work for a few years will result in you having a stack of cash but yet being totally alienated... ok that just happened to me when I locked myself in my apartment for 2 years working online and only seeing other humans at the grocery store. haha. I can work hard now :wink:
 
Philip J. Fry said:
because I've made money before and feel "full."
Click to expand...

That needs changing. Dig deeper, find a reason. Find a purpose. Clocks ticking.

16-life-lessons-from-steve-jobs-very-inspirational-quotes-16-638.jpg
 
Philip J. Fry said:
@Kevin meat and veggies. Sometimes rice. It might just be that I'm a night owl.
Click to expand...

Test this - I've found that if I have any quantity of carbs that are both simple and over 50g for lunch, I'm fucked from 1-2pm. So I started to fast through the first part of the day and then usually combine that with a workout into lunch so my glycogen stores are dwindling, which means my blood sugar is a lot more regulated, even if I do nom on a carb-heavy meal.
 
Day 27
17 May 2015

Found my motivation again.

I have 3 weeks to finish 4 sites and develop 1 site. THen I have a week off. Followed by a move from SE Asia to Europe.

This week, I'll finished the legal site, finish PC site, and develop the news site.

Cool news: legal site went from #80 to #60
 
Day 28
18 May 2015

Today was a killer. Merged 2 wordpress sites into 1, preserving silos. Finished the site's development. That took 2/3rd of the day. Then I finished up some orders and read all the traffic leak threads.

Stuff I learned:
  • Make 2 FB accounts, one for your brand and one for Entertainment. Siphon the entertainment followers to your brand.
  • Traffic Leaking is basically getting an emotional reaction out of the community and then directing the to your site. Or providing a top 10 list with one of your content in the top 10. The former is better.
  • Social traffic helps boost a site's earnings, FAST. Thats what I got from this reply https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/the-social-media-beast.410/#post-3724
  • Its better to do it and have it "wrong" than sit there perfecting it and never releasing it. Seriously, I had "release the site" on my to do for 6 months. First it was supposed to be made into 40 small sites, than 2 big sites, now, in 1 day, I just made it into 1 site and now its live. THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED 6 MONTHS AGO.
  • The site has a lot of small bugs, errors, and annoyances that I dislike but WHO CARES I can fix that once its making money. For now, we still gotta get the ball rolling.
 
Philip J. Fry said:
Traffic Leaking is basically getting an emotional reaction out of the community and then directing the to your site. Or providing a top 10 list with one of your content in the top 10. The former is better.
Click to expand...

There might be a bit more to it than this...

There is reverse guest-posting where you ask someone to post content on your site and then they turn around and promote the content on your site to their whole audience, validating them as an authority as well as exposing your brand to their whole audience. TL doesn't happen just on platforms but also within audiences as well.

You can offer a great deal to the owner and/or his audience of a community that goes out only through email - again exposing yourself to their complete audience. Something lucrative like offering 100% commission to the owner for everyone that signs up - BAM, who wouldn't jump on that? Everyone would, but now the people that sign-up you can up-sell without needing to give the owner anything cause they are now in your database and you've successfully extracted the most lucrative portion of his audience while disregarding the non-responsive individuals.

In a one sentence nutshell traffic leaking is finding existing traffic/customer/visitors in one area and figuring out how to get some of that traffic to your site or offer. Doing top 10 lists or emotional content is one of the pure raw ways, but there are more subtle ways to still accomplish the same thing - which most of the time result in longer term marketing campaigns (guerilla or direct).
 
Day 29
19 May 2015

You can never have it all, can you?

Last night, I couldn't fall asleep at all. This morning, I slept past both alarms. I rolled out of bed at 9:30am -_-. I ate an early lunch at 10 and, just my day, it made me feel sick to my stomach. I tried to get some work done but had no motivation. By 2, I felt fine again.

It took me longer than I expected to set the site up but, hey, its up now.

I have 21 articles to go through, edit, add affiliate links, photos, tables, and all that good stuff. I've finished 1 1/2.

The writer who scammed me really did sneak in a lot of BS writing. I'm having to rewrite about half of these articles >_< Ahh you live and you learn, huh?

It does take forever to do this but, hey, this is where you make your money.

@CCarter, thanks dude. That cleared up a lot of misconceptions I had about traffic leaks.

I have another 3 days to finish this site and the two smaller sites. I *have to* finish the remaining 18 1/2 articles tomorrow. God, here comes a miracle.
 
Day 30
20 May 2015

End of the 30 day challenge!

Today, I got shit loads done. I finished the big site's major work: uploaded content, added affiliate links, added pics. That took ages. Some content was shitty and I was thinking about ordering some from @stackcash, then I took a nap and said, fuck it, I'm just gonna go with the shitty content for now. I've been stalling on this for months. If it ranks and the conversion rate sucks, I'll get new content. For now, we're going forward.

second site's content and affiliate links and photos were done too!

So, its Wednesday and I'm on track to finish the week on time.

Here's what I found out from these 30 days:
-Its better to just DO IT, have it done, and move forward than sit and plan. Planning is the worse thing you can do. It usually leads to more planning, which is more time away from your goal. Take action now!
-Fuck this waking up early shit. I get the most work done after 5pm and up until the wee hours of the morning. Fuck what productivity gurus say, I couldn't care less about capturing my mornings. 20/80 rule baby, I'm gonna maximize that 20% time when I get mad shit done.

Tomorrow, I'm gonna spend the whole day link building for the 2nd site. I also gotta write 1 article for the first site. Then, for Friday, I'm gonna practice Traffic Leaks on the 3rd site!!! so excited.

Next week, I'm gonna Re-up and start round 2 of this 30 day challenge. New goals, new standards for myself, better results! Hooah!
 
Sounds like this was a good learning experience. I'd definitely set goals so you're aiming at something other than some abstract idea about "doing better." You could definitely profit from setting some boundaries and expectations around your girlfriend.

"she gets mad if I work when she's around." Then she doesn't need to come around while you're working. You don't show up to her job during her work hours, I'm sure, nor nag about it. Some GF's tend to want mutually exclusive things, such as you having a ton of money and time to blow on her without having earned it.

Goals and Boundaries = a more productive round 2
 
Day 31
21 May 2015

@nevefrugal's thread and blog's inspiring.

Its Thursday and I'm ahead for the week! Yeah! Tomorrow will be pure traffic leaking.

I've never used Reddit and, after studying metareddit, I think its 80% porn. haha. Seriously, The first idea I had for traffic leaks was to find some girls, have them post nudes on reddits, build a following, and collect that BitCoin $$$$. ePimping. hahaha

Tomorrow I'm:
-building a list of relevant communities to traffic leak, then rating them upon reach, activity, and relevancy to my site
-register accounts, make intro posts, and pick the ones I'll be targeting first.

The site I'm TL first is a free law resource I made. Its totally giving value so it should be easy to TL. Its also $5 CPC!

There's so many opportunities with this site, its awesome.

NeverFrugal's footprint technique got me thinking. I'm gonna do some testing tomorrow and see if my idea's feasible.

Cool updates:
-Law site gets 100 visitors/week right now. Awesome.
 
Day 32
22 May 2015

Its 6:30. Girlfriend's coming over any minute. She's only here on the weekends so weekends are us time.

This week's a good week. The minimum viable product for all 3 site's done. I sat down and reconned a lot of forums and reddits. Holy shit, my topic and these reddits were made in heaven. I thought this site would just get Google traffic but, fuck man, these forums have 1,000 users/day logging in! I marked 50 forums and am gonna write guides for all of them.

Basically, the site's a "how to avoid speeding tickets" or something similar legal resource. These forums are all car forums and I'm gonna write articles about "How to behave when you're pulled over" or "Maintain these things or else a cop's gonna pull you over!" or "My friend got ticketed with _____ for ______" (cop hate bait). This shit's golden. Forum traffic > G traffic for this niche.
 
Haha I think I just found one of your forum accounts on a forum which I was planning to traffic leak aswell.

Name and Image similar like on BUSO, on a german forum (bioXXXXXXX.de), is that you?
 
@Saiten, nein, dass ist nicht mich.

Friday the 19th of June is the end of the next 30 days. Man. I need cash.

Last month, I took in $2,870 in sales. Better than the $1,500 I estimated but below the $4,000 I was planning for.

Problem: I don't think I can get any more sales 0.0. Like, I've exhausted my list and exhausted the marketplace.

The new marketplace I wanted to enter didn't bite for this offer so I'll have to find a way to make money this month.

Ideas:
-create a new product and test it on the market place (DONE!)
-do what @NeverFrugal did except with a few tweaks

On top of that, I gotta work on my sites!
-Law site's done. Did 5-10 traffic leaks for it today. I realized I fucked up: there's no email capture for the site. The site's only CTA is the AdSense block but an opt-in forum would do wonders. I probably can sell the leads to local businesses. Durr. Added that to the to-do list.
-Toy site needs to be completed. That'll take a day.
-Weapons site needs to be completed. That'll take another day.
-Both site needs link building. VA's handling that, with my instructions.

I also realized that making SEO goals is different than sales goals. I'm gonna use the analyze-plan link building-execute link building-wait model on these sites. Work on the 4 now, wait 2 months, see results, plan more work. The big site will take more work to finish a link building round, but I'm gonna do the same thing there.

I'm moving from SE Asia to Europe on the 14th. I also have a vacation from the 7th to the 10th next month. No biggie, just that I need to prep work for my VA before hand to make sure she can hit her 40 hours/week.

I don't think the timezone stuff would affect my productivity since I'm going West.

So, my goal for these next 30 days are:
-$4,000 in sales. I did $2,870 last month. Close but no cigar.
-Finish site building, outreach, link building, and everything for the 4 small sites so they are ready for 2 months of aging/marinating/tenderizing. (2 sites of the 4 are done).

24 May 2015
-Catch up on orders, read all of traffic leaks. Researched my niche. Sidenote: I found tons of car forums who have official Insurance sponsors. Talk about awesome partnership. I also found a car forum where a member made his own photo uploading site. You can go there and see photos of only that kind of car as well as upload your own photos. Awesome traffic leak!
25 May 2015
-Did 5-10 traffic leaks on forums. Wrote how to articles.
-Launched new product.
-Sent out some development work to my VA.
-Wrote this thread + planned the next 30 days.

For this week, my goals are:
-Compile a list of 100 companies and call them. My intent is to close a web development contract on the phone for $xxx. That's to get them in the door. I want to upsell with SEO after they've seen my work. Min's $200.
-Leak law site to forums. DONE!
-Make 30 day goal. DONE!
-Finish toy site
-Traffic Leak to YT vids
-Do reverse guest posts for law site, mostly for the link.

Yeah!
 
Day 36
26 May 2015

New product sold $2,900 so far. Old product got a boost and sold $800 so far.

I haven't received the checks for the $2,900 so its not official but I've received the $800.

Now, I have to fulfill and over deliver these orders.

Getting that loyal client Yo.

Today, I... talked to a client, did some research, and did some more research.

WOW, time flew by, like, too fast.

It was my bad. I was steered off track by the new sales.

Be impartial to good news or bad news. Stay on course.

Time for sleep. Tomorrow, I'm touching bases with these clients, finishing the adult toy site and finishing the tool site (mostly write instruction to VA).

Yeah, the sales made me lost my hussle. It was like "yeah! money came in! I can relax now until the next bill comes in." HOly shit I was retarded. I'm still nowhere near the $9,000/month in earnings for my site nor am I anywhere near the $4,000/month in product sales (May's hovering a little below $4,000 but I haven't completed the orders yet, who knows, they might want a refund!).

NO time to relax.

I recognize my weakness, I'm motivated by pain. I'd do anything to prevent something but, when I've made it and there's no calamity to prevent, its easy for me to lose my determination!

That was evident today as well as the past 6 months and every other time I've made money! WTF have I been doing?!

Now I know.

Time to work, because I like to.
 
Day 37
27 May 2015

I'm 1/2 way through the second product's orders. 1/2 way through the first product's orders.

I'm going to have to get my VA prep work for me to meet these deadlines. She's working 40 hours/week right now so I'll have to hire a short time VA to do low priority tasks.

Actually, fuck that.

I've had enough hiring nightmares.

I'm assigning these high priority tasks to my current VA and down shifting the other things. That'll be good for the week I'm on vacation for 4 days as well as when I move to the EU (I'm expecting to be less efficient there during the first two weeks). It'll give her stuff to work on.

I'm debating delaying cold calling the weebly owners or just scraping WHOIS data and sending out a mass mailing. Can't decide. Either way, I'll have to hire someone to make the sites. Haha what if I send out a mass mail and have the customers mail back an order form and check, sorta like 1991? funniest way to sell web design ever.

ah fuck, its 3am and I'm talking to myself in front of the computer. TIme for bed!

Night!
 
Day 38
28 May 2015

-_- I woke up with an email from my VA saying the site's offline.

I poked around and thought it was a broken WP plugin. Opened a ticket with A2Hosting and they replied that the server was hacked. Yup, all sites on that shared hosting was compromised... and they want me to debug it -_- fuck them.

Last time I'm using A2Hosting.

I have a knownhost VPS and exporting cPanel from A2 to KnownHost and having KnownHost debug it for me! haha

Also, it took A2 8 hours to reply -_- fuckers.
 
Day 39
29 May 2015

Ahh my plan to have KnownHost fix the hack for me failed so I had to fix it myself :( Boo Hoo.

The mother fucker hacker was clever, he injected code into the DB that made edits to the index.php files on WP so I had to export WP as an XML, reinstall and import the XML, and rebuild the themes all over again -_-

To safeguard against whatever happened, I'm placing all WP installs on its own cPanel account.

Plus, I'm doing a CCarter and removing all plugins except ones I can't live without.

**sigh** that stalled work for 2 days, as well as set me back a few days since I have to re-do the site setups.

Oh well, lesson learned.

I also sent work to my VA, took 2 hours to write the operation order. Then, it took me about 2 hours to finish up some orders.

Let me see what this week's goals are again...

For this week, my goals are:
-Compile a list of 100 companies and call them. My intent is to close a web development contract on the phone for $xxx. That's to get them in the door. I want to upsell with SEO after they've seen my work. Min's $200. **cancelled. new product's sales are killing it. No time for a new biz.
-Leak law site to forums. DONE!
-Make 30 day goal. DONE!
-Finish toy site **still gotta do this... fuck that hacker.
-Traffic Leak to YT vids **still gotta do this. Might only be 20 vids that have high traffic on YT so I'll do it tomorrow
-Do reverse guest posts for law site, mostly for the link. **FUCK! I totally forgot about this! Damn, the law site's not even properly done now since the hacker fucked everything up. I gotta Big Brand the site all over again to do this. Ughhh. I'm gonna shelf this for later.

Hmmm... looks like I'm on track for this week besides the guest post thing. I gotta spend time fixing the sites some more but I can do that in an afternoon - I remember what I struggled through the other weeks -_-

Night.
 
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