Introductions Thread

Thanks for letting me have an account on this forum! I was introduced to Traffic Leaks by Charles Floate and that's how I heard about this forum. I've read some really good stuff on here and decided that it was time to get an account and get involved.

My wife and I own an ecommerce clothing company and have been running it for 17 months. I hope to learn from you guys and contribute what I know as well.

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Welcome Albertt!

I'm new to this forum as well. Sorry to hear about your business failure. Way to get back on the horse. If you don't mind, what do you think you're going to do differently this time around. What did you learn from your past business?

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Hey Denis! The biggest question I have is why did 3k people get on your list? It might be helpful to see what your competitors are doing for email marketing. For my business, I'm on all of my competitors email lists and get to see what they're doing. It's been helpful.
 
Nice, how is that going? Do you have your own products or are you drop shipping other people's stuff or what? In your mind, is it a success yet?
 
Good idea. I'll join their lists.

Based on the comments here I've got a survey going out to my list here to find out more about them and to run some product ideas by them. I've also migrated to Ezoic for ad optimization - very early days here but results looking ok so far.
 
Ryuzaki

been on vacation :smile:

Been online since 2010 but mostly in the offline client space. I dont consider my accomplishments major compared to many. but I have been able to leave the U.S. and after traveling central america and living in flats mingling with the locals..

I settled in Costa Rica.

and here is where I am re building my empire lol :smile:

great little country..
 
After lurking for awhile, I finally decided to register. I found the forum thanks to a friend of mine. He told me there is nothing like this place on the net and BOY was he right. I've never seen a group of such brilliant, interesting, diverse minds just from what I've been able to pick up.

A Bit About Me:

I'm a copywriter but I have a diverse background in everything from coding to sales. I had the blessing of being born to parents that were both creative (artsy) and yet good at technical skills such as engineering. Hence, I have always been oriented toward learning and actually doing.

I was dead broke a year ago after completing school and a few dead-end jobs. I realized I needed a change, and had skill sets that were markedly better than most people.

Through a mix of straight will power, creativity, and on the cliff/off the cuff decisions, I have made it freelancing enough to make more than most of the people I went to school with. My bills aren't very high, and I have a good amount of time and a decent income to work with.

Lately, I have been stagnating and been looking on like "ok, what the fuck do i do now?". So, I joined a gym and started working out, cut out drinking/partying too much and am now looking to dedicate my time and energy to building a real business.

I have had a handful of ideas, have been doing my research, and well, as I make moves to diversify my income figured it'd be good to join this group and put my stupid thoughts out there so better minds can pitch in their two cents.

It's like that book "Rebel Without a Camera" by Robert Rodrigeuz was alluding to, if you want to learn how to build or do something, you can only do so by doing it and learning from your mistakes. So, while I am here to try and earn a tenth of what people like @stackcash and @CCarter do, I understand the first few years are about learning.

I am here to try, fail, and grow.
 
Welcome to the team! Are you looking at expanding your freelancing skills into some form of agency? Or are you looking at putting the skills to use on a website project of your own? What are you thinking at this point?
 
Ryuzaki said:
Welcome to the team! Are you looking at expanding your freelancing skills into some form of agency? Or are you looking at putting the skills to use on a website project of your own? What are you thinking at this point?
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It's come down to this. I have the ability to understand how to craft content for most niches, most client's expectations, and balance my time appropriately.

The way I look at it:

Option A) I establish an agency. Now, there is no shortage of agencies, ranging from high fees and incredible quality and research to content mills. I know how to teach and help improve writers from being mediocre at their absolute best into pretty damn good writers.

I know what I would need to invest, how to find them, how to keep them happy because of the challenges myself and others I've worked with have dealt with.

At the same time, I feel like there's a degree of limitation on that option. It would be time intensive and I would essentially be splitting time between training/managing and contract acquisition.

The Pros:
-Editorial work which is always interesting and working with a variety of business/establish connections/expanding my network
-Pretty good money, and the option to always sell it later.
-Time intensive and people management with the possibility of having writers for my own future projects I can leverage.

The Cons:
-Managing writers can be super hit or miss even if everything is right. I literally only know a handful as reliable as myself.
-Competition

The Alternate: I keep it to just me, and gradually build up better paying/reliable contracts through proper branding and expanding to more offline businesses.

Option B): I have long wanted to get into the site running game. There is something so interesting to me about running a full fledged web business. I thought to get myself acclimated, I would invest in a site from a company I saw in the BST section: brandbuilders.

I've worked it out that if I put aside $1300 for a website, plus say another $1,500 for tools, links, etc. etc. I can make it work very well with my current schedule.

It makes sense since they have good mid range options and that would allow me to focus on building traffic and crafting content which I'm already good at whilst figuring out the more refined aspects of what running a full site entails.

For me personally, I think perhaps combining The Alternate & Option B offers the best experience and opportunity. That or working with someone and handling the content side of things.
 
why you want to buy turnkey site when you can build it yourself? biggest cost of starting site is 'content'..if you are good at writing, just do it...
 
Hi!

Been reading and enjoying the forum for a while now. This is a great community

I have a (kind of) authority website that is making good money, and I want to start another one while keep improving the one that I already have.

Another goal is to read the Crash Course carefully and apply it both to the new and the current site.

My idea is to create a journal here as a way to keep track of what I'm doing and keep me motivated.

I will tell you more about the site in the journal!

Thanks!
 
Welcome to the site!

I think you'll find that everyone is really friendly and will answer any questions you may have. The Crash Course is definitely the best place to start.
 
Thanks stackcash !

A little about me:

I started with this "internet life" around 4 years ago as an online poker player.

Playing online poker for a living can be really hard. I was making good money, but it's very hard psychologically. Also, the future isn't very bright for online poker with AI, bots and poker sites focusing more on the "casual" players.

So I started to look for other ways to make money online and found SEO and IM. I've been in this world for 1.5 years and I l really like it. I feel like I'm only scratching the surface and that is a lot to be discovered
 
DarkRed said:
I've been in this world for 1.5 years
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That's great that you have an authority site doing well in that amount of time. Most of us flounder around for years trying out different methods, learning what not to do, and then resisting doing those things we shouldn't. It was also a completely different world back then where some link spam could earn you an unbelievable amount of money quickly. I'm glad those days are past now, though. Too bad I didn't have an authority site project going on back then though.

Why do you feel like you want to start a 2nd project instead of doubling down on the first? Has it capped out it's earning potential?
 
The site started like a niche site but luckily the name was very general and I expanded it.

I made a lot of mistakes at first and the link strategy at first was grey/black hat. Now my main source of links is outreach and white hat ! And I've been "cleaning" the link profile.

No, it's not capped out but I feel that I have time to start the second project now that I have a cash flow to outsource some things.

There's a lot to do in my current site, that's why I said is "kind of" authority. I need to diversify traffic sources to rely less on SEO. And much more!
 
Hey all,

Just wanted to introduce myself. I have a long job history in SEO, paid acquisition and monetization so I've recently focused on site building as a way to leverage all that.

I've made many mistakes along the way that I'm still correcting, but I cracked 5 figures for the first time earlier this year and I'm working on getting to that level and beyond consistently.

I see some familiar names in here from other communities, looks like a fun place. If I can help you out, let me know.

Ben
 
Hello

I've been lurking the forum for a few months and finally decided to introduce myself, I do affiliate marketing and have been making a living doing so for the past 3 years or so but hopefully after some time I'll be moving in a new direction, anyway glad to be part of this community :smile:
 
What's the new direction you're looking into? What's leading you in that direction, since you seem to be doing well with the affiliate marketing?

Glad to have you on-board.
 
ari said:
Welcome.
Interesting how user names are case sensitive.
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They're not - that's an "L" in his username.

Edit: Welcome to the forum @Arl !!
 
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Ryuzaki said:
What's the new direction you're looking into? What's leading you in that direction, since you seem to be doing well with the affiliate marketing?

Glad to have you on-board.
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Reason why I'm trying to move away from affiliate marketing (blackhat cpa shit + fb ads specifically) is that its a business model which is getting harder to do as the time passes (anyone can say this for the past 10 years lol) and I simply don't see myself earning fuck you money with AM, instead of "working harder" I'll be doing AM for 2-3 hours a day because thats really all it takes me to launch/test/maintain campaigns and dedicate my remaining time in the other biz.

For the new direction, I'm planning to create some sort of freemium app (with recurring rev), I've researched the business model and after crunching the numbers I've realized that even in the worst case scenario (meaning low as fuck conversion rate) it'll still be okay. For now gotta stack bit more money and in 3-4 months time hopefully it'll be in the proof of concept phase.
 
I've been on the internet for quite a long time.

Initially got my start making progs on AOL then on AIM. Also stole and sold a lot of screen names (hence why I have a PayPal account from around 2000).

aol_files.png


Got into designing templates and selling them on DigitalPoint. Then started building websites and selling them.

Ended up finding my way to Offtopic. Co-created the 2girls1cup site (I designed the shit-cup logo, the backstory, and the layout).

Built another site called Hipster or Homeless that was a fun parody site. Then started a subreddit called Life Pro Tips. I then got banned on Reddit for promoting a site I built (lifeprotips.com -- now defunct)*, since I had ads on it (tl;dr: Reddit is a predatory parasite of the internet stealing content for profit).

Worked at a well known company that recently got acquired by Microsoft, and now work on a social network.

Nice to meet you.

Cheers,
P
 
Sad to say I'm a real fan of your work! Too bad the 1guy1jar dude had to ride your coattails! (don't google that, anyone).

Welcome aboard, you've been around for a while, a true veteran of virality. Yeah, Reddit in the past year really sold themselves out to corporate and government interests. It's a shame, but I'm sure they're getting a ton of behind-the-scenes shady cash. At the end of the day, we build sites to make cash, although I prefer to do it above ground.

I'm interested in hearing more of your stories over time. Catch you around the forum.
 
Thanks! Hah yeah, that's Morgan Thomas (aka thomor25 -- wallofmonitors.com). I actually built those sites out for him because I was money hungry and knew these sites wouldn't last/they were easy to replicate.

Funny story is I was at a party awhile back for ad:tech in San Francisco, talking to a friend of mine, and who do I run into? Morgan Thomas. I'd never seen or met the guy in real life before and he randomly recognized me. It was kind of whack how he partnered with Will (cojones who owned the 2g1c domain at the time), to provide a "dedicated server". Didn't provide much value, IMO, and he made out pretty well on the whole thing.

Reddit is a mess. They're apparently in the process of rebuilding the site, and the verdict is still out, but my prediction is they shoot themselves in the feet and piss off a lot of their core user base.

Cheers! I look forward to meeting some people around here!

P
 
Hi Everybody,

The name's Ryan. I'm a commercial real estate broker in Kansas, but I came out of the tech field. I ran my own tech company for a while before closing it down and leaving the big cities to come to where I am. I'm not a real big city kind of guy. But during that time, I was searching for ways to invest with the money I had made.

Enter my passion for commercial real estate.

There's loads of money to be made here, but everything is so old school. Unbelievably old school. I'm looking to take it up a notch by using web marketing to acquire a list of people interested in buying commercial real estate properties. I've seen the 30 day guide, amazing stuff and I regularly pass along tidbits of information I've picked up from the guide.

Glad to be here, feel free to ask any questions!
 
Those are going to be some delicious, high value leads. Welcome to the club.

I don't know much about real estate at all. When you say 'commercial' do you mean residential properties for rent, or do you mean commercially zoned properties to rent to businesses?
 
Ryuzaki said:
Those are going to be some delicious, high value leads. Welcome to the club.

I don't know much about real estate at all. When you say 'commercial' do you mean residential properties for rent, or do you mean commercially zoned properties to rent to businesses?
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No doubt. A commission on a deal runs 3-6%, sometimes I'll have to half my commission with somebody so like maybe 1.5%. On just a $1M deal, that's a $15K-60k check. And that's just one deal.

Commercial properties are places like apartment buildings, office buildings, retail strips. Even big ol industrial buildings are places I can sell. My big interest is in apartments and retail strips.
 
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