Introductions Thread

I found this site by searching for people who'd successfully made wooden whiteboards and I found a thread with an excellent walkthrough of a process from a few years back, which is PERFECT because I can ask the OP (once vetted) whether or not the finish he used has stood the test of use-over-time.

Now, that I see that this place is a community of people who care about materials and process for the creation of things, I'm feeling inspired and stoked to explore some of my other makey-aspirations here!

It's certainly not built, but I'd like to share a comic I make as part of my introduction.

Thank you, and I look forward to playing in the community!
 
Hi Guys,

Thought I'd introduce myself after being a lurker for a couple of months.

Here's a bit of my SEO background:

I started my career in SEO a few years ago while studying my master's degree at university (UK), since then I've been hooked. I absorbed everything there was to know about SEO as quickly as I could, leading to me getting a more senior position after just 6 months at the company. However, this company worked mostly with small scale, local clients (although I did enjoy the London medical practitioners as the keywords related to these were highly competitive and very rewarding, but these were few and far between) - but I wanted something more. I quickly planned my exit strategy and started to focus much more on the technical side rather than a jack-of-all-trades across everything.

I have since started work at another company that has clients within the gambling industry. This is great as it has really allowed me to expand my technical skills within a very difficult niche. This job gives me a lot of what I want if I'm honest but I would really like to nurture my own projects and build some side-income (possibly progressing to my sole-income)... plus I really just want to see how much I can automate with my new love for programming!

That's why I'm here. I am wanting to get involved with a very self-driven community who isn't just content on being drip fed the same old content from popular SEO blogs and to take my skills to new levels, do my own research and share the results with you guys :smile:

So I'm very looking forward to getting stuck into the forum and learning as much as I can.

Feel free to ask me anything!
 
That's a fun story. I've never worked for an agency but I know a ton of people that went that route. Almost all of them never build their own websites, not sure why. Fear of failure? I'd definitely recommend doing it, especially since you have the skill set and you get to keep all of the earnings.

What all is involved in gambling? I know there's legit clients and then tons of "churn and burn" spam. Seems like legit gambling is largely link acquisition from as many targets as possible since the number of related targets is relatively small.

Welcome to BuSo, glad to have you posting!
 
I remember that thread about the wooden white board made with flooring. It was @thehobbster, but I haven't seen him posting any time recently. He said in a Skype group a long time ago that it ended up warping because the braces on the back weren't thick enough.

By the way, in case you didn't realize it, this isn't a forum about "building" like houses and hobbies and construction. It's about building businesses, with a huge focus on internet business and marketing.
 
Hello @future_state,

Ah, well, bummer about the purpose of the forums, not my personal focus. Sorry for not having done more research and imposing my ignorance-

Thank you for the further info about @thehobbster. I'm most curious about how well the finish held up over time-
 
Well the first agency I worked at built their own websites, was very much just trying to churn them out initially which was a huge hassle, before we had a custom WP theme anyway.

The main client I work on is a huge online and retail brand in the UK with a relatively large website, so there's a lot of focus on-site rather than links at this point due to the size of their link profile. We have some smaller white label gambling clients that have a focus on link acquisition, however.

It's quite an interesting industry as you can actually see Google treats these websites with a hell of a lot more caution.

Thanks for the welcome! :smile:
 
hi all,

Came over recommended by a good friend, and i hope is the place to be these days,

from the all wickedf to wafo and other perks, glad to see u guys around

Peace
 
Hey @carlosse, welcome to BuSo. We've got a lot of old timers you may recognize, many under new usernames, and plenty of intermediate and newcomers too.

What's your history with internet marketing, SEO, and/or business in general? Big on affiliate marketing?
 
hey everyone,
I have been in the internet industry for around 12 years and I feel I am fairly successful.
Right from the days of , domain name business/fat loss pills/acai and anti aging offers/xrumer to 2019 where branding and user experience matters.

I used to check out here sometimes but not post.
Now I hope to start posting here.

My strength as an entrepreneur is finding markets which have low or zero competition.
I also have interest in innovation to make this world a better place.

If anyone of you have any questions regarding business/entrepreneurship, please post.
I would like to answer what I can.

I like to answer "WHYs".

Why people join this forum?
The accurate answer is not to make money.
Somewhere in the mind of many people here, the final goal is to be financially independent, successful and owning their own growing business on which they have complete control & which they enjoy running.

If I can assist you guys in your goals I would be happy to help.
Also, my goal here is to network and grow my knowledge/business & make friends.
 
Very Intelligent Question:
Do not think local or national. Think Global. Research, research and research. Google trends is also your friend. See which industries/sectors are growing. Whatever you see ask yourself a lot of "why's" at every stage. Do not shy away from using keyword research tools where you feel is required.
If you can travel, travel to a completely new country and observe what is going on and why. This will help your neurons fire.
No experience in life is waste, remember this.
Failures are sometimes more valuable than success.
Keep your mind open. All languages that people use on google are valuable. Google translate is also your friend.
Pick one niche and try it all over the globe.
Fail, Fail, Fail you will see everything is covered but it is not.
try another niche. do not tie yourself to one niche.
Don't be afraid to sell "Luxury Yatch Rentals" in Nigeria.
There are rich people everywhere.

Keep repeating whenever you fail, it should not take you long to find something with low or zero competition.

Also check manually top few SERPs. They are always not as strong as you think.
Learn SEO.
Learn Keyword Research.

Do not hate PPC either.
Facebook, youtube, Instagram, twitter everything has its place.
Do not accept or dismiss anything without rational evidence.

If you see a site ranking for years , try to know why and see how that can benefit in your project.

If a PPC campaign is running for years, do the same thing.

Above all remember you have to deliver value when you rank, else you will fall even after ranking sooner or later.
Do gigs to make instant money. Don't do business for instant money.

Plan and read but you should take some action every single day.

Someone can hold your hand and show you a niche but this will not teach you to fish. You will always need them.

When you reach the end, you will realise all the pain was worth it, you will control your finances and life and enter among a minority of people on earth who accomplish this.

If you are on this forum, you can do it.

And do one thing at a time, if you are slow do not worry. This road has to be slow if you are less than 2 years in the industry. Exceptions are everywhere. Make sure you are one step ahead every single day.

Amazon is also your friend, so is anything growing.
Ask why Amazon is rich?
what problem does Amazon solve?
Is there a bigger problem in the world right now?
Can you solve it?

If yes then you are already a billionaire.

Anything you do in life without answering why, has a chance to be irrational behaviour. We all are irrational somewhere. The successful ones are those who can minimise it the most.

Any questions, feel free to post.
 
Last edited:
John__N said:
Do not think local or national. Think Global. Research, research and research.
Click to expand...
Thx for this answer. What would be a good example for such a market? What are some main criteria that you look for before entering?
 
Example can be any industry where people like to read/see content. Ask yourself, is everyone in the world getting what they want to read? If not then who? Then research and find out. If it is a profitable niche. Plan how? Adsense? or you can build a business around it? Or you can network directly with businesses there? Or are there good affiliate networks from whom you can get commissions?

The first criteria I would look is that can I deliver better than the first ranked website. Honestly that is the only criteria. Rest is just delivery of content and basic SEO. If you can do this, you will never have to worry about SEO/PPC/Social Media Marketing after ranking.
Yes there are industries where you can rank for sometime but my focus is on building long term businesses. Long term stable growing businesses can only be built when you give quality supply to a hungry growing market.
 
I've been lurking for a while and finally built up some courage to get involved. I'm so impressed with the quality of conversations going on in here! This actually feels like a community and I'm excited to finally get to work.

⚠️ Warning: This post is going to be a bit of a cathartic exercise for me. I hope some other newbies can relate and that it encourages others to be honest in here. Helloooo vulnerability.

TL;DR
I'm a newbie in the online money-making/problem-solving space looking for some guidance here in BuSo. I've wandered for the past 8 years with no clear path and have wasted so much time it scares me. I have a small amount of web development experience and I'm learning SEO.

Why I'm here:
All of the noise out there about building websites that generate income has left me confused and paralyzed. I've been overwhelmed by Internet marketing and SEO communities and Facebook groups. People recommend said groups and they turn out to be low on substance and high on selling courses and services. It's pretty pathetic out there. I'm gonna lose my shit if another person tries to sell me their $1,997 SEO course that is discounted for the next 24 hours and comes with a bundle of 50 ranking secrets that is valued at $10,000. Oh! And once the doors close the offer will not reopen.

Ok, let's reel it back in here. Basically, I'm trying to find my tribe. I'm hoping that BuSo will be a place of accountability, guidance, education, and camaraderie for me.

My history/background:
For years, I've been a pinball bouncing around various money-making gigs. I've done photography, video editing, construction, and web development. The Tim Ferris bug bit me after college while I was traveling around Central America. Those ideas really changed how I viewed work and career life. It ruined my ability to work at a job. Being constrained by a job I don't enjoy scares the shit out of me [puffs on inhaler]. Those years ago, the concepts in The 4-Hour Workweek blew me away. I was just never exposed to alternative views on what work and life could be. The college-to-career mentality was all around me and it was intoxicating to discover a different way to live. Unfortunately, that excitement didn't translate into anything other than warm fuzzies. I just started avoiding getting a job and instead, opted for freelance work in an attempt to remain free. I've basically been living a pseudo-freedom lifestyle. Making ends meet on random gigs just to maintain a feeling of freedom. This is very dangerous. Maybe even an emergency. It has fucked my financial health and it's made me a generalist in my skills. I also feel I've wasted a lot of time and now I'm 31...

Where I'm at today:
Now that I'm aware of my pseudo-freedom, I'm trying to gain clarity and manage expectations when it comes to making money on the Internet and life in general. I'm also trying to get clear on my goals and what my ideal life looks like. I don't want to work four hours a week and then fuck off. I just want to work on something that actually works, and then I want to repeat that process until I have several businesses and revenue streams.

At the moment, all of my online endeavors are not making money. Some are in their infancy and others are moving very slowly.

What I'm working on:
1. Local lead gen sites (starting to pick this up again)- I have two at the moment. One gets a few phone calls a week and the other one is lost at sea. I really like the concept of local lead gen. Especially in the home services vertical b/c I've worked in a few of those industries before. I'm also very interested in the idea of building out local lead gen sites and eventually turning some of them into actual businesses. Send leads to local biz once the site is ranking, but one day turn that site into an actual service business. I'm super motivated by what @BoxF is doing with local lead gen.
2. SaaS product for home service professionals (ongoing for three years now)- my business partner and I have been building an app in the real estate vertical. We've done a lot of research and are getting close to releasing a beta. It's been a long road. Our slow movement is due to some hiccups in the past that hamstrung progress and there were significant timeframes where nothing was getting worked on at all. Also, my partner who is the developer can only put in 10-15 hrs each week and my coding skills aren't at a point to where I can be effective. Tried in the past, but ended up slowing things down even more. Hey! Coding can be hard! At the moment, I'm not sure what I should be working on with this project. Our beta should be ready mid-Summer. We have a landing page and target users in my state know about us because we've taught some website/marketing classes for free to build relationships with them.
3. A "marketing agency" for users of our SaaS app (a couple of hours a week)- my biz partner and I discovered that our target users were in need of websites and marketing. Through research and networking at conferences, they started asking us to help them with these items. We started a DBA under our SaaS business to offer websites and SEO/marketing to try and get some money coming in. We've built two websites since starting a couple of months ago, but haven't converted anyone to recurring work with SEO or marketing. This endeavor is very recent.
4. Paying my bills (~15 hrs/wk.)- right now my income is from working two days a week in my Father's business (more home services) and shooting weddings on weekends. These gigs pay quickly and allow me freedom throughout the week.

Goals/Desires:
1. Income creation, stability, and growth
2. Maintaining a handle on who has access to my time
3. Long term/pie in the sky- I want to be able to travel freely and often, build a small house that I design on a property near the ocean so I can work on my surfing and maybe do some farming/fishing (I love to cook), and have the means to quickly get into other business opportunities or help friends/family with theirs.

Enemies:
Procrastination
Laziness
Analysis paralysis
Shiny object syndrome

Fears:
That I'm gonna work on something for too long that ends up making little or no money.
Not working on the right thing.
Working a job I hate or committing to something I don't enjoy.
Being stuck where I've been stuck for the past 8 years.

Conclusion:
Ok! That wraps up the first episode of Another Confused, Wandering Entrepreneur. Thanks for tuning in and hope that was confusing and scary enough for everyone! I might read this tomorrow and wonder, "what was I thinking?".
 
tumblr_nfk4pt6Z7I1tcw4lfo1_400.gif


Amazing to hear that you're already getting some calls! It takes time and endless pursuit to make a large lead gen network, however, very achievable to those willing to work through it.
​
 
Your story is very similar to many of ours, I'm sure. Whether being a generalist and bouncing from thing to thing, or constantly "starting over" thanks to Google updates, losing our butts on PPC campaigns, etc.

One thing is for sure, being a generalist will absolutely hinder you. You need to be a specialist, for the sole reason that everyone can do what a generalist does. Being a jack of all trades and a master of none means exactly that, and only masters command big boy prices.

Yeah, seeking this freedom is harder than just taking the safe path of landing a day job. There's infinitely more risk, there's at least double the hours, there's a lack of being social, exercise, whatever else we put on the back burner. There's always the temptation of "I'll do it once I'm free" and then life passes us by.

A really huge bird's eye view of this game usually looks like:
  1. While you build your assets, make money by:
    1. Freelancing, or
    2. Day job
  2. You're now making better money from either:
    1. Freelancing as a specialist, or
    2. Your assets
  3. Now you scale your cash flow by either:
    1. Turning your freelancing into an agency, or
    2. Building more assets.
The most high-visibility people in the industry tend to go the Agency route. I've always been attracted to the Assets route and have ridden the rollercoaster up and down with SEO, which sucks. So I've been going 50/50 as Assets/Freelancer lately. Having the cash flow from doing 'active income' work can help you build your assets faster too.

It really boils down to the gold rush analogy. Do I sell shovels, or do I pick up a shovel and start digging (or both). But you definitely don't have time to 100 things and expect to gain mastery of any of them nor gain the notoriety needed to be seen as a master either.

That was a long ramble for me to attempt to say being a generalist sucks and focusing on one high-value skill is infinitely better. The rest is just the framework I see everyone else including myself working with during the journey.

I hope sharing another point of view can help bring some clarity or insight. I'm glad to have you aboard the forum and hope you'll stick around and be active. The more talking we have going on, the more knowledge gets shared and we're all better off for it. Catch ya around the forum!
 
You mentioned you are looking for a tribe. I can relate.
I started reading humblesalesman posts at r/entrepeneur.
I found out he moved to r/juststart. There I read about incomeschool.
It all sounded like a dream.

However, none of these places are as informative as BuSo.
Afaik, none of them give their members a kick in the ass when they are not performing.
Oh sure, some of them do give useful advice, and some even tell you that your process is wrong/not productive. Humble was the most useful one imho, but he is gone.

Here on BuSo it seems that the kick in the butt is better targeted. They usually tell you exactly where you are going wrong and WHY.

That is why I chose this place. It gave me the confidence to quit my job.
Because I know people will not treat me with kid gloves. They show the real world.

I am of similar age as you, and I feel the same.
Yet I feel we are young enough to take the leap. Just try to improve a little every day.
 
joshy said:
Enemies:
Procrastination
Laziness
Analysis paralysis
Shiny object syndrome
Click to expand...

These are all symptoms of the problem. You have no solid goals - nothing worth "jumping out of bed for", nothing worth "putting in an extra 2-4 hours a day or night for.", nothing worth "losing a day's sleep for".

joshy said:
Fears:
That I'm gonna work on something for too long that ends up making little or no money.
Not working on the right thing.
Working a job I hate or committing to something I don't enjoy.
Being stuck where I've been stuck for the past 8 years.
Click to expand...

1. No one bats 100% at the plate. Failure is a key ingredient in success. Either your personal failure or failure of others that you learn from. It's 1000% faster to learn from other's failures since that compresses time so you don't have to learn that lesson through experience which takes your time. You are going to fail, so get over it. Every failure leads to the next journey and next step of your game.

2. What's right or wrong? Especially when your goals are vague?

3. I think that's why most of us are here, so that's a check.

4. You are stuck cause you are comfortable being where you are. The one step that makes people take responsibility for their lives is admitting that once you get past 18, you are responsible for your actions. You are where you are at cause that's where you want to really be at. If you don't you wouldn't be where you are at, you wouldn't sleep. If you had no roof over your head, your #1 priority would be to get a roof over head no matter what cause it's uncomfortable sleeping on concrete or in your car.

The problem is once people get to a certain point they lose that "#1 priority killer instinct" that got them to where they are at. You need to get that back.

joshy said:
Goals/Desires:
1. Income creation, stability, and growth
2. Maintaining a handle on who has access to my time
3. Long term/pie in the sky- I want to be able to travel freely and often, build a small house that I design on a property near the ocean so I can work on my surfing and maybe do some farming/fishing (I love to cook), and have the means to quickly get into other business opportunities or help friends/family with theirs.
Click to expand...

1. This is your #1 problem - this goal is "vague". It's a desire - like a wish list. Tons of people wish for a car like a Ferrari, but how many are willing to not sleep or grind an extra 20-40 hours a week until they get one? Just 1% are willing to try.

Create solid goals that you can see - monthly income of 20K, and goal of increasing by 20% a month. Those are two solid goals that you can see how far off you are from it, and then you can figure out what high level skill you can utilizing to obtain it.

It's visual, it's quantifiable. "income creation" and "growth" without numbers are just vague. You could make 10K or 40K and still not be satisfied since you never set a real goal. It's like losing weight for an obese person or gaining muscle for a skinny person - what's the "end goal"?

Just losing weight won't work as a goal, there has to be a number to get to, and then create baby steps to get to that number by breaking it down by 10 pounds. Otherwise if you lose 10 or 40 pounds you won't be satisfied cause you didn't have a clear objective in the first place, that's why a lot of people fail cause they didn't have a target goal.

Same for gaining weight, what's a quantifiable goal? Then create baby goals that you can cross off your list to get to that big goal.

3. Again - perhaps you do have internal personal number of how much this is going to cost, but clearly these goals are not "jump out of bed" or "grind an extra 20 hours a week" - so they are weak. There are a lot of pie in the sky dreams of "retiring young and not doing anything" - which is okay for some, but you have to provide a lot of value to the world and exchange that value in the marketplace to gain whatever it cost to live that life.

If you quantify your goals you might find out that you only need 20K total to find cheap land in some country or coastal state, and can do all that - farming, fishing, building house - RIGHT NOW for extra $20K total to get started, then can do some freelance work for an extra $x month income and you'll be 1000x more happy.

But all that requires quantifying your desires, and setting real goals, then setting mini-goals to get to that.

I used to have no "serious goals" too, then I ran into this Earl Nightingale speech, I now listen to it about 2-3 time a week, it helps me stay on track and realize what's important in life according to my goals, it's worth a listen:


Welcome to BuSo!
 
I didn't read your whole thread, just the cliff notes...lol. People ask me this very same question all the time. Here's my short answers:

- Find a problem people have...solve it
- Find where there's demand....sell it.
- Focus on one thing...you can't be all things to everyone. Caveat being, you should know what you're talking about.

I'll be here all week.

P.S - Hit me up on Skype. I'll throw you some ideas.
 
BoxF said:
tumblr_nfk4pt6Z7I1tcw4lfo1_400.gif


Amazing to hear that you're already getting some calls! It takes time and endless pursuit to make a large lead gen network, however, very achievable to those willing to work through it.
​
Click to expand...
Thanks! The bulk of the calls I'm getting are from my GMB. My site is still buried in the SERP around pages 5-9. Haven't done any link building only around 70 citations- directories, social signals, videos. Very eager to hear an update from you in June!

CCarter said:
These are all symptoms of the problem. You have no solid goals - nothing worth "jumping out of bed for", nothing worth "putting in an extra 2-4 hours a day or night for.", nothing worth "losing a day's sleep for".



1. No one bats 100% at the plate. Failure is a key ingredient in success. Either your personal failure or failure of others that you learn from. It's 1000% faster to learn from other's failures since that compresses time so you don't have to learn that lesson through experience which takes your time. You are going to fail, so get over it. Every failure leads to the next journey and next step of your game.

2. What's right or wrong? Especially when your goals are vague?

3. I think that's why most of us are here, so that's a check.

4. You are stuck cause you are comfortable being where you are. The one step that makes people take responsibility for their lives is admitting that once you get past 18, you are responsible for your actions. You are where you are at cause that's where you want to really be at. If you don't you wouldn't be where you are at, you wouldn't sleep. If you had no roof over your head, your #1 priority would be to get a roof over head no matter what cause it's uncomfortable sleeping on concrete or in your car.

The problem is once people get to a certain point they lose that "#1 priority killer instinct" that got them to where they are at. You need to get that back.



1. This is your #1 problem - this goal is "vague". It's a desire - like a wish list. Tons of people wish for a car like a Ferrari, but how many are willing to not sleep or grind an extra 20-40 hours a week until they get one? Just 1% are willing to try.

Create solid goals that you can see - monthly income of 20K, and goal of increasing by 20% a month. Those are two solid goals that you can see how far off you are from it, and then you can figure out what high level skill you can utilizing to obtain it.

It's visual, it's quantifiable. "income creation" and "growth" without numbers are just vague. You could make 10K or 40K and still not be satisfied since you never set a real goal. It's like losing weight for an obese person or gaining muscle for a skinny person - what's the "end goal"?

Just losing weight won't work as a goal, there has to be a number to get to, and then create baby steps to get to that number by breaking it down by 10 pounds. Otherwise if you lose 10 or 40 pounds you won't be satisfied cause you didn't have a clear objective in the first place, that's why a lot of people fail cause they didn't have a target goal.

Same for gaining weight, what's a quantifiable goal? Then create baby goals that you can cross off your list to get to that big goal.

3. Again - perhaps you do have internal personal number of how much this is going to cost, but clearly these goals are not "jump out of bed" or "grind an extra 20 hours a week" - so they are weak. There are a lot of pie in the sky dreams of "retiring young and not doing anything" - which is okay for some, but you have to provide a lot of value to the world and exchange that value in the marketplace to gain whatever it cost to live that life.

If you quantify your goals you might find out that you only need 20K total to find cheap land in some country or coastal state, and can do all that - farming, fishing, building house - RIGHT NOW for extra $20K total to get started, then can do some freelance work for an extra $x month income and you'll be 1000x more happy.

But all that requires quantifying your desires, and setting real goals, then setting mini-goals to get to that.

I used to have no "serious goals" too, then I ran into this Earl Nightingale speech, I now listen to it about 2-3 time a week, it helps me stay on track and realize what's important in life according to my goals, it's worth a listen:


Welcome to BuSo!
Click to expand...
CCarter- Wow, thanks for the honest feedback. I never considered that my fear of working on something that will end up going bust was ACTUALLY fear of failure. Thanks for helping me clear that up!

Most of what you mentioned seems to revolve around my vague goals, which I totally agree with. I need to realign with some S.M.A.R.T. goals and push through. I have a tendency to fall off the boat when I'm not seeing progress. Then, I reach a point of vagueness where I'm lost and unsure of what to work on. A very vicious cycle to be in.

I re-read The War of Art over the weekend to get familiar with those ideas of Resistance as the enemy of success. I may have to make that my weekly read- similar to how you watch Earl Nightingale's speech 2-3 times a week. The ideas in that speech you shared are perfect parallels.

Thanks for the welcome!

WinMore said:
You mentioned you are looking for a tribe. I can relate.
I started reading humblesalesman posts at r/entrepeneur.
I found out he moved to r/juststart. There I read about incomeschool.
It all sounded like a dream.

However, none of these places are as informative as BuSo.
Afaik, none of them give their members a kick in the ass when they are not performing.
Oh sure, some of them do give useful advice, and some even tell you that your process is wrong/not productive. Humble was the most useful one imho, but he is gone.

Here on BuSo it seems that the kick in the butt is better targeted. They usually tell you exactly where you are going wrong and WHY.

That is why I chose this place. It gave me the confidence to quit my job.
Because I know people will not treat me with kid gloves. They show the real world.

I am of similar age as you, and I feel the same.
Yet I feel we are young enough to take the leap. Just try to improve a little every day.
Click to expand...
WinMore- Thanks for sharing. I'm familiar with Income School. That community felt a bit too amateurish for me. I do like that they put so much emphasis on putting in the work. The moderators are also very honest, well-meaning guys.

Would love to hear more about what led up to quitting your job! Anywho, thanks for the welcome!

Ryuzaki said:
Your story is very similar to many of ours, I'm sure. Whether being a generalist and bouncing from thing to thing, or constantly "starting over" thanks to Google updates, losing our butts on PPC campaigns, etc.

One thing is for sure, being a generalist will absolutely hinder you. You need to be a specialist, for the sole reason that everyone can do what a generalist does. Being a jack of all trades and a master of none means exactly that, and only masters command big boy prices.

Yeah, seeking this freedom is harder than just taking the safe path of landing a day job. There's infinitely more risk, there's at least double the hours, there's a lack of being social, exercise, whatever else we put on the back burner. There's always the temptation of "I'll do it once I'm free" and then life passes us by.

A really huge bird's eye view of this game usually looks like:
  1. While you build your assets, make money by:
    1. Freelancing, or
    2. Day job
  2. You're now making better money from either:
    1. Freelancing as a specialist, or
    2. Your assets
  3. Now you scale your cash flow by either:
    1. Turning your freelancing into an agency, or
    2. Building more assets.
The most high-visibility people in the industry tend to go the Agency route. I've always been attracted to the Assets route and have ridden the rollercoaster up and down with SEO, which sucks. So I've been going 50/50 as Assets/Freelancer lately. Having the cash flow from doing 'active income' work can help you build your assets faster too.

It really boils down to the gold rush analogy. Do I sell shovels, or do I pick up a shovel and start digging (or both). But you definitely don't have time to 100 things and expect to gain mastery of any of them nor gain the notoriety needed to be seen as a master either.

That was a long ramble for me to attempt to say being a generalist sucks and focusing on one high-value skill is infinitely better. The rest is just the framework I see everyone else including myself working with during the journey.

I hope sharing another point of view can help bring some clarity or insight. I'm glad to have you aboard the forum and hope you'll stick around and be active. The more talking we have going on, the more knowledge gets shared and we're all better off for it. Catch ya around the forum!
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Ryuzaki- That birds-eye-view is helpful! I also have to keep reminding myself to eat the elephant one bite at a time when thinking about the entirety of this process. Thanks for the warm welcome!
 
Started IM about 7 years ago. When I was in high school I had a couple of months where I made 10k-20k, which changed everything, and was the start of the true belief that I could acquire vast sums of money relatively easily with just being clever on the internet. Spent a lot of time reading IM forums those days, especially Wickedfire, which was so unbelievably entertaining that I feel bad for whoever didn't get to read Wickedfire. I still laugh out loud when I think of the dickrolling.

Since then I have jumped around and made some money through things like: SEO (making and ranking my own sites), freelance copywriting, and some product sale attempts. Some projects have been relatively successful, but overall I have never gotten too far past paying for living expenses in the grand scheme of things. Have had 10k-20k in savings a few times, but never really prepared for the lean times. Had some streaks early on when I would get a real job, do it for a while, then quit in pursuit of internet money.

Currently I am flat broke. Last year I made 20k in a few months through a certain social media website. Then the website did a big update and really fucked my shit up, just as I was about to scale up. Then I tunnel visioned for about 6 months, blowing through cash, spending tons of time and effort trying to get the method to work again, convinced that it was only a matter of time until I figured it out.

Then one day I realized that it wasn't going to work, and had a minor internal crisis. Had been working my ass off for months and spending lots on it, then it just failed. Was depressed for a month or two, definitely -- feeling stupid and stuck. I took a good hard look inside and realized that I had tunnel visioned, and it was stupid, but I've started with nothing and done well before, so I can do it again. In the end I felt free.

I ran through my projects of the past few years - failures and successes - and compared them to each other. I found that in general, the most successful projects were the ones where I was

Scheming -- using my so-called brainpower to buck the trend and put a twist on something known, instead of following in someone's footsteps
Using my best skills -- copywriting and keyword research are by far my two more polished skills. My SEO success was due primarily to good keywords (my link building strategy is to buy links and pray), and my other businesses were most successful when it relied primarily on my copywriting, instead of other unpolished skills (advertising, link building, Adsense shit, etc.)
Having fun -- if I forced myself to continue a project against my instincts before, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth now

I'll be starting two case study threads once I can a couple of 1-word posts and beg members for likes via PM (joke). One will be about SEO, and one about gorilla marketing. Hope to connect with some smart members on here. In the past I took pride in doing everything alone and never shared anything out of paranoia, but things change.
 
Yeah, that's the thing with SEO, PPC campaigns, affiliate marketing offers, exploiting social media... everything changes frequently enough that nothing is promised in terms of on-going success.

Having a real brand is definitely where it's at, when coupled with great content, most everything else takes care of itself.

I feel your pain. I know one of my weaknesses is getting attached to something and not letting it go despite it not doing as well as it should. I have my one project I allow myself to get that attached to, so I can treat everything else like it should be... a money-making project, not a precious baby to coddle and make sure everything is perfect.

Best of luck, looking forward to your case studies.
 
Here from Wickedfire as well.

Good times, but this is where it is at nowadays.

Welcome!
 
Hey, everyone!

I am from Pakistan. 2 years ago I graduated from college. I was damn sure I would get my dream job. A job that was my childhood dream.

But I could not qualify for it even after all my hard work.

At the same time, I went through such a bad situation in my personal life that it was mental torture.
It crushed me. I lost all hope. For the next year or so I did nothing. No jobs, no social life, nothing. I just lived from one day to the next.

I thought nothing good will happen in my life again. I had No Dreams.No Hope.

I hated my life. I hated my self.

But I did not want to spend the rest of life like this. So I decided to change. To do something about it.

To get out of my hopelessness mentality I started looking for a job. I knew it would give me something to look forward. After searching for three months ( I had no professional experience) I got a job at VA Agency. I worked exclusively with Amazon sellers as their VA. In the start it was difficult, but I enjoyed it. Because my work started occupying my thought and time, in place of despair and negativity.

I worked at the VA agency for 6 months. The job taught me many things, most importantly discipline. Discipline makes a man happy.

For the first time in many months, I started to smile and started connecting with my friends. Life was good.

Ten after 6 months due to some family reason I had to leave the job. The next 2 months I spent solving the family problem. Which I have finally solved.

Now I am jobless. With only $20 to my name.

I am going to start my own VA agency specifically for Amazon Sellers. But first of all, I need my first client. A client that can I work for at least 60 hours per month as it will help me pay my bills. The ideal would be 80 hours a month client.

But I don't want to compete on prices. I have seen people from sub-Continent competing on price, which starts a race to the bottom. And it does not end well.

I want my agency not to be known as the cheapest but the best. But first I need my first client.

I am in a bad financial situation right now. But I am hopeful. And I look forward to a better tomorrow.

I would welcome all criticism and guidance. I will not like the criticism, but it will help me grow. And I want to grow mentally and professionally.

-Jinna1947-

P.S: English is not my first language or the second. So please forgive any mistakes.
 
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