Introductions Thread

[danielsss0n]

You got this.

Sounds like you have starting anxiety.
Just start. Everything fucking works if you actually do it.
Big sites, small sites, sales sites, info sites all of them.
All the plans work if you actually do them and don't quit.

If you want help, make a journal and the rest of us will creep on you.
A few might even offer advice or encouragement.

Thanks for the encouragement.

I find that I generally have so many ideas, that I don't focus on just one. Then the others die off from neglect and the cycle repeats until I realize I'm just wasting time and eventually stop for awhile. I start (probably too many times), I think part of the problem lies with the consistency of doing and executing the task list while being attracted to shiny objects.

I will be posting the journey and will update this thread with the link.

I agree, but I'd add that you can't do things that'll sabotage you. So if it's an SEO project you don't need to be messing with mass spam and PBNs. Obviously you aren't going to compete in some giant competitive niche either. Pick the right target. If it's some kind of sales site and you blow your PPC budget without optimizing your campaigns, that's your fault.

I think the main obstacle in the internet marketing business is getting out of our own way. Don't sabotage yourself, don't get too nifty and tricky at the start. All of the info you need to do it right exists in places like Builder Society. There's really no magic secrets any more until you hit the mastery level. And those aren't necessarily secrets, but methods most others aren't doing because they don't know to do them, but the magic book is wide open for anyone willing to walk the straight and narrow road long enough.

You can do it. You're obviously drawn to this industry. Start, stick to it, listen to the data, pivot when necessary, and keep going. If something is a dud, let it go soon. Don't get emotionally attached. Find the winner and keep going, and then keep going. Don't distract yourself once you find the winner. Put on (the amazing) horse blinders and keep going.

I'll be treating this as a fresh start, no spam/pbns/301s etc. Content + social promotion and take it from there. I'm most likely going to be pursuing Amazon Affiliates for this site until I find other things to promote.

I don't think I'll be running PPC ads for this site. I really do need to stop overthinking things and just get on the path and travel it. I basically only ever travelled down the path to the first crossroads. Instead of making a decision, I overanalyzed and stayed in that spot, or just turned around and left.

I do feel a pull to the industry, so I'm going to explore and figure it out. I know if I stay the course and have the right mindset, eventually, it will work out. Thanks!

Good luck to you mate, I can relate with a lot of what you explained there. I guess it all boils down to whether or not you enjoy building sites, seo, growing a business, and all that comes with it. Personally I love it and even though I put 70 to 80 hours a week, never have I regreted walking away from the 9 to 5 lifestyle.

The more I work for other people, the less I want to work for other people. I don't see myself being happy long term doing that. I do enjoy it, instead of "finding the time" for it, I'm "creating the time" for it.

 

[DanielS]

I find that I generally have so many ideas, that I don't focus on just one. Then the others die off from neglect and the cycle repeats until I realize I'm just wasting time and eventually stop for awhile. I start (probably too many times), I think part of the problem lies with the consistency of doing and executing the task list while being attracted to shiny objects.

Yeah, you just need to get started. I find that many of my ideas fade into the background when I take action, as I no longer have the time or energy to focus on them.

 

[janky]

Hi guys,

I think it's time to introduce myself to the community.
I've been lurking in the shadows for quite some time on BuSo.
Today I saw this thread and knew I could help as I fixed this myself multiple times.
Then I noticed I don't have the privileges to post on that thread.
So here we go

I've been doing SEO for ~10 years. Like most people I had my ups and downs, but I never had to take a "real" job.
My most successful years were when link spamming was working well when GSA SER and low-quality PBN links were good enough.
You could dominate the SERPs easily and make thousands a day. I still remember one of my 5-page websites, which was making thousands a day (maybe someone remembers the garcinia and Dr 0z times).
After these links stopped working I took some time off from SEO. Tried a few other things online, couldn't get them to work (I probably gave up too fast).

What I noticed (after trying some other things) is that I love SEO and just can't let it go so easily.
Fundamentals didn't change that much. If you have the funds and your niche is not ultra-competitive it's still worth it IMO.

I'm back in business since late 2018 or so and started working on some authority sites.
They are making somewhat decent money and I'm working on scaling these up and selling them for a good payday.

As I've mentioned I'm pretty good at fixing WordPress speed issues (just decreased the speed of one of my sites from 5 sec to 2 sec yesterday).
If anyone needs speed or SEO help hit me up.
Happy to be here and it's great to be part of a smart community.

 

[ToffeeLa]

Welcome into the harsh light, janky. I'd be interested to hear what you have to say in that thread as well (as well as any of your other experiences).

 

[janky]

Welcome into the harsh light, janky. I'd be interested to hear what you have to say in that thread as well (as well as any of your other experiences).

Thanks
Coming soon, once I get the 3 likes, I will post it.

This is the one I fixed yesterday:

Mobile still needs a bit of work, but I don't think I will bother with it, it's good enough TBH.
The load time wasn't that bad before, but the $3.5/month shared hosting server was becoming way too crowded. So I moved it to a $5 DO droplet (actually $10 as I'm using cloudways and don't want to deal with the setup more than necessary).

This is a best xyz amazon page with 15 products (images + buttons), things to consider+faq.
11 active plugins

 

[Ryuzaki]

(maybe someone remembers the garcinia and Dr 0z times).

Garcinia Cambogia, Raspberry Ketones, Acai Berries, Deer Antler Extract...

I never joined in but I was an associate of what was basically a "diet pill cartel". It was all legal, of course. The ring leader had his own line of supplements put together and everyone in this "cartel" worked as affiliates or in small teams together. Gobs of money got made but I was too focused on something else.

I saw the diet pill re-billing eventually coming to and end and authority sites being the way to achieve lasting success. I regret not getting involved because even if it was to come to an end, so much money was made in such a short period of time, I could be retired right now.

Of course it's still wide open but that's just not my path.

Fundamentals didn't change that much.

Yeah, I agree. The basics are still in place and more important than ever. On-page and "On-SERP" if we want to make up a new thing can get a bit more complex these days, but the link building game is far simpler (in complexity). Nothing was easier than firing up Scrapebox, Sick Submitter, Bookmarking Demon, and all that old stuff. But it wasn't simple, scraping your own custom lists and filtering and cleaning all day, etc.

The link game is harder but simpler. Quality over quantity, which means you need to be able to justify those high quality links by having a high quality site build and content. Or have those be "good enough" and have the link building budget it place to get it done otherwise.

Well done on the page speed job. That's one of my specialties too, it's always a fun and unique puzzle each time.

I'm glad to have met you recently (digitally!) and I'm glad you've decided to post instead of just lurking. Catch ya around the forum. You should have the likes you need. Just one more post and you're a single, short cron job away from posting wherever you want.

 

[janky]

Yeah, those diet pills were hot stuff. I remember I first started with Green coffee pills.
My affiliate manager asked me why I'm not doing Garcinia Cambogia, as it's the new hot girl in the town.
1 week and 50K spam links later, I was doing $300/day on webs.com web2.
Shitty sales page with shitty content, 0 design. Then it got deleted because of spam
That's when I created a real site for it and I optimized everything it was converting 3x better.
+Meanwhile I ranked the website the trend grow 5x more too.
Good times.

And yeah it was kinda a cartel thing, you could get a bottle for $2 (bulk) and I was getting paid $50-60 per sale. I didn't last until rebills became an issue. SERPs started being manually looked at, as my sites were dropping out every 3-4 weeks.
It was funny to watch it, they manually removed me from google.com once, but they didn't remove me from the "other googles". Australia was making me $1K/day for weeks after they removed me from google.com LOL. Special thanks to the reviewer who didn't drop me from google.com.au, appreciate it

Unfortunately, I lasted only for a few months in the niche, it was brutal and I bet my competitors were reporting my sites like there's no tomorrow. It was a dirty niche.

Anyway, after rebills started (some) affiliate companies had big issues. The company CEO for whom I worked for lost it all, after being sued by you know who. Last time I talked with him, he was living in an RV. Sometimes it's good to be an affiliate and don't have so many risks I guess?

Yeah, I remember those times too. When Sick Submitter (especially those pligg bookmarks) were working very well. I ranked some crazy keywords for clients back then. I remember I ranked for a lot of e-cigs real estate and many other difficult keywords
This was way before Garcinia and unfortunately, I was too stupid to have my own sites and make real money.

Yeah, Onpage became a bit more complicated, but if you are following trends it's still not hard. And links got a lot more expensive and to make it worth you have to build quality sites now. Which sucks, but oh well.

Nice to meet you too, hopefully, I will be a useful member of this community.
Appreciate all the gold you shared in these years.

 

[Huang_Victor]

Hi,

I'm a few months old into digital marketing. I have experience running a brick and mortar business, reasonably successfully for a few years. I decided to dive in after the pandemic hit. Went through the digital strategy crash course multiple times and made a plan.

I'm looking to grow my blog into a brand that operates through multiple channels. The blog is in the home niche and has a lot of followers for blog content as well as video content. So I am doing a Blog + YouTube + Pinterest strategy. I've started publishing recently and have put up a few posts and the videos for it.

I plan to produce a lot of content (10-12 posts) every month. The content is not that easy to make. Each post has more than a dozen original aesthetic photos and a video corresponding to it.

Basically the last 2 months were spent in the preparation part. I took the help of an experienced wordpress developer and made a website for my brand. The website looks very neat (inspired by the top sites in this niche) and uses only 2 plugins (yoast and backup plugin). It's quite fast as well. Everything else is custom made on wordpress CMS. The next step was setting up the YouTube studio, which took a bit of time, because of my video production requirements. I had to invest a bit to get the necessary equipment in place for making the video content. The video content is produced by two of my employees in the studio. I am planning to go really hard on Youtube and video content for other social media (Pinterest/Tik-Tok/Instagram/Facebook). I have a graphic designer as well in house for making my pins ( I make 30 pins per post for the richer content), editing and resizing photos, and also for editing my videos.

also, I dabbled with HARO for one day last week. I gave 12 responses in one go and got 5 links. Most of them are DR50+ and one was DR 85+. That was a surprise though. Anyway I don't plan on going after more links right now, as my guess is that I will likely get a lot of natural links as the type of content I make is usually widely shared and accumulates lots of links that way. (due to the original images, videos and pinterest friendly nature).

I have a section on my website with a pure SEO play as well, where I'm going after the really easy keywords with almost zero competition. In that I mostly target snippets. Although it's easy for me to add original photos due to the nature of my niche and resources I have. In this section, I am writing the posts myself. I write at least one post a day for this section. I have a mentor who is successful in SEO who helps me with the keyword research and SEO strategy.

Personally I'm focusing on the keyword research/Ideation and promotion of my content. I am currently in the midst of applying various strategies and am planning to go really hard on things that work.

So my content production pipeline is almost smooth running now, with things running themselves. The only thing that has to be sped up a bit is the video editing (which I will solve very soon). I hope I'm able to break even within 6 months. I am planning to start a journal as soon as I get the required likes and go into detail on my strategy. I will talk more about my revenue goals and how I plan to achieve them in that journal.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Sounds like you have a good grasp on things and a great foundation to get started. A fast, custom theme with minimal plugins, a photo and video studio, high quality content with fast HARO success, and that Pinterest approach is going to pay dividends. It sounds to me like it's just a matter of continuing to do this hard work and make sure you're doing some marketing and it'll all be fruitful.

I am planning to start a journal as soon as I get the required likes and go into detail on my strategy. I will talk more about my revenue goals and how I plan to achieve them in that journal.

You've got the likes. You just need the posts now. 3 & 3 is all it takes. Glad to have you onboard.

 

[Huang_Victor]

Thank you so much for the welcome and kind words @Ryuzaki. I gave my requirements to the developer based on everything you said in the DS crash course.

Sounds like you have a good grasp on things and a great foundation to get started. A fast, custom theme with minimal plugins, a photo and video studio, high quality content with fast HARO success, and that Pinterest approach is going to pay dividends. It sounds to me like it's just a matter of continuing to do this hard work and make sure you're doing some marketing and it'll all be fruitful.

I'll start the lab journal ASAP to document everything I'm doing.

 

[Jabalako]

Hi, my name is Jabalako, and I've been working with affiliate sites for about a year now. I have two with about 40 url each, another with 10url, and the other just the home. My purpose is to learn and contribute as much as possible. Greetings!

 

[Ryuzaki]

Greetings, @Jabalako, how are these sites performing currently? Getting traffic? Revenue?

 

[Jabalako]

Hi @Ryuzaki, Between my first two I make 100-300$ every month (they are not seasonal, they have sales all year) the traffic is around 800-1000 visits per day, the other two 0$ and few visits. I think one of my problems is seeing the birds go by and not really focusing.

 

[SarahWalsh]

My name is Sarah and I’m the new girl here. I should say new to posting, not so new to reading all the newsletters and being a creepy lurker. The guidelines say introduce yourself so here I am. I am multi passionate aka: I have a squirrel brain, and love learning new things. As a result, a family friend asked “can you figure out how to make this work” (this=Facebook advertising). So I started running ads for his local business a few years ago and I fell in love with digital marketing. It checks all the boxes for me. I need be creative and strategic at same time while also consistently learning new things. Any who, I have really mastered the art and science behind it. Yeah, the algorithm may change but the fundamentals of marketing stay the same.
Up until Covid hit, I was booked out with local clients. I have since lost them all. Now it’s time to focus on my own client acquisition and I need to build a website.
Problem being— I don’t have any coding skills and some may even consider me to be techtarded. Yes I can build a sales funnel and use leadpages or click funnels but that is totally different than a Wordpress site. My journey thus far:
— I had a bug on my Wordpress site that locked me out of the Admin area.
— I was using the Astra theme, and I remember a few weeks back getting something from BuSo saying that Astra ran into some complications (sorry for the weak paraphrase). So I thought that may have been the issue.
— Contacted bluehost they told me to delete jetpack plugin and then reactivate. But I couldn’t get into my backend. When I finally did it looked like I had never been there (dashboard). Wanted me to fill out contact info etc. My plugin section was empty- so there wasn’t a jetpack plugIn to disable. Oddly enough (odd to me) the only thing that did exist was my site title and google analytics.
— Zero help from bluehost lead down a forum/google search rabbit hole and following advice from business coach which = Squarespace
— took a look at Squarespace’s guidelines, what the site was and was not capable of and lastly their backend.
— needless to say- I canceled Squarespace trial, fired my business coach and went back to Wordpress.
— Fresh start this time- was worried about all the domain transfers and analytics etc. So new domain, new hosting and fingers crossed.
—I’m now using Siteground for hosting (saw a few recommendations on here). I invested in basic website build course, VERY BASIC. But I’m working through step by step and hopefully I will get there.
—Working on researching and building up my own keyword list and want to optimize my blog and site for SEO.
— It’s much harder to market the Marketer! Why is that?
Through all of this I never thought to come here and ask for help with the original bug. So, I’m here now making my 3 posts in hopes to gain access to your forum and the genius minds behind it.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Welcome to the club, @SarahWalsh, I'm glad you've started posting. We could have absolutely helped you through that bug!

What you're working on: learning about the registrar, spinning up hosting, aiming DNS records at the server, installing Wordpress. These companies have made it extremely simple. There's one-click installs, user interfaces for everything, etc. cPanels and dashboards and on and on. You can do it.

After that, though it won't be necessary, you might want more insight into how the one-click installs get the job done. Like, with an Apache server, how you would upload the Wordpress files to the file hierarchy, create MySQL databases and users, connect Wordpress to the database, etc. It's good info to know and how you root out bugs and get around being locked out of the admin dashboard.

Actually, I recall this thread: How to Transfer a Wordpress Site to a New Server and Domain. That shows some of the behind the scenes stuff I'm talking about.

You're in the "get a lay of the land" stage of things. It may seem overwhelming but it'll all click for you. Once you're up and running I highly suggest reading through the entirety of the Digital Strategy Crash Course here on the forum. Even if you don't understand it all the first time through, it'll introduce you to things you'll undoubtedly be encountering, and you'll know to come back to the course for more info.

It's all about exposure, over and over again. Keep going!

 

[SarahWalsh]

Thank you and thank you to those who contribute to this site. Not only is information on here top notch the support from the community is truly amazing. I started out just freelancing different services cleaning, dog walking, and craft fairs. The craft fairs led me to wanting an Etsy shop. So I took a few courses which opened my eyes the massive amount of opportunity online line. I honestly don’t understand people who think this is a “hobby” or “not a real job”. It’s actually quite humorous. I did read Day One in the crash course and can relate to everything that was said. I’m going to do this, I know my why and I know I have what it takes. Sure, some days I’m running on pure spite but most days I’m loving every minute of it. The knowledge I’m gaining on this journey both professionally and personally can’t be taken back. The more I learn the more doors start opening and I’m determined to provide my kids with a better childhood, life and a better mom!

 

[Genovese]

Hello all, hope everyone's doing well.

My name's Jose. I've been studying copywriting and learning about funnels and how they work - mainly from the financial space.

I'm interested in building a "Lead Gen" Agency helping a specific niche - undecided thus far - attract more clients via paid ads (Facebook Ads.)

I'm kind of stuck trying to learn about the fulfillment process:

1. Onboarding.
2. Facebook Ads.
3. What tools to use (there's so many out there.)
4. How to put it all together.

My funnel would go something like this:
1. Paid ads.
2. Landing Page -> Lead Magnet -> Thank You Page/Book a Call.
3. Retarget via Email Sequence and Broadcast Emails.

I was wondering if there was a thread explaining this very topic (looked through the blog but couldn't find anything.)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all in advance.

- Jose

 

[Ryuzaki]

Hey, @Genovese, welcome aboard. I'm not aware that we've had any one thread covering the entire process of gaining and onboarding clients, firing off PPC ads, and building out the funnel + retargeting sequences. But I think we've had various threads on single aspects. I know we have many members doing that specific kind of work who'd be happy to speak up if specific questions get asked.

 

[Genovese]

Hey, thank you, I appreciate the response @Ryuzaki. I’ll be sure to look through the blog to see if I can dig these threads up.

 

[Jove]

Greetings Jabalako! What is the difference between your two sites that are earning and the other two that aren't?

 

[nikolaykrastev]

Working on new content may help you, even without links. Focus on the KWs with less volume (0-10), rank for them and when you have enough content ranking, start with KWs with more volume. Then target the articles with more value KWs from those with less volume.

I believe there is a detailed thread here that explains this strategy. It might help you.

 

[_fish]

Focus on the KWs with less volume (0-10)

I have been lurking here for a moment and I have seen messages about focusing on keywords that nobody is searching for.

This has confused me enough to change me from a lurker to a member.

Can you explain to me where this idea comes from? Can you link this thread?

Maybe I am too old school but I think that we should target keywords that people are typing into search engines more than 0 times every month.

"0-10 volume" does not mean it is easier to rank than a keyword that gets "100-200 volume."

I believe this statement is accurate.

"There are better signs that we can look at to tell us how difficult a keyword might be besides the volume."

I believe this statement is accurate.

If both of those statements are accurate I am at a loss for why we are spending much time to rank for keywords that nobody is searching for instead of trying to rank for keywords that people are searching for. I say "nobody" but I mean 0.3 people per day.

Does it scare us to attack a keyword that other people are attacking? If we are afraid to compete in the search results perhaps this is not a business for us.

I have to read through more case studies here but are there examples of people who have made success with 0-10 volume keywords? I am worried.

You can attack more than one keyword in an article so why are we not attacking keywords with 1000 volume and just adding in the little keywords as extra?

I think everybody writing articles targeting 0-10 will be discouraged soon when they get no visitors for all of their hard work.

_fish

----

I am _fish but you can call me any nice words you want to call me. My dad calls me when he needs money. My mom calls me punky.

I said in another thread that I lurked for a while and decided to join now. I did this for 3 reasons.

1) I want to read case studies. I have skimmed one very quickly so far before my first post but I will spend the rest of the evening reading more. Maybe tomorrow as well!

2) I want to share what I have experienced because I see people who are going in a very silly direction sometimes so I will see if they ever ask for advice and then I will offer mine to them.

3) I want to advertise in the marketplace and I need an account to do that.

I am not doing anything groundbreaking or special with my site building. I'm afraid the best strategy I've found is consistency. It's not sexy or shiny but it pays for the roof over my head.

• I keep a list of topics that interest me.
• I break them down into categories and keywords.
• I determine which ones are valuable and reasonable to rank for.
• I write articles myself. I find pictures to use or I make drawings and scan them.

I look forward to getting to know people better! I see many familiar usernames showing up and now I'm excited to read your case studies and to see how you put everything into action. I keep my things simple but I always have room to improve.

 

[secretagentdad]

Wanna try and rank for fishing?

That’d be a cool a journal.

 

[Ryuzaki]

@_fish, welcome aboard. So I take it you're interested in SEO, based on your site building strategy. Is that right? How long have you been involved with internet marketing? Can you tell us about any successes or failures you've had so far?

 

[_fish]

Wanna try and rank for fishing?

Ok you might be trolling but I will take the bait. I am swimming against the tides with those whale keywords unless someone can school me but I think I should scale back because it's a whole can of worms. This will make me look like a betta but I it will be reel hard to rank for 'fishing'. Any fin is possible but my net gains will be higher if I stay in line with what I'm already trying to tackle instead of swivelling.

So I take it you're interested in SEO, based on your site building strategy. Is that right? How long have you been involved with internet marketing? Can you tell us about any successes or failures you've had so far?

Who am I to fight against the current? In other words yes... seo is working for me now. I like it. My fortunes changed when I learned to see the difference between people who talk about seo and people who do seo. I have watched people spend years jumping from shortcut to shortcut. They are trying to hustle. They should be grinding. My friends... grind, don't hustle.

I don't want to get very specific about my experiences yet. I hope this is ok. I will share more as I get to know the community better and when it comes up. This is still our first date!

I will tell you that my proudest accomplishment is that I am still at the table and will leave it at that for now.