Introductions Thread

Picking a big value singleton keyword is a great way to really test out seo and learn fast.

Fishing is non sketchy and has lots of high value tails.

Googles been more open minded about testing in high quality sites lately. Even if you fail you can pick up a pile of information from trying that will give you insight into the long tails.

I would encourage you to swing for the home run. With network effects like the web failing to aim high is planning to fail.

You can niche down later when you have some insights from exploring with webmaster tools.

Doesnt have to be fishing. I was just picking a random example of a target that fit your username.
 
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I am new to Builder Society I learning this new skill that is seo and building sites, I pretend to launch a new site and monetize it with Amazon Affiliates & ads. I look forward to sharing my journey with this community and learning how I can achieve $1000 a month in the future with this site.

PS: I already learned about the google sandbox, but it's the first time that I'm in a forum sandbox, wish me luck!!!
 
I hope you aren't just pretending to launch a site and intend to do it or already are doing it!
 
Hello everyone!

This forum is quite different compared to what I've read in the past about SEO. The minute I signed up I haven't been able to put my laptop down to stop reading. So I would love to participate and get feedback on my own site.

I'm 32 years old from Canada and have worked in SEO for the last 5 years only part-time. I actually started in web development and continue to program with various languages. At the beginning of the quarantine (March), my twin brother and I bought a built aged site together.

I slowly started writing content on my own since I was off work. I did my keyword research and performed my SEO tactics for the next few months. My goal is to turn the site into a huge authority because I truly love the niche. Down the road my goal would be to learn how to build a portfolio of websites with proper management.

Right now my approach is content first since my link building capabilities are not great and my funds are limited. Been doing this AM stuff for 10 years back when BHW and Warrior Forum were goldmines, so feel free to ask me questions and don't be a stranger.

Looking forward to learning and giving back.
 
Hello! I've been a part of the SEO game for a few years now and figured I'd join up here as the discussion is great for morning reading and motivation.

About 30% of my online income comes from niche sites and other online business ventures. I'm a programmer at heart, but these days I probably spend more time writing content x.x
 
well, I already bought the domain, looking right now for a cheap webhosting to start...
 
Hello!

What sort of other online ventures do you have in addition to the niche sites? If you don't mind sharing, that is.

Do you have any pain points right now with your niche sites, anything slowing you down?

Hey @vgoncalves, welcome.

Namecheap has a sale on right now to celebrate their 20th anniversary and they're offering their EasyWP Starter plan for $23 for the first year. I think that's about the best you'll find for something cheap and halfway decent enough to get you started, until your site takes off and you need to upgrade.

Edit: Assuming you're planning on using Wordpress.
 
TheCurator said:
Hey @vgoncalves, welcome.

Namecheap has a sale on right now to celebrate their 20th anniversary and they're offering their EasyWP Starter plan for $23 for the first year. I think that's about the best you'll find for something cheap and halfway decent enough to get you started, until your site takes off and you need to upgrade.

Edit: Assuming you're planning on using Wordpress.
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Yes, I'll be using wordpress.

That namecheap deal seems to be a very nice option, I'll give it a look...

thanks
 
Oh my, it's been almost 5 year since I posted this. Time for an update, and things have indeed changed. Have been still lurking here, but not posting much, so I owe an update to everyone.

Work/Income:

Did a lot of things here and there, but in 2018 I moved to capital city and took an agency job, as a full time link builder, and I managed to improve the quality of their link-building and scale it to 200 placements a month in mostly hard niches, where links don't come easy.

This helped me see things differently, see how agencies work, and what an actual job looks like, as well a budget to spend on links that I wouldn't have had as a freelancer.

Nop, not for me. Boring, constant routine, stress, not much creativity, upper management doesn't see your full potential etc.

Worked there for almost a year, and most of it was thinking about what to do next, as I knew it's not for me.

Found a local company that builds affiliate stuff (globally), and immediately applied. They were like me, understood me, respected me, and saw my potential and hired me.

Better pay, little stress, access to resources that I would never have myself, remote work.

Still work with them, get a good wage, profit share, equity, and other perks (Equipment, Airbnb, etc)

But I delivered, built an affiliate site that was making less than 1k, now close to 10k/month and doing it for 5 additional sites now (more in the future). Systemised and scaled content production, while increasing quality. Custom linkbuilding campaigns from scratch that they didn't do. Hired or transferred 10+ team members on my team.

It hasn't even been a year yet. Within next 2 years will scale it to 100k+/month.

The funny thing is, I recently got a consulting job with the agency that I worked for. They have been fucking up the link-building a bit since I left, and there is no one near the level I was internally, but at that time I wasn't as confident in my abilities (at least I didn't feel like it, even though I was). They probably didn't see the value I provided until I left.

Now they are paying me 150$/hr (close to 10x what I was paid there hourly), and more than they charge clients for hourly consulting. And I actually capped it at 10h/month so that it doesn't affect my "day job" even though they want more.

And now they listen to what I have to say, even though I was communicating it when I worked there.

Personal :

How much I made, directly correlated to how much I fixed myself up internally and emotionally. Feeling good, have fixed all the things that for me was a problem (there are things that I do that aren't healthy still, but I have no problem with and feel no guilt about).

Have a lot of self respect, and put boundaries with old friends / family, that I didn't before. You lose some friends, but the ones that respect your boundaries, are now much deeper friendships. As well, you don't waste time on "friends" that wouldn't have developed in anything meaningful anyway.

Life is good. Even when life throws shit at you, you are much more capable of fixing it, and not getting emotional about it, as you are feeling good internally.

You can't manage 10+ team, and be a loser yourself. At least you shouldn't do that.

Getting close to 4 years alcohol free as well, while still socialising and going out. Don't have a problem with other people drinking (except if you get hammered, and become an animal).

Looking back it's hard to believe, that all it took was fixing yourself and gain some self respect, everything else will be fixed naturally.

Advice for those lost : Put all you free time in fixing yourself emotionally. Write down what you like, don't like, what are your problems, how to fix them, how to forgive people and move on etc.
 
Congratulations on the self improvement. Thanks for posting. I find it really cool to see what the more ready less posty focused members of the community are up to.

Ryuzaki said:
Welcome to becoming a non-lurker!
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PWNT :wink: He got u good )-
 
Klayne said:
How much I made, directly correlated to how much I fixed myself up internally and emotionally.
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I agree with this so much. The first day of the Crash Course is all about psychology and "taking self-inventory" for a reason. There's been a lot of posts on the forum about anxiety and not working for days at a time recently. I haven't responded because there's no way to not drag the conversation in that direction and get completely off-topic, but yes, they've identified their problems. They've not identified the solutions yet though. There's a lot of gimmicks out there, but if things are truly that bad you need to find a local therapist you're willing to sit down with in person once a week, every week, until you're good. CBT, EMDR, etc. There's proven methods to fix these problems fast, the actual problems, not applying a bandaid on top.

Congrats to @Klayne for the success you earned. Sometimes we simply have to get out of our own way by clearing out the gunk inside of us. It's typically not our fault and is something done to us, but at the end of the day we all bear the weight of our own cross and it's up to us to figure out how to move past it. Doing so is almost miraculous in how fast things change, not only in your own mind and body but in the events going on around you and the opportunities that open up.

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Welcome, @Wazzy88. Yeah, sadly those forums have become cesspits of people just typing some variation of "thanks" and "following" over and over again.

Yeah, people who got completely quarantined for months and months on end and did nothing but watch TV and "go insane out of boredom" wasted a huge opportunity to revolutionize their lives. "Oh no, what am I going to do with my time" should have been "it's go time on building a business or learning a skill."

Anyways, I hope all goes well with your project. Definitely get over that link building hurdle. It's as simple as finding places to create links or talking to people who have places to create links or attracting links. All three of those are much easier (and free) if you can produce very high quality content... link-bait, if you will.
 
Ryuzaki said:
It's typically not our fault and is something done to us, but at the end of the day we all bear the weight of our own cross and it's up to us to figure out how to move past it.
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This. Exactly this.

I grew up in a post soviet country, with parents that are grown up children with toxic mindsets and no self awareness.

My father had full control over our lives when we grew up as children (as does any parent basically). Oh boy did he enjoy that power trip. He had no boundaries for us (children), and my mother. He abused and broke any trust/respect that there could be, but a child still loves their parents emotionally, and this creates a conflict inside yourself.

Just to quickly illustrate what he did, and based on that you can guess how day to day life was. He liked to kick our dog after work, he created a separate section in the fridge, that no one could eat from, so only what mom bought could be eaten, he sold alcohol illegally for year, so I was around a lot of drunks, he smoked indoors 3 packs a day, my home was black and filled with mold, we had a DIY stove to heat up and all my clothes smelled like smoke in school.

Anger at mother for being co-dependant to my father, and not being a grown up, who should have had some boundaries and self respect for herself, and not allow to be treated that way. She had the option to walk away, children don't.

It's terrible, and all I want to do now is go back and hug myself and take me (and my brothers and mother) to live with myself today, and show that the world isn't as it was projected by my dad's insecurities and issues.

And for father, I hope he one day heals himself up and forgives himself, but it's not my responsibility to fix him, if he isn't ready to be fixed and ask for honest forgiveness and doesn't deny what he did.

But listen, you are not your father or mother. What they did to you or told you doesn't reflect who you are. You can fix yourself now, as you aren't a child anymore.

No one really becomes that way without a reason, and I realised that they are more damaged than me, and they never grew up, that's why they did what they did, not because I'm "bad".

Mentally I see them as small children in a grown up body. Everything makes sense when you do that.

You should forgive them, for your own sake, but it doesn't mean it was right what they did, and that you should give them any respect or spend any time with them. Don't allow to be guilted by them or similar (they know you in and out, they will find a way that works, until you heal yourself.)

Don't suppress the anger, hate/love, shame that you feel. Realise it, punch your pillow, scream, cry etc until you don't feel any negative emotions when thinking about the past. You should feel compassion and love for them, after all they are damaged children.

But don't make the mistake that you can fix yourself in the head by thinking and analysing. As the issue is deeper and stored in your body and emotions. That can only be released through body and emotions. Once you do that, your life will change.
 
I grew up with the exact same type of issues, same problems in the family. It's impossible for a kid to think that the authority figures in their lives could be to blame, because all of the structure of life would fall apart. So a kid takes the blame and shame upon themselves and assumes they're "bad". And we end up carrying that into adulthood and it zaps our full potential.

I agree 100% that "the body keeps the score". All the psychosomatic illnesses and tensions and all that is stored trauma. There's zero doubt about it at this point and we're just waiting on the literature to play catch up.

Congrats again! Things are looking up for you even beyond where you've already taken them. I'd say the hard part is behind you now. I'm very happy for you. I hope everyone reads your story and takes it very seriously.
 
Hi @Ryuzaki, I have read many of your posts and truly appreciate your advice.

The time I spent in quarantine allowed me to learn so much about myself and advance my skills in SEO as well as programming. The forced vacation allowed me to reset my goals and change the course of my life all together. I completely agree with your statement of using the time given to build something impactful.

The Digital Crash Course on this website is amazing! And it's free? I've paid hundreds of dollars to learn from online gurus and yet this course explained many concepts of SEO better. One of my goals is to start link-building once I have a more complete content schedule/plan. Seeing the results from link-building will be very rewarding.

Outreach and HARO are popular ways of link building but if anyone can point me to other resources or methods I would be grateful.
 
MrMedia said:
I fucking hate Oprah style posts filled with feels but this is someone who has walked the walk and come out on top.

Kudos to you and I am happy you are in a better place in all aspects.
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Thanks a lot.

The Oprah style posts don't fix anything, they just seek validation and don't get to the root of the problem. Just babbling about stuff, as they are in a mess. Looking for someone else to fix their problems.

That's probably why we hate them, including the writer of the post.
 
Hi everyone,

Marketing has always been the thing that challenged me most in all my enterprises so I'm planning to do something about it. Forum seems to be very civil and I've found quite a lot of value in it so here we are.

I've done full-stack development for most of my time as a dev (little over 2 years now) and in the past couple of months have dabbled in Machine Learning and AI. I've built several social media bots over the time and have experience building scrapers for all sorts of websites. I'm hoping these skills turn out to be useful in my journey of mastering marketing and also that I may be helpful to the forum.

Here's to a prosperous and insightful adventure.
 
Hello everyone I'm happy to be join the site after lurking for a little while.

I'm 34, based in the UK and after leaving school at 16 I went to work in a marketing agency as the tea boy and then over nearly two decades managed worked my way up to a head of paid search. In June I was let go due to global events, so with my redundancy money I decided to freelance for a little while until the jobs market picks back up.

To be perfectly honest, I've had to relearn a lot of skills and platforms as I was somewhat removed from them over the last couple of years but after going down a rabbit hole I found /r/juststart which eventually lead me here and as it seems like an excellent community I thought why not - might as well sign up improve my knowledge and help others do the same.

-----

Hey fellow newbie - great to see someone with a development background signing up.

Have you ever built anything ML related for advertising?
 
Welcome aboard, @landband, glad to have you. The majority of my developer skills are mainly front-end with some scripting and whatnot. But just that, without much back-end dev talent, opened up a huge variety of opportunity with my own projects and with helping out clients.

Being a jack of all trades is great when you want to improve your own stuff, but being a master of one or two things is better if you're looking at marketing your skills. For instance, I can do a wide range of front-end things masterfully, but as far as the public knows, I (used to be, too busy now) the guy to go to for page speed optimization or Wordpress theme development with speed in mind from the start.

When you can do something better than everyone else and can communicate that fact, while also being trustworthy and getting work done on time, you command a higher price for your services too, largely because your time is limited and big players want to know that they're getting the job done right, and even better since you know things they don't, and it's getting done on time without any games being played.

Sounds like you have a wide array of talents and can pick one or two and become the master of it. Marketing isn't hard, though mastering it takes time because your entire mind state has to change from a consumer to a producer. But I'm sure you have enough marketing skills as it is, simply from being inundated by it your entire life, to be successful with it.

Best of luck. Looking forward to learning from you as we carry on discussions!

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@AdsNerd, I'm very happy you joined us in conversation. We have a couple PPC masters here but we need more. The more the merrier!

It's funny, because as an SEO guy the grass is always greener on the PPC side, and for the PPC guy the grass is greener on the SEO side. My man @miketpowell is perhaps the PPC god and is still venturing into SEO. Meanwhile I'm always drooling over PPC. The truth is it isn't an "either/or" but a "both" situation. Anyways I'm talking to myself in this paragraph.

I'm excited to learn from you as we all continue to discuss things as time goes by. Thanks for joining and sharing your adventure thus far.
 
Thank you for the welcome @Ryuzaki. What you said about mastering a skill was really insightful. I think it's quite accurate. You always provide a lot of insight with your posts and I appreciate that. Glad to be on a forum with people like this.
 
Discovered this site through a weird set of circumstance (and as you will get from my future posts I strongly believe and trust in the "Universe" to guide me as long as I, kinda as an agent of said Universe, use my will and vision to create my reality) just browsing a Reddit thread about how to learn which lead me to WF which lead me to here. Been a member on/off of other sites, notably paywalled PPC forums, before, learnt a lot, tried and failed repeatedly.

I always avoided SEO as I simply didn't have the patience to wait months on Google to maybe help me out, having already been burned by Google before (see below). I've always gone straight to PPC and honestly this is probably where I will stay. Been reading this forum for the last two days in multiple browser tabs and windows as there's just too much to ingest, and when I stumbled upon eJuice's part about PPC I started feeling excited again.

My somewhat brief decade as an internet marketer. All of them failed, some quicker than others.

- Aged 16: The Golden Years - 3-4 page information sites written by hand or copied and pasted + Adsense. Being so young, foolish, somewhat stupid, I thought I was going to make 4 figures a day for the rest of my life! HA HA. Then Adsense banned me for no apparent reason (probably the copied and pasted stuff). A few months of getting new sites and Adsense accounts later and it was all over. This stands out as I've not found anything this easy yet, and because I had to get parental permission to get paid!

- Domains. For a while I sold the domains I had acquired for the Adsense sites. I used that money to buy more domains. Back then you could buy a 6 letter .com for $2k. Good luck with that now.. This quickly became a chore with all the scammers out there on top of people whining about "squatting" (and most of these whiners were other domainers).

- Kindle. Started in 2013, just writing 40+ page Kindle information books whilst following a GURU who's course I paid for. Quickly hit 4 figures per month...then 5... whilst everyone else was claiming to be doing $1MM per month...with screenshots. Never felt so disappointed in myself. Then learned it was all BS and you can fake your Amazon earnings through the Inspector tool. Moved into fiction. Big mistake. Then Amazon changed things. Earnings went down to 3 figure months pretty much instantly. Had to lie about my earnings too so not to lose face!!! The biggest takeaway I got from Kindle was my entry to the world of PPC, specifically running arbitrage against my own kindle titles. I would spend $10-100 per day and make back anywhere from 1-~300% ROI. The problem was, Kindle paid you on a 60 day arreas whereas Facebook wanted you to pay more or less instantly. Cashflow was an issue. By the time I got paid by Amazon the momentum I had built via ads was dead. As a result of this cashflow problem, I put the entire of my revenue back into ads or having ghostwriters create the content for me; and I never, not even once, took a paycheck from that company. 5 years, $100k+ in profit, and I never saw any of it. The other problem, which taught me to really hate people, was the other authors. Leaving negative reviews on your books and links to buy theirs was just the tip of the iceberg. Some of these authors were forming whole cartels with each other to dominate the Kindle marketplace. DMCA'ing your fresh releases claiming you had copied there's, etc. And add to all that in the last few years there have been reports, and I have experienced this, of Kindle payments not matching your KDP earnings. You email them and suddenly you get a payment...then next month nothing. I feel like this is just a symptom of a marketplace getting too big, and my fault really because like MJ DeMarco stresses; never rely on a platform. I did this with Google (Adsense) and then I stupidly did it with Amazon Select, and therefore I was at behest of their rules on their platforms. This is what puts me off SEO.

Since then I discovered affiliate arbitrage and planned on doing this but circumstances dictated otherwise so I spent the last 3 years working on myself; a spiritual awakening, then long hard days of meditation and fighting my ego. You see, all my past experiences made me become a victim of the world and I've had to fight to get out of that mindset. Never again will I be a victim. I tend to see problems as challenges now, and challenges lead to successes which lead to growth. It's almost like the Universe lobs a spanner in the works and if you get through the gauntlet you come out stronger.

So now here I am a changed person. Also an uncertain one. It seems like affiliate...anything is dead, and it's all about having a brand or a tangible product now. Which makes life somewhat harder as I have to think of something no one has done before, or has done before but I can do better, except all of my previous experience lead to business failure.

I hope the above wall of text has described my situation and that I'm here as a beginner. I know nothing, I just want to learn and put in the sweat equity to make something of myself. I've only had a small taste of success but I've learned from all my failures too. I know my strengths and weaknesses in business and feel like I can exploit them.

Thanks.
 
Welcome, @nothing. You sound a lot like me in terms of the metaphysical stuff. I try to keep the beginner's mind and keep my cup not-full so I can accept new info. My ego used to cause me to refuse to learn from others, which is about as stupid as it gets.

I wouldn't say affiliate methods are dead, but you're right that having your own product will be a vastly higher ROI, which means you can afford to market with PPC and play the numbers game you're used to. It definitely doesn't have to be a tangible product. Software, courses, e-books, videos, all that is huge money.

You definitely don't have to have a product that hasn't ever been done either. There's so few of those in existence at any given time, and a bunch of those don't even add value. Improving on existing ideas is fine. You can even not improve anything and just do better marketing.

But multi-millionaires are definitely being made with affiliate marketing still. I still have my foot in that game but I've moved on from that for the most part. I don't even sell a product or service on my sites at all and do quite well. Sometimes the content is the product (like Youtube videos, high-ranking posts on Google, etc.)

Best of luck with it all. I hope you'll continue posting. You've had a lot of valuable experience we can all learn from. I'm eager to hear more over time.
 
Welcome, I'm looking to learn more about PPC while I already know SEO, so I look forward to reading more from you.
 
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