The Bragging Thread - Inspire A Newbie

I made these sawhorses using a chainsaw mill I built to create lumber from a tree I cut down on property we bought using income we earned from self learning seo, affiliate marketing, digital marketing, blogging, email marketing and coaching in 9 months.

My bank account: Can't remember, haven't checked lately, but it's enough.

I own my home, I own my land, my family is happy and healthy. We don't rely on any public utilities for our power, water, sewer or security. We don't use any medications, drugs or have medical problems. We have trees and tools to create our own lumber and skills to build most anything actually need. We grow most of our own food and what we can't grow we trade with other neighbors. We own our cars and work when we feel like it from a small cabin we built using materials we reclaimed from a house that was being demolished. We sleep in till we're rested and I get to talk by phone with each of my family members at least once a week, including my 73 year old dad who I never got to know as a kid.

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This message will be dismissed by the masses, but will appeal to those to whom it should.

To anyone posting up photos of their bank account, I'll share a small history lesson with you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression
 
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tykesmurf said:
I'll share a small history lesson with you
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I agree with you in a lot of ways. Definitely purchase the basics of automobiles, land, a home, etc., and reduce your expenses as far as you can. At the same time, over-buying any of these can increase your expenses and keep you burdened by having to generate cash flow. To me, reducing dependence on cash flow is the key to freedom. After that, I can worry about luxuries or extravagant nest eggs, but as you're saying, those nest eggs are unrealized assets and can be gone in a poof. Taking these steps out of order leaves you with this house I used to drive by on my way to high school... there were always three fancy cars parked out front... Escalades, Caddilacs, etc., with rims and all the extras... parked in front of their single wide trailer home with the siding falling off. Guess where all their cashflow was pre-promised as payment? They didn't care, because when they went out on the town, at least they appeared wealthy. I'd rather feel secure and appear poor than the other way around, but ultimately, both.
 
It's funny how we read the same thing and because of our perspective got two different messages @Ryuzaki All I read was freedom to spend time with family with family being the over riding theme.
 
I think some people are missing the whole point and spirit of this thread. It's called the "Bragging Thread" to inspire newbies that this "internet thing" is real and can make you serious guac if you focus and put correct energy towards it. Sitting around with your family and friends isn't inspirational cause poor people have the luxury of doing that all day.

Problem is when that poor person wants to do something more with their life or help out a family member with bills or who has health problems - only way to remedy that in THIS society is with guac (unless you live in fantasy world).

"Love" and "Feelings" aren't going to get you much else except a pat on the back and "good job" from random strangers. You can't have freedom in THIS society without guac, even the dude building his house had to get his start-up guac at the very basic level from online ventures.

The problem I see is there is an undertone that seems to be creeping up that guac doesn't matter and only "family and friends" do. Which always seems to be the shield of people who can't generate money, so they switch their thought process to "well money is evil", and become anti-capitalist and preach virtue. The pastors preach virtue every Sunday, but they still pass around the offering basket cause guac is the only thing that will keep the lights on.

If you can't figure out how to "make money", that's okay. Everyone here started out not knowing how to do that, but they kept grinding and grinding, over and over, failure after failure, until they finally "did it". This internet thing is NEW to ALL of us, since we are at the dawn of it.

The difference between the winners in this thread and the undertone of "anti-capitalism" is maybe when the winners failed, they kept getting back up, and when the people that didn't win, the losers, gave up when they failed. Failure is a key ingredient for success, so don't let people tell you that getting guac is bad simply because they were unable to in life since they decided to give up after a couple of failures.

I didn't participate in this thread for personal beliefs (except for my 8-ball), but this thread and the "materialist" objects are needed to inspire because simply telling people "to get more money" is not enough. They sometimes have to see the financial security and end result of others to weather the darkness as they go through this journey, cause after all we are on a business forum, and are not here to hold hands and sing kumbaya with each other around a campfire.

If you want freedom in THIS society, guess what, guac is the only way to get it. What you do with that guac afterwards is up to you. I can't judge anyone for their purchasing decisions in life and what makes them happy, cause I haven't walked a day in their shoes or known life through their perspective.

Let's get back to the spirit of this thread mates: to inspire a newbie to reach for something better than their current environment and circumstances since we are living in THIS society for the foreseeable future where we trade services, skills, and goods for guac.

For my contribution, my second prized possession besides my 8-ball, R2D2:

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Perhaps I don't have Aston Martin or Ferrari yet, but this is what I always get inspired by when I take a look through my office window because I know that achieving dreams is still possible.:

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I grew up poor as shit. Lived in a trailer home. I remember one time, my neighbor shot a hole through our house with a 12 gauge. Patched it up with duct tape. It was meant for his wife (so the story goes). Imagine being 12 years old and hearing your father reason with a maniac, as to why he shot a hole in his house.

One of the many crazy stories in my life. But I made it through. I now make $1200 a month with adsense sites. It's amazing.
 
Back in 2007, my newly launched website was making like $50 on a good month. I seriously considered selling it for $500-$700 to get some quick money and free up more time as I've also had my day job. Thanks to my laziness and some luck, I've never got to actually sell it. Following a few years and a lot of hard work, this same website is making me much more than I could ever dream earning with my day job.

When you have something working, just keep investing yourself in it and it will bring its fruit.
 
Bought a new house this month. Needed(wanted) a bigger place since my wife and I had twins last year.

4,400+ sqft in a guard gated neighborhood with a pool/spa. My new 1st would problem is the long walk to the bathroom from bed in the giant master bedroom.

This is all the cardboard in the garage from all the boxes we have been getting new stuff in.

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Jesus, how do you guys make these figures?! I'm seen people here posting their revenues with adsense and affiliate accounts and I'm scratching my head trying figure out what am i doing wrong?

Currently doing mostly clickbank stuff and I'm averaging about 5K a month... maybe I need to move to CPA?
Any help would be appreciated...
 
SMoKeR said:
Jesus, how do you guys make these figures?! I'm seen people here posting their revenues with adsense and affiliate accounts and I'm scratching my head trying figure out what am i doing wrong?

Currently doing mostly clickbank stuff and I'm averaging about 5K a month... maybe I need to move to CPA?
Any help would be appreciated...
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In some ways it doesn't so much matter what you do but your approach to it. You need a path of reinvestment into your business and growing from basically a free lancer into a "business".

If you are making 5k/month doing something. Can you find a way to do 20x more and make 100k/month? Well probably not all yourself but if you develop some systems and hire/train people maybe you can start generating 100k/month while paying 50k/month in expenses.

Usually the barrier I see in people in your position is trying to keep high margins as you continue to grow revenue. High revenue really isn't possible without high costs. The net can still be much better than the guy with very little expenses though. If you are currently netting 5k/month find a way to start investing 1-3k of that back into your business to increase that revenue. Initially you will be taking home less each month but that's the sacrifice for getting to more later. If you need ideas on what to invest in on your business just go read through other threads here, you should find something.
 
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I really hate to brag, it goes against my nature however.. here we go.. One of my funnels from last year.. $100K - 350 customers you don't need big lists or lots of buyers, you just got to treat the existing ones well.

Never forget it's easier to increase conversions than get new subscribers..

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Such a great thread. Lots of inspiration, great to be among guys actually earning and killing it.
I will add this (ecommerce):

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I'm not going to post a picture, but I'll briefly describe what this shit has enabled for me.

I just turned 29 earlier this week. I'm single. I've got a nice house, some land, a pool, a 2016 car, enough money to live on (reasonably) for the foreseeable future. In the past week alone, I've spent about $7500 (daniel defense ar15, new bed frame, some european down duvet bullshit a girl told me to get, whiskey, hash oil, some paintings for my house, a drone, some work on my sailboat and a trip setup...).

That's all dope and shit. But the real wealth, the real inspiration is that I wake up in the morning and I do whatever the fuck I want all day. Mostly, that's grind out some serious work and chip away at larger plans. It's also to take care of myself. As of last week I'm down 73lbs. My phone is constantly blowing up with offers from super rad friends (more successful than me, cooler, smarter, funnier) to come out and hang. Girls want to fuck. Hot girls. Not the type of girls I was getting when I was 23 and fat. Girls you'd want to fuck too.

This is all because of the internet. This is all because of the principles on this forum. This is all because of the cool motherfuckers that hit me up in PM and we get something going.

Let's keep it up, BuSo. I've got high expectations and big plans for all of you :smile:

bopeep said:
You still in the debt niche primarily?
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Naw man, I'm not in any niche, in a 'primary' way. I've got a ton of sites. All with different monetization models. Some ecommerce, some paid -> affiliate, some subscription SaaS, some arbitrage, MFA, a little consulting... it's all over the place.

The only niche I'm in, in hindsight is making fucking stacks of money from this here keyboard.

Edit: I also have sites that expired a long time ago or were sold that still earn on a monthly basis. Good checks too. Always take the revshare if you can.

animalstyle said:
@dresden how long you been at it? Can you give some examples of how you work with others? Like people approaching you via pm with opportunities or as partners?
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I started in 2002 at the ripe old age of 15. Was in hard spam for a long time, until ~2008 or so I think. Got mailed a knife, some death threats, that type of thing... the RBN is tough competition. I was operating in viagra/dick pills/payday, wow gold, counterfeits etc

I switched it up and went into ecommerce pretty heavily. Did well. Started taking consulting clients for a % of their gross. I had/have some pretty sick sweetheart deals from that.

Since I don't live in a big city, 99% of my partners over the years come from forums, intros from others, or conferences. I always, always, always prefer to operate with a partner. 1+1 = 4, IMO, if the other dude is rad enough to put in his time and bring his expertise into the fold. I hold up my share, every single time. I'm nothing without my network. Every break I've been given, every new opportunity has been because I stick to my word and I respect people and go above and beyond to do right by people. I protect that rep with everything I have. My simple rule is that if I say I'm going to do it, I do it, or die. Done. So many people ignore this and flake out. Happens all the fucking time. I'm not interested in partnerships with people who haven't been there, done that. I can tell within 15 mins of skype chat/pm with someone if they're worth their weight.

The worst thing ever, and this has actually happened, is getting a partner who was kind of green and had never seen big numbers before. We started having $3k-$5k/days and he legit went AWOL. I don't know if it was the pressure, the lifestyle it enabled, or what. He basically stopped working and kept in touch over text pushing off meetings. I still don't get it. *shrug*

I can't say enough about making sure you stick to your word and don't fuck people over. I've been in this game a long time, been to a lot of conferences, spoken, etc. You can't even imagine how many times some fuck will do something and every single person I know hits me up on skype and passes along the blacklist tip. This is a small fucking industry. Maybe medium size with all of the wannabes, but the real heavy hitters are a pretty close knit circle and word travels like wildfire.

In terms of how I work - it really depends on the projects. These days I'm more often the 'technical founder', so to speak. That type of arrangement often looks like this:
  • We work together to identify an opportunity
  • We find the 10x multiplier / USP / killer feature
  • We figure out the MVP / path to market
  • We mockup
  • I build
  • They market / create content / etc (whatever they agreed to)
  • Rinse, repeat until we're happy. Do it again.
For spam / non-dev plays it looks like this:
  • Normally the other dude has an idea of niche, or currently operates in a space. He gets in touch.
  • We rap for a while, run some analysis.
  • Come up with a hypothesis. Some baseline metrics we'd need. Could be social performance, links, leaks, ppc / cogs numbers to hit.
  • Normally we test with some barnacle work. Fancy.com/houzz.com/amazon.com for ecom, 3rd party hosted page for spam, etc. I normally reach out to bizdev contacts at this stage and start off the test on the right foot.
  • Depending on that, build out / scale up or iterate and try again.
I love working with partners. I always learn something. Even if we're both already heavily engaged in the same space, some simple conversation can bring about a totally new idea, or we can find something working that applies to a new space. It's really not rocket science... just be nice to people and work towards mutual goals.
 
Already posted a visa/mastercard merchant account history but this thread is epic :']

I know a lot of guys on forums (here and elsewhere) often say "focus on one task" but sometimes this can hinder a site's growth. I find positive reinforcement, which usually spikes dramatically after the first sale, is one of my own strongest motivating factors. This is precisely what got me started in 2013; threw an OEM product that was getting heavy TV advertisement on eBay and had my first sale ($3 cost price, $39 sale price) within 30 minutes.

When opening a store, slap the products on (with or without images), prices, payment gateway and THEN go back and fill put images, metas, blog pages, product descriptions, etcetera. Sometimes just having 1 intermittent sale even when your website is looking like shit is so powerful that it's made me go back and complete the rest of the site within 30 minutes of that first sale.

I'm also a big fan of launching sites before they're ready, for example, launching a site with someone's product before you've even cut a deal. One example is direct B2B pay per call arrangements: I will redirect a number to a client and start giving him new customers without his knowledge. After we have some calls come in, I will approach him and mention the customers that I've brought him and he really has no choice but to start paying for those and future customers.

Here's some ecommerce turnovers from Jan 1 this year:

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This one is from an old CMS that I have now changed to woocommerce but still worth posting:

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Working hard and learning what is working is good. Just started into the social and video stuff and things are doing well.

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SMoKeR said:
Jesus, how do you guys make these figures?! I'm seen people here posting their revenues with adsense and affiliate accounts and I'm scratching my head trying figure out what am i doing wrong?

Currently doing mostly clickbank stuff and I'm averaging about 5K a month... maybe I need to move to CPA?
Any help would be appreciated...
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It's not necessary about what you're doing (adsense vs cpa vs clickbank). It's more about how much money there is in a market, and how big of a slice you can get from the pie. Having a successful site in "how to get rid of tinnitus" vs. "how to get six pack abs" can be the difference between making $1,800 per month and $17,000 per month.
 
My day job. We sell appliances locally so most sales are in person or over the phone. Not my business but i've built it up from nothing and working here part time keeps a roof over my head for the moment and frees me up for my personal stuff. Also means I don't have to freelance :mad:

7K FB / #1 on most local relevant keywords / Adwords (£500-1K / mo) / FB Ads (£500-1K/MO) / Bing (£50 once in a blue moon lol). / Starting on emails 1K so far / 2K SMS database

Again this isn't a true reflection of the sales most people come to the showroom.

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wxyz said:
@Greyhat nothing better than seeing an exponential curve!
418 orders placed is plenty: have you tried offline credit cards by wplab?
I have been saving customer card numbers and have a Filipino call all customers a month after and ask if they'd like to order the same again - simple 'yes' or 'no' over the phone and we bill them again :smile:

Are you in the UK? http://www.bulksms.com/products/sms-api.htm
"Hi! It's Greyhat from Herbal Remedies :smile: You placed an order about a month ago, would you like the same again? We still have your name and address on file, just reply YES if you want another tub! -Greyhat"
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@wxyz that's not a bad idea no I haven't thought of that. Yes i'm in the UK I may give that a go thanks : )
 
Last 30ish days from 1 website. The revenue screenshots are only the last 30ish days from one ad network for the site. The site has 3 other ad networks on top of that. (Site makes $100k+/month)

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also got this achievement 7 months ago

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Here's 3 website sales for 2 million dollars : (i've sold 40+ other sites on top of these)

• https://feinternational.com/buy-a-website/2268-digital-fitness-magazine-28k-net-mo
• https://feinternational.com/buy-a-w...rsonal-style-blog-85m-pageviews-mo-29k-net-mo
• https://flippa.com/5594317-fightstate-com

Kakarot said:
@Tavin Incredible results, congratulations! Is this all by SEO organic traffic?
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Mostly from organic social reach, which leads naturally to backlinks, etc.

First of all amazing job. (I remember reading the prospectus of the fitness site ages ago). 3 questions: When FB meddles with organic reach, does it impact you heavily? Have you gotten this down to a pretty normalized process now (find vertical, hire writers, promote articles, arb the ads/to aff, rinse, repeat)? and do you need connections to get those CPMs? I am much more on the aff side and I findhaving connections and knowing other pubs will get me significantly higher CPAs or rev share rates.
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They're always changing the algo. The one thing we've learned is to do our best to post high engagement posts (high quality memes, videos) that will keep users engaged and coming back. The more a user comes to your page directly, the more it will show up on their timeline.

You definitely need connections to get higher CPMs. The ad networks are at risk, if they have you in their network running fraudulent traffic. The big CPMs come when you have advertisers buy full takeover campaigns or social native details.

You have to earn your way there with 1 site, and that opens the door to them trusting you on new sites.

You have sold a few nice websites, and not everyone of them was probably properly taken care of by the new owner/s. On the other hand some of those sites are growing, and getting stronger on a daily basis. What owners of those growing sites do better than owners of those that don't? Any specific areas of operating and/or marketing site?
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The owners doing best, were the ones that we're willing to swallow their pride, and listen. Almost every single time you get a new owner that thinks they will do much better than you and don't take your advice, it never ends well. They change everything way too fast, no split testing, etc.

It's foolish to not learn from the experiences of those who've come before you.
 
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I just wanted to add my 2 cents for those of you starting out -

I started in this industry by hustling and cranking out content for website owners in my living room after work. I remember I once got an order for 10 articles on how to throw a dog a birthday party. Yikes.

Now, it's 6 years later, and I have 4 employees and multiple contractors, and we work with businesses all over the US.

But, more important than any of the money or growth - we just had our first baby, a little girl, and myself and my wife get to be at home with her, and spend pretty much as much time with her as we want. That looks a lot more like success to me than any numbers we might have in our bank account!

You can do this! I had no idea 6 years ago that this is where I could be now. If I had known I would have quit my job earlier!
 
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