Introductions Thread

What kind of sites have you been building? What do you dabble in? PPC any? What types of monetization do you prefer? Do you build eCommerce, MFA, Authority, Content sites, etc?
 
Hi. I'm Michael (Mike). I've been into internet marketing, mostly building niche websites, for several years now, but just came upon this site today. It looks like there are a lot of interesting threads to check out. Lately, I've been looking for information about current best practices for onpage SEO (that's what led me here). I'm off to explore the place now. Nice to meet you all!
 
Welcome... to the land of... the Real....

You'll find all kinds of great information here. I wrote an on-page SEO thread, which you can find in my signature. Another great place is to head into the Laboratory > Bootcamp and read all of @CCarter 's coaching threads.
 
Hello everyone, finally am here. traced ccarter here after i have read all his articles on wicked fire. I have been a silent reader on here for sometime and i have been entertained by several threads and amazed with their updates, one of such is built. To a wonderful time together
 
Speaking of Humblesalesman...

He deleted all of his former posts. You fine people did save all that, yes? I picked up a thing or two from him. I like the guy's style. I have em all in a fat notebook.
 
droplister said:
If there isn't anyone doing it already, I'll be that wide-eyed bitcoin fanatic that everyone wishes would stop posting. Also, LARAVEL IS THE ONE TRUE GOD.

So, look forward to that.
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I'm into Bitcoin and crypto as well, you're in good company. Would love to read about anything you're working on in the crypto-sphere!
 
I have read CCarter's threads before. Have been lurking for a while and decided to create an account now.

I am planning to build sites for the long term. Hope to share whatever I know with you guys.

PS: The bootcamp threads are awesome!
 
Hi Nanexo. Ain't sure what your issue on WF was, but i think i used one of your services a few years ago and like it was good. Welcome.
 
Welcome to the club! What kind of sites are you interested in? eCommerce? Authority content sites? MFA style?
 
Thanks!
Not MFA sites. I am building a few sites with minimal content, one by one. I am hoping to work on them, one at a time. Along with this, I want to look at product creation, but I am afraid that it will result in me spreading too thin - especially now, when I am just starting.
At some point, I hope to build eCommerce sites, but I have no clue as to how to build and maintain them :-)

Goal #1: Build and flip an authority content site.
 
welcome @builder just a thought about the product creation well actually goes for content as well, don't know if you've heard of the 3 book theory from copyblogger, but just to some it up basecally if you've read 3 books on a subject you already know more about that subject than 90% of your target audience.
Now it doesn't have to be 3 books, just the equivelant in quality information, and you'd be good to go.
 
I just wanted to create this post to introduce myself and say hi to everyone out there.

I've been reading a lot of CCarter recently and I managed to follow the crumbs from WickedFire to this forum.

Looking forward to getting to know you all.
 
I was recommended to this forum by a buddy and thought i'd check it out. A bit about my background: I started off with small niche sites, but never saw any real success. Then I got into affiliate marketing and made a few thousand, but nothing huge.

As of lately I've been putting in massive action towards an ecommerce site that I now have. Excited to hit some real success soon. I've been grinding (no less than 5 hours a day) for the past 10 months.

Anyways, hope to meet some of you guys and learn some stuff. I'll try to give back what little knowledge I have when I can.
 
Welcome aboard. Sounds like you should be meeting success real soon with that level of dedication. In such a fast moving world as the internet, very few people will hang on for as long as 10 months on one project. Congrats and good luck. See you around the forum!
 
As a kid, I dabbled with making websites and then found it awesome that I could earn money with them. That led me to selling my first website (http://www.createmybb.com) for a measly $1500 (when I was 15 I was so excited, though!). It's still up and running today... 10 years later.

Anyways, I joined the military after that, made a couple websites while I was in.. but never really had time to fully manage them and they fizzled out. I'm out of the military now and back home. I had a job lined up and it didn't work out so now FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. I have one website up and running right now, it's making something.... but that something is not anything.

I'm planning on making a few websites using long tail niche keywords... doing some research right now. Hoping to learn from some of you guys here! Please lead me in the right direction! I've read.. alot. I've got long tail pro, and I know the basics around that. Also, I implemented some of the techniques on one of my active sites and the keyword went from 500+ on Google to 2 within a week. I guess I did something right!

Thanks everyone!
 
After checking out several forums this one stood out to me: here people actually talk... regularly. And, here, people seem to talk about the real deal instead of trolling or talking about the latest tricks instead of long term plays. And since I'm a strategy kinda guy, I thought I'd join!

Allow me to introduce myself:

  • Serial entrepreneur in the process of starting his third business (hence third time's the charm)
  • Been doing online marketing for 7 years
  • I hail from a tiny country in Europe (compared to the US)
  • I'm a marketer turned programmer (I feel like I can learn so much from the veterans here)
  • I've worked with many channels (SEO, SEA, social, email, affiliate, video, remarketing, etc.)
  • Helped people/companies in various industries and countries, ranging from dating in the US to nanotechnology in Belgium and from camping in Italy to fitness in Australia
  • I love the hustle, I love to think outside the box, and I love to combine channels and make it rain!
I can almost hear you thinking "Sounds great man, but why are you here then?"

Two reasons...

First off, I feel like my development as a marketer flatlined somewhere in the last 1-2 years. And I've looked everywhere to break through the glass ceiling I ran into: colleagues at work, people in my network, the "best" blogs in my country, books, friends, events, even got a mentor... and it didn't do sh*t for me. Nada. I've felt empty. Frustrated. Confused? Felt like I was going insane.

The worst thing that can ever happen to someone like me who has an innate need to improve, to build and to develop... is to feel all buildings have been constructed, to feel the city's done.

Secondly, I currently have a 9 to 5 but not by my choice. You see, I had a get rich or die trying mentality when I owned my first business, sold it eventually, and started a consulting firm. Two years in, I was confronted with some serious health problems because I neglected my physical wellbeing. Since I invested all my money and was presented with astronomical healthcare bills, I had no choice but to get a job. That hurt, and not only physically.

I'm leaving some parts out there for the sake of not turning this into a book report, but the point is: I've almost recovered health wise and with each day that goes by my hunger for the hustle increases. I'm ready for round 3!

To make a long story short: reading the topics in this forum I feel like this might just be my marketing home. A place where I'm NOT the smartest/most driven guy in the room. Finally...

I hope to build my 3rd business among peers :-)

Jayhoon said:
As a kid, I dabbled with making websites and then found it awesome that I could earn money with them. That led me to selling my first website (http://www.createmybb.com) for a measly $1500 (when I was 15 I was so excited, though!). It's still up and running today... 10 years later.

Anyways, I joined the military after that, made a couple websites while I was in.. but never really had time to fully manage them and they fizzled out. I'm out of the military now and back home. I had a job lined up and it didn't work out so now FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. I have one website up and running right now, it's making something.... but that something is not anything.

I'm planning on making a few websites using long tail niche keywords... doing some research right now. Hoping to learn from some of you guys here! Please lead me in the right direction! I've read.. alot. I've got long tail pro, and I know the basics around that. Also, I implemented some of the techniques on one of my active sites and the keyword went from 500+ on Google to 2 within a week. I guess I did something right!

Thanks everyone!
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I hear you brother: failure is not an option! And I'm just getting started again as well.

The one piece of advice I can give you: never put all your money/time/effort into one channel, Google in this particular case. Working for a marketing agency, I see so many companies crash and burn because they rely for over 60-70% of their traffic (and income) on Google. Someone takes a shortcut somewhere down the road and BAM penalized.

With 60-70% of their income gone when they least expect it, few survive. So, spread your risks: email marketing, social (including advertising), PR, mobile, heck, offline.
 
Welcome to the board!

How did you find the learning curve going from marketer to programmer? Where/how did you receive your education in programming?
 
stackcash said:
Welcome to the board!

How did you find the learning curve going from marketer to programmer? Where/how did you receive your education in programming?
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Funny story: I actually did some "programming" before I even started marketing. Built my first website with HTML tables with my dad when I was 12, because my martial arts dojo didn't have a site yet lol.

All my coding education was born out of necessity, really. Example: back in 2008 I started my 1st bizz, needed a site, and hired some WordPress guys from India. Spent what little money I had at the time on it and they delivered a piss poor site. Being broke, I HAD TO learn how to make Wordpress do what I wanted it to do because I knew no one that could help and had no money to my name. That's how I learned the basics of CSS, PHP an MySQL: by editing many different WordPress installs, some custom CMS's, etc.

As for the learning curve: I curse a lot at my screen at times lol, but it's a lot of fun. I'm nowhere near where some of the other peeps on here are, but I'm a persistent SOB. Plan to up my PHP and Javascript game this year for sure!
 
Hello everyone,

I got told about the forum a while back by a friend, finally got around to checking it out. Looks great, so I'm here and I'm going to stick around.

My background:

I grew up in a working class family who always told me that as long as you work hard you'll do well in life. I took that to heart, when I was young (about 8 years old) my parents had their own store and this was way back in the 90s btw, my step-dad taught me how to build and repair computers before I could even ride a bike. I'm 100% serious lol.

I enjoyed creative pursuits for most of my teens. I mastered Photoshop at 14. Learned to code websites by 15. I run a number of forums in my teens, got real competitive in FPS games and I made some good money selling my services amongst those kind of communities, even worked for Xfire for a few months doing graphical work, but those guys were retarded (as we know since Steam rolled over them). So I left Xfire and just coasted through school, stopped doing all that stuff by the time I was 19.

When I was 22 I got back some motivation again...

At 22 I knew I was wasting my life and talents away, my main problem was that I hated doing graphics work for others and in he 7 or so years since I went hard learning to code & program a fair bit had changed and I had no motivation to do that again either.

What interested me most was building things, like when I ran forums and was solely responsible for making them better than the competition, which meant everything from design to marketing to content.

I built a bunch of sites for clients at this point, up-sold them some content marketing services and did that for a good year before I touched anything else. I got pretty good at it, well, I was already better than I thought at the time.

My main client during this time was a SaaS and we just absolutely rinsed communities, LinkedIn, FB Groups etc. It wasn't anything groundbreaking but we got about 100k subscribers ready for launch within 6 months. During that time I also had a lot of creative control & direction on the landing pages... I used what I knew about design, what I had learned about marketing & copywriting and our absolute best performing landing page ended up at an 11% conversion rate which was INSANE! They were very happy... I was bored which is typical of me as you can probably already tell... So I left not longer after (lol). Edit: Also run a fuck load of Ads.

I moved into SEO because this was something else that interested me and did that for the better part of a year and a half... I mixed a lot of white hat with grey. Spent a lot of time spamming with GSA SER and basically used all of that time to keep testing everything I could... I pretty much have a formula that I use now and it's probably more white hat than anything. I sometimes use SAPE or PBN, but very rarely.

I kept money coming in from 1 big client during that time and helped them successfully sell their business which ended up consisting of multiple sites for just under $5,000,000. I got a nice bonus, and I've basically been learning more about other forms of marketing since then...

Since January I've basically been spinning my wheels, achieving goals in other areas of my life and spending money. Yeah I've learned and improved, but now I'm at this point where I can do whatever I put my mind to I'm totally, completely and utterly lost with what's next...

My goal would be to run a site as clean as a whistle, something I'm very passionate about so that I can rely on it a little in the long run. Since I get itchy feet I also want to have a number of other sites in the future, stuff where I can just have fun with everything from advertising, click-bait, to media manipulation to heavy duty spamming. (Not necessarily all on one site, but one thing at a time.)

Eventually I'd like to have a network of sites, my preference is informational and entertainment based. I'd like to be up there and able to play with the big boys one day in terms of traffic across the network :smile: Build it massive!

Anyway that's me, long intro I know but I'd rather have it here to reference it later. I've been lurking for a while and I think there are a few posters on here who sometimes assume that everyone is a fucking idiot who just does SEO!

If anyone has any questions then feel free to ask and I'm also all ears to hearing about any solutions you guys might have to getting out of this mental block I'm having with getting started on something new!
 
That's a killer story and similar to many others on this forum. So many of us were obviously just naturals at this as far back as early high school (and earlier), saw some early success, and some how just moved away from it all until our early 20's. It's some kind of archetypal blueprint for us internet entrepreneurs somehow.

Good call on having one "passion project" that's clean as a whistle and lasts forever. Then getting your tests and more risky energies out on other projects. That's how I do things as well. You'll always have that clean site to fall back on (and should end up being the big money maker anyways).
 
Massive said:
I pretty much have a formula that I use now and it's probably more white hat than anything. I sometimes use SAPE or PBN, but very rarely.
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What`s your main strategy? Would appreciate if you share it.
 
algospider said:
What`s your main strategy? Would appreciate if you share it.
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I think I've heard a few people referring to 'pumpkin hacking' which is pretty close to what I do.

Other than that philosophy if you will, my emphasis is good site structure, speed and above all else I put a big emphasis on creating content that will work as an asset for more than one goal... E.g. primary goal: shares, secondary goal: whatever.

The reason this works is purely down to strategy. Knowing what content has to give me what result is very useful, like not every piece of content is really worth the time-cost of outreach, as this isn't something I entrust to a PA. Additionally, going for the long tails on a new site is useful because I can get a 'dependable' level (albeit small) of search traffic every month. My promotion efforts are pretty much synonymous with link building at this point, new sites don't get spam or we could say I build no links where there's no traffic to click-through to the site.

So we're getting traffic from day one due to that approach, and we're learning from that data early which means we can adjust as we go which also helps our SEO efforts. I'm also sure that there's a level of authority you get when you're ranking for the lower level keywords, call it relevancy 2.0 or whatever you want; it's definitely helped us to take this approach.

When I've decided to use SAPE, PBN & even GSA links it's been a decision that's made as a trade-off between risk and reward. I think that's the way it should be, since the potential benefits of these links can be huge and there isn't a high level of commitment to acquire them (just need the $$) we can easily buy or build them links without thinking about the real cost.

My preference is to keep my white hat sites white, my grey hat grey and promote the hell out of all of them regardless. I haven't always been able to do that, but it's still my preference.

By the way, I'm really curious about building an exposure engine as I've built a number of accounts on Twitter before to promote each other for the purpose of getting traffic to the money site later. When there are tools out there like FollowLiker & HootSuite/Buffer you can get a lot out of these channels with less time-cost than ever. So if anyone has experience with how to build a real exposure engine I'd love to hear all about it as I can't find much information on it.

To go back a moment though and give you a bit more info, I saw a post recently on SerpWoo about high trust domains to build links on... I think it was 35 domains.. Well you should check it out because these are some of the sites I use for building links early on that can send traffic if the content is good and the initial promotion is good. Those kinds of links can build the foundation for a very strong site from an SEO perspective in my experience.
 
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Thanks for sharing, so to make sure I understand it correctly you main goal is build a content that will be shared - right?

You assuming that if the content is appreciated by the users e.g. they are sharing it, all other will follow: ranking, traffic, etc...

It would be very interesting to see how you planning on writing a content that people will share? Do you have any guidelines? Or any article that you share?
 
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