Introductions Thread

Welcome.

I just got here myself, I kinda feel you.

The old days of the internet were just something else entirely.

You could actually feel the freedom.

Nowadays it feels like the Internet is less free than it used to be.
 
Hi all - I've been lurking on here for a while, figured it was time to say hello. I've been in SEO for about 9 years now, almost all client/agency work. I have a couple of niche sites that have been dying on the vine a little, so the plan is to grow and sell a handful of sites over the next couple of years. Still learn a lot from this forum, so thanks to everyone who contributes to the discussion!
 
Welcome, @aberdons. If you work at an agency you should know enough or at least have insight into enough to absolutely succeed on your own and far outpace your wages at the agency. I hope you'll do it, because all there is to it is to do it, especially once you're equipped with the knowledge.
 
Thanks @Ryuzaki , learned a lot from your threads so it's great to meet you. I'm 100% confident in what I can do in SEO, I've made a huge difference for a lot of businesses, so I'm just starting to balance my weekly hours to work on my projects until they're viable as a business. Might start a thread in the lab to track my priority project to show some of the methods I've learned here and elsewhere.
 
Thanks for your reply @Ryuzaki. You're right in the sense that currently we do depend on a lot of plugins that could be done away with if one knows how to code (which I don't yet).

I do know about the Income Store fiasco and I saw it coming from a mile away. I had alerted and warned my friends who were doing business with them. Some listened and some didn't, and they ended up losing a good chunk of money.

Interesting to know that your sites ended up in their portfolio; small world indeed. Which brokerages do you use to buy and sell sites by the way?

P.S - Sorry for the late reply. Is there a way I can be notified whenever there is a reply on this thread?
 
mohit said:
Which brokerages do you use to buy and sell sites by the way?
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I've used FE International exclusively except for a handful of smaller Flippa sales. There's others that I'd trust just as much, but I haven't personally used them yet, like Empire Flippers for instance. There's some newcomers to the game that I'll probably use next time, like Alpha Investors. All of these guys are members here!

mohit said:
Is there a way I can be notified whenever there is a reply on this thread?
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You can use the Watch button at the top right of each thread above the first post. It lets you subscribe by email. You can do this with any threads.
 
Hi all,

An ex affiliate marketer (like, 10 years ago) and current academic here. This seems like a place to be to find smart _white hat_ folks. I have a few dreams that I am working on the side and would like to get ideas and feedback and - more than anything else - find like-minded people to build with. The nights spent battling my PHP demons do get lonely!

In any case, happy to see what's going on here and I'm sure I can contribute something back!
 
Welcome, @scidi. Glad to have you aboard. What are you working on these days, if you can share?
 
secretagentdad said:
Forums are dead. Long live forums.

You can read the same posts here reworded by some facebranded gurutard on fb groups.
Somehow the substance always seems to get diluted as part of their rehashing process though.
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Exactly.

But that's what I found different about this place.

The direct, no bullshit, straight to the point language commonly used in this community is really valuable for people like me.

Especially when we are feeling stuck with certain aspects of our lives.

This forum makes my path look more like a straight line and less like a loop.

scidi said:
Hi all,

An ex affiliate marketer (like, 10 years ago) and current academic here. This seems like a place to be to find smart _white hat_ folks. I have a few dreams that I am working on the side and would like to get ideas and feedback and - more than anything else - find like-minded people to build with. The nights spent battling my PHP demons do get lonely!

In any case, happy to see what's going on here and I'm sure I can contribute something back!
Click to expand...

The impression I have is not that people here are White Hat.

I don't mean Black Hat, or even Grey Hat either.

These guys have Rainbow Hats, Transparent Hats, Hats with State of the art Cloaking Device Technology and more...
 
Some might not even wear hats because they can walk in the rain and not get wet.
 
I run TextBoss here. :smile: My name is Taylor. I have extensive experience in business administration, Internet marketing, SEO, and website development. I also run a content & copywriting agency. I look forward to participating in the forum extensively and being of great value to the community.
 
Ryuzaki said:
Welcome, @scidi. Glad to have you aboard. What are you working on these days, if you can share?
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Thanks! I'm working on decision support systems -- think of simple interactive widgets that are 1) faster and better than Google and 2) clutter-free, for e.g. discovering the <best something> for your personal profile. A combination of tens of thousands of data points sourced from real users of those somethings, some simple machine learning on the backend, and basically matching the <best something> to the user's psychometrics.

I think I can spin this into a marketing tool as a WordPress plugin. Again, a relatable example - a WordPress plugin to discover the "best online forum for digital marketers". Now, best is not a 1-dimensional attribute -- although it's often treated as one (think of thumbs up/down voting based systems). It's more complicated than that: "best" in terms of what? We can e.g. have "cost", "newbie-friendliness", a few other decision-making heuristics. I collect data across all those, and match some other user attributes on the backend, and can provide suggestions.

How to spin it into marketing and potentially a business? That's what I'm here to figure out. I have been working on e.g. on a WordPress solution where the data is really the asset I control -- the code part is relatively simple PHP soup, much like any other WP plugins. The users of my (future) plugin can simply insert the decision support system and the website visitors can discover, say, "best diets for me" (weight loss is kinda...stereotypical niche) --> Webmaster gets to offer a diet finder (most big sites have these, but they're crap, not based on real data from real hooman beings, and not science-backed -- mine is, this is all peer-reviewed, published stuff in some of the planet's best applied computer science venues).

... Anyway.. I'm starting to get excited, this would never end.

TLDR: WordPress plugins with a unique twist. I'm here to ask for your guidance and hang around :D

CryptoDavid said:
The impression I have is not that people here are White Hat.

I don't mean Black Hat, or even Grey Hat either.

These guys have Rainbow Hats, Transparent Hats, Hats with State of the art Cloaking Device Technology and more...
Click to expand...

I'm down with any of those :D
 
CCarter said:
What real-world problem are you solving though?
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Not sure about the "real-world" part.

Choice overload is a legit problem for consumers. I plan to parallelize the process so that it's not my site that provides the solution, but anyone's who is using my solution.
 
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scidi said:
Not sure about the "real-world" part.
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In simple words - like an elevator speech, what pain point are you solving for your potential customers? Because I can't even understand what your plugin does. Unless I'm missing something.

Are you creating a product then looking for a market fit, or are you solving a problem/pain point that currently exist?
 
CCarter said:
In simple words - like an elevator speech, what pain point are you solving for your potential customers? Because I can't even understand what your plugin does. Unless I'm missing something.

Are you creating a product then looking for a market fit, or are you solving a problem/pain point that currently exist?
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Simple words... I am bad at those but I'll try! :/

In the elevator: My plugin helps people choose the best diet for them and the webmasters to monetize the plugin users.

Choosing is a real problem -- choice overload and an Internet full of predatory ads. Google "what is the best diet for me?" and you'll see a long list of ads and then a lot of interactive content, such as:

https://time.com/473/quiz-find-the-best-diet-for-your-personality/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/whats_the_right_diet_for_you
https://doctorsthatdo.osteopathic.org/diet-quiz-which-diet-suits-you-best

These tools help people choose. And people like these tools more than a long wall of text: less work for them, takes less time to choose, and the tools give a concrete #1 recommendation. They provide a shortcut. And oh how we love shortcuts!

But most webmasters can't implement these. I offer a 1-click-installable interactive widget that does this exact thing well and in a credible way: helping people choose a diet. The plugin is customizable, allowing for the webmasters to link to any diet affiliate programs and/or sending the user data into a CRM.

This sounds more like a product-first endeavour for sure.

Coming from the affiliate world, I'm wagering there are thousands of small site owners in the weight loss niche alone who could be interested in installing the free version of the plugin and I can take it from there to build it bigger & better.

EDIT: I think this is easier to explain with a few screenshots... will be back with those. I'm also happy to be shot down if this idea sucks and is doomed to failure, maybe I can pivot it into something better!

...actually that BBC one seems to be the closest match of those. It finds you a diet and then in the concluding stage offers further reading about that diet. In that case, it just funnels the reader to another page on their own site (Intermittent dieting recipes).

In my case, webmasters can customize those links --> get recommendation --> sales page or a content page.

tSfEKCtl.png
 
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Hello everyone, I'm so glad to be here.

I'm Louie from the Philippines. I've been blogging since 15 years ago but found a little success only a few years ago. I hope I can contribute to this forum with my knowledge and also learn new stuff.

See you all!
 
Welcome, Czech Republic is a nice place, I've been for a month some years back. Is it still a decently cheap place to live?

Do you still run this business with VAs?

Because if you do, I could be a customer, if you could train your VAs to do stuff like Elementor and update affiliate links and the like.

I actually think that such a business could be successful in a place like Czech, because you guys are fully western in mindset and english ability, but you're still somewhat cheaper. I know that a few large IT companies are in Czech for that reason as well.
 
Hi, @louiexism, glad to have you on board. What kind of projects have you built and/or are currently working on? How do you monetize? Do you have any new exciting plans? Tell us more!
 
Hi Bernard, thanks!

Yes, the Czech Republic is a beautiful place to live. And yes, it's still a cheap place, especially compared to western countries. But the prices went up in the last time, especially rents.

I don't run business with VAs anymore. I got a great opportunity, so that's my main focus right now. But I can connect you with some of my previous co-workers who could help you. We can discuss it more in the PM if you want to.

That's an interesting idea about the business. It might work quite well... It's definitely something to think about!

Alex
 
Hey everyone! Excellent forum! Been reading for a few weeks now and finally joined.
My background:
  1. Been buying, growing, and selling sites since 2008
  2. My first flip was in 2009
  3. Since then, I've been buying sites from my Flippa, Empire Flippers, and private buyers.
  4. I am a Super Seller on Flippa with over 100 transactions to date
  5. Currently, managing 5 sites for myself or with partners
The 5 sites earn as follows:
  1. Site 1 (purchased April 2019): $9,000/mo, monetized with 10+ affiliate offers in the niche
  2. Site 2 (purchased April 2020): $7,000/mo, monetized with 20 affiliate networks, email list of 15,000, social channels as well
  3. Site 3 (purchased August 2020): $400/mo, partnership with an operator in place. I advise
The other 2 sites are starter sites that I am building from scratch.
I prefer to buy sites and grow them. I have always found that taking something from $500 to $5,000 is much easier (at least for me), then taking something from $0 to $500.
My goals in 2020:
  1. Dominate a vertical as an authority (already own top 5 blogs in the space)
  2. Diversified earnings non-reliant on Amazon (only 30% of my revenue from the sites is from Amazon)
  3. Diversified traffic non-reliant on Google (working on this over time)
Looking forward to give back and learn! Thanks!
 
Ryuzaki said:
Hi, @louiexism, glad to have you on board. What kind of projects have you built and/or are currently working on? How do you monetize? Do you have any new exciting plans? Tell us more!
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Thanks for asking.

I currently have a tech blog that's earning me about $600 a month. Used to be $2,000 until the pandemic hit. I monetize with Ezoic.

I'm planning to start another site, possibly in the home and garden niche. With my main site I write all the articles myself. But with my planned site, I plan to hire some writers. I hope to learn a lot from other members here.
 
Welcome, @msa123, a true veteran of the game! Are you saying that all 5 of your current sites are in the same vertical?

I've never tried it but I've often thought about building 3 of the exact same sites but make them look different. Each one would get the same keyword-focused articles (written differently of course). Just whatever I would do, I would do in three's. And see where that got me. If you could take the top 3 of all the SERPs, you'd really soak it up and truly dominate.
 
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