Introductions Thread

Thanks proppipper! I was just starting now my journey thread for the reasons you mentioned.
It will work out for me, i had a lot, lot of failures in my life but never give up, so it will work on the end this is what i am confident about.
Since you are also already taking action - you will make it work for you too!
See you around mate.
 
Found this place as a result of a Charles Floate post on Facebook.

Been in this game for several years, focusing on Amazon affiliate sites. Last couple of years have been trying to diversify income, but that's only going so-so for me.

Right now I've reached the $20,000 month club and I'm looking to scale this up even higher and finally start making decent income outside of Amazon Associates. I'm not really seeing a big decrease in my earnings (so far) from the Amazon commission changes, I guess due to dumb luck picking decent categories to promote in the past. Anyways, I guess I'm kind of treading water now, just doing the same things, which is increasing my income, but not in the ways that I want to, if that makes sense.

After looking around, this seems like a legit place to help me figure out how to next level this shit and I'm looking forward to being able to contribute to some of the threads I can't access yet and learning new tricks from you guys.

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oh man, Altavista, I was kicking tires on the web back then too, but some of my first sites were on Homestead, if anyone remembers that. What I'd give to have known about AdSense back when I was just wasting time on the web.
 
Welcome to BuSo!

Yeah, Amazon's restructuring of their commissions was nerve wracking. I took a ~20% hit but thankfully we work in a world where I recovered that by the next month. Although their program is the largest part of my earnings on my main site, I also have CPC and CPM ads. This reminded me that while I'm focusing almost entirely on this project that I should spread my risk internally too.

I'm adding CPA lead generation pages in the coming couple of weeks and will be seeking other opportunities as well. There are tons and just like we shouldn't hinge everything on Google, we shouldn't do the same on social or Amazon or anything else.

Glad to have you on board and hope to learn from you and share with you in return.

How many projects comprise your $20k a month revenue? Are you spread out or narrowly focused?
 
Ryuzaki said:
How many projects comprise your $20k a month revenue? Are you spread out or narrowly focused?
Click to expand...

I am stupidly about 90% Amazon focused and spread over 10 projects right now (some are newer and not earning much though). The money was just too damn good to spend time on other revenue streams, so here I am still not diversified. Build up and flip has been my model for a few years now.
 
Hello everyone,

I stumbled upon this forum accidentally by finding some domain related links. Basically I'm a full time domainer.

Looking forward to learning and sharing my experience with fellow builders.

Thanks!
AbdulBasit Makrani
 
Welcome Abdul,
Greetings from your neighbor.
How is the domain name market right now?
I find domaining interesting but someone advised me that it is dying(gTLDs and apps)
What's your take?
 
Thanks for the warm welcome :smile:
Neighbor - which place?
I still consider it's the right time to buy domains.
Forget the new gTLDs as they are worthless and full of confusion.
Stick to .com domains and can easily find expiring or deleting domains which are of better quality than hand regs.
 
Welcome blackcanary!
It seems you have hit your goal of getting 3 likes and I'm in the same boat since I joined this forum to post in other forum and unfortunately that requires at least 3 likes.
 
Hahah was this the thread you found? Good to have you here, welcome to BuSo.

I'm sending some likes your way so hopefully it's enough to give you access to the rest of the forum, would love to hear anything you're willing to share about the whole Swifties thing in that thread I linked (If you're not under NDA?)

I've only very recently started to dig a little deeper into the world of domaining and building a portfolio, and it's not something that gets discussed here very often. I think we'd mostly fall under the end-user banner.
 
@Potatoe
Thanks for the warm welcome and giving likes but it seems that's not enough to post in that particular forum (You have insufficient privileges to reply here.)

This is quite frustrating and the admin(s) of this forum must look into this issue and let people to freely post in forums they would like and have more constructive discussion going.

Is there any specific forum I can post about domains or answer questions as I love to talk on domaining and if you need any guidance, feel free to ask.
 
AbdulBasit said:
This is quite frustrating and the admin(s) of this forum must look into this issue and let people to freely post in forums they would like and have more constructive discussion going.
Click to expand...

The cron job runs every 10 minutes. I bet you're fine to post everywhere now.

You'd be surprised the amount of spam we block and delete daily. There are a lot of low quality SEO posters out there who want to be here. We're seen as the last bastion of hope even though it's not even our main focus.

Unfortunately the only reason we have such high quality discussion is that we have to filter out a majority of posters who would rather spam, self-promote, or litter, rather than share and learn.
 
Thanks Ryuzaki for the clarification.
It seems I can post there now...
Yes, I can understand completely as I used to operate a forum with huge traffic which had an Alexa Rank of under 25K.
 
Hello Everyone,

I joined at the suggestion of a friend in January but life prevented me from actively participating and gaining any value from signing up.

I have no difficulty creating content for my site, I also create my own products and services to sell.

I am just looking for ways to create better traffic as well as ways to passively monetize that traffic.

I have some ethical/moral limitations in avenues I can use generating traffic, as well as monetization. While I am not in judgment of those who choose to use blackhat methods, I philosophically cannot. I'm willing to lose some money and traffic to keep my morals and opinions aligned with where I am at in life.

As far as putting ads onto my site, I would need more control of what those ads were so it aligned with what my site represented.

The main concept of my site is Philosophy / Spirituality.
 
You're in the right spot because we, in general, frown upon blackhat methods as well. We do have some link spammers around, but that seems to be the extent of it, nothing really too far gone off the ethics path.

I'm with you. Nothing is more valuable than having a peaceful heart and mind when you lay down to sleep each night.

In terms of controlling which ads appear on your site, you'd likely need to run direct sales yourself or through a company like BuySellAds which will take a cut to get you visibility. You can accept or reject ads there. Sounds like you may do well, too, with something like Amazon Affiliates where you can promote books and other products, especially if your content ventures into the realm of New Age spirituality.

Welcome, definitely stay involved and we can help you along and learn from you what we can as well.
 
Hi, I am a former squid from squidoo.com. Squidoo closing down was actually a good thing for me as it helped me get out of my comfort zone and go on to make my own affiliate websites. Eventually I got the hang of it and now enjoying my work. Hope to connect with like minded people here.
 
Do you avoid that model like the plague now?

It's hard to shed dependence on things, whether that be Wordpress or Drupal, Google or Bing, Facebook or Twitter, MailChimp or SendGrid, Adsense or Amazon... I think in the end all we can really do is minimize their impact and control and mainly backing up our data.

Not being in control sucks and it can all come crashing down for even the stupidest reasons.
 
You are right! Currently solely dependent on Google search for traffic. Hope to diversify into making niche sites as a service.
 
andrew69 said:
Hi, I am a former squid from squidoo.com. Squidoo closing down was actually a good thing for me as it helped me get out of my comfort zone and go on to make my own affiliate websites. Eventually I got the hang of it and now enjoying my work. Hope to connect with like minded people here.
Click to expand...

ah the Squidoo gold rush days, I remember those well :smile:
 
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
Click to expand...
So hello guys, my name is Dariush and I'm an in-house digital marketing manager from the UK.

My 'why' for signing up here is simple self improvement and preparation.

I can sense that the end of corporate life is close and I want to make sure that when I transition into the next life it's as the best possible version of myself.

I'm yet to start any project of my own and I'm sure a lot of my questions will be on the pros and cons of starting an agency vs an affiliate site!

Time to pour myself a drink and think about what I want from the universe.
 
Dariush said:
I'm yet to start any project of my own and I'm sure a lot of my questions will be on the pros and cons of starting an agency vs an affiliate site!
Click to expand...

So many people take the "agency" route. I've known people who have worked for agencies, started agencies, quit that and went back to agencies... and over a decade or more they've never had a website of their own.

That's FEAR and nothing more.

But I'll tell you this... I'd never hire anyone's agency or as a freelancer who hasn't actually done what they claim they can do.

Would you hire a mechanic to work on your car engine who's never worked on a car engine? Maybe they've worked in a group where all they've ever done is replace an alternator a million times... but they have no clue how the big picture works.

In my mind, there's going to be some clients who don't want to see your successes gained for other clients, or even some claims about what you contributed to while working for another agency. They want to see your own projects and see if you truly walk the walk.

And if you haven't, you're going to be doing a doozy to your own psyche.

I've never understood this concept of "feeling like a fraud" but it's everywhere. All of the self-help sites and blogs and reddits talk about it. I have a real good guess why someone would feel like a fraud...

I'm also not a fan of this "meta-business" concept people flock to. The entire Guru circuit in every industry... "coaches" of every kind... they can't do it so they teach it by copying people who can do it, and then when the 0.1% of their membership succeeds, they pretend that validates "their" methods, which they are parroting from elsewhere.

That's me though. It depends on your goal. If it's money, then that's fine, but you're really building yourself another 9-5. If it's freedom of life and choice, you probably won't want to tie yourself down to clients and employees. The only reason to go into the trenches for someone else instead of yourself is to overcharge them, which is fine, or to swindle them because they haven't educated themselves.

______

That was quite the ramble and not at all aimed at you. I just wanted to share my perspective on your impending choice in relation to all the people I've known in your shoes. They keep doing the agency thing because it's comfortable and predictable, but they never find freedom from wage slavery.

Something to consider is that you can be building and growing a brand for your own non-agency project and an agency project alike, before your corporate life comes to an end. The difference is that you can't really attack the agency side in terms of revenue until you quit your job. You can only prepare. But you can start earning on a non-agency project nearly immediately.

The main pro/con I see is that with an agency you're still trading your time for money, and that never scales. You'll never escape working IN your business, on everyone else's schedule. With truly scalable projects, you work ON your business and they keep working for you even if you decide to take the next year off. The goal has to be a separation of trading time for money, and an agency of humans can only add distance between you and the labor, but never separate.
 
@Ryuzaki, that's awesome brother.

It did cross my mind that it's extremely difficult to do the agency think while transitioning from my corporate gig.

I can't just take calls from clients while I'm in the office... but I could sneak in the odd piece of content to a content site or build the odd link during lunch.
 
Hello everyone,

I'm a comp sci student and coincidentally also have about a year of experience working in an e-commerce firm. The reason I am turning to IM is because I still have lots of spare time next to my study and I want to spend that time building on something which can actually grow. I can also never see myself working a 9-5 so by the time my study is done (3 years or so) I want to actually be able to provide for myself purely through IM.

I found this forum a few days ago and it was surprisingly good. I used to turn to BHW and HF but those sites have seemingly gone down the drain. I've already gone through the first 6 days or so of the Crash Course and they have been very helpful. A big shoutout to Ryuzaki, CCarter and the other editors for making such high quality content available for free.

Fortunately I am already well-versed in setting up websites, managing linux servers etc. and have recently learned Javascript/JQuery. I am very passionate about Tech, so that is the obvious vertical for me. As a direction I am learning towards a hardware themed review site, although I find it very hard to judge how feasible this would be, even after reading the courses.

Looking forward to contributing and learning!
 
Welcome aboard mate. Your journey sounds a lot like mine so far!

Question - Are you a hardcore / hardstyle fan being from the Netherlands?
 
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