A start at IM that involves actual marketing not just massive automated spam

Steve

BuSo Pro
Joined
Dec 29, 2016
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So this is basically my intro thread.
I have been a programmer for 12 years, started messing about with 'IM' in 2008, joined BlackHatWorld and started playing with massive spam generation.

Had fun, made a few quid ranking squidoo pages with clickbank products, but never really had a strategy and could always earn a lot more money programming than spamming shit.

I found WF in 2009, found the content and advice a whole world apart from BHW, so decided to join up, and pretty much immediately got banned for asking bb_wolfe for a review copy of a wordpress local directory pluggin.

Undeterred i signed back up with a new handle and got stuck into mass link spam again, writing some personal use supplementary tools to work with the major spam tools of the time (scrapebox in particular), such as list dedupping, spintax gerneration etc.

I created a bunch of shoddy uk based EMD's based on boring ass topics (picked entirely because an emd was available - think mattress protectors, microwave ovens etc) , wrote some half assed content, signed up to affiliate window and something called easycontentunits, created a bunch of spun web2.0s and blasted the living shit out of them with spam.

This actually created more money than the squidoo gig, but nothing compared to programming.

I then bought a wordpress plugin called wptweetbomb, created a bunch of sites with it and let it beat the living shit out of twitter with a lot of twitter accounts.
This actually worked amazingly well, the sites where pure autoblog spun crap, but got hundreds of thousands of visits between them. I rather stupidly put up adsense, and make a decent chunk of change until one of the sites ripped content from someone who filled a dmca with google, and bam my adsense account was dead. No other networks came close in payout, and as all the sites where total shit content, display adds where the only option. Eventually the plugin author went awol, the sites stopped working and that was that.

Since spam clearly worked for ranking, but i wasnt making progress with the important bit (how to actually make money from said rankings, retain vistors etc), i decided to sell spam to others.

I created software to automate spam as much as i could, and sold the usual 2011 era packages (200,000 blog comments, 10,000 wiki links etc etc) until 2012 rolled around, naive bulk spam pretty much died, and i lost interest.

Its now 2017 and i am getting fed up with my earning being linked to the number of hours i can work, i have built up a lot of local business contacts, and i am about to head back into marketing, with the aim of having clients on monthly contracts.

I am not an arsehole, so i will be starting a project of my own to test the huge amount of theory available before i attempt to charge anyone for my efforts, with a focus on local SEO (since that is what i intend to charge for once i am confident i can deliver).

I am unsure whether to create a dummy business sites(eg joes pluming), and attempt to rank it, or go with more resellable (but less representative of my intended customers) lead gen site, so if any local seo guys in her have some input that would be usefull.

I am also unsure what kind of timeframe local (or indeed any) seo takes now days, so any insite there would also be great
 
Welcome Steve, nice to see another WF expat here.

I started around the same time as you; being BHW my first contact with IM, I kinda "learnt" a lot of stuff but it was until I joined WF that I really understood key concepts behind marketing.

I wish you the best in your new endeavors.
 
Hi Steve,

Welcome. I have been doing local SEO for about 4 years now. I was doing my own thing, then had to get a gig at an agency because of a couple new additions (kids) and because I just suck at selling.

I am also unsure what kind of timeframe local (or indeed any) seo takes now days, so any insite there would also be great
Very seldom do we take on someone who doesn't already have some sort of digital footprint. Mainly, most of our clients come from scalping other agencies. We find it takes roughly 3-6 months to start ranking. It depends on how big of a city and terms we are targeting and how bad the previous SEO agency jacked stuff up.

There is money to be made in local, the guy I work for is a hell of a sale person and he can book 3-5 new clients a month.

I am unsure whether to create a dummy business sites(eg joes pluming), and attempt to rank it, or go with more resellable (but less representative of my intended customers) lead gen site, so if any local seo guys in her have some input that would be usefull.

Instead of starting from scratch, ask some local business owners you know or a business you frequent. Ask them to cover your cost in exchange for them to introduce you to their friends/ other business owners.

There is a shit ton of snake oil salesmen in the local arena. So you will find most business owners are gun shy or they don't see the value of SEO. The hardest part of local SEO is selling it, the rest of it is fairly straight forward.

The best advice I can say is pick a vertical and work in that vertical and then own that vertical.
 
I agree with the previous comment - the hardest part about local SEO is selling it. Local SEO isn't all that difficult to learn - both on-page and off-page. It's more competitive in some niches, and will take longer, but the principles are very similar.

The challenge is finding clients, and picking a vertical and becoming an expert in that vertical is a great way to go. However at first I think it's a good idea to work with a few different businesses to get an idea for the types of clients you like working with, industries which have money to pay you etc.

Usually with a bit of local networking in the town / city you live in you can find some clients to get started with - they might not be the highest paying clients you'll ever have but they'll be a great way to get started, get some confidence, some testimonials and go from there.
 
I'm from WF initially but crossed over to BHW in the early days. Have not logged in to WF for over donkey years. I still has a war room subscription with them though.

I used to run my own small agency dealing with local clients. Thinking of getting back into the client game but doing it differently. eg local niche directories, selling leads etc. Not sure if these are still viable ideas at the moment.
 
I'm from WF initially but crossed over to BHW in the early days. Have not logged in to WF for over donkey years. I still has a war room subscription with them though.

WF means WickedFire here, not WarriorForum, that's WaFo.
 
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