CC9 -- Kaylee

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Finally getting it - We're here for traffic - not to win Pulitzers... Once you fully let go, you'll realize how far you can really get... lets just say, someone else did something today - where even I was left speechless - like wow... the numbers are still coming in...
 
@Calamari it's a great feeling to see the numbers going in the right direction.

@Politico even if you've only got the basics in place I'd just start and learn as you go. Content wise it's all in the compelling content thread and the subtle traffic leaks thread.

My problem's always been a lack of action which is why I'm so driven this time. If I get something wrong, so what I'll evolve and come back stronger next time.
 
My updates have been none existent this week, but that's not to say I haven't been working.

The 9-5 grind has been relentless but even after 16 hour days I've made sure to work for a couple of hours every night.

Without pain without sacrifice we would have nothing

I've still been really struggling with traffic leaks, this stuff isn't easy. I messaged CCarter a few times to discuss strategy and now I feel that I have a better grasp on what's going on and what I need to do.

I also got a good dose of reality and brutal honesty so I've been working on plugging some holes in my site and trying to improve the number of sign ups. Already it's trickling in with a new subscriber to the mailing list.

So the plan for next week is to build a list of a dozen more platforms, get all the accounts signed up and profiles filled out and then start to share some compelling content on them.

I'm also going to contact my list for the first time which could be interesting...
 
09/02/15 (3 hours)

I've spent the last week deep in thought, My performance has been weak and my head hasn't been in the game.

That shit all stops now.

I'm here to join the 1%, part of the marketing elite. It's time nut up and rape, pillage and plunder my niche.

+ Signed up and posted on 3 niche relevant forums, filled out profiles, picture and posted
+ Updated ebook text
+ Started working on my beginners guide

I was shocked to see that my forum posts over the last 2 days have driven 30 visitors and 4 sign-ups to my newsletter which was more than my first traffic leak attempt.

10/02/15 (3 hours)

The focus of today was getting the first newsletter ready to go out and fixing a few issues on the site. I've realized that some of my posts have been really substandard so I'm going through my content asking if I was a visitor would I read this or would I think it's spam.

+ Wrote the copy for email
+ Pulled together a basic template
+ Improved the copy of 6 blog posts.

CCarter - I'm pretty annoyed with myself that I haven't contacted them yet but the communications sequence will start this week.
 
I think a lot of people don't start emailing cause they think people will unsubscribe. Here is a news flash... People will unsubscribe period. That's life.

I used to be agitated when I saw unsubscribes, but when you've got a list of 20K people, and nearly 45% open rate, 10 people unsubscribing is 0.0005%, Even if you have 100 people and 5 people unsubscribe, that's only 5%, so fucking man up and deal with the rejection. Maybe it wasn't for them, or they weren't serious, OR they realized they are not your target audience, if they decide to unsubscribe, think of it as clearing cobwebs instead of rejection.

Every time I send out a email people unsubscribe - Period - that shit ALWAYS happens. There is nothing you can do to hit 100% batting average. But I also have people forwarding the emails to friends and family, and get tons of visitors, and by the next newsletter the list has grown positively, so just mail those suckers and move on.

Go into every email campaign thinking 40% of the people are going to unsubscribe no matter what - so make this email count, headline, etc. So then when you get 1% unsubscribe rate, it's going to be a complete win versus a 40% unsubscribe rate you were going for - AND IF you do get a 40%+ unsubscribe rate, then the way you GOT the email is the reason they are unsubscribing - Learning lesson. Maybe enticing them with free XYZ is not the answer since you get the people simply looking for free shit.
 
16/03/2015 (finally an update)

It's been a little over a month since I updated this thread and truth be told (and as I PM'ed @CCarter) I've not done much with my website - year end is coming at the 9-5 and the pressure has been crazy!

It's done now and I can get back to what is important to me.

I've been driving a lot which has given me time to think, time to ponder and time to plan.

Everything I've done up until now has been shit!

My game has been weak and as I look at it now I'm embarrassed by what I've produced.

Where I've Gone Wrong

We all started this boot camp with different objectives and goals. My objective was traffic - an awfully vague answer that I have since slapped myself for.

I rushed into it.

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It wasn't in the slightest bit SMART and more importantly I couldn't visualise anything about it.

As I mentioned to CCarter in a PM, I didn't visualise seeing the money and traffic come in. I didn't picture building the lifeboat I need to strike out on my own. I never once daydreamed of walking up to my bosses desk and handing my notice in and then driving off in a brand new Range Rover.

While I was happy with the content that I was producing - it was the wrong type of content because I had the wrong objective.

This caused me to lose heart, to lose focus and to become lazy.

Getting Back on The Horse

I'm pissed at myself but I've learned a lesson and now it's time to move on, to redefine my objectives and to think more about what the fuck I'm doing.

Repositioning

Firstly - I'm an arrogant dick and CCarter was right to question my niche.

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^^ this isn't a good sign within an industry. Interest in my niche (from a content point of view) was dead...

If I'd looked a little bit harder (within the same niche) I'd have found a gem that's on the up...

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A big motivator was this post over on WickedFire. If you're also struggling I suggest you read it and think about the lessons contained within.

Secondly - I wasn't thinking about the audience. I was putting all my faith in customers coming onto the website, reading an article and signing up to my newsletter... This was the only call to action - I don't think that there was ever a chance of this putting money in my pocket.

To make money I need to add value to the customer journey and this means starting to think about product!

Turning It Around

New objective:
By June 30th 2015 I will be making $100 a week from my website.

Content will have 2 distinct purposes:
  1. Will put money in my pocket
  2. Will funnel traffic towards buying pages
Nothing complicated.

The niche will be adjusted to allow me to better reach my objective.

Using "hunting" as an example (not that I know anything about the niche)...

Previously I would have written about best places to fish, how to start hunting big game and a calendar of the season.

I would then slap a sign-up box to the end of the post expecting people to sign up - how could I ever get rich from this?

Even if I'd written a "Buying your first hunting bow" guide - I had no way to monetize it.

Like I said - I was weak.

So we adjust - it's not too late to turn it around.

Now my content strategy is simple - I either write reviews of products or I write content that funnels traffic to those review pages. The "Buying your first hunting bow" post now has a purpose.

It links through to the top 10 beginner bows (complete with their affiliate links).

Turning It Around

I've already wasted 90 days playing at building a website, now I need to spend the next 90 days getting serious about this shit.

I finally feel like I have a raison d'etre.
 
Okay weekly update time...

Firstly homework:

Picking A Niche
So I mentioned in my previous thread that one of the things that I got wrong the niche selection - I still don't feel I have that 'money making mindset'.

Reddit
I still haven't managed to crack Reddit yet. I was getting consistent (albeit low) traffic from forum posting and even managed a few sales... with my change of strategy I'm not sure how useful Reddit will be for quality traffic.

Focus
This one is more personal but I seem to be struggling to focus on building my website out although I'm getting back in the zone - I know that it's the whole need for instant gratification but I sometimes feel like giving up when I see those low numbers in analytics.

The week so far
It's been a pretty good week for getting stuff done. I've completely coded a new site template and started building in the features I need to succeed - I'll be saying goodbye to wordpress once it's done and hello to a new CMS.

It's going to be a quiet week next week as I've finally got a family vacation booked and I'm not planning on bringing a laptop with me.

I'm hoping to come back fired up and ready for some serious graft.
 
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Man... a couple of things.

#1 - the reason for the reddit traffic is purely to show you what's possible when applied correctly. If you can survive reddit without shooting yourself cause of the flaming, you can survive any other lesser platform and will learn a lot. It's purely to show you, that you can do 30K a day - breaking that mental barrier that exists within everyone that's never seen it.

#2 - You are falling into the trap that EVERY website owner does. When things aren't going right, they decide to re-design their website, re-vamp their CMS, or whatever. All shit that stalls the inevitable obstacles of generating traffic. EVERY website owner does this when they can't figure out how to market or generate traffic.

Your website is already perfect. Period. The new content just has to have a better goal - DO NOT waste fucking time on a re-design, re-vamp, or "starting all over" stage. Look at craigslist, that site looks like shit and generates millions of visitors a day - why? cause of the content on the site. It's not about looking pretty it's about getting the information to the people looking for the content of your niche.

#3 - concentrate on generating the right traffic with the content - a redesign is a stall tactic, it always is, it always will be. How many people out there have you talked to that want to work in their project but they've first "got to re-design it"... fucking waste of time. Traffic is all that matters. Worse case scenario you can pop-up a pop-up survey asking people what they think, what they want to see more of and what they want to see less of. Don't go down that re-design route, that's an additional 1 month of stalling with the work load you've already got with your job.

I'd rather see you struggling to hit a rock that's a part of a dam for 100 days straight and getting little cracks into it - cause on that 101th day, you'll hit it and it will finally break and the flood of water will come through, it's impossible for it not to. But it requires swinging, not re-designing the hammer.
 
@CCarter: nicemetaphors with the rock, hammer and water. Those Miyamoto books you read sure have made some impact on your thinking. But as he wrote the problem seems to be with the trend of the niche. Shouldn't he pivot?
 
fastdreamer said:
@CCarter: nicemetaphors with the rock, hammer and water. Those Miyamoto books you read sure have made some impact on your thinking. But as he wrote the problem seems to be with the trend of the niche. Shouldn't he pivot?
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To be honest, he hasn't really swung the hammer more then 10 times. If you pivot without doing a thousand swings, you'll be pivoting all over the place. I know his site and his niche, It maybe on a downward trend but it still has huge volume especially worldwide - no one is doing XYZ nonsense fad outside the USA for example, so the downward trends is mostly accounting for that in his market (not being the fad that's growing) - which is great cause if he angles it right he can have a huge international market - especially people emerging on the scene, but the general niche still holds tens of thousands of events within the States alone, so it's not dead - it will survived all of these fad niches.

In his scenario he looked even deeper within his niche, and found a sub-niche that is actually growing, if he had pivoted, he would have missed that since he took 10 swings and gave up - that's the problem just because there is an obstacle in your way, doesn't necessary mean you go in a different direction - you just have to look closer to the rock and find the sweet spot to start hammering away. Once you find the fault in the rock, bam - you are likely to get a flood sooner.

This is also a primary example of why you have to put in at least a thousand of hours at something before giving up. @ModernMarketeer has a job, so he can't dedicate 18+ hours a day for 7 days a week, if he was dedicating that much he would have found the problem sooner probably within 1-2 weeks, and corrected his aim, but that learning still took XYZ hours = probably 200 hours - it doesn't matter if he learns it months later or weeks later since the same amount of time is needed to make that discovery, now he can swing better, and go forward.

If you believe in something, just because there are nay-sayers, doubters, or people on the sideline questioning your choice, it doesn't mean you are necessarily wrong, or they are wrong, just look closer and figure out how to overcome the obstacle in your way. Even if he doesn't go after the sub-niche, his main niche still has millions of more people then any of the other fads.
 
So my thread has been dormant for some time now and so has my site.

I've hardly checked BuSo (although I'm so pleased to see so many new members) but I just wanted to end my journey properly to hopefully guide others.

What did you learn?

I'm going to say something that many will disagree with but strategically I didn't learn much. I always wondered when I saw experiments like this about what those on the inside knew - I was jealous that they had access to some secrets that weren't available to others but the truth is that 99% of what was posted in the private group was available to everyone else through the different threads.

I have learnt a lot about myself though - mainly that this isn't for me. I'm far too comfortable with my 9/5 job... even going so far as to say I love what I do for work!

The problem is that for me to be able to replace my current level of income I would need to be part of the digital marketing 1%... and I realised that was never going to happen when I have a family to feed and a lifestyle outside of work that I love - I simply gave up.

It was refreshing to be free from the feeling that has nagged at me for so many years - that I should be running my own online biz...

I'm simply too comfortable and not hungry enough.

You've gotta really want this shit.

@CCarter isn't some zen master, final level marketing boss... he's just a guy who keeps grinding it out no matter what.

How's your project doing now?

The site is still getting a few hundred views each month and I'm adding half a dozen new subscribers to my mailing list each day.

Any regrets or things you would do differently?

Regrets and starting over feels like excuses but I think if I had to do it all over again I would have built a proper business and done something ecommerce based instead.

The design was good and content solid but I just couldn't keep grinding.

If anyone's interested I picked the triathlon niche and the website is http://www.triathlonbase.com/

What worked the best for you?

SEO and forum engagement. These have been my two biggest traffic sources. I didn't like the constant pushing of Reddit as a traffic source without any real focus on other channels.

Have you applied what you've learned into your next project if you started something new?

I've applied a few of the time management and organisation tips to my day-to-day planning.
 
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