Antics' Journal

[Antics]

Hey all,

To preface... I have absolutely no fucking clue what I'm doing, for the most part. I know the basics of on-site and technical SEO, some rudimentary link building techniques and have a tenuous grasp on the basics of social media marketing/web design.

This thread will serve as the journal for my very first IM project.

That's right, my very first project.

I'm hoping that this journal will help me stay on task as well as provide some value for the lurkers are on here that are totally new to all of this as well. I know that there are at least a few of you on here :tongue2:

I'll be targeting a specific sub-set of the fitness niche.

I'm going to be attempting to capture emails through a thin site (just a LP as homepage) using a 'Groundbreaking Report' type offer (this may change over the coming week or two if I brainstorm anything else). This should sound familiar if you've read this post: http://www.wickedfire.com/enlightened-members/165861-case-study-additional-traffic-sources.html

Depending on my level of success with this project I'd like to build a 'real' community around this brand and remarket to a growing email list down the line. This project could also end up being an Adsense stain on my IM portfolio, we'll see.

I'll be spending the next week or two building out my primary offer and beginning to embed myself in a few different communities related to my niche that I can begin tapping for traffic in a few weeks.

A lot of the things I'll be doing during this project will be based on the philosophy of capturing traffic from multiple streams in a controllable way, as espoused by CCarter. This is something I've wanted to play with and it makes sense within the context of my niche anyway.

There will be SEO work done for this site though, both on and off-site with the intention of capturing as much Google/Yahoo!/Bing traffic as possible. I'm a broke-ass college student so don't expect many or any reviews on BST link packages until this project is generating enough revenue to support those kind of this (at which point I may not want to take that kind of 'risk' with this brand anyway).

Apologies in advance for the relatively worthless opening post but this is pretty much the only way I'll actually hold myself to getting the site set up in the next 24-36 hours. I've said a lot here but provided very little value - I would like to think this will be the last post of this type that I'll be making in this thread.

My apologies.

I'm expecting a whole lot of this in my future:

But isn't that what this is all about anyway - getting up and dusting yourself off again, then asking for more.

 

[lyannastark]

Hey, well we all gotta start somewhere right? I wish you the best of luck!

 

[Antics]

I switched niches already.

Please don't ban me.

 

[Antics]

Seriously though, the niche I wanted to pursue just doesn't provide strong enough opportunities for generating passive income to make it all worthwhile. The niche is still a deeply ingrained passion of mine but isn't popular enough to generate large amounts of traffic, or even moderate amounts of convertible traffic (convertible to passive sources, that is). I could definitely make a "living" doing consulting in the niche but it would require major travel and I just don't have the on-paper credentials in the field to demand a salary that would make it worth it at all.

I validated all of this over the course of 8-10 hours yesterday digging through competitors sites, the SERPs, Similarweb, AhRefs and Majestic.

If you have any specific questions about the above just PM me and I'd be happy to explain why I made these decisions in a more specific context.

There's another niche I have in mind that I know is profitable but is far, far more competitive and there are some legal questions I need cleared up before I do anything that will get me wrapped into the glorious US legal system.

That said.. I'm planning on taking some time today to look into researching niches, any suggestions you faggots? I'm definitely facing a big knowledge gap with this one.

 

[BlogHue]

The most important thing about being successful is STARTING. So yes, you've got that covered.

If you keep this journal updated, you will find that you'll end up receiving a lot of positive inputs from members around here.

I give out landing pages occassionally,

http://www.wickedfire.com/traffic-c...landing-page-you-now-go-make-some-monies.html

http://www.wickedfire.com/traffic-c...veaway-deux-geo-targeted-responsive-more.html

//

These are bare-bone versions, that can be customized by you as per your need. See if they help.

Good luck. Subscribed.

 

[Antics]

The most important thing about being successful is STARTING. So yes, you've got that covered.

If you keep this journal updated, you will find that you'll end up receiving a lot of positive inputs from members around here.

I give out landing pages occassionally,

http://www.wickedfire.com/traffic-c...landing-page-you-now-go-make-some-monies.html

http://www.wickedfire.com/traffic-c...veaway-deux-geo-targeted-responsive-more.html

//

These are bare-bone versions, that can be customized by you as per your need. See if they help.

Good luck. Subscribed.

Thanks so much man. These will definitely come in handy once I finish building out this initial offer and get things set up.

 

[Antics]

Going to be locking myself in the apartment this weekend and knocking out the content for this first offer. Hopefully it won't require a Friday night to Sunday night haul but I have enough vyvanse on hand to kill a bear.

Also going to be doing some reselling to try and get some $$$ rolling in so I can really have some fun with this once the site goes up.

Since I'm going to be locked in most of the weekend..any music suggestions? I've been playing this album pretty much non-stop for the past few days and could use something new:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maqOMyliwaQ

 

[Antics]

Offer is written up but I'm still not totally happy with it. I'm pretty poor with Creative Suite so I'll either be outsourcing or more likely garnering some serious inspiration from someone else's design.

I wanted to sit on it for a week anyway to give me time to read it over a couple of times and alter what I don't like/generally improve the quality of the offer.

I'm beginning to realize that if I want to make anything out of this project I'm going to need more cash on hand to start dedicating towards it.

Because of this I'll be splitting my effort for the foreseeable future at around 60% reselling/40% working on the site.

Once I can get a bit of a cash flow established I'll be able to dedicate a larger portion of my free time towards the website. I'm currently working on trimming my budget and reallocating my leisure money towards the project as well.

Sorry for the slow start guys.

A little mungo-ball to spice things up:

 

[Antics]

Settling with my vendor over the next 24hr on terms and shit for the reselling efforts. Have a handful of leads I'm working on towards that end right now.

Also just got my hands on a list from a local advertiser of clients they've either pitched to or had in their system who had budgetary constraints that stopped them from working with the agency or running a campaign with enough volume to make much a difference to their bottom line.

That advertiser works with contracts starting around the $10k+ neighborhood so these should be decent targets for my reselling efforts.

I also just had a relative stroke of genius and have something fun to work on this weekend which I 'm incredibly passionate about and may even turn a bit of a profit in a niche I thought I couldn't profit from. I've switched my focus from profiting from that niche itself to profiting from advertising to that niche - this has changed things.

It's also one of my biggest life passions and what I'm building will provide real-world, practical value to everyone who uses it. I'm very excited about this project and will be leaning on this fire to drive me forward.

I won't be relying on SEO for this project. Any SEO benefits I receive (beyond basic on-page and technical) will be totally organic and the "way Google wants you to do SEO". I'll be relying on my own connections within/my knowledge of this particular space to promote the project, this should be more than enough.

If you've read more than five of my posts you can probably make a pretty well-educated guess as to which general niche I'll be screwing with.

 

[Antics]

Zejayes is good people.

 

[Antics]

Sorry for the lack of updates and progress, had to deal with a bunch of personal/family shit recently but that's all behind me now.

Passed my first lead along to my vendor last week, still waiting on confirmation from them that it closed (need to firm up commission structure with vendor anyway).

Anyone here have experience in harvesting leads from forums and the like? I've had some success (the aforementioned lead and a few others that I'm still nurturing but aren't ready to pass on) but it does seem to be a bit more blind luck than I'm comfortable with.

Going to be expanding into some other avenues starting today, I'll be updating more regularly with how this is going and exactly what I'm doing.

I'll be posting up the .AI files for the sell sheet I'll be using during in-person sales meetings in a bit, gotta give something back to the community.

Time to start flooding the channels:

 

[Antics]

Big ego-check getting my site set up and LP designed.

I've got so much to learn it's actually a bit intimidating.

 

[skohh]

Big ego-check getting my site set up and LP designed.

I've got so much to learn it's actually a bit intimidating.

You don't always have to reinvent the wheel. Look at competitors in your niche, ask yourself, is this shit good? Would I be interested in it? Assuming you can empathize with your prospects. Then spin your own version of it.

I'd say the best way to accelerate your learning/business is not trying to create your flagship products / services first, rather get to some success as fast as you can. Even if it's only a tiny bit. Or they also say, fail fast, thats good too because then you can more rapidly reach successes. GL

 

[Antics]

You don't always have to reinvent the wheel. Look at competitors in your niche, ask yourself, is this shit good? Would I be interested in it? Assuming you can empathize with your prospects. Then spin your own version of it.

I'd say the best way to accelerate your learning/business is not trying to create your flagship products / services first, rather get to some success as fast as you can. Even if it's only a tiny bit. Or they also say, fail fast, thats good too because then you can more rapidly reach successes. GL

Thanks for the words of encouragement, mate.

I am currently chasing some short-term success, but it's primarily through offline methods.

I don't think I'm reinventing the wheel as much as I am taking the 28" spinners off of someone else's car and slapping them on my own, if that analogy makes any sense.

The spinners are coming from another niche which while actually incredibly close to my own couldn't be more different in terms of actual interests.

I'll happily explain more in PMs.

 

[lyannastark]

Hey, man! Glad to see you're still at it Remember to keep us all updated

 

[Scococo]

Shot in the dark here... was your first niche Rugby Union?

Subbed.

 

[Antics]

Shot in the dark here... was your first niche Rugby Union?

Subbed.

Thanks for the sub. It was on the table but isn't a profitable niche for passive income.

 

[slowboiled]

That's right, my very first project.

Well punch me in the cunt I still get excited hearing about people taking action and starting something.

Like BlugHue and skohh said, thats the MOST important part. You're entering the battlefield now, that takes some stones. Now get that first kill fast and start stacking. Doesn't need to be big, just take a concept through to execution and ROI. Concept execution, rinse/repeat. Low hanging fruit tastes just as sweet.

I switched niches already.

You're doing this to learn and make money right? 'Next' is the most powerful four letter word in IM.

I'll either be outsourcing or more likely garnering some serious inspiration from someone else's design.

Both are likely going to be needed to keep yourself ahead of the curve. It's the new wild west in here...seen some shit man...don't be scurred.

Look at competitors in your niche, ask yourself, is this shit good? Would I be interested in it? Assuming you can empathize with your prospects. Then spin your own version of it.

skohh is spitting some real knowledge when he says to look to the seasoned lead geners and your competitors not just for SEO metrics, but for creative inspiration as well. They're dropping good money and usually some good grey matter on those pages and the media to be on your screen, so you can use that budget and experience to at least keep your fingers on the pulse of what works for creatives. Before long you'll start to pick out the path to making your pages even better. If your pages aren't better than the best in your niche, scrap your shit, get inspired by the best thats out there, then knuckle up and make a better page.

Einstein said the secret to creativity is hiding your sources(or some shit like that). Even that guy was looking at the other guys paper if he didn't have the answer himself.

I won't be relying on SEO for this project.

I say 'to each his own' and no campaign should be one dimensional, but you may want to PM someone before you rush to judgement on that.

Good job getting your feet wet and best of success to ya man.

 

[Antics]

Thanks for the words of encouragement, mate.

I know, I know - OP is a giant faggot who never updates his thread. You're right!

But did you know Australia took France to the cleaners this weekend in the first of their three-test series? Guess not all is wrong in the world.

I'm considering repositioning the anti-SEO project as a secondary project to something more traditional. The anti-SEO project was/will be almost entirely reliant on UGC so it may make more sense to get a site ranking more traditionally and then try to spin the resulting community (obviously doing email capture on this shit) towards the anti-SEO project to secure a large enough user group at launch to sustain the site.

I'd like to have multiple points of access to this niche anyway so it fits into the larger scope of what I'd like to do.

Regardless, that shit's on the back-burner for the moment as I focus on more immediate 'wins' and things that will benefit me hugely down the line.

Here's a quick list on what I'll be focusing on this month (in order of priority to me):

1) Selling the shit out of this second SEO agency and growing it to the moon and beyond for the immediate income boost
2) Learn JQuery, MySQL and Python
3) Write at least 500 words worth of copywriting practice a day
4) Become functionally literate with MySQL by building a database site (might just do it in the niche I'm using for the pair of project sites to use them together down the line)
5) Build my first bots in Python and start playing with them
6) Learn GSA - continue to annoy Skohh on Skype
7) Continue to grind at this 9-5 (really 6-2 most days) until I'm generating enough revenue through the other agency to make up for the lost paycheck. There's been a pretty major overhaul here in terms of the "direction" of this 9-5 agency and I'm incredibly unhappy with it. I am now doing far, far more community management and content writing than I am actual SEO. It fucking blows and I have no real room for growth and am no longer getting anything out of working here that isn't purely autodidactic in nature - it's nice that they pay for AhRefs but that's really about all I can say for the positive side of things.

Unfortunately because of the things I'm focusing on right now there aren't any inspiring Analytics graphs on the immediate horizon.

I will be making a point of updating this more regularly though. Expect most of it to be in relation to what is/isn't working for me in regards to the real-world sales. Most of it is going to be offline, old school shit but honestly that's exactly how 99% of the small agencies I'm familiar with got their start so I'm sure it'd be of some value to the freelancers and future 'CEOs' on here.

 

[Antics]

Having some fun playing around with different traffic leaking techniques (thanks again Carter for all the help so far).

A little over 1K uniques from Reddit and 37 emails over the weekend. Going to keep moving this content up to progressively larger boards as long as it keeps being received well. Shout out to Tavin for reminding me that 'quality' content doesn't have to take hours and half of your soul to produce.

Reddit's definitely a fat fucking pig of a website though and I'm here for the bacon. I had a proof of concept post on one of the medium-sized boards go absolutely gangbusters because of how blatantly retarded it was (sort of the point of the test) - judging by the metrics around the post it would have been good for 60-85k UVs that week.

I'm just rolling through proxies across multiple accounts which I've got organized into a spreadsheet based on persona, login info, etc. The reception of call-and-answer posts by the general community is laughably positive most of the time. This feels way too easy so I'm sure I will get busted and shadow-banned or some shit once I scale up or start targeting the default subreddits and I'll have to rethink this strategy from the ground-up, oh well.

I'd like to bump that conversion rate up a bit so once I've spent more time playing with more traffic leaks (scraping for some forums and discussion boards atm) I'll start focusing more on the copy within the funnel. I think part of the issue is a bit of confusion being caused by two nearly-identical CTAs being run on these pages.

I know it's a cardinal sin and it's not something I would let fly on my own sites but I'm traffic leaking for this agency and not everything is directly under my control - I'm just practicing traffic leaking during my 9-5.

MySQL and Python are not nearly as shitty and boring as I was expecting.

Unfortunately didn't get through nearly as much sales work (if you're reading this - sorry mate, just hit me up on Skype) as I would have liked to the past 10-14 days. Girlfriend had some medical issues come up that threw my life into a bit of a tailspin - shit's stabilizing now so back on the grind.