[Serious Thread] What are your current roadblocks?

[Toro]

My biggest struggle since I started IM 9 years ago:

Overcoming laziness, distractions, procrastination and actually work productively on my projects and get stuff done without getting overwhelmed.

It seems I can never do things for myself that I need to get done.

However, when I work for others I can work very well because I have some type of pressure (a deadline, something is expected of me, responsibility to a boss/coworkers, etc)

I started with IM when I was 16. Now I'm 26 and still not earning a full-time income (but I'm progressing slowly).

When I was 20 I sometimes couldn't sleep at night because I would think about how I was not working towards my goals because I was getting distracted by other stuff.

At my 22nd birthday I remember I was depressed thinking about how I was getting older but still not any closer to my dream. My GF tried to cheer me up. Didn't help.

At 24 I said "fuck it" and quit my job, and moved to a low-cost foreign country where I could finally focus full time, and I wouldn't go back home until I fulfilled my dream. Well, that was the plan. I still found ways to procrastinate.

However, during the last few years I've dug deeper into psychology during my periods of procrastination. I've taken several personality tests, and it turns out I'm very low in the trait conscientiousness, especially the part called industriousness, which is basically the trait of productive people who go out into the world and actually do what they want to do. I've also read about the symptoms of low testosterone making you very passive, so I may have to take a blood test to check it.

Ever since after puberty, I've been feeling like I'm just drifting through life, never doing anything productive, never doing anything exciting, taking initiative, etc.

I don't think I'm depressed, since I'm very emotionally stable, just really passive.

My plan to overcome this problem it is focus more on my goals and constantly remind myself (keeping post-it notes around my apartment, etc), and to slowly create daily habits of productive work. But I still struggle sticking to any type of personal schedule.

If anyone has any tips/resources for people with low-industrious/conscientious personality traits to become more productive, I'd love to hear about it.

 

[Battambang]

My current road block is lack of time. (only 24 hours in a day)
And lack of funds for a writer. (for now)

Writing is the slowest part of my process and I am only ok at it. Though I am getting better and slightly faster.
I like making videos but not so much writing the script.
All I can do for now is just do it until I can pay someone else to do it.
Once I get to that point my road block will be I cant make videos fast enough for all the ideas I have.

I sleep 6 hours a day spend 3 hours with family work an offline job for 7 hours and do online work (now YouTube) for 7 hours and 1 hour of reading before sleeping. 6 days a week and 1 day just family/relax time

It slightly annoys me seeing other people posting: time management and Im too lazy or I dont know how to start etc...
My reply STOP playing video games Stop watching porn Stop complaining, START Doing Something! (or dont I actually dont care, less competition and more stupid lazy people to watch YouTube )

 

[kiks]

I have an idea that i believe can work and make sales because the competition is low, i am learning developing languages at the moment but i have some blocks and it's getting hard because my english is limited but not giving up!

 

[lightningblitz]

Traffic and newsletter subscribers.

I'm pretty decent at social media and the one thing holding my back from monetization is finding a way to get subscribers. I've tried some paid advertising to me site, without any conversions. Maybe I need to improve my copy, but for now, that's my roadblock.

The easiest part of my website monitization is subscribers.

I have found out two fundamental facts of conversions:

1. You need perfect ad copy, perfect placement, and technical on page copy perfect.

This is what most people do. They read a lot of threads, split test and optimize to get the best conversion rates.

The problem is that this requires time and effort to split test everything and when you have a site or two, you risk losing all income.

2. Offer incredible value.

This is what i do. I offer a lot of free stuff to people visiting my website.

I offer ebooks for sign ups which i also post on kindle.

I tell people the value and offer it for free if they sign up.

Most people have a throw away email and will sign up for a $20 + dollar offer related to your niche.

My experience is if you have good traffic you can convert to an email list by making people think they are getting a lot for free.

My biggest struggle since I started IM 9 years ago:

Overcoming laziness, distractions, procrastination and actually work productively on my projects and get stuff done without getting overwhelmed.

It seems I can never do things for myself that I need to get done.

However, when I work for others I can work very well because I have some type of pressure (a deadline, something is expected of me, responsibility to a boss/coworkers, etc)

I started with IM when I was 16. Now I'm 26 and still not earning a full-time income (but I'm progressing slowly).

When I was 20 I sometimes couldn't sleep at night because I would think about how I was not working towards my goals because I was getting distracted by other stuff.

At my 22nd birthday I remember I was depressed thinking about how I was getting older but still not any closer to my dream. My GF tried to cheer me up. Didn't help.

At 24 I said "fuck it" and quit my job, and moved to a low-cost foreign country where I could finally focus full time, and I wouldn't go back home until I fulfilled my dream. Well, that was the plan. I still found ways to procrastinate.

However, during the last few years I've dug deeper into psychology during my periods of procrastination. I've taken several personality tests, and it turns out I'm very low in the trait conscientiousness, especially the part called industriousness, which is basically the trait of productive people who go out into the world and actually do what they want to do. I've also read about the symptoms of low testosterone making you very passive, so I may have to take a blood test to check it.

Ever since after puberty, I've been feeling like I'm just drifting through life, never doing anything productive, never doing anything exciting, taking initiative, etc.

I don't think I'm depressed, since I'm very emotionally stable, just really passive.

My plan to overcome this problem it is focus more on my goals and constantly remind myself (keeping post-it notes around my apartment, etc), and to slowly create daily habits of productive work. But I still struggle sticking to any type of personal schedule.

If anyone has any tips/resources for people with low-industrious/conscientious personality traits to become more productive, I'd love to hear about it.

We are about the same age.

I am also lazy.

How do I do it?

1. Self imposed deadlines or rules.

I used to set very unrealistic goals and try to reach them. Every day i had a self imposed limitation or deadline i had to reach.

It works. Set your own goals.

2. Get real life pressure.

As a mid 20 something, you most likely dont have a real deadline at your back.

I know i didnt when i started im.

But over time i had multiple house payments, a significant other, and pets i had to provide for.

I learned that if i needed 6 hours a day for recurring income streams (rental property), 2 hours a day to maintain my home, i had limited time to work on websites.

Life forced me to decide if i wanted to train my puppy / spend time with my newborn OR work on IM.

The only choice was to do both better.

I learned that unless i had real life deadlines, i had to make them. Now that i have real limitations, i still set some goals to keep me focussed but the rest falls into place.

I read a lot before this realization but no one had the amswer. Only life set me straight.

 

[Samtondon2]

I think its a good discussion to start.
I think I am mostly stuck on time management and anxiety to control myself from jumping into new "money making" methods rather than sticking to whats working for me currently.
I have always been enthusiastic to try everything and keep losing whatever I earn in the process.
Now, I am always trying to learning lot of things that is necessary for the current requirement.
So, lacking in managing multiple ongoing stuff altogether and thus, losing track of some.
If we are assisting by you and your rules this will helpful definitely.
we are happy because you with us.

 

[Rockstar007]

My roadblock is lack of money for starting another project and laziness which both are bad combinations for anyone who wants to be successful. I have only 1 source of income and want to get into SEO but i pass my time in tv series and games mostly.

 

[Chepe]

My biggest struggle since I started IM 9 years ago:

Overcoming laziness, distractions, procrastination and actually work productively on my projects and get stuff done without getting overwhelmed.

It seems I can never do things for myself that I need to get done.

However, when I work for others I can work very well because I have some type of pressure (a deadline, something is expected of me, responsibility to a boss/coworkers, etc)

I started with IM when I was 16. Now I'm 26 and still not earning a full-time income (but I'm progressing slowly).

When I was 20 I sometimes couldn't sleep at night because I would think about how I was not working towards my goals because I was getting distracted by other stuff.

At my 22nd birthday I remember I was depressed thinking about how I was getting older but still not any closer to my dream. My GF tried to cheer me up. Didn't help.

At 24 I said "fuck it" and quit my job, and moved to a low-cost foreign country where I could finally focus full time, and I wouldn't go back home until I fulfilled my dream. Well, that was the plan. I still found ways to procrastinate.

However, during the last few years I've dug deeper into psychology during my periods of procrastination. I've taken several personality tests, and it turns out I'm very low in the trait conscientiousness, especially the part called industriousness, which is basically the trait of productive people who go out into the world and actually do what they want to do. I've also read about the symptoms of low testosterone making you very passive, so I may have to take a blood test to check it.

Ever since after puberty, I've been feeling like I'm just drifting through life, never doing anything productive, never doing anything exciting, taking initiative, etc.

I don't think I'm depressed, since I'm very emotionally stable, just really passive.

My plan to overcome this problem it is focus more on my goals and constantly remind myself (keeping post-it notes around my apartment, etc), and to slowly create daily habits of productive work. But I still struggle sticking to any type of personal schedule.

If anyone has any tips/resources for people with low-industrious/conscientious personality traits to become more productive, I'd love to hear about it.

Im just about to turn 21 and can relate. I’m always counting on my future self to do everything but he just fucks up and procrastinstes like I do!

 

[Marketingpulse]

A few constraints i'm facing right now:

1. Low budget and already used the Ahrefs trials a few times and can't do it more. Have like 7 exports I want to do but no way to get the link data i need. If anybody would be willing to export some of these for me i'd be very very grateful
2. sending cold emails at 15k a month scale from semi-cleaned email lists, trying to find a working method

What I can help on:

• mindfulness - i have been meditating and running daily for the last year and it has done wonders for my motivation and drive
• traffic ideas - I have grown a few sites to 100k+ visits before (mostly via social)

I will help you with Ahrefs(If you still need).

 

[lalgsw]

I will help you with Ahrefs(If you still need).

thank you so much!! PM'ing

 

[DEFINE]

Crippling anxiety.

 

[alexxforrd]

Currently My Biggest Road Block is College.

Almost 75% of my day is lost in doing college work.

From Morning 7 to 5:30 in the evening I'll be in college. Then 6-7:30 Gym, After that work on my final year college project till 9.
Then Browse BHW, YouTube, Netflix, Sleep..
This is my final year at college but once it is over I have to go to higher studies again I cannot leave it until I complete my MS (another 5 years) coz I cannot disappoint my parents after what they have done for me.

I work on my YT channel, blog and skills in the weekends. But I want to work on them daily and be consistent.

I plan my day to be productive the night before but it never goes as planned.

I am doing Automation & Robotics in which I am not interested as much as Graphic Design and IM. If I want to leave college and work on them I have to convince my parents that Graphic Design & IM can work for me and I can make a living out of it.

What I need right now is a effective plan to work on goals and college daily.
If anyone can help me out I would greatly appreciate it, Thanks BHW

 

[karupoiss]

My current roadblock is lack of belief in the things I do. I have tried several methods over the years and every time some new update comes out that wipes out my income stream. I guess I am tired of fighting the losing fight - I want something stable and long term but I don't know how to make it happen. SEO is out of the question as it is expensive as fck and takes aeons to rank anything (if anything ranks at all + G can wipe out all your work with a single update).

I have done the porn re-uploading to direct traffic to cams revenue share offers but I haven't found good enough videos that get lots of views and thus.. traffic is laughable. Another long term way would be to build an email list (so I have been told) but I don't know how to generate free traffic cause YT, IF, FB, TW are all so anal about everything nowadays that you need thousands of dollars to test before you find a way to keep your accounts alive.

 

[t1nar1wen]

As someone already mentioned, time management and keeping the focus on few most important projects. I'm struggling to diversify my business without loosing focus.

 

[thescrrr]

Every night i think that i will start working in morning. But again all day passes. This frustration is making me angry.

Yep, It's the same with me. Good ol' procrastination.

 

[Sherb]

Wow, this blew up. Let's see here.

Stress, and things just being unpredictable. It's pretty much about that i'm finishing high-school, and i need money for tuition, otherwise i won't be in position to afford a the first year in uni, and moving into another city.
I had the experience of working with someone for like 5 months on developing a website + sources of traffic, where person just unfriended me few days before launching and that stopped responding. He didn't complain on anything before. Just like that.
Worst few days of my life - stress wise. I just poured all my energy into that project, expecting a decent income. And BOOM. Like nothing happened. So i'm left with 2 more months time to establish some passive (500$/month) income for myself.
So, stress, and PTSD-like trust issues.

Did you get paid for your work? Did you get a contract signed? It's taken some setbacks, but I've learned that, unless you are willing to do the work for free, always get the terms and agreement in writing and have both parties sign. It's not a lack of trust, it's a security measure for both sides.

Spend the next five days reading, then start implementing. If you're looking at the affiliate site route, @HenryHavoc and @LuckyCharm007 have awesome journey threads where they start from scratch and are both building awesome sites.

A few constraints i'm facing right now:

1. Low budget and already used the Ahrefs trials a few times and can't do it more. Have like 7 exports I want to do but no way to get the link data i need. If anybody would be willing to export some of these for me i'd be very very grateful
2. sending cold emails at 15k a month scale from semi-cleaned email lists, trying to find a working method

What I can help on:

• mindfulness - i have been meditating and running daily for the last year and it has done wonders for my motivation and drive
• traffic ideas - I have grown a few sites to 100k+ visits before (mostly via social)

If you are still needing any ahrefs exports let me know. I've got the full subscription (standard one).

Finding decent media buyers to scale up my business.

I've literally tried everything (even tried coaching to help filter decent candidates) but it's hard to find decent media buyers that a) won't steal your campaigns and/or b) won't run away after you teach them.

I know others find this easy, personally this has been a huge problem in the past year for me. I have managed to get 2 media buyers out of a pool of maybe 2000 candidates...

That's way beyond by pay grade, although I recently read a thread that pointed to @Sephrata as an experienced media buyer. He might have some solid advice.

Working online all alone does isolate you from the outside world and makes you a bit autistic if you are not carefull. At least that is my experience. I am not the one who automaticaly assumes that this is applicable to anyone else that works all alone. Don’t get me wrong here.

My skillset is mainly WordPress related. Tweaking the hell out of it and the theme and plugins. Things like adding a branded avatar that gets shown if people that leave a comment don’t have one. Fixing php, css and html issues, things like that.

On the other hand I have to be carefull that I don’t go full OCD. I.e. a layout issue in WooCommerce drives me nuts and I could spend an hour on getting things pixel perfect. Recently I got bored, took a break and calculated that I spend almost a week on tweaking the WC css for my own site. Time and energy that I could have spend on creating a pull request and submitting it.

The WordPress coding standards are also something I seem to upses about. If I see that a plugin uses json_encode my neckhairs start to raise and I have to fork the pluging in order to use wp_json_encode. You can imagine that things like this do not benefit the “time to market” for my still not ranking website.

Then there is alsways the dreaded content. I know I am a halve decent writer but English is not my native tongue and I am afraid that weird spelling issues might undermine my value proposition. So I look for others to take care of this, which in turn leads to other problems I won’t bore you with at this moment.

Probably I could benefit from an accountability partner. Someone who I have to explain to why the f*%k I did not met the deadline I had set for a particular task.

Accountability partners, in my experience, are crutches. You can only progress as far as the lowest progressing partner. If that's not you, you're holding yourself back.

Instead of isolating yourself from the outside world, why not take a chunk of your day when you are doing things that are not as computer-intensive, and bring a laptop to a coffee shop or something? Get some fresh air, have some human interaction.

My current roadblocks are finding the perfect team and getting things done on time.
Finding people who are experts at what they do and who are also honest and trustworthy.

Second ..I have a hard time getting things done on time and that can mean loosing out on revenue.
Sometimes I have to wait for other people before I can go to the next step in the process.
I try to streamline things so things can go smoother but sometimes things are always behind.

Those are my major roadblocks.

I face similar issues due to the volume of workload and the fact that I'm not doing IM full time. Are you using any tools for task management?

Also, vetting a solid team is a difficult task. Finding honest, trustworthy team members who are good at their job is a whole different animal. You might want to come to terms with the fact that you will never find the "perfect" team. I don't think anyone has. What mediums are you using to look for potential team members?

Im the biggest roadblock to myself. Overthinking things and not just jumping in.

Jump in, dude. If you don't someone else will, and they'll snatch up the profit that could have been yours, while you sit at the edge of the deep end of the money pool watching everyone else swim in dollars like Scrooge McDuck yo.

my income kinda became passive and as a result I lost the motivation to work as hard as I used to, even when I know that I could earn more.

Take every cent of that passive income you are currently making, and stash it away somewhere. Forget it exists. Act like you are starting from square one again. Then hit the ground running.

My current roadblock is my feelings lol. For example, my relationship is on the rocks at the moment and it literally affects my business life. Anyone that can offer suggestions?

Remove distractions. If IM is a distraction to your personal life, and you value your personal life more, stop doing IM. If your personal life is a distraction to your IM, and you value IM more, cut ties.

My roadblock is knowing when you are expected to see results.

Good ideas are scarce. For both niche site ideas & opportunities.

Knowing how much to spend on that idea determines how much $ you can make.

How do you figure out how much $ is justified for the project's success?

Do i keep it at a minimum and add more as on the way up for link building and only see results in 2-3 months?

The missing factor here is how the project makes you feel. If it becomes nothing more than a "job", you're going to be miserable and not want to put the time in. Is this a cash grab project, or is this something you are actually passionate about? And for reasons besides the potential money. Is this something you'd spend time on for free?

My current roadblock is proper monetization of our(me and my friend's) blog. We've got a good daily traffic but facing a lot of problems with proper monetization.

What monetization methods are you currently using?

However, during the last few years I've dug deeper into psychology during my periods of procrastination. I've taken several personality tests, and it turns out I'm very low in the trait conscientiousness, especially the part called industriousness, which is basically the trait of productive people who go out into the world and actually do what they want to do. I've also read about the symptoms of low testosterone making you very passive, so I may have to take a blood test to check it.

Never let a personality test determine how you are going to perceive yourself. I only quoted a paragraph, but it sounds like you are making a lot of excuses, when in reality you just don't have the ambition. Are you working on things you give a shit about, or just looking for things that will pay the bills?

That's all I got for now. I'll try to respond to another 10 or so later today.

 

[Phoenion]

What monetization methods are you currently using?

Thanks for replying
We Tried Adsense, native ads, CPA, but nothing seems to work that well with Reddit traffic... Had submitted for revcontent a week ago but no reply from them yet

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

Thanks for replying
We Tried Adsense, native ads, CPA, but nothing seems to work that well with Reddit traffic... Had submitted for revcontent a week ago but no reply from them yet

Reddit traffic is hard to convert in a lot of niches.

I'd try more of a soft sell and see if you can build a list from that traffic as opposed to a straight up offer.

 

[Phoenion]

Reddit traffic is hard to convert in a lot of niches.

I'd try more of a soft sell and see if you can build a list from that traffic as opposed to a straight up offer.

Thanks
Will give a try to that...

 

[Topiano]

Almost 75% of my day is lost in doing college work.

From Morning 7 to 5:30 in the evening I'll be in college. Then 6-7:30 Gym, After that work on my final year college project till 9.
Then Browse BHW, YouTube, Netflix, Sleep..

I recently graduated from college ... I turned 22 recently and I can understand how you feel .

One thing I do to keep with track — After returning from classes I try taking naps so that I can get my self re-energized. Wake up for few hours to get things done before sleeping again for next day classes.

But you need to focus mate — Focus One Course till U Successful. You having little time would make you want to indulge in many things.

Try as much as possible to spend time understanding one before moving to another if not going to work in a long run .


That would help you save little time you’ve got

 

[Sephrata]

I know others find this easy, personally this has been a huge problem in the past year for me. I have managed to get 2 media buyers out of a pool of maybe 2000 candidates...

I'm not sure how you find your media buyers, but if you're using Facebook I can offer the following advice:

- Always check their Facebook account. If it looks fake (I check the profile pic with Tineye and Google images), then it's a red flag
- Check their group posting history to see if they are really an experience media buyer. I'm in a few Adwords groups and some people give genuinely shocking advice, yet on their profiles they claim they are Google Partners or they run their own media agencies
- Don't post that you're looking for a media buyer. This just attracts a majority of people with little or no experience
- If you find someone you think meets your needs, then ask for references or existing clients as a due diligence check