How to not be wiped out completely

[DaisyA]

Max, it sounds like you have a strategic problem, not an operational problem. If things haven't been working for you for a long time - across several different projects - and you know you've been putting in the hours, then it's time to step back and reassess your "big picture" roadmap.

My advice would be to think smaller. That sounds boring, but in reality, having a small win and building on that is a speedy way to overall success. Read lots of the "journey" posts on BHW. Read and read and read. And when you find a business model that resonates with you - one that you're excited about and that you know for sure utilises your particular skills - go with that.

Spend a day planning your "big picture" strategy. Plan out what you will do and where you want to be month to month. Be super focused on one project. Work on it every day. If it isn't taking off and you're falling behind in your overall strategic goals, come back here and read and read and read until you learn why. Or start a new post asking specific questions which people will be happy to help with.

The big projects will come. You just have to learn how to walk before you run. And BHW is a great place to do that. Start small. Work hard. Ask lots of very detailed questions, correct your course when you get off track, and you'll have success before you know it.

 

[Max Kirschner]

@DaisyA

What is the quickest way to learn proper marketing, where everything but marketing is in place?

We are talking affiliate links here, or what do you intend? Those need your own website and some structure around them to work. Posting them here or in some forums will get them removed.
Then again, which structure of a website is good? Wordpress takes care of most of it, yet everybody is using wordpress. And you again have thousands of variables that are nowhere documented how to optimize. You are one of many. Why would anyone come to your site?
Also, how do you stay anonymous, so people don't connect you to previous failures and stop buying then more than ever...

 

[nouveauriche]

@DaisyA

What is the quickest way to learn proper marketing, where everything but marketing is in place?

We are talking affiliate links here, or what do you intend? Those need your own website and some structure around them to work. Posting them here or in some forums will get them removed.
Then again, which structure of a website is good? Wordpress takes care of most of it, yet everybody is using wordpress. And you again have thousands of variables that are nowhere documented how to optimize. You are one of many. Why would anyone come to your site?
Also, how do you stay anonymous, so people don't connect you to previous failures and stop buying then more than ever...

There is no quick way, marketing is complex, you have to embrace complexity.
If you want to start an affiliate marketing business using SEO you have to know how a search engine works, and you have to make sure your blog is seen as very usable by the search engine, so that it ranks.
That's the easy part tho, the difficult part is actual marketing.

 

[Max Kirschner]

1) Find out what people are looking for
2) Find product that fulfils their need
3) Assess your budget ("does selling this product require a business structure i cannot afford?" - "can i sell this product having a high margin on sales?") meaning yes, you can make money selling toilet paper, some people do, but how expensive is it to start a toilet paper business?
4) Know who your ideal customer is
5) Pick a price (based on your ideal customer's budget, but also your margin need)
6) Copywriting to justify the price (based on your ideal customer's demographics), to destroy competitors and to create loyal customers
7) Where are your ideal customers? (Are they on Facebook? Are they on instagram? Are they on Google? Are they on YouTube? Are they not on the internet?)
8) Lead generation/Brand awareness/both (depending on product, price, ideal customers...).

Which entry level ecommerce business method is precisely laid out and where?

 

[Max Kirschner]

@CCarter

They do interact with my content. But they don't come back.

Whether videos are bland also requires a certain view count.

How do you know which topics you should do a diy about

Is this "BuilderSociety Customer Profiles" the well known persona where you picture some random person and write an ad to them like Mathilda, 40, single based on some fringe data? Know that this is a bad approach because you are so far off reality with that that you invalidate your previous efforts.

 

[cyberzilla]

You remind me of @Bartman but less funny though.

 

[nouveauriche]

Which entry level ecommerce business method is precisely laid out and where?

There's no such thing as entry level in any business, it's either the real deal or useless stuff. You have to find someone who's selling courses on that specific business, but i have nobody to suggest, you have to do some research for yourself making sure you pick the right guy who shows his results and knows what he's talking about instead of someone who has no idea about anything and just wants to sell courses, or even worse someone who copied a good course and is selling it.

Business is all about marketing, marketing is literally the "money making" part of the business, and marketing is complicated, that's why you have to embrace complexity.

 

[Max Kirschner]

There's no such thing as entry level in any business, it's either the real deal or useless stuff. You have to find someone who's selling courses on that specific business, but i have nobody to suggest, you have to do some research for yourself making sure you pick the right guy who shows his results and knows what he's talking about instead of someone who has no idea about anything and just wants to sell courses, or even worse someone who copied a good course and is selling it.

Business is all about marketing, marketing is literally the "money making" part of the business, and marketing is complicated, that's why you have to embrace complexity.

This post provides almost zero practical value.

 

[Elvlin]

How do you decide your project dead?
If you still working on the site it's not dead. Some site take 1-2 year constant working, till it really take off.

 

[CCarter]

Know that this is a bad approach because you are so far off reality with that that you invalidate your previous efforts.

How are you off reality? You are building a persona based off of data you've researched.

It's also helps in creating new content. You can visualize who you are writing for and therefore make your content feel like it's written for them when they land on the page.

Example: if you are targeting an SEO agency, then you can throw in a joke about "Matt Cutt's new job".

Only an SEO would know who Matt Cutts is.

If you can't visualize your audience you will be creating bland content that no one wants to comment on or interact with. Hence your current problem.

 

[nouveauriche]

This post provides almost zero practical value.

You just need to search for e-com courses out there, courses teach you the strategies for that specific business, the rest is all about marketing, check out some courses by Dan Kennedy for that (stuff like The Source Code, Mind Hijacking, Renegade Millionaire 2.0, Make Them Buy Now, Marketing To The Affluent...)

Business is tricky, you need knowledge first to help you figure out a plan, then you need money to turn the plan into action, then more knowledge, experience, more knowledge and that's pretty much what you keep doing all the time, learn new stuff, realize more stuff, learn more, realize more, fix this, fix that, perfect this, perfect that, making more and more money till you get to the point that you're making enough money to pay other people to do the boring stuff, so that you have more time to focus on the "grown up" stuff, which is providing value to your shareholders (if you don't any, you're the only shareholder), finding terminators to put in your team, finding money (banks, credit cards...) managing money, MICROmanaging money... There's is so much stuff it's impossible to lay it all down here.

imagine business as cooking, if you want to be better than other cooks you have to consider more variables than they do, meaning you check where every ingredient comes from so that you know exactly what the cow the steak comes from ate its whole life, you use pans made of certain materials because they cook stuff more like you want to, you check every temperature, you basically turn into a chemist.
That's the difference between Gordon Ramsay and the guy who makes burgers in a diner on the highway.

 

[Max Kirschner]

nouveauriche, how do you make money?

 

[nouveauriche]

nouveauriche, how do you make money?

Right now i do affiliate marketing, but in the near future i will be using it to fund other businesses, i want to invest in some real estate (not the cheap 80k apartments) and do some trading, but AM will be my core business for a while.

 

[Max Kirschner]

nouveauriche, how did you start affiliate marketing? What was your mvp?

 

[nouveauriche]

nouveauriche, how did you start affiliate marketing? What was your mvp?

I started without a course actually, then i got one course but it's pretty outdated now, and the guy never made any other course, that one made a big difference tho, but most of the stuff in it doesn't exist anymore and the rest is just different. I then started promoting online casinos and made quite some money with that, and now i'm running a few affiliate blogs (SEO) and i do ads, i only have an ads guy in my team right now, that's pretty much me and him, and i'm not the only guy he works with even tho he mostly works for me.

Affiliate marketing is very broad too, and it varies a lot depending on which country or language you want to target, but could be less complicated than let's say e-commerce as you only have to drive hot traffic to the product, with e-commerce you have a more stable business (in affiliate marketing you can get your affiliate accounts deleted, not get paid, affiliate programs shut down...) but also more variables, that's why you need quite some money to start it, you need a customer service guy for sure at the very least, maybe not in the beginning but you will need a guy for that very soon, you'll need an ads guy too, that starts getting a little bit more complicated, you need storage (unless you do dropshipping, which is not as profitable as having your own brand) too.