From Zero to Hero For, Like, The 18th Time...

[Total Noob]

I started IM when I was 13, back when Xrumer was the holy grail of blackhat SEO and Scrapebox didn’t even exist.

Since then, due to passive IM earnings, I have been on vacation for the vast majority of my life.

Most recently, I spent the past year on vacation, living off of one website that was ranking for ~20 keywords.

I deleted the website from existence about three months ago, as I decided that I didn’t want to be living off of blackhat money anymore (the website was shady).

One month ago, I decided to go on a grand adventure with the remainder of my savings... and failed miserably on the second day, albeit for a reason out of my control.

I find myself once again at Zero: $1,000 to my name, no car (in a city where you need a car), and crashing on a friend’s couch.

Now, I’ve been here before. Many of you are responsible people. Me, not so much. I’ve made a lot of money with IM, but I’ve also been a degenerate for most of my life.

It was always a vicious cycle...

1: Be broke
2: Create one or more passive income streams
3: Start coasting
4: Live “paycheck to paycheck” and never save any money
5: Watch as the passive income streams eventually evaporate
6: Repeat

I’m looking to break free from that cycle this time around.

So, this will be a journey about IM and getting back to Hero status, but also my personal journey to stop being so reckless and such a degenerate.

For example, I had about $300 to my name about a month ago (after I failed on my grand adventure). Recklessly, I put $50 onto a poker website. With that $50, I ended up placing top three in not just one, but two tournaments. Added $2,400 to my bank account. Also landed a copywriting client for $400. I could have purchased a used motorcycle right then and there. All I would have had to do would be get the funds for an apartment.

What did I do instead? Recklessly, I decided I was going to play poker for money. Lost about ⅔ of my earnings and also spent a bunch on superfluous living expenses. So now, I’m at $1,000, no car, no apartment. Fun. Alright...

I need to make money immediately, so I do not have the luxury of doing things that I’m not experienced in.

I have three talents that I can use to make immediate money.

WRITING

About four years ago, I was a fairly successful freelance copywriter.

I eventually stopped because actual work didn’t mesh well with my degenerate lifestyle.

But I definitely have some solid ability in this arena, and just a few solid clients can get me out of the financial rut I’m in right now.

So far, Upwork has been the best platform for me.

So, every day, I’ll be applying to almost every copywriting gig on Upwork.

A major problem is that my Upwork profile is still quite new: I have $300 earned and four total projects with two five-star reviews, which isn’t terrible, but it makes me look like an amateur.

My portfolio is also old, and I’m way better at writing than I was back when I was freelancing a couple years prior.

So, I’ll be doing three things overall to make immediately money by slinging copy:

1: Creating a really, really nice-looking website
2: Bidding on projects on Upwork almost immediately after they’re posted, so I don’t get lost in the muck
3: Updating my portfolio items (and editing them) so my current level of skill is accurately reflected in the writing

KEYWORD RESEARCH

I am also quite good at keyword research. I’ve lived off of passive SEO money for most of my life, but I’ve never built a link by hand. I just buy links and pray. This approach has always worked because the competition has always been so weak.

I’m not sure exactly what I will use this skill for, but I will start abusing the Ahrefs free trial in a few days to gather up some good keywords. Once I get a couple of solid keyword lists going, I will probably aggressively build an authority website.

This approach isn’t exactly conducive to quick cash, and I’ll need to put some money into the website to pay the writers (I can’t write the content myself -- not a good use of time resources). I’ll also need to pay for SEO costs (whitehat outreach). So I may also try slinging some keywords again like I did a few years ago to pay for these costs and possibly provide a nice real-life financial cushion.

Overall, for now, I expect copywriting to be a far more immediate source of income. But I am also, obviously, looking to get my passive income back up and running as well. Who isn't?

EXPERIMENTAL: COACHING

Keyword research and finding clients are both tedious tasks. So, I need something to do when I want to take a break but still be productive.

I spent the past year writing a book, and I have to say, it’s pretty damn good. 60,000 words, 255 pages -- a real book.

Hilariously, two days after I published the book on Amazon, Amazon decided to ban my account. Why? I had two books blocked a couple years ago, and they randomly decided to ban the account now.

So, there goes that.

I am going to repurpose the content inside of the book in two ways:

The first half of the book was about all of my various blackhat schemes over the years. I’ll post some of those chapters directly on this thread, purely for entertainment purposes.

I’ll then take the self-help part of the book and repurpose it into an article series.

That article series will contain a ton of value and also push an additional info product of some sort (that I will create). I’ll also offer virtual coaching.

Though I’ve been through many financial ups and downs in my life, I’ve always been an incredibly optimistic person and can use logic and science to back up my relentless optimism, so I feel I have a lot to offer in that realm. We will see.

I will send traffic to the first part in the article series somehow, then hopefully, they read all four articles and then buy whatever I’m selling.

Even if they don’t, I will just be happy that they have read the info, as it took me a shit load of time to put together.

May also consider creating some YouTube promotional stuff to push the product.

Since I am banned from pretty much every major web platform out there (except YouTube and Reddit), getting traffic to the article series will be tricky. And I only have a Chromebook right now, so I can’t really get technical with any workarounds. No worries, I’ll figure something out.

---

Overall, I won’t be doing anything blackhat over the duration of this journey.

This is a big deviation from my previously-held attitude on whitehat vs. blackhat.

I’ll update this thread every few days with progress, stories, and random anecdotes from my day-to-day.

Please excuse any spelling or grammar errors, as I won’t be editing these posts very much.

 

[Deleted member 1107112]

Wish you success in your Journey to HERO

Edit:- Used to think all Jr. Exec have minimum of $10M

 

[Razentyler]

Wish you a good luck,Though your journey is almost like a rollercoaster and it’s time to make it stable..

 

[Deleted member 813988]

Edit:- Used to think all Jr. Exec have minimum of $10M

Now you know it's just a badge

 

[hazzi]

Good luck ! Also what type of blackhat thing were you ranking for ?

 

[blackbrut]

When you mention previous earning and be on vacation for most of your life, what kind of amount are we talking about? How can you be broke now if you had enough money to do nothing?

 

[Panther28]

You have an amazing back story, I'm sure you'll be surfing to your own coach in a matter of months!
You need somewhere like a home that you can have a good computer setup and your own little library.
Good luck.

 

[venturetrade]

To be this genuine and honest like that is really something.. respect on that mate.

In regards to the keywords speciality and niche sites experience you have, if you are interested in a partner with plenty of experience in the tech industry and that can finance all of the project.. PM me.

I wish you the best of luck, not just in this project, but in life.

 

[Animation_Videos]

woahh you started at 13? i was probably watching cartoons back then..btw whats your age now?

 

[Mr Positive]

Inspirational story keep on going onwards and upwards

 

[rajkumar31]

Good to know your story! I'll follow along on your journey updates.

 

[SocialNed]

Wow, very interesting journey thus far! I am interested to see where this one goes

 

[stepdub]

I started IM when I was 13, back when Xrumer was the holy grail of blackhat SEO and Scrapebox didn’t even exist.

Since then, due to passive IM earnings, I have been on vacation for the vast majority of my life.

Most recently, I spent the past year on vacation, living off of one website that was ranking for ~20 keywords.

I deleted the website from existence about three months ago, as I decided that I didn’t want to be living off of blackhat money anymore (the website was shady).

One month ago, I decided to go on a grand adventure with the remainder of my savings... and failed miserably on the second day, albeit for a reason out of my control.

I find myself once again at Zero: $1,000 to my name, no car (in a city where you need a car), and crashing on a friend’s couch.

Now, I’ve been here before. Many of you are responsible people. Me, not so much. I’ve made a lot of money with IM, but I’ve also been a degenerate for most of my life.

It was always a vicious cycle...

1: Be broke
2: Create one or more passive income streams
3: Start coasting
4: Live “paycheck to paycheck” and never save any money
5: Watch as the passive income streams eventually evaporate
6: Repeat

I’m looking to break free from that cycle this time around.

So, this will be a journey about IM and getting back to Hero status, but also my personal journey to stop being so reckless and such a degenerate.

For example, I had about $300 to my name about a month ago (after I failed on my grand adventure). Recklessly, I put $50 onto a poker website. With that $50, I ended up placing top three in not just one, but two tournaments. Added $2,400 to my bank account. Also landed a copywriting client for $400. I could have purchased a used motorcycle right then and there. All I would have had to do would be get the funds for an apartment.

What did I do instead? Recklessly, I decided I was going to play poker for money. Lost about ⅔ of my earnings and also spent a bunch on superfluous living expenses. So now, I’m at $1,000, no car, no apartment. Fun. Alright...

I need to make money immediately, so I do not have the luxury of doing things that I’m not experienced in.

I have three talents that I can use to make immediate money.

WRITING

About four years ago, I was a fairly successful freelance copywriter.

I eventually stopped because actual work didn’t mesh well with my degenerate lifestyle.

But I definitely have some solid ability in this arena, and just a few solid clients can get me out of the financial rut I’m in right now.

So far, Upwork has been the best platform for me.

So, every day, I’ll be applying to almost every copywriting gig on Upwork.

A major problem is that my Upwork profile is still quite new: I have $300 earned and four total projects with two five-star reviews, which isn’t terrible, but it makes me look like an amateur.

My portfolio is also old, and I’m way better at writing than I was back when I was freelancing a couple years prior.

So, I’ll be doing three things overall to make immediately money by slinging copy:

1: Creating a really, really nice-looking website
2: Bidding on projects on Upwork almost immediately after they’re posted, so I don’t get lost in the muck
3: Updating my portfolio items (and editing them) so my current level of skill is accurately reflected in the writing

KEYWORD RESEARCH

I am also quite good at keyword research. I’ve lived off of passive SEO money for most of my life, but I’ve never built a link by hand. I just buy links and pray. This approach has always worked because the competition has always been so weak.

I’m not sure exactly what I will use this skill for, but I will start abusing the Ahrefs free trial in a few days to gather up some good keywords. Once I get a couple of solid keyword lists going, I will probably aggressively build an authority website.

This approach isn’t exactly conducive to quick cash, and I’ll need to put some money into the website to pay the writers (I can’t write the content myself -- not a good use of time resources). I’ll also need to pay for SEO costs (whitehat outreach). So I may also try slinging some keywords again like I did a few years ago to pay for these costs and possibly provide a nice real-life financial cushion.

Overall, for now, I expect copywriting to be a far more immediate source of income. But I am also, obviously, looking to get my passive income back up and running as well. Who isn't?

EXPERIMENTAL: COACHING

Keyword research and finding clients are both tedious tasks. So, I need something to do when I want to take a break but still be productive.

I spent the past year writing a book, and I have to say, it’s pretty damn good. 60,000 words, 255 pages -- a real book.

Hilariously, two days after I published the book on Amazon, Amazon decided to ban my account. Why? I had two books blocked a couple years ago, and they randomly decided to ban the account now.

So, there goes that.

I am going to repurpose the content inside of the book in two ways:

The first half of the book was about all of my various blackhat schemes over the years. I’ll post some of those chapters directly on this thread, purely for entertainment purposes.

I’ll then take the self-help part of the book and repurpose it into an article series.

That article series will contain a ton of value and also push an additional info product of some sort (that I will create). I’ll also offer virtual coaching.

Though I’ve been through many financial ups and downs in my life, I’ve always been an incredibly optimistic person and can use logic and science to back up my relentless optimism, so I feel I have a lot to offer in that realm. We will see.

I will send traffic to the first part in the article series somehow, then hopefully, they read all four articles and then buy whatever I’m selling.

Even if they don’t, I will just be happy that they have read the info, as it took me a shit load of time to put together.

May also consider creating some YouTube promotional stuff to push the product.

Since I am banned from pretty much every major web platform out there (except YouTube and Reddit), getting traffic to the article series will be tricky. And I only have a Chromebook right now, so I can’t really get technical with any workarounds. No worries, I’ll figure something out.

---

Overall, I won’t be doing anything blackhat over the duration of this journey.

This is a big deviation from my previously-held attitude on whitehat vs. blackhat.

I’ll update this thread every few days with progress, stories, and random anecdotes from my day-to-day.

Please excuse any spelling or grammar errors, as I won’t be editing these posts very much.

It's nice to see that you've finally decided to break free from that vicious cycle. All the best budd.

 

[Total Noob]

Thanks for all the feedback and positive vibes!

Yesterday, I finished my website and finished updating my portfolio. Website looks pretty damn good. Portfolio is decent, too. Found some better material from way back when, removed all of the so-so items from the portfolio, and organized it to look more succinct and professional. Feeling much more confident in how I appear to potential clients.

Plan for today is to basically just watch Upwork like a hawk and immediately bid on any project that looks remotely decent.

In between, I'll try to crank out my second article in the four-part article series. These "articles" are more like long sales pages, but to convince the reader to believe something, rather than to buy something.

May start messing around with Ahrefs as well.

Let's see if I can scoop a client or two!

Good luck ! Also what type of blackhat thing were you ranking for ?

Can't say! I deleted the website rather than selling it for a reason: I don't want to be fueling shady things anymore. All I will say is that if you want to do shady methods, just take one small step out of the box, and there is so much money to be made. Look to automate and scale immediately. When shady stuff is involved, do not pick one niche. Do every niche. My 2c.

When you mention previous earning and be on vacation for most of your life, what kind of amount are we talking about? How can you be broke now if you had enough money to do nothing?

Hello blackbrut, still doing YT? My income stream was usually around $4k to $5k per month, all passive. No idea how I never saved any money. The most money I ever saved was when I was 16 as a junior in high school. Had mid $XX,XXX in my bank account, but mostly because I accidentally started printing money for a couple weeks with a good keyword. I've never been rich, but I've never really worked much, either.

You have an amazing back story, I'm sure you'll be surfing to your own coach in a matter of months!
You need somewhere like a home that you can have a good computer setup and your own little library.
Good luck.

Tell me about it. Working from a Chromebook is kind of driving me crazy. I decided to give away my business laptop and my monitor to some random person in need on Craigslist a few months ago. At least he is hopefully putting it to good use!

woahh you started at 13? i was probably watching cartoons back then..btw whats your age now?

I did start at 13. I got my feet wet the year before that by selling Halo 3 accounts. My friend and I would spend a weekend "boosting" an account up to level 50 in Team Doubles, then sling it on eBay for $30 - $50. Not big money, but blew my mind that I could make money online without working at the grocery store. The most expensive account we ever sold was for $82 -- its gamertag was "A For Animosity" (which I thought of) and the account had a perfect win record.

Wish you success in your Journey to HERO

Edit:- Used to think all Jr. Exec have minimum of $10M

I used to share a LOT of valuable stuff on BHW. The method I posted that eventually got me upgraded to Jr. Exec is as follows (excerpt from my book). Note that this was before Damien bought the forum:

Right after my short-lived and highly-profitable background check adventure came to its conclusion, Craigslist decided to make improvements to its anti-spam security, which was an intelligent decision, as any website that is falling victim to spammers and scammers to the degree that Craigslist was will eventually lose its real users. To make the anti-spam security improvements, Craigslist sued the creator of the most popular automated Craigslist posting software, CL Ad Genius, which cost $999 for a single license. As part of the settlement, Craigslist forced the creator of CL Ad Genius to help out with anti-spam security.

The creator knew his stuff. All of my posts started getting deleted instantly and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Even if I did manage to figure it out, I had no good way to make money now that I did not have access to traditional lead generation companies or a background check company. So, I decided to go back to the drawing board.

Craigslist had been the source of all of my income thus far, so I started there. I couldn’t post. Okay, whatever. Posting had always been a major hassle anyways. Perhaps I could just email the people who posted instead of posting myself. If I did that, I would have a wider range of people to scam and I wouldn’t need to put in any manual labor. Win/win.

I found a Craigslist email scraper on one of the forums and let it rip. The program worked flawlessly, but Craigslist was wise to the fact that unsavory characters would be scraping its platform in an attempt to find bulk email addresses to spam. That’s where the @craigslist.org relay system comes into play.

When you make a post on Craigslist, you are assigned a unique @craigslist.org email address, which serves two purposes. On the surface, it allows you to communicate anonymously with other Craigslist users. In the background, it allows Craigslist to aggressively block spam emails far beyond what a normal email provider would. I could not figure out how to get past the Craigslist spam filter, so I could not deliver emails to 95% of Craigslist posters. My messages never made it through the relay system and the recipients never saw them.

Luckily, about 5% of people opted out of the relay system for whatever reason and associated their regular email addresses (@gmail.com, @hotmail.com, etc.) with their ads. I could deliver to these addresses because they did not have the extra layer of security that @craigslist.org addresses had. Most of my emails ended up in the spam folder, but that wasn’t too big of a deal, as anyone who posts on Craigslist will likely check his spam folder to make sure he doesn’t miss any replies.

Upon further inspection, I discovered that the vast majority of the regular email addresses I was able to find originated from the automotive section (where people list their cars for sale). I studied the ads in that section in an attempt to find an angle to make money and noticed only one commonality: almost every ad referenced the fact that the owner had purchased a Carfax report and was ready to show it to any potential buyer to prove the vehicle’s legitimacy. That could be my in.

Curiously, I looked to see if there were any competitors to Carfax. There was only one: Autocheck. Then, the moment of truth. Did Autocheck allow people to promote their products on a commission basis? They did. Every time I was able to refer an Autocheck sale at $19.95, I would be paid around $10.

The first step in the scheme was to blast out an email to every regular email address I could find in the automotive section. This initial email simply expressed interest in the car and asked for more photos.

A couple hours after receiving a reply, my autoresponder program would reply back telling the seller that the photos looked great, and that I was ready to meet, test drive the car, and possibly pay for it on the spot, in cash, at the asking price, if everything went well. The catch, of course, was that I wanted to see an Autocheck report before I took the time out of my day to come see the car, as I was a very busy person. To remove the possibility of someone countering by saying he had already purchased a Carfax report, I made sure to mention I had a bad experience with Carfax in the past and now trusted only Autocheck.

Sales flooded in. My confidence in myself was restored and I forgot all about my previous failure. Even better, every part of the process was automated. It’s not like I had been putting in long hours with the Craigslist Jobs Method, but now, my workload consisted of clicking a few buttons every couple of days.

Considering this scheme relied so heavily on ripping off one single company, it lasted a surprisingly long time. Only at the end of sophomore year of high school did I eventually get banned from Autocheck. I imagine someone bought an Autocheck report at my request, continued to receive my emails every couple of days, realized he got scammed, became royally pissed off, and contacted Autocheck directly in order to vent. Understandable.

Since I couldn’t make money with the method anymore, I ended up sharing it on one of the shady marketing forums in an attempt to gain some clout. As luck would have it, one of the forum moderators was doing something similar within the automotive section of Craigslist, which meant he wanted to keep the method a secret. He took my post down, but upgraded my account to a special rank that only a few highly-respected members had (on a forum with tens of thousands of active members). People on this particular forum now assumed I was a masterful online marketer, which was hilarious, because I was actually a 15-year-old with severe acne who still had no real clue what he was doing.

Without an active scheme, I would usually go into a panic trying to find a new one in order to cover up how bad I felt about myself. But while I was promoting Autocheck, I discovered a different way to cover those feelings up: weed. Instead of relentlessly scheming as a distraction from my crappy life, I started relentlessly smoking weed. I also had the epiphany that I could actually spend the money I was making on material things. So my funds began to diminish, and at the start of junior year of high school, although I wasn’t broke, I did need to get back in the grind to maintain my newfound drug addiction and materialistic lifestyle. (And wait… wasn’t I trying to become a young millionaire? For a while, I believed weed was the godsend of the universe and that its common side effect of complacency wasn’t real.)

 

[SonOfBhw]

Used to think all Jr. Exec have minimum of $10M

Op is lying he does have a $10m but its all black

 

[Opulentos]

After reading this, I've realized we're the same.

I've been coasting off passive IM income until it evaporates, living life, travelling, zero savings, and then starting all over from nothing.

I sometimes dread that the methods that work will no longer work and that the big parent companies make IM almost impossible unless you're a big corp, Do you ever feel the same way?

 

[Total Noob]

After reading this, I've realized we're the same.

I've been coasting off passive IM income until it evaporates, living life, travelling, zero savings, and then starting all over from nothing.

I sometimes dread that the methods that work will no longer work and that the big parent companies make IM almost impossible unless you're a big corp, Do you ever feel the same way?

Sounds very familiar. Nothing wrong with that, though. Had a lot of fun coasting on my passive income, even though I undoubtedly sacrificed further profits because I always stopped scaling up before hitting big numbers (except in a few cases). I have beat myself up for that in the past ("Ugh! I could be so rich right now!"), but these days, it's all good. I have a lot of good stories and I've lived an interesting life.

I hear you on the platforms making it more difficult for independent marketers to compete. That being said, I've never really dreaded it. It means less competition... if you can make it work. I think we are lucky to have gotten into IM so early. Can you imagine trying to wrap your head around the complexities of something like managing multiple Facebook ad accounts in 2020 with zero prior experience?

Additionally, my success as a freelancer a few years ago definitely took some of the weight/stress off my shoulders: though I prefer passive income (who doesn't), I know that I can freelance to pay the bills if I need to, as I'm working up to doing right now.

 

[ahenna]

Wish you success

 

[Total Noob]

WORK PROGRESS TODAY

• Applied to ~25 Upwork gigs
• Three replies (so far)
• Two of the replies seem to have mysteriously fizzled out after some back-and-forth
• One went well -- call set for tomorrow -- good potential client, B2B stuff, NDA signed and contract already started
• Two new tasks from existing clients I landed earlier this month -- not big tasks but everything counts
• Three new unrelated connections that may help power my client acquisition / SEO efforts

LIFESTYLE PROGRESS TODAY

• Switched back to vaping. Was rolling my own unfiltered cigs for the past two months and destroying my health
• Actually ate lunch, instead of fasting until dinner as I usually do

Overall a good day! Boring, but good.

 

[Rashad Hossain]

Good stuff man! Sent you a PM