Was making 7k solid a month before today.

Man, that's hard to hear. I was in your position around this time last year when there was a huge algo update and I lost my $5K/m site. It taught me so much about diversification. From then on, I never put my eggs in at least 8 baskets.
 
Very sorry this happened to you op. But very similiar events happened to me earlier this year.
 
The key is to go even harder and fk google until your making enough to be comfortable.
 
Wow I really feal your pain, that is what I was doing in the beginning of my carrier and I was making 20k the first year, then I went down to nothing cause of the black hat tactics i used. Now i worked hard for 8 months, and I will end this year with 5 times the amount of last year. Keep going my friend
 
I'm sorry to hear that this happened to you, I lost a successful business back in 2007 as well, and I really believe that you will get that 7k again, if not EVEN MORE. You have our support dude.
 
Question for the OP... exactly what "risky" tactics were you using? Guys here are acting like they know you used sape links and cheap ass Fiverrs, but that seems like wild speculation. What exactly were your rankings built off of?
 
Wow the support has been amazing on this thread. I thank you all from all my heart.

I had bought the SEO service from india as my first project ever.. prior to buying this monthly service, I had only heard what SEO was and that it was needed promote my site.

Saying that, I did not expect anything but success with the little knowledge I had.

One night over a drunk convo with an old buddy of mine who actually created my first site for me and also knew a bit about IM told me about blackhatlinks to buy off this site and how this was the way to make it in 2014, thus the ambitious/curious/aggressive me ended up here.

This community is nothing like the real world. People here help you, without a charge, without a motive, just pure knowledge. I love this community.

Well its been crazy today. I have a lot of things I will need to give up. It is costing me 4k to get of of the lease as a penalty on top of October but hey, I have no real savings and my credit card is my best friend right now.

Monday I am back in my home office, right where I started. I am making a journey thread, everybody is welcome to follow. I dont have a plan on how I will update the journey but I will keep the community in the loop on my rankings and knowledge.

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...ctober-19th-2014-day-after-penguin-3-0-a.html

Just like every other failure I have seen, I always said these exact words to myself

All I need is air in my lungs and a vision in my mind.

I will be back &
Google will be my bitch.
 
Wow the support has been amazing on this thread. I thank you all from all my heart.

I had bought the SEO service from india as my first project ever.. prior to buying this monthly service, I had only heard what SEO was and that it was needed promote my site.

Saying that, I did not expect anything but success with the little knowledge I had.

One night over a drunk convo with an old buddy of mine who actually created my first site for me and also knew a bit about IM told me about blackhatlinks to buy off this site and how this was the way to make it in 2014, thus the ambitious/curious/aggressive me ended up here.

This community is nothing like the real world. People here help you, without a charge, without a motive, just pure knowledge. I love this community.

Well its been crazy today. I have a lot of things I will need to give up. It is costing me 4k to get of of the lease as a penalty on top of October but hey, I have no real savings and my credit card is my best friend right now.

Monday I am back in my home office, right where I started. I am making a journey thread, everybody is welcome to follow. I dont have a plan on how I will update the journey but I will keep the community in the loop on my rankings and knowledge.

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...ctober-19th-2014-day-after-penguin-3-0-a.html

Just like every other failure I have seen, I always said these exact words to myself

All I need is air in my lungs and a vision in my mind.

I will be back &
Google will be my bitch.
And how about the girl you hired?
 
Dude you had a spam service for $70/month from India then put Sape on that site. Go get a beer, hooker too if you struggle with the ladies, and celebrate the money that site got you.

I've heard the hard way that its a must to continue pouring money back in. Glad I learned that lesson and now I'm coming back stronger and smarter than ever.
U hire an American instead of Indian ,build a solid biz rather than spam.. never need to come back stronger, coz u never have to go down..
 
Renting office and hiring a nice chick is the biggest mistake people do once they start earning money. Because office, or the girl, are just expenses - it's not an investment (even though she might have provided some extra services to you :D).
So from my point of view, the biggest lesson you got is not from SEO, but from business.

Anyway, GL in your future ventures!
 
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Renting office and hiring a nice chick is the biggest mistake people do once they start earning money. Because office, or the girl, are just expenses - it's not an investment (even though she might have provided some extra services to you :D).
So from my point of view, the biggest lesson you got is not from SEO, but from business.

Anyway, GL in your future ventures!
if the chick could write some decent content then worth it..
 
Dude it sounds like you had a great run! Forget about those sites now and go again.
 
Well 3.0 rolled out for me. All my money sites are gone (2 that is). I only have like 5 websites in total.

Last month because my income has been solid for 3 months, I signed a lease for 2k/month office and hired one girl to work for me. All based on this income from my sites.

Well right now, I do not know how I will pay my next months payment. So if 3.0 fucked you hard, do not worry, theres people like me in your position.

Saying that, I know in a year I will be making BIG $ in the future because for some reason I am MORE motivated than ever. This time, not taking shortcuts.

I hired a seo company for $70 a month from India for my websites and 3 months into to (spam) service I bought Sape links which got me #1.

To conclude, there is no easy way to life.. shit catch up to you. Until you reach the top.

I will be back, much smarter.
View attachment 55927

Let me see if I got this right, you are spending 2000$ a month on an office and also hired a girl to work for you, yet you only spend 70$ a month on SEP + some sape links? You sure got your priorities set right...
 
Urghh, sorry to hear that man.

Since Google was giving us some hints on its update for a few weeks now, you should have sold those websites.
 
What I have learned in my time in this business is don't take short cuts. If you use spammy link methods, just know that any results will be short lived. Outside of very safe web 2.0 links, I almost never place a link that I cannot personally control. My links come from my own PBN only. My network is diverse and well hidden. This is the only way to be safe these days.

Rather than getting an office and hiring a staff, work from home, invest in building a good PBN and build that sucker to be a powerhouse. You may spend thousands of dollars on your PBN over time, but you will probably never get hit with these updates and you WILL rank. I sleep a lot better at night knowing I'm safe from these updates.

I learned the hard way with the first updates in 2012. I lost half my income overnight. It never pays to have spammy links pointing to you money site, ever! You must be able to control your links, unless you are purely running churn and burn operation. SEO is built on a solid foundation.

The single best thing any SEO can do is build a PBN. Otherwise, you are playing Russian roulette with your bank account. I know this is not a new concept, but why anyone would buy sape links or any crappy Indian links is a hard thing to understand these days. Its like going to the redlight district without a condom. Its not a matter of "if" you will get hit, its only a matter of "when" your rankings will vanish.

The most important thing you can do is to learn from your mistakes and do not repeat them. Also, learn from others and don't repeat their mistakes either. Losing your income sucks, but stay positive and stay focused and build a bad ass PBN and you will be ranking new sites in no time.

On a positive note, I did recover a client site under penalty back to page # 1 after the update. He was so happy that he doubled his contract with me. : ) It seemed the disavow and link delete works after all. It took 8-months of hard work.

I am very thankful for BHW community and the ability to share information.
 
Perfected the churn and burn strategy, something he'll be proud of after he has to give back his new office and fire his employee.

He can either do something about it and fix his sites that were making $7k or continue down the churn and burn path.

Some of us prefer to build sustainable SEO and not need to lose there shirts with each algorithm update.

Lol dude I don't think you understand. Think of it as a machine. Insert $70 ---> $7000 is given to you. Not sure how long he's been making that $7000/month but with a ROI as massive as that, I wouldn't be upset AT ALL WHEN the spam site (sape + cheap SEO) died. As Mickyfu would say, once that site lasted longer than 1-2 months, you just gotta laugh at Google.

He said he had 5 sites, 2 of them which made him money. He learned a lesson and that lesson is to reinvest that cash he got. He can only be mad he didn't reinvest and now he has to deal with paying his employee + the office. The fact that the $7k/month site which was built on Sape and a $70/month service died shouldnt upset him at all.

"Some of us prefer to build sustainable SEO and not need to lose there shirts with each algorithm update."

You're right, but hindsight is 2020 and I'm sure OP doesn't regret the fact that he had a 9900% ROI. Had he reinvested this wouldn't even be a thread.

U hire an American instead of Indian ,build a solid biz rather than spam.. never need to come back stronger, coz u never have to go down..

Oh you're one of those white hat guys. OP made 21k in 3 months with spam.

Had he gone the white hat route, dude would've made $0 and probably still would've gotten bitch slapped by Google.

He'll be back.
 
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OP, I am also in this game for more than 10 years and lost everything in few times and saw 20k+ month seems like very much stable incomes which make you vulnerable with false security.
In IM world certainty and stability terms are not exist. I still put all my eggs to one basket and take risks every-time but always be prepared to see all your rankings vanished overnight, even you do whitest hat SEO. I suggest even painful, try to start again ASAP and be prepared this time.
Also never underestimate bing-yahoo traffic, they are life saver. Hope you recover fast.

Selling the sites while they making their best income earliest possible would be also good strategy. its very difficult to say than do similar to exit the Rulette table when you are winning.
 
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if the chick could write some decent content then worth it..

That was part of her job. 1000 words everyday .. Talked to her today and let her go.
 
Just want to address this in more clarification.. I didnt even know what SEO was until April 2014. The $70 service came my way when i went on freelancer to find someone who can bring me on top of google. At this point I did not know BHW existed nor did i know the costs associated with a real SEO company. So I thought paying somebody offshore to get the results is not a bad idea.. especially because well they claimed that can and have done it and other that it was only $70.

Now about why i did not reinvest heavily was because I never thought of the $70 service as a steal:

1. the supplier was very happy and satisfied with the compensation
2. I thought I was paying the right price! Converting $70 to indian money can feed a home for weeks... so i though initially, i was paying for quality.

The reason for renting an office was that i wanted to expand myself locally in a whole new industry as a financial advisor. The nature of the work is around meeting clients in person, thus I needed a receptionist and a nice office.

Another thing I wanted to clear out. I was not just investing $70/month per website, I was paying monthly for sape links which costed about $180/month per website to rent along with content written every week which totalled to another $100/month in total for my websites.

I do not regret anything, this part of the game. Anyone here who makes a significant bank here has been thorough this or has learned from someone like me.

Op, why did you need to rent an office just to run 5 websites and make monthly payments of 70 bucks to your Indian seo guy?
 
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