[2015] Journey to Self-Employment

Hello everyone, I've learned much from this forum and this year I've
decided that it's the right time to take the plunge into building my
own online business.

If you're looking for a get-rich-quick method, you aren't going to find it
here. However, what you will find here is my attempt at succeeding in
the goal I've set for myself.

Right now this thread is going to serve as motivation for myself but I
hope that in the future it might inspire someone else to get off their ass
and make some money online.

Let's get started.

Update No. 1

Purchased a brand-new domain and hosting for one year for $17 from a
company I've dealt with before. I logged into the cPanel and set up the
email and ftp accounts that I need.

Then I configured Thunderbird to work with my new email account and
tested it out. After that, I set up Google Webmaster Tools and Google
Analytics accounts, since I know already that I'm going to need those.

What I'm going to do next is to register the related social media accounts
for my company and then I'm going to get started on designing the logo
as well the website.

Good luck man, a year ago I had the same goal to be self employed. Every one doubted me, even I doubted myself, but I kept going and now I'm a self employed 18 year old lol, it feels great man, just remember, NEVER GIVE UP! Hard work pays off, you get what you put in.

Thank you for the encouragement! And congratulations to you on your
success.

EDIT: Might as well add tomorrow's plan to give everyone a heads-up of
what to expect.

Tomorrow's Plan

I'm a web developer by profession, so tomorrow things are going to get
a little bit technical. At the very minimum, I'm going to install the Laravel
framework on my hosting account. I'm really looking forward to this
because version five has been released recently and I can't wait to get
started on using it.

By the way, I know there are a fair number of skilled designers and
developers here, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask. I'd be
happy to answer them. Hopefully we can get a good discussion going
because it'll give me something to do after I'm done with the updates.

Update No. 2

Hello everyone, hope you're all doing fine. Right, so yesterday I
finished setting up the social media accounts for my business as
planned.

What I'm going to do today is to install the latest version of the
Laravel framework on my machine and sync it with my host so
that I can get started with designing and developing my website.

I'm also going to integrate HTML5 Boilerplate and Skeleton so I
have a good base to work off of once I'm finished with my design
in Photoshop. I have to say, I've done this many times before, but
there's definitely a thrill to doing this for my own business.

On the development side, once I'm done, I'm going to push my
changes to my repo in Bitbucket so that it's under version control.

On the design sign, I intend to finish designing my logo and the
initial layout of my website. While I'd like to get this done today,
this is a creative process and that means I might end up going
through a great number of concepts before I'm satisfied with the
results.

Additionally, I'm also working on researching the keywords that
I'm going to focus on to rank my website. I'm new to SEO, so this
is going to be my greatest challenge.

That's all, folks.

Good luck! Keep updating!

Update No. 3

I finished integrating HTML5 Boilerplate and Skeleton with Laravel, so
I'm ready to get started with development. I also set up a simple host
on my machine to get my PSD design into an actual HTML template.

You might be wondering why I'm so keen on using Laravel. The reason
is because my idea involves developing a small suite of web applications
that are going to make managing my business easier down the line, as
well as providing my prospective customers with a service that hopefully
will appeal to them. I'll share more details about this over time.

Regarding the design itself, I'm feeling pretty happy with myself because
I managed to nail the logo down within three revisions. I was surprised
how quickly I was able to create something I was satisfied with but now
that I think about it, my subconscious was probably working away behind
the scenes for months on the concept.

The other bit of good news I have is that I was able to put together a
colour scheme for the website that's quite attractive, so using that what
I'm now looking at in Photoshop is something that I can be proud of.

What I'm going to do now is take a break from designing and get started
on putting together the content that I need. For this, I'm going to spend
some time on researching how to write compelling copy that will convert
my visitors.

Thanks for reading.

ja1myn said:

Good luck! Keep updating!

Click to expand...

Thank you very much. I'm doing my best to keep the updates rolling in
whenever I think I've made some progress. I've started my research into
writing some awesome copy for my website.

I'm taking a break right now because I've been reading since the past five
hours or so. I now have a new-found respect for the work that copywriters
put into coming up with great copy.

On a side note, those of you who are reading this and are web designers,
please consider the impact your design has on mobile users when they
have to use those goddamned sliders.

Good luck with your journey mate!

Good luck on your journey

eXampL said:

Good luck with your journey mate!

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chocolatecricket said:

Good luck on your journey

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Thank you for your words of encouragement, mates.

All right, so here's what's been happening. I've finished the typography
for my website. Basically what that means is, I now know which fonts
I'm going to use for the headings and body text, their sizes, etc. Since
I'm content with today's progress. I might as well post tomorrow's plan.

Tomorrow's Plan

So tomorrow I'm going to continue working on the design. My goal is to
start transferring it from its home in Photoshop to a HTML template that
I can actually load in the browser. Since this is going to be a responsive
website, the sooner I get it into the browser, the better I'm going to be
able to test it using my phone.

Second, I'm going to ramp up the keyword research that I've been doing
on the side, because now that I've started working on writing the copy, I
might as well implement the on-page SEO at this stage rather than write
the copy first and tweak it later.

That's it for today, folks. Oh yes, since my mind is in the zone right now
I might as well add the following section:

Brainstorming

So yeah, as I mentioned earlier, one of the reasons why I chose Laravel
is because I'm going to be building a few web applications as well. As a
token of appreciation to the BHW community, I intend to offer my services
at a discounted rate to everyone here.

Once this project is launched, I'll sign up for Jr. VIP and submit a thread
for approval in the marketplace. As a special thank you, what I'm going
to do is to offer reduced rates through a discount code system on my
website.

So that's one thing that one of my web apps (built on Laravel) is going to
be managing. Essentially, an online discount code system. I'm not going to
reveal what the service is right now, but according to my research, I think
it's something that many of you who are starting out in IM are going to
appreciate.

All right, time to catch some shuteye.

Nice updates, keep going

I am too self-employed, however running my offline business that makes even more money for me. Blogging is an excellent method to make money online, but in these days it become hardest thing for newbies.

mrhydeto said:

Nice updates, keep going

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TeKn1qu3z said:

I am too self-employed, however running my offline business that makes even more money for me. Blogging is an excellent method to make money online, but in these days it become hardest thing for newbies.

Click to expand...

Thank you for your support!

Update No. 4

Everything is proceeding as planned. I started transferring my design
from Photoshop to HTML. I've finished implementing the primary
navigation menu for my website and now it's responsive - looks just
as I want it to on a mobile display.

Next, I'm still working on the copy for the homepage. I got hit with
writer's block, but I've kept my head down and I'm pushing ahead.
I think I've thrown away at least eight drafts until now. Hopefully I'm
going to be satisfied with what I come up with in a few hours.

Using Market Samurai, I've chosen the keywords I want to target and
I've been investing time into scoping out the competition. One of the
sites that's on the first page of Google has terrible SEO compared to
the other sites, but I think the reason why it's way up there is because
it has two backlinks - one from an .edu and one from a .gov.

I've tracked down the .edu page that's linking to it - oddly enough, it's a
botany page on Oregon State Uni's website. However, I can't for the life
of me figure out where the link is in the page. Clearly, more investigation
is required because as I mentioned, I'm new to SEO techniques.

I'm going to spend more time tracking down the .gov link. My instinct is
telling me the tool I'm using has got it wrong and that there isn't any .gov
link at all. If you guys feel like helping me out, I'd be interested on what
tools you use to get a list of all the backlinks to a site.

That's all I have for now.

I like journey which updates time to time.

Ah! So this is what you been up to Wish you the best of luck mate! I'm pretty sure that you will succeed in this journey.

Good luck man.. I will follow this story.

All the Best.........

Teejayy said:

Ah! So this is what you been up to Wish you the best of luck mate! I'm pretty sure that you will succeed in this journey.

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Indeed, this is what I've been up to, mate. Thank you very much for
your support. Thanks to Nut-Nights, AlexIv and sasmeesami as well for
your encouragement.

So here is where things stand at the moment. I've come up with a draft
of copy for the home page that looks promising. I'm keeping on revising
it just to see whether I can make it better.

On the SEO front, I downloaded and installed SEO Spyglass and I don't
know about the rest of you but I like this more than Market Samurai. I
put some time into Spyglass and scoped out my competitors' sites and
I've dug up quite a bit of useful information.

For instance, I now know that the #1 ranked site is -definitely- using
black-hat SEO techniques to get up there. And from the data I have, it
should be relatively easy (fingers crossed) to blow them out of the first
page.

One thing I like more about SEO Spyglass is that it ranks the difficulty
of competing for keywords in a much more newbie-friendly manner than
Market Samurai. I'm happy that I'm putting time into learning about SEO
as this was something that I always wanted to get into.

That's all I have for now, folks. I might not post tomorrow's plan today
as I intend to keep working until I'm exhausted and fall asleep. Writing
this copy hasn't been easy but now that I'm in my zone I can't afford to
slip out of it.

Oh and happy Valentine's Day (bah, sentimental bastids)

Good luck on your journey.

Nice updates.