5 Years Later and Still Struggling

Punisher said:

I don't want steps! I don't think I can be more clear about asking for help! I JUST want a direction. If something is working for someone, can you point me in that direction. Nothing more like you keep implying. Appreciate your offer for work, but like i said in my PM and my earlier message, I do not want to keep writing articles. I have enough work, I don't need to cut back 15 hours.

You said there is no real passive income, I disagree. I will find it if nothing else but for my determination. Someone on this website is making a true passive income, and when I do find that direction, I will gladly come back and tell the minions about the promised land!

Your opportunity that you offered me is nothing more than more writing work. In time, you will want to get a better rate, you will want more words, less pay, and I will be right back here in 6 months. Been writing for 30 years, I know the routine. Your opportunity sounds great today, but I was not asking for an opportunity. I appreciate the offer, but I see it leading me nowhere but back here again. I am simply going to choose one direction, and run with everything i have learned until I am making money day and night.

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iBrazilian said:

A direction? Go where everyone makes a "real" (as real as it gets) passive income. Make an authority site in a niche that isn't competetive. You seem to want to go after a cash cow that Flippa was 5 years back. Hundreds of thousands of people get into the "making money" niche online, so it's constantly changing and becoming saturated. That's why YOU have to have the unique view of where you want to go. Nobody else can give you that.

There definitely is real passive income, but that's money that doesn't really allow you to grow your own assets. If you want $80 or $100 a day, then sure you can get passive income. If you want $5000+ a day, then it's definitely not passive. I've used ONLY this site to grow my sites and I work about 20 hours a week to make a mid 6 figure income. Perspective changes for everyone.

What I had offered you is a way to keep the same income you currently have, but cut down your hours tremendously, allowing you MUCH more time to start this project that you posted about. You're writing for a network, I hire content writers for long term jobs. If my site grows and the content is good, my content writers get paid MORE. You never pay someone less unless you want lower and lower quality over time.

If you really wanted a truly passive income by 60, you'd have invested in a 401k and IRA for your retirement funds. Either way, I wish you the best and hope you can find what you're looking for. There's no "easy" method nowadays that can earn a truly passive income to live off of.

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Punisher said:

No one said it would be easy. When you reference Flippa, wrong again. The reason i wrote i made $80,000 on Flippa was to show someone out there that I made a ton of cash with ZERO experience, I put in the hard work, and the determination to learn something new. You keep implying I am after a cash cow, wrong again.

Your offer was for more writing work, even though it would free up my hours. I want to find a direction, then cut the cord 100% to writing. If i leaned how to build websites, write content, get them ranked, and sell 100's of sites, I can learn anything. THAT was my ONLY point. Nothing more like you keep implying.

I don't want a roadmap, a formula, a magic bullet, so please stop it already. You are pissed i rejected your offer, I tried to be courteous when I declined but you are obviously pissed off I won't write for you.

I have made passive income in 7 different areas, just hoping someone who is truly making passive income would tell me kill this go for that. That's it. If building Porno sites is sustainable and there is room for another guy, then i will go that route. If someone says research CPA offers, then i will do all the leg work. I am just asking anyone with success to kick me in a direction, so please stop implying to the forum I am asking for a hand out. I am not.

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Punisher said:

Thank You! I will research some niche sites and try to expand on the one niche I think has real potential. I was following AZ 123 to the letter, and now wondering was building sites on Blogger the wrong way to go as opposed to WP. Appreciate the help.

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Punisher said:

Not rude at all, I asked for help and was hoping to get it!

The Amazon affiliate thing. So, I got a few different programs here on BHW. The first one, 123 Affiliate, was about building Blogger sites, writing unique content, linking to AZ products, making 50-100 posts and keep going. The reason I stopped, well, never really stopped, the sites are still out there. Like i said in my original post, some make $5 a day, then a penny a day, then nothing a day, then $10 a day. The niche is really untapped, gets great traffic, but once I hit 100 posts over a 6 month period, it appeared to level off. So I still add a post here an there, but in my eyes, it never grew like the author said it would. I would then just focus on something else thinking it was a bust.

One thing all you JR VPs and higher -ups need to understand, many people here, myself included, learn what we know from this website only. So if I am building AZ sites, I get my information from a program that was recommended here, by posters on this site, and by people on this site who have seen results. When it doesn't work, I don't have the answer. I knew nothing about AZ sites before the program, so I learned what I know from that program and comments on these forums. While many of the higher-ups have crazy experience and can spot warning signs a mile away, I am not sure you see it through our eyes. I only know what I am learning, so if i grab a shit program, I don't have any idea it is shit unless someone says it is shit. If 90% say it works, I try it. If I don't get results and you ask me why I stopped, my answer is basically it failed because I DONT KNOW WHY! I mean, I did what the program says, and that is my only reference point. Not calling out you guys in the know, just saying, you can can spot what is wrong in the blink of an eye. I couldn't spot it because I get my skills from the program I made us of, while you JR VPs have mad skills we wish we could have.

When you say there is no reason it should fail, why shouldn't it fail? It could be she had us use Blogger not WP. It could be she had us use her code to link to AZ, but, I don't have the answer. I know i can write, I know I wrote all unique content, maybe it was the program, maybe it was the niche, I just have no way to tell you why it failed. It definitely was NOT for lack of passion, hard work, commitment, or focus. I build 5 of those sites over a year, and today, lucky if i make $100 a month on all 5. So, to me, that's a fail, and I wander away looking for a new idea......

If I knew AZ affiliate was going to explode after two years, I'd keep at it. But thats the problem. Guys like me are left to kind of figure it out after we read the program and read posts here. Those who see results don't reveal too much, while most crash and burn and say it is trash out of frustration. So I am left to try and determine on my own, does it work and its a guarded secret, or is it shit and no one wants to admit it. I don't mind hard work, just frustrated I keep getting all-in and hitting the wall. Many of the programs I find here, download, and use, get 50/50 reviews, so I have to go all the way to see if it works, and when it doesn't, I honestly could not give you the answer because i do exaclty like the program instructs and have no idea what are the variables that negatively affect the work.

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netmoney1 said:

I'm going to give you something to think about, and don't think I'm trying to be a dick...

5 years is a long time. People finish college in less time. People raise kids and send them off to school in that time.

The reality: maybe making money online isn't what you are destined to do...

The key is to find something that:

A) You fucking love doing
B) You can offer value by doing it
C) You know what you are doing

Can't have one or two without the other. Need all 3.

I'll give you an example. A friend of mine wanted to live the easy life. He was the typical fucking retard that bought every WSO. The type that would buy every freaking $97 product that would hit the market, just hoping it would be the secret formula to doing nothing and getting paid for it. But he really didn't love it, and he had shit to offer, and didn't know what he was doing.

He really liked doing home remodeling projects. He was the type of guy that would be the first to volunteer to help friends redo their kitchen or bathroom. Never wanted money either. Feed him cold beers all day, and he would crank out amazing work....because he loved doing it.

Fast forward a couple years and he is sitting pretty on a pile of money and a thriving business. He buys foreclosures and shitholes, renovates then and sells them or holds them if they are multi-family and rents them. He is kicking ass. Not working online. He grinds in the real world and sweats his ass off but he is happy.

Too many people assume the online world is kick back and chill and make money. Reality: getting fat, less social and diabetes. Don't let the guru fucks fool you with the work from a villa in bora bora all day while you bang 10 girls and count money. There are just as many happy people that make a living doing normal jobs and running traditional businesses.

Find something that you love and you will be in a great state of mind. Life is fucking short...be happy.

Good luck to you man.

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Punisher said:

Not being a dick, much, lol......kidding.

So let me clear up some things. I know 5 years is a long time. But, I have not worked a real job in those 5 years. Pay my mortgage, car, and all house bills, plus raising a teenager. So, while five years might seem long, it is JUST paying all my bills. That being said, I want to get to the next level and start making enough to have play money too.

So to your point, I LOVE writing about a particular subject, so I wrote 15 e-books in a 2 year span. I was making $100, then $200, and as i made more books, I made it to $600 a month. I thought i was on to something. In another 15 books I'd be at $1,200 and the rest is history. THEN, amazon decides to go with paying by page, and i drop from $2.99 profit to 20 cents, and my thinking was I would have to keep pumping out books for 10year to get to $1,200. Dream over, reboot.

So I found something I LOVE, it definitely adds value, I know what I am doing, but, an outside force pulled the rug from under me.

That's why I came here. Looking for a direction with the least chance of it going south or relying on a giant like Amazon or eBay. I have considered getting a publisher, but everyone on this site says you make even less than Amazon, which would be pennies then.

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BreaknBrix said:

Ok so you did something similar to what I did right.

When I was a noob (2011) I found a clickbank program on WaFo that a lot of people were having success with. The program explained what to do except the traffic part wasn't really clear. Still being a noob & not knowing better I did what the program said. Worked for months. Didn't make money. I felt like IM was shit, didn't work, fuck Clickbank, fuck programs.

Then I came back to Clickbank like 6 months later going at it independently. I ignored programs. I started an IM journey working my ass off and every time I ran into a problem I asked a specific question in my journey thread.... the question got answered... I applied what I was told.... did this for 3 months then started making money. 6 months later $100 / day. 18 months in $200 / day. And I did this all while launching multiple local authority sites which are my biggest assets till this day. All that work I put into CB there are times I go for months not doing shit for CB but they still mail my checks every 2 weeks. If I see my traffic dip by 20% consistently over a 60-90 day period I get paranoid, launch a few more campaigns and start drilling for oil again. Although my goal with CB isn't scaling as much as it is to just maintain a low status quo of $100-$150 / day. If I didn't spend 80% of my time on local I'd care more about those earnings and work harder on CB but local brokering is my bread & butter.

The key components of any campaign, you know what they are.

1) Niche selection - Like I said I'll spend a full month on this if I need. And I don't target 1 niche I usually create a list of like 40-50 niches I *think are good. In the 4 years I've doing doing this I have something like 1500+ really good niches to target just with Clickbank. Listed out in excel with all the data I need. Then I use Google Keyword Planner + a shared group buy for ahrefs and majestic to keep those costs down. I do all the research I need. What sites are ranking. Videos. Backlinks. Views. I don't just dig through my competitors backlinks I did through their entire funnels as deep as possible as efficiently as possible looking for exploits their doing to twist and leverage for myself.

2) Traffic - All I look for are stupid people who are exploiting niches successfully but on an amateur level. Then I narrow down my top 10 niches and will usually start off targeting 3. I add a 4th and 5th then typically lock in and just keep drilling in on those 5. I like the number 5 as I naturally expect at least 70-80% of my campaigns to fail. The 20-30% that don't fail are the ones that in the long term bring the $ home. And once you really lock into a niche deep you can take your hand off the trigger a long time but those commissions just keep pouring in.

To get traffic, I always look for the weakest chain in the link. Niche A might be easy to exploit via SEO so I got that route. Niche B might by easy to exploit with blogs so I manually spam blogs. Niche C might be easy to exploit on YT so I got with YT. Sometimes I see an idiot on pinterest who's ranking #1 with a few posts and backlinks. So I create a pinterest, get a few PBN posts nice and slowly, outrank that fucker with better copy and it's the high conversion rates that always win in the end.

Explaining this marketing shit is like explaining how to build a car. But it seems like you wasted way too much time on content and way too little time on niche selection and traffic generation. If I had to guess... I probably spend about 80% of my time on the traffic part. Even with my local sites which are pretty big. Some 500 pages big. That still represents only about 20% of the work (if not less) that I did for that site.

I really don't know what to say man. I think journeys are VERY useful but you gotta go at it balls to the wall. Get all your shit in order the best you can on your own then start a journey. I have no problem advising people. But when I ask to see their keyword research and they pm me 3 fucking keywords with SM I lose my mind and will never talk to them again.

I expect to see a list of keywords with a lot more information than keyword + SM. And if I see someone is really putting the work in on the niche selection part then I'll advise like "no, stay away from that niche for a, b & c reasons" or "these 5 niches right here are great".

Other times dudes get paranoid I'm gonna steal their shit so I'll throw them an old, shitty list of keyword research I did 3 years ago just to prove I have more niches than I can target.

My best advice is this. 90% of marketers I've spoke to do NOT like doing market research the proper way. Cause it's boring as fuck. Painfully boring in fact. But BECAUSE so many don't do it right they target HORRIBLE NICHES. This is a fact. And that in itself should be motivation enough to go absolutely maniacally batshit crazy digging and researching the shit out of as many niches as possible then neatly listing every piece of data you can find in a spreadsheet.

Like copywriters have huge swipefiles (which I also recommend lol).... all IMers need a goldmine of data about preferably thousands of niches. Although you can just start with 40-50. FIGURE THIS PART OUT. I can't emphasize it enough.

Then start a journey and start ASKING QUESTIONS.

If there's 1 thing I know for a fact.... JR VIPs, JR Exec VIPs, experienced marketers of all types and persuasions WILL HELP you if they see you're making a valiant and concerted effort to help yourself. If you show that to the forum you WILL the answers you really need. Dudes will motivate you. You'll find other people doing similar shit as you. You connect with those people on skype like I did. Exchange ideas. You start seeing that everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Then you take all THEIR strengths and weaknesses and turn it ALL into strengths for yourself. That's really all I did. I spoke to like 10 really smart people on skype. I saw that each person was really good at 1 thing, studied the shit out of what they were doing then absorbed all their skillsets like a sponge.

This advice is vague, abstract garbage but if you treat this like science & enjoy it like an art form you WILL motivate yourself. You WILL have NO reason to fail. And that motivation doesn't come from the $ it comes from the DOING, the JOURNEY, the SKILLS. The power is always in the skills. I'd rather be skilled and broke than stumble upon a working method accidentally having no idea wtf I did. And ultimately that's the way you need to treat this. Force the will & laws of capitalism... the entire fucking universe to bend in your favor. Use your brain and our brains collectively to hack your way through the marketing matrix. And don't worry about what you're passionate about. Your #1 passion like every human on this planet is self sustainability. So that's what you stay passionate about is chasing opportunities to capitalize on.

-BB

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The Doctor said:

messaged you with an opportunity.

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Regalia said:

Hey I'm not sure if I'm the best person to give advice. But 50 years means you have a lot of experience under your belt, which is something young people lack. So you have an advantage when it comes to market experience and understanding. It might be worth trying to do your "own thing". Passive income comes from something you make once, and sell as a product (e.g. a groundbreaking book, sustainable website). Hourly wage comes from working for someone else, you should consider working for yourself.

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iBrazilian said:

Right, take what I said for example. I actually didn't give you advice, I gave you something better - an opportunity. If you'd have accepted, you could have cut back 15 hours of writing 7 days a week to 10-12 hours 2 days a week. You want passive income, but there's no "real" passive income. If you want to burn and churn sites, it's not passive. You have to research what niche to get into next. If you want to build a huge authority website, it's not passive. You need a steady stream of content.

Even if you get to the point where you're managing your content writers, your newsletter conversion team, etc. you still aren't making passive income. There's always some work that has to be put in, and with methods to make you truly large passive incomes you have to put a LOT of work upfront for nothing.

You're saying you don't want a magic sauce, you just want the steps. The steps are all over this forum, it's just that you can't follow guides step by step. You have to adapt and create something unique and give value to a reader that somewhere else can't.

Making money online is about having a skillset, marketing it properly, and charging an appropriate value.

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AckAck said:

Sir with all due respect, with your writting ability and a decent understanding how this game works it might be youre too scared to push the limits. Turn off your modem for a few hours and bust out a pen and paper with some ideas. Take a break from reading threads. Its overwhelming and anyone can spin in circles trying to obsorb all this wonderful threads. But im just schmuck who makes 120k a year. Also my seo skills are not great but i found my niche for ppc for a certain market and doing the 9--5. I wish i could ball at home like some ppl here. I hope 6 months from now youre making bank

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Punisher said:

NOPE! Like I said, I don't want anything. I don't want a magic sauce or secret formula. I only want to know how to make a true passive income.

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