A complete newbies journey

-UPDATE DAY #3-

Yesterday I had some great chats with members from BHW, starting to get a good thinking process going (atleast I hope they're on the right track) and I'm probably learning things as well as I ever could without actually doing them. While I've had some potential ideas for good niches, none of them have turned out to be great.

I think this part will be the hardest part for me, actually having an idea I believe in enough to endure all the work I'll have to put into it. Granted, if I ever find a niche I think I could work with, I wouldn't give up easily. I'm stubborn that way.

Most important thing right now is keeping my head in a playful mood. It's nothing serious yet, and I don't expect it to be in quite a while.
Don't suck the fun out of this one just yet by overthinking everything, Luke!

Today has been sort of an off day for me. Trying to keep myself from getting sicker. Usually I take a lot of walks and focus on eating right to get healthy again, but the problem is that
IT'S BLOODY FREEZING OUTSIDE, AND THERE'S CHRISTMAS TREATS EVERYWHERE!!

I've been keeping myself motivated by reading through Kinlee's amazingly awesome (and successful) journey thread. I feel like I could get there, if I just overcome all these relatively small problems.
It's like starting a car uphill or rolling too slow on a skateboard and hitting a pebble. I just gotta push through it.

Someday I'll work out some graphics and new formatting to this IM journey thread, which is becoming more and more like a general blog. I was, of course, inspired by Kinlee (damn you for making me want to be less lazy)!

Anyways. Going to try messing around with WordPress widgets tonight, if I don't find my time slowly drowning in the pool of quicksand that is Spotify.

Love, bajs123

ps. sorry if the daily updating of this nonsense is too spammy, I'm doing it to keep myself actively engaged. Also, big shout-out to anyone and everyone offering me help; this site turned out to be a goldmine of both moneymaking strategies and pleasantly helpful people!

Awesome journey!! don't forget to update us

-UPDATE DAY #5-
Hello! Yesterday was a complete day off to try and kill off this cold. I didn't do anything IM related except for playing around in WordPress a bit more.
Today will be another off-day unfortunately, as there is a Christmas market I'd like to attend. We'll see for just how long that will be but frankly, not being well completely kills my focus.

I'm in it for the long game, though. I will probably do some more reading around on the forums if I can't figure out something more productive to do properly while being sick.
Still having those "A-ha!" moments daily, I completely love it. To get to understand something I've been using several times a day for many years more closely, all while trying to figure out a way to make a profit from it; this is something I wouldn't mind doing for quite a while!

SEO is such a dynamic subject, it has so many different takes and it's constantly evolving; yet nobody can be 100% certain of some things and that's what makes for great discussions and conversations.
It's a dynamic of us vs them, where internet marketers pool their knowledge to trick, fool and bend a higher power to their benefit. There's something very poetic and almost epic about it, and in such a small format!

This is what I've experienced so far and it might not even be correct, I'm still a newb, and for the moment that suits me just fine.

Love, bajs123

UPDATE DAY #6

I think I'm finally getting better health-wise! It feels great. Today I've been slacking off yet again, hanging around the forums and only really looking at domain names and such. I learned a bit more about buying a domain and also hosting it, different stuff surrounding that whole ordeal.

Sorry for the boring mini-updates, thing will get more interesting once I'm well rested and actually doing stuff!

Intresting journey. Keep up the good work!

Update Day #626:

I killed the whole project after a trip to the hospital ended up with me paying like a big chunk of that cash away. I felt demotivated as hell and I ended up getting a day job which didn't pay very much, but enough for me to get by. Kept it for about 8 months, traveled a bit, got a girlfriend and broke up with girlfriend, studied English at a university level for a few terms. Lots of things has happened in my life since I started this thread, and I actually loved coming back and reading stuff I wrote when I was obviously excited about starting something new. Well.. So much for that I guess. I've come to the conclusion that I definitely hate being a worker bee, and that striving to be self-employed is probably my best bet to not feel completely depressed all the time. That said, my job didn't feel very rewarding, it helped my social skills a lot but that part plateaued after a while.

But I'm back now, lurking the forums. I have a general plan in my head regarding life and how I'd like to live mine. Yesterday I read through the Pewep thread with him trying to meditate his way to $1M. It was really enlightening - obviously not the part where he tries to get rich by meditating, but the part where the community seemed genuinely agree that the way we think, and our mindset, definitely affects the outcome of our work. Seeing this come from a generally skeptical community was a real wake-up call for me. I recommend reading that thread, it's comedy mixed with thought-provoking ideas. (It's over at IM journeys).

Today's schedule:
* Look up how to get partnered with Amazon from Scandinavia. Is it possible? Anyone with experience, feel free to hit this thread up.

* Fast-day. No food, water and a bit of coffee accepted

* Play around with new hosting service I got yesterday.

* Find more WP themes that are easily customizable and suited for a landing page

* Start looking into different methods of link-building, anyone with reading tips, hit me up

* Brainstorming niche ideas

* A bit of graphical design. Continue working a project that I've already sunk like 12 hours into. Result is stunning so far.

Look up how to get partnered with Amazon from Scandinavia. Is it possible? Anyone with experience, feel free to hit this thread up.

Click to expand...

Yes no problem at all to join amazon associates. Also sign up with payoneer so you can get direct deposit instead of checks sent to you.

PS. Like your name "BAJS"

onlineonly said:

Yes no problem at all to join amazon associates. Also sign up with payoneer so you can get direct deposit instead of checks sent to you.

PS. Like your name "BAJS"

Click to expand...

Thank you! Adding the Payoneer thing to my schedule today.

And yes, the name is amazing isn't it? 14 year old me was very imaginative!

Edit: I'm also having a chuckle at my "newbies" status while being one of the "older" accounts on this site, haha!

Update
So I've spent about an hour looking at WP themes and fighting with my hosting service (arrrgh trying to transfer domains is a process apparently), and about 2 hours watching Mathew Woodwards tutorials on tiered link building.

General thoughts so far: his method feels very blackhat and dishonest, and requires a few pricey softwares. His tier 1 links seem to be of such low quality, and the quality deteriorates as he moves further down the lines, ending up in complete 100% spam - which obviously is the point of having tiers, but still. Good watch for beginners though, I would imagine, as many basic wide-range-of-use tools are covered. Some of the software automate things that I generally feel should be done by hand. He fails to explain quite how some of the expensive programs work, too - doing more of a hands on "do this, then do this" tutorial.

Haven't spent too much time thinking about niches, but will do that as I meet some friends in town.

About content spinners, are there spinners covering more languages than English? Gonna look up this l

Update Day #627:

I spent a fair bit of time just theorizing about niches yesterday, felt I had a fair grip of a few ideas. Turns out all of them were either in heavily contested markets or simply not realistic. I've been thinking a lot about amazon associates and that whole % of sales kind of deal, and it is probably by far the highest $ per conversion aside from carrying and selling your own products (and something like that would obviously require a looot more work, most likely even registration of an own business). PPC and Content Locking seems like it can generate quite a nice revenue as well, I re-read Kin Lee's journey to $10k a month, it's very inspiring, although she faced like no major upsets or obstacles (at least she never wrote about it). So, I guess her journey is the ultimate success.

Learned a lot about link building, like the practical specifics instead of vague terminology dancing around the actual methods. That's definitely part of why I got frustrated enough to turn to other things than IM. SEO is such a massive concept to grasp, with small parts being equally important as the bigger parts. "Link building is an art" - and I'm still not quite an artist.

Tiered link building seems to be a standard nowadays, and definitely it seems to be the smartest way to minimize both risk of being caught out by webmasters, and obviously it's a GREAT way of creating link-juice flowing to your landing page.

So for today, what do I do?

* Keep researching niches. Brainstorm ideas good for content locking and PPC.

* Keep trying to get hosting and domains in place, this shit is really getting on my nerves.

* WP theme hunting. Need one good template for content-locking type websites, and one good template good for amazon affiliation stuff.

* Learn how to properly customize WP themes. Probably wont be too hard.

All of the technical things don't seem TOO overwhelming as long as you keep making step-by-step plans for it. My end goal is to have a steady automated or low-effort stream of money coming in. Not looking to get rich or to make an empire, just to make money less of a stress-inducing topic of my life.

Sooooo that's it for now I guess.

Update Day #628:

Ended up working on another, not IM related project a lot yesterday. Didn't have a very creative day overall. I did, however, get my hosting and domains straight once and for all. First ever website controlled by me is up and running. Currently, I'm looking through a bunch of WP themes and trying to figure out how to edit a child theme. Trying to learn about plugins used as well. It all feels a bit overwhelming right now, as I know only the very basics of html.

So, realistically, I should be spending more time trying to figure out my first niche, even though I have a few in mind already. I want that big-bang idea to start off with, because if I end up spending like 250 dollars on software only to not make any kind of progress at all, I feel like I would easily quit and in my mind, it would be justified as "cutting my losses".

So, what software am I talking about? Well, the basics of link-building if I understand it correctly is ScapeBox, TheBestSpinner, GSA and various online tracking tools.
Obviously, I could outsource all of the link-building, but where is the fun in that, and how would I cope with diminishing results after the service has run it's course? Pay for another service, while my site might not even be making any conversions at all?

No, I think I'll be second-guessing my niches and ideas for a while more, while I get a firm fucking grip on the WP and customization things.

So. The schedule for today:

* Get at least 1 WP theme customized as I'd like it. Try to "save" the customization using the child theme.

* Keep looking for good WP themes, I'm currently reading "The Ultimate Amazon Thread" which has a great number of cool tips. It suggested magazine-type themes as the best converting ones, so looking for those.

* Brew some tasty coffee to keep me sane during these starting stages

TTYL XO XO

keep going its been a long journey but you are sticking in there, good luck so much to learn

jak19 said:

keep going its been a long journey but you are sticking in there, good luck so much to learn

Click to expand...

Indeed there is a loooooooooooooot to learn. WP plugins are giving me a headache, as most of the premium themes leaked here on BHW use a slider plugin that costs money. I'm not even really planning to have a slider, I prefer having a pretty static and reliable design that is still gripping, somehow.

So, keep looking around. I've tried about 9 themes for the site so far, I need to make some test posts with images and links, and also learn a bit more about making silo-formations to categories and such. It'll come soon I guess.

Good luck, wish you all the best

Had a great idea, gonna be working with it for a while and so far I have a general plan in my head. It's a fairly saturated market, but I think I can dominate it with a few tweaks.

The project will have a code-name, may I represent to you:


This project will be time-consuming and it will take a great deal of work, and possibly money, and will most likely fail - but if it doesn't, I will probably cash in big. I will do as much work as I can by myself, and I'll try to make these posts a little more enticing by adding small, quick bits of graphic. Excuse the terrible formatting of my posts, learning as I go.

Yesterday I finally found some niches I'd like to enter. Two of them have a lot of competition, and one is basically without any kind of competition. None of the ideas fit neatly into the CPA or Content locking or Amazon Affiliates way of monetizing, but we'll see about that whole ordeal later.

General to-do list today:

* Wind down

* Recap last few days

* Make step-by-step plans for the future


This project will be the first one I'll be working on. As I stated before, it wont bring in money in a while, so I feel that it's a good project to start with - I wont be hooked on not making a profit, rather, I'll gain very valuable experience and skills for future use.

In It to Win It TO-DO list:


* Read about bbPress and BuddyPress, learn about implementation of those

* Read about connecting API's to site

* Read about setting up automated email registration

* Read about implementing Captcha

So yeah, even though I don't feel like doing LOTS of work today, I'll keep myself somewhat busy.

TTYL XO XO

edit: sundays are supposed to be fun, so I spent some time animating the top banner.. it looks terrible, might rework.