Lehman3920
Newbie
- Apr 6, 2016
- 0
- 1
I?m dealing with a partner in a joint venture who puts in very little work and is basically freeloading of the hard work I?ve been putting in this project for almost a year now. There have been many situations where I had to kick him out or just halt the project, only for him to beg for another chance and eventually not holding to his word once again. Now I find myself in a somewhat unpleasing situation as I?m unsure what would be the best decision.
I?m currently considering my options.
What would you do if you was me? After reading the below story?
Background
About one year ago I started a joint venture with this guy that I?ve known for more than 8 years from some chat room.
I had an idea, strategy and A-Z plan to start a website and make bank with it. I have a background in Marketing and SEO. Have done many freelance jobs for corporate giants and have a very good understanding of the search engine game.
There is only one problem that has been a hindrance for the past 10+ years. My gambling addiction has got the best of me most of my life which resulted in me having a large debt of over 65K dollars and not progressing in life. I?m almost hitting 30?s and this plan should have made me a reasonable amount of money to either re-invest or pay of a big portion of my debt.
As you might know gamblers are broke most of the time. So when starting this plan, I figured if this guy (an American) can type a million words in a chat room where he?s wasting his life, he can create content as I needed lots of to make it work. After another day of losses at the casino and being broke again, I decided to reach out to him about a year ago which I regret to this day.
The plan was to create an adult site in a specific niche with a 50/50 distribution as long he keeps his responsibilities. The project is currently raking in $2,500 a month and growing. It could easily earn 4x that if it was in somebody else?s hands.
After a few weeks of training him the content still wasn?t top notch. He?s a high school dropout and doesn?t have the best control of the basics (grammar, spelling & punctuation). So I proofread every article he creates and edit where necessary.
The guy had little or no SEO knowledge and everything he did on his own always resulted in a failure, while he?s on social security. On top of that, he got serious dental and mental problems. He spends a lot of time in a chatroom looking for trouble with people, and can?t let things go very easily.
During the course of this project I had to warn him many times to stay away from chat rooms. Because when he visits them he neglects his responsibilities. As mentioned above this often causes friction. I for my life can?t understand why people are wasting their life in chat rooms instead of contributing.
I constantly get annoyed by the fella and the real distribution of work is basically 65/35%. He does a lot of shit that?s completely unacceptable, including trying to blackmail me when I halted/threatened to kick him out the project to release all KW data to attract competition, and giving away the idea for free. I called his bluff and eventually he didn?t do it and I have him one last opportunity in January without further improvement. He still does to little?
Now he?s constantly anxious and dare I say mentally ill. He procrastinates all the time postponing his writing responsibilities and just keeps lying in my face. I no longer can stand the guy and any bit of sympathy I had for him has been long gone.
I myself am not perfect either, after 5 months (august 2015) I lost 1K by gambling it while it was supposed to be invested in the project. After that we continued working and I apologized for the fact. I finally for the first time in my life seem to have my gambling addiction under control. I haven?t spent a penny on it for almost 5 months now.
So this project did bring something good. Since the incident he has been paid more than $5,100 which is like 40%.
As far as skills concerned, he?s not very skilled apart from writing content according to a trained formula, which he doesn?t do well by the way, he?s not bringing in any significant value. He has the mind frame of a child and constantly brings his own problems into the project (mentally, physically etc.), and makes excuses for basically anything playing the victim role.
I?m putting tons of hours to get this project to work out but I?m tired of dealing with a freeloader. I have enough niches in mind which I know will pay off eventually, However, with white hat SEO it will take 4-6 months to rank as you might know. But eventually I can do anything else at any time even if he releases confidential information.
Every time I tried to kick him out he begs for his content (130+ articles) which he has been compensated for more than $5,100 by now. At this point, the project is about 60% off from reaching maturity and possibly flipping the site which should take a couple more months (4-5).
Right now I?m even prepared to give him all that content back cause he?s not worth the headache as I?m a professional who doesn?t have the patience nor tolerance for laziness, mental issues and procrastination, let alone chat rooms. I?m sick and tired of constantly hearing excuses.
The options I figured out I have:
A) Kick him out of the project permanently without any further compensation nor any articles which he has been paid for. My problem is that I?m dealing with somewhat of a lunatic that can?t accept such measures even though he doesn?t deserve to stay on.
I value my privacy, and would not like to see my private information all over the web with some porn shit attached to it as my family is strongly religious. It would be not worth it to live with the shame. I can do the same to him, including reporting him for tax evasion. But that would be a lose-lose situation.
B) Kick him out of the project permanently and give back his articles and let him keep the $5K+. He?s not worth the headache. The problem that would possibly arise then, is that he would try to emulate the site and do everything I do, and I?m not ruling out leaking private information either.
C) Let him stay on and spend the money I?m supposed to send him for coming month on content writers to create the remaining pages and eventually sell.
D) Spend less time on this project and let him stay on, and start with my other ideas that will work out guaranteed so I have more than one decent income stream.
E) Flip the site immediately, give him half and move on. I think the site could sell for 20K plus now and perhaps 30K once finished.
F) Write the majority of the remaining content myself and let him stay on, and just swallow my pride until completion and sell for 30K and move on.
Basically I?m the main editor, writer, SEO consultant, proofreader, A/B tester and who knows what else all at once. I made a lot of sacrifices including my income from freelance jobs to make this project work.
I clearly made a mistake by working with the guy. I knew beforehand he was mental and that there was a certain risk factor. Now I would like to know how others who might have found themselves in a similar situation have dealt with such. Everything right now is under my own name, he has no access to the vital areas of the site (Host) and I live abroad and he does in The States.
What would you do?
I?m currently considering my options.
What would you do if you was me? After reading the below story?
Background
About one year ago I started a joint venture with this guy that I?ve known for more than 8 years from some chat room.
I had an idea, strategy and A-Z plan to start a website and make bank with it. I have a background in Marketing and SEO. Have done many freelance jobs for corporate giants and have a very good understanding of the search engine game.
There is only one problem that has been a hindrance for the past 10+ years. My gambling addiction has got the best of me most of my life which resulted in me having a large debt of over 65K dollars and not progressing in life. I?m almost hitting 30?s and this plan should have made me a reasonable amount of money to either re-invest or pay of a big portion of my debt.
As you might know gamblers are broke most of the time. So when starting this plan, I figured if this guy (an American) can type a million words in a chat room where he?s wasting his life, he can create content as I needed lots of to make it work. After another day of losses at the casino and being broke again, I decided to reach out to him about a year ago which I regret to this day.
The plan was to create an adult site in a specific niche with a 50/50 distribution as long he keeps his responsibilities. The project is currently raking in $2,500 a month and growing. It could easily earn 4x that if it was in somebody else?s hands.
After a few weeks of training him the content still wasn?t top notch. He?s a high school dropout and doesn?t have the best control of the basics (grammar, spelling & punctuation). So I proofread every article he creates and edit where necessary.
The guy had little or no SEO knowledge and everything he did on his own always resulted in a failure, while he?s on social security. On top of that, he got serious dental and mental problems. He spends a lot of time in a chatroom looking for trouble with people, and can?t let things go very easily.
During the course of this project I had to warn him many times to stay away from chat rooms. Because when he visits them he neglects his responsibilities. As mentioned above this often causes friction. I for my life can?t understand why people are wasting their life in chat rooms instead of contributing.
I constantly get annoyed by the fella and the real distribution of work is basically 65/35%. He does a lot of shit that?s completely unacceptable, including trying to blackmail me when I halted/threatened to kick him out the project to release all KW data to attract competition, and giving away the idea for free. I called his bluff and eventually he didn?t do it and I have him one last opportunity in January without further improvement. He still does to little?
Now he?s constantly anxious and dare I say mentally ill. He procrastinates all the time postponing his writing responsibilities and just keeps lying in my face. I no longer can stand the guy and any bit of sympathy I had for him has been long gone.
I myself am not perfect either, after 5 months (august 2015) I lost 1K by gambling it while it was supposed to be invested in the project. After that we continued working and I apologized for the fact. I finally for the first time in my life seem to have my gambling addiction under control. I haven?t spent a penny on it for almost 5 months now.
So this project did bring something good. Since the incident he has been paid more than $5,100 which is like 40%.
As far as skills concerned, he?s not very skilled apart from writing content according to a trained formula, which he doesn?t do well by the way, he?s not bringing in any significant value. He has the mind frame of a child and constantly brings his own problems into the project (mentally, physically etc.), and makes excuses for basically anything playing the victim role.
I?m putting tons of hours to get this project to work out but I?m tired of dealing with a freeloader. I have enough niches in mind which I know will pay off eventually, However, with white hat SEO it will take 4-6 months to rank as you might know. But eventually I can do anything else at any time even if he releases confidential information.
Every time I tried to kick him out he begs for his content (130+ articles) which he has been compensated for more than $5,100 by now. At this point, the project is about 60% off from reaching maturity and possibly flipping the site which should take a couple more months (4-5).
Right now I?m even prepared to give him all that content back cause he?s not worth the headache as I?m a professional who doesn?t have the patience nor tolerance for laziness, mental issues and procrastination, let alone chat rooms. I?m sick and tired of constantly hearing excuses.
The options I figured out I have:
A) Kick him out of the project permanently without any further compensation nor any articles which he has been paid for. My problem is that I?m dealing with somewhat of a lunatic that can?t accept such measures even though he doesn?t deserve to stay on.
I value my privacy, and would not like to see my private information all over the web with some porn shit attached to it as my family is strongly religious. It would be not worth it to live with the shame. I can do the same to him, including reporting him for tax evasion. But that would be a lose-lose situation.
B) Kick him out of the project permanently and give back his articles and let him keep the $5K+. He?s not worth the headache. The problem that would possibly arise then, is that he would try to emulate the site and do everything I do, and I?m not ruling out leaking private information either.
C) Let him stay on and spend the money I?m supposed to send him for coming month on content writers to create the remaining pages and eventually sell.
D) Spend less time on this project and let him stay on, and start with my other ideas that will work out guaranteed so I have more than one decent income stream.
E) Flip the site immediately, give him half and move on. I think the site could sell for 20K plus now and perhaps 30K once finished.
F) Write the majority of the remaining content myself and let him stay on, and just swallow my pride until completion and sell for 30K and move on.
Basically I?m the main editor, writer, SEO consultant, proofreader, A/B tester and who knows what else all at once. I made a lot of sacrifices including my income from freelance jobs to make this project work.
I clearly made a mistake by working with the guy. I knew beforehand he was mental and that there was a certain risk factor. Now I would like to know how others who might have found themselves in a similar situation have dealt with such. Everything right now is under my own name, he has no access to the vital areas of the site (Host) and I live abroad and he does in The States.
What would you do?
