Guys need your advice please :-)

I feel at the moment I'm at a fork in the road with several paths and I'm not really sure where to go.

I studied hard at university and I've been lucky to land a good job and had several promotions since. I'm also lucky in the sense that this job has given me plenty of free time and disposable income to experiment with many different internet ventures. I've had varying success but to be honest I've never really stuck to one idea that long because my hearts never been in it, bad shiny object syndrome I think! I'm a typical IT geek I'm only really interested in technical stuff (coding), ranking and boting. I know for sure I don't want to spend my life in the 9-5 rat race.

The only thing I can really safely say I could put 100% of my effort into that I can think of at the moment is probably a quite technical SEO blog but it just seems like such a saturated market, who doesn't have an SEO blog these days!? I want to go white hat so its a reliable source of income and of genuine value and that seems to be the only thing I think I could actually generate really good content for.

I want to leave my 9-5 and do something I actually have passion for but that market just looks so hard to crack! I've got such hunger for success, its all I think about everyday!

What do you guys think I should do? Any ideas are welcome apart from hanging myself etc etc

Just because many people have an SEO blog doesn't mean any of them are doing it right. You can still succeed with an SEO-related blog if you know who to target and what to write about.

I think you can succeed in a SEO blog, you just have to try and find a unique approach to it.

Zwielicht said:

Just because many people have an SEO blog doesn't mean any of them are doing it right. You can still succeed with an SEO-related blog if you know who to target and what to write about.

Click to expand...

Yeah that is true. I've noticed all these big SEO blogs just have a lot of waffle and not much substance. I think I'm going to have to do something I have a genuine interest in or I'll just keep moving onto something else all the time. Plus I want to make something I'm really proud of and I think you can only do that when your hearts in it.

maxedgames said:

I think you can succeed in a SEO blog, you just have to try and find a unique approach to it.

Click to expand...

Good advice, I think I have a sub niche picked out already

White hat (which is really an illusion anyway) is not guaranteed either. Been freelancing for 7 years even though I take onsite contracts. I'd say my survival depends on my diversity to take lots of jobs. In the last month, I've helped a startup move towards deployment and pull development out of India, fixed a guy's SQL Server, written a shit ton of content (albeit, all tech related), written a small C# tool, reviewed websites and audited SEO work, and trolled here.

Being an expert in 1 field is great, but you gotta be able to maneuver quick if shit starts to go south. Always have a plan B, even if it's "I'll get a job if I fail."

archon10 said:

White hat (which is really an illusion anyway) is not guaranteed either. Been freelancing for 7 years even though I take onsite contracts. I'd say my survival depends on my diversity to take lots of jobs. In the last month, I've helped a startup move towards deployment and pull development out of India, fixed a guy's SQL Server, written a shit ton of content (albeit, all tech related), written a small C# tool, reviewed websites and audited SEO work, and trolled here.

Being an expert in 1 field is great, but you gotta be able to maneuver quick if shit starts to go south. Always have a plan B, even if it's "I'll get a job if I fail."

Click to expand...

Yeah that is true, even white hat can vanish over night with an algo update. I just want to do something I love and be in control of my own time. But i suppose that's what everyone wants and if everyone got what they wanted the world could be chaos! I'll do my best to try though!

Zwielicht said:

Just because many people have an SEO blog doesn't mean any of them are doing it right. You can still succeed with an SEO-related blog if you know who to target and what to write about.

Click to expand...

Usually these kind of blogs aim for buidling brands intead of blogs , the traffic wont rely solely on search engines but in most of cases the traffic is either direct or from referrals ,

3lt0n1 said:

Usually these kind of blogs aim for buidling brands intead of blogs , the traffic wont rely solely on search engines but in most of cases the traffic is either direct or from referrals ,

Click to expand...

For my Internet marketing blog that's on my business site (B2B), that's true; my goal is to build a brand rather than just a blog. However, in my case, I rely on traffic from search engines since my ideology is that, "I clearly know how to rank a site since you managed to find this one in the SERPs". This makes it easier for me to get clients since I can just show them a few of the good keywords that my site is ranking for.

The goals, strategies, and traffic sources of SEO blogs will vary.

We have SEO Blogs, Then we have SEO blogs that actually works, Just because there are SEO blogs out there, Doesn't mean everyone does the same thing, I think you can be good at this, Just try a different approach work around your ideas and also there is always blackhat team here on forum to help you., So Just cheer a little

i'd say don't leave your job for now, at first see how blogging is working out for you, it can be easily done besides having a job and if it looks good, you can leave your job, but before you do that, you should think about other income streams too, because relying on only one site is pretty steep, you mentioned that you like coding, so for instance while writing your blog, you can develop bots for sale or for your own use, both are pretty lucrative businesses

Go for affiliate marketing. If you are good at SEO, you can make a lot of money with it.

And you can also start your own SEO blog. For example I'm reading seroundtable.com every day to keep up with all Google news. Then you also have searchengineland.com - another SEO blog. However, I think these SEO blogs make money just from selling advertising on their websites and I think you can earn more doing affiliate marketing.

create your own blog and insert google adsense...

jamie3000 said:

Yeah that is true, even white hat can vanish over night with an algo update. I just want to do something I love and be in control of my own time. But i suppose that's what everyone wants and if everyone got what they wanted the world could be chaos! I'll do my best to try though!

Click to expand...

It *is* what everyone wants. The only reason I stress every day is to basically do what I want when I want.

I would be careful with just a blog as a full-time income. I very smart freelancer told me once to never have any 1 source be more than 33% of your income. So, if one fails, you can kinda gimp along at 66% volume until you find something else.

I'll give you an example of one time the rug got pulled out from under me. I used to be one of Demand Media's top producers. I had that shit on a system. I made $75k in one year from them alone. Had other income, but I got comfortable for 2 years with them as I was making bank just writing crap. It was 3/4 of my income. Then, Google Panda came and Demand fired all of their writers right after xmas 2011. I was fucked. I was making maybe $10-$15k in other places, but I can't live off of that. So, I took a 6 month contract and started over. While I worked I built up other income, and after a year I was back to where I was, but plan b saved my ass.

Anyway, I don't blame you for hating a 9-5. I hate them too, but they are comfortable too. If you have a family to support, it's a risky proposal especially for just a blog.

Couldn't agree more. What's your home life like? If it's not insanely busy why not do both - the 9-5 with the regular income, then play about with coding & blogging out of hours? Life's too short to get sucked in by yet another hbo series

If you have a 9-5 job that pays decent money, as in 5K+/month, you've already got what ~80% of people here can only dream about having. Earning that kind of money online, month after month, is pretty tough... I don't care what anyone says... plus you have to factor in the cost of health insurance and pension plans.

You may be able to generate high-quality technical SEO content that ranks well and stands on its own merit, but if your target audience are those who are already know how Google AdSense, Amazon's affiliate program and AdBlocker work, how exactly do you plan to monetize your blog? I guess the obvious answer to that is to create a paid membership type site, but again, how many members would you have to secure at what monthly membership fee in order to earn as much as you currently earn from your 9-5 job?

If I were you, I would keep my "secure" 9-5 job for the time being and exploit the shit out of Google's ranking algorithm with my insane technical knowledge of SEO by making use of under-priced outsourcing services.

*dream
I can't edit my previous post for some reason. "You are trying to post a message that has triggered our moderation system. Double check our rules to make sure you are posting something that is appropriate. We don't tolerate any selling, posting contact information, urls, swearing, giving thanks ect... Please understand this is to protect our community from spammers. Once you have been a member of BHW for a longer period of time this limit will be removed. Thank you!"

dietcoke55 said:

*dream
I can't edit my previous post for some reason. "You are trying to post a message that has triggered our moderation system. Double check our rules to make sure you are posting something that is appropriate. We don't tolerate any selling, posting contact information, urls, swearing, giving thanks ect... Please understand this is to protect our community from spammers. Once you have been a member of BHW for a longer period of time this limit will be removed. Thank you!"

Click to expand...

highlighted the reason for you..

Mr Apricot said:

highlighted the reason for you..

Click to expand...

Thanks , but I've been a member since 2011?

Ok, fair play It's ranked by amount of posts in addition to time since registration. If you've got any questions, probly best to pm me now so we don't derail the thread.