IM is general is getting much more difficult.
The problem is now there's an entire industry dedicated to making people get into IM. Youtubers sellers courses etc. The means that for every idea you have the chances are 10 more people are working on that idea right now.
SEO is absolutely more difficult. A few years ago I could literally buy some garbage fiverr links and use spun articles and rank for low comp keywords and make money. My main business, which is entirely built on SEO traffic and word of mouth is still struggling despite investing thousands into content and links. The sites at the top of SERPs most "white hat" SEOs would say it would be impossible for them to rank. There's just no certain way to get results and build a business on SEO for me at the moment.
Few things I have noticed is a common factor in recent successful business and what I have considered:
- Having a face of your business. A great example is the UK based gym/supplement supplier Mental Hamster owned by Aarron Lambo. His controversial videos and helpful content appealed massively to the masses, especially the working class people in the UK. They are turning over massive amounts of money with products that frankly have been around for ages, but his audience like and trust his products.
- For Ecommerce sites, stop wasting all your money trying to rank for a few KWs, which might have a combined monthly search of a few K. The amount of links and content you'll need to purchase could be used to pay influencers, test FB/Insta ads, google ads etc. The main SEO priority is ranking for your brand name, this is of absolute important. So choose a brand name that's unique instead of chasing expired domains and trying to wrap an old domain name around a new brand. You can always use expired domains on seperate "Review" type sites, this seems to work okay still, but Google will come down on expired domains eventually as they are being abused massively.
- Focus on building a brand. Many new and IMers seem to keep trying the usual method of making a quick basic ecommerce store, throwing a tonne of dropship/POD products and trying to just push ads with generic non branded products. Use this method to test the market, but focus on getting white label/own brand products once you find something that works.
- Videos. This may seem like a no brainer, but people LOVE videos. Whether its an explainer, product unboxing, 360 pan view of a product etc they will always build confidence in your product. DON'T just throw the usual 3D renders up with your label on with nothing else. Yes crap pictures work if your product is highly desired, but why handicap yourself.
- Don't waste your energy on tasks which drain you
If you're building a clothing business, and you love designing clothes and posting on social media but hate writing SEO articles, hire a writer to do the articles, as trying to do things you hate will divert energy from things which could benefit your business
- Don't be a shady dropshipper
We've all seen the surge of these sites built in an hour, with aliexpress pictures, grammar mistakes and stock photos. They have no business information, registration, contact information etc. Work as a legit company and don't try and hide who you are, unless you're doing something illegal I guess.
