Old Noob Ready to Get Back to webdesign,,,

hi to all the members here. This is also my first post on this forum
although I have been skimming over the forum for last few weeks as I'm
interested to start making better money than I'm now which is now very
low. I first searched for making money selling wordpress web sites or
something and got sent to post5017397 ( i cant put the actual url in as im a noob here_

Some of the stuff I have read on that thread has been very intuitive. It
is great to see others here who have done similar things and it would
be good to hear from those earlier posters on where they are now with
their business and some lessons, mistakes they have learned, failure or
success, we can all learn.

I actually started as a web designer way back in 1996 and was probably
one of the first commercial designers in my city back then. I freelanced
for a few years and had my own business but I lost interest and
motivation after too many whinging and demanding clients. I preferred
just play with photoshop and html rather than dealing with people so I
started looking around at other ideas...

I then got more seriously into affiliate marketing through the mid
noughties and after some years battling away to just make enough to
cover my living I was lucky that in 2008 to 2010 I averaged over 100k
profit a year due to having lots of domains and sites that just earned
money from ads, datafeed websites and the like and I never promoted any
of them as Google was not as it is now and traffic would just turn up. I
had several income streams in AM and another website that was a bit
different earned me most of the money and it still is my main income as
of today but it has now gone down to a dribble as new cowboys hit the
scene and push my old site out of the google.

OK I will split this post up as I seem to be getting errors, continues below....

so to continue....

So since November the competition is pushing me out and I have done
little seo work so it's not surprising as it's very competitive these
days for organic traffic. I was also lucky back then for 2 years where I
promoted a company and they tracked my sales by coupon code so I was
able to make huge amounts with this for little effort until new young
dork took over the advertiser marketing job in the company and when he
realized I was making so much with this method he stopped it and the
affiliate network director had something to do with it too. Anyway I was
lucky as I was making over $1000 per day at times back then and it was
nearly shocking to log into my account and see how much I was making. I
bought 2 homes from my income and did several overseas trips. I still
have one home but I sold one earlier this year to come and live
overseas.

But those days are gone, I still have many websites and I have lately
rebuilt them with the latest technologies and have a constant content
stream happening now which should improve things in the future. I plan
to market them more over the next few months and get some traffic with
youtube and yahoo etc after reading a lot of the stuff here.
I never thought I would have to join a black hat forum as I have always
been white hat although I probably did black hat at times without
realizing it.

Continues below....

continue....

Now I'm in Asia away from my home country and I have lived here with my fiancee for over 6 months. such a beautiful young woman who I will marry in the future. But now my money has all but run out and I booked a ticket to fly back as I can't live there with no money. I'm sitting here in the tropics, working and enjoying farcry 3, riding motorcycles and the warm weather..

to continue below...

I'm not sure I can post the rest of my post as I keep getting errors ... (so limited to how much I can post, very frustrating) ....

continues from above..

So now desperate to make some cash as I want to get back to my girl as we don't want to be apart.

have been working out what is the best methods for me to make money, long term I think I can do good with the websites but that is still going to take some time and effort and to be honest I don't like off site seo as I hate tedious tasks of replying to blogs or forums etc and I don't like article writing that much although I do enjoy the old write up like this.

contines below & the browser keeps crashing to make it worse..

So after some thinking I'm now planning to get back into web design
after all these years although I'm not rusty by any means as I have been
maintaining many of my own websites for many years and I keep up with
new things. But wordpress can do most of the work and with plugins etc
there is no where near the work we would have had to do back a decade a
go I have been fortunate enough to have been using wordpress for my
platform for many years now too so I know it well. I'm not a coder by
nature but more of a graphics guy and that is why WP had suited me well
too. I can customize a WP theme though with a lot of cut and pasting and
trial and error, I have a good library of scripts I use built up over
the years. My belief is that when you need something done there is a way
and I often learn when something needs doing. Now with place like Fiver
etc I can outsource a lot of stuff too...
So I go back at the end of this month/year to my city and my plan is as follows roughly in no particular order:

contune below

you were such a lucky bastard, to bad you lacked wisdom, until you're right enough money are only good to make more money. I'm a web developer and you right about WP but because of this the market is so low, you can get an WordPress site from fivver with 5$, unless your graphic design skills are not mind blowing I see a lot of cold calling in future.

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# Stay in the city when i get back and market there first
# buy a new domain and build a portfolio website for this venture
# create some business cards plus have some sales brochures printed
# Have the website setup to display a number of themes I have downloaded and customized
# I will go around with my marketing material and my laptop and take on
business owners face to face. I don't like the phone or even the web to
market.
#Create business plan, pricing, marketing plan etc

I won't have much money to invest in this so my costs will be for the
marketing material mainly. I have my laptop, hosting, websites etc...
I'm unsure about pricing yet as I a still have to do more research in my
area but I'm pretty motivated and since I have been living in another
country for so long it will be more exciting to suddenly be back in the
big city with a challenge.

I will update as I go here....

that is it finally huhu

cm00x said:

you were such a lucky bastard, to bad you lacked wisdom, until you're right enough money are only good to make more money. I'm a web developer and you right about WP but because of this the market is so low, you can get an WordPress site from fivver with 5$, unless your graphic design skills are not mind blowing I see a lot of cold calling in future.

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thanks for the reply...., well I don't think it is long term plans, really just looking to bank some cash so I can live for 6 months while I get back to work on my own stuff. If I can sign up 10 business owners on 1k each or 20 on $500 each within 2 months then that would be sufficient for me to live in the tropics with my fiancee for 6 months at least. I have to do something urgently and this is the only thing I can think of that I know a little about and might just work if I put in the effort. I should be able to create the website within 1 day once I get a system running and probably less after time. I will add monlty maintenance and hosting etc on top for continuoes income for awhile as well.

A lot of business owners would not have heard of places like fiver and if they don't have a website up in 2013 then they would be likely not to have known of fiver or similar places. There is some immigrants in my city that are good at hardware on pc's but have little understanding of places that can offer budget prices for services online. I'm probably going to start with that market segment in my city first....

I am i the same boat and trying to get my local offline off the ground, contact me if you want to discuss anything such as tactics, pricing, design, whatever

UPNorthSEO.com is my new site.

thanks martin, after thinking about it I'm still not sure I want to do it yet. I know from the past there is a lot more involved than just giving them a wordpress template. Dealing with clients can be difficult, finding clients is even harder. Then you need to have the framework setup, templates, legal documents, contracts, terms etc. Then you need advertising material, business cards, flyers. You also need to have your portfolio looking sharp along with a showcase to show them when you meet them. You need to set pricing etc. there is a lot to running even a small business like this and if you do it you need to do it properly otherwise after one or two clients you will be in a mess.... I'm not sure I can be bothered, I might just look for a job instead for now...

That's the wrong attitude mate, especially when you've already done this before, with succes!

Regarding clients, well you don't have to only do offline work, there's much more money to make on the global net, why not combine it?

I would love to be in your shoes, not financially, but with the experience. Experience is so important as it gives confidence and prevents you from making all the mistakes you already did when you were a newbie.

Freelancing as a web developer is the best best decision I ever made. I'm currently dealing with a client who keeps squeezing more juice out of me (that misinterpretate that) even though I already gave him a huge discount (because I need customers to build a good rep) but you know what, instead of letting it discourage me, I see it as an opportunity to grow.

Now I know to be more specific of what my 'gig' / work involves for the fixed price, next time I let someone hire me. I thought I approached the client correctly, but already now after 2 days, I realize that I should have been more specific, as I've already done work that many developers would have charged $500 for, for only $50 hah!

Anyways, I wish you luck with your journey

What sales skills do you have OW? Can you negotiate effectively using simple words? Do you know how to present yourself (acting at its core)? Do you know psychology and sales skills needed to create and close sales? You have said you got talent, but you don't have the right talent needed to beat the "lowest price, best service" routine offered by many web developers. Your first good read needs to be Mind Control Marketing by Mark Joyner, and your second good read can be Influence The Psychology of Persuasion along with Cashvertising. All those .pdfs can be found in the BHW download section or even by a simple Google search.

As for anymore advice, you might want to start teaching some people web design to build up authority. This would require you teaching them in exchange for them testifying that you are a authority on web design. This rpocess should also be combined with some BSTS from here (press releases for building up news about you). You might also want facebook or twitter follows + retweets + likes + post likes to make you seem at first like "YEAH people are liking his comments and stuff because he knows what he is doing!".

We that's a good start, the rest is up to YOU reading and learning psychology and sales copy.

I'm sure it can work but you must have the right attitude YES and be motivated and I you guys do well as I'm sure you can if you want.

For me, instead, I decided to look at what I had success with in the past and see if I can find a new angle to focus on. So I have picked up a lot of info on this site and now I have been making very good sales again with affiliate marketing. So far it's looking bright, I have been working with social media and now able to get ranked on Google within hours on front page for even competitive keywords. So far this week my sales have been several hundred in total for last week (commissions) and that is only the 2nd week so I"m quite excited. I'm sorry I can't share my strategy as it would jeopardize my own business but all I can say is that there are ways to get sales online, you just have to think outside the square a little

good post...

btw...the OP mentioned this post "post5017397"

How can i get to that post?

Can someone post a link to it?

thanks very much!

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...-selling-wordpress-themes-website-design.html

btw...the OP mentioned this post "post5017397"

How can i get to that post?

Can someone post a link to it?

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