Turning A Vacation Into A Profit Machine

Rock_Shock said:

Moral of the story: Atleast for me - Dont share website address on BHW..

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Would you attribute this hacking to BHW? Why?

There are plenty of URLS advertised here all day, never hacked. Why would his be?

bartosimpsonio said:

Would you attribute this hacking to BHW? Why?

There are plenty of URLS advertised here all day, never hacked. Why would his be?

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well you are correct that there are a lot of urls advertised here..i dunno.. perhaps being anonymous is helpful...it COULD potentially have been a person who saw his thread on BHW

Rock_Shock said:

well you are correct that there are a lot of urls advertised here..i dunno.. perhaps being anonymous is helpful...it COULD potentially have been a person who saw his thread on BHW

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Only he can know where the attack started. Maybe the attack wasn't even on his journey site!

Sherbert Hoover said:

Fun little update. Bad news and good news.

BAD NEWS

My web hosting account was compromised and hacked. All 30+ of my project sites 404'ed. Cue panic mode. It's alright though, my web host was able to revert back to all sites from two weeks ago.

Guess what I started two weeks ago? Yeah. So I get to start the site over from scratch. It's alright though, I'll do it better this time around. With a stronger database password.

GOOD NEWS

Instagram account is rocking 139 followers with zero content. Twitter account at 222. All followers are laser targeted. i.e. people who recently followed a similar account. Basically, each one of the followers I currently have have met all of the following criteria:

1) They recently followed an account based on traveling in Iceland
2) They are not bots (I have been hand following to make sure)
3) They are interested in following another account based on traveling in Iceland

I will continue to build the accounts up both before and during the project progression.

T-minus seven days til liftoff (of the trip, not the site).

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Really sorry to hear this happened mate, but you're a positive guy and will bounce back.

Hope you both really have a great time and I look forward to reading your blog etc.

Tamerlane said:

That's a great idea, I'm sure you could apply it to other destinations as well. Just keep going on vacation and soon enough you'll have a digital empire of "In 8 Days" sites making you $$$.
I find using my in-built voice recorder in my phone is a great way to quickly and discreetly take notes - for those facts or ideas that you know you'll lose or forget but definitely don't want to. Good luck!

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Thanks, man! Good thinking with the voice recorder. I've also got a small Evernote Moleskine (https://evernote.com/partner/moleskine/)

Rock_Shock said:

Moral of the story: Atleast for me - Dont share website address on BHW..

Also, do you use a managed VPS.. I am planning on getting one..

I usually always get DMCA ignored hosting and i think i am gonna be using a managed VPS for this site. It costs a bit more but having to deal with false DMCAs and other shit is probably gonna be taken care of by them..

Mind sharing what was hacked and what steps are you taking to prevent it in the future so that others following this, like me, can do that from the get go ?

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bartosimpsonio said:

Only he can know where the attack started. Maybe the attack wasn't even on his journey site!

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@bartosimpsonio is correct. It didn't come from BHW or from my Iceland site. It came through my main host URL and I've been troubleshooting with my web host ever since.

MisterF said:

Really sorry to hear this happened mate, but you're a positive guy and will bounce back.

Hope you both really have a great time and I look forward to reading your blog etc.

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Thanks, @MisterF! Should be a fun time.

UPDATE

Still having issues with the website. It gets an "error establishing database connection" message upon load off and on. In contact with my web host about it. I was able to get the site re-created though, and paid someone here on BHW to re-create and re-link all 80+ pages. Worth every penny. So I'm back to where I was last week as far as the site being ready and waiting for content/images, except now with the database connection issue.

I put the pressure on my web host, though. Hopefully a resolution will come.

Instagram account to 313 targeted followers from 139 on Friday. Twitter account to 607 from 222.

All packed up. Leaving for the airport tomorrow morning.

excellent idea good luck!

Safe flight mate and have a great time.

Have a good flight and hope you get all your issues resolved. Sounds like your social presence is growing nicely!

What are you using to grow your IG ? I mean like MP or FL ?

Inception_AC said:

excellent idea good luck!

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MisterF said:

Safe flight mate and have a great time.

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WebDuke said:

Have a good flight and hope you get all your issues resolved. Sounds like your social presence is growing nicely!

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Thanks, everyone!

Rock_Shock said:

What are you using to grow your IG ? I mean like MP or FL ?

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My eyes and hands.

I'm going to accounts that have recently followed related Iceland travel accounts, and checking to see if they are bots or spam accounts. I'm following the ones that are legit.

The way I see it, I'd rather have one follower that will engage, interact, and click through than 100 who will not.

EDIT: The site is back up. Let's roll.

What wordpress did you use?

Looks really interesting! Best of luck bud !

inkshock said:

What wordpress did you use?

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I'm not sure what you are asking. The most recent version of Wordpress, I guess.

AquaticGamer said:

Looks really interesting! Best of luck bud !

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Thank you!

ANOTHER UPDATE

As stated above, the site is back up and churning. I added the Analytics code into my plugin to do some tracking.

For the first few bursts of traffic, I plan on utilizing some things on a four week spread. Week one I will post the site to the r/visitingiceland subreddit. Week two it moves to the r/iceland subreddit in general. Week three is the Bodybuilding forum, where I have a nice aged account with very high reputation (I've used this site in the past for massive traffic bursts). Week four is the r/travel subreddit.

This will be a rollout plan for the first four weeks after site development and image posting is complete. I am going to give myself 30 days after we return (so June 7th) to have everything at 100% operating efficiency, but plan on leaving the site under construction as is, and resubmit a sitemap to Google once I've got it all set.

I will also be utilizing manual blog comment posting for some traffic/links as well. Everything about this site is going to be whitehat, by-the-books, raw manual labor.

Looks really interesting, have a good time bro ..

Very interesting concept. How would you go about bringing traffic to your page?

Edit: Just read about your plans with Reddit. I'm going to be using Reddit to launch a project of mine very soon. Any tips before doing so? I don't want this to blow up in my face. And - should I buy upvotes to get some momentum on the post? I have an established account to use already.

And I'm back.

The trip was incredible. I got 1000+ great pictures from 3000+ taken. We ended up adding well over a dozen new "attractions" to our itinerary and only missed a couple of smaller things.

I'll make a thread in the Lounge with some of the best pictures later on, but for now wanted to update.

This week will be getting all the images I want to use organized, compressed, renamed, and watermarked. I don't want a ton of pictures on the site. Maybe one for each of the smaller things, hotels, and restaurants, three for each of the larger things we did.

Stay tuned!

Another update.

My classic perfectionism is taking hold.

I grabbed all the images I wanted and made them square so I could upload to Instagram. Uploaded a bunch to the Wordpress site, but after a while realized that by cutting out 1/3 of the image the viewers were missing out on a lot. So I've scrapped that and am working on getting the images in 4:3 format for better viewing. I've got some horizontal and vertical panoramas as well that I'm grabbing.

Image gathering, compressing, and renaming should be done by next Monday.

I ran a test on one page for formatting. It was one of the not-boring-but-not-super-intensive attractions we went to. The article ended up being 900 words with bulleted lists, headings, images, Google Maps, all that fun stuff.

http://icelandin8days.com/Solheimasandur-Plane-Wreck/

You can see the square image issue and how with almost every image something is cut off. I'm not about that life.

Sections that will be relevant for medium-to-larger-scale attractions are: History, Experience/Images, Pros and Cons, Tips and Pointers, Additional Links and Information, Google Maps Location.

By the end of tomorrow I will have the home page reorganized to match what our actual itinerary ended up being versus what we wanted it to be. Then once the images are up the goals are:

• Writing, writing, writing
• Stabilization and uploading of the video snippets I took
• Continued social media growth

I started an account on Reddit and have been contributing good stuff to the VisitingIceland subreddit in the meantime as well. Gotta build rapport.

To be continued.

Sherbert Hoover said:

Another update.

My classic perfectionism is taking hold.

I grabbed all the images I wanted and made them square so I could upload to Instagram. Uploaded a bunch to the Wordpress site, but after a while realized that by cutting out 1/3 of the image the viewers were missing out on a lot. So I've scrapped that and am working on getting the images in 4:3 format for better viewing. I've got some horizontal and vertical panoramas as well that I'm grabbing.

Image gathering, compressing, and renaming should be done by next Monday.

I ran a test on one page for formatting. It was one of the not-boring-but-not-super-intensive attractions we went to. The article ended up being 900 words with bulleted lists, headings, images, Google Maps, all that fun stuff.

http://icelandin8days.com/Solheimasandur-Plane-Wreck/

You can see the square image issue and how with almost every image something is cut off. I'm not about that life.

Sections that will be relevant for medium-to-larger-scale attractions are: History, Experience/Images, Pros and Cons, Tips and Pointers, Additional Links and Information, Google Maps Location.

By the end of tomorrow I will have the home page reorganized to match what our actual itinerary ended up being versus what we wanted it to be. Then once the images are up the goals are:

• Writing, writing, writing
• Stabilization and uploading of the video snippets I took
• Continued social media growth

I started an account on Reddit and have been contributing good stuff to the VisitingIceland subreddit in the meantime as well. Gotta build rapport.

To be continued.

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Glad you're still on this - any updates? I've wanted to travel to Iceland with my GF for a while - definitely following your progress on this

Sherbert Hoover said:

Flights: $1,871.32, Car Rental: $1,230.58, Hotels: $990.63, Attractions: $188.19, Fees: $72.25

After the remaining attractions, hotel payments, food, and miscellaneous charges, I anticipate the trip will end up costing around $6,000 to $7,000.

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So, you are gonna spend $6,000 to see $188 worth of attractions....I dont know about that trip. I am sure you can find better destination.

Johnny_Tsunami said:

Glad you're still on this - any updates? I've wanted to travel to Iceland with my GF for a while - definitely following your progress on this

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Appreciate the bump!

I have cherry-picked, gathered, and edited/resized all the images I want to have on the site. It's about 400 of them. I need to rename the images and upload them to the website. Then get some writing done hardcore. I underestimated how long I would need to get this site up and running, and other projects/life events have caused delays in the delivery of a final product.

But I have not given up on this website, and don't plan to. The business tax deduction benefits alone will make it worth the while.

Highly recommend a trip to Iceland.

SkyrocketSEO said:

So, you are gonna spend $6,000 to see $188 worth of attractions....I dont know about that trip. I am sure you can find better destination.

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Not quite. $188 was the cost for attractions we actually had to pay for. The majority of the things we saw were free as they were natural.

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/iceland-is-incredible-pic-heavy-thread.937914/

This thread goes over the majority of the larger scale things we saw. Thanks for stopping by the thread!