[DAILY JOURNAL] - Going Full-Time

[exsuit]

Wickedfire,

I hope that posting in the newbie section will save me from some of the flaming that seems so popular on this forum.

Anyways, long story short, I have always been passionate about starting my own business, and always been offensively interested in the online marketing space. Up until last week I have been a "slave" to the corporate world. I have had quite good success, and my career was all laid out in front of me right to the top. The problem was that with the hours I had time for nothing else in my life, and the job didn't make me happy. Getting harder and harder to put that kind of effort out when I'm not getting any utility (happiness), and making significant money for the "owners".

I am not new to the marketing space - I'm one of those guys that's been a "reader" and not a "doer" for the better part of the last 5 years. Today I start "doing".

This journal is most likely going to be boring - no $30K loans, no amazing product launch after 10 pages of generating interest, and I suspect revenues will not start being generated for a month or two. Although I feel I know alot, I'm sure I'll be taking it to a whole new level when I starting "doing" and not just reading theory, making mistakes and (hopefully) finding successes. Of course along the way, any input you guys might have would be greatly appreciated!

The Business Plan
Extra emphasis on business. Over the years as I have read and watch, it amazes me how many people find success in this industry, but have no idea that they are running a business. It almost always results in the same ending - eventual failure. I am here to build a business. One of my favourite books that really spelled this out for me was the "e-myth" (E for entrepreneurial). If you havn't read it, and you want to start a business (in any industry), I highly suggest reading it. The backend turns into a bit of a sales pitch for his company, but the content in the book is important for helping develop the mindset of building a business.

My plan (high high level), is to start offering SEO services (I understand SEO, I have the tools, and I understand the importance of customer service). This is not what my end-game business is to be, its purpose is to start generating immediate cash flows to finance my longer term goals. Perhaps once I have refined the process, and if I have a large enough client base, this can evolve into its own business by hiring someone to perform the work in my place, and I remain involved to manage the clients.

With my short term cash flows produced by SEO services, I will start to develop my own web properties. I want to master the art of ranking for profitable search terms and monetizing them. Once I have mastered the process of identifying and ranking for terms, I want to diversify and monetize primarily through 4 different methods (adsense, affiliate offers, generating mailing lists, and flipping sites).

I did "start" April 1, 2011 but wickedfire was down for a couple, and they were quite unproductive, as I still had some meetings to attend at my old job.

What I will be sharing in my journal is my daily activities, my questions/doubts, and how much revenue my work had generated that day. Since I am here full-time now, and I have no other sources of revenue, I will keep this updated and not let the journal die like some others I have read on here that looked promising.

cheers,

 

[exsuit]

Yesterday was a half-day.

There are so many processes to learn (niche finding, site building, link building, monetization), I'm realizing the startup is going to take a while. I got wordpress Multi-site setup, and will be using subdomains to practice my niche finding + ranking abilities. Once I am confident with my strategies, will start buying domains for every niche I try and rank for.

I started my niche research in the morning, and realized that's one area I have no real knowledge. I like systems (see first post and reference to e-myth), so I tried to make this a process that I can analyze/improve/replicate down the road.

I wanted to find 10 niches for affiliate products (starting with CBank) and 10 niches for adsense sites. My first goal is to identify niche, rank it, then monetize it. So will just be getting the sites up quickly and working on the conversions once I start seeing traffic.

As for finding niches, I realized I have no real experience in this area (in the past when this was just a hobby, I would just chose things that looked like top converting offers - green tea, car insurance, etc.). Needless to say, I need a better system. I know there are softwares that "do all that", but I want to develop a system manually first so I actually understand how it works. My quick and dirty (and free!) system was as follows:

1. Log into the CB Marketplace and just start scrolling through CB offers (no sorting for gravity/popularity, etc.). I would ignore anything that was clearly a competitive market (forex, cheap flights, ripped abs, etc.) and once I "thought" I had found an offer that I could compete in (organically), I would move it to step 2.

2. I would take the shortest, broadest search term that someone who would be searching for the product I had found in step 1 and would enter that key phrase into SEOBook Keyword tool. I wanted to make sure that there was actually organic traffic for that term (for example, I found a guide on "moving to the philipines", however there seemed to be no traffic for that term, so I dumped it). If, there was decent search volume (above 50/day) I would then move to step 3 to gauge competition.

3. TO guage the competition I found a toolbar by SEMRush (one for google, one for firefox). It displays a bunch of information about search results in goolge (which I could export to CSV). I was most interested in "title" (to see if that site was actually trying to rank for that term), then average links the top 10 results had (10's, 100's or thousands) and then average site ages. For some sites, all the metrics I was looking at were high for each of the top 10 results (all had thousands or 10's of thousands of backlinks, all had "intitle", all were more than 3 years old), in which case I would dump it, and go back to step 2 to see if there was another search term that SEOBook Keyword tool had recommended that had decent traffic (again above 50/day) and come back to step 3. If all the terms looked too compeitive, I went back to step 1.

What I ended with were 10 niches that varied in all the above metrics and have recorded the information in a spreadsheets (niche, keyword, expected traffic, allintitile*, backlinks*,age*) so that I can track my eventual progress to see what the different levels of compeition mean for me in terms of work+time to rank.

For the adsense niches, I actually have them half setup previously (they bing in 50 cents-$1.00/month for the last couple months). I selected the niches without using any real defined method. I chose high volume, high competitive terms, in the hopes I can get long tail traffic with high CPC values. Not nearly as thought out as my above site, but I want to see that the couple hours I spent doing niche research will actaully help me, rather than taking the shotgun approach I did with the adsense sites.

Income
As I said, I want to show how the progress of my work converts to $$'s. Obviously the work I did above has no generated any revenue yet, but one of those half-setup adsense sites I have had for a couple months had its best (sad) day ever.

April 5 - $3.31
April 6 - $0.82

I have actually had some adsense revenue every day for the month of April from two of these adsense sites, and I have no idea why they have started ranking. I had no tracking installed, so I am setting piwik today to start getting some better information to help focus my link building campaign that will start in the coming days after I have the sites setup.

Not much revenue, but its gotta start somewhere!

 

[emperoryogi]

Nice! I'll keep checking back. That's gusty of you to quit the day job without already having IM stuff generating income, but good for you.

 

[exsuit]

damn, seems that my post didn't go through, so will summarize again...

April 7
- started building out my niche sites today (from the niches I identfied yesterday)
- spent the entire day working on 1 site, getting the content, some images/youtube videos, modifying theme and links to the CB products. I was hoping to get the sites up faster, realized that I probably don't need to waste time on costmetics/modifying themes and monetization. Going forward I'm going to try and setup sites faster, only worrying about content. I can work on cosmetics and monetization when I start to see traffic.

April 7 Income
$0.00 (no more adsense)

April 8
- BIG day today in site creation mode, got another 3.5 half sites setup, just working on the content, not worrying about theme or ad placements.

April 8 Income
$0.00


April 9
- half day today...its the weekend and wanted to spend some time with the lady. Have about almost 8 sites done now.

April 9 Income
adsense $0.25


I'm typing this Sunday (10th).....hooked on amazing Masters Sunday, so not likely to get any more sites done today. Hopefully get the rest of the sites up this week so I can begin ranking them.

 

[ozblackjack]

Nice start - hope that you do keep this journal going. You have taken a gutsy step to take it on full-time.
Really like the methodical approach that you've taken to your niche selection.
Look forward to reading more of your updates.

 

[Brad789]

Can Use Your Comment

exsuit - Brad here ! Very inspirational post. I suspect there are a lot of closet "full time wanabees" just like me reading your comments and hoping for the best for you and ourselves.

Treating it like a business is consistent with all the training and materials I have read. I am working on two programs that I believe are very effective introduction to how the internet works and what is needed to convert work into a business.

I am working the Chris Farrell Membership. It is the number 1 program on IMReportCard dot com. There is a legion of members who feel exactly the way I do. Their posts and comments are illuminating. Chris makes it clear this is not a get rich quick program. He takes every concept and explains it clearly. Most important to me - his work is reproducable - a bellweather of effective training.

I am also working on Yaro Staraks Blog Mastermind program. He shares the same philosphy Chris has. They say almost in unison "over deliver quality content" I have watched these guys for sometime and confirmed that they live up to their mantra.

Chris gives away an ebook Build Your Website by 3:45 Today. It is exceptional. Site members have access to tons of free materials.

Yaro Starack teamed up with Guidan Shalwig and have a fantastic series of videos and ebooks -- ALL FREE -- that are exeptionally clear.

Both programs say it clearly - no get rich quick here! Second they both say stick with it long enough and I will see results.

Good enough for me.

If you have time I would appreciate you clicking thru to my blog and checking it out. I would be very interested in your critique. If you are going to work on SEO - that may be a place to start.

I really appreciate your post - just let me know when I can return the favor - I will gladly do whatever I can to help.

Cheers!

 

[lemons884]

This journal should be interesting.

 

[exsuit]

Nice start - hope that you do keep this journal going. You have taken a gutsy step to take it on full-time.
Really like the methodical approach that you've taken to your niche selection.
Look forward to reading more of your updates.

Yes gusty, but anything worth doing probably is! Will update in a couple weeks to see if my niche selection approach yeilds any better results than just choosing "random niches" with my head.

exsuit - Brad here ! Very inspirational post. I suspect there are a lot of closet "full time wanabees" just like me reading your comments and hoping for the best for you and ourselves.

Treating it like a business is consistent with all the training and materials I have read. I am working on two programs that I believe are very effective introduction to how the internet works and what is needed to convert work into a business.

I am working the Chris Farrell Membership. It is the number 1 program on IMReportCard dot com. There is a legion of members who feel exactly the way I do. Their posts and comments are illuminating. Chris makes it clear this is not a get rich quick program. He takes every concept and explains it clearly. Most important to me - his work is reproducable - a bellweather of effective training.

I am also working on Yaro Staraks Blog Mastermind program. He shares the same philosphy Chris has. They say almost in unison "over deliver quality content" I have watched these guys for sometime and confirmed that they live up to their mantra.

Chris gives away an ebook Build Your Website by 3:45 Today. It is exceptional. Site members have access to tons of free materials.

Yaro Starack teamed up with Guidan Shalwig and have a fantastic series of videos and ebooks -- ALL FREE -- that are exeptionally clear.

Both programs say it clearly - no get rich quick here! Second they both say stick with it long enough and I will see results.

Good enough for me.

If you have time I would appreciate you clicking thru to my blog and checking it out. I would be very interested in your critique. If you are going to work on SEO - that may be a place to start.

I really appreciate your post - just let me know when I can return the favor - I will gladly do whatever I can to help.

Cheers!

Thanks for the two resources. At this point, I feel I have the KNOWLEDGE, now that I have left my job I have the TIME. Of course I don't know everything, and I am going to make mistakes along the way. I am staying away from any courses or even softwares as every expense needs to pay for itself quickly while I am in startup mode!

This journal should be interesting.

Thanks, hope you enjoy it!

 

[tomyates]

Wow this is really interesting im hooked , please keep posting your progress here , ive recently just quit my job to go full time self emp. So its really inspiring to read of others doing the same. Thanks Tom

 

[exsuit]

catching up on this journal again...

April 10
So I left off on Master's Sunday (the BEST Master's I have seen in years!). Given the golf, I didn't get much work done. I DID however, finally post one of my link building services (on another forum) to see if any interest was generated. I responded to a couple of PM's and went off to bed.

April 10 Income Summary

$0.00

April 11
Turned on the computer this morning with two great emails to start my day!

"You've got funds!"​

Two of the potential clients that I had been dealing with on Sunday decided to test out my service! Spent a couple hours and got their work done a reports sent. Seems all are happy, I just hope they leave a review in the sales thread to generate more interest.

The money was definately not worth the time I put in (between all the pre-sales questions, actual work and post sales support), but it is worth it when I consider the follwing:

• generates immediate cash flow (I have to pay rent at the end of the month)
• Gives me a contact list of buyers, that I can hit additional SEO service
• customer acquisition has a costs (the next time, pre and post sales support will be minimal, increasing my ROI)
• and finally, I can watch how effective my link building is for moving clients SE positions (so I can use the most effective link building on my own niche sites!)

Anyways, I answered some other questions of potential customers and hopefully a few more sales will come through.

Apart from workin on SEO projects, I continued working on my niche sites. I am starting to get the hang of putting the sites up quick and not worrying about cosmetics or details. I got another 5 sites done, bringing me to a total of 13 sites. Another couple days and I should have all 20 done and can begin promoting them!

April 11 - Income

Adsense $0.11
SEO Service $30.00
Total $30.11

Not much to brag about, but record day! :music06:

 

[exsuit]

April 12, 2011

Picked up another couple SEO clients! I have been handling so much pre-sales support, I need a system to keep track of it all! As I am bootstrapping still, I figured excel would be my only option. I did quick look around them web and noted that Zoho CRM has a free "entrepreneur" licence. Going to be checking that out as soon as I get some time. Had to finish work for the new customers and also finished putting together 3 more of my niche sites. Total of 16 sites up now(of course no traffic, as they are not even indexed yet).


April 12, 2011

Adsense $0.00
SEO Service $82.00
Total $82.00

New record day! :music06::music06::music06:

 

[Chianti]

> generates immediate cash flow (I have to pay rent at the end of the month)

I thought you'd have at least saved enough from your corporate position to pay your mortgage/rent for 6 months to a year, and have a couple of grand set by for investment.

If you have nothing saved, how reckless do you think you're being in your own estimation? If your attempts fail, do you have yourself covered somehow, considering that these days it can take six months or more to find a decent job again?

Not knocking you. Just saying, many people (most?) wouldn't consider going full time until they had matched their day-job income from doing IM in their spare time, and had already saved something approaching a year's salary.

 

[exsuit]

> generates immediate cash flow (I have to pay rent at the end of the month)

I thought you'd have at least saved enough from your corporate position to pay your mortgage/rent for 6 months to a year, and have a couple of grand set by for investment.

If you have nothing saved, how reckless do you think you're being in your own estimation? If your attempts fail, do you have yourself covered somehow, considering that these days it can take six months or more to find a decent job again?

Not knocking you. Just saying, many people (most?) wouldn't consider going full time until they had matched their day-job income from doing IM in their spare time, and had already saved something approaching a year's salary.

Absolutely I have a security blanket. But leaning on that is not the right mindset. It's a problem new start-ups face often. They are given a large chunk of capital, usually through loan (in this case capital = my savings), and think they have tonnes of money to spend to "make their business". My business is starting with zero capital (besides the few domains, software programs and hosting account I previously purchased).

I could have chosen to just focus on building sites to monetize, but its not very realistic that I could be bringing in any sizable revenues earlier than 3-6 months (with organic traffic). I could have spent 6 months of my savings (capital), worked my ass off, and found at the end of 6 months my approach was wrong and I don't have ANY sites generating revenues. Then what would I do? Put the suit back on and head back to corporate life.

My approach/business model is to try and generate cash flow right from the beginning (by offering SEO services) to fund the rest of my business startup without dipping into my savings. Ideally I can generate enough from SEO contracts that I can continue living, keep buying additional domains and in 3-6 months time not be forced into any situation as I have not spent any of my capital.

It might take me longer to develop sites, get them ranking, but my timeline for success if I am generating some revenues right away (vs. waiting and spending my savings) turns into years, rather than months.

I completely agree with you, I would not suggest anyone take the decision to go full-time lightly.

- I have no kids, no wife (ie. I can cut back alot of expenses with out impacting family). No one is going to complain if its tuna 4 nights in a row!

- I have tracked my committed and discretionary spending in great detail for the past 12 months to understand how much a month it costs me to live. (Than I looked at what I could take away from discretionary)

- I have planned for the worse (ie. what happens if I don't make ANY money for 6 months, 12 months, 2 years?!) and made contingency plans

- My worse case scenario, I have a CV that allows me to get a well paying job
in 24 hours

These are just some highlight I can remember when I did up my detailed case to help me decide if that was the proper move for me to make(remember, I was leaving a secure job with secure future at the prospect of making.....pennies a day!).

Have to pay the rent = my mindset​

 

[csnreyes]

^^this
Write a book on how to actually begin a business if you have a 9-5, you'll make monies!

You got it down pat.

 

[exsuit]

April 13, 2011

A bit of a lost day for me today. Picked up a nasty virus that locked my internet connection out. I disabled my virus scanner AVG some time ago, because it just made everything run so slow. FInally got around the bugger and picked up Avast, seems to be the most common recommendation and runs light.

Didn't get any SEO sales today, but probably for the better as I didn't have computer/time to handle them (and I didn't want to be one of those service providers with lame excuse "my computer had a virus!")

Spent some time putting together another niche site up, have17 ready to go now! 3 more and I can begin promoting them.

April 13, 2011 Income Summary
Adsense $0.04


Questions
For people with experience in low competition niches, how long do you usually find it takes to get a site to the first page of google? I know it can vary, but want a general idea if it's days/weeks/months I should be expecting?¡

 

[imkazu]

I used to have AVG until it started to give me bsod ... avira is a good alternative, lighter
tip, also back your stuff up with dropbox

 

[graeme61]

I've also just gone full time at this (although, unfortunately, unplanned) I'm trying to maintain the same mindset, ie work as if I had no cash to fall back on. This thread shows me what a slacker I am! Learning loads, though. What exactly are the SEO services you're being paid for? Just link building?

 

[exsuit]

I've also just gone full time at this (although, unfortunately, unplanned) I'm trying to maintain the same mindset, ie work as if I had no cash to fall back on. This thread shows me what a slacker I am! Learning loads, though. What exactly are the SEO services you're being paid for? Just link building?

Sorry to hear it wasn't your choice. If you want to start a business, you have to get serious. If you are just looking for an easy money making scheme, you won't find it.

For ways to make money, look through all the webmaster forums BST sections and see what others are offering. Take a popular service and make it better, add your own spin, actually provide good customer service! Setup blogs, code scripts, do design, build backlinks, write content. If all you have is time, and no way of making money, you can charge less to get customers in the door to prove your worth (that's what I am doing right now). After a while, once you get demand for your service to a point where you don't have any time, you can start charging a premium for your time.

Right now, I am just doing simple cheap back linking to get some customer reviews and learn to manage the process.

 

[exsuit]

April 14, 2011
-Got a couple reviews posted in my sales thread backlinks from my first customers. Got another client today, still small but hopefully it grows into something larger

-Spent almost two hours watching a webinar by John Chow, Tyler Cruz and Zac Johnson about buying/selling on flippa. Definately some potential to make money there once I get some cash generation from the other parts of by business

- finally finalized my business plan (on paper). I have had a very clear idea of where I want to go, and how I am going to get there in my head. Scattered through tonnes of excel files and word documents are my budgets, ideas, risk analysis, etc. I finally pulled it all together into one master document polished as if I had to present it to someone. This action has given me even more clarity in where I am going now and the actions I need to execute to get there! Definately recommended!

-Tomorrow I want to finish my niche sites up!

April 14, 2011 Income Summary
Adsense $0.00
SEO Service $30.00

 

[jr_sci]

^^this
Write a book on how to actually begin a business if you have a 9-5, you'll make monies!

You got it down pat.

I seriously think it will be a brilliant idea... Write your own success story. Create a 30-40 page Ebook and then start selling it. You can use adwords etc.. to promote your ebook. But anyways, great to hear your story.. I have a similar blog. If you get time, check it out. http://www.affiliateguru.org Will come back again to check this thread.