Accomplish 1k$/month until 2019

Man seems you are putting more effort into telling us about what you are going to do. Or you just can type really really fast. Interesting read though. Good luck. I applaud your efforts.

As I said on my post above, marketing differs from theory to practice a lot, you can't learn everything just by waiting and analyze, your analysis will miss a lot of things, also I'm impatient, I researched of course but it triggers my ocd waiting so much. I need action. I'm not expecting this to go smoothly without a lot of refinements in the process.

UPDATE

I spent most of the time refining my plans and gathering knowledge, I also sent a bunch of emails and tried to approach a lot of gaming vendors. Sadly no luck.

There were serious complications with both of my plans.

The agent plan just can't work like that, everything about it is wrong. I will change it from a commission based business to a service sell business, there are many problems with the commission model like:

1. I need to mention myself to the client... Most clients prefer to talk directly to the freelancer, It's more practical this way but I can't do that with a commission business because I have no control over the freelancer, he can take the money and say nothing. Lastly, sending emails again and again to the same blogs using the same domain and name, will flag me as spammer.

2. I need to find both writers and clients, again very impractical

3. Most writers don't cooperate nearly as much and they are kinda indifferent since the work is for free, If they instead paid a gig, they would be more likely to do their best to succeed.

4. I rely on someone else to show responsibility, this is very risky and again not neccesary. I hate relying on others.

I will now sell email/contact form marketing services as a gig, this will grant me a lot of flexibility and also increase my target audience, I will not need to mention myself when I represent someone else, I will not need to find both clients and writers, writers will now be my clients, I won't need to rely on them since I will already have my money and finally, they will cooperate much better with me since their money will be at stake, so just by changing this business, I solve everything without changing its general goal.

I just thought that offering this service as a commission will make it easier to do something, in practice it creates tons of problems. I also realized that I need to appear more professional and in order to do so I need a site but since I can't create one atm, I will use fiverr instead, It's a decent replacement and will handle all the payment issues. So now this business is basically a selling email marketing business, that's it. I plan to add more forms of marketing in the distant future but right now, I want to focus in emails and contacts.

Overall, commision based agencies cannot work in my situation, you need to be already successful and have lots of referrals and a good site. It's not unlikely to try it again in the future but I will need a much better setup and influence in order to do so.

As for my gaming account plan, I just stopped it, It's impossible to overcome the problems. Accounts are way too scammy business and also there are no vendors out there who cooperate or their offers have some arbitrage value, lastly the platforms have specific restrictions that make it impossible to resell without actually buying first the account you want to resell. This business can only work if you have a lot of budget and you can buy the accounts you want to resell, otherwise the complications ruin it.

I thought at first to switch the business from reselling accounts to reselling services like gold, powerleveling, boosting etc since this is completely safe for the buyer and far more manageable, also there are no restrictions for this so it's like a perfect business but I haven't found any vendor who is willing to cooperate, I literally run out of vendors. Most of the established vendors have nothing to gain by cooperating and the non-established ones are unreliable. I haven't completely give up on this, I'm thinking to approach weak vendors since they will find my offering more valuable, I'm not very optimistic though, despite that I would really like such a business.


My experience with doing business so far is that I start to hate reselling without actually buying first, It's so unreliable business, there are always serious complications with it that make it impossible to start. I hate to beg others to lend me their weapons, I hate not having absolute control, I want to create my own internet weapon that I will be able to sell whenever I want and cash on it, this is my ultimate goal, I always wanted that and hated for having nothing of my own. I hope that selling marketing services will be the weapon that I'm looking for because I have nothing else besides this, I have games too but I can't call them *weapon*, you can create a business around them but they don't fit the type of business that I'm looking for. Generally, when I sell something of my own, I can at least "start", I sold things before. The reselling without buying business have kept me stucked. None ever cooperates and when they do, there are other impossible to overcome complications that ruin everything.

My goal for next week is to get scrapebox, this tool is a staple for the business I'm trying to run (or for every business tbh) I also want to get sendy, a staple email software. I need to finish the setup for the agent plan, I have a lot to do and learn. I also plan to find vendors for the gaming service plan. Everything is volatile atm, none of my businesses have stabilized yet, the first period will be the hardest since all the complications I didn't manage to find during my analysis have started to show up, if my businesses survive through them then there is a future.


I will update next tuesday again.

i dont know you and im just getting started in this forum and up to speed on protocol. Your mindset is questionable. you keep saying negative slanted things about yourself and success. Why? Something inside me thinks you would do well to focus on mindset first (The Way of the Superior Man, ex would be a good start or Be The Man).

If you head doesn't get past your stories, you have no chance in business success. Start there.

You are wrong, I work intensely on my gaming plan for about 2 months now and I have made significant progress. The accounts I started before 2 months will profit me 200-250e each (they are up to this level now), I'm just waiting for something to happen until I sell them and this will happen very very soon(next week). I just don't know what to update, my business doesn't generate views/likes or whatever and I don't make sells quick either, so what do you expect me to update? my gaming progress? people arent familiar with it here. I planned to make a big update when I made my sells, if you can give me any ideas about how I can update more often then feel free to do so, Generally not every business can update once per week.

I made tons of mistakes and miscalculations on this plan which forced me to work so much more, I literally work 19 hours everyday for 60 days (the other 5 I sleep), If I didn't fail that much at the start then my plan would already be completed and I would have profit even more but that's the price to pay when you don't know a business inside out, I had to go through this but the next time I'm trying this it will be different. In the end I'm expecting to hit the goal I set since my last post (300-400$ for each month) despite my mistakes which will grant me the starting capital I desired in order to advance into better investments.


I said many things on this thread because when I started, I just didn't know what to do and made many experiments, so people are confused here, I will update my opening thread at some point but I cba to do that now.

My advice for everyone is this:

Find a way to turn the thing you are doing the most in your life and have the most knowledge about into a business, that's the only thing that can make you money in the end. That "thing" can of course change depending on your money too(some things are expensive) but the tip still stands. If you don't do something with passion or lack the skills to execute it and lack the passion to learn those skills then don't bother, you will fail 100%. I believe it's good idea to search in your hobbies for a viable business model. Mixing your best niche with your best skill = money. Also when you are doing business into something you tend to do a lot then you know how people talk and behave, that's VERY important in order to sell something. Consumer language and behavior matters a ton. Freelancers are completely different than gamers.


I personally stopped reading guides, they are good to give you inspiration but nothing more, just evaluate your skills/passions and do something with them, that's the secret. I'm doing just that and I think my estimated gains are similar to someone who works In mcdonalds (for my country standars), ofc I gathered knowledge about doing business so my future gains will be much more than this. Only time will tell... this journey is huge but I'm really enjoying it, it's challenging, tough, risky and very meaningful. I'm not giving up until it's december 31 2019 or I die. Not because I'm too tough to give up but instead because I'm having a lot of fun doing this.

I will make a more in-depth post for my business at some point

I noticed something when reading this thread - so looked closer.

You have used the word 'but' at least 100 times so far in this thread!

Go to the first page - use 'find' and 'highlight all' to see those 'buts' - and you'll see you are dismissing your own ideas.

"This can work...but...."
"XXX is good, but...."

When you follow and idea with 'but' you are saying "what I just said isn't true". It's an easy habit to get into - but a bad habit to have.

When you go from one thing to the next to the next....you are shutting yourself down. The 'money' is in doing one thing well - not in giving everything a quick try.

I wasn't saying 'don't do it' or 'don't post' - just pointing out you don't seem to be gaining traction and that might be one reason why.

If you don't have a reliable team ready (friends,network etc) to assist you in a service then you need to go through 2 stages in order to scale it, first is gather lots of clients alone and second recruit members when you can afford giving them a monthly paycheck, maybe independent contractors too but the first one is easier. Stage 1 is neccesary in order to proceed to stage 2, you can't achieve stage 1 if the service you offer is very time consuming and not very profitable aka it has a bad $/time ratio.

Services that involve lots of labour can't do that and sadly gaming services are exactly that. They cannot be scaled unless you already have a reliable team ready to assist you. It can still make me some money similar to a low virtual assistant, something like 300-400$+ per month should be possible but no more than this unless you have some incredible skills and connections like being a top pro or something like that, even then you wont make much.

Literally the only thing I can do with my skills at a scalable level is reselling accounts instead of building them myself because building them isn't scalable at all and it caps at around 250-300$ per month. I'm researching more in-depth what I can do to protect myself because reselling instead of building accounts is much much riskier, the scam factor is very high on this business, It's by no means a bad business but terrible things can happen security wise. No business comes without risks or sacrifices anyway, you have to sacrifice something to make money, it's better if what holds you back is just fear instead of something that may require tons of work and tedious processes. Fear is something I can handle.


I'm still researching other plans, my favorite business model is ecommerce stock&ship(not dropship.. I hate that), I wanted to import from china or buy cheap from my country and sell on amazon but I can't do that due to very serious limitations in my country regarding such businesses.
Other plans don't attract me nearly as much, that's why I'm taking more seriously the gaming plan now and think about switching to reselling. It's an ecommerce plan anyway so not something I don't like.

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Jeez, my third account has not been sold yet even though I took several steps to improve my profile and I reduced the price significantly, I probably failed somewhere. Maybe I was lucky and sold so early the other two, I want to finish with this plan already so I can proceed to the next. I have half month left to receive all my money. The only thing I can do until then is brainstorming and researching.

It might be good that paypal delays my money because I used all this time to research further everything, I have now a much better picture about everything. My business intuition has improved a lot. The reselling account plan requires serious legal support because it involves contracts and other stuff that can't be done without a lawyer I think, it also requires good inquisitor skills, seriously it's more of a *police* job than a ecommerce one. It's easy to market an account and sell assuming you have all the warranties in place but until you reach that point you need to investigate everything and take serious steps to prevent something terrible from happening. I'm not sure if I want to do that, living in constant fear is not good but I may not have a choice. It's kinda funny tbh.

I researched other stuff too, I think I have good chance to follow a traditional ecommerce plan, I think now that I can use my country as a product source, also I researched the software that is required and it's affordable. I want to learn more about product research and how to exploit amazon/ebay for profit. It would be VERY useful skill if I could do everything with ebay/amazon alone since any other form of marketing is completely out of my reach with my current budget.

Generally, the only cheap and powerfull forms of marketing is sharing content through social media or pay influencers to promote you, I can't create content, neither I can create great ad/landers, I'm really bad and I can't do much about it because besides the specific skills I'm not a native english speaker either so I have to pay a lot to do these and you can't do that if you don't know first that your offer is great and scalable, you can't go for a very cheap price either because quality matters a lot. I will eventually have to pay for copywriters/designers/developers/paidads but until that point, I need to be carried by forums or ecommerce platforms. This is the price for not having practical marketing skills. Since I can't attain that, I have to at least ensure that I'm as good as possible with the product I offer, this is something I can do.

Finally, I researched programming too. The gaming bot plan is impossible, it would take a lots of time and resources in order to reach the level of creating something like this. In order to get into this thing, I would have to start with something easier first like web developing. I'm not so motivated about this but it's something that I can do since there aren't any language, software expertise or creativity barriers, all it takes is logic and I'm good with logic, it's also possible to selflearn this while most of the other skills require tutoring preferably in your mother language. Motivation is what matters the most anyway and I'm more motivated about learning product research and the arbitrage ecommerce model instead of programming but you never know.

I will keep studying for next 15 days or so, I will get back to work when I receive the money and there will be no more researching, now I have the budget, knowledge and no more paypal delays so there aren't any excuses, I will commit this time until the end, no matter what I decide to do.

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Seo is strange in the way that the consumer pie is being shared, Ebay/Amazon require some very advanced form of seo in order to succeed, you can't just list your product and expect to sell anything when you compete with hundred other items, none will ever see you. It's not a straightforward form of marketing like the rest. It's not even about finding an arbitrage or a perfect product on these platforms, it's all about the title and the listing, if there are no visible competitors then you can sell much higher, you can do a lot of tricks with seo. There are no shortcuts with marketing, you have to be skilled at it because if you are not you will be punished severely. I need to solve that part. The first thing I will do about it will be to hire a copywriter.

I once thought that programmers are the most powerfull beings on the web because they can create the most awesome products but after my marketing/business journey, I realize that copywriters with seo&design skills are by far more powerful, they really have an unfair advantage. Visibility&manipulation >>>>>> product&value.

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I had an interesting discussion with someone today, his opinion about business was that he would never try to run any business unless he could offer a better product or better customer service/privileges (anything related to the customer) than his competitors AKA superior value. In my opinion having superior visibility/consumer manipulation can make up for the lack of value but he disagreed, he thought that it could work in the short term but it's not sustainable. I can't say for sure if that's correct or not because if it was correct there wouldn't be any small businesses running since those can't offer better value than the large ones, they steal from the pie due to consumer fault mostly AKA ignorance, lack of patience, engagement, attachment, unwillingness to change... not pure mathematical value. Emotion/psychology matters..

Despite that, I think that his words are not completely wrong, "real value" could possibly create a much stronger effect of "sustainability". I'm pretty sure that the million dollar companies are up to that level because they offer superior value unless of course they have copywriter gods or something like that. Sustainability is important because it could turn a bad and cheap marketing campaign into a profitable one in the long term, eg. a good campaign attracts 10 consumers while a bad campaign attracts 1 only, the bad campaign can still be saved if the 1 consumer is a permanent one due to the incredible value of the store, also it could bring referals to it. So a campaign that is -roi now could turn +roi in the distant future. Value can make your business huge but also it enables you to do successful marketing on a very small budget, that's my theory at least and it's a very important one for my current situation. Generally value can make up for the lack of marketing. Ideally you want to maximize both but you can't always do it.

Right now, I analyze my future business based on these two factors, Visibility/Manipulation and Value, I'm trying to find realistic and decent solutions for both but it's not easy. Those who sell gigs have it easier than those who sell physical products. Physical products are probably the most expensive and tough (marketing wise) but they make up for this due to the easy access to the product, you don't have to create it etc so you can focus more on other things. Personally I use a third factor too, that's commitment, being able to endure the hardships and get the job done. The plan I have been doing until now offered the best returns on these three factors according to what I was capable to do, it just wasn't scalable neither very profitable and that's another thing to account for.

The next plan will force me to pay, it will be the real thing, there are so many things you can pay for: influencers, fb ads, bing ads, google adwords, paying niche sites directly to promote you, blog for content marketing. There is surely one perfect choice based on math but I don't know it. What I know for sure is that I will be capable to pay for one thing and I can't do anything to avoid it.

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I sold the account that the previous buyer didn't want for 210e through skrill, that was incredibly lucky, I managed to refund the previous buyer and my money are available and safe now, on top of this I profited 20e because skrill doesn't charge fees. That was one of the best things that could happen, I was scared that the previous buyer would eventually ask for a chargeback. It also made me look very proffesional, my promise wasn't for nothing. It was very hard to resell this, I now think that I shouldn't expect fast sells, reducing the price is a bad move, I should just wait until I find someone to buy them at the full price.

I don't like paypal, I'm not sure who thought that so easy chargebacks are a smart idea, I don't like doing business like this, you either get paid or you don't. I wouldn't care so much if I sold low ticket items but when you sell services or expensive items then it becomes a serious pain. I rather avoid businesses who have to deal with stuff like that, I'm allergic to this kind of thing. It turns a legit business into gambling, yes that kind of risk creates a gambling situation and a very bad one for your psychology.

These days, I have joined a "pro" dropshipping group, I got an unexpected invite by someone, I have gathered incredible info regarding the shopify/oberlo/fbads model. It doesn't look so bad tbh but I can't justify doing this. The cost is fairly low though, I can certainly support such a plan for a considerable amount of time, but should I do it? I can't foresee any edge, when I begun my gaming account plan, I knew that I will be able to sell the accounts because I had in-depth knowledge about the product and the market, I can't say the same thing about the physical product market. Sure I can read courses/tutorials etc, this group provived me with many and also expensive but there is something more that you need to win....besides logic and courses, that is intuition. When you lack intuition then you are in the dark, however that's impossible to attain without risking first, I don't want this knowledge to come at a great cost tbh, so I dunno.


My own insticts and experience say to invest into a strong gig. Gigs are the safest thing there is and you never risk anything, you can easily promote yourself through free channels and create a free base on fiverr, also you can increase the value of a service easier and in the worst case scenario, that skill is useful in real life while a closed store didn't give you anything useful in real life. The bad thing about gigs is that they can't easily lead to lots of money, they can't scale to the level and profit that physical products do. Ecommerce is just a safer form of trading, trading is the fastest way to lots of $ but also the riskier, dropshipping is safer because you can sell before you buy but you still risk by paying paid ads, it's impossible to do business without them. This type of business requires a very deep analysis and even then it wouldn't be enough, I will have to make a tough decision.

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Second account delivery was confirmed by the buyer and I received the money before the 21 days mark, I didn't know I could do that, right now I have 350e and one account left at the 150e range. The most important thing, my money are safe. The second plan will begin at about 500e budget.

The only question I have to answer now is: does it worth dumping them on paid advertising or go for a safe and slow plan? everything else is free besides some very cheap courses. Finally I think that shopify is an excellent choice to build a site due to the partner offers. I will have to study a lot paid ads, there are infinite things you can do with it, that's where the real game is played.

I played a lot with shopify and oberlo, I normally don't like the dropship model due to the fact that it's very troublesome or even impossible to get a reliable supplier quick, however this combination makes it very easy to get a supplier, you only have to pick the products, everything else is taken care of, also it's very easy to build the site and it's completely free with the partner program. It's basically a game where you compete at paid ads and you have to make optimal choices. Well I'd rather compete at paid ads rather than cards, at least you don't have to spend 8 hours in front of the pc pushing the same buttons again and again. I can even do this from my mobile phone.

I have no reason to delay any longer, I have more than enough money to start the plan but I don't know what products to sell yet, I had one idea about a specific niche but there isn't any supplier available for it. I'd admit that I like this shopify/oberlo plan, actually it's exactly what I was looking for when I stopped playing poker, I wanted a less stressfull/more solid form of trading, nevertheless I won't do it just because it's so easy to start if there isn't any profit into it. Some say that this thing will get saturated but I don't believe this because competing for ads is the very soul of capitalism, it's something that everyone has to do in order to survive and win, so if that thing can get saturated then everything besides washing dishes can get saturated too. Ofc this thing cost money unlike other forms of advertising but life has expenses anyway so nothing is really free. We can always win if we think out of the box and hit at the perfect spot. This plan will also teach me very important skills about paid ads, building ecommerce sites/stores and the market, I'm very positive overall.

Shopify/oberlo/dropship/paid ads will be 90% my next plan but before I start, I will spend a lot of time reading some very expensive courses and watch videos regarding this subject, I won't proceed with the plan if I judge that the risk of ruin is too high on my current budget. Right now I'm very positive about this and I have incredible amount of resources in my hands.

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I don't believe much in fb ads, google ads etc, even if I did, I would still not use those because I would need a very high roi close to 200% to make decent profit due to the taxes of my country, is that sustainable or even attainable? I honestly don't know but people would kill to get that kind of edge so I doubt it's possible for the majority. Some make money with these kind of ads them after a lot of testing but I see no reason to do this, this is like backtesting in stock/forex trading, I won't be gambling... I'd rather spend 100$ on a significant gain rather than 5$ on nothing.

What I like based on the numbers I see is influencer marketing, this is also paid advertising but it's more safe imo or it looks like that, I will target specific niche sites with large communities or instagram/pinterest influencers and will try to get good deals with them or even profit share. I think influencer marketing is the strongest marketing there is, I doubt anything else can even get close to this level except seo perhaps but seo is a long term form of marketing, it can't give you money right away. Profit share will be my main goal first or crazy good deals, I have no reason to treat this like gambling or waste money on tests, I can't test with my budget and I can't negotiate with fb/google/bing. I also plan to make my own social media profiles and increase followers through shareable content since I can't create my own, I will use bots to make this part easier. Most of my expensive courses are about social media especially instagram, I will spend a lot of hours watching and learn.

Even though I set a goal of 1k per month, that would still be bad in my country, It's one of the worst countries to do business, that's why I'm so paranoid and calculative, I have to use the strongest weapons in order to survive here, no matter what I do next the bar will be set very high. I will spend most of the november reading, I have 250gb worth of courses with great material on what I'm going to do.

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I'm close at finishing my first course, it's a really nice course, I used to lose my focus easily when I read/watched new things especially on english but it didn't happen this time, every subject was very interesting and I learned a lot, it basically explained me everything I needed to know in detail, I always found topics related to strategy fascinating, they are probably the only topics that would not make me sleep. I'm not going to watch all of the courses since I don't think it's effective, you just need to read 2-3 to get you started and everything else is learned through experience.

I notice that I will have to pay a lot of fees, this shopify plan is expensive due to the amount of apps you have to use, it also involves a lot of copywriting. Copywriting is a pain because I'm not a master in english neither I can pay a copywriter to do it because there are so many product descriptions/emails that I have to do. I may be able to fix this problem by hiring an editor&proofreader and do the copywriting myself because I think editors are cheaper, not sure yet. Email content will be the hardest to do. No serious business can avoid this stuff anyway.

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I watched a webinar today, it didn't talk about a strategy that I didn't knew already, everything is pretty much the same at this point, product->landing/site/webinar etc->influencing/seo/emails, it's more about optimizing every technical part of your strategy, your copywriting, your campaigns etc. and having a knowledge about what/who people want to buy aka that's your expertise.

This webinar touched an important subject though and that's copywriting, this isn't problem only for me it seems, it's a problem even among english speaking people, it's a skill that has to be learned and takes lots of time, the amount of work is so much that it feels almost impossible to outsource it if you aren't on a very high budget. I now understand why there is so much demand about copywriters and why they make so much money. I will need a software or text boost, this is probably the most important piece of the puzzle that I have to solve, nothing else holds me back now.

I have finished the courses and I have learned a lot, I learned about some business models I didn't know about, I learned tons of things about paid ad and what method is best according to any situation, I learned lots of things about product research, testing parameters, funnels and the importance of copying. I understand now what methods are popular these days and what most marketers are trying to do. I see hundreds of opportunities now. These courses were great but they didn't teach much about picking a niche and a product, this is the most important part, everything else can be solved.

I'm trying to figure out now what should I sell, returns are a big deal online so If I go for a shopify plan then I can't sell expensive items because I risk losing it all. I'm thinking to sell toys or phone accessories/earphones because they are cheap, I think phone accessories is really the best low ticket niche, it's very easy to promote too. My favorite niche is board games or card games but it looks harder to find a supplier. I want to sell something profitable and cheap but I don't want to sell somethign that I don't like, how am I supposed to understand what my customer needs if I don't like or never used the product myself?

I thought that my options were limited but I now realize that you can turn anything even the smallest gig into a business by promoting it correctly. You don't even need a budget for some type of businesses if you do a partnership. I have to answer some questions before I launch my next plan. I don't want to lose my focus once I start because my campaigns or something else didn't go well. Finally I'm thinking to buy a ps4 & a TV during black friday and resell them after for a 300-400$ budget increase, also I will probably receive some holiday money from the state which will increase my budget even further, it may get close to 1200e or so but anyway, this won't affect my business decision, I already have enough money, it won't make much of a difference.

I will update on weekly basis now since I don't want to create another big wall of text

I have studied many statistics and I monitor the progress of others who are more knowledgeable than me and I don't think that it's possible to do anything in the product market without a lot of social proof first or a great original product that has a lot of demand. Selling from china the same cheap products that everyone else does is a crystal clear NO. At the very least you need to sell expensive products at a significant discount accompanied by some type of content or insane copywriting and have a very good looking store/great customer service and shipping.

I have seen people burning a lot of cash on fb ads without any result. Some numbers really scare me, they say 30% refund rate is possible online, also 99% you don't make conversions without a lot of engagement first, literally some people burned 1000$ or 500$ on fb ads, I studied the aliexpress orders on the best products too and these are discouraging as well, high volume sales based on price is a myth, expensive and cheap products have similar orders. If you think about it, brick and mortar stores have a persistent presence, instant delivery and a lot of social proof. It looks like people don't really trust online stores if they already buy from another store. It's much easier to sell digital products or gigs because these don't have a shipping time and they have better demand online, also you own them 100%. It's easier to market them too because it's easier to determine who needs them.

I stopped poker because I didn't want to mess with stuff like this. I'm not saying that it's impossible to succeed but it's hard to find your edge, you have to research a lot and spend a lot of cash too until you find that secret edge that makes you money, it's exactly the same as stock/forex trading, I dare to say that poker feels more solid than this. You always know what players you face at poker and you can backtest on forex trading, on the other hand, you don't have a safe way to test with an online store.

Building a solid business that it's deprived of any luck element requires value through content and persistent internet presence (social media, seo) or a very valuable product/gig, most likely through private label, also a top notch store/site. Content and social media is for the poor because it's free to create content, on the other hand creating a valuable product and a top site requires lots of cash or skills. If I want to make a store or sell anything, I have to focus on my social media presence first or create something incredible valuable on my own. Building followers first is mandatory imo. It's not very efficient to do this while having a store and paying fees because it will significantly slow my progress. It's like a strategy game, you first build your economy (followers/list) and then build your army (store). Only an insane product can surpass this and lead to high volume or consistent sales instantly. That's what I think at least. It's not like I have a mentor or anything. I judge everything based on my own logic and resources, the online world have its own rules.

There is not an easy way out but at least I think there is a safe and efficient way to do this even if it's slow, I'm now trying to get some value out of black friday and thinking a lot about how I can provide meaningful value that will sell and how I can create a persistent internet presence without spending much money online. Persistency or real value are the keys to the dream business, rarely anything else.

You seem to have looked into and analyzed a lot of ideas and plans and even tried some things that paid off to some extent.

But you don't seem much farther ahead - you still look at buiding a site/ blog and a simple funnel as 'complex' - and they aren't that at all.

You are involved in the process and that is an important first step - you aren't moving ahead as quickly as you might hope because you are still focused on the mindset and 'what i love' rather than on creating business.

i was curious so did some copy/paste...did you know you have written almost 19,000 words in THIS thread? What could you have done with that much content online? An ebook of 50+ pages - a blog with 30 posts - an email series prewritten and ready to go - sales pages to create a funnel.

You have 30 days till 2019 - I know you've earned some money - have you created a monthly stream of income even if it's $50? Don't fall into the bog of over analyzing and over justifying everything you plan or try to do. It will hold you back.

For this month why not create a 1,2,3,4,5 (and more) plan/process to follow for the entire month without second guessing or changing plans, etc.

Focus on building a Wordpress blog on your own domain....and create a landing page, email series and a very simple starter funnel? Don't overthink it - use threads here - and google searches and youtube for the basics and follow the instructions. You are ready for those next steps...but not sure you realize it.

You have an ability to express yourself in writing that is the stumbling block for a LOT of new marketers. Use that ability for more than self analysis- make it pay off.

I agree with you -you've learn a lot.....you will learn even more when you start applying.


My concern comes from seeing new marketers who sometimes get so involved in looking at the process...they don't get around to DOING the process. Doesn't sound like that's what you will do.


Just keep moving forward.

While I'm waiting for my black friday investments to pay off and for a specific thing to happen in mid december, I researched further about my own site creation. I took some courses into the theory of Ux and Ui. I now think that making a good looking site is an absolute must and will grant me an edge over the competition. A website is not only important for promoting into a much wider audience easier but also for branding purposes. People are getting affected by the looks and usability of it, which cause them to get emotionally attached to it.

Today, someone reached on me on skype and asked me for advice to set a business up that is similar to the previous business I did (he was from the forum I was promoting), it was kinda funny, I felt like a consulant or coach for a while, ofc I didn't suggest him my previous business because it was bad. There was a business on that mmo niche that I wanted to try that was much more promising and the biggest companies on that niche are doing it too, I never tried it myself but I knew the steps, so I told him what to do step by step and he looked like he would try it but had some problems setting everything up. I'm very curious now if he is going to make it. I have tutored and encouraged people before to take action on specific businesses, it's always interesting to see how they will develop. In fact I have been very successful on this but I never got paid for it. If he is successful too then I will charge him for further help.

The guy had a point though "how do I set everything up" aka how do I make the website? how do I make the sales page thread? these are things that every marketer including me is struggling with and the answer is always the same, give hundreds of $ and make it. We are not web designers, in fact we don't even possess a single skill that is involved within a site (ux,ui,seo,frontend,backend,graphic design,illustrator,copywriting) and all of them are freelance businesses on their own(very tough and in-depth ones). We only know the business that we are meant to sell. The guy already worked online on a much worse business (worse than my previous one), he looked hard working and decisive, so he wasn't someone who was searching for easy solutions or looked the process from a far but I can already predict he will get stucked on the setting up part. Setting everything up is not hard work but instead very complicated work and sadly neccesary in order to beat the competition and promote properly your business.

Don't reach out and tell me about wordpress and elementor because according to the courses I saw, nothing comes close to the level of an experienced designer and do you know what? the lack of proper branding and design could cost you your entire business, that's lost money for you and in an already very saturated/competitive market, you can't afford losing money from things like this. A blogger could potentially have it easier because the nature of work and design requirements are different but that's not true for every business. If you see someone stucked at "looking the process" then consider that he is unable to do anything about it assuming that his/her business is requiring so many unrelated things to it. Just like we can't build a home from scratch, we can't build a website either. Hell, we shouldn't even be responsible for the marketing campaign (that's a specialty too with many branches who are also freelance businesses on their own) and instead we should focus only on business specific processes but at least marketing is more affordable(it took me ages and expensive material to learn about it though and still learning). I'm not whining and I have a solution for these problems, what I'm saying is that not everything involved in business is about your business only. When I played poker, I could just log and play, nothing unrelated to this was required so I didn't hesitate at all. If I instead had to design the cards and the platform in order to play then I would never bother with it(that's what a digital business is most of the time). A single human can only do so much, these problems are very serious and I need to have a better an answer to them than just "find partners" (the typical online advice). The $ are not always there for that to be fisible. Overall, doing digital business is hard. The ebook that I mentioned on the another thread that I made before, forced me to do so many unrelated things to the content, like formatting, editing, proof reading, cover designing. I just don't like this. I have to find a permanent solution that is affordable.

Damn, I couldn't hold it, I made another gigantic thread. I need to control myself somehow.

I won't go into details about how much I learned this past week because I will have to write another ebook, it was probably my best week when it comes to marketing strategic knowledge and web corporate world knowledge. I'm completely in touch with reality now and I have created my own unique theories/systems that I will use. My notepad file where I have all my strategies, business/marketing analysis, theories, rules and systems can be sold for a decent amount I believe. I'm not only looking or searching, all this time I spend all my hours everyday writing, analyzing businesses and marketing strategies, preparing every step and thinking a lot, literally all of them. I don't consider myself skilless anymore, I have a power now and it's called business and marketing, I don't need more than that because it would have no practical value at all, we can only do so much, we can't learn everything in this life. I have to respect my power now and use it instead of trying to learn new powers in order fix things that are impossible to fix. ofc I'm not a specialist yet on a specific category of it, I still need a specilization within that power and a success story preferably. A success story will be my own mba.

My next business will focus on one marketing category and only that, I will try to master it. When you are alone it's impossible to afford more than one, if the firm employers can't handle more than one then I have no reason to believe that I can. Also I will try to reduce my plan's reliance on the other web technology roles by making the website a less important or insignificant part of the overall plan and also very easy to construct, so the marketing and operations will be the majority of my next plan. I won't try to cheat it (eg. wordpress/elementor), cheats can work in some cases (eg. blogs) but they aren't optimal, a good business requires money and partners. I have to accept that I lack the fund in order to make a functional website that will convert. Finally there is a good chance that my next business will be a local one so I will be confident at contacting with partners and customers and even use the telephone if needed. I'm not confident at all at my english. I can write some but I could never speak up to a business level.

Anyway, the state betrayed me and I didn't receive my money as I should(it's a communist state after all, what should I expect?), the 3rd account didn't sell yet and my black friday investment (an xbox console) didn't sell either, this probably sounds terrible but it's counterbalanced by the massive amount of knowledge and enlightment I received this week. It somehow put a halt on some of my plans, it wasn't good by all means but I can adjust easily to this circumstance and proceed with my business just fine. I had to wait all this time in order to see how my final budget will look like, now there is nothing to wait for. I'm preparing the final steps of my plan, it won't take long before I launch my business maybe tommorow or next week at most. I also hope that I will sell the xbox in the meantime.

I have an entire year to crush the markets, it says until 2019 that means 31 december 2019 in my language, nothing is over yet. If you think that I failed the challenge then you are wrong.

Now that I look back on my first business when I started this thread, it was meant to be some sort of freelance b2b project manager business, yes that is strange. There are many flows with it when the cooperation requires two people and it's not in-house.

In an inhouse environment you can control your partners easily and forbid them to meet directly with customers, also if the cooperation requires more than 2 people then the customer can never drive a worker out of your company and use him individually because the worker cannot complete the project alone. The customer will return back to you and all his referals(very important!) will come for you instead of going for your worker.

Especially with the marketing tactics I used which were really weak aka they could never generate enough leads for my partner, it was very important to have the returning customer and referals for myself but also I had to invest into long-term well paying projects which would cause me to get paid monthly since it was hard to find many customers therefore going for many short-term gigs wasn't viable. In other words I needed two strong long-term partnerships, one with my worker and one with my customer.

My marketing tactic didn't allow for a high volume of customers and it couldn't be sold individually as a service either because it was too weak on it's own and none would buy it. In some sense I went with the right mindset, I used my marketing/business in the best possible way(commission/middleman style instead of service) but the details were really bad.

Since I can't control my partner and I can't coordinate well with him either because we aren't in an in-house environment then I had to use someone who could complete a project without requiring a lot of coordination and also who would never need to meet with my customer in order to get approval and complete the job and possibly steal my customer & referals. I had to present myself as a firm instead of promoting my partner and use his portofolio for myself. I think that's what the firms do as well, once you join them then your portfolio it's theirs and you cease to exist as an individual. In a "out-house" two people partnership, everything becomes extremely hard, contracts cannot be enforced and there is always the possibility to get scammed or lose customers if you allow them to meet your partner directly. All these details are extremely important. Finally even if I wanted to make this firm in-house by recruiting local workers(I don't have space though) I wouldn't be able to go for a profit share model with my workers, I would have to pay them every month, so that's not an option either.

Not every freelance job(if any) can combine both two people partnership, long-term good paying customers and lack of neccesity in communication/direct meeting between customer and worker(the most important!). Being an "out-house" project manager can work but you have to fulfil the details. If your marketing skills are so good that it's possible to generate many customers for your client and also reuse this service again and again for him (eg. PPC) then you are better off selling it as a service instead. Anything weak/low volume requires expensive long-term gigs and middleman work. Even thought I know a lot about every type of marketing now, my marketing skills are still not strong enough because specilization or growth/commitment is needed, despite that, I'm very strong when it comes to operations, communication and problem solving. My power lies more in business strategy rather than marketing itself. I still lack a strong marketing specialty like PPC, SEO, social media, affiliate manager or content/email campaign expert. It's true that these specialties can only be mastered in practise. Nevertheless, I have great business ideas.

I have learned a lot about wordpress. I installed it on a local server (xampp) and play with elementor and other plugins. Elementor is amazing. I need to learn how to design the templates a bit better. I'm very close at creating a site and setting up an email funnel, I just need to get the design right. After I'm done, a huge negative block would be over.

I read an interesting phrase in a book that describes how the lack of tactics could lead in paralysis even if you have a strategy on marketing. I personally have tactics and strategy but I'm not confident on my tactics or they aren't as specific as I would like, I need to build some confidence somehow, the uncertainty means that my expected value is not positive. My marketing plan needs to be laser focused and the offer should give value to the right people. I probably still lack a good offer and the specific market that I will present this offer.

As I'm trying to change my business model this my biggest challenge, there are products that I'm confident I can sell easily like gaming currency but I don't want to keep relying on gimmicky products that may have no future or require shady tactics in order to be scaled(bots). This could be a good or a bad choice, I'm not sure. Creating a positive EV plan is not an easy task, so I don't know if it's something you can give up so easily.

Marketing and business as skills are hugely bound by niche and learning a niche is much harder than learning marketing strategies. Tactics lie within niche and practice. This takes a lot of experience to be built. I'm playing games for over 15 years and I have been involved in "hobbyist" business activity, so that's why I'm confident at this. Normally someone learns a niche by working within an industry as an employee and when he is experienced enough he can then switch to his own business by learning marketing strategies. I believe I have severely underestimated the impact of niche. Any kind of product or service is a big deal, it's not something you are supposed to change easily. I'm not sure if this is something I can solve in few days, time will tell but we have to start somewhere.

Anyway for now, I will slowly transition into the practical things of my business, I will finish my wordpress site, I will play with optins and emails, I will test the software and marketing channels that I will need for my business. I will essentially do business without doing it, this will help me break several negative blocks. I will also put more emphasis on my product, the only thing that matters is just the product, I will improve my offer even more and confirm that the market I'm targeting does exist.

For now, practice, practice and more practice.

Marketing/business theory is nice but there is still a big question to answer and that is what are you going to sell with it. I realized that you can't do much when you are working alone at a very low budget without any social proof and so bad english, the best thing you can do is selling some sort of content creation services or create a solo content media for yourself, you can also make a successful media with curate content. Everything else is remote working, very expensive or has high requirements that I don't meet.

So, I had to decide what kind of content I will sell, I decided that it have to be something writing related since I have no skill or interest with anything else, however due to the fact that my english are bad, I had to pick something that would give me the time to correct them(the flow as well) and the best option is an ebook. Ebook is a nice choice because I'm very bad when I work under pressure especially in a foreign language, also I published an ebook before on kindle so I'm already experienced with it. Overall, I like writing, what I don't like instead is "forced writing", like trying hard to publish something on a blog. I personally want to take my time, wait for inspiration if needed and make a complete project. This will also give me time to market my product better since I won't have to worry about creating new content. Creating new content and market the product at the same time is not a good idea when working alone.

This is literally the only thing I can do, there is not alternative, if I fail then I have to learn another profession in order to be able to create a product or work remotely(eg. programming), marketing is nice but it doesn't give you a product to sell and it also requires multiple skills and lots of money in order to work optimally. Doing business is expensive. It would be much better if I was able to create a nice product and whitelabeled the marketing. I don't plan to give up though but this will be my all in move and I plan to raise the stakes a lot, I won't go down without a very strong move first that will make use of everything I have learned. This is not just an attempt, it is hard ofc but I will put all my strength and focus into it. Believe me, it may take a lot until I make a decision but once I do, I don't stop until I'm dead.

Here is the plan:


I will use UX, powerful copywriting and minimax concepts in order to gain an advantage with my content. I will reduce the impact of english by making my content more guidish/simple and I will make it VERY usable aka minimize my weaknesses and maximize the strengths. The information on the web is chaotic and the posts intimidating so I can always gain an advantage with usability. We don't need a huge advantage, just a small one. Finally I will only make a blog for my website so that I won't have to rely very much on design since I'm very bad at it. I don't believe that a blog can lose an advantage in anything other than the content itself, if your blog lacks a lot of features/pages/graphics etc then it wins in readability since there are less elements to confuse the user.

Here are the steps:

Step 1

Create 25+ articles on for the blog (some will link to affiliate offers or my ebook)
Create several topics worth of 10k+words for the amazon kindle ebook
Create at least 8+ articles for the email campaigns (the last of them will link to affiliate offers or my amazon ebook)
Create one small freebie(the goal of it is to funnel to my amazon ebook)

All of them will be created on notepad first

Step 2

Format all of them properly with the neccesary photos/graphics
Publish the ebook on amazon
Launch the blog site and publish 10 articles or so (publish the other 15-20 later on)
Add the optin etc
Prepare the autoresponder

Step 3

The goal is to sell the ebook for free first and funnel to it through content&paid ad&emails. Since the ebook is free, that will trigger a lot of downloads quick and it will allow the ebook to rank better on amazon. This is the no1 goal, ranking it as much as possible by giving it for free at the beginning then capitalize on the ranking. I'm going to mix paid traffic from my blog along with organic traffic from amazon, I will also drive that amazon organic traffic to my blog by linking through the ebook, so that I will make affiliate sales too.


As you can see I mention making 25+ blog articles and 8+ emails, I obviously plan to write all of them before I make my blog, I would never made a blog if I had to write under pressure, my blog will be similar to my ebook aka a project with a start and an end. I won't update it once I publish my last premade article into it or if I do, it will be rarely. Struggling to find new content and write asap is a no no. The blog will just help the promotion and make an affiliate sale if we are lucky. The prime goal though is the ebook.

The subject will be one that I like, have an idea about problems and can make simple guides. This will be entrepreneurship. I studied it for too long so I have an idea about what people need. I have a big notepad file that will give me all the ideas I need. I will start writing from tomorrow, I don't know how long it will take me to finish everything but I will take my time and stay calm, I'm not in a hurry, I want to do something good. I don't think it will take that long because the goal is to improve usability and not neccesarily adding new info, also the articles will be as small as possible. If I manage to complete everything then it will be so great, many opportunities will open probably.

My business now officially starts

I already wrote 3500 words for my ebook and I didn't even work that much. I know what topics I will write about, so the skeleton of the ebook is ready. I can't believe I have so much content to write about, I can easily reach 20k words or more at this point which will also leave lots of content for my blog and emails.

In the end it wasn't a waste studying, researching and analyzing so much because I gathered incredible amount of content and also I became more used to writing due to reading countless books, blog posts and copywriting tips, it's kinda funny.

7500 words currently, I really enjoy it, I may even create more ebooks but very small ones. Writing is great when you can take your time with it. I like that I finally work and my goals are now clear for the future.

Happy christmas & new year to everyone.

Please start another thread with

- a clear timeline
- clearly outlined goals
- a plan of action to reach the goals


You can even start the new thread with the most recent 'goals' you posted above.


This thread has run its course.