Erick's Progression Thread

[ErickMendez]

Okay, after lurking on the forums for a while, I've decided that I'd like to make a progression thread. So basically, this thread/post will serve as a little motivator for me. I'll post my progression in this thread to the public to keep myself motivated (and also to prevent myself from procrastinating). First of all, I'll try my best to post daily as a reminder for myself to get off my lazy a$$ and do something productive. Second, I'm not entirely sure what my goals will be. A simple goal of mine would be to aim for financial freedom (I mean, who doesn't want that?), but for the other goals, I'll have to figure that out along the way.

Progress:

Anyway, at the time of writing this, it's summer break for me, so basically, I have 1.5 months to focus on entrepreneurial ideas. At the moment, I'm trying to build a reputation in web development (I'm making websites for businesses). I'll try to give a progress update every day on how that's going. Well, I don't want to make this post too long, so that'll be it for my progress update.

Hopefully, someday I'll wake up without a worry in the world...

 

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[Timo.]

Hey, tell us a bit more. What will be your first steps to build up your reputation?

 

[ErickMendez]

Hey, tell us a bit more. What will be your first steps to build up your reputation?

Well at the moment I took advice from a person on the forums, Right now im making free websites for businesses in exchange for testimonials and i guess connections too. after that I have things in mind that I wanna do, but first I’ll follow this path that ive taken and see what opportunities I can find along the way.

 

[Timo.]

Well at the moment I took advice from a person on the forums, Right now im making free websites for businesses in exchange for testimonials and i guess connections too. after that I have things in mind that I wanna do, but first I’ll follow this path that ive taken and see what opportunities I can find along the way.

Great way to start. I am doing the same thing but as a Google Ads Freelancer

have you already found your first clients? Or are you just starting?

 

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[ErickMendez]

Great way to start. I am doing the same thing but as a Google Ads Freelancer

have you already found your first clients? Or are you just starting?

Sorry for a late response.

But for the most part I’m currently just starting, Though i do have businesses in mind that I want to work with. Right now im just focusing on self improvement, speaking of which heres what I’ve done today.

• Read books

(Read for 2 hours)

• Studied web design

(Created practice websites)

• Scouted businesses

(found businesses that could have opportunity for me)

but yeah for the most part thats what I did today, will update this thread again tomorrow!

 

[ErickMendez]

Progress: 07/01/2023.

Today, I contacted businesses to see if they were interested in my offer. Well, how that went was not what I expected. I expected that after contacting the businesses, they would respond and accept my offer (since, you know, I'm offering this for free?). However, my expectations didn't align with reality. Out of the three businesses I contacted, none of them were interested. I've realized that maybe my online approach in contacting them wasn't really effective. From a business's perspective, it's basically a random guy with NO PORTFOLIO asking, "Hey, your business looks nice. Can I make you website? haha not a scam btw" That's most likely their point of view.

Anyway, after that mess, here's what I've done today.

• Read books (I always do this everyday)
  
  
• Contacted Businesses (haha that went well)
  
  
• Practiced web design (made practice websites)

well all of that said I hope I can share something actually interesting in this thread tomorrow, anyways that's all that happened today, feel free to give any suggestions.

 

[ErickMendez]

Progress: 07/02/2023

Writing this late because I didn’t really do much today, I’m not trying to make excuses but honestly I was out the whole day So I couldn’t get anything done. Anyways I am just a kid so I’m not trying to rush into anything just yet, my goal is to improve myself in anyway possible and I’m not focusing really focusing on the business side of things just yet, (like i said im literally just a kid). With all that said heres what I’ve done today.

• Read books (i do this everyday for an hour or two)
• Practiced web design
• Scouted businesses

Thats pretty much it, this thread is like a diary for me now so dont expect much.

 

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[ErickMendez]

Hey!

Just a update on this thread I’m going to stop making daily progress updates as I feel that It’s useless for me to document daily progress that Isn’t progress at all. This doesn’t mean I’ll stop posting progress updates, this just means that I’ll ONLY post if there is a significant amount of progress, as of the moment if I do post daily it would just some boring crap like Read books, Studied programming, etc.

Well thats all for the update as of right now my goal is to build a business of web design but i’m looking to find other ways to build a business. But yeah thats about it, (I WILL POST IN THIS THREAD SOMETIME I PROMISE.)

 

[ErickMendez]

Progress/Update 07/05/2023

Hey you know lifes been great! ive went outside, went golfing but NO. OKAY LETS GET STRAIGHT TO THE POINT.

HERES WHAT THE PLAN IS
erick (me) will be trying out this roadmap to see where it will take me.

SO first, I LOVE MONEY! WHO DOESN’T? SECOND. How do i get money?

What im planning to do is web development, How? Simple. I Create websites for businesses in exchange for money, I wish it was that easy but heres some lists of problems in order.

1. How will I find a business? If you do find one, its most likely there expectations will make your brain explode.

2. How will they pay you? First of all I only accept online payment, I’m a kid so I prefer to contact them and recieve payments via online.

3. Creating the website itself? Yes that shit is not easy.

4. Once the website is done, what if they don’t like it and they decide to not work with you anymore.

So after all those problems ASSUMING I find a good business that accepts my offer and that business has my preferable payment. Then Creating the website showing it to them and them liking it back and them actually buying the website from me.

Assuming all of those problems are met then BOOM, i just made some money.

Well thats my plan for now, ill update this thread if problem one is a success. Then afterwards moving on to problem 2 etc.

 

[ErickMendez]

Progress/Update 07/012/2023

Hey, yeah, it's been a while. For those of you who do read these, my original plan of making a website for businesses has been scrapped. But hey, I have a new plan. Currently, what I'm trying to do is create a specific niche website where people usually search for it. That's my idea for getting traffic. I already have a great way to do that, and I've started building the website already. Everything about the website should be easy to build except for a few things. Here are some problems I'm facing so far.

1. Building a responsive websites
(holy shit its a pain in the a$$, imagine when you finally finished an entire website and it doesn't even work on mobile.)

2. website hosting
(I'm not entirely sure if I can afford the one I'm going with. I live in the Philippines so payment methods are annoying.)

3. google adsense
(right now I'm finding alternatives because google AdSense isn't really going to let some 14 year old use there platform)

anyways those are my problems that I need to fix IN ORDER.
I'll be updating this forum once something interesting happens.

 

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[ErickMendez]

Progress/Update 07/013/2023

yoo, so here's what I did today, I gotta say its not the best news but it definitely got me a step closer to what I want.

first of all lets cover what I said yesterday

1. Building a responsive websites

Ok here I was seriously doubting myself but in the end I managed to actually make a fairly working website, the website was responsive and it was an okay website for someone who has BARELY any experience.

2. website hosting

it worked out in the end, my original plan was to get a website host plan the day it becomes July, but my head wasn't too up in the clouds and things happens so and so..

anyways I bought a website host today using money I had saved from both my parents and friends, I decided to buy one since I had already made a "okay" website, turns out making a "okay" website wasn't going to put me on the top of the SEO engine.

My expectations were since I was focusing on a niche topic, It would be easy to get traffic, butttt turns out my "okay" website was not okay and actually so shit. I doubt googles algorithm would pick up on some poorly made website, BUT HEY, its my website and I learned a lot from making it, so it really is a "okay" website. (imo)

3. google adsense

yeah like i said earlier, theres no way someone would lay a finger on my website...


SO AFTER ALL THATS SAID HERES WHAT IM GOING TO DO ABOUT IT.

obviously I don't wanna abandon what I'm doing since I'm feeling like im getting a step closer to achieving my desires *does that sound too weird?*. SOOO I will be continuing to improve both my Web development and SEO skills, TILL ONE DAY, maybe the niche topic i was focusing on will have my beautiful shit website I coded at the top of the page, oh until then you guys will have to wait.

(anyways hope things workout, for those who actually read these post i make, im shocked.)

 

[ErickMendez]

Progress/Update 07/016/2023

okay lets get straight to the point. remember that shit website I made?, yeah I restarted the entire project and made it better

how better?

well lets start with the SEO of my old website, first of all the website I created didn't even have a single ounce of SEO, it was made using vscode so I didn't really know much about SEO in the first place. Now the new website I created has finally been complete with Improved SEO, Improved speed, Improved design, Improved EVERYTHING. well it certainly took me a while to complete and I was considering just moving on to a different business opportunity, but in the end things worked out. I kept working on the website for 3 days straight and boom. created, published and finished.

Now about the performance of my new website, that I still don't know. I published it just a few minutes ago during the writing of this progress update, sooo I'm not sure if it will do significantly better then my old website or it will perform way worse then my old one.

but I don't care, if the website is a flop, I don't care.

what really matters was the experience and effort I put in, I learned a lot from creating websites, that experience is what matters the MOST to me.

I'm really proud of myself that I didn't waste this summer on video games and having fun, but instead I used my time to actually be productive.

well I'll update this thread again once anything happens as usual, but for now a prayer to myself.

 

[ErickMendez]

Progress/Update 07/017/2023

Just read some interesting posts now I'm motivated.

anyways here's what happened to the website I created.

the website did perform better yes, but in the end other people started to pick up on the niche so my KD "keyword difficulty" rose, and my website isn't even in the top 10..

so after that I have a few things I need to work on:

1. build more websites (my web development skills are still pretty bad)

2. learn more about SEO (SEO is not my thing.)

3. discover better ways to get clients (I read some interesting posts regarding web development, I wanna use the knowledge I learned from those posts.)

anyways my original plan when starting this thread was to focus on making websites for businesses in exchange for cash. as of right now I'm not doing that and I've focused on creating websites to try to gain the revenue from ads, but after reading some posts I'm not entirely sure what I want to do right now.

I think I'm going to do both.

time is ticking and school abt to start for me, I hope I can get at least 1 dollar from web development.

 

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[ErickMendez]

Forget what i wrote.

 

[ErickMendez]

Progress/Update 07/024/2023

I've done a few things I would like to share during 07/017/2023 - 07/024/2023.

First of all during that time I've been working on making a portfolio website and completed it fairly quickly, even though I don't have any previous works I just hinted that I didn't have any works to show BUT you could be the first and I'm a fairly skilled developer blah blah blah..

Second I've been going outside a lot so I haven't had time to spend working on my web development journey, but the times I do have time I spend it on finding businesses using google maps, I target businesses without a website of course and then email them about it.

the email goes something like

Hi [Client's Name],

I came across your business on Google Maps and was impressed by what you've built so far.
I noticed that your business currently doesn't have a website. Are you open to exploring ways to attract more clients and enhance your online presence?

check out my portfolio blah blah etc etc..

Today and yesterday I contacted a few businesses if there interested in my services. I contacted them via email and still waiting for a response.

also I've been making audiobooks for me to listen to while I'm outside playing golf, so thats cool i guess?

anyways I had to rewrite this post a third time cuz I accidently pressed enter when writing it midway, and when I posted it by accident I had to edit it and I accidently clicked cancel.

but that doesn't matter. anyways again thats all i have to share in this post.

 

[ErickMendez]

Progress/Update 07/029/2023

Okay In total I emailed 13 businesses if there interested in my web design services. Spoiler alert: non responded. If It reaches to 20 businesses or maybe even 15 I'm probably doing something wrong, I'll try to refine my approach or try something else. I've gathered a bunch of other businesses so lets see how that will do tomorrow.

anyways during my July 24 - 29 I've been toying around with ai, I've been making machine learning models just for fun as a hobby, I've made a ML model that can evaluate my golf swings from 0 - 1, 0 being bad and 1 being good, of course it isn't perfect (yet). also the reason why its 0 - 1 and not 1 - 10 is because I didn't have a bunch of data to show it, but I have a lot of data now so I'll probably work on my model again sometime.

I also made another website that covers a niece topic, but I'm currently having trouble with the domain so I can't even publish it yet (man that sucks.)

anyways again, I think that mostly covers what I've been doing. I haven't earned anything but hey, at least I'm moving you know? hopefully I will be able to share something interesting in this thread, for now I'll keep learning and developing my skills.

 

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