Let me introduce myself...

[silentjay]

Finally got round to reading the millionaire fastlane , it's been on my reading list for ages, great book! Glad I found this forum, I've spent ages looking for a forum like this which wasn't full of people pimping their warez *cough* warrior forum *cough*

Anyway a bit about me, built a website back in 2000 when I realised there was a massive gap for a local online service which no-one had filled. Within days was ranking number 1 on google, and was pulling in about £2k-£5k a month, which was pretty good considering I was in my very early 20s. This went on for years, and I led a very good life because of it i.e. flushed most the money down the drain.

Fast forward to 2010-2011, lots and lots and lots of competition now. Everyone and their dog has jumped into my little niche. Google Panda hits, blows my site out the water. Traffic drops from 100s a day to <100. Income gets obliterated. Lesson? I should of diversified. I had all my eggs in one basket.

Luckily discovered minimalism at the same time, realised I didn't need to be spending 110% of my earnings to be happy. I had a much softer landing than many.

Current situation: 0 net worth (I count myself lucky im not in massive debts or bankrupt). Moved out of my flat and back home with rents. Living on less than the minimum wage now with my business on life support. Not really sure where i'm heading now, everythings up in the air and i'll be honest its quite a lonely place to be, but hope springs eternal!

 

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[nitrousflame]

Welcome aboard. You're ahead of most.

Also, Re: diversification, fastlaner Snowbank wrote a great blog post that you might be interested in. Entrepreneurial Diworsification | Forever Jobless

See you around the forums.

 

[silentjay]

Also, Re: diversification, fastlaner Snowbank wrote a great blog post that you might be interested in. Entrepreneurial Diworsification | Forever Jobless

See you around the forums.

Thanks nitrousflame, great pic by the way! I had that very thought today, how even though I'm broke i'm still richer than a large proportion of population. It scares me to think if I followed the traditional route as so many of my friends I'd be massively in debt on a house/car etc right now. Leveraged up to my eyeballs on a £25k salary just to keep up the with jones.

I've read 75% of the article, very interesting, agree with it on early diversification is as bad as early optimisation. However the whole "if you can only survive by ranking well on google then you don't know how to run a business blah blah" and then uses the whole branding nonsense...eurgh...because how many people know a website well enough for you to type its name directly into the search box? businesses will grow and die based on first page rankings on the Big G, and branding is a mythical unicorn for people to chase. Give me that top 3 SERPs position any day!

update: finished reading the article. See he's actually against niche sites with the whole outsourced $5 blog posts. Can't argue with him there, after the EMD update niche sites are finished, and that's not a bad thing. Maybe the only business model left there is flipping them

 

[nitrousflame]

I've read 75% of the article, very interesting, agree with it on early diversification is as bad as early optimisation. However the whole "if you can only survive by ranking well on google then you don't know how to run a business blah blah" and then uses the whole branding nonsense...eurgh...because how many people know a website well enough for you to type its name directly into the search box? businesses will grow and die based on first page rankings on the Big G, and branding is a mythical unicorn for people to chase. Give me that top 3 SERPs position any day!

Be careful with that kind of thinking. If you're only in business because of your SEO, you're giving all of your control to that search engine. You might be making great money when you're ranking, but take that away and you're back to square one. You even mentioned in your first post that you yourself were a victim of this!

 

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[silentjay]

Be careful with that kind of thinking. If you're only in business because of your SEO, you're giving all of your control to that search engine. You might be making great money when you're ranking, but take that away and you're back to square one. You even mentioned in your first post that you yourself were a victim of this!

I'm with you there, I'd never build another business so reliant on the big G. It's just that article makes out: oh don't worry about a good google rank, just get a brand. Like it's that easy to become a household name like twitter, facebook et al.

SEO has almost turned into a dirty word for me lol

 

[nitrousflame]

How did twitter and facebook start out? Did they sit around worrying about how they were going to rank, or were they busy creating a brand that provided value (or solved a problem) which in turn drove traffic and ranking?

No one said it's easy.