Road to 100K

[Mister]

Who am I?

My name is Martin, I'm 22 years old and live in Germany.
I started my slowlane life with 15 years old. With 19 i went back to school to have a "break" and find out what i want to do with my life. Then working in the same construction job for the next 40 years sound not really like fun to me.
Around that time I watched an interview of some dude who makes millions with Instagram theme pages and that got me hooked . I wanted to do the same, so I started an Instagram page in the finance niche, I didn't have the goal in mind to make some money rather to gain some experience with "marketing".

Fast-forward and a few years and I'm working from home with for me good paying job (31k).
I still live with my parents, but that gives me the ability to save up to 60% of my monthly income and take some major risks.

What is my goal?

I want to build myself a lifestyle business and travel the world while working.
I aim for an income from 5k per month trough (mainly) SEO services (my normal salary is not included)
With that amount, I can travel and have also money to save and invest in future ideas.
What I do after that is not 100% clear, but I will decide it when I am there.

My goal is it to reach that level till the 24.04.23.
When not, I will extend the deadline and will try to find a new job in a SEO agency.

What is my plan?

1. Learn SEO
Im "learning" SEO for quite some time but never executed my learned knowledge.
This month I bought a SEO course about affiliate and local SEO and began to apply the learned knowledge.

I consider that phase done when I have ranked my own page to the number 1 spot of a search term.
I will mainly focus on local SEO (+GMB) than it's the easiest form of SEO and I can get there pretty fast results
I currently have 3 sites, 2 of them are Local SEO pages and one is a ecom / affiliate site from a past project.

I'm currently planing to publish 2 new sites within the same niche, to try what works for each difficulty (Each keyword / search term has a differnet difficulty, and according to that it's easier or harder to get a site to the first page of Google.

When everything goes as planed I have by the end of the year a few sites on the first page of Google and can consider that phase done.

2. Find a niche
I have already a niche in mind but need to prove that this industry is really worth procuring.

By picking a niche, I will look at:
-How much do they charge for their service ?
-How high is the competition ?
-Are the companies willing to scale?
-Do they have a problem with getting new employees?

In the beginning, I will offer my services for free to get some results that I can use as references. Also I want to use that time to building out an offer with the existing costumers to match their needs.

3. Getting Costumers

In this phase, I will focus on getting costumers and getting them great results.
I think I will start with doing cold outreach, later on i will probably try to rank for specific kw for that niche. (Like "SEO for plumbers")
I have already a broad pricing in my mind, but to that more to a later point.


How will this thread look like?

I will write here every Sunday an update to my progress and share some insights.
Week: 34 / 2022

Im currently tracking how much time I spend working on my biz.
This week it was: 8h

I tried this week, get up a few hours earlier and use that time for the biz. I did it only 3 days, but the results weren't that great.
So I think I will go back to my old habit with working after work.
Also, I wasted a lot of time this Saturday I spend only 3 hours working, that something I want and need to improve.

I spend currently to much time on YouTube and watching some bs videos. I need to improve that over the next week.
I will do that by:
-Go only on my phone after 1 PM
-Be more mindful when i have my phone in my hand
-Stop using my phone when I'm on the toilet
-Install a YouTube feed blocker.


I created a spreadsheet with all information for the site I need. So that i just can enter the sheet and know what to do. I also use it as an access point to link out to the text documents for each article that I have written,
It's the first time I use it, but I like it and probably will use it for my other sites too.





Overall, I'm happy with my progress this week.
I'm a few days ahead of my schedule with the 3te site and expect to finish the 4te till week 36 / 37

Goals for next week:
-Getting the 3te site published
-Writing 3 new articles for the future
-Finding someone to verifies the GMB
-Making an appointment for my driving test
-Making an appointment with the doctor (nothing serious)


When you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to share them

 

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[PiotrB]

My goal is it to reach that level till the 24.04.23.
When not, I will extend the deadline and will try to find a new job in a SEO agency.

Rephrase this part to -> I will have/achieve XYZ by 24.04.23

Be absolutely certain that you will achieve your goals and don't think about the plan B. Go all in and burn your ships.

If someone said they would kill the person you love the most unless you come up with $100k by the end of the month, wouldn't you find a way to achieve it? I bet you would.

 

[Mister]

Rephrase this part to -> I will have/achieve XYZ by 24.04.23

Be absolutely certain that you will achieve your goals and don't think about the plan B. Go all in and burn your ships.

If someone said they would kill the person you love the most unless you come up with $100k by the end of the month, wouldn't you find a way to achieve it? I bet you would.

Thanks for your suggestion.

Saying it like that has definitely more power behind it

 

[Mister]

34 weeks till 24.04.23
Worked this week: 9,5h

Through @Andy Black I came to the conclusion that I can help straight local business without "wasting" time on building new sites to gain experience.

I already know a biz owner who I knew that would be happy when I help him.

I spend some time looking at bigger sites in the niche to get a feeling of how the website is structured and which keywords they use.
Then I use that knowledge to make a plan to improve his site overall ranking.

It's pretty straight forward:
1. Go for fast wins
-Improve the H1 of the service pages
2. Write new content
-He offers quite a few services, for half of them he has no page, so I will create them.
-Improve the existent pages.
3. Upload all new pages & restructure the Website.

To write all this new content will take quite some time, I expect to need around 2-3 weeks.
I aim for ranking him for 15 Services on a local/notional level.
So that he can't save himself anymore for new costumers

After that improvement, I have still a few ideas how I can help him more. For now, I will focus on the basics.


I worked 9,5 hours which is solid, but I feel I can push myself more.
On Friday evenings after work, I enter a "weekend mode" which is not beneficial when want to keep pushing on Saturday.
I will want to get to the point that I work also Saturday full 8 hours.
It will be hard, but that one day will help me to make a faster process.
(I work around 1-2h after work. When I work 8 hours on a Saturday, I make the same process that I do on 5 workdays.
So It's pretty dumb to waste the weekend.)

I will tread my Friday like a normal workday, so no going out on that day. So that i can have a good 8h sleep and can give 100% on Saturday.

 

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[Mister]

I decided to post no new update when there is nothing to talk about.

The last week I was for a week in Paris and afterwords i got ill.

While i was driving back i created on the train a few sketches for a hoodies / tee´s that i had in mind. I spend the next day with deciding if i want to switch that i idea or if i want to proceed my goal.

I read on twitter something like "when you cant work 3 months on the same project. Its no wonder that you aren't success full". That was where my old habit came to mind. Then Im at the point where i just need to write content, which is not really something i like but its the process i need to go to achieve my goal. So i decided to stick with it.

Now I'm feeling better but have the "problem" that i can't get work done, it feels like I have a inner demon that hardly can overcome. Also my motivation is pretty down.

I spend the last day with thinking about what could be the cause of it. Do i lack a strong why ? Is my business idea to bad ? I came to no conclusion but I have I solution for it.

After reading a post from MJ, i came to the conclusion that I can focus more on a broadly goal from 5k income at 24.04 rather than to have that income from a specific source.

I spend the next few days with finishing the Lead gen website that i mention and afterwords i finish the other project.

 

[Mister]

So last week I got the massage that I will be fired by the end of the month.

Honestly the best thing that could happened for me.

Over this week I got more stuff done than in the last year.

I got the chance the work under a agency owner.

I meet like minded people on twitter and started a seo group with them.

One of my sites reached a age where I can rank stuff pretty “easy”. But I still need to figure out how to rank on the first page / 1 place.

I will now go all in on that site.
I plan to hire a few people so that stuff gets faster done.

I’m definitely hyped for the next months

 

[Mister]

Hello everyone,

The first full month is over of me being a full type entrepreneur and did 1100 Euro in revenue.

Currently, I have 1 main client.

Went yesterday to a few local businesses and asked if they would like to work with me. I did some research the day before, so I know I can help them.
Out of 9 that I visited, 1 showed interested and called me today, so I will prepare something for them. (Best thing is that I don't have a website or business cards )

I will do some light work for them for free, and will try to pitch them as a monthly client afterwords.

In total,I called with 10 local companies and 2 of them were interested.
Cold calls did like 50 and only one person was interested.
(Over the last few months)

I spend most of the last month trying to get a sale for my site and writing content.
But didn't get any sale. I think it's because most people were just looking and don't have any interest in buying.





For now, I will focus more on the client SEO.

I need to do more outreach so that I have a constant flow of new people that are interested. I have a few things in mind that I will try.
I also got the feedback that I shouldn't do something for free, but rater do it for a bit of money.
The most important for me is that I focus all my time on one thing and don't jump around 2 ideas.

 

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[Mister]

SOOO

I wish you all a happy new year.

I spend the new year on the Wat Phra That Doi Suthep overlooking Chiang Mai. Got cold over time but was worth the view.



I made this month 1445 Euro

Looking back, I realize I had many wins this month / year

- Became an entrepreneur
- Started traveling
- Meet cool people, even one here in Chiang Mai
- Got my first organic click
- Got my first client
- Got my first affiliate sale
- Got my driver's license
- First time on my own


The client for that I did free work, for now, doesn't answer my messages anymore, I will still follow up with him weekly until he says, that he doesn't want my help.

It's a bit sad, but I think that's how business goes. Also, some dude that I met on Upwork didn't pay his invoice and I need to hire a collection agency to get my money. Just a pain in the a$$, I push that now forward for weeks, the worst part is just 50 bucks.
Probably will write him a google/linkedin review so that people know how professional he is.

Most of the time went into planning and preparing for the trip to Asia, so I didn't do anything.

To be honest I'm comfortable with having just one client. The client is an agency so it unlikely he will drop me all of a sudden.

In the long run, I want to have my own websites that bring in substantial income or even build a portfolio of them. Therefore I don't stress too much about getting new clients. I rather spend time building sites that have long-term potential.

I have many ideas for websites and plans to test the market with minimal effort to see what sticks.

SEO STRATEGIES
For the last few days, the following SEO Strategies have been on my mind, they follow all the rules of minimal effort and maximal output.

AI
Using AI for a Website was a common theme in the SEO space on Twitter but now, with the hype around GTP-3 I figured a way out how to do it myself.

Of course, using GTP-3 for your content is the bottom line quality-wise. But once the process is built it can be improved in different verticals, using a different AI, hiring Editors, or even building a database to give the AI better information about the niche.

Programmatic SEO
With Programmatic SEO you create a database of information that you use for many pages. The easiest use case is for product comparisons. You simply create a set of information of your own product, like price, size, etc, and then you do the same for all your competitors.

Now you can use the data to create a template, now you need only to switch up all the competitor information (Your brand vs. comp. 1, your brand vs. comp. 2, etc) and you are done.

Programmatic SEO comes in different forms but it follows the exact same steps.
1. Research for topics
2. Research for information
3. Creating the template
4. Publishing the pages using the template

Translation
In the normal business world, it would mean that you expand to another country. Of course, there are many questions that need to be solved before answering it but that is for another post in the future.

With the translation of your website you enable the ability the rank for the same keywords just in new country, which could mean you 2-10x your current reach.

Its simple and effective. The bottom line is that you use a tool to translate everything for you. Then you can improve everything when its gets traction or is about to get some.

About AI websites their arent that much information out there (or I'm just blind lol) but the other two are known for years.

Combining all three or even two of them is just nuts when you look at the numbers.

Let's say you make a product comparison site for laptops, you have 300 products you can list.
Now each product can be compared to 5 other products.
You also have the ability to ship the product to 5 other countries.

That's a total of 7500 pages. I will be modest and say each page can get 10 clicks a month, leading you to 75000 monthly visitors. When you have a 1% conversion rate with 20$ profit per sale. That leads you to 15K a month.

I will try all these methods to some extent over the next weeks and will share the juice with you.
I think I should start writing about SEO on my own website, is probably the best Idea

Website one
As mentioned I got my first affiliate sale, but as already know I don't have a product-market fit. I get now 1-5 clicks on my affiliate link a day but no sales. I will use the site for some testing but nothing more




When you have any questions about SEO just feel free to ask me!

 

[stefanlazar]

Hey! Thanks for sharing your story.

For people who haven't made any money yet it sounds hard to start making money, but you presented it like it was easy-peasy. Thank you for giving us hope!

Your story is very inspirational and I think that you can achieve your goal even months before your supposed deadline.

Wish you the best of luck! Keep us updated!

 

[Rörik]

Great thread, I loved reading it and am looking forward to more updates. Makes me want to do a weekly report of my own.

 

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[Mister]

Been a few weeks since the last update.

Here the revenue numbers:
May: 1.375,00 EUR
Febuary: 1.950,00 EUR
Jan: 1.437,50 EUR

I enjoyed mostly my time and explored the areas with my scooter or trained Muay Thai.
I tried to get SEO Agencys as clients but failed to lack of numbers (only send out 300 mails).

Looking back to when I started the journey, the goal was for me to grow the my site and have it as a income source.
Sadly I focused only on making money instead of uploading content.

I realised that for me the next level eighter a agency or a website portfolio is.
I choose the later, so that I dont have to deal with clients.

Luckly my work from beginning of the last year paid of, then now I have two sites that are indexed that I can use to grow.

Nr1


Nr2

I have some plans in mind to grow them. I will tell you guys more when I do so.

I got my biggest site up to 400 clicks per month but overdid it with the testing (uploaded 100 pages with just a h1) which coused it to drop.

Main page:


I will continue to work on this site and maybe I can get it to his old peek back.


After I relected what the reason is that I didnt grow my main website, I realised that I only focused on making money.
So I stated to upload daily new content (just created a bunch at one time and schedule it).

I will continue to do that and maybe in a new months I earn some money from them.
I already have a project in mind that I could use to go fastlane but for now I will focus on the easy wins.

"What you have to learn is to fold early when the odds are against you, or if you have a big edge, back it heavily because you don't get a big edge often. Opportunity comes, but it doesn't come often, so seize it when it does come." Charlie Munger

 

[Mister]

My goal is it to reach that level till the 24.04.23.

I see I missed my goal.

Uff

But I will continue down this road that I have in front of me.

I decided to stay a year in thailand and just work.

I dont have a real goal in mind, I just want to keep uploading content, building out my current and new websites.
Then the money will come on his own.

 

[Mister]

I'm the second week home in Germany because of a visa issue.

Moving out is the right choice to progress in life

- The fear of not being able to pay rent
- The control over all aspects of your day

Today is a day again where I'm just unmotivated, that's the second time in two weeks.

In Thailand, that only happened ones a month.

 

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[Mister]

Time for a report

April: 1950 Euro
May: 750 Euro
Open: 200 Euro

I'm done to 3.000 Euro from savings (Had in December last year 8k), so it's time to focus or I will fail. (Great motivation)
I plan to live on 500Euro a month in Thailand (fly back next week), so I can life survive 6 months without earning something.

I keep in my head 3 months, which should be more than enough dou.

But I need to be focused on what I will do.

I need to level up as a freelancer and will set the foundation for an agency. I will get my own clients.
I only work with agencies and it's no fun. You dont have control over how much work you have and are completely dependent on them. On top of them, you need to suck their balls so that they be happy with you and that pisses me off.

The only problem that I have is that I'm not sure I have the ability to get the client enough results so that it covers my service cost.

In my eyes, a marketing agency only works when you can produce the client +2 ROI with your services.
Because of that, I will work with 5 people for free. I decided on a niche that I'm gonna target and to which I will stick.

I already have the first one. I know I know, I shouldn't work for free but I decided it so I will stick to it.
My goal is to make them increase their revenue so much that it already covers my service cost.

Why not charge money now?
I started playing chess and you can plan your move in the same way. Here are the thing that I think will happen:

1. Get first clients
2. Get bad results
3. Make a mistake
4. Get a bad review
5. You can start from new, because no one wants to work with you

My goal is the following

1. Help 5 people for free
2. Get them amazing results, do not care about how much work it is
3. Getting with each of them better
4. Maybe converting some of them to real clients
5. Be confident enough to do outreach

I'm noticing that I talk to much, back to work.

stay hard

 

[Mister]

I also post content on twitter, my website, and here.

Maybe I should stick to one.

@Andy Black what to you think I should do?

 

[Subsonic]

Hey man, glad to see your getting somewhere.

A secret I found for getting in contact with people is to call, or better yet, show up in person.

The last one is probably unrealistic for you but calling will always be treated with more urgency. Also, if nothing else works, you can make a course on how to make 1k a month with seo and then sell it for 497€ using clickfunnels.

 

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[Andy Black]

I also post content on twitter, my website, and here.

Maybe I should stick to one.

@Andy Black what to you think I should do?

I did a quick skim to try and catch up.

You're helping local service businesses? What are you helping them with?

You said agencies are hard to work with. What about getting referrals from other freelancers and agencies who know who you help and what you help them with?

As for content marketing... my content is mostly so people referred to me can check me out. I get a few clients directly from the content, but most come from referrals.

I dropped Twitter as it felt like a content treadmill. I post occasionally to Facebook and LinkedIn. Sometimes YouTube too. It's sporadic though.

Not sure that helps...

 

[Mister]

Hey man, glad to see your getting somewhere.

A secret I found for getting in contact with people is to call, or better yet, show up in person.

The last one is probably unrealistic for you but calling will always be treated with more urgency. Also, if nothing else works, you can make a course on how to make 1k a month with seo and then sell it for 497€ using clickfunnels.

Thank you man

Had a similar experience with ppl that I meet in person. Went last year to a few local stores and offered them my help for free, 1 out of 5 accepted. Best conversation rate that I ever had
It's also a lot nicer to work with ppl when you meet them in person.

I did a quick skim to try and catch up.

You're helping local service businesses? What are you helping them with?

You said agencies are hard to work with. What about getting referrals from other freelancers and agencies who know who you help and what you help them with?

As for content marketing... my content is mostly so people referred to me can check me out. I get a few clients directly from the content, but most come from referrals.

I dropped Twitter as it felt like a content treadmill. I post occasionally to Facebook and LinkedIn. Sometimes YouTube too. It's sporadic though.

Not sure that helps...

Appricate your effort.

I focus on ecom stores and help them with their SEO.

I see working with my own clients as the next step that I need to take, to have real control and dont be dependent on my clients to get clients.

Yea it's crazy how much you need to post on Twitter to be successful there.

I think the key is just consistency, you have so much content that you build over time that even a few posts a month makes a lot over a long time

 

[Mister]

Imposter syndrome is a bitch, that you rather never touch.

Just did a mental framework that helps me to improve myself (will share it in a sec).

I wanted to figure out why I have a fear of charging money for my services.
The truth is that there is no real reason, I'm just too afraid of failure and the responsibility if I F*ck up.

But then I just took a quick look at which campaigns or clients I worked with till now. One is now hitting its high session and did last week alone 20k.
Another is a brand that got sold for 7 figures recently, and I'm sure there make a similar amount of money.

All of these were clients of clients, but I did the work, so as long I dont do any dumb stuff, I will deliver a good service.

 

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[Mister]

It is a few months since the last update.

Currently, I make 1500-1300 in revenue, and after expenses and taxes, I get 750 Euro out.

I currently life of 750 Euro month so need to worry for me.

Also don't want to leave Thailand which is a nice motivation

Till the last time, I picked up two new clients and lost one.

One is my first own SEO client (before that I worked for a agency), which already grows well and hopefully get to 7k a month in the next two months



The other one is a marketing agency, and I write their blog. I met the CEO, and it's more like a SEO PhD, so basically a training.

Already learned a few things by reverse engineering their Google sheets.

I'm a bit concerned because I didn't have contact with him for over a month (Invoice not paid).

I also have the feeling that the other writer already quit, but I'm willing to do the extra work even when it's not paid well.

What's next?
I dont see how I can onboard new clients because I dont have the experience to charge a lot of money, which leaves just me working on the project and I'm already at 80% capacity.

I invested some money into one of my sites, which already made me 100$ in commission in it's lifetime.

So I'm pretty sure I can get the site running to the point where it makes some good money.

Now I just need to write like crazy and hopefully in 10 months I hit the 10k a month mark.

I check out one of MJ's post and there are just golden: GOLD! - MINDSET - 8 Steps That Will Radically Change Your Life in 30 Days or Less, Guaranteed.

To get to my goal, I will need to write 4 affiliate articles a month, the one for my client and do the other work for the client.

I will just write every day and try to make at least on a month.

Maybe I will post here more but when you want to see more you can check out my twitter: https://twitter.com/_MSTRY_

 

[Mister]

Update

I lost the client because I was lazy AF. Absolutely my fault and I changed my mindset.

Now, I work with an Agency together and focus heavily on building my websites and using code to do so. With that, I mean using it for programmatic websites or directory type of websites. Which is for me more fascinating then sitting down for 6 months and writing every day for 4 hours an article.

I'm currently building site number three for this year and have a lot planned for this year.

Overall I focus on my own sites for
1. To make money with them and make my main income out of it
2. I get more experience
3. Can use them to create content
4. I have fun building things

I will keep you updated on stuff that I do.