Hey everyone, I hope that this is relevant to this topic. If not, please recommend somewhere it would be more suitable. I've come to a point in my 'internet marketing career' that I'd like to reflect on my experiences for the sake of my enjoyment and hopefully to the benefit of other people. Finding out about SEO/Online Marketing I didn't really know what I wanted to do during my final year at high school. I'm fairly bright but everything at school basically bored me, and I never really did any work. I ended up getting 68% for my total final exams (the ones which are used for university admission), which was about 2% above the state average. One of my best friends whom I always sat next to in class had a laptop, and would always be looking at digitalpoint and various other marketing/seo stuff, which I would ask him questions about and tend to focus on since I didn't really care about the work our class was doing. Anyway, after school finished last year, I didn't apply for any universities since I was keen to do some internet marketing by myself. My 'Internet Marketing Career' Begins So I got a bit excited and started registering domains like crazy - without doing any sort of keyword research or niche research, I just thought of a topic i.e bathrooms and registered some terrible spammy domains with dashes and all. At the time, I was pretty excited and oblivious about my decision. So I start developing some content, set up Adsense and sit there anticipating the cash to start rolling in. First day - 50 cents. I was over the moon! I kept developing my domains, learning more SEO through ebooks and forums (mainly digitalpoint) and soon enough the daily revenue was at about 90 cents a day. As long as I was making more per month, I was happy and felt like I was making progress. My Career Starts Crumbling Anyway, around March or so, I started becoming a bit bummed. I loved SEO and all, but I started becoming really demotivated about content development since it was in niches I didn't really care about or was interested in. Also, my family, friends and especially my girlfriend started to become very skeptical of my 'career choice'. They would always be cracking jokes about how I spend my hard-earnt 70 cents a day. Come April, I started applying around SEO/SEM firms in Sydney - I didn't get any responses of interest. Not too encouraging. My First Official SEO Firm Employment I didn't really get up to too much work around May, then suddenly, one of the firms I applied at contacted me with interest. They were impressed by my utilage of SEO via my Adsense sites, and they wanted me to write up an SEO/Competitor analysis on one of their sites to further demonstrate my knowledge. I wrote up a pretty comprehensive and detailed report, and the director of the firm was really impressed. We met up and discussed the opportunities he has available for me - managing one of his affiliate marketing sites. I was really excited since I didn't know much about affiliate marketing, except for how potentially rich it can make you . So my manager proposed a $500 'trial' contract for the first month to see how I perform, then he would consider increasing it to $1000 for the following month if I reached target objectives etc. Pretty shocking pay I thought, but it was a big step from my $1 a day Adsense at least hahaha. My Job Performance My target for that month was to hit $3000 in revenue from the website. I hit $4400, and my employer was still only content on paying me $1000 for the next month. Well, I wasn't too pleased about that since I performed well over expectation, and I basically sent him an email saying that I'll be leaving to pursue my own affiliate marketing (since I had learnt a lot already working on the site) unless I receive better pay. My negotiation was successful, and he accepted my proposal of a fixed percentage of the total revenue the site earns. So June has been my first month working on this new contract, and it's been great. I exceeded target revenue again, which was great since as mentioned, I receive a fixed percentage of earnings. This month I earnt $1500, and according to the projected and target revenue for the site, I should be on about $5000 a month by early next year. Even better, I get to work from home. By the way, since I've been working practically solely on my employer's site, I have not been focusing on my Adsense at all. I'm proud to say that after leaving my sites untouched for almost 2 months, they've finally accumulated my first $100! via adsense. What are my future plans? I'm content about saving some earnings for possibly one of my own, solo affiliate ventures somewhere down the track. If I were to summarise some essential lessons for people, based on my own experiences, they would be: Main Lessons I've Learnt Make mistakes. I believe that there's no better way to learn something and gain valuable experience than learning from your mistakes. I've made plenty, plenty on which I definately won't be going back on again. Money does not convert to SEO and Marketing knowledge anywhere as near as time and dedication do. You may feel like you've achieved something buying a $50 e-book, but you aren't going to learn from it while it's sitting there unopened in your desktop. Keep on reading up, developing and experimenting. Being in a solid financial situation, or having the support of your friends and family is essential. Generally, you won't see the kind of returns big enough to support your mortgage, car or life after a fair long while. Quit your day job if it's a possibility, or dedicate almost all your leisure time to learning. I believe if you're only in for it as a small time hobby, the online marketplace and seo algorythms will change faster than you can keep up! You're never going to go backwards in progress. Some opportunities and results will come faster to others than some. Even my Adsense came incredibly slow - I was always so (and still am) impressed about people earning $3 a day or so on their first day of running Adsense. But I almost always had motivation, and kept driving on, absorbing knowledge and looking for chances to excel. Find someone with the same specific interests as you (e.g Adsense, Copywriting, Affiliate Marketing) and chat to them frequently. Having a friend of mine in the same field of SEO as I is really encouraging and knowledgable, as you can bounce ideas off each other and brainstorm. Share ideas and little things you find out along the way and it's almost like doubling your progress. That's it for now, I'm pretty buggered and tired. If anything else comes to mind, I'll edit the post and ad it. Well, I hope everyone enjoyed my story, Thanks DigitalPoint for getting me this far! Mike
Reading this part i thought it was my own post lol. Yeah my friend was surfing digital point forums one day and asked what it was about (i'm a big forum buff) and was very interested in what i discovered. Also finished year12 last year and currently at uni. My aim in life is to work for myself and i'm hoping internet marketing is the answer. By the way, Nice post, and story. It sounds like you will become even more successful.
Thanks Mike, good post. I especially agree with the part about making mistakes. It is going to happen in the sooner you make them the faster you can get onto being successful.
Hey mike interesting post, im also from sydney and didnt even bother doing my HSC, I went to st lukes in dee why? maybe youve heard of it. Anyway I left school and worked numerous jobs and finally started looking at marketing. I enrolled in a Business Marketing Dip. at TAFE and yeah its great man. From there you can move on to uni with credit points and study emarketing, thats my plan at least. I rekon having a crack at TAFE marketing if you want to further your education, its great fun. Good luck
I considered it, but don't really need it at the moment. I'm gaining lots of satisfaction being self-made so far and I plan to keep it that way - if It ever slumps, I'll probably consider enrolling.
Hello I really appreciate your post ! it made me feel better, gave me some positive emotion and widen the sky Actually, as I knew it, not only me has gone through that experience, buying domains like crazy... ( bought more then 200 in 6 months ) and gaining few cents a day... Also, I am a lazy student, for the simple reason, nothing exciting me in this IT ( even I am the one who choose it ) but now after a push from all the teachers and university stuff, I am doing my thesis about Internet marketing where I felt this subject could be mine... and I am happy feeling that I am going in the right way... I am still in your stage where I did not even yet applied to some job... because I am having one already but not into search engine marketing... I will keep your post in mind and if you have a blog, please PM it ! thank you Ben ( Finland )
Hey Ben, Thanks a lot I appreciate that you liked my post. Sorry to say but I don't have my own personal or seo blog - you asking for it has motivated me however! I'll PM you if I ever get around to making one.
they say that most people who succeed only do so because they have failed more times then anyone else. If you dont try you cant succeed.
Inspiring post bro! Thanks for sharing your journey. I learned a lot from it. Mistakes aren't the reason or the cause for you to stop trying but to keep you worth trying.