Hi everyone,
I've been reading through this forum for the last past week and decided I wanted to join and get involved due to the fact that I almost lost sight of my dreams...
To provide a little background on me. About 4-5 years ago, I was jobless and in college finishing up a degree in management information systems. I wanted to create a money tree of my own, so I read and read a bunch of books on seo, and started my first blog the summer of 2009. Within a year I made my first paycheck from that blog... $110 bucks!
It was through google adsense, the cash had been piling up for almost a year (pennies a day). After I received that first paycheck, things changed in my mind. I knew now that I could really make money online.
The months that proceeded I started making more and more. For the next couple months I made $300, then $500, then $800, then $1,000. By year two of owning my blog, I was making $1,000/a month from my blog, had grown a huge following via twitter and facebook.
By mid second year I was making $2,000 a month. Soon my blog started to push about 20,000 page views a day when my blog got picked up by a private advertising network. My life changed again once this happened. First month of being on the network, I made $10,000 as well as the preceeding next two months. Then my income dropped to $3,000-4,000. The drop was due to the fact that when I signed on, it was the holidays and that's when advertisers had the most spending budgets.
Even though I was making only $3-4k, I found other ways of making extra cash. I sold ticket events from my site and racked in another two months of $10k from just selling tickets to events.
Since November of last year of me joining this private network I started to see a great income from my blog, where in the beginning I was working on my site day in day out (16 hours a day), and now I only work on it 1 hour a day and still get 4-6k income/monthly.
My blog dominates the search engine for every keyword and only needs a new post once every 2 days or so... but that's only the good stuff...:sigh:
The day I got accepted into the private network, I was interviewing for jobs because I was about to graduate. I landed a great job that was gonna pay me $60k yearly, so I accepted.
January of this year I started my new corp job and relocated to a entire different state. My thought process was, "$60k + online income = AWESOME!"
It was awesome for a little while though...
I bought myself a Lexus IS 250 cash, and got a nice bachelor pad in Vienna, Virginia costing me $2300/month, dumbest thing I think I've done. I didn't know anybody in Virginia, so I couldn't room with anyone. So I had to grab a place to myself, but still $2300 is a mortgage payment from where I'm from, originally from Miami, Florida.
My paychecks from my corp job literally paid for me to live here in Virginia. Food, rent, bills...
6 months into the corp life, I realized how good I had it before I came into the workforce. My energy was getting sucked up into mundane tasks that I had to do at work, my productivity dropped because I was always tired when I got home, and the ideas stop coming in on ways to improve the blog. All I was thinking was this career and how much I hated it. It was right in the alley of my degree I got, but everything seems much more exciting and interesting in the books than when your actually there when it comes to corp. life.
but... that's not the only thing, people's mindset in corp environment is like robots and drones. Everybody is comfortable with their life and with a cushony entry salary like mine... I could see why people stay for the hell of it.
I even started living in that reality, I wanted to get some certificates that would increase my salary and everything... My life went from great to miserable. I made $100k+ this year, but mentally and in my soul my dreams were dying.
I coined the word one day when I was talking with some of my enlightened friends, "Let me call you back, I got to start heading out to the dream killing factory". That's exactly what it is.
So by the 6 month I started studying for this certificate in my career and just kept saving the money I got from my online income since, I barely had time to invest it back into my business.
I put about 12k into facebook.... (-_-... yeah we know where that went)
Learned my lesson there, now I just stack money in my investment account...
So here I am now, read this book somewhere in the first 6 months of working at my job and loved it! Decided to finally come visit the forum and saw the bank statement post. Went to the bank statement guy's facebook page and read his statement as well as all his posts on there... sat in my apartment chair thinking how did I stray so far from what I had built up for 4 years with enjoyment, to being miserable with a dumb corp job and my blog at a stand still....?
This is when I realized... everything I've worked for so much, everything I've read, everything I planned for had gotten shifted by my decision to come into corp america. I wanted to live that lifestyle of making my own money, I liked waking up when ever I wanted, and working hard for 16 hours straight on MY business that makes me money while I sleep now, I love not having to do dumb shit for other people, I love working on my own f*cking terms...
So with that said, I'll be moving back to Florida once my one year lease is up to live with my parents for 2 months until my two best friends lease is up, then I will be moving to orlando to live with them, and from there grow my business into what I have been trying to do for four years now.
Some are probably asking why move to orlando?
1) moving in with my parents is great and all for cost, but I can't live with my parents in my ear about everything.
2) rent will be divided by 3, and housing in orlando is relatively cheap for a great place.
3) my best friend is a programmer, he wants to get involved in the online money, I could definitely use someone like him around. Guidance on hiring programmers and help when ever I need help with coding issues.
4) Just good company. These two friends are the only ones that have stuck around and support me.
So with that said you now know a little more about me and I hope I can contribute to this forum.
PS: I grew my site with out ever putting a cent into PPC, so building site traffic can be done without spending boat loads of money, you just have to adapt to Google's game of chess and figure out different platforms to drive traffic to your site.
I know this post is somewhat lengthy, but I think it's easier for people to know me and get me, once they know a little about me.
I've been reading through this forum for the last past week and decided I wanted to join and get involved due to the fact that I almost lost sight of my dreams...
To provide a little background on me. About 4-5 years ago, I was jobless and in college finishing up a degree in management information systems. I wanted to create a money tree of my own, so I read and read a bunch of books on seo, and started my first blog the summer of 2009. Within a year I made my first paycheck from that blog... $110 bucks!
It was through google adsense, the cash had been piling up for almost a year (pennies a day). After I received that first paycheck, things changed in my mind. I knew now that I could really make money online.
The months that proceeded I started making more and more. For the next couple months I made $300, then $500, then $800, then $1,000. By year two of owning my blog, I was making $1,000/a month from my blog, had grown a huge following via twitter and facebook.
By mid second year I was making $2,000 a month. Soon my blog started to push about 20,000 page views a day when my blog got picked up by a private advertising network. My life changed again once this happened. First month of being on the network, I made $10,000 as well as the preceeding next two months. Then my income dropped to $3,000-4,000. The drop was due to the fact that when I signed on, it was the holidays and that's when advertisers had the most spending budgets.
Even though I was making only $3-4k, I found other ways of making extra cash. I sold ticket events from my site and racked in another two months of $10k from just selling tickets to events.
Since November of last year of me joining this private network I started to see a great income from my blog, where in the beginning I was working on my site day in day out (16 hours a day), and now I only work on it 1 hour a day and still get 4-6k income/monthly.
My blog dominates the search engine for every keyword and only needs a new post once every 2 days or so... but that's only the good stuff...:sigh:
The day I got accepted into the private network, I was interviewing for jobs because I was about to graduate. I landed a great job that was gonna pay me $60k yearly, so I accepted.
January of this year I started my new corp job and relocated to a entire different state. My thought process was, "$60k + online income = AWESOME!"
It was awesome for a little while though...
I bought myself a Lexus IS 250 cash, and got a nice bachelor pad in Vienna, Virginia costing me $2300/month, dumbest thing I think I've done. I didn't know anybody in Virginia, so I couldn't room with anyone. So I had to grab a place to myself, but still $2300 is a mortgage payment from where I'm from, originally from Miami, Florida.
My paychecks from my corp job literally paid for me to live here in Virginia. Food, rent, bills...
6 months into the corp life, I realized how good I had it before I came into the workforce. My energy was getting sucked up into mundane tasks that I had to do at work, my productivity dropped because I was always tired when I got home, and the ideas stop coming in on ways to improve the blog. All I was thinking was this career and how much I hated it. It was right in the alley of my degree I got, but everything seems much more exciting and interesting in the books than when your actually there when it comes to corp. life.
but... that's not the only thing, people's mindset in corp environment is like robots and drones. Everybody is comfortable with their life and with a cushony entry salary like mine... I could see why people stay for the hell of it.
I even started living in that reality, I wanted to get some certificates that would increase my salary and everything... My life went from great to miserable. I made $100k+ this year, but mentally and in my soul my dreams were dying.
I coined the word one day when I was talking with some of my enlightened friends, "Let me call you back, I got to start heading out to the dream killing factory". That's exactly what it is.
So by the 6 month I started studying for this certificate in my career and just kept saving the money I got from my online income since, I barely had time to invest it back into my business.
I put about 12k into facebook.... (-_-... yeah we know where that went)
Learned my lesson there, now I just stack money in my investment account...
So here I am now, read this book somewhere in the first 6 months of working at my job and loved it! Decided to finally come visit the forum and saw the bank statement post. Went to the bank statement guy's facebook page and read his statement as well as all his posts on there... sat in my apartment chair thinking how did I stray so far from what I had built up for 4 years with enjoyment, to being miserable with a dumb corp job and my blog at a stand still....?
This is when I realized... everything I've worked for so much, everything I've read, everything I planned for had gotten shifted by my decision to come into corp america. I wanted to live that lifestyle of making my own money, I liked waking up when ever I wanted, and working hard for 16 hours straight on MY business that makes me money while I sleep now, I love not having to do dumb shit for other people, I love working on my own f*cking terms...
So with that said, I'll be moving back to Florida once my one year lease is up to live with my parents for 2 months until my two best friends lease is up, then I will be moving to orlando to live with them, and from there grow my business into what I have been trying to do for four years now.
Some are probably asking why move to orlando?
1) moving in with my parents is great and all for cost, but I can't live with my parents in my ear about everything.
2) rent will be divided by 3, and housing in orlando is relatively cheap for a great place.
3) my best friend is a programmer, he wants to get involved in the online money, I could definitely use someone like him around. Guidance on hiring programmers and help when ever I need help with coding issues.
4) Just good company. These two friends are the only ones that have stuck around and support me.
So with that said you now know a little more about me and I hope I can contribute to this forum.
PS: I grew my site with out ever putting a cent into PPC, so building site traffic can be done without spending boat loads of money, you just have to adapt to Google's game of chess and figure out different platforms to drive traffic to your site.
I know this post is somewhat lengthy, but I think it's easier for people to know me and get me, once they know a little about me.
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