Hi,
My name is Travis and I'm 22 years old. I just graduated from university and have started my Fastlane Life. I have been browsing the Fastlane Forum for a while and loved The Millionaire Fastlane book. My expertise is in SEO / Online Marketing. I just recently began making 12k+/month in online scalable income.
Here's a bit of history about me, where I came from and how I have arrived where I am now:
----------------------------------------
I grew up in a very low income abusive household. I remember eating spoonfuls of peanut butter for dinner and hiding in my room while my parents would argue and physically abuse each other. When I was 7 I was taken away from my family to live with my Aunt/Uncle in NC for several years. I owe a lot of my development to my Aunt & Uncle. They taught me to strive for excellence, helped me get rid of my temper, and gave me much needed TLC. Furthermore, they were both tech savvy and taught me a lot about computers.
I moved back in with my Mom in SC after I turned 12 and she had gotten out of prison and a job. At this point, I was obsessed with the game, Age of Empires, and anime. I created my first website at 12 (here is what my first website looked like: My first site you can enter and see me posting updates if you highlight the text haha). I remember seeing some of the traffic stats and noticing that my friend and I would receive over 1k unique visitors a day. Of course, we had no idea how to monetize it back then. From 12-15, all I did was play Age of Empires, study and make websites for fun.
At 15, it no longer became cool to play games and watch anime. So I got into sports - wrestling and soccer. I also got into lifting weights, bodybuilding and girls. I also got my first job working at Subway to pay for my first car (95 Honda Accord with 200k miles
).
I got into online marketing when I was a senior in college. The spark was triggered prom my senior year. I didn't have a date for prom so I stayed home while my friends were having a good time. I went down the rabbit hole of personal development blogs and stumbled across an article by Steve Pavlina about passive income. I never heard this concept before and it seemed to resonate with what I wanted in life - to separate time from money.
Shortly after, I got into adsense (still make about $100/month off of that, but it was not worth the effort), affiliate marketing (that's where I made a lot of money) and eventually having my own SEO Company.
By freshman year in college I was making 2k a month in affiliate marketing.
While I made decent money for a college student as an affiliate marketer, I knew that I needed to do something else to step that up to the next level. That's when I got into Craigslist scamming. This is probably the lowest I've been in life. I was too focused on chasing money that I had no regard for providing value or helping people. Instead, I manipulated and scammed people for me to make money. With craigslist scamming, I had reached 5-6k a month in additional income.
One day, I began bragging to one of my roommates about what I was doing. He is an entrepreneur. He started a Car Detailing business in Boston and went to school in South Carolina. After I finished explaining to him what I was doing, he told me "Congratulations, you steal money from dumb people." He was right, and I felt like shit after he put it to me like that. I had convinced people to buy shit they didn't want and was nearly impossible to cancel (such as Acai Berry free trials). Congratulations, I had provided no value to people and was succeeding in making the world a shittier place.
No more Craigslist scamming. From this point forward, I was determined to provide value and make money by giving people what they needed. I learned a lot from my roommate, and decided to use my SEO skills to help him start a Car Detailing business while he was in school. I quickly ranked him #1 for all car detailing/auto detailing/car wash keywords for the city we went to school. He was getting enough business to hire full-time employees. He paid me monthly for SEO services. I was happy and so was he. This is when I knew that this was the type of business I wanted to do.
Providing SEO services on a monthly retainer was good income for me, but this business model still tied me to doing a service. However, the best thing about having good SEO skills is that you can apply it to any niche. I didn't mind doing SEO for people because it gave me opportunity to improve my skills. I knew that I would always be making money online, and therefore would always need to have good SEO skills.
All of my SEO clients came to me because I created a site ranked for SEO in my city. During this time I was still doing affiliate marketing, but I realized that there was not enough control in this business. I invested time ranking for top affiliate terms and sometimes after I finally started seeing the results, the offer would be dropped. One day, I received a call from someone looking for SEO services.
This phone call changed everything.
The guy calling owned a local Service (I won't say exactly what this service is) company. He wanted to know if I considered myself an "SEO Expert." Of course I am. Then he wanted to meet up and talk with me about a big business idea. I agreed, but I had a lot of doubts.
I'm glad I gave this guy a chance though. He had accidentally stumbled across a goldmine. People were calling him from other areas he didn't serve looking for this service. Rather than ignore the calls, he decided to make money off of them buy giving a quote and finding a company to do the work cheaper. He approached me looking for someone to get him more business for brokering in SC/NC/GA.
If all he had to do was answer a phone call, then what's stopping him from going anywhere in the U.S.? He thought about it and realized that there are no borders for this model. I proceeded to create two websites that rank for "Service city, st" for thousands of cities. He pays me per phone call.
Now it's been 6 months since I received the phone call asking if I were an SEO Expert. He has 15 employees answering the phone all day. The two sites continue to climb in rankings everyday.
I'm currently in the stage of fastlane growth. Since I graduated with a statistics degree, I've had time to go fulltime on this. At the start of summer, I was making 3k a month on this business. This month I've made 12k+.
----------------------------
Where I plan to be:
I plan to milk this niche for what's it's worth. I anticipate making 20-25k a month by the end of this year. The next step is to move on to other niches and use the broker model to monetize it (I already have several ideas).
Problems along the way:
Overcoming my past definitely was a huge barrier holding me back. I grew up around scarcity. However, my Aunt and Uncle taught me to be the best I could be. Instead of letting my past hold me back, it became motivation to succeed. It's not about the hand you are dealt, but how you play your cards.
The next problem was going into business with my best friend. I decided to bring in a partner on this service brokering business. I agreed to split 50/50 until we decided whether we would officially want to partner on this. He's a hard worker, smart and creative. However, I hired him because he was my friend, not because he was qualified to work in this business. Several months in, I had to end the partnership because he didn't bring the company forward. I had depended on him to take care of on-page work, but ended up having to do a lot of it myself. It was the hardest thing to do, because seeing your best friend break down and cry is one of the toughest things to see. However, keeping emotions aside, it had to be done. Him being in the partnership didn't improve the bottom line, and him leaving hasn't affected it. Don't go to business with friends.
Another problem I ran into was an issue with diversification. I started with 1 site, and put all of my effort into that site. This was great, because income was growing rapidly each month. However, I was too aggressive with linking and found my way into the sandbox. To see your income go from growing over 3k a month to 0 overnight really sucked. That's when I realized I needed to diversify. I used other methods to promote the site while it was sandboxed that didn't rely on search engines, I kept working to get it out of the sandbox, and I created a new site. I used more conservative link building approaches on the new site, and eventually my first site came out of the sandbox. Now I have 2 sites in the top 10 for thousands of search terms
.
The most important problem that I had to overcome was to not chase money. Growing up in poverty made me believe that money was everything. I had to do anything to get it. This mentality caused me to do stuff I didn't enjoy (make money off my body), scam people, and not provide value. The shift from making money to providing value has brought me to closer to Financial Freedom.
What are my Goals for Joining the Fastlane Forum?
I joined because there are so many people to relate to on this forum. I enjoy reading success stories and seeing how other people are making their way. I hope that I can share ways to help others in whatever way I can and I hope to gain more motivation to chase my dream of being a millionaire by the age of 25.
Thanks MJ for writing the Millionaire Fastlane and thank you to Fastlane Forum for creating such a cultivating environment for entrepreneurs.
-Travis
My name is Travis and I'm 22 years old. I just graduated from university and have started my Fastlane Life. I have been browsing the Fastlane Forum for a while and loved The Millionaire Fastlane book. My expertise is in SEO / Online Marketing. I just recently began making 12k+/month in online scalable income.
Here's a bit of history about me, where I came from and how I have arrived where I am now:
----------------------------------------
I grew up in a very low income abusive household. I remember eating spoonfuls of peanut butter for dinner and hiding in my room while my parents would argue and physically abuse each other. When I was 7 I was taken away from my family to live with my Aunt/Uncle in NC for several years. I owe a lot of my development to my Aunt & Uncle. They taught me to strive for excellence, helped me get rid of my temper, and gave me much needed TLC. Furthermore, they were both tech savvy and taught me a lot about computers.
I moved back in with my Mom in SC after I turned 12 and she had gotten out of prison and a job. At this point, I was obsessed with the game, Age of Empires, and anime. I created my first website at 12 (here is what my first website looked like: My first site you can enter and see me posting updates if you highlight the text haha). I remember seeing some of the traffic stats and noticing that my friend and I would receive over 1k unique visitors a day. Of course, we had no idea how to monetize it back then. From 12-15, all I did was play Age of Empires, study and make websites for fun.
At 15, it no longer became cool to play games and watch anime. So I got into sports - wrestling and soccer. I also got into lifting weights, bodybuilding and girls. I also got my first job working at Subway to pay for my first car (95 Honda Accord with 200k miles
).I got into online marketing when I was a senior in college. The spark was triggered prom my senior year. I didn't have a date for prom so I stayed home while my friends were having a good time. I went down the rabbit hole of personal development blogs and stumbled across an article by Steve Pavlina about passive income. I never heard this concept before and it seemed to resonate with what I wanted in life - to separate time from money.
Shortly after, I got into adsense (still make about $100/month off of that, but it was not worth the effort), affiliate marketing (that's where I made a lot of money) and eventually having my own SEO Company.
By freshman year in college I was making 2k a month in affiliate marketing.
While I made decent money for a college student as an affiliate marketer, I knew that I needed to do something else to step that up to the next level. That's when I got into Craigslist scamming. This is probably the lowest I've been in life. I was too focused on chasing money that I had no regard for providing value or helping people. Instead, I manipulated and scammed people for me to make money. With craigslist scamming, I had reached 5-6k a month in additional income.
One day, I began bragging to one of my roommates about what I was doing. He is an entrepreneur. He started a Car Detailing business in Boston and went to school in South Carolina. After I finished explaining to him what I was doing, he told me "Congratulations, you steal money from dumb people." He was right, and I felt like shit after he put it to me like that. I had convinced people to buy shit they didn't want and was nearly impossible to cancel (such as Acai Berry free trials). Congratulations, I had provided no value to people and was succeeding in making the world a shittier place.
No more Craigslist scamming. From this point forward, I was determined to provide value and make money by giving people what they needed. I learned a lot from my roommate, and decided to use my SEO skills to help him start a Car Detailing business while he was in school. I quickly ranked him #1 for all car detailing/auto detailing/car wash keywords for the city we went to school. He was getting enough business to hire full-time employees. He paid me monthly for SEO services. I was happy and so was he. This is when I knew that this was the type of business I wanted to do.
Providing SEO services on a monthly retainer was good income for me, but this business model still tied me to doing a service. However, the best thing about having good SEO skills is that you can apply it to any niche. I didn't mind doing SEO for people because it gave me opportunity to improve my skills. I knew that I would always be making money online, and therefore would always need to have good SEO skills.
All of my SEO clients came to me because I created a site ranked for SEO in my city. During this time I was still doing affiliate marketing, but I realized that there was not enough control in this business. I invested time ranking for top affiliate terms and sometimes after I finally started seeing the results, the offer would be dropped. One day, I received a call from someone looking for SEO services.
This phone call changed everything.
The guy calling owned a local Service (I won't say exactly what this service is) company. He wanted to know if I considered myself an "SEO Expert." Of course I am. Then he wanted to meet up and talk with me about a big business idea. I agreed, but I had a lot of doubts.
I'm glad I gave this guy a chance though. He had accidentally stumbled across a goldmine. People were calling him from other areas he didn't serve looking for this service. Rather than ignore the calls, he decided to make money off of them buy giving a quote and finding a company to do the work cheaper. He approached me looking for someone to get him more business for brokering in SC/NC/GA.
If all he had to do was answer a phone call, then what's stopping him from going anywhere in the U.S.? He thought about it and realized that there are no borders for this model. I proceeded to create two websites that rank for "Service city, st" for thousands of cities. He pays me per phone call.
Now it's been 6 months since I received the phone call asking if I were an SEO Expert. He has 15 employees answering the phone all day. The two sites continue to climb in rankings everyday.
I'm currently in the stage of fastlane growth. Since I graduated with a statistics degree, I've had time to go fulltime on this. At the start of summer, I was making 3k a month on this business. This month I've made 12k+.
----------------------------
Where I plan to be:
I plan to milk this niche for what's it's worth. I anticipate making 20-25k a month by the end of this year. The next step is to move on to other niches and use the broker model to monetize it (I already have several ideas).
Problems along the way:
Overcoming my past definitely was a huge barrier holding me back. I grew up around scarcity. However, my Aunt and Uncle taught me to be the best I could be. Instead of letting my past hold me back, it became motivation to succeed. It's not about the hand you are dealt, but how you play your cards.
The next problem was going into business with my best friend. I decided to bring in a partner on this service brokering business. I agreed to split 50/50 until we decided whether we would officially want to partner on this. He's a hard worker, smart and creative. However, I hired him because he was my friend, not because he was qualified to work in this business. Several months in, I had to end the partnership because he didn't bring the company forward. I had depended on him to take care of on-page work, but ended up having to do a lot of it myself. It was the hardest thing to do, because seeing your best friend break down and cry is one of the toughest things to see. However, keeping emotions aside, it had to be done. Him being in the partnership didn't improve the bottom line, and him leaving hasn't affected it. Don't go to business with friends.
Another problem I ran into was an issue with diversification. I started with 1 site, and put all of my effort into that site. This was great, because income was growing rapidly each month. However, I was too aggressive with linking and found my way into the sandbox. To see your income go from growing over 3k a month to 0 overnight really sucked. That's when I realized I needed to diversify. I used other methods to promote the site while it was sandboxed that didn't rely on search engines, I kept working to get it out of the sandbox, and I created a new site. I used more conservative link building approaches on the new site, and eventually my first site came out of the sandbox. Now I have 2 sites in the top 10 for thousands of search terms
. The most important problem that I had to overcome was to not chase money. Growing up in poverty made me believe that money was everything. I had to do anything to get it. This mentality caused me to do stuff I didn't enjoy (make money off my body), scam people, and not provide value. The shift from making money to providing value has brought me to closer to Financial Freedom.
What are my Goals for Joining the Fastlane Forum?
I joined because there are so many people to relate to on this forum. I enjoy reading success stories and seeing how other people are making their way. I hope that I can share ways to help others in whatever way I can and I hope to gain more motivation to chase my dream of being a millionaire by the age of 25.
Thanks MJ for writing the Millionaire Fastlane and thank you to Fastlane Forum for creating such a cultivating environment for entrepreneurs.
-Travis
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