Running a Real Holiday: Journaling 135 Days of Joyful Vacation

December 3rd 2014 - Day 49

Last night I tried to be a hero and migrate 3 sites over to Digital Ocean myself despite having 0 linux experience. I gave up at 4am while NGINX was failing to restart after I tried to configure a virtual host so I could add more domains. Unmanaged hosting isn't the answer for me right now.

This spontaneous decision was made after Dreamhost - who I got a black Friday deal on, was taking hours to answer support inquiries. They also told me I needed to use SSH to migrate my .sql backup. My thought process went like this: If I need to learn how to use SSH, I might as well dive into everything. I think I did pretty well, but there's no way staying on an unmanaged server won't distract me from more important things, like it did over the last 24 hours...

Anyway, I wrote up my first outreach attempt for operation user content. He was last active on the site 2 days ago, so I might have to wait a little bit for a response. I need to figure out my hosting situation tonight. I'm tempted to get off shared hosting, but I'm not sure if it's a wise financial decision right now.

It's been two really late nights in a row. Hoping I have some time tonight to regroup and get back into planning my most important tasks. I'm working longer the last 48 hours, but less actual work is being done.

86 days left
 


Staccs said:
Last night I tried to be a hero and migrate 3 sites over to Digital Ocean myself despite having 0 linux experience. I gave up at 4am while NGINX was failing to restart after I tried to configure a virtual host so I could add more domains. Unmanaged hosting isn't the answer for me right now.
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Oh... Read this, from Enlightened:

Meatytreats said:
  1. You are your biggest asset!
  2. You need to identify your strengths and your weaknesses.
Now these two go hand in hand because YOU can either maximize your success or hinder it. What I mean is; if you don’t know what your good at and what you’re not good at, then you may find yourself doing shit that is simply counterproductive. Anyone that has been at this game long enough knows what I am talking about.


  1. Spending 3 hours on a logo or a script, that you could have paid $25 bucks for.
  2. Writing content or sales copy when your skill set is lacking in that department
  3. Setting up websites or doing server shit when you don’t know what you’re doing
The list goes on and on and every one of these things is huge momentum killer. It is the bottleneck that prevents you from reaching your goal faster. It’s the part of the game that frustrates you. It’s the haze that forms on top of your clear vision! There are people out there that specialize in this shit. Let them do it!
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:xmas-smiley-022:



.
 
December 4th 2014 - Day 50

Thanks for the reminder @golan. I was hinting at that concept in my post, but I think I can apply it broader. My strong point for this project is clearly content creation which can be a very advantageous strength to have.

Instead of spending time trying to learn wtf I'm doing when it comes to link building I should be creating really, really good content, then reaching out to get other bloggers to share it. I should let my content build my links.

I've been publishing quality stuff thus far, but I haven't given anybody a reason to share it. I'm doing a lot of blog commenting - I should be writing 1-2 posts a week based off of the posts I am leaving comments on. Then reaching out to them becomes much easier: "Hey Blogger25, I left a comment on your post about Red Widgets earlier in the week but I your post inspired me to expand on my thoughts further. I just wrote a blog post on the same concept you introduced here - mysite.com/link."

I'm going to write a piece tomorrow based off of a post I commented on last week. It's an authority my industry, so if I can get even a social share out of it the effects should be big.

I'm also waiting on a response from the community PM I sent. If I don't get a response by Monday I'll send out another one. Eventually I think I can start sending 3-4 of these a week. If I convert on 50% that's 2 piece of original content being posted each week that I only have to edit, not write from scratch.

I didn't do much to move this project forward today. Christmas is coming and I have short-term work to do in order to give what I want to give. I'm not going to let that sabotage this project, but it's possible I have to trade another day or two.

I am excited about what's coming up, but I've still got a ways to go to make the remaining 63% of this project better than the first 37%.

85 days left
 
Stacc's last minute response had me on the edge of my seat today. Bravo!

Yesterday he delivered a classic line of "Hoping I have some time tonight to regroup and get back into planning" - getting back to planning - I lost my shit reading that.

Now tonight, Christmas is coming so it's time to take it easy, go get a job, so he can buy gifts by spending money he doesn't have - wow.

This is best troll ever. No matter how hard I try, every night I sit here waiting for Staccs to deliver today's troll, and without fail, he's done it successfully. Trolling is an art, and Staccs has continued to push the boundaries of the art. Bravo!
 
December 5th 2014 - Day 51

Worked on a bigger post in response to a comment I left. It's a list, so I compiled all the relevant items I'm going to go into detail about. Wrote the intro and got the structure laid out. I'm pretty confident this is going to be positively received.

I will be able to finish the writing by the end of tomorrow. I'm debating monetizing this post because affiliate links/buy now CTAs would actually provide value. I'll decide + set up all the aff links after the post is completed.

I'm off to workout now but I need to refill Buffer later for sure, and probably put another dent into this post afterwards.

84 days left
 
Staccs said:
December 4th 2014 - Day 50
I'm also waiting on a response from the community PM I sent. If I don't get a response by Monday I'll send out another one. Eventually I think I can start sending 3-4 of these a week.
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Careful now, don't over exert yourself.
 
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December 6th 2014 - Day 52

Away from laptop most of the day. Don't expect regular sized updates until Monday or Tuesday. Busy weekend.

83 days left
 
December 7th 2014 - Day 53

Away from laptop most of the day. Don't expect regular sized updates until Monday or Tuesday. Busy weekend.

82 days left
 
TLDR: OP continues to update WF for almost 2 months about his plans to take action. **Spoiler** Doesn't take action.
 
December 8th 2014 - Day 54

This morning I slacked off. I wasn't planning or researching, I just procrastinated.

I got back on track from the afternoon on.

More Craiglist hunting. I'd like to get onto a decent host, but I'll need more money to stay on one.

Worked on the response post. This is going to be my biggest article yet. I should be able to finish it when I get up early and put in a full day tomorrow.

Reloaded Buffer with social posts.

Reached out to another community member. The last one isn't going to respond it seems like. I may nudge him tomorrow. I want to keep trying to connect slowly to prevent coming across as a marketer.

81 days left
 
Honestly, OP I'm not bashing you or anything. I just feel like you shouldn't have started this case study until AFTER you had written all your content. I get that your content is high quality, but all this has been so far is "planning" and content. If you had outsourced all the content, what would be the substance of this journal. What exactly are you DOING to GROW your business? I haven't been on WF in a while, but I literally had to comment on this. Good luck with your site.
 
OP your "authority site" won't even make $100 by the time this journal's over because you think writing content will make you successful. It won't, you aren't Ernest Hemingway.
 
December 9th 2014 - Day 55

Spent all day working on the post I've been talking about. It's done. Comes in at almost 3,400 words after editing. Reaching out to other bloggers now.

Didn't get a response yet from the 2nd community member I contacted yet, but he hasn't posted in a while. I'll send another one out.

80 days left
 
aeisn said:
OP your "authority site" won't even make $100 by the time this journal's over because you think writing content will make you successful. It won't, you aren't Ernest Hemingway.
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now this is an interesting post. the implication is that content doesn't make money, only empty marketing tactics make money. can you justify that theory?
 
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drave said:
now this is an interesting post. the implication is that content doesn't make money, only empty marketing tactics make money. can you justify that theory?
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He stated "writing content", you are stretching.

Edit: If you sit around for days writing content but put as much effort as Staccs does for outreach - "today I sent a PM", then you won't get anywhere. People have already stated to OP several times to outsource this stuff, but he refuses, so now most of his day is either planning on writing content, or writing content and sending 1 PM over the course of a week.
 
December 10th 2014 - Day 56

Continued working on outreach today. I honestly thought this would be much easier than it's been.

The most recent post was made as a response, but the website it's responding to probably isn't going to share it. Perhaps this was an err in judgement considering the site hasn't shared any content other than their own on social media in the past couple months, but I was optimistic because of how I expanded on a theme they first introduced.

Anyway, I'll try hitting up the writer again tomorrow via email to see if I can get some kind of response at all. I send out a message to the social account that tweeted out my content before as well.

I did more community reach out, but on a different site. This one is a much larger forum where I can send out 5-10 PMs without having to worry about being banned, so I did that. No responses yet. I'll give it 48 hours, but I may have to rethink this interview-style content if nobody bites. I don't think it's my pitch.

I just finished going through the backlinks from page 1 of the SERPs for my main keywords to see what other reach out opportunities there are. I didn't find anything significant. There few sites dedicated to this topic. I need to work on a list of sites who would be willing to link to me within the same industry. I don't think there's many (if any) ultra-targeted opportunities aside from forums.

EDIT: Got a response re: community outreach!!

79 days left

Dragonfly said:
Edit: If you sit around for days writing content but put as much effort as Staccs does for outreach - "today I sent a PM", then you won't get anywhere.
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I'm feeling pretty lost when it comes to finding linking opportunities so far.

I've been regularly commenting on industry blogs to get my foot in the door to creating relationships with bloggers and (recently) creating posts clearly inspired by these same bloggers. I also started trying to see who has linked to similar content in the past and try reaching out to them.

Am I missing something obvious? I'd appreciate any kind of tips on what I should be doing in terms of link building for a niche with few similar sites.

Also, you have my link outreach - what I just spoke about - confused with my community outreach. The goal with my community outreach is to create content based on the specific experiences of people participating on niche relevant forums, not for links.
 
December 11th 2014 - Day 57

Finally got to get started on this community content angle.

I traded emails with a forum member today and started the interview process. I'm asking him a total of 10 questions split between two emails so it doesn't overwhelm him. He's already answered the first batch. Sent the second batch of questions to him.

I got another response on a different forum which I'm following up on. Waiting for him to give me his email address before I can start the process.

I did a little more patrolling around trying to find more targets for this. I didn't find any, but I did participate on a couple forums which won't hurt the authority behind my future pitches.

The humongous blog post that I'm trying to get shared by a specific authority site isn't going to happen. This is a lesson.

My mission right now is to get 1-2 good links via reaching out to webmasters before I write anymore content. Establishing the relationship matters more to me than getting the link at this point. I have enough quality right now to warrant respect from an authority. Best case scenario I can maintain 1-2 posts per week from this community reach out stuff.

I may be sporadic over the next 7 days or so. I'll make sure I post something.

78 days left
 
Staccs said:
I'm feeling pretty lost when it comes to finding linking opportunities so far.

I've been regularly commenting on industry blogs to get my foot in the door to creating relationships with bloggers and (recently) creating posts clearly inspired by these same bloggers. I also started trying to see who has linked to similar content in the past and try reaching out to them.

Am I missing something obvious? I'd appreciate any kind of tips on what I should be doing in terms of link building for a niche with few similar sites.

Also, you have my link outreach - what I just spoke about - confused with my community outreach. The goal with my community outreach is to create content based on the specific experiences of people participating on niche relevant forums, not for links.
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The problem is you are looking for linking opportunities instead of traffic opportunities. I'm not a Ccarter fanboy, but he wrote a thread about this: Traffic Leaks

As well there are places like Reddit with subreddits of your topic or related topic you can engage users on. You can go to forums like topix.com, that most likely have your topic at some level where you can engage users on. You can use LinkedIn's Inmail advertisement option to connect to people on that platform. There are Google+ communities to connect with. Every major website has an audience and most likely has a direct way for you to engage them - a pay for play model, or have indirect ways as Ccarter wrote.

Your problem is you are trying to get links rather then engage a community and have the audience follow you - extracting them from that location. If you state something that's memorable and concise, people will PM you asking for more details, and try to find out more about you - where you can then send them to your website - creating an extremely hot lead.

WickedFire's whole enlightened section is an example of content you should be putting out on 3rd party websites to create your own voice and authority within the niche, which will lead to people following you. Look at how people follow some of the top writers of the enlightened section - that's the type of engagement you need within your niche, not just sending PMs to get a link from a blogger.
 
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