Need to help my buddy out... he's going bankrupt :(

crossfittn

crossfittn

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Feb 4, 2007
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So, I have a good friend whose entire portfolio of sites was taken down by Penguin. He's filing bankruptcy and looking for a job... he has to support his wife and two young kids. He's a good guy and he actually honestly believed that if he tries to make good content, nothing bad like that would happen to him in Google. Naive and I wish it was true... His sites were quality.

Anyway, I want to help him out if possible..
Can we brainstorm quickly bit about jobs he could do for quick cash online?

Here are his skills:

  • He can turn boring text content into engaging, interesting pages so at a quick glance, you kinda get the main points without reading it.
  • He can write quality text-only content too if someone needs that.
  • He can do manual link building negotiations (emailing and negotiating)
  • Random, but he's great at working on/fixing/tuning and even painting cars.
  • He's good at designing CMS wordpress themes for authority sites.
  • ...and of course he can do simple things like setting up wordpress sites, misc. scripts..
Do you have any ideas for where he could use these skills to get money? Anyone you need help? Please let me know.. I hate to see this happening to my good friend.


Thanks guys.


Ian
 


Client work. Have him do SEO for people he knows who have websites and charge $300-400/mo.

If all else fails write content on Elance/oDesk for $15-20/hour and continue looking for a job.
 
I don't want to sound like a cynic moron, but with wife and two kids, having a business dependent entirely on Google is just stupid, sorry to say.
Client work, as suggested above. It sucks, but it pays the bills. Get back into positive cashflow first, think about starting something new later.
 
Houdas said:
I don't want to sound like a cynic moron, but with wife and two kids, having a business dependent entirely on Google is just stupid, sorry to say.
Click to expand...

Yeah, thanks for the input but it doesn't help at this point... Anyway it's your right to post. Sad day to see this happen to a friend
 
Okay, to actually show some interest in this matter - what do you mean by "taken down by Penguin"? Are his sites like literally doomed with zero traffic and zero income? If not, then I guess it's always possible to get them back, but it will take time.

Another option - did he build any lists during the time his sites were successful? If he did, he can use the list to make some money.

And another one - if he is really a good writer, tell us his price, I would give him some work, nothing big but every bit helps I guess.
 
Everyone feels the pain. Rest assured you're not alone. Although I still make money, I had about 4-5 properties that went down that were pulling in tens of g's per month when the others stuck. The only thing you can do, is tell him to not be a quitter and proceed. Otherwise if he's just gonna give up, he never deserved to have such sites to begin with.

As for his skills:

S4303.jpg
 
My sites/business model has been shut down 3-4 times in the past, every time i've learned to build something bigger/better that lasts longer. Now I'm building client bases and listbuilding. If his business model depended only on google, then he needs to learn to be not as shortsighted and plan longer term strategies. Many people here are in the same boat as he is, and many are asking for handouts.

Unfortunately the AM/IM space is full of people who shouldn't be in it, the fruit has been too low hanging for too long and the industry needs shocked.
 
schockergd said:
My sites/business model has been shut down 3-4 times in the past, every time i've learned to build something bigger/better that lasts longer. Now I'm building client bases and listbuilding. If his business model depended only on google, then he needs to learn to be not as shortsighted and plan longer term strategies. Many people here are in the same boat as he is, and many are asking for handouts.

Unfortunately the AM/IM space is full of people who shouldn't be in it, the fruit has been too low hanging for too long and the industry needs shocked.
Click to expand...


I'd say it got a shock.
 
ly2 from WF said:
I went from $25k or better a month to $7k - $10k a month in the matter of like 2 days.

Most people here are fucked. No, I take that back, most people here have been fucked but the few who weren't fucked already, are now also fucked with the help of penguin.
Click to expand...

Yeah he went from 20-25k/mo to $4k/mo... right after he used almost all of his savings to get into house that was on forclosure, so he could get out of the ghetto where people kept scaring his kids and vandalizing his mom's house etc...

Most people here have been fucked, yeah, cause almost everyone here thinks super short term. Those of us who thought longer term just got fucked a little later and kinda 50/50 random split by Penguin.
 
I don't mean this in a condescending way or anything, but he probably needs to learn how to manage money a little better. This won't matter much that he is broke now, but in the future it will pay off.

You shouldn't go completely broke two months after the loss of your income. You should have at least a year of living expenses saved up at all times imo, the more of a buffer you have, the better. This gives you time to transition into something different without immediately going broke. Also, don't buy stuff you don't need unless you can pay for it with cash and still have a year plus of living expenses saved up.
 
I'd like to also mention something.


Back in the early 30s, there was a semi-famous playwright who went bankrupt. He was interviewed by a newspaper as he lived in central park. They asked him what it was like to be poor.

His answer was something like this - Poor is a mindset, not a financial statement. If you are rich minded, you will always be rich, and your pocketbook will eventually reflect that.

We need to realize how to be rich in this industry, whether it requires diversification or just more work. If you prop someone up that truly doesn't get it, you'll be throwing your money away. A good friend of mine was given nearly $30k from his dad to 'invest it' in things. He has lost it and is down to $350 or so as of today, this is over the course of only 2 months. In the same time period I have invested maybe $3k and have done quite well and am still making money.

You can't subsidize success, it can only be earned and learned.


I also would like to mention I do live in 'The ghetto' of my town, tons of drug use. I haven't moved simply because I know how this online game is played, personally I'd rather save up the $$$ and buy a home for cash than do what OP has seemed to lead on and buy a property with a mortgage and risk failure in something as volitile as online stuff.
 
crossfittn said:
So, I have a good friend whose entire portfolio of sites was taken down by Penguin. He's filing bankruptcy and looking for a job... he has to support his wife and two young kids. He's a good guy and he actually honestly believed that if he tries to make good content, nothing bad like that would happen to him in Google. Naive and I wish it was true... His sites were quality.

Anyway, I want to help him out if possible..
Can we brainstorm quickly bit about jobs he could do for quick cash online?

Here are his skills:

  • He can turn boring text content into engaging, interesting pages so at a quick glance, you kinda get the main points without reading it.
  • He can write quality text-only content too if someone needs that.
  • He can do manual link building negotiations (emailing and negotiating)
  • Random, but he's great at working on/fixing/tuning and even painting cars.
  • He's good at designing CMS wordpress themes for authority sites.
  • ...and of course he can do simple things like setting up wordpress sites, misc. scripts..
Do you have any ideas for where he could use these skills to get money? Anyone you need help? Please let me know.. I hate to see this happening to my good friend.


Thanks guys.


Ian
Click to expand...

Your friend has a golden opportunity to learn a new skills and rebuild a proper business, because he now has some decent motivation. A lot of wealthy people have been utterly fucked at some stage, it's what gives them the drive (i.e. fear) to get where they do.

All of the above are marketable skills. I suggest that he buys a list of local businesses, and starts cold calling them to sell them. LinkedIn & Facebook can be pretty decent too.

Web designs at $1K a throw, ongoing support for a few hundreds bucks a month.

If you want to help him:

1. Get him a cold calling course. Ari Galper (http://www.unlockthegame.com) and Art Sobczak (http://www.businessbyphone.com) are both pretty decent sales trainers.

2. Go sit in his home office and work on your laptop whilst he makes cold calls. Kick his ass every time he slacks off, and give him encouragement every time he does something well. Buy him a beer or two once he's hit his target for the day (50-100 dials is a good number, depending on how hard your decision makers are to get through to).

He will take a couple of weeks to get anywhere with prospecting, but he should start to land clients after that. And if he learns to sell well, he'll never go hungry (or homeless).

Alternatively, he could give up running a business and get a job. There's no shame in that, it's not for everyone.
 
schockergd said:
I'd like to also mention something.


Back in the early 30s, there was a semi-famous playwright who went bankrupt. He was interviewed by a newspaper as he lived in central park. They asked him what it was like to be poor.

His answer was something like this - Poor is a mindset, not a financial statement. If you are rich minded, you will always be rich, and your pocketbook will eventually reflect that.

We need to realize how to be rich in this industry, whether it requires diversification or just more work. If you prop someone up that truly doesn't get it, you'll be throwing your money away. A good friend of mine was given nearly $30k from his dad to 'invest it' in things. He has lost it and is down to $350 or so as of today, this is over the course of only 2 months. In the same time period I have invested maybe $3k and have done quite well and am still making money.

You can't subsidize success, it can only be earned and learned.


I also would like to mention I do live in 'The ghetto' of my town, tons of drug use. I haven't moved simply because I know how this online game is played, personally I'd rather save up the $$$ and buy a home for cash than do what OP has seemed to lead on and buy a property with a mortgage and risk failure in something as volitile as online stuff.
Click to expand...
trust me we don't need any more poor people thinking they're rich. this industry has too much of that
 
overbech said:
trust me we don't need any more poor people thinking they're rich. this industry has too much of that
Click to expand...

I think you missed his point, it's more of a personal improvement thing, than a selling point on the products you're being pushed almost daily...
 
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hA-7aq6OXI"]Napoleon Hill-What the mind can conceive, believe & achieve. - YouTube[/ame]

Just left that there to support my previous post on self-improvement, because the Dr. is right.
 
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