Welcome to today’s issue of the Opossum’s Substack. There’s a lot of new people on my email list so I wanted to catch everybody up. Today’s email is going to be a little different. This email will be pinned to the top of the Substack permanently. It will be a living document that outlines your learning journey to your first second income.

Think of it as a cumulation of everything in this Substack outlined in a step-by-step format. Action on this document *in order*.

If I were to ever sell a course, this would be it.

But first. Let’s get one thing out of the way. *You have no real excuses*

There is but one real valid excuse to not set up and work towards building your digital real estate. You’re dumb. Like really dumb. Like bottom 10% of the population dumb. If that’s the case, then you have a real excuse and I’m sorry. However, that’s likely 0 people that have found me and are reading this.

I try to get people IRL to just start all of the time. All I hear are excuses. Half of the excuses I’ve dealt with personally.

Trust me. I’ve heard them all. *You have no real excuses*

You have a “I consume too much and don’t create enough problem.”

So now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started.

First, you’re going to go to this post on The Basics of Your First Website on BowTiedOpossum.com.

If you’re having trouble deciding what platform to use, read my in depth guide on Website Platform Choice Explanation. It explains the flowchart in The Basics of Your First Websites in more detail.

BowTiedOpossum @bowtiedopossum

Stop picking the wrong platform for your website. I've laid it all out here.

Then you’re going to action on it. Not read it and say “that’s nice, but I don’t have time” or “I just don’t have an idea.”.

Action on it.

Are you stuck on the best procrastinating excuse out there? The “I don’t have an idea” procrastination excuse? Fucking lamps. Create a website about fucking lamps. That’s your idea. Now go and create.

Guess what? It doesn’t matter. Either you create a great lamp affiliate site and make a bunch of money OR you learn what the hell you’re doing so when that “perfect idea” does come along, you can actually execute on it.

If you haven’t actioned, no need to read further.

Now that you’ve got your first site setup, it’s time to get the data right. Go read on how to set up Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Tag Manager.

Action on it.

Now that your Google Analytics is set up, make sure your Google Analytics is configured correctly.

Action on it.

Now that everything is stood up, you want to make sure your site is as fast as possible without sacrificing usability and functionality. Go read The Basics of Site Speed.

Action on it. Seriously. Go.

If you’re doing Ecommerce, you’re going to have a lot less tools at your disposal to speed up your site compared to WordPress. That’s why theme selection is so important.

If you’re on Shopify, which you likely are, you need to setup Google’s Free and Paid Listings.

Once that is done, you’re going to really want to understand what Google likes in a website. Read their very long rater guidelines. It’s what they give to an army of people to rate and ensure their algorithm is serving the results that they want it to.

From there, you’re going to want to understand what Google thinks of your website. Read my post on The Basics of Google Search Console. Then read Google’s Search documentation on SEO.

Next, if you’re building an affiliate site, you’re going to want to read Affiliate Marketing Part 1, Part 2, Part 3a, and Part 3b.

If you’re trying to build a brand (which you should), you should go read Brand Building and Share of Voice.

If you’re going the Ecommerce route, you need to understand attribution. It’s going to be the core of how you market and how you know what’s working and what’s not. Go read the post on Attribution Modeling.

At this point, you should be getting introduced to a range of tools and understand how they work. Read the article on Tools You Should Know How to Use. They’re all free. Unless you’ve found a better tool to replace the ones in the list, there’s no reason you shouldn’t know how to use 11/13 of them.

Lastly, for today, is how you’re going to get visitors once you’ve gotten to this point. Go read Acquisition Channels for Your New Website and figure out how you’re going to drive traffic.

BowTiedOpossum @bowtiedopossum

Websites are not fictional baseball fields. Users will not come if you just build it. Figure out your acquisition strategy to get people to your website.

That’s all for today. This post will be pinned and continuously updated as I write more for you. Make sure to bookmark it as you’ll want to constantly come back through your journey and as it’s updated. *Google every term and concept in the posts that you don’t understand*.

If you want to get smarter about all things digital, upgrade today from free to paid for only $10 a month. The paid posts are where I dive even further into the weeds to help you truly understand and capitalize on the digital landscape.

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