My IM Journey

My journey through the internet marketing world has been a long and treacherous one, not unlike the journey many of you have traveled.

I started my IM journey by getting involved in some MLM schemes including one where I ate a whole bunch of dark chocolate. I didn’t make any money, but the dark chocolate was awesome. I did learn some of the online basics like hosting, autoresponders, simple HTML and web design.

Even back then, I understood the importance of getting leads but I didn’t convince myself that ‘the money is in the list.’ I collected leads here and there and didn’t really follow-up with the leads I did have on my list.

I was convinced that I could do this. I researched and followed many of the successful marketers to see what they were doing. Of course, I fell into the abyss and caught a serious case of BSOS, bright shiny object syndrome. I spent a tonnage of money and ended up with hard drives full of stuff but no money and no online business.

I gave myself a hard slap to the face and decided to focus on something. I did it, I focused on creating affiliate sites that were ranked for keywords on Google. I was auto-blogging and making an income, not earth-shattering money, but it was money. I created a network of autoblogs that ranked on page 1 of the Google search pages and I was pulling in adsense money, affiliate commissions and payments for backlinking to other blogs.

I was there, I created an online business, I was successful…NOT!

Google slapped me harder than I did myself. There went my page 1 ranked blogs and my income followed. I made another crucial mistake during my autoblog phase. I didn’t create a list of folks that visited my blogs and clicked my links. I wasted that exposure and opportunity. I thought I was smart and had this IM stuff figured out. Reality proved otherwise.

I began to focus again on building my online business. This time I wasn’t going to make the mistake of not building my list. All the successful marketers had one thing in common, they built and maintained their lists.

My BSOS came back and I dabbled in a whole bunch of ‘stuff.’ I use that word because I want to keep it P.G., but damn, I wasted a lot of time and money. The worst part is that I lost a great deal of time that I could have spent with my wife and kids.

I created my lead magnet, set up my webpages and drove some traffic using some free sources. My list started growing but not at the pace I wanted it to grow. What was I doing wrong? More research, more tweaking and more money. I even tried paid ads but to no avail. My list wasn’t growing anywhere near the size of all these ‘guru’ marketers.

I refused to throw more money at this pit. I collected a bunch of tools and resources, the answer had to be there amongst that mountain of stuff I collected. What now?!

I opened up an email. In that email was an invitation to a webinar from a marketer that I respected and followed. That webinar was given by a successful marketer that I also respected. The webinar showed me a simple system for building an online business, it was great information. The information convinced me to spend some more money, a significant amount of money – I had to hide this outlay from the boss at home.

I was going to work with a coach, a successful marketer that could show me the way to build my business. I clicked the link, forked over my money and I was a student. I consumed the information like a rabid honey badger and I continue to learn. I will continue this journey in future posts to share the progress I have made and will make. This time I’m going to do it right!

I hope you follow along with me as I post my progress.

Here’s a link to the Free webinar that convinced me to take on a coach. The webinar contains some fantastic training and some testimonials from folks that have benefitted from the knowledge. See if it can benefit you. http://go.allanmartin.com/simple-formula-webinar