A Very Achievable Challenge: Internet Marketing

As a beginner Internet Marketer I was having
a bit of a tough time putting all the pieces
of the puzzle together.

I was, and still am nevertheless determined
to make this work for me.

My determination flourished from the fact
that after working most of my adult life
in offices I have gradually become extremely
saturated with the nature of office work and
the daily, monotonous rutine that it entails,
along with all the gossip and back-stabbing,
which seems to go naturally hand in hand with
an office.

My level of frustration was such that I have
even started to strongly dislike (I don't like
the word "hate") my bosses and superiors.

This is definitely not healthy for me and I
realized that I must do something to change
my situation lest I become emotionally ill.

I mean, I'm in my early 40's already and here
I am wanting to break away from my comfort zone
and start something completely new to me.

I really didn't know what exactly I wanted to
do with my professional life, and that in
itself was making me feel even more frustrated.

But I did know ONE thing.

That one thing was that I no longer wanted
to have a boss in my life, and this is all I
could think about.

But that one thing alone was enough to give me
the strong drive to really focus and start
searching for a "boss-less" job.

In other words I wanted to be my own boss.

I wanted to make my own decisions (good or bad).
Work as much or as little as I want, when, and
if I want, and know that the money that I do
make will be for me alone and not to make someone
else rich.

I was ready to take control of my own income.

I first gave it a shot at MLM (aka Network Marketing),
and even though I strongly believed (and still do)
in the product I was trying to promote/sell (till
today, 1 1/2 years later I'm still consuming the
product) I just couldn't seem to recruit anybody,
so that quickly became a disappointmet for me
and clouded a little my vision of ever becoming my
own boss.

Well, it's a fact that I have absolutely no
marketing background of any kind.

When I finished high school I went on to college
and university and got me a Bachelor of Arts degree
with a Major in French and a Minor in Spanish,
so you can see that marketing of any kind or sort
was not at all within my field of study.

I have always been on the "consumer" side
(and a big consumer at that). So if I wanted to
pursue the marketing field the first and foremost
thing I had to do was switch my mindset
to the opposite side of the road and see products
and services with a different perspective, but
at the same time not totally lose the consumer in me.

What I mean is that, I think that in order to sell
someone something it's always good to try to put
yourself in the consumer's mind in order to better
understand the needs and wants of your customers.

However, this is not as easy as it sounds because
if you sound like you are desperately trying to
sell someone something then people immediately run
away. The best way would be to convince people that
you are trying to help them find a solution to their
problems and that the solution lies within purchasing
xyz product.

One day just surfing the net I run into Affiliate
Marketing and Internet Marketing and it really caught
my attention. I mean, so many people claiming that
they make so much money on the internet working at
their own pace and time, and most importantly WITHOUT
having a boss. So I decided to go more into this.

Well to make a long story short, within 2 months
of starting my new endeavor as an Affiliate Marketer
I made some money ($1,400 to be exact) so that
encouraged me to pursue Affiliate and Internet
Marketing further.

I am not rich yet, but I am making some extra
money every month. Extra money which I didn't
have before. And I've realized that making
it in the IM world is a process and it takes
a lot of learning and determination.

It is not something you can master from one
day to the next.

I'll repeat that.

It is not something you can master from one
day to the next.

You do need however to empower youserlf
with determination.

You must be determined to make this work for you.

If you are not determined enough then guess what.
You will fail. So, you might as well not waste
your time.

You must know and realize that have to put time
aside to read and inform yourself as much as possible.

And it is possible to learn a new skill on the internet.

Heck! I'm doin' it! and I'm not even that young anymore!
(I defy the saying "you can't teach an old dog a new trick" ;-)

I have done my homerwork (and still am, remember this is
a learning process. Never stop learning), and sifting thru
a lot of material available on the internet I have found
so far that the following products/services have helped me
inmensly in my quest to conquering Affiliate Marketing and
Internet Marketing:

-MAGNETIC SPONSORING:
I run into this ebook while surfing the net trying to look for ideas on how to recruit people for my unsuccessful MLM business. Even though this book does not talk about Internet Marketing nor Affiliate Marketing per se, I consider it as my "turning point" for 2 reasons:
1. I realized that MLM was not for me.
2. I got my first taste of Affiliate Marketing by selling this ebook to other people in the MLM business, thru a special link created just for me, and making my first 2 commissions in the process. It was a piece of cake!

-BEATING ADWORDS:
I don't even remember how I came about this ebook, but I'm glad I did. Thanks to BA I overcame the fear of setting up an account with GOOGLE ADWORDS to start advertising Affiliate products. It guided me all the way thru and taught me important tips that helped save lots of money in advertising costs. These tips are of course NOT mentioned by Google Adwords when signing up (or even after signing up), so if you want to start advertising with GOOGLE ADWORDS you NEED to make this small investment on BEATING ADWORDS in order to avoid frustration and much bigger losses in the process.

-WEALTHY AFFILIATE:
I found out about WA thru BEATING ADWORDS as the 2 guys who created this site (Kyle and Carson) are the authors of BEATING ADWORDS. At first I hesitated a lot in joining WA mostly because there was a recurring monthly fee involved $29.99/month), but now that I'm a member there I simply LOVE IT. Honestly, I can't stay away from that site! Everyday I login to their forum and read, learn and implement as much as possible. Their forum is really priceless. There's newbies, intermediate and advance marketers alike, all sharing their knowledge and experience and together we all pitch in with our "silly" or "dumb" (or not) questions and get feedback from the more experienced marketers, or even from other newbies that have made new discoveries. WA is my internet "family", so I'm definitely keeping my membership.

-RICH JERK:
The language in their sales pitch and email follow ups (if you sign up for that) can be quite intimidating, but if you can brush aside all that and purchase the ebook you will see that the language therein is totally innocent and friendly. Simply put this book explains some methods of Affiliate Marketing in very easy-to-understand language. And the best thing? They give you a FREE website so that you can start making money right away.

-GOOGLE PROFITS:
Among other things, this ebook explains to you how to make money online without the necessity of having a website, a product or a service.

-INSTANT AUTHOR:
This ebook will guide you when you feel ready to write your own ebook. I haven't written my own ebook yet, but I find that INSTANT AUTHOR does help me with writing. Period. Whether you want to write an article or an ebook, INSTANT AUTHOR helps you organize your thoughts and put your ideas in order, and emphasizes on the most important factor when writing, which is..... well, WRITE!


In my opinion all above compliment one another in one way or another, and explain Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing in their own way, so in case you have a hard time fully understanding how the whole thing works it's good to have different points of view.

Now, you don't HAVE to invest in all these products, but if you're looking to start in Internet/Affiliate Marketing beware that there is a LOT of junk out there, both free and paid, and you can really end up spending a lot of money on "the next best thing" and then find out that it's crap. So above I'm just mentioning some of the good, quality stuff. Like I said, each of the above products/services compliment each other and combined form a conglomerate of usefull tips and information which far exceed their monetary value.

One last tip I would like to give to all newbies at this, or any other kind of self employed business. It is imperative that you NOT have any negativity surrounding you if you want to make it in this, or any other business for that matter. You must try to avoid negative people nagging and telling you that you will never make it, or ridiculing your efforts, otherwise you will end up believing them, and guess what, you won't make it. You'll give up. So, personally what I do is that I just don't share my thoughts with negative people from whom I know for a fact I will not get constructive criticism but only negative energy.

One last word of wisdom:
YOU CAN'T WIN IF YOU GIVE UP!