When did you first 'experience' Internet Marketing (as a potential customer)

My apologies in advance. This post is way too long, if you want to skip it, answer the question in the title and save your eyes =)

I'd like to hear about the first time an internet marketer tried to sell you, or sign you up to something on the internet. I don't mean an internet banner or google ads or something like that, I want to hear about the first time you ran into a sales letter or a squeeze page or someone trying to get you to sign up to an email list in order to later sell you something.

I've been on the internet since 1996, and made my first web page then. Unfortunately I haven't made any more web pages since 1996 so I've probably missed out on a billion or two haha.

Anyway, in the early years I don't recall running into the sales-letter/email list pure-internet-marketer kind of sites. Even then there were banner ads, people trying to sign you up to porn sites and the like, but I simply didn't run into the kind of stuff that affiliate marketers or CPA people promote today.

I think, for me, the first time was in about 1998 when I was at uni, and spending a lot of time on the internet. I thought "Hey, why don't I try and find out how to make some money online!". So I did some searches. I don't recall what my search query was, but I imagine it was "How can I make money online?" or something similar.

At that time I did not, unfortunately, find the warrior forum or its earlier incarnations; or even, indeed, anything similar. I found people trying to sell me ebooks or reports. Pages and pages of altavista or lycos search results of people trying to sell me something.

I wasn't tempted by these offers. I figured, "Well, the money a lone person can earn has already been tapped, these poor saps have resorted to selling stories to OTHER people about how to make money; they obviously can't make it themselves any more". I guess I was wrong about that haha.

Apart from that, I don't recall running into internet marketers too much until about two years ago. I think the reason for this is that I simply never typed the 'right' things into search engine boxes. I wasn't in any internet marketer's 'niche'. I must have been typing weird stuff in the search box I guess haha.

Anyway, about two years ago I was looking to find out information about opening a restaurant. The thing is, I was not interested in opening a restaurant in N. America or Europe, I was just interested in the much broader idea. I was looking for stories of people who'd done it, pitfalls to avoid etc. I didn't want to know about health regulations in the US or licencing laws in the UK or other things irrelvant to me. Unfortunately my websearch was COMPLETELY fruitless. All I got was sales pages to e-books about how to open a restaurant (Very much focussed to N. America) and online 'articles' which directed me to similar sales letters. It was very disappointing as an internet user. This was my second 'run in' with internet marketing. People trying to sell me stuff they thought I wanted, but really really didn't. It was really annoying because I KNEW there must be dozens of stories on the internet about people opening restaurants, I just couldn't get the search engines to find them for me. All I found was damn sales pages which annoyed me no end. A disappointing (re)-introduction to IM.

Anyway, those were my early experiences of internet marketing. I've never been a victim of a scam, and I've never bought an affiliate promoted product as yet. My spending online has been at amazon.com and cdnow.com (which I think amazon bought.. like.. a decade ago or something haha). Oh and the war room. But that was promoted by Mr.Says, not an affiliate. I'm not proud of not having bought an affiliate promoted product; I just think that long sales letters don't work on ME (though I understand they are very effective in general).


Anyway, sorry for the long life story. When did YOU first come in contact with Internet Marketing on the receiving end?