I am now full time online, by accident more than design!

I am now starting to make my living online.

But before I tell you how and why I thought you might like to hear my story, my hope is it will serve as a lesson and hopefully a bit of inspiration for those who are grinding it out trying to get a break online.

I have been trying to make money on the internet in some way shape or form for around 14 years.

When my wife was pregnant with our first son we met a couple at anti-natal classes and the husband was a bit of a whizz on the pc.

We got talking and decided to try and make some money from me selling and then him building websites for offline business in the town
where we lived. We started to get things together and were about to go for it, when he and his wife split up and he moved out of the area.
I had no technical knowledge so business number one down the toilet.

Not to be put off, a relatives boyfriend was doing a course in web design so I approached him to see if he wanted to do a similar thing, he agreed. We were going to try our luck with local real estate agents and build a specific site for them, where all agents could advertise their properties.
This was in the very infancy of sites like rightmove etc so we were getting in on the ground floor, here comes the money I thought!!!
Within 6 weeks of us starting up he and my relative had split up and he didn't want to do it anymore.
Business number two down the toilet.

Number 3 - I went looking for dropshipping companies. I didn't research the niche I just went looking for something that was convenient and didn't rely on me having any stock, dropshipping is the future
I thought. I chose oil paintings. I am sure there are plenty of people making money online with oil painting drop shipping and I did it for a few years always just about breaking even. I knew very little about
oil paintings and I knew even less really about driving traffic. Most of my profits went on PPC or ebay fees. Eventually I had to admit I was not going to become a millionaire selling oil paintings.
Business number 3 down the toilet.

Business number 4 came off the back of me having a chat with someone I knew who ran a warehouse full of everything you can think of. I was still into the dropshipping idea. So we set up an eBay shop
selling all the stuff he had in stock. I worked my backside of setting it all up and it was going really well. Unfortunately he wasn't holding up his end in terms of the packing and it ended
up with me not only doing all the stuff my end but having to drive to his warehouse to pack everything too. Not too bad I guess if I wasn't holding down a fulltime job as well. I had to shut this down.
Business number 4 down the toilet.

Number 5 my son is a keen footballer (soccer) and his team had a website at http://www.footskiteams.com. The site was just an experiment by its writers on the uses of Ruby on Rails. When the project was done they shut it down.
I contacted them and asked if I could have it, thinking I could make some money here. They gave it to me, I set up a newsletter, I found a dropshipper of football goods, I set up a kitbag white label affiliate shop and an Amazon shop too. This I thought is it, the national sport, its going to be a winner. I made not a penny from it. I still have it and its a hobby. It has over 190 football teams on it and run it for the love of it
not for the money. I abandoned the newsletter, oh and the blog.
Business number 5 although not down the toilet is now a hobby.

Business number 6 - I paid almost $1000 for a football/soccer betting site. It was supposed to be an affiliate site and it also sold a book that told people the sites they could watch soccer online for free.
It made some money but was a lot of work and when the site was hacked and everything lost, I really didn't have the inclination to set it all up again.
Business numebr 6 going the same way as its predecessors!

We are somewhere in early 2009. A work colleague of mine was just like me, desperately unhappy working for the company we were employed by and looking for a way out. He had heard of a guy called Andrew Reynolds and had bought a course he was selling. We went through every module, we attended a seminar in London in October 2009 and to be honest it was one big sales pitch. There was one guy there though who made sense
an English guy, to be honest I can't remember his name, but he talked about PLR and building a list etc.

This made sense to me and a light went on in my head.

Over the previous few years I had learned a bit to HTML, FTP and had an autoresponder. So I wrote 2 books and gave them away here on the WF along with a sales letter and tons of PLR articles.

That WSO took my list from zero to over 1k in the space of 7 weeks.
I put a couple of other WSO's here and although extremely successful they didn't hit the heights of the first one.

I then read a book about list building, adswaps and giveaway events etc.
I also heard an audio from a very well known list builder who I now am lucky enough to call a friend as well as mentor, Jit Uppal.

I started doing adswaps left right and centre.

All was going well, when as has happened to so many people, I was made redundant. Luckily the company I worked for offered a pretty good package. A package I can make last 12 months.

So this is where my dilemma came. Do I really go for it 100% online or do I still do this part time and get another job.

Well I took the biggest scariest step I have ever taken, also bear in mind I have a wife, mortagage, 2 kids and 7 failed attempts to make money online!!!

I am now doing this full time and I have never been happier. I know I am lucky I have some money behind me, but I am still on the clock and the pressure is on. It certainly focusses the mind.

I also guess I am lucky in that my background has been, albeit offline, sales, training and business development, and I have written training programmes for some of the UK's largest retailers and know
how to train people effectively.

So I am pretty certain once I get this thing working completely I will be in a position to share in a clear and coherent manner all the things I have learned over the last 14 years.

And that's where I am now, a list just under 5k and a growing business and I have just launched my first JV Event, to go along with the PLR Membership site I run.

I ask that you please excuse any spelling mistakes or repetition or in fact any self indulgence, I just felt the need to write this having spent a few hours looking around the WF.

I also need you to know that doing this is so not me it's untrue, I tend to keep my feelings inside and am not a heart on my sleeve type person but I felt a need to type this to try and help anyone out their who feels lost and doesn't know if they will ever make sense online business, and now I can't stop!!!

I wanted to people to know that you never know what is around the corner and even though you may have tried many things never give up.

It always seems that everyone else is doing so well online, they all seem to be pulling in 5 figures a month.
They all seem to know something you don't, they are keeping it to themselves. I have lost count of the number of times I have said to myself "I am missing something here, I must be, missing a trick".

Its funny though in all the other things I have done online even though I wrote maps and plans etc I never felt like I knew where I was going, but now I do I have it all sorted in my mind what I want to achieve and how I am going to achieve and by when. And its starting to work.

I know what size I need my list to be, by when, and what activity I need to put in place to achieve it, and I have made plans in my business that are going to take me at present to March 2011 and to me being able to say I am a full time marketer not just someone trying to start an online business which is what I am saying at present.

I hope this helps someone in some way, and if it didn't and you are making 5 figures a month please spare a thought for those that are wondering what it is they are missing.

Finally console yourself with the thought that every marketer started with nothing, this business hasn't been around long enough for fathers to hand down to sons or mothers down to daughters. They were all lost at sometime or other, they just managed to work out which way round to hold the map


Good Luck & Take care.

Anthony

UPDATE ADDED: 8th October 20010

Hey guys I just wanted to say thanks for all the great comments here and I wanted to (I hope) give a little more encouragement to anyone who feels they need it.

Since writing this post I have continued to actively grow my business, my list hit 8k yesterday and has really started to grow at a pace, I have added 2300 in the last 4 weeks.

I am now mentoring 3 guys, and helping them to build a list and make their first dollar online, we are going through ftp, auto responders, squeeze pages, oto's, sales funnels and relationship building with their list.

At the same time I have also been building a 100% affiliate commission program. All the front end offers are free, which helps the affiliate build the relationship with their list and they get 100% commission on the one time only offer.

I launched yesterday and even with very little promotion its already yielding results for affiliates.

Its a platform that I can build on and over time the affiliates will earn bigger incomes, the ultimate goal is to put my own coaching program in there and pay affiliates a residual income from it.

Things have rocketed for me and I just wanted to add this to try and give some more back to the site that has been so good to me.

If I could give any advice it would be, taken action, don't sit on the sidelines, get in the game, network with other marketers even if they are beginners too or only have smalll lists, they will be your JV partners of the future and get yourself a mentor, it doesn't have to be a guru, just someone who knows what they are doing and has a track record. There are plenty of them out there find the one you like and respect and listen to them and implement what they tell you and you will succeed.

If anyone needs any help, please feel free to PM me and i'll do all I can to be of assistance.

Good luck everyone and God bless.

Anthony