How I was dead and re-born again in IM !

I thought it is best for me to start in WF, by starting a thread on some of the valuable experiences that life thought me as a IMer. This thread is rather long, and I have tried my level best to simply it.

First let me start with my mistakes:

Mistake 1:
It started when I was in school. I heard about Internet marketing and people making money out of it. It was so thrilling to me and I wonder if I can earn some extra bucks that would help me save for day to day expenses. I did some googling and figured out Adsense is a best place to start. Without any knowledge or notion about Internet Marketing, I started a website and filled with crappy content and loads of adsense ads to earn money.

I thought I would get money from day 1. But it didnt happen. It's so funny those were days I didn't even knew about web reporting and basics of internet business. All I wanted is money, money and money. So I accidently clicked my ads and saw one bucks on my account the next day. Thought it was fun and I researched on how to cheat the system.

I read some blog posts and nasty articles and went on clicking ads from my school, home and from my friend's house. In just 10 days my adsense account reached $100 and I was so happy. Thought this is what is called internet income. Soon later Google banned my account and I was so sad that I lost by $100.

Mistake 2 - Did the same thing again!
This time I started another Adsense account. Though I knew its not legal in terms of Google's TOS to open another account, I did it because of my love for money ! This time I was very clever and i was sure not to click my own ads.

However I created loads of MFA sites and drove traffic from classifieds and Yahoo answers. I started to see money rolling in and later few checks. This lazy type of income, drove my to do the next big mistake.

Mistake3 - MFA Networks
I realized that to have huge income I need to create network of sites with loads of adsense in it. I never understood the philosophy of internet marketing, value to customers, advertising etc., All I wanted is money, money.

I started 10 niche websites with loads of Adsense ads. Meanwhile I became an expert in SEO and I started doing SEO for these websites like anything. By hard work and skill I was able to drive immense traffic to these sites and it was like an auto-pilot income for me. It took me over 4 years to reach to this point.

Lazy Behavior
Since Adsense gave me decent money every month I was happy with it. Since I had a day job, this income was more like a residual auto income. I didnt bother to try other facets of internet marketing.

The Bummer
It was all well, till the day I had to re-located to the US as a part of my job. I had to place a hold on Adsense since I was working out of new country. I thought I would withdraw this money later when I get back to my native country. The money got accumulated in the account for over a year and it crossed a decent $xx,xxx. On a fine day Adsense sent me an email stating that my account was closed as all the sites were poor quality. Never heard of such reason. I tried fighting with the giant, but nothing turned out.

Hellish Life
It is this part of my life, I learnt very important lessons. I was so disappointed. How will you feel if someone take away 4 years of your hard work? I asked several questions to myself and I was living in a dark room cursing myself. After a week of mental stress and agony I came out with clear thoughts. It is for the first time in life I had to face loss, a heavy loss. I accepted the fact that I was wrong and I did crappy things in IM because all my motives was in money and nothing else.

Started the fight, but this time from the scratch
So, now that I got defeated by IM, I wanted to prove myself that I am capable enough to defeat my own ego and earn money in internet. However this time I wanted to offer value to customers and there by earn not only money but some self satisfaction of pleasing customers whom I deal with.

Beyond Adsense and Dirty Games....
Yes, I started from scratch and I did almost everything! I became a freelance writer, started selling domains, started creating blogs and experimented many other things in IM.

First 2 months I saw nothing. Yes, nothing. However I never let my spirit go down and I fighted even hard. In that process I loved the way how Internet Marketing worked. I learnt one thing for sure. If we offer value there are people who are ready to spend money with us.

This became my mantra. I did multiple things and in everything that I do, I offered value and customers started loving my service. Few became regular customers and started to spend big bucks with me. In about a year, everything changed. Big checks and Big income stream started to flow! Customers started to follow me asking for my services again and again !!

Now that I not only earn good money, I have self satisfaction of pleasing customers who spend their valuable money with me. Not only that, I earned money from multiple streams of IM !

Lessons - Summary
Here are some lessons that I learnt the hard way:

1. Never rely on one source of money
2. Try differnet models of internet business
3. Always offer value in your services
4. Respect your customers in terms of communication, transparency and openness
5. Have Unique proposition that will attract customers and will allow you to beat competition
6. Never chase money - Passion to 'only' Money will make you do nasty things and will leave you in the middle of nowhere

Though many of the above points were straight forward and obvious things, I never followed it to my heart. So, if you are such person, stop right now! and add value to your service. And never ever chase money!. You will never get to a point where it fulfills your throat

Start experimenting with different facets of income in internet. Why settle down with the traditional way that millions of people already tried? Why not innovate and offer something different?

If you keep thinking this way, you will surely hit the jackpot one day and will write success stories like me!

Good luck,
Sam