[Newbie Inspiration] My story of finally becoming a fulltime Internet Marketer

So, I was redesigning my blog and decided to share my story in a "about me" page. Since I've never shared my story with anyone here I decided that it might be inspirational to anyone getting started or struggling to make it online. Hopefully it will inspire some to not give up.

I'm a full time Internet Marketer and have been for some time. However, I was not successful right away!

Back in 2001 I started selling Video Games on ebay. I found out about this amazing thing called Drop Shipping where wholesale companies would ship their warehoused items directly to your customers for you. Immediately I started making a killing. For a while, this was great but soon competition from China and even the supposed wholesale supplier I was getting my games from was selling on ebay as well. They were able to undercut the price even more than my cost from them so I was quickly out of business on ebay.

Not to be discouraged, I started an ecommerce site with the hopes of selling directly from my website to customers. Having little to no knowledge of marketing or how to promote a website, I built this amazing site, loaded all the products and waited for people to show up. I didn't know about SEO, PPC or any of that. I didn't even know what Search Engine Ranking was. So, I never saw a visitor and never got a sale. Discouraged, but determined, I kept the site up anyway hoping something would change.

I took a break and focused on my job in I.T. and tried to forget about Internet Marketing, Drop Shipping or anything related. I felt defeated and temporarily gave up on my dreams of being my own boss and working from home. Then, I got laid off.

With the little bit of savings I had, I decided to try my luck at this Internet Marketing thing once again. I brought my ecommerce site back up and even bought pallets of things from china like cheap electronics hoping to cut out the middle man wholesalers. I did okay for a while. I sold all of my electronics on ebay but was barely making a few dollars per sale after fees. My ecommerce site was still sitting there with no sales and no visitors. That's when I discovered PPC advertising.

I spent a ton getting visitors to my site and it resulted in many sales. However, the margin on a $25 dollar video game is only a few bucks after paying credit card processing fees. The PPC costs were more than what I was making. The thing is I didn't know about longtail keywords so I set up an adwords campaign with the keyword of "games" or "video games" and saw a ton of traffic but the cost was killing me because my visitors were not targeted. After racking up hundreds per day in PPC fee's I decided enough is enough and found a corporate job and again left this Internet Marketing mess alone.

This new job was a blessing though. I was working third shift at a huge company doing tech support over the phone. I rarely got a phone call in the middle of the night so it gave me plenty of free time to do other things. I came across this website called warriorforum.com where I read up on Internet Marketing, PPC, affiliate marketing and so on.

So, with all that free time I set up a few affiliate websites promoting a handful of offers and I started making sales. I liked this because I didn't have to worry about customer support, credit card fee's, returns, etc. There was one problem. The sales were not enough to go full time on. I was getting traffic organically. I was doing no PPC at all. I didn't know how I was getting all this traffic at the time because I still didn't know about SEO or search engine ranking. It just happened that the domain name I bought matched a keyword that no one else was targeting but that brought in around a thousand visitors per month.

I kept this site online for a while but soon people found the keyword and started optimizing their sites which brought my ranking down. The sales finally trickled off and became nothing.

I was frustrated all over again. Plus, on a personal level during this time both of my parents died so I decided I needed a change and I moved to a new state to start over.

I ended up getting engaged to my high school crush who just happened to be living just an hour away from me. I had a good job and was making enough that when we got married my wife didn't even need to work. Even though I hated my job at the time because I had a horrible boss, I stuck with it and made plans to get married.

The day before I was going to get married my boss called me in her office to talk about what needed to be done while I was gone. I showed her everything that she needed to do and she got overwhelmed. She said, "I Don't think I am going to be able to let you go on your honeymoon next week." to which I replied, " I don't think you have a choice!" I had already paid for my cruise, flights, and everything. There was no way I was not going. She was pretty mad but I tried to forget it and enjoy my honeymoon anyway.

The week I came back from my honeymoon my boss said, "The CEO asked how to do something and I didn't know and felt like an idiot so I'm going to write you up." Seriously, she wrote me up because she didn't know something. The next day, I was called in her office again. "We are letting you go and while you were out last week we interviewed and hired your replacement." I had never been fired before in my life. In fact I had previous employers calling me all the time trying to get me to come back to work with them. I always took pride in my work and was great at what I did but found out that sometimes people just don't like you and there is nothing you can do to change that. It was obvious at this point that getting written up was just so they had a paper trail in case I tried to contest wrongful termination.

So, three days after I came back from my honeymoon I was going home to my unemployed wife without a job myself. Wouldn't you know it, driving down the interstate, one of my belts on my car came off and ripped through the timing belt cover and broke the timing belt right off. So, now, I was stuck on the side of the highway, unemployed, car is dead and had to call my wife to come pick me up. Not a good day.

I was so tired of working for stupid people on power trips. I wanted to start my own business but didn't have the money now. So, I did what I had to do and found another job.

On this job I met a guy who had been reading about Internet Marketing. He and I talked about different ideas we had and what we could do to make it work. He ended up leaving but the fire was lit under me. I was determined not to have a boss anymore. So, I studied, and studied and learned everything I could and started promoting amazon affiliate products and others. With my new understanding I was starting to see success. Every month, more and more sales and bigger commissions were coming in. I was making it this time. It's finally working.

The best day in my life, aside from getting married to my wife, was when I handed my resignation letter to my boss and told him I was leaving for my Internet business. He was shocked and I will never forget the look on his face.

That was in 2010. I am still a full time Internet Marketer. I promote affiliate products and have even gone back into ecommerce and dropshipping. I've even created my own info products and software as well.

My dream was to always live in the country and have lots of land. My wife and I were able to move out of our tiny apartment in the city and now live in a big house with 10 acres of land surrounded by mountain views. The best part is, the house is paid in full!

Now, I'm not telling you all this to boast. I'm telling you this to encourage you. I was discouraged. I gave up a few times but I kept trying even after my failures. I have failed way more than I succeeded but you only have to be successful once. I have learned that if you have a dream it can come true but persistence is the key. I hope this inspires and motivates you and lights the fire under you like that co-worker did for me. Never give up on your dreams, just pursue them. Fight for them. Educate yourself and prepare for them. You can make it. It can be done. I'm proof.