What Did You Do Before Full Time IMing

Sold TV's and home appliances.

Perseverance.

Was a life underwriter. Read medical records for almost 8 years. yaaawwwwnnnn....
In the wireless industry before that.
Ministry before that.

Anyways...

Connecting with like-minded POSITIVE people made all the difference in the world!

~Mark

I was a security researcher, reverse engineering malware for the AV industry. I still do it actually, just on a part-time bases.

Yelled at under-payed production assistants.

(to camera op) Camera One, I need you to truck left, pan right and tilt up.

(to prompter operator) are you watching MTV? Turn it up, I like that song.

(to camera op) CAMERA ONE, TRUCK LEFT, PAN RIGHT, TILT UP. You know what the shot is supposed to look like and that ain't it.

(to technical director) Man, that new reporter isn't the sharpest tool but she sure has... Standby Camera One.

(to camera op) CAMERA ONE.... What The @#$$!!!!

(to producer) At least it's not sweeps

(Camera operator is out in the studio texting)

Awesome thread.

I was a computer Tech, an SEO and a Web Designer.

What really allowed me to go full time entrepreneur is modeling experts, understanding the behavioral and psychological components of marketing and blogging, and creating a system of product creation for myself.

Additionally, many of you contributed to a lot of the knowledge I have. All of your posts are incredibly useful.

Before full time IM'ing I was working for a Marketing firm training new folks that wanted to sell on the road for the company.

Take care,

Bernard St-Pierre
Marketing Consultant
Copywriter/Teacher

Work as a freelance search engine optimization specialist.

I was a financial advisor up till 2008 when the whole financial world came crumbling down. Then I went on to do admin job and bore the hell out of myself for 2 years before calling it quits. All those time, I was doing part-time IM earning extras with Clickbank, Linkshare and Adsense. Now I'm a full time IMer and I am enjoying my extra time.

What made the biggest difference in my success? I would say my willingness to learn and I am still learning, hard work and preseverance.

Never had a day job...
Student>>> Full time IMer

I am a trainer and still is but mainly as a free lancer....I integrate both social media (my offline training courses)

Its all about systemizing your sales processes...I found that as long as you have a product to sell, a hungry crowd and ways to drive them to purchase your product, then you will make money.

Sounds simple? It is but not easy

I was a teacher on information technology. I was teaching children computer. I wish I had taken the course of Internet Marketing, when I was young. I just took computer programming... and here I am now!

Inner-city chemistry teacher for 14 yrs.

Was actually selling print-and-ink books I wrote before I quit teaching so it wasn't such a traumatic shift getting into online marketing. --Mike

I was a Chemical Dependency Technician, to sum it up it was pretty much babysitting prison inmates that want to turn their life around (not very easy)

I am a milker on a dairy farm since 2000.

I started running a jewelry supply business online almost a decade ago. I still enjoy it immensely and it fully supports my family, but I can't see myself doing it forever. My daughter helps with everything - from taking product pictures, to traveling with me to buy new products - so I hope to pass the business on to her when she's older (only 8 now!).

Last year I really started branching out to more IM stuff. For me it's not so much a huge mental challenge as it is genuine hard work. I put in a lot more hours with IM than I ever did with the supply business. You just have to be willing to sit down and work your butt off. No e-books can solve that part of it.

I was working with IBM and had worked with some other companies before I started IM.

I was selling ladies shoes for a local retailer. Yeah, it was fun at times! What made the difference was COMMUNITY. Once I found my community with mentors, leaders, and support-everything changed!

Was a full time SEO, and that experience helped in making the transition to full time IM

I had a job in the orders and customer-service department at a big door panels manufacturer, processing orders and occasionally liaising with customers.

I realised that working for, under and with others, on someone else's terms, really wasn't for me.

I lasted about 7 months, then I left to focus full-time on a web-hosting business I had established.

Then, after about 3 years, I moved on to stuff that might come under the broad term of "internet marketing".

Worked as a commercial lender for a large bank. It was ok, but it's definitely too much work/headaches for the money.

I focused on sites that had value to the visitor and just used IM/SEO to support my efforts. I never wasted my time with tactics or tricks if I didn't feel it added to the user experience.

Before going full time with my IM job I owned my own landscaping service. It wasn't bad either. Both are a lot of work and I believe owning my own service and being my own boss prepared me for the online world. Treat IM like a real job and you will be successful.

I was a kid with big dreams who grew up knowing that life isn't always going to play in your favor but if you work smart (not hard) towards your goals, you'll become what you want to be at any age, time, or day.

Forex-trading (by spread-betting, i.e. with little capital) and network marketing. I did just about make a living (but had pretty low expenses anyway, at that time, and didn't need to earn fortunes anyway). I was really pleased to give up both, though.

Doing something I enjoy that gradually builds increasing residual income the longer I do it.

I still work full time as a mum lolz

I am scaling up my IMing to an even more full time schedule, once my son heads to Kindergarten in September.

Biggest factor in my success. Mmmmm. I think the key factor here is walking the walk instead of talking the talk. It's easy to get distracted in this business. I am reaping the fruits of my labor now because I took action. KWIM?

I was a corporate lemming. Hated every minute of it. I had the feeling that I was working my ass off to make someone else rich.

In my IM business? JV traffic and back-end offers.

I'm an engineering graduate. But I earn with internet marketing :p

Nice question and nice to read al these stories.

I am currently 23 years young, worked at the local postal office and mcdonalds for a while. These were part-time jobs because I was and still am studying! Got my masters degree in business economics and marketing. And rounding up Psychology masters degree at the moment. I am now doing IM for 2 years of which 6 months succesfully.

Planning to become a super guru after my study! LOL focus on the dutch market a bit.

Well my 2 cents

Cheers

Work for an Internet Marketing guru ... I don't think I'll quit even when my online income surpasses my day job income. I learn too much valuable information here for free.

I worked for the govournment before I decided to stay home with my two kids. A few months later I got into IM

Leslie

Just before I started online I quickly worked my way up from door to door sales to becoming the regional marketing director for a local offline advertising company.

What made the most difference for me is that my position was 100% commission based so my financial success was 100% in my hands. The more deals I closed, the more sales I made, the more successful my sales teams were... the more money I could make. Of course it did not hurt that our product was highly marketable and that we were the best form of results driven advertising available in that local.

Being able to be involved in consulting local and corporate businesses as well as direct sales to and interaction with consumers allowed me to learn many sides of the sales process including closing the deal and securing contracts with advertisers, writing copy, creating compelling offers, creating loyalty programs, tracking response, finding the hot buttons of consumers, closing the sale, the power of associating with and donating a portion of profits to charities and generating repeat business.

An aquaintence of mine who was trying to break into a market online once asked Dan Kennedy what advice he would give him to gain the experience and skills necessary to get into online sales and to paraphrase Mr. Kennedy told him "get an offline sales job."

Luckily online you have lots of options if copywriting and direct sales are not your strong points... you could learn CEO or paid advertising strategies to drive targeted traffic... but you still need to learn how to boost your CTR at the least.

No matter where you sell... online or offline the same principles apply. For me it was great to have a solid foundation of offline sales, marketing, and jv brokering experience and then I used ebay and ezine ads to practice my early online copywriting skills (as well as the WSO forum).

I practiced my online communication skills in the Warrior Forum by participating in discussions. I practiced writing copy in the WSO forum... being a prolific poster and participant here has more benefits than you might think... I even credit it or helping me hone my typing skills :-)

What made the biggest diference when getting started?

Taking $500 and investing in a small product development project. I highly recommend it to anyone. Think of it as an education. Don't worry if your first project flops... the experience will unlock the power of creative inspiration and give you valuable experience.

I made decent money doing affiliate marketing, jv brokering, buying and selling rights to high end products, selling unique artifacts and rare books on ebay when I was first starting out...

But what really made the difference was identifying a need in the market and creating a product to meet that need.

What was more important than that was that I had began to build a mailing list from my various ventures... a small one with just a few thousand subscribers. I had also started an affiliate program for a JV we put together leveraging products that I had licensed.

I sent an email to my small list of what I think was around 3000 at the time letting them know that this tool I had been developing was ready and I was going to have a teleseminar that evening to announce it...

I had more than 1200 people register for the call. I told them what my product did on the call and in 24 hours closed five figures in sales for a $79 product.

Of course there are many things that happened in my life before these experiences and much that I have done since but that was the path that got me rolling.

I recommend to anyone to create at least one product. Even if your first product sucks it will generate a flood of inspiration for the next.