The Secret to Success is no secret at all. It's right here. Let me share it with you. [LONG READ]

I'm a new member here but I am not new to the ruthless and often soulless realm of Internet Marketing. I began walking the path of internet wanderer 3 years ago. At the time I as a college student immersing myself in the fascinating world of psychology and business. I was to graduate 12 years later as a psychologist, or a scholar of human behavior. I would be able to help people through untested shades of wisdom learned from books I never questioned. I was a career man, spending 6 hours a day studying after lessons, ruthlessly regurgitating the same-old that I was taught would lead me to the American Dream.

But that wasn't my dream. My dream was something more intangible, something beyond the stereotypical dreams of old Americans. It involved freedom...But freedom from what? I could not pin point it at the time but I knew it was to be found "out there", somewhere. Or so I thought. Today I know the dream was really "inside" of me all along waiting to be discovered..

I will not try and rip you of dimes and nickles in this thread to feed my greed, nor will I make you sign up to one of my newsletters so I can later sell you what you already have within you. No, this thread is about something more, it is an attempt to enlighten the intangible and unseen paths that have led to my success and happiness. I'm not going to be teaching you a "method" or a "system" here. I won't waste your time teaching you how to dig out gold em there mountains when I know there's only coal to be found. Read carefully and you may discover something more valuable and timeless than the regurgitated systems you've paid for only to become obsolete with weeks or months.

I began my IM career like most of you. I had a dream of freedom, flexibility and self determination. IM seemed like the only path leading in that direction. On a whim I quit university, grabbed my travel bag and set forth in this brave new world. I read numerous make-money-online blog and forum posts on more websites than I knew the internet could carry. I bought ebooks, I bought videos and I bought into the dream sold by all forms of guru's. I spent up to 7-8, sometimes 10 hours a day consuming ever mile of the information highway. I spent a year paralyzed like this, unknowing of my own handicap. I made blogs, I made static sites, I bought keyword tools and automation tools I signed up to every back alley CPA company that would take me. I did everything by the books, but the books closed shut on me.

I made exactly 0 cents during my first 13 months of Internet Marketing. I lived at my parents with no part time job, spending day and night learning or as I thought, at the time, riding the magic bullet all the way to automated riches. But the bullet wasn't silver nor was it magical. It was black and rusted. It flew straight into my brain, hemorrhaging my ability to reason. It was saddled by Guru's who had made me believe that I was the one riding the magic bullet. I was going nowhere. 13 months and still at square one. Even Kasparov makes a move faster than me.

But then a turning point came.... My neurons..They sparked. Some tiny bolt of electricity had created a thought in my brain. I was scared, I have not felt such a thing in 13 months. I blindly followed the direction laid before me, I had no time for petty thinking. But I couldn't help but listen to these new voices in my head.

This thought was one of inspiration. Of initiative. I knew they had to be acted upon. By this point I had over 150GB of material stored on my hard drive. But enough was enough. It wasn't working. I had made a decision to cut the fat. I deleted almost everything off my hard drive. The books, the videos, the audios, the tools...Everything I had paid for. Because in the end what I bought were liabilities and dead weight. I became ruthless in my attempt to cleanse my mind and soul of the marketing pollution. I had become a victim of those I had wanted to become.

During the next 12 months I spent 5-6 hours a day taking thoughtful action, fumbling about trying to make progress at my own will. I did not follow any systems or methods. I followed common sense and thoughtful judgements. I became a ruthless driver of my destiny. I did not care if I failed. I cared to succeed and I knew it was only a question of how bad I wanted it. I didn't keep up with all the latest IM buzz words or Google changes.

Yet... within my first month I had made 70 dollars fumbling about, more than I did the entire year before following the Guru's systems. Was it Fortunas pity that lent me a hand to make a few dollars before my inevitable demise? But no...My second month....I had made $250. My third month...$1100. Within 3 months I was equalling my parents full time income (they're poor folk). By my sixth month I was making over 3k a month. One Year after having set off to find my OWN path of success I was making over 8k a month. My parents quit their jobs. My friends were wowed and some were jealous. And me? I was accomplished. I was confident. I was at peace with myself. I had made it with my own two hands. Success came so rapidly it was difficult to keep up with it. It's speed could only be explained by the fact that it was already there the whole time, it just needed to be discovered.

So what is the moral of my story, the takeaway of my long insane rambling?

The obvious is that actions speak louder than words or thoughts. No course, no advice, no nothing can replace concentrated action. But there's more that I've learned. For the sake of greater read-through conversion rates I'm going to bullet point these;

• Success is already within YOU. It is not knowledge that makes one successful it is indiscriminate drive, devotion and belief in your craft and in your future. What can change the nature of a man? Belief. If you can believe you can succeed.
• You need to move your hind off the passenger seat and grab the wheel in the drivers seat. When you're buying IM product after IM product and getting nowhere it is because you are STILL in the slave mindset. You are following someone elses directions, you're relying on someone else to draw you a roadmap to success. You're being an...EMPLOYEE of the someone, in mind. If you're going to succeed as a self made man, you need to switch sides and become the employer of your own mind and destiny.
• Adaptability and flexibility is key in this industry. You need to be ruthless about cutting the fat. We are now in a RESULTS driven industry and not the typical put-in-my-hours-and-get-paid employee "welfare" society. RESULTS demand ruthless planning and ruthless action. Something is not working out? You cut the fat. You measure everything. We're in this for freedom, and if you are unable to eliminate the barriers and cut the shackles holding you back you will never find it.
• Adaptability does NOT mean butter-flying from product to product, project to project, not really trying and then giving up and moving on to the next for a lack of results. You must apply yourself 100% to every project you see through and if you can, in all good faith, say that you have done everything to make it work and it still doesn't THEN you move on.
• Don't focus on the money, focus on the life that you want. I never said to myself "I want to make 10k/month by the end of this year". No, I said that I want to buy a boat and sail, a car and house in my hometown, pay my parents mortgage and have them quit their jobs, travel all year around and afford 5 star hotel stays. Those TANGIBLE desires moved me to make something of myself. Money was just a side effect of that.

Am I saying that you should not read and educate yourself? Of course not. What I am saying is that all the knowledge in the world goes to waste if it is not put to good use. Action.

After I had deleted almost everything on my hard drive, I didn't altogether stop reading and learning things. There were still a a few fellow man I followed and a few products I picked up. But instead of moving from one thing to the next I applied myself to one thing at a time. I bought one product about traffic. I spent 6 weeks applying all the methods to gaining more traffic. My traffic increased significantly and I was now more of an expert on the subject than 99% of so-called Internet Marketers. 6 weeks is all it took. What does that tell you? Meanwhile others had written the product off and moved on to the next product that they invariably wrote off as well because of their own failure to make it work.

In Internet Marketing there's a curious phenomena that when you take too many steps "forward" too fast you probably really aren't moving anywhere, much less forward. Take it one step at a time, check your feet and make sure you've moved one step ahead before taking the next step.

Knowledge is Nothing. Applied Knowledge is Power. Invest in your education in both time and money. But do so with reason and make sure you are squeezing out every once of value from everything you grab. Don't read/watch 5 hours a day and DO only 30 minutes. Don't juggle 3 projects at a time and think you'll come out richer. Court Jesters never become Kings. Follow a single path, learn but also question, critique and use your own judgement. Only through your own will you become successful.

I achieved my dreams and continue to do so because of me ruthlessly chasing after my dreams and MAKING them HAPPEN. You can achieve everything you wish for. You just need to become a doer, a believer and a master of your craft and destiny. I haven't seen a store that sells those yet though I'm sure many have promised.