What/How/When did you start Internet Marketing?

The Free For All Lounge
#1

Hey guys, the title of the topic pretty much sums it up, I’m very curious to know how did you start on the world of Internet Marketing, when did you start and what did you do when you first started?

Please tell us your history, even if it’s boring, I think no one minds that. I will start by telling my history:

In 2010, one of my older cousins was trying to find an old movie to watch for free, which I don’t really remember the name, and after spending almost 2 hours searching he found an Youtube video with a link to download, but, you may guessed it already it was a locked link, first he had to do an offer, which he did, then the link unlocked and we both watched the movie together. But, here is the thing, while watching the movie I was just thinking about the locked link, how could someone do this, was this easy to do and how much profit could you make with it. When I got home, I walked to my computer and searched and studied for hours about this. That’s when I first heard the term PPD (pay per download) and I got really into it, registered on the good old Sharecash network, which still exists, and started locking everything I put my hands on, from movies, music, games, etc, and started to promote them via Youtube videos. I got my first conversion 2 days later, I still remember the amount, 0.23$. It was such a happy moment, I realized I could make money on the internet and was only 14 years old, so I was super excited :slight_smile:

After that I have never stopped, I dropped out of highschool, because I was earning 3 figures per day with my main job and did internet marketing as a hobby or second job I guess, and earning 3 figures per day with that as well. From that moment on, it has been a climbing journey! I’m really happy and satisfied with what I do and for me that’s the most important thing in life :+1:

So enough about me, tell me about you, what is your history?

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#2

I’m not in IM, but was about to drop the hammer on dropshipping back when the space was not so crowded and fulfilment by amazon was easier. I was also about to open a number of porn sites using some pretty basic code that would pull video URLs from sites. I learned that from a straight, married co-worker who ran some 500+ gay websites. He did it in his spare time and made quite a bit. He was one of the first people to introduce me to this amazing software. Everything got in the way because I was too busy working and studying for a lot of certs. I just kind of put it all on hold.

Eventually I was given an ultimatum, either move back to the corporate office (I was working from home several states away), or else. I chose or else. I put in my two weeks and was an exemplary employee. My time was done and I filed for unemployment. And won. This gave me about 6 months of decent funding. The jokes on them, we were already moving back to Denver. My 401k which was previously growing well was tanking. I withdrew my money as a ROTH IRA also didn’t make much sense. My wife did the same.

I looked up job opportunities abroad and figured blogging would be a good way to make cash. We booked tickets and didn’t look back. About 3 months in, I ran into an old coworker and I remembered the software. My IG almost exploded overnight. I had other bloggers ask me how so I took them on as clients. Word got out and I started to make more and more.

We finally ran out of funds before I ever really focused on IG management. The wifey liked staying in the most expensive places we could. We moved back to the states for a month to save cash before we went to Costa RIca. By now I had enough clients and decent income, and finally put up a website.

Costa Rica blew donkey nuts and the money I made with my clients literally saved us and got us out of there.

I’ve been too busy since I’ve been back to focus on IG management and let it go fallow as clients dropped off. Just too busy to bring new clients on and or train people. Currently we are working on a brick and mortar business and doing very well.

I am happy with what I do, but am pulled thin at times with different disciplines and aspects of running an online business, trying to start another, and a regular small business. I still think about going IM or related full time. Lots of ideas, not a lot of action.

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#3

Good story you got there, running business would be a nice new challenge for me, maybe some day I get into it. About the lack of action, don’t worry, because a lot of people who I talk to got the exact same issue. I never really got that problem tho, mine is too much action haha. But you got to get to work if you have a wife who likes expensive stuff :smiley:

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#4

Sorry it was a long read. It’s been a long road. I’ve got the next month or so to see if my other ideas can get up and running.

#5

See if I can make this short :slight_smile: Worked for a large bank for ten years IT network admin, software distribution etc. My stepfather owned a Pool Company for 30 years never had a website this was all back in 2007 btw. My friend started doing SEO back in 07’ he did very well which of course got my attention.

I created a website for the Pool Business using some $25.00/month to build your own site. My friend did the onsite SEO and told me about links etc. Got on an old school SEO forum bought some links and the pool page shot to the #1 position and created a LOT of business. SEO was much easier back in these days you could put links in blog comments and hit #1 no problem.

Seeing how online money could be made, I spent night and day learning everything about SEO for months on end. People were making easy money back then building out niche sites using unique content then ranking for high volume keywords using cheap links.

After many failures and getting scammed several times I finally came up with a process to pump out sites using Adsense to monetize. I marketed towards women mostly and women’s health. Long story short I ended up with about 50 websites ranking #1 in there niche and after 1.5 years was making $20k/month with these sites with just Adsense. Big players would pay me $200 to $1000 month for links in content, front page ect. I would get offers in the six figures for some of these sites (which I should have taken but thought it would last LOL forever). The money was flowing like never before was a lot of fun.

In 2010 I worked to become a Mod on one of the biggest IM Forums at the time. After six months I became Mod of the Sales area of the forum. I made lots of connections set up my own sales threads and made a lot of money. Got connected with one of the largest media companies in the US through this position. This company gave me ALL their offsite SEO work aka link building. I had invested around $100k in SEO domains to create links and could push any site to #1 for the most part. Also was invested in a system to blast links from over 100,000 blogs to a site and could rank a site to the first page in a day or so. Google was stupid at this time that stopped around 2013 with the Panda updates :).

Needless to say, the party was over with the beginning of Panda. Went from making close to $500k/year to $10k in just 3 years after the first update. I still have some of the sites up and make around $200/month from Adsense LOL. The big contract went bye-bye party over. I saved my money and paid off everything and retired at 45 from working for others.

Now five years later having an Amazon, Yelp concept site built out for a niche I have been involved in the last seven years personally. My daughter is into IG for this niche this gave me the IG idea.

This is the short story LOL…

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#6

Hard to make them short eh?

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#7

Yeah it really is there were a lot of details could have added but most like me are ADD will not get through the first paragraph :slight_smile:

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#8

I don’t mind at all about the length, I love to read stories like this. Learning how someone ends up earning money from the web instead of a normal job is always interesting to hear. I see you have a lot of experience on SEO, which is something I just started to get into, maybe there should be a section for it on this forum?

2 Likes