About Me
Hi my name is Mark and I came into Internet marketing after being laid off work from the fishing tackle shop where I had worked for the previous six years. As the local job market was tough and I wasn’t having any success in getting called for interviews I started to look around the internet for ideas.
I came across scam after scam and have to say I did buy a couple of products promising me a bucket load of money. I would join and find
once I was in they just wanted more money to get to the next level where they would promise you something else and so on. I wasted hours reading and watching long winded sales pitches that bored me rigid before I made a break.
Where it all started for me!
This is when I came across a website called bum marketing method and as it suggests it was a way to make money without any capital and that was exactly where I was at. I had little or no money to spend so I couldn’t invest. I started reading through this website and noticed a review on Wealthy Affiliate so I checked it out.
As I didn’t have the $47 dollars to join for a month I was left reading up about it more. Then just a few weeks later I was given the opportunity to join for $1 on Black Friday. What I had heard about the place had me begging for more so I thought what is the harm in one month for a dollar I would read all I could and go if not happy. Well guys its been over a year and I’m still a member.
Selling fishing tackle online?
I may point out that when closing down the fishing tackle shop I approached one of the suppliers and asked if they would allow me to keep on a trade account so I could sell some fishing tackle online. They had a discussion and decided to give me ago. I was extremely happy now I had a product line and somewhere to start.
I started to read all I could on WA as well as put up as many items I could a week on my new eBay shop. Discount Tackle Online As I researched I started to make a few sales on the shop and so my online income began. It was slow at first but I managed to make enough to pay for the WA subscription so I was at least not out a pocket when the price was increased to $47 the month later. I was buzzing and my head was spinning from all the information.
Shyness never wins!
So my journey had begun. I was a very shy at the beginning and just scratched around the site reading tutorials, blog and the forums trying to decide where to take my first niche. I should have read the Beginners Guide course before I went about it. That way I would have picked a fishing niche. As it happened I was still following the bum marketer Travis and he had a new product on the market for getting guys to commit to a relationship so I thought I would give that a try.
Learning a hard lesson!
As it happened I didn’t use my own name but created a false account and started the niche. I started building my site and writing articles but things were not going smoothly. I wasn’t getting any traffic and so no sales so I binned it after a few weeks in favour of my fishing niche. As pointed out in the WA it is far easier to write about something you are passionate about than try to create content with a niche you know nothing about. This is a lesson I learn’t the hard way.
Well that’s enough about me for now. Come with me and let me show you the workings of the Internet market and see what I have learn’t along the way so you too can make money from an online business.
Feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment below for more information. Always glad to hear from someone new!
You can check in with me at Wealthy Affiliate here too!
Hi Mark I agree Wealthy Affiliate is the real deal. I have learn’t so much since being a member there. Keep up the good work on your site.
Thanks Stephen, yes Wealthy Affiliate has taught me almost everything I know about internet marketing.
really enjoyed your sites format and the simplistic way it was created. I also enjoyed reading your about me page as I am in a similar situation now, scratching around the edges with some uncertainty and whether or not take the plunge and be a premium member, really interesting stuff here . Awesome!
I would recommend doing it. You will not get anywhere looking from the outside. Who knows 2 months down the path you could have a website gaining traffic and a following you could promote too. It doesn’t happen on its own you need to dig in. 🙂 Good luck whatever you decide.
I love your site . Its perfect and you did a great job and have showed me a lot . thanks
Thanks for stopping by, feel free to contact me any time if you want a hand getting started.
Wealthy Affiliate is one of those places that, when you find it, a voice inside says, “This is IT!”
Yea Daniel I had that feeling when i joined over a year ago. I had searched around a bit before it and everything else came up short. WA is the place to be to learn your online marketing skills.
It is awesome to read your experience when starting with this online business world. I still have a lot to learn and it seems to me that you give great content to people like me, searching for good information that is not that easy to find anymore.
Thanks Lorena I will try to provide quality content that people can use to get an online presence and so succeed to a passive income.
Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with the importance of finding a niche you are passionate about. I also had some false starts, but I had a growing interest in nutrition. I didn’t grab the bull by the horns at first as it is a very competitive niche and I didn’t know a lot about it.
I can testify that now that I have been at it awhile, while it is a lot of work, I have grown in my knowledge of both IM and nutrition. And, most importantly, I absolutely love what I am doing!
Jim having an interest or passion in a particular subjects makes for an easier time in building your niche as you are well aware. I have read a lot of your posts and know the depths of your research on your subject. Your writing I can see comes from a passion well rooted within you and transpires on the page as a testimony to your effort. Your niche has been built from solid research in a subject that appeals to you. On the other hand when I tried the relationship advice niche I had little or no experience apart from sixteen years of marriage. I wasn’t trying to come across as an expert and let my readers know that but it does become difficult to talk about subject matter when you are not an expert on it. You can do research and spend time on learning your niche and that works for some people but having a passion and being knowledgeable makes for a quicker start and better progress.
Seems like WA is a shelter for veterans. But not ex-military vets, instead it is people who have been ripped off by scams. The great thing is, those honest people who just want to learn to make a business, not get rich quick, can really learn something in WA
That is very true Dominic, there are that many scams out there it is hard not to get caught when you first start out in this field. The scam ads are also so well put together that it is very hard to turn away and you get sucked in. Then after a while you understand the language and turn off after a few seconds. I lost count of the hours I spend watching videos, reading posts about this great way to make money and that great way, follow me and so on before I came across the Wealthy Affiliate site and I haven’t moved since. I still get emails from marketers trying their written magic on me but I just delete them now without wasting important time.
I had the same problem in the beginning when I joined… finding a niche. This was hard and I realized it was so important to find something you’re passionate about. I joined about a week after reading a bunch of good reviews for WA. So glad I did and I’m still here moving forward.
Melissa getting the niche correct can be a daunting task for so many people. The fact is we over think it. I was trying to hook onto an already successful marketer in the hope it would rub off on me. Not so I had no followers and virtually no social awareness which resulted in no traffic. Once I was told to go for something I was passionate about “Fishing” I was able to go forward so easily. I have so many ideas to take it forward and get more everyday, I just don’t have the time to implement them all, what a problem to have. I see others struggle to find content in niches they know very little about however I can just start writing and it comes naturally.
WA has come leaps and bounds lately, hasn’t it.
I was forever getting ‘lost’ in there and having log off and back on again. No such problems now though.
For anyone wanting to get started it has to be the place to go..
Great intro about you by the way!
Thanks Dave, you are correct WA has come on so much in the last year. It is so much easier to get around and the classrooms and discussions are full of insightful information. I spent a couple of months working my way around all the information at the beginning and still needed help in getting started. That has all changed the newbie can get further so much quicker now.
Hey Mark I had to laugh when I read that part about reading the beginners guide. I joined on the same promotion as you did, black Friday $1 for 1 month. Back at that time you had to be a little bit tenacious about finding what you needed at WA.
As you know they have since made it a lot more organized and added a lot more step by step tutorials to make it easier for people to figure out what they should be doing and how to get started.
Anyway I agree that people should choose a niche they are actually interested in especially if you’re going to build an authority site about it, it might be okay for a micro niche site after you already know what you’re doing, well for some people I don’t care to waste my time or energy doing something I don’t love.
Hey Ty thanks for stopping by, you are correct WA has improved a great deal since those days. It was a lot harder to find the information you needed to get started and there was no step by step tutorials for beginners. I thought I would point out that link now for anyone looking to get started.
Starting a niche on something you are passionate about is so much easier to work at the articles and posts come naturally making the process faster. I would recommend that to anybody starting out now. Then when you have got a campaign up and running you can try something different.
A lot of people have experienced the same Internet start you did, Mark, so already they can sympathize and relate to your situation. That’s a great way to draw in the reader and persuade them to follow along. I know, because I tried. Nothing behind that ‘Getting started’ link! 🙂
Thanks Bill, yea so many people don’t start on this path because they have decided on a career change it’s more down to necessity either they need extra income to pay house hold bills or want to get a bit extra to take the family on vacation etc, or like in my case survival. As luck had it I landed another job just as I started into this but I was bitten by the bug and continued on the path to see where it takes me..So lets see where that is!
I’ve never heard of anyone having a bad experience at WA. And of course, now it’s even easier to get started there…
Wealthy Affiliate is a cool place to be, I have learn’t so much there over the course of the last year. I has made my life a lot easier when building websites and targeting traffic. Getting started for FREE is a real bonus they didn’t offer that when I did.