I’m 27. And up until Friday December the 14th 2006, I was a proud student of a Los Angeles Community College… All prestige aside, I decided that it was time to stop living off my parents and try to get a not-so-real job.
Being a student is awesome, the ramen noodle diet just wore me down.
Through a remarkable twist of fate, just as I was contemplating my very grim-looking future and realizing just how many years of ramen noodles I had left in even the best-case scenario, I got to know a guy who was making a living through online marketing.
Now, I know there’s money to be made on the internet. Everybody knows there’s money to be made on the internet. The problem is just knowing where to start. I’ve always found the idea of being able to work in my underwear appealing, so the thought of trying to find that elusive golden online cash cow has been on my mind off and on for some time. After looking in to and dismissing selling stuff on ebay (someone correct me if I’m wrong here, but it seems you need a flipping warehouse filled with stuff if you’re going to make decent money on ebay), I sort of gave up the idea and went back to paying my bills by serving food to people I’d rather punch in the face.
So when this guy, let’s call him Steve, started dishing out tips on how to make money online, you can be sure I listened.
When he noticed my interest he really started talking. He told me about sites to go to, forums to watch and newsletters to read. He told me about things like A/B split testing, the “would you like fries with that” principle, and why red headers are better than blue headers. He told me about commitment & consistency, conditioning and how to “train” your sales list. I jotted down names of websites and books and people and articles and software.
And just like that, the problem with where to start was solved.
After some intense researching I came to the conclusion that with the information I now had, making a living off of online marketing was definitely doable. There’s no guarantee that *I* will be able to do it, but it’s doable. And when you’re 27 and studying “Introduction to Political Science” while trying to figure out how to scramble money to pay for that parking ticket you just got, doable is (or at least should be) all you need.
I’d played it safe for while taking classes to give myself the impression that I actually was doing something sensible, but I knew the time had come for me to take a chance. This was clearly one of those things that would have evolved into a haunting “what if” if I didn’t at least try to find out for myself.
So here I am. I just finished up my finals, and I have no intentions of going back.
For the next few months, I’m going to focus all my time on seeing if I can keep myself afloat using only online marketing. But just so we’re clear and you can realize the significance of this undertaking: All I have going in to this is a few ideas and whatever time the landlord will give me before he evicts me – if I don’t sell, I don’t eat.
And the purpose of this blog is for me to vent, you to read, and – if things go the way I hope – chart out a step-by-step map on how I went from broke to not-broke.
On this blog I will post links and info about every site I come across and find useful.
If a site has helped me in any way, you will find the link in this blog.
As I have time to thoroughly check out various paid membership sites and online marketing tools, I will put up reviews here.
And you, dear reader, should click on their links and buy whatever products look useful to you. Trust me, most of the stuff you’ll find in here will be things that you will sign up to at one point or another if you’re serious about getting into online marketing, so you might as well do it from this site so I can get my kickback and pay my rent (seriously).
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