In this post, I am going to talk about my ups and downs of internet marketing full time.
Which I never revealed before as my family and some of my close friends would get absolutely furious with me as internet marketing or the concept of working and making money from home was –
what most of the people from my country Singapore were extremely skeptical about due to numerous on-and-offline scams and government efforts to crack them down totally, leading them to believe that employment is still the best and ONLY way to survive let alone making money.
To be honest, if my dad was still alive, he would also be angry with me and even kicked me out of the house as NO parents in their right minds will wish to see their kids spending their hard-earned money on courses but getting no results.
To began with, I have to stop my internet marketing activities and go look for a REAL job as my mom does not like to see me working from home even though I was making money although it was still not enough to quit my job.
If that is not bad enough, two other things happened. One is my dad’s condition which I already talked about and do not wish to elaborate again in my last post. And two, is because JOBS are hard to come by during the 2008-9 Global Financial Crisis.
But my mom refused to acknowledge any of that as reasons.
She sees those as my excuses for not wanting to work for others despite those being the facts reported by News.
Why was she skeptical?
For the past 30 years or so, she has been working in what I defined as blue-collar hotel industry. She has been doing housekeeping at Shangri-La, one of the world’s famous and top hotels.
If there were jobs in which people would not get affected whether the economy was bad or good, I would say hotels were among those as there would always be tourists booking rooms and travelling whether the economy was up or down.
She made a very blunt statement that it was not a matter of whether the jobs were available or not. But rather whether you want those jobs or not even if they were made available.
She even recommended me to work as waiter there but out of pride and ego, I refused as I did not want to give others the impression that i got the job because of my mom’s position there for years.
Having said, I will now move on to internet marketing.
After my dad passed away, I got a share of my inheritance money which I invested over $30K into my online business. Besides the basic tools of autoresponder, domains and web hosting, I also invested into various courses, software applications and website themes be it html or WordPress.
The truth is – even though they were just excuses on my part after thought about them carefully, is despite investing in a wealth of resources and tools, I did not give myself enough time – not in just 1-2 weeks but in at least 2-3 months – to go through and implement what I was supposed to do.
Like everyone else, I kept buying courses just wanting to earn quick bucks which I eventually realized the hard way – after being told off by one of my compatriot marketers – that such an outcome did not exist.
Even if there were enterpreneurs – I am not just talking about on-or-offline – making great income, it was NOT a result of just putting in a few days of work but in a few months and even years after facing and overcoming different challenges and setbacks that came their way.
Initially I was very interested in the idea of list building and email marketing from just a single lead capture page or what marketers called them squeeze page or landing page.
While that was potentially the quickiest way to make money online, that was also the quickiest way to lose money and even your subscribers in the long run.
So I got to hear and become obsessed with building niche review sites. Not just make money online but health, personal development and physical products as well. The problem is building those sites are very time-consuming as besides web design, I got to learn content writing that engages and attracts visitors to buy whatever I recommend.
Then I got interested in blogging and auto-blogging tools. Unfortunately that venture did not last long due to Google’s relentless updates in the last 3-4 years.
Still speaking of blogging, I do not know how to fit into my internet marketing plan. While I knew having a single landing page to capture email addresses, build list and send emails recommending different products and services as the essential core to build a successful online business, I did not know how or what did blogging got to do with all these?
Eventually having studied successful marketers like Anthony Robbins and Eben Pagan, I realized that having a blog was not just to let people know who I am and what I can do for them –
But to build trust as well so that when I have a landing page and like them know about it, chances are they will more likely to optin and even buy whatever I recommend.
This concept was what I intend to use when it came to promoting information products whether they were from Clickbank, JVZoo or Warrior Plus.
But when it came to promoting physical products and CPA offers, I broke that rule by not building a list.
Except for my Christmas and New Year gifts site, I only focused on placing ads either when promoting seasonal items or CPA offers whose trials were for a limited period only.
Reason was even if I don’t follow up with them, the companies whom I was marketing for be it Amazon or Market Health would follow up with them. And also given the fact that the latter paid me for every lead I generated for them rather than sales.
While the downs were wasting money and taking what I invested in for granted, the ups was I intend to do things differently from I used to do come this year and beyond.
Having read this, some of you might agree while others don’t. But that is my situation and I considered it a blessing to still being able to pursue while others were unable to due to family objections and threats to kick them out of homes should they still want to focus on their online business but have zero results to show for and still not able to get a job.