Wake Up Call

Well, it happened. Recently I was forcibly introduced to the realities of internet marketing and making money online in a way that had a profound effect on my perspective and vision on what it is exactly I am trying to accomplish here.

First off, I am by no means an expert or ‘guru’ or a HUGE success in the arena of internet marketing, no where near guys like Mike Filsaime, Frank Kern, Shawn Casey or any of the other top marketers you may have heard of (I do make good money from the few ventures I have started but not enough – YET – to replace my J.O.B but stay with me here) but over the last few months, thanks to people like Andy Jenkins, Brad Fallon, Paul Colligan, Ed Dale, Robert Somerville and many more, I had what I can only call an epiphany of epic proportions.

In order to effectively explain what I mean, I need to take you down a little trip through my experiences to date with internet marketing. To start, like many of you looking to make money online, I was lured into this space initially by the latest and greatest business opportunity spam email message.

I remember my initial altruistic dreams of being my own boss, owning my own business, working only 5-10 hours a week and providing the best life for my family possible. I saw the internet marketing world as the ideal place to leverage my 20+ years of sales and marketing experience in the offline world and, jumping right in feet first, full steam ahead, filled with ambitions and dreams of riches. I clicked on my very first spam marketing message – “Make $3-5k per week on autopilot” and I have to tell you, this was a BIG step for me.

You see, at that point in my career I was working for one of the largest ISPs in the world in sales operations (8 years) and one of the biggest things I learned while there was to absolutely avoid clicking on spam. Reason: a lot of spam messages are intended to ‘trick’ the readers into clicking on links that in many cases invariably lead to installing some kind of software with spyware on your computer. This of course opens you up to the potential threats of scammers, identify thieves and phishers online (there are more out there than you can imagine). So I NEVER opened spam!

So why exactly did I open the email? As I mentioned, I had dreams of making more than I was at my J.O.B., a better life, I was tired of working for someone else, tired of struggling to pay bills and I was in all honesty in a financial crisis so in a sense, I was desperate.

Now, like I said I do make money from my ventures – to this day, that first business opportunity does generate cashflow for me, just not enough – but what happened were two things. First, I found that I LOVE the business of internet marketing – it is exciting, fun and it really is the future of major wealth today. Second, my initial investment of $4000 (product, back end, marketing, etc…) turned into $12000 within the first 90 days. Then $15000, then $18000 – within my first 5 months I had more than tripled the investment in my very first venture and I had no clue what the hell I was doing. Not bad, right? Especially since my child support stopped coming in (yes, I am a man who gets child support – imagine that!).

WRONG! Andy Jenkins says it best in the inaugural issue of The Net Effect and I will paraphrase: Basically, my Vision Mindset is what drove my initial success but I forgot how to actually RUN a business – I ignored the Process Mindset which is the critical piece of running any business. I was full of excitement at making so much money in a short period of time that I became so comfortable (and I believed the autopilot hype) I STOPPED working the business actively and I actually left my job.

I believed the hype that my online business would simply run by itself with little effort on my part and I would just collect the cash. I am sure you can guess what happened next – my income stream DRIED up. Traffic trickled down to zero, sales stopped coming in and the competition within the business I had joined became fierce. It seemed like there were tens of thousands out there promoting the same thing using the same email copy and tactics.

So, very humbly after 6 months with internet marketing I picked up my shattered ego and I went back to work for someone else. Aside from dealing with the depression of failure, I resigned myself to my old reality and gave up.

By now you are probably thinking “I hear you Eddie, I see what you went through but what exactly changed in the last 30 days, what is the wake up call you are talking about?”

The wake up call is this: thanks to some awesome guys (see above), I learned it is actually very easy to get started making money online and it doesn’t have to cost you anything. That’s right – you can make money online absolutely FREE. I know, you’ve heard the hype before but I am not here to sell you anything, I am not here to ask you to give me $997, $197, $97, $47 or any other number you want to think of.

The reality is there are TONS of free tools and resources out there to get you started and maintain your business. The key is to get started, be persistent and never give up. Don’t get me wrong here – there is tremendous value in paying for tools and resources, for eBooks and systems that help your business. Any business, offline or online, requires a steady investment of some kind to stay alive.

The point here is you can easily get started for next to nothing (I will show you where to look) and by learning the right tips, tricks and processes (I will show you where to find them), you can build a successful online business and achieve your dreams and goals.

The very first step is to align yourself with the right mentors. This is the key – no matter what your product, what your strategy or goals may be, if you have the wrong mentors you will go nowhere fast. Plain and simple.

Am I asking you to follow me or listen to what I say? No, because I believe that is an individual choice you have to make about who you want to listen to. However, if you do choose to follow me and want to learn what I have painfully learned, if you want to avoid wasting thousands of dollars on the next greatest thing, I can only promise you this – I will openly share what I have learned, including all of the FREE resources and tools as well as information on exactly how to use them.

So get off that couch, turn off the TV and find your own wake up call. I am here to help. Fair enough? Thanks and until next time!

-Loaded Beach Bum

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