Greg's Story & Page Summary

This is partly my story and partly advice for other people -- advice about how not to repeat my mistakes.

Yeah, I fell on my face over and over again, wasted a lot of time and money, and then finally figured out how to make some money online.

And I've written a lot of it down.  Here.  In this site.

But let's talk about you first --

Is this you?  When you first heard about IM (Internet Marketing") or AM ("Affiliate Marketing") it was so exciting you woke up early in the morning and even in the middle of the night to work on your computer and read the books you had downloaded.  Then came that creeping feeling that you weren't getting anywhere. This IM thing was a little harder than it looked and now it's not so much fun any more.  You're spending money instead of making it.  Maybe feeling a little "Overwhelmed?"

Don't feel like the Lone Ranger.  For 95% of the people who start, it takes around 3 months. Then they drift away, cancel their subscriptions, and quit.  And if you look at a year, that number goes to 98%.  So most of the people who try online marketing don't make it.

Why?  Because of the 4 myths (or just plain lies) that we hear over and over again.  Here they are:

• It's easy,
• Anybody can do it,
• In just a few hours a day,
• And the biggest one of all:  I want to share my secret formula with you.

I think most IM veterans will agree that:

• IM is a GREAT business but NOT and easy business.
• Many people can do it, but being reasonably intelligent, literate and computer savvy helps a lot.
• At least for the first few years, it takes a LOT of time -- 8-10 hours a day, minimum.
• And nobody is giving away any secret formulas or keys to the Kingdom.

If you think I'm wrong, go visit a few forums like Wickedfire, Warrior, or Digitalpoint. Listen to what the people who have been around for a while say when they are talking to each other.  Then, if you still think I'm wrong, write or comment and let me know.  Let everyone who reads this blog know.  That's how blogs work.  And I'll get back to you.  If you've learned something the rest of us have missed, I'd like to find out about it, too.  There's always more to learn, right?

OK, so why should you keep reading this blog?  Because I'm finally making money online, and if you read my blog, I'll tell you how I finally did it.  Think of this site as having an older brother or a good friend you can go to for advice.  Someone who will tell you "do this", don't do that", or "try it this way".  Wouldn't that be nice?  And wouldn't it save you a lot of time, money and blind alleys?  A lot of what you need is under Greg's Tutorials or Products I Like & Use, but don't go there right away.  Finish reading this Home Page first.

I'll tell you about the things I've found that worked -- the things I like and use. And I'll also tell you about the things I think you should stay away from -- the things that wasted my time and got me nowhere.  That won't make me a lot of friends with some of the big guys, but that's OK, too.

So welcome to my Internet Income Jackpot site.  Stick around.  Follow my story.  You'll feel better and get to YOUR Jackpot a lot faster.

Greg's Story:
How I Finally Learned IM ("Internet Marketing")

____________________________________

I was stoked.  I was so excited I couldn't sleep.  I woke up in the middle of the night and worked through tutorials on my computer.  I went from site to site, e-book to e-book.  I was already counting my money.  Then I tried to set up my first site and met my first Plesk board and cPanel.  Hmmm.Then I signed onto a service that was going to give me 5 ready made sites every month.  Every month!  Written by experts, with all the words, graphics, products, squeeze pages, the whole shebang.  All I had to do was edit the sites a little, set up my email lists at an autoresponder company like iContact or Aweber, upload the sites to my hosting account, and push the button.

Wait.

Stop.

Did I say "edit the sites"?  Edit my backside. I couldn't even get them to open in my browser.  I couldn't even look at them.  You see, they were written in PHP.  And when I wrote to the company and asked them what I needed to do to edit the sites, they didn't write back.  But when I really kept after them, they finally said I could try NVU, Kompozer, or Dreamweaver.  Those are the editors most people use.

Well, NVU and Kompozer are free.  So I downloaded them.  But they're HTML editors.  They don't do PHP sites.  For PHP sites you need a LAMP (Linux And MySQL PHP) stack.  And I didn't have one.  So I couldn't even see the darned websites, no less edit them.

Oh, and my first WordPress installation.  Pitiful.  Their Famous 5 Minute Installation? Nothing buy one hosting error after another.  Can't find database!  Check for proper installation!  And the automatic pushbutton, one-step options?  Like Microsoft's Web Platform Installer (Web PI)?

Run away! Run Away!!

That little puppy probably cost me a week all by itself!  Filled my computer up with more garbage that I could even count!  Some of that junk is still there.  XAMPP (another LAMP stack) never did work.  But WAMP did.  Finally.  After I got rid of Microsoft's new i6 TCP/IP protocol, and also got Skype to release Port 80.  Want more about running programs that Linux based (like PHP and MySQL on a Mac or Windows system?  It's here, in this site, but on another page.  Let's just say, it's not intuitive.  Or easy.

To be fair, Dreamweaver has it's own SQL and PHP built in, so it will load and run and edit PHP websites "effortlessly".  Once you shell out almost $1000 for Dreamweaver, that is.  And learn how to run it.  Think "Photoshop" and you'll have some idea how "easy" it is to learn and run Dreamweaver.

IT'S SUCH A GREAT BUSINESS

Internet Marketing (IM) is a GREAT business and this is a GREAT time to be getting into it, but it takes some WORK.  That means studying, learning, reading, writing, coding, spending time at your computer, thinking -- you know, WORK!  Most of us find it enjoyable work, but we're not just sitting back with our feet up watching the money roll in.

Where was I?  Oh.  Right.  Work.

The people who are willing to work at IM can make more money faster than anywhere else I know -- anything legal, anyhow.  My fellow members at Wealthy Affiliate are living proof that what I just said is true.

But if you're not ready to do that (work) ... If you're still chasing free lunches and money for nothing, please go away!  Surf on off to another site.  This one is not for you.

STOP THE PRESSES.  LET'S GIVE SOMETHING AWAY.

I've got a great Internet Marketing course called the Mad Marketing Method.  Kind of a hokey name, but a really good course.  It was written by Kyle and Carson, two 25 year old college kids who have made a bundle on the internet.  I'll tell you more about them later, and give you more of the stuff they've written.  But for starters, how about signing up for their free, absolutely free with no obligations, Internet Marketing course.  Sound good?  Click here.

SO WHAT'S THE SECRET?

For those of you who are still with me, here's the good news:  If you're willing to do a little work -- most of it is kind of fun -- and use one of the best resources available, you can avoid most of what sinks other people.  The frustration and grief, too.

Think about painting by the numbers. You follow a pattern and end up with a picture. For IM, it's "learn what you need to learn, do what you need to do, and watch the money start adding up in your Paypal account."  When those emails start showing up saying, "You've Got Money!", it feels great!

MY FATHER USED TO SAY ...

"Success is not personal. Success is a pattern. If you want to be successful, find somebody else who's successful, learn what he or she is doing, and then copy it EXACTLY. If you can do that, you'll be successful, too."

(He seems to have gotten smarter as I've gotten older.)

Sounds easy, right? Find a winning formula; follow it; count your money. No problem.

There's just one catch: People who have found a winning formula are not usually enthusiastic about giving it away.  Selling it?  Maybe.  Giving it away?  No way, no how!

In the real world most successful people keep very quiet about their winning formulas and use them to make as much money for themselves as they can.  For themselves.  And maybe their children.

GREAT!  SO WHERE'S THE WINNING FORUMULA?

So how do you find one of those winning formulas? A DETAILED and EXACT formula?  A REAL one?  Where do you start looking?

How about your inbox?  (Hint:  Usually not here.)

Every day I get lots of emails from people offering to give me their winning formulas. Here are a few recent ones:

• Newbie Earns $37,730 In His Second Month"

• Make 1K Per Day From Home (Must See)

• 50 FREE IM Products You Need Greg

• Free Gifts (48 Hours Only, act now!)

• Single blog makes $1763 in 1 day (shocking)

• Your first $1K commission check in 14 days?

• Re: $379/ Day Home Job Position

I've left out the ones that will improve my sex life, grow hair, double my money in the stock market and triple it in Forex (foreign exchange). That first one about the newbie who makes $37,730 his second month sounds pretty interesting, though . . . . . . Just kidding.

Come on, we all know what they are, don't we?  They're baloney!  Come-ons for suckers.  But there's a little sucker in all of us, isn't there?  Well, there is in me, anyhow.  A little greed?  A little willingness to suspend disbelief and just BUY IT!  TAKE A CHANCE!  MAYBE THIS TIME ....

We all know there's no free lunch, but some of those sales letters sounded so darned good, and pushed so many of my buttons I found myself clicking "Buy" before I could stop myself.  And what happened?  A bunch of funnels, squeeze pages, more sales pages (the "upsells"), and another system or subscription or "Blueprint" sitting on my hard drive.

Am I right?  You've done the same thing, right?

And the junk is still sitting there on my hard drive.  I'll probably put it up as a free download someday when I get to it.

I FOUND IT!!

OK, so I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer.  I've made some mistakes.  But I did a few things right. Want to see some of them? Then check out the "Products I Like & Use" page. And now I've written sites for clients and at least some people see me as kind of an "authority" about IM.  Wow.  I'm getting there.  And I'm getting some of those "You've Got Money" emails, too.

Feels pretty good.

And now I'd like to make more money -- keep my IM income growing.  (How's that for straight talk?)  I'm writing this site because I'd like to make more money from IM.

How am I going to do that?  How about by helping you make some money, too?  It's a big market.  There's lots of room for lots of people. See, I finally stumbled onto one of those "winning formulas".  It took me a while, but I finally did it.  Keep reading.  I'll tell you about it.

Or, maybe you'd rather skip the conversation and just go see it for yourself?  Now?

INTRODUCING .... THE WINNING FORMULA!

Go back to the menus above and start looking through them. Start with "Greg's Tutorials", "Gregs Posts", and "PBCS Newsfeed". Then look for "Products I Like & Use".

I'll start you off with a comprehensive course for beginners, and I'll save you at least a year (and a lot of money) buying and trying things that don't work. The products and services I finally found and use myself that DO work are on the "Greg's Picks" page. If you read them carefully, they'll save you at least a year of floundering around -- and a lot of money.

But if you're just starting out, maybe the most important thing I can suggest is to start off with the free course published by Carson and Kyle, the two 25 year olds who make about $2000 a day online with their Wealthy Affiliate site.  They know what they're talking about.  They make a lot of money.  They've actually done it.  Themselves.  Hands on.  And then they wrote a course about how they did it.

And they let me give it away.

For free.

Here.

Do you think maybe reading their course would be a good way to get started?

For those of you who are still with me (guess you like my writing?), let's think about some of the things you're going to need to learn if you want to make money in IM:  Buying and registering domain names, buying and setting up hosting services, building and editing web sites, writing content for web sites, promoting your websites, making your promotion stand out from the millions of other people also promoting their websites, search engine optimization, article marketing, pay per click marketing, email marketing, Adsense, Adwords, Analytics, Tracking, etc, etc, etc.

I could fill up this page with the things successful IM people know, but that wouldn't do you any good right now, would it?  How can you learn what you need to learn, step by step, as quickly as possible?  Well, as I hope we agreed already, nobody is going to give you the keys to the IM kingdom but a lot of those keys are waiting for you in Carson and Kyle's course.  It's even free.  All you have to do is ask for it by signing up below.

IT'S RIGHT HERE, PARDNER.

It even comes with a link to a group of other people who are successful and who are helping each other become more successful.  That link right now is me and this blog.  Between me, this blog, the course, and those people, you are looking right at one of those success patterns. One of those winning formulas.  If you copy it, you can make it start working for you, too.

Of course, I didn't always do that ....

I'M NOT A PERFECT PERSON

No shock to my wife....

But seriously, you know what?  Every time I "fell off the wagon" and started chasing those "get rich quick" offers, I ended up wasting time, effort and money.  Just chasing my tail.  And every time I went back to Carson and Kyle and the people who follow what they teach, the cash started coming back into my Paypal account.

That's why -- with their help -- I'm building this site.  It's because I've found that the best way for me to be successful is to help other people be successful.  That's what this site is all about -- helping YOU become successful so that I can be successful, too.

What happens next?

TAKE THE COURSE!  IT'S FREE AND IT'S GOOD!!

That's kind of up to you.  You can keep chasing "autopilot" and "bot" and "pushbutton" Get Rich Quick Offers, or you can sign up now for Carson & Kyle's free course.  You can do it here, below, or in the sign up form in the sidebars.  They both work and will both get you the same free course.  Enter your name and email, press the big red button, and then, in about 5 minutes, check your inbox.

If you have any other questions or comments, send me an email.  The easiest way is the use the contact form in the sidebar on the right -- the one that says "Send Greg An Email".

Cheers -- Greg