How I Got Started Making Money Online

Right out of university back in 2005, there I was back home contemplating my future after a three week backpacking trip to Europe. It was a full year before I would eventually get hired on by my current employer of 10 years (which has absolutely nothing to do with my degree in Criminology!). I was working part time with a labour crew, while trying to figure out what I wanted to do with myself. One day off, an infomercial (I know, stop cringing!) for an online currency exchange caught my eye, so I decided to give it a try. Long story short, a month went by, I was a few hundred dollars down, and I decided that I needed to give something else a try!

This is where fortunes turned. I started doing some more in-depth research about what people were doing to make money online. I was pretty green when it came to spotting the difference between legit and scam, so I had my BS force field on full power so I didn’t have a repeat of the currency exchange debacle.

That’s when I found The Rich Jerk. He was different than all the rest. While everyone else was trying to win you over with positive reinforcement, screenshots of bank accounts, and outlandish guarantees, The Rich Jerk basically told you that you were nothing, he was awesome, and he didn’t care if you bought his product or not. I instantly liked him! I didn’t know it at the time, but his sales copy changed the way every internet marketer thought about sales copy. It was unheard of to think that you could say things like that and expect people to buy your product. But people did….a lot of people! To top it off, his info product was good as well. It was for people like me who were just getting into the online scene who had no idea how to start. After going through the ebook, I was able to get a self-hosted blog setup with WordPress, got the basics on how to fill it with content, and also a rundown on affiliate networks and how to set up some easy accounts. From there it went on to discuss ways to market your site successfully, which was VERY different from how we do it today (social media was just a whisper at that point!)

So with my new found skills I was off to give them a try. If I had questions along the way I would ask them at Warrior Forum or Digital Point forums (but be sure to search for answers first….they tend to get testy about answering easy questions over and over). I basically learned by trial and error over the first couple of years. I’d build a site, fill it with content and ads, then sit there and wonder why I wasn’t making any money like any naïve 24 year old would. I spend another two years “learning the hard way” of how NOT to make money online before I actually put something together that was profitable.

In 2010 I read this fantastic post on Warrior Forum about advertising the benefits of online marketing to offline businesses. It prompted me to start my own marketing business, which I did have some success with. In the process of marketing my own business, I met my eventual partner for 6Starmedia….that of course is another story altogether.