As you may guess by the title of this post I haven’t given up, in fact quite the contrary, I am probably in over my head. If one coaching program doesn’t get you where you need to be, do another, and while you are doing that 3 plus nights a week, take on a couple of more projects. If you think it sounds like I am having second thoughts, your right. Oh, did I mention that I work 50 hours a week at my full time gig? At my desk at 6Am EST until 6PM EST, I usually take an hour for lunch.

Why another coaching program after the last one didn’t quite live up to expectations? Because I believe I need a mentor to show me the way, a guide through the ‘Cyber Jungle’, and since I believe this is the fastest way for me to be successful, than for me, its’ true. I think that for many of us , especially those that did not grow up in our parents basement, glued to a computer screen, the intricate workings of the internet is, and always will be one of life’s great mysteries .  So, I need a mentor, maybe you do as well.

As of December 3^rd, 2009 I became Howie Swartz’s Apprentice. I joined ‘Howie’s Apprentice 5’ program to be schooled in the discipline of internet marketing. This program costs me twice as much as my previous program with Alex Jeffries called ‘Marketing with Alex’ , but I believe it covers much more. When I compare the two curriculums, Howie’s Apprentice 5 program wins hands down and should well out perform the dollar differences between the two courses.  Marketing with Alex was one night a week for 7 weeks, Howie’s Apprentice 5 program is 3 nights a week for 10 weeks. Howie’s obvious investment in course development and content alone make it an absolute bargain compared to Marketing with Alex.  Howie also has a staff of internet marketing experts, each an industry leader in their own niche to teach me the how and the why. I am excited to be in a position to be able to take advantage of this training and I have high expectations for the future.

I had a two year window to get established in my internet marketing business and half of that is gone and right now I am making a measly $800.00 a month and putting that right back into my business. Not much of a living, right? Where in the world could I go and support my family in the style they have become accustomed to, on $800.00 a month, any ideas?

As you can see by my writing, I am violating the first rule of successful blogging, I am writing from my heart and mind with complete and utter disregard for keyword insertion. This means that few people will find their way to my blog and read my stories. Since this blog has yet to be monetized and may never be, it really doesn’t matter to me. What does matter you ask. If you are reading this, you are probably on the same journey as I am, searching for the same things that I am, if this blog serves as your guide or it serves as your example of what not to do, is a story that remains to be told. I am doing my utmost best to make this blog your blueprint for a wildly successful internet marketing business of your own.

I am and will continue to be, painfully honest in this blog and document my struggle. I am planning to be posting to this blog multiple times a week, short posts due to the all too obvious  time constraints, but they will truly document what I am doing to put myself in a position of financial independence.

I know this will be an epic struggle for me, but in my mind, its’ crunch time. For the past year I have closed my emails with a quote attributed to an Israeli sage from long ago, it was as true then as it is today.

“If not you, Who? If not now, When?” .. Hillel

Well, the more I poke around the internet trying to find my way to a profitable internet business, the more I believe that  my story is really not so unique. More and more stories are finding their way to my computer screen like metal shavings to a magnet. I guess it’s true, when you create a need the ‘universe’ seeks to fulfill it. Out of this latest ‘challenge’ I have not come away empty handed, my education continues even when I wish it didn’t.

Definite ‘Lessons Learned’:

• There is no ‘Free Lunch’ and what worked for some ‘super’ successful affiliate coach, may never work exactly the same way again.  Two years ago on the internet is equivalent to a lifetime ago in human terms. I very much doubt that if my coach started his internet business today, using the same  methods he’s teaching me, the exact same way he started in business, that his results would not be very much different than my own have been, dismal. That’s certainly not a fact I can prove, but I think it’s a better than average bet.

• Don’t enter into any coaching program that does not have a 60 day, no questions asked,  money back guarantee. Since you are probably a new arrival on the internet marketing scene, it will take you at least that long to evaluate what you are being taught and if I t is really up to date information that can readily be applied. Things change lightening fast on the internet and you could be getting yesterdays’ news at futuristic prices.

• When the vast majority of your coaches’ income, which is of course, a big draw when it comes to recruiting students, comes from the last time your coach recruited a hungry throng of students, the red flag should go up. In other words, learn from someone with a million dollar income that is the direct result of selling other peoples products, not from someone where the majority of their income comes from teaching other people to sell other peoples products in previous coaching sessions. You may want to read that last sentence more than once. In other words, did the huge income come from teaching or doing?  You need a DOER, as well as a TEACHER.

I did however get a good understanding of the basics and technical requirements of affiliate marketing, I said understanding, not proficiencies. I believe I could intelligently outsource the technical aspects and not be in the dark when talking to anyone I might engage to complete my technical requirements. Alex Jeffries said it is unlikely that he will ever hold another coaching session, if he does, I hope he takes a different approach.

I cannot say it was time and money completely wasted, I at least got a good jumping off point and will continue to search for the mentor I need and hopefully continue to grow and move forward toward my eventual success on My Internet Journey.

Well, I don’t know what to say, I have been floundering around for weeks now trying to figure out what I did wrong.  I decided it isn’t what I did, as much as it is what I didn’t do. The way Alex Jeffreys explained it was, he built his website and somehow, from somewhere all this traffic just started to appear. He even said, and there are recordings, he can’t explain it, it just appeared.  Well, I beg to differ, as most of you realize traffic just doesn’t appear because you created a website, at least it hasn’t appeared for me and I haven’t heard that from anyone else. Actually, at this moment in time I have four blogs and a personal website and I am still waiting for traffic to ‘just appear’. So far, I got nothing, noda, zilch, in other words,   zero traffic. I don’t know how it happened for him, but it didn’t happen for me. So, What’s next?

Actually, I am not 100% sure, but what I am sure of is this, I will not throw in the towel and call it a day. This is way too important to me, I must succeed in the internet marketing business, and I must succeed for my family and for myself. I make a nice living as a computer consultant, not the internet or website variety, I am of the flavor that is only useful to large corporations or the government, so it doesn’t help me in this discipline, and my current contract is scheduled to soon disappear. I am working on a project for the US Army, and that is soon to end and with the economy still in the toilet, there isn’t anything on the horizon. Sounds like do or die time to me, what do you think?

Anyway, I live in a no whine zone, so there will be no more of that. I just have to thank the Lord, I am so much more fortunate than many, many others today. This economy has financially devastated so many families, hundreds of families are losing their homes every day in this country, still, we as Americans are fortunate enough to live in the greatest nation the world has ever known, and this will pass, just as many other crisis we have faced in this great country.  I truly believe that even in this terrible economy there is still plenty of opportunity for the ambitious and committed  to grow and prosper, it just takes a little more determination and hard work to become an ‘overnight success’.  Be persistent and consistent.

Stay tuned, I am not done yet, not by a long shot..

PART III of III

Why I did it again, I don’t know, but once again an internet coach/mentor happened to arrive in my inbox. Did you ever hear this? ‘When the student is ready the teacher will appear.’ Well, I have, but don’t ask me where it originated, and I am a believer in the ‘Law of Attraction’, sometimes when the need is great enough your subconscious is answered.

I was able to do a much better job in selecting a coach/mentor this time around, I was more aware of what and what not to look for in a coach. This wasn’t the first time Alex Jeffreys had offered a ‘Coaching Program’; it was however only the second time and possibly the last for a while, it was taking too much time away from his own successful internet business.

The cost is $1000.00, although not cheap, it was not really expensive when you consider what other ‘mentoring’ programs cost, or even a two day seminar.  I consider myself to be fortunate to have ‘found’ this program and to have been able to pay for it. Not only does Alex teach you ‘How’, he actually gives you part of his own successful business. Correct, Alex gives you his list building product to sell and teaches you how to use this website, your website, to build your own profitable list to jumpstart your internet business.

Alex teaches you from the initial domain name selection and purchase through marketing the product online. If this doesn’t sound daunting to you, you are either unaware of the steps and processes involved or you are way ahead of where I am today.

Each week there is a webinar on a new topic, which is scheduled to last two hours, but is never less than three and usually more, after which homework is assigned and should be completed the following week. Alex is available for questions by email during the week and he has an extremely talented technical assistant, Gary Parks. Gary is helpful and knowledgeable when it comes to all technical aspects of the course and is the student forum narrator.

The student forum is an invaluable tool, everyone is moving along at their own pace and other students who are more advanced, are more than happy to assist those of us who fall a little arrears. When no correct answer is coming from the student forum, Gary Parks steps in and answers your question.

If you read the first two parts of this article, you could be wondering why I am in this type of caoching program, isn’t this more along the lines of affiliate marketing than network marketing? Yes, your right, it is, but marketing is marketing and not sales, if you learn the mechanics and processes involved in taking a ‘product’ or ’service’ to the internet and the methods to be successful, you can apply those mechanics and processes to any ‘product’. Everything offered for ’sale’ can be considered and treated as a product.

Stay tuned and follow my progress through ‘Marketing with Alex Jeffreys’.

PART II of III

My first attempt at finding an internet coach/mentor happened to arrive in my inbox around the time I was coming to the conclusion I needed more then just a little help, I needed some hand holding.

I received an email from a fellow named Deagan Smith, from the Washington D.C. area, close to home, sounded right, so I thought, why not. After two coaching sessions on the phone, there still was no visible plan or consistent approach, I quit and asked for a refund and promptly got a full refund as promised. I have nothing bad to say about Deagan Smith. Deagan is a really nice guy, good speaker and apparently successful network marketer, just not my style. I think Deagan would make an excellent sponsor in any network marketing program he chose. But, I am struggling here, and laid back and joking is not what I was looking for, I needed a little intensity in my coach, someone with a fire in his belly.

I was attracted to Deagan for the wrong reason, I have an inherit fear of the telephone and struggled with this fear of rejection for a long time, one of the reasons success in my chosen industry had escaped me for so long, and Deagan based his coaching on the fact that he had never called a single lead. Talk about the Law of Attraction, it was mesmerizing to me, never to have to pick up the phone, YES! No, it was the absolute wrong reason to select a mentor. I wasn’t selecting a mentor, I was validating my own fear, I was justifying my inability to perform a vital task in my chosen industry.

I wrote an extensive article about fear or mental challenges that criple your efforts to be a successful internet marketer, as well as interfere with your accomplishing other goals you may have in your life. It’s entitled ‘The Mind Killer’. Together with two related articles dealing with identifying your personal fears, and overcoming the personal fears that stand between you and your success. To read more on this subject; Click on ‘My TriVita Business’ in this Blogroll.

The moral of this story is obvious; you don’t choose a mentor because he thinks the way you do, you chose a mentor in order to grow your business and overcome your failures by their teaching and example.

The Search Resumes.

PART I of III

My search for the best internet marketing course started with the decision I made sometime in the month of January 2009. At that point in time I realized that I would never reach my financial or business goals if I didn’t find someone to guide me through the maze that is internet marketing. Website construction, blogging, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Squidoo, SEO, keyword optimization, and a myriad of other technology and terms that I never realized existed. The terms alone were enough to put an end to my internet marketing career before it even started.

I came to the realization that I needed help after about twenty thousand dollars and a series of failed attempts at marketing my network marketing opportunities to the reported hungry masses of the internet communities. I suppose you think that a much brighter person would have come to that conclusion long before he spent 20K, obviously you have never plunged headlong into PayPerClick advertising in Google for keywords like; ‘Internet Business Opportunity’,  “Network Marketing Opportunity’, or how about “Make Money From Home’. The money flies out the door at an incredible speed, especially at $3 or $4 a click. In a month you can easily plow through 3-5K even when being conservative.

Now, I don’t want to go all the way back to the beginning, I’ll save that for when I am mentally up to the chore of digging up all of my dead bodies, right now I don’t have the stomach for it, so I’ll start in the Fall of 2007. After a costly and failed attempt at a  network marketing business in the travel industry, I joined a company named ITV Ventures, it had a business plan that I felt was unique and they had about 60 nutritional products, this looked like the best internet marketing business I had seen to date. I dove in head first, part time of course; my fulltime day job supported my internet business obsession. Long story short, about 9 months into the business and 5K invested in an ecommerce website, that I was just ready to launch, ITV Ventures ‘dropped’ the bombshell. All the business associates were terminated, with no compensation of course, and changed their unique business plan to a new plan, consisting of a group of about 25 ‘Master Distributors’ to sell what products remained in ITV Ventures, on ecommerce sites only. When you don’t pay your bills, suppliers will stop shipping. Why didn’t I do that since I had spent so much developing my ecommerce site, ITV Ventures also wanted and additional $25,000.00 to allow you to market their remaining products. Get me once, shame on you, get me twice, shame on me!

Let’s not go any deeper into that saga; it was only another startup company in a series of the ‘Best Internet Marketing’ opportunities on planet internet. Following that debacle I swore off network marketing opportunities, which lasted a month, but this time I really did find the right company, TriVita, and it has lasted and grown; now I had to learn how to maximize my opportunity. I had been presented with a real internet business opportunity, one with established products, customers, a ten year history and a future, not some flash in the pan startup. What do I do now was the question, how do I make ‘My Business’ grow and prosper.

I needed help, now!