The first real money of any significant size or consequence that I made online was with a 2-tier affiliate program for a private membership site called Desktop Money Machine back in 2000. Prior to 2000 I had been making affiliate income from online marketing since 1997, but nothing had compared to what I experienced after the startup of Desktop Money Machine.
The site was created by my good friend Bill Burdin from Australia. Payment was through Paypal and you got a $15 commission for every sale you made, plus $15 from any sale made by someone who became an affilate under you (i.e., your second tier).
I joined the program, then turned around and spent $150 to run an advertisement for the program in two popular ezines or electronic newsletters geared to the business opportunities and work-at-home markets. The ads were to begin on the following Saturday — about a week away from the time I purchased them. My wife and I had already made plans to drive to my parents home for a weekend visit on the same weekend the ads were supposed to run.
We arrived at their house late Friday night, close to midnight. When I awoke the next morning I was eager to see if the ads had run and if I had any email. For I knew if I had made any sales that Paypal would be sending me notices of receiving $15 for each sale. My parents live in a rural area and access via modem was quite slow in those days. I was so anxious to see if I had earned anything and was walking in circles waiting for the computer to boot up, and then later waiting for the modem connection and download of my emails. And then suddenly, much to my amazing surprise, my PC literally turned into a Desktop Money Machine. My inbox was immediately flooded with 17 emails from Paypal, all saying that $15 had been deposited into my Paypal account.
By the end of the first full day I had made 166 sales totaling $2,490 in commissions. Needless to say, I was hooked on Internet marketing and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Within a few short months Desktop Money Machine had become “old hat” to the professional Internet marketing boys and they were off and running on the next latest and greatest money plan to hit the Internet. After chasing that crowd for a while I realized I needed to have more control over my future earnings online. I begin writing and marketing my own e-books and this worked out quite well. But I’ve always enjoyed writing and when Adsence was introduced by Google I knew that all of my prior writing efforts and love for writing would pay off. I begin creating rich content sites and continued to research and work in other areas of online marketing — but concentrating my efforts into three areas:
- Adsense
- eBooks
- Affiliate Marketing (mainly Clickbank and Commission Junction)
My income from these efforts is now in the six-figure range. But its been a real roller coaster getting there. I’m had some great moments along the way, but I’ve also made a lot of mistakes and wrong turns as well. With this site I hope to steer you in the right direction, avoiding some of the wrong turns and pitfalls I fell victim to along the way.
Until next time,
Steve
