My Internet Marketing Career  

My Internet Marketing Career

Author: Prince Avery

I started My Internet marketing career at the tender age of 14, when my parents bought our first computer.  Was a decent hp machine and we had dial-up Internet. My motivation for deciding to make money online, beside the fact that I wanted money, was that I wanted money! There weren't too many alternatives either for a 14 year old trying to make money, I mean; you couldn't even get a job until you were 16 years old. Mowing lawns wasn't my thing either; I'm not too big on the physical labor. It was a complete failure. I started with inbox dollar programs that pay you for reading emails. I could also get paid for surfing websites. I'm sure you're familiar with those. They suck. I heard of some people making some decent money with those programs, but I just don't see how. It was way too tedious for my liking, especially when using dial-up and it takes the average page almost a minute to load. I was never able to amass enough credits to get any checks sent out. I might have not been persistent enough, but the results just discouraged me from that route. I decided I needed a website. I didn't have any money, but I could get a free one, so I went on to make a website! This is where my age and experience I think failed me. I was just stomped on what to put on my page. Not that I didn't have any topics of interest, but I just didn't have anything to say. Thinking back on it now I probably did have a lot to say, but maybe wasn't sure of myself, who knows! I decided to get one of those free malls and start advertising it hoping to sell products. The sad part is i knew about nothing on marketing, and back in those days, all you were reading about it was to put banner ads, pay for ads (impossible in my case), link exchanges, MLM programs and such. I even printed my own business cards about it then (not the real ones, just got construction paper and cut them out". How stupid it must have been, because it was all to no avail. I also can’t really say I put much effort in it, or even could have. When you have to fight for time on the only computer in the family, it’s kind of hard to get any consistent work done. I did the thing where you surf on someone else’s website and you get visitors to yours, but then you know the traffic is bullshit, because the websites you look at you don't even give a second glance. Why would you expect other people participating in the program to give your site a second glance? I guess it was a matter of trying anything i could just to see some kind of response on the net. My biggest mistake during that period, and one that still haunts me today is the idea that "I" would be rejected or better put, uninteresting on the net. Why did someone want to read what i had to say? What did I have to say? I'm just some snot-nosed kid who had barely just opened his eyes to the world! Because of that, I injected a lot of “fakeness” and wanted the professional (at least I thought) look and feel, even though there was nothing professional about what i was doing. I was just an Internet copycat for a while and it got me nowhere, especially when you suck at copycatting, and are trying to duplicate the work of people who have far more experience and resources to carry out their intentions.

It took me a lot of just time-wasting daydreaming about wealth, and pure failure, before I began to realize what it really took to make some money online, and then i encountered my greatest hurdle to overcome. I was too young!

Or at least that’s what I was thinking at the time. Was I so wrong....?