I guess it's past time I introduce myself.

You probably wonder who is writing all this stuff.

My name is Stephen. I'm not a guru. I'm a retired physician who has been doing traditional network marketing since 1996. What a ride! My first experience was with a nutrition company that looked very strong. It had a 7 year history, member of the Direct Marketing Association, publicly traded, lots of very successful members... looked good to me. I did pretty much what I was told to do by some very successful people. I bought expensive leads. I called them. I hated doing that, but I did personally sponsor 15 people. Only one of them ever sponsored anyone else. They ran into the same thing I did.... lots of work and no money coming in.

My upline encouraged me to go to meetings, including national conventions. I did that. I loved the excitement and always came home with a new charge of enthusiasm and ideas. I have to admit that I didn't make any where near as much money as I spent.

It seemed to me that you could use the Internet to promote the business, but the company discouraged doing that in many ways. They wanted me to use only the corporate site. They prohibited almost every other Internet activity.

That company ultimately failed and I went shopping for something else. After about 4 years I gave up network marketing and swore I would never do it again.

I started doing internet marketing for several products and monetizing my old site, imagine-hawaii.com with Adsense and a few other ads. These things have brought me some profits through a LOT of work.

Somehow, I asked for and started receiving email from Daegan Smith ( Free CD ) about using the internet, and email in particular, to form relationships with like-minded people and generate leads in a way that payed for itself. One of the things he suggested was creating a blog and sharing my experience.

So, here I am, letting it all hang out. I'm being as truthful as I can without incriminating the innocent and intend to chronicle my journey from these beginnings to success. I hope some of you, my readers, will chime in and contribute some wisdom.

Stephen

Over-enthusiastic purchasing

There was something in my brain, trying to get my attention. It turns out it was that I have lost track of what my periodic payments are for subscriptions, hosting and so on. I finally sat down, pulled it all together, and cancelled some things that I have no time for. FOCUS ! I trimmed away about $200 dollars.

A slow day and some changes

As you undoubtedly know, the Pacific Northwest is beautiful, but pretty grey a lot of the year. The sun is out today, so I limited my work time to get out in the yard.

What I DID was:

· Make some changes to a few of my webpages , hoping to boost the click-through rate on the Adsense.

· Answer a few emails

· Sell an airline ticket

· Read my mentor’s latest 2 emails

Now, back to the sun.
Stephen

Business Building Web Log -- The first day.

7:00 – 7:15 Am
I read all my email after chucking out all the spam.

I made a new box for stuff related to this blog.

I smiled as I read my mentor, Daegan’s , morning email. He has not just told me,
but shown me, how effective it is to be consistent with emails to your list.
I am notorious for being a lousy letter writer, but emails are seldom letters, so I intend to escape through that semantic hole and build mutually beneficial relationships the way he does.

7:20 Somebody in my quiet neighborhood wants a bunch of variances to chop up small property into micro lots and build on it. I’m writing to the city to do something about that.

8:00 I am rapidly emerging from an information overload. Over the past 6 months, I have been taking a look at the growing heap of information I’ve collected and dabbled with about internet and network marketing. Yesterday, I tried to summarize it in a single sort of outline … you know,some sort of title for each e-book, traffic program, audio book….. That I’ve taken at least a cursory look at.

Overwhelming, but not nearly so formidable when organized into a loose outline. I am using a word processor that allows hyperlinks, so now I have a handy way to jump to documents and websites. As I have been doing this, I am filling in the outline with details.

My goal is to thin down the candidates for useful action, and to make a tentative to-do list, putting tasks in chronological order. I have a tendency to over plan and remind myself of that as I do this. I’m asking myself if I’m overplanning by doing this activity.

I’m spending the next hour or so on this. I’ll re-ask the above question when I am done.
The "outline", minus some details looks like this now. It looks more likea to-do list than an outline. Item’s in [parentheses] replace actual entries for the sake of privacy.

Traffic Kahuna http://traffickahuna.org/
Marketing Makeover
[ member id ] [password] http://members.marketingmakeovergenerator.com/specialinfo.asp?x=1740555

Blogs
Web2.0Squidoo Dashboard

Twitter Sign in

YouTube Sign in [ID password ]

Facebook

MySpace Sign in [ ID ]

Newsletter Marketing

My Mentor’s affiliate program
Tracking on free CD affiliate ( how do I do this? )
This program pays commissions on all of the products found at http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=777762.

The first offer is for the "True MLM Wealth" free CD and commission is $20 per free CD request. Then as I will follow up with your leads via email and they purchase any other product from the same vendor, will receive commissions in the following dollar amounts per product:
Email MLM Formula $200,
Email MLM Formula One Time Offer $100,
Email MLM Swipe File $150,
Email MLM Swipe File OTO $75,
Advanced Profit Loop System $75,
Copywriting Seminar In A Box $150, MLM Big Money $15,
Magnetic Marketing $150,
MLM Mastery Course $75 after 30 day free trial,
Power Prospecting Secrets $60,
Squeeze Page Pro $50,
You Can Make A Living Online $150
Private Wealth Consult $50.

So I see there is huge profit potential over the long term to earn a lot off passive income with this program. All I have to do is drive traffic through my affiliate link and collect my commission. "The King Of Never Calling A Single Lead" will do all the rest!I will promote this link: http://www.1shoppingcart.com/SYS/?m=81142&c=l

Ezine searches recommended by mentor:
Top Ezine Ads (this one is really good but it costs a few bucks)http://www.topezineads.com/

Lifestyles Pub (this one is really good but it costs a few bucks) http://www.lifestylespub.com/

EzineSeekhttp://www.ezineseek.com/

eZINESearchhttp://www.ezinesearch.com/

E-ZineZhttp://www.e-zinez.com/

Best Ezines.comhttp://www.bestezines.com/

John Labovitz's Ezine List (this one is good but it may not be updated past March 2000 )http://www.meer.net/~johnl/e-zine-list/

YTB Travel

Power Prospecting System
Email MLM Formula
[ Below this are many pages of proprietary information… A summary of one of Daegan’s amazing e-books. I can’t give it away here, but for a free look at this stuff, click here.]

8:55 AM
I thinned that out a bit. I realized, while reviewing this, that
You have to be a bit careful when posting personal notesto a blog that you respect the privacy and the copyrightsof people when you do this.
That there are abundant opportunities in a blog about mymarketing efforts, to share links to affiliate programs that are already part of the note! You will find a few in what I just posted. You might even click on some!
There are opportunities to share even more non-affiliate links to useful tools with blog readers

9:00 Am in need of some Java.

9:20 OK. We Seattle area folks need a coffee fix to keep going.
As I was sipping mine, it occurred to me that this blog is not monetized.No Adsense. No nothing…. Monetizing blogs is a piece of the formulafor funding the advertising to promote an MLM business.

How many times have I heard that? I do it on my Imagine Hawaii website, and now that I think about it, it’s paying for a pretty good chunk of ads every week.