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