How I learned to Succeed Online, Finally

If you thought anything like I did several years ago, you probably thought you could just THROW up a website and make money. You know, like the ones our "friends" at Dead yellow offered. FREE Website, FREE e-mail, FREE money, FREE...........well, I won't go there. After throwing the site together, just submit it to the URL submitter a couple times a day and visitors would just flock to my site. NOT! Boy did I feel stupid. Still do sometimes. But I have to admit making mistakes has helped in my approach to earning money online. Fortunately those early ventures only cost me about $400 and I did actually earn several checks so I put my loss at around $240. I think it was worth the lessons I've learned. The way I see it, these are the things you MUST have in order to prosper on the Internet. 1) A Unique Product or become a dealer for a reputable company 2) You own opt-in mailing list with a listserver 3) A PROfessionally designed website 4) A Salemanager (software to follow up on your prospects) 5) Traffic Being in the restaurant and lawn & tree care businesses a unique product was somewhat of a problem. I mean I really couldn't have you download a T-bone medium rare and a twice baked, now could I ? Mmmm...maybe a fungicide treatment for your lawn. Nope. Grub treatment.......Nope. Now off to the Net to find something that people would NEED and purchase in quantity. First I cut some cookies. BIG mistake. Then I tried to sell overpriced vitamins. HUGE mistake. Not only did I sell about 2% of what I ordered, they weren't as good as ones costing about 20% as much. Boy did that guy FOOL me! Now my pea-sized brain was spinning..........where do I find the products or sevices that people TRULY need. I needed to offer the same quality that people received from my offline businesses. And it HAD to have the same VALUE. Off to the web to find a Professional designer. Made a list and started checking out their reference sites. Whatever you do, check out at least twenty of their designs. Alright lets go site seeing. Mmmm...Nice....Ah OK.......Oh Gosh is that Elvis? I mean pink on black, who can even read that? YECH ! Pretty good. Gross. Eyes glimmering. Terrible. The one thing I kept asking myself was, would I be PROUD to let my Mother see this? I mean I may not have the greatest sense of color in the world, but NEON on black??? Just so amateurish it made me wonder what in the world these people were thinking about. Did they really think ANYONE would buy something from a HORROR show? Nuff about the hunt for the website designer. I FOUND them and they did a terrific job for me. Well, I hate to tell you the truth about this, but it truly took me OVER a year to find the right combination of companies that has started earning me money. I found companies that offer great products and education. I combined them with a company that has everything you NEED to do business on the web. The smaller investments have slowly but SURELY grown while I now have a PRO fessional website with which to advertise this combination of products and services. My site has a listserver built in, so my newsletter subscriber list is growing very quickly. I have the salesmanager software also built into my site. And I am proceeding to make adequate (for the time being) money on the Internet. Ta Da......I never really thought I would get rich doing this, just earn enough to retire from the brick and mortar world. Hopefully you understand that it does take HARD work and long hours to prosper on the 'Net. If you think you can just get "lucky"........forget it ! Hopefully we will all realize our dreams of being financially independent, working from HOME. Happy Marketing !