About The Challenge & How I Got Here
How Did I Get Involved With This?
First… What is the Thirty Day Challenge?
Here is the answer from the site.
WHAT IS THE THIRTY DAY CHALLENGE?
In a nutshell… The Thirty Day Challenge is about making your first $10 online. For a full 30 days we are going to be showing you exactly how to start your own Internet business and generate your first income online without spending a dime.
That’s right, this is going to cost zip, diddly, nothing, nada, ziltch. The entire training program is free, and you won’t have to spend a thing to get your business started and begin making money. No credit card required.
Well I was reading a thread in a forum about a person who wanted to get started online, had no funds and very limited experience. A poster recommended The Thirty Day Challenge and I ended up there. These type of post are common and one of the reasons I started my website & newsletter The Dean Report.
I know where these posters are coming from. My first venture into “IM” was when I typed “how to make money from home” or something along those lines into a search engine. I was flooded with all sorts of stuff, signed up for a few freebies and here come the emails. The ebook of the moment was “Secrets of the Big Dogs”. I never bought any of this stuff. I liked hardback books. Why would I pay $37 for an ebook that had some 40 pages? Didn’t seem like a very good deal at all to me even with the hype. But the thought of the “Secret To Online Riches” was planted in my head forever.
First I bought MS Publisher and made my first site with my own domain. ASAPResumes.com hosted on AOL Hometown. Despite the typo’s and poor grammar you see here I can write and format killer resumes. My specialty was writing for “challenged” people looking for employment. I enjoyed coaching them and getting them ready for an interview. Offline I hired people with disabilities as so many call it. To me these employees were some of my best and their disability was not a disability at all but a gift.
Amazingly my little site moved up in the rankings and eventually I had more business than I could handle without hiring a writer beside myself. It didn’t take long to see that I would not be able to make more than I could write. I didn’t want employees – offline I was managing 200 or so = stress.
Next I discovered ebay and the websites for sale section. After some trial and error I had an ebay store selling info products obtained form packages and a membership site and doing well with websites I adapted to the “thing of the moment” adsense, affiliate programs, ebooks. Next I hosted clients on a reseller account (big headache). Made power seller. Eventually the info product area became a bit of a freak show and I was out of there.
Then I put up a hideous website promoting affiliate products and ebooks – total failure.
Finally landed at The Warriors forum where I leaned a lot from observing, eventually doing ok with clickbank and adwords (it was a lot easier back then). Built an adsense network that did well but it was a constant battle to add new sites as the made for adsense sites lost page rank.
Now I’m here publishing my newsletter and trying to help people get started at my main site using free resources etc. I did open a membership site this year that has remained sold out. I’m learning a lot running it mostly on my own.
I joined this challenge to see if I can make a profit with no budget and free tools. I have always had a budget and could get the tools I need. Even though I’ve used free tools so that I could answer questions and recommend them I want to see if it can really be done.
I know what I can do offline and what I achieved; I’m retired at 49 from a stressful but financially rewarding career. Now I want to prove to myself that I can replicate my offline success online. This will not be easy, no personal assistant, no marketing team, no help desk. I think the key will be getting to a level where you can generate enough recurring income to out source.
People have to start somewhere. I’m hoping the challenge will show me the somewhere & I can pass it along.
Cheers,
Tom
