Making Money Online - Breakdown Of A Typical Scenario, Pitfalls, How To Succeed - My Story & Path

In this comprehensive outline of the internet marketing mindset, I'm going to walk you through my story/path to success, how I started (the courses! ahhh!), the hierarchy of how I developed my skill sets, and especially the pitfalls to look out for, what they look like, and what the right direction looks like.

One example of a great free way to "learn as you earn" without spending a dime in the entire process, is breaking into the realm through sites like Wizzley (you are here) where you can learn to write powerful copy that earns, then monetize it easily with plug and play modules like eBay, Amazon, Zazzle, AllPosters, and affiliate links to products that pay you a commission when someone clicks them and/or buys something.

This is written for the complete newbie to the realm of making money online to the person whose failed and is frustrated, thinking they are alone or simply can't figure it out. I'm here to share my story and to hopefully inspire you to persevere and keep going.

For most- Buying Useless "Make Money Online" Courses Is How They Get A Foot Into The Realm Of Internet Marketing

I, like many, had spent most of my first 2 years online looking for the next best way to make money from the web. As many have before me, I spent most of my free day wasting time on courses and products that made grandiose promises but delivered, well… let’s just say they didn’t deliver the full package of what they promised.

Many didn't even come close and seemed more like recycled information of web 1.0 opportunities that no longer worked in the web 2.0 world (1.0 and 2.o refer to generations or evolutions of the web, 1.o being the static web (no interactivity just reading) and 2.0 being the interactive web).

Some, in hindsight, did have value, but their intrinsic value was worthless to an unseasoned “newbie”. To make any use of them you had to comprehend certain principals that only experience would lend you. The fact that they marketed these gems to newbie’s as if they could use them to shortcut past the experience, really gave me pause (long after I too was a newbie who fell into the trap").

The problem these days when it comes to internet marketing and sales pages is the copy does well to motivate you, but how do we know that the copy will ring true- for those that actually need it the most? After all you could be holding on to a treasure map encoded in a normal picture but if you don’t know how to decode the picture into a real map to the treasure, aren’t you just holding a picture?

My point is that a big part of the problem is that these courses misrepresent who their market should be. In fact they do it on purpose because those that could actually use the information, more than likely already have experience and don't need the course, but an unseasoned newbie will think they are getting something valuable and useful to them now, and fall for the scam!

This isn’t always done on purpose, but none the less this is a boil on the skin of an internet marketer apprentices journey that can generate mind numbing frustration.

Many will pick up these courses being green and inexperienced, based on someones feedback/testimonial that they made a lot of money using it, but they neglect to tell you that this person had some experience and just needed the nuggets in the course to exploit that experience. This would be the variety of people who have experience but may not have thought to go in the direction THIS marketer went. Others may already have resources that allow them to put the tactics into play!

A step by step course that doesn’t attend to the details a newbie MUST know to make a go of these concepts is being irresponsible unless they market this course specifically to seasoned IMmers, or mention that this is not a “starter course”.

But do they? Not usually… after all, although your money is good to them, their course is premature to you (but later may prove useful after all). It’s like buying a Ferrari and having no racing experience, they will sell ANYONE the car who can pony up the doe, regardless of what you plan to use it for, and they will sell you on the features like how fast this puppy will go, because realistically they are selling the car, it’s on you what you do with it. It’s also on you to get driving lessons, and taking a safety course before hitting the track with the car. If you crash the car it’s not the dealers fault, unless of course they told you just buying it will be all you need to do.

We tend to think that these courses not working ‘for us’ makes it the authors fault, but the reality is, we should have taken some time and investigated the realm before even thinking of buying a shortcut to riches course in the first place.

It’s a grey area really, because many of these marketers do make it seem like any Joe with no experience can navigate the course and return with plug and play wealth, but it simply in reality- doesn't work that way.

There are hidden resources, including vast experience that is required for it to work. Sure they can "prove" it by doing it, even in real time, but what you see is only a dog and pony show for you- but real earnings for them for the reasons above.

I’m not trying to say that everyone marketing a course designed for experienced marketers is trying to rip you off- even though their course may well be worth the money, if it lends you valuable insight you can’t find just anywhere on the web.

More often than not it’s only valuable if you can actually use the information right away, the tricks and tips are real but they will not work once everyone's doing them because the market will saturate.

You still need experience and knowledge of the landscape/realm to full understand how to use expert tactics. Another pitfall to realize is that most of these "tricks and tactics" are often outdated by the time you get the course! The web is consistently growing and fast, so the rules of the game evolve with them.

There are many marketers out there that mean well and just simply don’t realize that a newbie won’t get it, doesn't have the experience to actually comprehend enough to not mess it up, or they simply forget what it’s like to be brand spanking new in the realm of online marketing.

This isn’t to say that you can’t hold onto that course you bought when you thought you were ready to use it. (NEVER THROW AWAY ANY COURSE YOU PAY FOR) You can still use it for future information when you do reach the pinnacle of experience that would make it useful. Experience unlocks layers of awareness that make what was once useless or confusing material valuable and useful. It turns simple information into powerful resources.

Many of these course authors often make it seem as if you can just plug and play the steps to SEO or AdWords campaigns and reach success- You can’t. Plain and simple. Not without some background/experience.

If you can’t test your marketing campaigns (AdWords) because you don’t understand what to do or how it works, then you can’t fine tune your ads, placement, even products to sell and a range of other variables which limits your income potential. Success in AdWords is truly in the details, in the testing and using what works FOR YOU. There are no cookie cutter concepts here as many books would like you to believe.

You can effectively do the manual work, creating an ad, placing it on Google AdSense AdWords sites, and incorporating your affiliate links, but this is where they stop giving you advice more often than not (in this particular part of IMming/Internet marketing)… which means you are severely limited to either breaking even, or losing money… sure you may get lucky, but don’t count on it.

Some survive by sheer willpower of learning from everything they do that doesn't work. They power through learning how things work, why networks exist, and how to properly navigate them to generate a money making cloud of sites.

For many new people wanting to know how to make money online, the internet can be an intimidating place. Without the knowledge to back common sense in this area, (common sense being built from experience) after all we all start out as neophytes in making money online with this kind of thirst for the knowledge we desire but cannot easily find anywhere.

We tend to, at first, be a little gullible when it comes to products to buy, tools to use, and so on. What you may not know is that many of the resources and information bits you need are actually available FREE online! Once you learn the realm, it's easy to find them too!

It only takes a few bad turns on the information superhighway for us to think that this is all we will ever be able to achieve. Ironically it takes just one good turn to change all that around. How many people actually get through several dozen bad purchases of courses and materials promising to help them make money before they quit?

Actually a lot of people do. This is part of why when someone gives up- they give up hard. Because it takes a lot of effort after being scammed, or feeling like they were scammed to trust that putting in your all will actually be worth the work. The thing is, as a budding internet marketer apprentice, many get very excited and their excitement levels rise to unbelievable heights. This energy often comes only in the beginning and if you fail for whatever reason, after putting in a ton of effort and work you're more than likely going to have a hard time recouping that ambition and pride in pushing the envelope to learn.

Disappointment often kills the dream and makes the whole realm seem too good to be true, even if you were making progress but didn't realize it- because you are focusing mainly on being taken for a ride and not that someone tricked you, lied to you to sell you a bunk course, or you simply didn't persevere thinking "I knew this was too good to work". If you persevere, however, you come to realize that this was just a bump in the road and you need to learn to surpass it and get back on the horse.

When you fail again (and blame the course or bad information, misinformation) this just adds a layer of distrust that often will set a precedence that seals your fate- but it doesn't have to! The precedence is actually as unreal as the information that tripped you up. This new mental filter pushes you away from success and essentially filters all future ambition through what was actually a temporary setback, diluting your very ability to get excited again to that superlative degree you were at before.

It takes a lot of energy and ambition, perseverance in the first place just to do it WITH the experience behind you and the right information, imagine what a newbie goes through after failing 4-10 times in a row with no success between to balance out the equation.

Everyone has their own light house of inspiration. For me it was always watching E! True Hollywood Stories that kept me going and thinking REALISTICALLY! I found inspiration in watching how Brad Pitt, or Adam Sandler, or Demi Moore struggled BEFORE they made it rich.

Those pitfalls, bad information, and a lot of failed interviews for parts sometimes in the hundreds before they got their big break- is all part of the journey that seasons you. In these stories the one common thread is that they all went through a lot of downs before they reached just one up- but in all the downs they honed their craft, built up their ability to make it by learning why they failed, what happened, and above all, that one interviewer that didn't see their value, doesn't mean a dam thing! It means someone didn't see what was right in front of them! 

A good example that really made me want to ALWAYS persevere is Mr. Mel Blanc's story. In fact I'll put the youtube video of his biography below to show you what pushed me to keep going when things seemed impossible. Long story short, this is the guy who invented the voice and personality of 98% of the Loony Toons cartoons (bugs bunny, Yosemite Sam, Elmer Fudd, Tweetie Bird, Mr. Spacely (Jetsons), and likely hundreds more. He is hailed as a genius and one of the most talented voice/actors of our time.

When he first went to Warner Brothers studios they refused to even hear him out (literally). He returned every 2 weeks for 2 years simply asking them to listen to his voice impressions but the guy was stubborn and wouldn't even give him a minute of his time.

Two years later the President of the company who kept shunning him died and a new guy took over and gave him the time to interview and he instantly loved him! Where would Loony Tunes cartoons we grew up on be without Mel? Had he given up, we'd not know the joy of all those wonderful characters, or they may have simply sounded ok but not great like Mel's interpretation of them was!

You should try this, watch the biography channel, E!, and anything else that shows you someone successful who started out with nothing, who is now in super-stardom… The motivation you need for anything is the same weather it's trying to make it in Hollywood or in internet marketing! The man who started Blockbuster video opened over 100 stores that failed before the one that caught on worked- this is now a major video rental chain!

Watching these stories shows me on a continual basis that the failures I’m enduring are temporary, but making them permanent is A CHOICE I’m not going to make. Anyone can quit after failing, but only someone successful endures and tries something else that may work and realizes 100 crashes may happen before they make it. In the crash we learn a great deal!

I’ve even gone online and found these stories of how Domino’s Pizza’s creator started, and many others. I found a great video that shows you some of them (below):

I’m not going to pretend that some people aren't given a silver spoon. Paris Hilton and many like her were literally handed success (in the form of money) with no more work than having to fight off the paparazzi. The fact however is YOU weren't nor will you likely be so lucky.

The truth is there are many real ways to make money online, and contrary to popular or conceptual belief, ALL of them take real work and time vested. Success without failure to build your brick and mortar foundation of experience, is as hollow as Paris Hiltons ability to make it in the world without money, power, or her daddy’s (or anyone Else's) support.

Many are looking for the get rich quick, granted, but there are many more that realize there are no shortcuts, and they are actually looking for the get rich for sure concept, regardless of the work involved they just want to know HOW.

I know when I was getting started especially, I would have sold my car, my house, my dignity, to pay for a course that was FOR REAL, that would actually show me how to gain experience, insight, and regardless of how long it would take, would put me in the right place to make money online. This format mimics a college, but try to learn how to earn money online through a college- it’s not going to happen.

The only colleges available are seminars and courses, eBooks, and PDF files… hence the problem. It’s all pretty much unregulated other than truth in advertising, but as we already discussed, they are not using false advertising, they are just not marketing to the right people, or mentioning that newbie’s can’t effectively do these things because of the experience needed to “do it right”.

The problem sets in when you get several dozen so called “how to” books, courses, even attend expensive seminars, and still end up stuck. Do these courses all prey on the newbie’s? The inexperienced marketer? I can’t really say, after all I’ve bought many courses and attended many seminars but what I found was that most of them are unrealistic in their approach towards inexperienced IMmers or aspiring IMmers.

They spend more time hyping up the industry or the wealth on the back end than telling you exactly what to do than explaining something real that will get you there. They seem to be more of a motivational seminar, or course than actual how to. WHY? Because the moment you mention work, 80% of the people who would have shelled out the 150.00 for the book will walk away and go look for those other courses that don’t even mention work.

This leaves those of us willing to work, but want the real deal, sifting through thousands of sales pages, forums (to validate those products yet which are now infiltrated by fake posters made up of affiliate marketers trying to sell the product, leaving you nowhere to look for a real answers to “is this the real deal?”

I would go so far as to predict that 99% of the “product reviews”, “review sites”, and the like are not real, but in fact affiliate marketing in action. This takes you back to square one, you have to purchase the product and pray if it is bunk, you can get your money back.

Did you know that most negative reviews on a product site are not published or are moderated out so only positive reviews are left standing? This is, of course with the exception of sites like amazon.com, eBay.com and other non-partial sites that would rather a bad product be called out than the site get tarnished for the stigma of not warning their customers. If your planning or have bought a course because some "review" site's testimonials excited you- think again!

When starting out we have tremendous, generated, ambition, energy, and go-get-em attitude. We are willing to bet the farm just to acquire the right information because our energy levels are booming, we know we can do this, just point us in the right direction and we will do what we have to, to make this happen.

Unfortunately we end up in a cycle of motivational materials with no guts to show us what to do, or worse we get a course with the guts and the course expects us to already understand and have experience in the industry so we have information that is alien to us, including terminology and format. We need another course to teach us the terminology, how to test market, and so on…

The cycle seems to never end- because no course out there seems to be complete… beginning to end, one shot, and one book, full of everything you need from neophyte to Wealthy IMmer. Well there are a few courses out there. but they are structured into a membership site full of tools and site builders to give someone on the job training.

As a newbie what you need is a concise, clear, step by step manual to one concept (not many) in making money online at a time. Something basic that you can later add to or use as part of a bigger plan. In short you need to get your feet wet with one concept then you can expand later.

Get rich? Most people would settle for doubling or even matching their current jobs income so they can have a back up plan, and maybe move into other things later right?

When I started I ran into ALL of these road blocks and more. I admit I gave up more than once, threw in the towel and decided that the online world was just too dam complicated, too littered with bad information that made finding that diamond in the rough as easy as finding a needle in a haystack.

What brought me back again and again however, was seeing people make it. I’d be watching the biography channel and there would be a guy or a woman who made multiple millions of dollars ONLINE. I thought at first, yea, lucky you… I'm not talking about an infomercial but back stories of successful entrepreneurs, often on Biography.

They had been in the exact same position I was in and many of you are in, but they made it. These stories inspired in me great hope, hope that would recharge my batteries and had me psyching my self up once again…. I’d tell myself “this time I’ll do it, this time that diamond is going to present itself”. I’d say a little prayer to the internet gods to lead me in the right direction.

I realized that finding the course or product, or even career online that would make me rich would not come in a get rich quick concept, nor would it come in a pretty package with a red bow around it.

The fact is, you have to re-frame what "rich" really is, relatively speaking. Wealth is actually not millions or even tens of thousands of dollars- unless your making half that already. If your making 2k a month at your job (take home of about 1.5k) then $4,000 IS WEALTH to you. This is a realistic goal to reach for and much easier than millions don't you think? If you strive for 4k you will actually feel wealthy even if you only make 2k!

If you shoot for a million dollars and make 2k you will feel like you failed- but you didn't- not at all! Maintaining motivation requires realistic thinking and attainable goals. You start (in the above example) with trying to  make 4k and settle for 2k, then when you reach that you double that and strive for 8k and settle at 4k.

Even if you just maintain 2k consistently and that's all you ever make, you've created wealth because you've effectively doubled your income... when you can double that to 4k you can quit your day job and really feel good.

The get rich mentality robs you of your ambition because it never works long term and often not even short term. It lacks experience that allows you to fortify the last step so you can hop up higher to the next step. If your last step isn't fortified and you jump you may break the last step and fall through to the previous step- experience is like the concrete below the step (stair case metaphor).

I started to realize that it would come in an ordinary package and I would need to do something everyone else out there starting out WASN’T doing. What was it? Was it hard work? Was it working for someone who DID make it? Aha!

My aha moment came one day when I had an epiphany. I was watching a show called The Devil Wears Prada, a movie about a girl trying to break into the fashion industry but was working for this evil woman who was like a god in the industry. I remember watching this movie the first time thinking about how mean that woman was, but then the second run I caught a glimpse of a second layer.

The woman was mean because she was trying to teach this girl something she NEEDED TO SURVIVE in THAT industry! Strength! Had she gone easy on her the industry would have eaten her alive. She was too mousy, to this and too that. The point was my aha moment came when I realized that the answers lay in this format.

Why go out there in the big bad internet marketing world and let the wolves eat you alive, steal your wallet, and leave you desolate and lacking the vitality and ambition you once had? These wolves however don’t just mug you and take your whole wallet, they nickel and dime you to death and leave you with just enough information to feel frustrated, and feeling like it’s YOUR fault you failed. They do this by raising and crashing your hopes again and again selling you yet another "solution", and by the time your broke your will is also broken!

After all they gave you the right information right? (let’s remember they always leave out some vital piece of the puzzle that makes the whole thing work, this way you come back and buy their next package that will resolve that piece (then open up ten new questions and so forth)?

It’s exhausting trying to break into this industry through any course or seminar. There are courses out there that are well worth their weight in gold, in fact there are courses out there that are the real deal, but the problem is by the time you find them, your blinded with fury because although these courses have sales copy that actually does tell you what the product does and is about, there were a thousand other products that were BS that had the SAME copy (they may have even stolen the sales page content even though it wasn't valid for their product! So we tend to walk away thinking, yea right buddy, your just another internet marketer daemon after my chump change.

If you approach this industry realistically starting at the treadmill working hard and learning without getting paid for your time or effort (yet), you will succeed. One way many are doing this now is with the help of Web 2.0 sites/properties like Wizzley, Hubpages, Squidoo, and many others.

These sites are geared towards writers who want to monetize their writing. Internet marketing is all about the writing so this is an excellant training ground in writing potent, monetizable copy. You learn monetization along the way.

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At first you just plug in products through the many widgets such as amazon, ebay, Google
adsense, and many more.

Over time you start to see money coming in from these articles you build and monetize and get curious about how to tune up your articles and monetization.

In a year or two you build up to becoming an expert to the point where you could actually take your skills and build your own sites from scratch and know how to add the monetization code even affiliate links!

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I wrote an entire course/Book about how to use HubPages (currently retooling it for Wizzley Authors) to break into internet marketing slowly and effectively (187 pages). In retrospection, I can't imagine a better place to start than a writing platform because all making money online opportunities start with content!!

There are no BS marketers trying to lure you in to buy their course, there are built in communities of various experience levels that are more than willing to help you succeed, and these sites are build like universities in the respect that they teach you through doing, help files assist you in using the site but in actually doing the work, you learn the REAL internet marketing game!

Give any of these sites a full year of your time, really push yourself to learn and grow, write and learn what niches make money, and no course out there will fool you- but you may purchase them (and look past their marketing rhetoric) simply to read their techniques/tips/tricks to get ideas for how to improve your master game plan.

The irony is that you don’t so much miss the money you wasted on courses or seminars. You miss your ambition levels, your inspirational viewpoints, your virgin ambition levels where nothing could stop you, nothing could hold you back, where had you found the right course back then, you would have not only made it you’d be a 100-thousand-aire today.

Many do find the right course but they are so beat up emotionally by the time they actually acquire it that they are paralyzed from actually following the course and making it! It’s a catch 22 really.

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Hopefully if you’re here reading this your still in stage one of your ambition. Hopefully if you’re reading this and have been beat up, you still have one more nugget of ambition available that will allow you to forge full steam ahead with the right information in your grasp.

Hopefully, you're willing to give it one more shot- because there really is money in this business. Money, freedom, liberation from working offline to working in the more convenient online career path, your own business, is absolutely possible- I've seen it!

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You're best bet from here is to join Wizzley or any 2.0 property that shares revenue or page views (your ads show up on up to 60% of the pages loaded by readers and if they click on your portion of impressions- you keep the money).

Learn how sites like this one work, you can do that in the help sections. Create an account, then just start writing. Start monetizing (using their monetization modules) your articles but realize you will have to practice for this to really crystallize. You can always go back later as you develop your awareness and update your first articles so nothing is lost if you get it wrong even 100+ times! Utilize the community forums, read other authors articles specifically about how to make money on these sites. It's a free membership, the only expense is your time! Can't beat that!

If you're not a member of Wizzley, you can sign up by clicking the banner below. You would effectively be entering under me so I'd earn a commission from your articles (I get 10% of the impressions with my ads on them but not from your cut- from Wizzley's)... so I would be more than happy to help you get on your feet! After all I'd love to see you build hundreds, even thousands of articles over the years and become a success.

You could also join other sites like this one- even simultaneously as to not put all your eggs- er articles, in one basket (diversify your portfolio). The beauty of these sites is you'll learn not only how to make money with your writing, you will slowly and surely develop the most powerful skill set conglomerate online- Internet marketing from the ground up without spending a dime to learn it.

I hope this was inspirational, this is my story, my path, your's may be different but the rules are the same. Don't waste money on a course until you've fully grasped the concept of how making money online works, the layers are all on these 2.0 sites, you just have to sign up, be willing to ask questions, and practice practice practice. The first thing you will need to learn is how to write articles that earn money. You can learn this by finding articles on this very site that teach you this.

Good Luck! I'll see you out there!