How I Began Online & Where To From Now On ?

I have been working in the Internet Marketing industry on and off since early 2007 and full time since 2008. End of 2009 marks my full two years in this industry. I am now ready to take my business to the next step and to do this I had to make some tough decisions. Before I get started on what these decisions are, let me start at the beginning, beginning of how and why I started my online business:

In 2007, in my free time, I built an online directory for kids activities in Australia. After building the site, I of course had to market it and this is when my journey in the internet marketing industry began. I researched and read and learned as much as I can about marketing online.

	And as I learned new things, I implemented them and tested it with my website. Soon the traffic increased and my site is now ranked on the first page of Google for many many kids activities’ related keywords.
Image Copyright / CC BY 2.0

I was loving this new field and soon explored other ways I could make money through internet marketing. eBooks was something that caught my interest. In mid 2007 I wrote a few ebooks and set up sites to sell them online – one such example is my handwriting ebooks.

I was spending any spare time I could find working on this new business – And I soon realized that I was enjoying my new business way more than my software business. In December 2007, I made some tough decisions and closed the doors of my software business and moved full time into internet marketing (IM).

In January 2008, when I was writing out my business plan, I decided that I would do everything – eBooks, affiliate marketing, directory sites and adsense sites. I was convinced that this was the right plan for me because I loved every aspect of Internet Marketing Industry and did not want to miss out on any aspect.

By March 2009 I had a huge list of properties in my new business – I had around 6 ebooks – some written with my real name and some written using pen names. I also had a couple of very large affiliate sites, one directory site, a personal finance blog and a few adsense related sites. And for the rest of 2009, I had lot more in pipeline as well – more adsense sites, more directory sites and more affiliate sites – domain names all registered and waiting for me to start working on them.

By June 2009, it all seemed a bit too much – I was working on a lot of things but focusing on none. I was making money on most of my sites, but somehow I was sure that if I could focus more on each of them I could earn a lot more from each of my sites. I was kind of losing focus and wavering a bit – I ended with huge tasks lists – I was falling behind – And suddenly everything seemed quite overwhelming.

I knew that if I had move to forward, I definitely was on the wrong path but did not know at this stage what my right path was.

By September 2009, I had done a lot of thinking and was slowly seeing where I want to be in 5 years time and in 10 years time – Things were getting more and more clearer to me – I finally seemed to have found the answer for taking the next step in my business ladder.

The answer was to focus on one thing. Pretty obvious now, but definitely was not that obvious to me at the start of my business. And the one that I need to focus on has to be something which I most enjoy and one which also has some good earning potential. And this is the thing that I have to spend most of time on.

And for me this thing is Affiliate Marketing. This is the avenue from which I want to earn most of my income in the future years.

One other big decision I have made is to take one step at a time – meaning, one site at a time – I will build a site, grow it till it starts earning my target income for that site and then move it into maintenance mode.

Only when that site is in maintenance mode, will I move to my next project.

This does not mean that I will be ignoring my existing sites which are in maintenance mode – most of these sites are already profitable – they do however require my time now and then. And so I will probably spend around 4 hours a week (or less) on them.

Last week I bought Super Affiliate Handbook. I have almost finished reading it – And am now ready and looking forward to start my first project (website) – I will be building it, marketing it and making money from it based on what I have learned from this incredible ebook.

So that’s my journey so far and am looking forward to my next leg of my business journey.

What about you, have you made some tough business decisions lately ?

Best,