My Story
"Ramblings of an Internet Loser"

Hello, my name is beeeeeep and I am an Internet Loser (aka, a Net Knucklehead). By the way, a "Net Knucklehead" is someone who has tried and tried to make a living on the Internet without seeing any real success.

My story goes like this:

1997

I became fascinated with this new thing called "the Internet" in 1997, although I was skeptical that it would "catch on". (Of course I also thought that about the Pet Rock.)

Regardless, I dove into learning how to create web pages and absolutely LOVED the creative side of it. I started out using Frontpage 98.

While attending a noon mass in downtown beeeeeeeep one day, I noticed a flyer in the pew. I picked it up and began reading it. Inside, there was a request for volunteers to maintain the church's website. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to get into web design so I contacted them and before I knew it, I was redesigning the church's website.

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1998

Fresh off the complete redesign of the Church site, I started my own website design business.

My first attempt at Internet fortune was a site I developed known as My Father's Store. I tried to sell products as an affiliate. My total commissions for a year totaled $1.92. I closed down the site.

1999 - 2002

For the next few years, I continued to run my website design business from home on a part-time basis. (I was an IT Manager by day and a website designer by night.)

And as I became more miserable in my day-time job (due to being acquired by another company), I became more and more desperate to find online success.

Internet Marketers absolutely LOVED ME because I bought practically every 'how to get rich on the Internet' product that came out. None of them worked for me of course.

2003

My website business continued to grow as I added new clients but my revenues hardly increased. (How does that happen???) My day-time job was absolutely horrible by now and I knew I had to get out. Unfortunately the job market sucked so I was stuck.

Then in June I was informed that my job was being eliminated. It wasn't too much of a shock and I have to admit, it was a relief. Plus, it was summer!

It was at this point that I began reading about the Consignment Auction business. I had dabbled in eBay previously as a seller with very limited success but it was difficult to find product to sell. Therefore, I thought consignment was the way to go.

I found my first consignment client who had 4-5 boxes of Dept 56 figurines they wanted to get rid of. Boy, was I excited!

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WHAT A NIGHTMARE!!! Yes, the stuff sold but keeping track of all the auctions, finding packing material, wrapping, and going to UPS was a major pain in the donkey! I couldn't wait to get rid of all that crap.

In the end, I made about $300 but it wasn't worth it.

2004

After several months of searching for a new job, I finally landed a temporary contracting job. It wasn't great but it would keep the bills paid.

At night, I continued to build websites that sold affiliate products and displayed related Google ads (as part of the Google Adsense program). And a weird thing started happening - I started making some money from the Google Ads. It's not much - less than $100 per month - but it keeps growing and I'm not doing a darn thing.

TODAY

So as I write this (2004), I am:

• Employed as an IT consultant
• Running my website design business (profits around $100/month)
• Maintaining my affiliate websites (profits around $100/month)
• Building new affiliate websites to increase my monthly profits
• Continuing to look for ways to make a full-time living on the Internet.

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