Hi, my name is David Walker and I want to thank you for visiting my blog.
The chances are you have never heard of me but I have been fortunate enough to make a full time income online since March 2006 (yes, really!) and I want to tell you a little more about me here…
The Early Years (1997-2004)
I had always been interested in the Internet, ever since I got my first “dial up” connection way back in 1997.
I started messing about creating homepages and then soon progressed to full-on HTML websites while still at school. By the time I had graduated from university I decided I wanted to work for myself and was never really happy taking orders from somebody else – the Internet was a huge opportunity for me.
While I loved it, I couldn’t make the Internet pay so continued to work a full-time job.
My first passion online was betting on soccer matches and after attempting to maintain several early forms of “blogs” on my betting predictions and results I gave it a more serious effort in 2001.
I tried to set up and run a soccer betting tipster service and even though my predictions were good, I never really made any real money with it.
I also dabbled on eBay and remember when eBay UK launched in 1998.
I went on to make some decent sideline cash selling various online gambling systems which ran into several hundred pounds per week before a slew of other sellers jumped on the bandwagon and saturated the market.
The SEO Revolution (2005-2007)
I could see there was a huge amount of money to be made in the online gambling niche and in 2005 I set up a gambling affiliate website.
I didn’t know of any traffic generation methods apart from SEO and I got pretty good at it (I still am!) and managed to rank my website at #4 in Google UK for it’s most popular search term.
This was going to be my ticket to mega riches but in my impatience to rank the website higher, I made some poor decisions. One morning I checked Google and could see the site had been dumped from the rankings.
Fortunately, the website continues to bring in money to this day but I know it could have been much, much more…
Not to be beaten I stumbled across a quirky way of making bucket loads of cash from the soccer niche. I guess you could say I used an early form of the “Google Sniper” technique before it became a popular, widely known method.
I built a fleet of simple websites which raked in thousands of dollars every week without fail and as high as $4,000 in a single day – all from free, organic search engine traffic.
It was an incredible time, a genuine license to print money.
I could see the way the market was heading so while I wasn’t foolish enough to believe this income stream would last forever, my girlfriend Nicola and I enjoyed it while it lasted and it afforded us to live the “Internet lifestyle” you read so much about online.
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (2008-2009)
However, despite having a knack for making money online I never had what you’d call a “real” business. I was involved in volatile niches and as I feared, the money started drying up in the soccer niche as visitor habits changed…
$2,000 weekends soon became $200 weekends for the same amount of effort.
I needed to try something new and I was confident I could succeed.
I had earned a full-time living online up to this point and naively, I believed I had something of a “golden touch”.
CPA (Cost Per Action) was the next thing I got stuck into and theoretically it seemed a great way to make money.
Perhaps misguidedly, I went down the “grey hat” route and between September 2008 and May 2009 must have spent around $10,000 on training, software and hosting for this venture.
No matter how hard I worked, I just couldn’t get it right on a consistent basis and encountered problems daily:
Offshore hosts would disappear, deleting websites and sales funnels which had taken weeks to set up…
Online avenues used for promotion would constantly change their rules and algorithms, so one day my posting software would work and the next it wouldn’t…
When it worked, it worked well and the money rolled in but it was a constant game of cat and mouse and an uphill battle I was losing day by day.
Enough was enough.
The Crazy World of Internet Marketing (2009 – 2010)
Up until this point I also had a sideline business on eBay selling websites and training but that all but dried up after the website switched to an infuriating method of organising listings by “best match” rather than “ending soonest”…
Fees had doubled but listings were not getting a fraction of the views.
So with that income stream gone and calling time on my CPA activities I wondered what my next move was going to be.
I’d hovered around the edges of the Internet Marketing industry and it was an area I fancied my chances in.
Even though I had made plenty of money online, the niche was new to me and I wanted to reduce my learning curve as much as possible, so I registered to a couple of coaching programs.
The coaching taught me the “basics” – stuff I had never done in my other niches, like build a subscriber list (I know, how stupid do I feel?)
While neither coaching program gave me the “whole story”, they did at least give me an introduction to the industry and the networking aspect was worth more than the admission fee.
What the coaching did teach me, though, is that IM is a really crazy industry.
And I mean crazy.
I had years of experience of actually making money online which didn’t involve me “teaching” others how to do it…
I was a six figure super affiliate in the gambling niche, had earned tens of thousands of dollars in the soccer niche and sold websites for five figure sums…
I had earned thousands of “shady” CPA dollars and thousands more selling websites on eBay as a “sideline”.
I had always taken quite a ruthless approach to business and it had served me well.
And yet, Internet Marketing was packaged as this “fluffy”, “sunshine and rainbows” world where marketers are all “helping” each other succeed with the emphasis very much on not trying to make money.
Very idealistic…
It took me a while to realise that this is mostly bull shit.
This isn’t about me “outing” anybody or anything like that and even if you don’t believe me…
One day, you will.
Whereas I was able to write with at least some authority and experience on the subject of making money online, I found myself during the early stages of my involvement in Internet Marketing in the cycle of trying to provide “value” and “great content” first…
Ironically taking the advice from numerous marketers who I perceived to be higher up than me in the IM food chain that did neither… and then worry about the money later.
But, real life doesn’t work like that.
While it is possible to make at least some money as an Internet Marketer with this time consuming and often frustrating approach…
It is tough to make a lot of money consistently compared to other niches I had operated in where I was raking in the cash rather anonymously and effortlessly.
Fatherhood & The IM Treadmill (2011)
In December 2010 I became a father to Thomas and if I ever needed a boot up the ass to achieve more then he was it.
In 2011 I made the decision to change the way I conducted my business online.
I had to stop trying to please everybody and concentrate more on real marketing.
I started following a couple of great email marketers and loved their content – in fact, I looked forward to reading their emails on a daily basis.
This was a model I knew I could succeed with, so I started sending out emails daily and also hopped on the WSO bandwagon to create and sell products and build a lucrative buyers list.
This combination worked very well.
I sold thousands of copies of my WSO products and made more money than I ever had in IM…
But, I was burning myself out.
Setting a deadline of one new product every two to three weeks was taking it’s toll – 12 hours days researching, creating, writing sales copy and lining up JV partners with no guarantee of massive success the effort deserved at the end of it.
The money was rolling in admittedly and I was making lots of potentially lucrative connections with other like-minded marketers…
And, I could send out an email on any given day and pretty much guarantee hundreds of dollars in sales because my subscribers were all proven buyers rather than the freebie-seeking tire-kickers I had left behind.
But, while I was grateful to be earning a tidy income as an Internet Marketer…
And spend a lot of time with my little boy during the precious first year of his life…
I felt like I was on a treadmill…
And, I knew I would make myself ill if I continued marketing at one hundred miles per hour every day.
Marketing & The Mob (2012)
Towards the end of 2011 I had grown tired of Internet Marketing…
I was working harder than I ever had during my six years self employed online and it was starting to feel like a job.
People quit their job to pursue their online interests, their passions, but now I wanted to quit online and pursue something else.
So, I prescribed myself some time out…
Almost six months.
But, you know what?
I missed the noise and fanfare that comes with Internet Marketing…
I missed writing about my thoughts on the industry…
And I missed emailing my subscribers every day.
During a Skype chat with a well-known IMer, he summed it up perfectly:
And it’s true.
At the end of 2011 I was prepared to walk away from IM forever…
But after a few months away I felt refreshed and ready to return.
I’d had time to think about what I wanted to achieve in the industry…
And I can now afford to take a much more relaxed approach to my marketing.
You see, I don’t really “need” to succeed in Internet Marketing any more…
This niche is not the be-all-and-end-all for me.
I am not surrounded by the smell of desperation that haunts most trying to “fake it till they make it” online.
Unlike a lot of other marketers who are just one bad product launch away from bankruptcy…
Mine does not have to be a “shit or bust” approach.
So:
If you don’t like me… that’s fine.
If you don’t want to buy my products or training… even better.
If you don’t want to listen and learn from me, preferring to be duped by some snake oil merchant promising you “push button riches”…
Well, good luck with that because you are not my problem.
Admittedly, this is not the typical attitude you see from most marketers who crave popularity…
Who want to be loved by their subscribers and will do whatever it takes to get attention.
Personally, I can’t be bothered with all that “soap opera” bull shit any more.
Instead, I’m moving forward with my pet project:
An incredible new membership site that will give you all the skills and tools you need to actually make money online.
Under my guidance, you will keep things simple and profitable so you have more time to enjoy the more important things in life.
And, I am working with clients on a one-to-one basis if they request it.
Put simply: I am here if you need me.
Freebie seekers need not despair either…
Daily content is posted to this blog for you to comment on…
Share on all your favourite social media time-sucks…
And do whatever else it is you do to avoid any actual marketing.
It’s all good.
A Little Final Info…
Seeing as you’ve read this far I may as well reveal a little more info about myself:
When I’m not “making the monies online” I enjoy watching football, either on television or at Cardiff City where I am a season ticket holder…
I have a renewed passion for fitness after ballooning to 200 pounds and now work out at home to P90x every day which has seen me lose weight and gain strength…
I attribute my new physical well-being to better concentration and increased productivity in my business.
I enjoy reading – business books and biographies rather than fiction and also like to chill out in front of a good (or not so good!) movie or television series.
Finally, spending time with my little family is hugely important to me.
Remember, you’ll never get the time back so you owe it to yourself to do the best for them you can.
This ain’t a rehearsal.
