2006 didn’t exist for me. Really. I quit my job in January to try to start a business on Ebay, inspired by a piece of junk mail I got. The idea of working for myself is something that I had never given much thought; too hard, too expensive, too risky. But setting up a business on the internet is almost completely risk free. $10 a month here, $3 for a domain name there, and so on. I’m utterly stumped as to why I hadn’t thought of it before.
I bought a few ebooks to learn the ropes, and spent most of January and February trying to find a product source that was cheap enough to turn a profit on Ebay.
Ha!
Ebay prices are regularly less than wholesale prices. No matter how much I looked I just couldn’t figure out a way to make a profit. I’m sure I could have if I had kept at it, but…
A Yahoo Store! That was the answer, surely! In a Yahoo Store you can charge closer to retail prices because people aren’t there looking for a good deal on an auction; they simply want to buy something as in a brick-n-mortar store.
And perhaps it would have been the answer.
Until I ran across a tiny paragraph in a book called Yahoo Store Profits. It mentioned getting other people to promote your products for you, and paying them a commission, a finder’s fee if you will, if they refer a paying customer. In fact, the book went on to say, there are several people making a living from doing just that.
Hmmm. Really? I wonder what this is called? Ah, “affiliate marketing.” Now THERE’s a business I could enjoy. Set up a website, refer customers to a merchant, and get paid. No product sourcing, no customers to deal with, nothing to do once it’s set up and making money.
Easy, right?
Sometimes I think I may have been better off with that Yahoo store.
One year later and I still haven’t made a dime. The year was spent reading every ebook on affiliate marketing out there, and with each ebook saying: THIS is the ONE! This is it! The magic bullet! Finally I’m going to start making money.
I can’t believe a year has just gone by, and all it was filled with was me reading ebooks and forums. I worked briefly at Target. That’s where my life is now. 32, married, broke, and working at Target. All because of my faith in internet marketing.
At least I do have one website to show for it. But I still don’t know what I’m doing, and I have this HORRIBLE sense of procrastination.
I created this diary to log my marketing efforts; maybe it’ll help motivate, maybe it’ll just be a distraction. Who knows where the hell I’m going from here…
Melvin Parisian said
You have to keep trying. I’ve tried many different things on tne internet and a lot of them never panned out. I guess you have to spend money to make money. It’s all about input and output also. I know I’m going to keep trying until something works.