I arrived here through being a member of WA which is where I connected with Partha and Diane. I had to leave WA at the end of 2023 after the Google HCU update.

Traffic flat-lined and I couldn't warrant forking out on another yearly membership plus I wasn't keen on the direction they were heading with WA anyway ... too much focus on AI.

My forays into internet marketing began way back in the late 1990's ... yep, I'm not a spring chicken any more 😊 I remember, while travelling with my wife on a round the world trip in 2002, I'd hook up my ancient laptop (think it was a Sony Vaio) to what must have been a 1G (or slower!) connection on my equally ancient Motorolla mobile phone and I'd try to get my newsletter sent out!

Bit crazy when I think back that it was even possible to do that back then ... but do it, I did. I was reviewing online business tools and actually grew that site into something worthwhile. I built a decent sized email list and then sold the site a couple of years later for $15k.

I got into SEO around that time too and a group of us were IP cl0aking, putting up 1000's of pages a day with Adsens3 on the human facing side. A couple of my group had $20k+ months and I think my best month was over $7.5k ... we had a good 6 month period of similar earnings before Google cottoned on.

Looking back, this must have been the Google Big Daddy update of 2005 which addressed web spam. All of my inner circle black-h4t group were hit and we disbanded. We went our separate ways with our tails between our legs.

It took me a long time to recover from that, mentally.

I sold my website as my funds began nearing zero and got badly distracted by shiny object syndrome, racking up substantial credit card debt, chasing money making schemes online! I was so far down the rabbit hole ... partly because I knew it was possible to make good money, having actually done it myself!

Eventually I gave up, completely broke. My family had been telling me for years it was folly and now, it seemed like they had been vindicated! I didn't touch IM for at least a decade. Unsubscribed from all the email lists I was on, staying only with Gauher Chaudhry ... who I still follow today.

Then I found WA through one of Jay's sites and my enthusiasm in internet marketing was rekindled. I felt really confident this was my time and I felt like I could finally tell my wife how excited I was about this opportunity.

The context being, she had suffered my endless promises of finally becoming financially free with whatever shiny new object I'd found recently.

Then Google kicked me out of bounds again ... along with all the other small publishers who're now discovering (as I did back in 2005) that the big G doesn't care about your organic SEO endeavours. Even if you are creating genuinely helpful content.

So I've come full circle yet again but maybe all this has happened for a reason.

I'm blessed to have connected with Partha and Diane. I still have faith that I can achieve financial freedom ... 25+ years after I began playing the game!

I'm glad to be here. Here's to the future 😊