RetroWebDev's No Joke Guide to Making Money on the Internet - Part 1: Introduction

OK, this is it. I know, I know, there are a ton of guides out there, most of them wanting money and most of them promising financial independence and near-instant wealth. You too can earn $3,768.18 a day!

Well maybe you can, but if that's the type of program you're looking for, read no further, because that's not the type of program I'm going to talk about.

I'm talking about a real, working-as-I-type-this program that has, for the last year, earned me between $1,000 - $2,000 a month. At my peak in December 2005, I had over $10,000 in revenue and just over $9,000 in gross profit.

But that's another story, for another time, and in another time, before the search engines had their huge affiliate crackdown in early 2006 and I went from $300 a day to $30. Ouch! Good thing I hadn't quit my day job....

That's probably worth making a rule: Don't quit your day job.

The type of pay-per-lead and pay-per-sale marketing I'm talking about can be a finicky beast, with companies and offers and products coming in and out of the marketplace and marketing terms being changed all the time. Nothing hurts quite so bad as having a well performing offer pulled out from under you or the terms changed to prohibit your most profitable marketing channel, but it happens all the time, for any reason (or for no reason at all).

Example: In 2007 I was doing $5,000 a month of a very popular diet program, only to have the company change their affiliate terms to prohibit pay-per-click marketing, because--Iwas told--they felt I was stealing sales they would have been getting! Bye-bye $5k....

This isn't to say if you ever do reach $3,768.18 that you couldn't quit. If you did, and it was coming in spread acorss a large number of offers and sites, and you had been saving $3,468.18 a day (or more) for the last 6 months, you still need to work. In that case, you probably don't.

If you're still reading, I'll assume you aren't making anything, or at least not that much, and you want to know the secret. By the end of all this, I think you'll see this isn't much of a secret at all. It's a proven method (at least proven for me in that it works and I get checks), based on some pretty solid and repeatable actions.

In other words, anyone can do it. But there are some things you need to have in place before you can get started.

Stay Tuned for Part 2: What you Need to get Started