Never trust anyone until they have earned your trust.

Yep, that's an odd way to start an "About Me" page but it really is relevant. The internet is a great thing. It allows us almost instant access to all kinds of information. And in my experience, not all of what is out there is necessarily true and/or factual.

I get emails everyday from some purported "internet guru" claiming to have just discovered the latest trick or technique that will make you rich. The question in my mind is always "Why in the world would you make public any sort of trick or technique that would make me rich?" If I had discovered the 'holy grail' to internet wealth, then you can bet I wouldn't share it. I would keep it to myself and become even wealthier. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that these so called experts are making their money by selling you their ebooks, courses, software and/or their expensive mentoring programs.

I can pretty much lump all of the "guru" programs into a small group of categories:

• Make money with affiliate programs (they really like it when you sell their programs)
• Put up hundreds of websites and make money from the Adsense ads
• Use Pay per Click programs to drive traffic to your websites
• Make your own ebook and sell it over the net
• Get rich using ebay

I seriously doubt whether most of the people making money selling these types of programs have ever really made any money.

Yeah, I have seen those "commission reports" showing thousands of dollars per day. But, the cynic in me always thinks "Anyone can photoshop a commission report and make it look great". Or even if the report is real, there is never anything that shows exactly how much money they spent to make those commissions.

Which brings me to actual point of this "About Me" page.

There is no holy grail to making money on the internet. It takes some work and even takes some money (contrary to what you may have heard, it is not possible to start a successful internet business with NO money).

I make money everyday over the internet, but it's not through some individual trick or technique. It's through a combination of lots of things I have learned over the years.

I have an extensive business background and understand that it's not how much money you make..... it's how much mone you keep. The only indication of how well a business is doing is gauged by the "Net Profit". If you have a million dollars in sales and your expenses are a million dollars too, then your profit is zero. And in this extreme example, you would have worked really hard for nothing.

Success in business (and yes that includes the internet business as well) revolves around ROI (Return on Investment). That's it. Nothing tricky. Just how much return do you get for every dollar you invested?

I started my first business when I was 25 years old. Before I was 30 I had started 2 more companies.

I sold my first company when I was 31 years old and make enough money to pay off my house. At the time I thought that was fantastic.

At 35, I sold one of my other companies to Southwestern Bell and was a millionaire at 35.

I sold my third company a little later and just added another significant chunk to my Net Worth.

I pretty much retired for 5 years then got restless and started another company at 40. That company was sold in early 2008 to AT&T.

I have owned wholesale distribution companies, retail companies, service companies, sales companies and , yep, internet companies too. I have made money (a lot of money) in my business ventures. I have gained a lot of experience in starting, owning, running and selling companies.

About 3 years ago, I was again getting bored again and looking for something to do. But after being in business for myself nearly all my life I set out some hard rules as to what it would take to get me to start another company.

The criteria I established was:

• Minimal or no employees (I've had hundreds of employees in my life and I really didn't want a company that would require a lot of employees)
• Residual income: This is something the vast majority of people overlook when searching for a business to go into. Residual income is money you continue to receive every month for work you have done in the past. For example I owned a cellular company and received 3% of every one of my customers cellular phone bills every month. After 5 years I was netting over $15,000 per month, just in residual income. It's fantastic to be able to continue to make money for something you did months or years ago.
• Fun: If I couldn't find something that I would enjoy, then I didn't want to do it. I spent years telling my employees "Life's too short to be unhappy. If you don't like your job. Quit. Unhappiness in your job can cause problems in all other aspects of your life too".
• Rewarding: By rewarding, I mean financially rewarding. My wifes says that with me, it's not about the money. The money is only a measuring stick that I use to determine my success. That's her way of saying, you don't need the money but you only want to be in a business that allows you to gauge your success that way.
• Control my own destiny: I have owned companies in the past that were 'exclusive agents' for Fortune 50 companies. The problem is that the "big dogs" control the 'little dogs'. As an example, a friend of mine recently was forced to sell his company for $300,000 LESS than what it was worth because his exclusive contract stated that the "big dog" must approve of any sale. Sounds OK right? He had an offer for a lot of money from a potential buyer and, as required by his contract, he took the offer to the 'big dog' for approval. They looked it over and after 60 days (the contract said they had 60 days to respond and they took all 60 days), they sent him a certified letter stating that they would not approve the sale. That's it. No explanation, no nothing. Then, they sent their manager to pay my friend a visit. Their position was that they would buy his company for $300,000 LESS than his previous offer and if he didn't take the offer, they would not be renewing his contract (which meant they would be putting him out of business). And yes, he went to an attorney who said he should have never agreed to be an exclusive agent for the 'big dog' in the first place. But if you don't sign the exclusive agreement, you don't get to sell their products, so you effectively have no business. Lesson learned, if you are in business for yourself, make sure you control your own destiny. There is a direct corollary to this in the internet business too. A lot of people had the rug pulled out from under them (some, a number of times) when Google (one fo the 'Big Dogs') changes their policy on website advertising. Sometimes known as the Google Search Algorithm. Do a Google search for the term "google slap" if you are curious about this. People whose incomes were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year all of a sudden had an income of zero. Be careful of the foundation you build your business on.

The above list is pretty short, but it's not easy to find an opportunity that meets all of those criteria.

Then I stumbled across something on the internet and saw that it had potential. I set about designing a business that meets all of the above requirements and, as the old saying goes, the rest is history.

I started out part-time and kind of dabbled. Made some mistakes along the way (the biggest was believing that the internet experts, or self proclaimed gurus know what they are talking about when it comes to running a business). I learned that this business is like all of my other businesses. You have to manage the business for your Return on Investment. Nothing else. Hearing someone tell me that they can increase my sales by 100% means nothing without information on exactly how much money it will take to accomplish those increases.

Nothing in my life (short of my children and my wife) has been more rewarding than owning my own businesses and I hope my children will be able to feel that same sense of accomplishment when they start their own companies.

At this point I have peaked and tweaked my internet business system to the point that it's pretty much on 'auto pilot'. Which allows me time to think about other ways that I can improve my business.

So this website is one of the many I own that I make money from everyday.

CONCLUSION:

As I stated in the beginning "Never trust anyone until they have earned your trust'. That's what I use the newsletter for.... to gain your respect and trust. Once you have received a few issues and tested my concepts, you can decide for yourself if internet marketing is something you are interested in pursuing.

It's free and if you don't like it you can cancel at anytime.

I hope you enjoy the site and selfishly hope you find some of my other sites too. The more you click, the more I make.

Ray