Hello From Maryland

[Rhab]

Hello all, very awesome to be here! My name is Dave and I was fortunate enough to find this forum through Lemonarian's blog. In fact I was fortunate to find Lemonarian's blog for that matter.

Anyway, I'm not a "noob" to internet marketing, but I am not yet at the level I would like to be. I am always trying to learn more, improve what I am currently doing, and striving to reach my goals step by step until I get there.

Although I am a "part time" marketer, I use the term lightly. My career is in law enforcement specifically in S.W.A.T. so I have a very hectic and often time consuming job with crazy hours. I consider my internet marketing a business and treat it as such. I am very serious about it and though i can't devote as much time to it as I would like at this stage, thus "part time", I do as much as I can with focus.

Being here at this forum for me is an opportunity to learn from my peers in our marketing community and to take my skills, knowledge, and business to the next level. Heck, to ramp it up many levels! Although I'm sure I'm on the lower end of the experience totem pole compared to many of our vets here, I also hope to be able to be a positive contributor here in some form, from the knowledge, experience, and mistakes I've made over the years.

For about two years I tried breaking into the whole making money from the internet game. I've got to admit I found it frustrating as heck, difficult, and quite frankly demoralizing at times. It may sound dramatic but my primary driving force to never give up was to be able to provide a better life for my family and to be able to stop having to work part time gigs and be home more.

I simply had no true guidance, especially not being computer or net savvy to start with. I fell into the beginner's trap of buying every e-book and course launched by the "guru's" that was released. I went through information overload and with everything, there was always the one thing missing to complete the picture.

It was not until the 30 day challenge that things started to turn around for me. The 30 DC in 2007 finally gave me a complete picture to work with. It was then that I also met a couple people who I was able to network with, learn and develop from, and then began to actually make money instead of throwing it away. I took the base foundation of the 30DC and progressed into moving forward on my own through experimenting, testing, successes and failures.

I am now making a low to mid 4 figure income every month. For the past two years I have not had to go straight from work into a part time gig or pick up overtime hours. I am able to provide not only what my family needs, but am also able to provide that little extra enjoyment in life for the fun stuff.

What i hope to achieve through this forum is to fine tune what I have now. I consider myself a niche marketer. I have many goals, however my current goal is to achieve a solid $5,000 per month. Right now I'm doing low to mid but it is fluctuating month to month.

Areas I want to improve upon and simply fine tune are the following:

- Finding Niches: I've done ok, but I really feel I could improve upon this element.
- Link building
- Article Marketing
- Outsourcing

So, as I look at this post so far, I see I have rambled on, and on, and on... Please forgive me. I tend to be passionate about this stuff which often times means I ramble a lot. Forgive me if I have bored anyone and kudos to you if you made it this far to get the apology.

Looking forward to getting to know you all more and enjoying this community.

[Paul]

Hey Dave,

Welcome to you too and thanks for sharing where you're at, very interesting.

S.W.A.T. -- I bet that can be cool at times? Its weird to think that behind this whole IM world theres regular people doing their thing.

Hearing that you're on low to mid 4 figures is reassuring - I know you want more but the fact that you got to there in your spare time (and with a family) in about a year or year and a half is IMHO awesome. Cant wait to hear more from you.