How did I get here?

At the weekend I was down in Valencia where I met up with the rest of the “Spanish Crew” (above), who I met at Ed Dale’s conference in Manchester back in November. While there was a social element to the meetup and we went to the MTV Arctic Monkey’s gig, a lot of it was spent discussing a project that we’ve been working on for the last 10 days or so.

Now, while we had planned on starting a project together, as we definitely have complimentary skill sets, an opportunity came up the week before last that was too good to ignore. And so we’ve had hours of Skype conference calls in which we’ve really knocked out ideas into shape, looked at different possibilities, knocked holes in our ideas, re-thought them, pushed them, prodded them and kicked them into shape – now simply known as the big plan.

While the big plan is top secret – we have run it past a few people and yesterday received an extraordinarily positive response – it got me thinking about how I got to be spending so much time working on this project and the key steps that led me here.

Part of it is lifestyle design, although I didn’t know it at the time. But it goes back further.

When I was first exposed to the internet in around 95/96 I saw huge possibilities and knew it was going to change everything. So, after playing around with it for a while and getting a company webs site set up I decided I wanted to work for an ISP – that didn’t quite happen initially.

Then, in December 1997, I met a fantastic girl from Barcelona and I soon became an easyJet frequent flier. By April 1998 I was working at Demon Internet where I eventually became Product Manager for ADSL prior to its UK launch; and then to Bulldog Communications, which paid fantastically well, but was the worst job I’ve ever had.

One thing the Bulldog job did allow me to do was save like crazy; in May 2001, after working there for 8 months I quit and on August 12th 2001 I moved to Barcelona. That sounds like a big step, but in fact moving to Barcelona was easy – the difficult thing was taking action and actually telling my boss that I was quitting.

Not having a job lined up – or even any idea of what I was going to do next – I was playing around with websites again. In January 2002 I received a phone call from the sales director of a hotel booking website – he wanted me to include a link to his site on my Barcelona related site in exchange for commission on any referred sales.

Since it was easy to do, I added the link and thought nothing of it; at least not until the next month, when he phoned me to tell me I’d made 4 sales!

That was the point I knew I could make a living online

Fast forward to 2007. I’d suffered badly from combination of luck and my own mistakes. I’d been earning some pretty good money, but had been wiped out when Google gave my main website a penalty that knocked it way out of the results.

After flailing around for a while I tried Adsense Arbitrage, which worked well, but I knew it wouldn’t last; and when I saw people being kicked out of Adsense I decided enough was enough. Once again looking for some way to replace my lost income, I signed up to Stompernet SIMPLE. It cost me $1 for a month of internet training; I really dived in and signed up for the $97/month program afterwards.

While SIMPLE had some serious flaws in it, I was introduced to Ed Dale through it. Although I didn’t follow the 30 Day Challenge in August 2007, I did follow what he was doing; and in September 2007 I joined Immediate Edge run by him and Dan Raine.

The next big decision was to attend Ed’s “Coming Home” seminar in Manchester at the end of November 2009. While I was there to boost my knowledge of internet marketing, I was hoping to make some contacts; in fact, while the content was excellent, the biggest benefit was in the contacts – that’s why I was in Valencia last weekend, currently the last link in a chain that began with me finding the internet in the mid 90s.

So, what’s the key?

Good question. I’ve had good luck and bad; made good decisions and bad; felt elated and downtrodden; and it’s been hard work, but it’s been fun.

Above all, while I have had to change direction or modify my plans, I have never given up.

Categorised in: internet marketing, life

This post was written by David