Like many people I first got into marketing on the internet selling stuff on eBay. When I was a kid I was a big Sinclair fan, the Sinclair Spectrum was the computer I cut my teeth on (after a brief stint with a Commodore VIC20). I found all these crazy people selling Sinclair stuff on eBay and Yahoo Auctions (now defunct in the UK), and started buying all the things I couldn’t afford as a kid.
Back in the early 1980’s it wasn’t uncommon to build computers from parts and plans – in fact, soldering irons were a big part of the hobby scene. Whilst hunting around on the net I came across a guy in the US who had a stock of unbuilt ZX81 kits – a goldmine to a geek like me! So I started importing and selling them. Then I found another guy who had caves full of Atari games, Split Screen camper telephones(!) and other treasures. Needless to say I started importing and selling them in the UK. My eBaying became a bit of an obsession, at one point I started buying and selling Sinclair C5 cars… I still have a Sinclair Zike and probably 50 Sinclair computers in my attic. I built my first real website for selling ZX81 kits.
Selling on eBay was fun, and the main reason I don’t do it anymore is the amount of travel I do (it makes it difficult to hold stock). The hardest part of running a successful business on eBay is finding a reliable, cost effective wholesaler who does small batches. Often buying in large lots is impractical for different reasons (cost, value of inventory, storage space, turnover) and it is difficult for the little guy to get a foothold.
I first experimented with PPC in 2003 whilst on a year’s holiday. I was living in a VW kombi in Cairns, Australia, and working out of an internet cafe. I built my first adsense website in January 2004 (I still own the site) whilst on the same holiday - I bought a secondhand laptop from a pawn shop for $300, and used software off a magazine cover disc to build the site, transferring it to my digital cameras memory card and uploading to the server from an internet cafe. I wrote all the content and did the design myself. I was hooked after the first click!
Affiliate Marketing makes more sense for me as I can walk away from the business for days, weeks, or even months and I know that my websites will continue working for me, and other people will be fulfilling all the orders behind the scenes. I tend to use large, reliable companies (google’s adsense, cj, clickbank etc) who do not change their offers too often, and aim for natural search traffic - I’ve worked with PPC (and had some success), but my commitments mean I cannot stay on top of campaigns effectively. Those of you who have worked with PPC will know that it isn’t an easy business to stay in control of if you are not 100% focused.
Thats enough about me for now anyway. I’m sure there was a point to this post when I started typing, but it seems to have gotten* lost along the way.
*why do I always wind up using Americanism’s when I type on the net?