I can still remember sitting in my 2nd story, 2 bedroom apartment in Pensacola FL with my roommate Jason. I am from Oklahoma and Jason is from Texas. We were both in Bible school together, and both worked full time in order to pay our way through. We both hated our jobs with passion. You see, the reason that we had come to Bible school is because we had been touched by the power of God, given our lives to Christ, and were now on a mission to travel all over the world and preach the gospel that would set people free. There was only one problem. We had NO MONEY!
I remember the day exactly. We both had the day off of work, and we were just hanging out at the apartment. I started explaining to him how I knew there had to be a better way to make money. He started telling me about people that he heard of that were making a full time income on the internet. That’s all I needed to hear. I never even knew that kind of thing existed (I was kind of naive). I grew up in a home and town where you were just expected to do good in school so you could get into a good college so you could get a good job (great plan isn’t it?). I started my search on Google…and began typing in ‘make money from home’ and ‘make money online’. I had no idea so many people actually did this.
How our first endeavor got us banned from Google
Jason and I decided to give this internet thing a try. Our first internet income endeavor was a partnership (LOL). We bought into an affiliate website system for $100 (50/50). It was basically a website that you could automatically populate with content from article directories, and then put Google adsense ads on the site (Note: At the time we had NO IDEA what adsense was). When we found out that we were going to get paid money just for people ‘clicking’ on the ads, we knew we were going to be rich. We didn’t even have to sell anything…People just had to click on the ads! The next thing we did is what got us banned. We started asking a few of our friends to click on some of the ads on our website just to test it out. We wanted to see if this thing really worked. After day 1, we had made around $8. I was flipping out. We thought we had found the secret to making millions on the internet. Well, within about a week Google had banned our account because there were too many people from the same general vicinity (most of our friends lived within 5 minutes from us – haha) clicking on our ads.
I got really bummed out about getting banned from Google adsense, but it didn’t stop me. Jason and I kept searching for ways to make money online. We ran into a company called Easy Daily Cash (later known as EDC Gold). It was a business opportunity where you could make 100% commission on sales of $297 or $997. The product was a package of software and ebooks (that hardly anyone read or used). We both bought in, and then learned a hard lesson really fast. Although the opportunity was cool, we had no idea how to market the business. We had this great website and opportunity but no way to market it to people who were looking for an opportunity to make money online. Our sponsor joined the witness protection program so we had nobody to help lead us in the right direction.
I finally ran into a guy named Michelangelo Lopez who was a top earner in EDC Gold. I paid him $97 to learn some Craigslist marketing skills. This $97 investment changed my life…literally. When I started learning how to post 200-300 ads per day on this free classifieds site, I started making sales pretty much every week. There were a couple things I learned from this guy that changed my financial state. I learned how to put up capture pages that branded me instead of my company or another guru. I learned how to capture leads and put them into my own autoresponder so I could build a list that I could email any time I wanted. And I learned how to get traffic from free classified sites (sometimes over 100 leads per day). It was crazy. Within about 60 days, I was able to quit my job waiting tables at Olive Garden (getting people refills on soup and salad is annoying). I was now in the game full time.
The biggest mistake I made was not learning other marketing strategies. Now that I look back, I realize that at the time I still didn’t even understand the principles of making money online. I had just run into a loophole that allowed me to make some quick cash. This went on for about 2 years and I did really well (for a 23 year old kid). I was making between 4-8K a month just with one marketing strategy. Around this time my wife and I moved to NC to start preaching the gospel and ministering to college students at colleges like Duke University and North Carolina Central University. Working at home full time allowed me the ability to go on campus 3-4 days a week and spend time with the students and preach the gospel.
After working EDC Gold for about 2 years, the marketing methods I was using just kind of stopped working. My income started declining with EDC Gold, so I looked for another avenue. I jumped into another program and just basically started marketing the new opportunity to my list. I lived off of the income I made from that list for probably around 6 months when something terrible happened. I actually made about 6K in the first 45-60 days in this new program. The U.S. attorney general came in and shut down the opportunity. There was some fraudulent activity in the company, and the whole thing got shut down overnight. I felt so bad about promoting that opportunity to my list that I basically just quit.
I cancelled my Aweber account (that had around 2,000 people on my list). I basically just quit promoting opportunities altogether. I started doing a little bit of affiliate marketing and made a little bit of money here and there, but just not enough to survive off of.
What I Dreaded
I had to get a job. I couldn’t believe it. I thought that I would never work another job again. I got a job with Bridgestone. After working at Bridgestone for a while, I knew I had to get back into the marketing game. I knew too much. I know people that are making 5-10K every time they send out an email to their list. I know some of the keys that allow people to work at home full time and have the freedom to live the way they want to live.
So just a few months ago, I decided to get back into online marketing. I am still on a mission to preach the gospel all over the world. And I concluded that network marketing is the industry that is going to help us do that. The first thing I did after signing up with my network marketing company is look for a marketing system. I know this is the most important piece of the puzzle. I ran into a system called My Lead System Pro (check out the link in the P.S. line of this blog post). I quickly signed up after seeing that it was only $9.97 for a 2 week trial. What I found inside this system after I signed up blew my mind! Within my first 30 days of using MLSP, I had sponsored 3 people, made 1 product sale (that netted me $102 profit), and made 2 affiliate commissions.
MLSP has been a Godsend, and it has helped me to get off the ground very quickly. I have never seen anything that is so easy to set up and get going quickly. The best thing about MLSP is that you can customize every piece of the system, so that people can’t even tell it is MLSP.
One thing that MLSP is allowing me to do is to set up profit systems and perpetual funnels. This allows me to use technology and automated sales processes to do most of the work for me. I can focus on connecting with people and driving internet traffic to my funnels.
I truly believe that this system is going to help us have the ability to quit our jobs full time and travel all over the world preaching the gospel of the kingdom!
Be blessed,
James Starr
P.s. Have you gotten your automated sales funnel set up yet? If not, give My Lead System Pro a try (only $10 for a 2 week trial).
P.P.S. If you have read this entire blog post, then I applaude you (LOL). This will probably be the longest blog post I ever write. I just wanted to share my story with those that follow me. Thank you, and I appreciate you!
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