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We all love shortcuts right? Why take the longest path when a quicker way is right in front of you…

When I first connected to the world wide web back in 1999 on my Macintosh G3 with it’s slow 56k modem there were no shortcuts to take that I knew of.

To help you appreciate just how much of a shortcut I’m giving you I need to tell you my story about the “long path” I had to take to get to where I am to day… it was a path riddled with pot-holes, dead ends and lots of wasted time and money. In the end I’ll show you a shortcut I think you’ll find very interesting.

I can even remember my first email address, it was reactor@dircon.co.uk. I stopped using it years ago after it imploded under the pressure of too many spam messages. I think I must have found myself on every spammer list this side of Beijing.

Even from the beginning I could see the potential the Internet held and realized it could indeed make you very rich, but only if you know what you were doing. So with that said I begun my research into ways of making money online.

Incidentally it was 1999 that I got my first credit card which I had been resisting getting up until then. If there was no Internet I probably would still be without a card to this day. But of course this isn’t how it worked if you wanted to learn how to make money online.

Somehow I had gotten the idea that it would be a great idea to help others make money online, even though I had not made a penny yet. To this day I still have no idea where I got that crazy idea from!

Since leaving school back in 1986 I had always wanted to be a graphic designer, I loved drawing, painting and technical drawing so it was a great mix. Unfortunately when I graduated high school I didn’t have enough qualifications to attend art school …which is something I had always wanted to do.

So instead I joined a government program called the Youth Training Scheme (YTS) whereby you get to work in the industry and once a week you get to go to college for a City & Guilds qualification.

The YTS lasted 3 years and gave you real world experience in the industry you wanted to work in. So for me I was able to become an apprentice Graphic Designer.

After those 3 years I still wanted to attend art college and found a way of getting in, despite not having enough qualifications. I managed it by persuading the college principal to accept my 3 years of industry experience to make up for the qualifications I lacked.

So for another 3 years I attended art college and loved every minute! When I graduated in 1992 it was at the height of the recession here in the UK, so Graphic Design jobs were few and far between. Thankfully I was able to land a client who hired me to design a few of their brochures which helped me out a lot! It was through this I realized that I be better off landing a few other clients. So that was it my mind was made up and I started looking around for new design clients in need of brochures and corporate identities.

I can’t say it was easy but I managed to find some regular work from a local design studio who didn’t want to hire a full-time employee, but had enough work to keep me busy from time to time.

Several years went past and I ended up in partnering with a marketing communications agency specializing in direct response IT marketing. Their clients consisted of Microsoft, IBM, Lotus amongst several other big name companies.

What we did was to set up design company called “Perception” …which became the marketing companies design studio. Through doing this I gained some really valuable business experience because now I was the Creative Director of a busy design studio. As with any title with the word “Director” in comes lots of responsibilities, not only to other share holders but also to the creative team I was managing and building.

After 3 years of 50+ hour work weeks I had had enough, more so because I was no longer working on the design, instead I was delegating it to other graphic designers. So it was also getting a little frustrating to say the least. It was to this end I decided to switch my path and become a freelance Graphic Designer working for other design studios.

I have to say this was the best thing I had ever done, it gave me the freedom to work whenever I wanted to and for whoever I wanted.

I enjoyed working as a freelance designer traveling from one design studio to another. Whenever possible I would take the work home to do, so this was an even better deal.

Getting back to the main thrust of things…

It was around 1999 when I first came online (as I mentioned earlier) and I also started learning HTML and designing websites as well as studying Internet Marketing and it’s ability to help me make money.

Here’s the first website I created in July 2001 that was designed to help other people to make money online…

(more…)

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