Ok, where to start. I was your typical 9-5 guy trying to get the best job and highest paying job I could. Back in 2005 (age 19 at the time) I got a Technical Support Specialist position at a local hospital. The job was actually very fun because I enjoyed computers and constantly being around technology. At this job I was making around $12/hour. I worked here until mid 2006 until I realized that I wasn’t really getting anywhere. I wanted to be more involved in the corporate environment and make more then what I was currently making.

My brother kept telling me, if you want to have more opportunities we should move to Florida. With him living in Florida for several years he knew my potential and that I could find a higher paying job with no problem. So we packed up and moved to Sarasota, FL. I applied for several jobs but ended up getting one at an insurance company as a Help Desk Analyst paying around $18/hour. This was a decently new company still trying to expand so I was hired on as a 6 month contract position with potential of going full time after the 6 month period.

I was so excited to get this job because it was something I liked to do and I was actually making an impact on a new company that was thriving to expand! After the 6 month period I did go full time and earned the title “System Administrator” and got a raise to $25/hour. This was like my dream job. To make a long story short, after about 6 months to a year of watching this company grow tremendously, including hiring new employees and receiving new clients constantly, they filed for an IPO. If you do not know what an IPO is, it is basically the process of applying to go public with your company.

This was huge! I thought I was going to get in at the perfect time and really help this company evolve into a top insurance company. One day I had gotten wind that the IPO had possibly failed and people might be getting let go but I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t think my job was in jeopardy at the time due to the new CIO telling me that she wants me to possibly move to the Ft Lauderdale Headquarters into a management position of some sort. You can only imagine how excited I was. You will never believe what I am about to tell you next. This changes the story completely. You ready?

Here we go.. About a week or 2 after the CIO telling me that I have a pretty good chance of a promotion coming, the Human Resources Manager (which I had seen her go through the hire process since I was the person that setup new employee accounts in the system) showed up at the local Sarasota, FL office and basically sat me down and offered me a Severance package and that today will be my last day working for this company. I was crushed, confused, and mad all at the same time. I didn’t know what to think! The only thing I could think is WHAT AM I GOING TO DO NOW? No job, no income, but I have a condo and other bills that must be paid.

Well, here is what happened. My brother was constantly telling me that I should get away from the typical 9-5 and do something that I enjoy and that I can make money off of and not have to rely on other people to make an income. I thought to myself after getting let go from this company, you know, he is right. So I started asking him things and learning what he was doing online. He showed me a course called “StomperNet” that I knew was a lot of information but if I actually sat down and read it, that I wouldn’t be disappointed. This is when I setup my first website to make an income. I knew that I had to make enough to pay for all my bills and condo that I had.

I will be honest, I was overloaded with information at this point and I could not for the life of me think of a “niche” that I wanted to go after. Well, after some long thinking I decided to try to setup a complete eCommerce store selling Collectible Swords. Yes, Collectible Swords. I didn’t know a single thing when it came to swords. I wanted this to make money and I know that it would take a lot of work but in the long run it would be all worth it. So I followed all the information that was given to me to setup this eCommerce store from nothing.

I got my domain setup “www.thesworddepot.net”. I was actually excited to work on it every day and see progress. I optimized each product page for Google as well as Google Base, RSS Feeds, etc. I mean I did everything to article marketing, social marketing, directory submissions, blog posts, purchasing one-way backlinks, having unique press releases written, and many more things. After about 2-3 months of adding products, tweaking SEO to learn what google wanted, and doing backlinking I finally started seeing TARGETED traffic come in for keywords of the products that I had. This was very exciting to actually see traffic come in and I realized that now all I have to do is convert this traffic. Which is exactly what I did.

Not 3 months after setting up my site from scratch, I started making profit and getting orders! I knew that I had to communicate with my drop shippers to get orders processed and do customer support when it was needed. I was making about $2,000/month at one point on this site. BUT, after about 7-8 months I realized that this is not what I wanted to do. Yes, I do enjoy setting up websites and getting them earning revenue from Google organic traffic, but I did NOT want to be in the sword niche, since I knew nothing about it. It was very difficult to run such a niche store when you don’t even own a sword, let alone run an entire ecommerce shop.

I did end up selling “www.thesworddepot.net” on Flippa.com for around $7,000. I knew that I could of gotten a lot more for it but to be honest I just lost interest in the site very quickly and wanted fast money. What this comes down to is a lot of people have problems getting into internet marketing because they are going after a niche or a market that they know nothing about. While you can be successful in a niche that you know nothing about, I personally think its best to just go all out in a niche or market that you are familiar with and actually enjoy.

As you can see from my story I went from working 9-5 as a computer tech guy to setting up a website online and making decent money just from reading, troubleshooting, trial and error, and actually DOING IT. I hope this story helps some people realize that you can do anything you want, as long as you put your mind to it.