Seems to me that every ‘newbie’ — on their way to becoming a full-time marketer or, if they wish, "guru" in their niche — has to jump through certain hoops.

Of course, some strike it lucky, they realize early on that making their own products is where the money is… but for others (me included) it takes a little longer.

Here's my own set of trials and tribulations I suffered before quitting the 9 to 5 and working from wherever and whenever I want.

And before you think I'm leading up to some slimy sales pitch, I'm not…I just want to see if any of my subscribers identify with this rocky road and I also want you to know you'll get there as long as you keep on going.

It was in 2005 I think I began to look for alternate ways to make money. I remember sitting in my workplace thinking "there's got to be more to life than this…"

I knew I enjoyed writing and design but I also knew it was darn hard to make any money with those two skills.

I started looking at the eBay for "work from home" opportunities and of course ran into the usual get rich quick schemes. Have you ever browsed the business section of eBay? So many scams. Must admit, it can be fun to try some of them out just for the thrill. I remember a roulette strategy a friend of mine tried out… we were making money, our pot going up and up and up. Then we swiftly lost it all. Hey ho!

Around this time, I remember stumbling across my first genuine ‘make money online’ forum. Not the Warriors mind you, a UK version called The Trader I think. It had a small membership but I remember realizing that some people really were making large amounts of money by building websites.

Hmmm… I thought, I had enough spare time at my job, I might give this a try.

Back then however, folks hadn’t really caught onto the fact that building QUALITY websites was the way to go and so I got sucked into the whole page generation/adsense crap. If you don’t know what I’m talking about… the trend back in 2005 was to slap up hundreds of pages filled with junk and, crucially, adsense ads. Google wasn’t as sophisticated back then and so would rank any old page and you’d get easy adsense clicks.

A lot of people made a lot of money doing this. I wasn’t one of them.

Nevertheless, I was undeterred and over the next couple of years spent more time at my day job learning SEO, affiliate marketing, product creation and copywriting than I did doing my actual job.

But we’ll keep that between ourselves eh?

You’ll be able to read the full story in the report you get when you sign-up but over the past few years, from page generation nonsense to earning six-figures from home, I’ve learnt a few little pearls…

1) Getting to know other marketers is vital. I mean… building relationships makes everything so much easier. And don’t do it in a fake way because you see it as the fast route to making a few bucks. Strike up a genuine interest in how another marketer works and get to know them. You’d be surprised how many guru folk are actually very warm and welcoming.

2) Don’t sweat the small stuff. I used to obsess on tiny technical details like alt tags or getting the right secondary keywords etc. None of that is as important as creating value of some kind. Make each webpage, report, blog post or even Tweet as valuable as you can and people will find YOU.

3) Trading time for money isn’t a crime. Everyone’s chasing the mythical automatic income. It is possible but if you want to quit your job sooner rather than later, find something you love doing and offer to do it for a guru or even head out to elance or guru.com just to get yourself started.

When I realized people would pay me to write copy it set me off on my way to becoming a pretty darn good copywriter. I now write for some of the biggest names in the biz. That’s not to toot my own horn BUT if you can find something you enjoy doing online, it makes trading time for dollars a whole lot easier and success will come more swiftly.

4) Copywriting is VERY important. That last point reminded me, copy is at the heart of everything you do online. Either read some of the classic books on copywriting or pay someone else to do it for you. It’s that important.

5) You need to be selling SOMETHING! It’s amazing how many people (and I was one of them) wonder why they’re not making any money when they’re not actually selling a damn thing. Get that sales page up, get that pre-sell page up and drive traffic to it. That’s all there is to it really. Twitter, Squidoo, Hubpages, blogs, social networking, yadda, yadda, yadda… just sell something of value and don’t sweat the trendy stuff.

Alright… I’ve rambled on long enough.

I hope the penny dropped for you or you’re a little more motivated (hope I haven’t depressed you!) Two more things – watching an episode of The Wire each day helps break the day up and it’s the best show ever made.

Also… working from home isn’t as amazing as you might think… you just might miss the work environment. If you DO work from home, make sure you get the hell out of the house at least once a day.

The online life is great, but it’s not worth going stir crazy over.

Peace!