06 Jul 2008

An Up and Coming Internet Marketing Expert

Recently, I was able to catch up with Caroline Middlebrook for an online interview about her blog and attempts to make money online. For those of you that haven’t heard of Caroline, if you are into social networking, internet marketing (IM), or making money online, I am betting that you will hear of her very shortly. I first found out about her when I was doing some of my own IM research and happened to stumble upon the 30 Day Challenge. I followed a link on the forums to her blog, where I found a great E-book about setting up mini-sites using Wordpress. I took her advice and made a mini-site of my own. Months later after the success of one site, I’ve made several based on my own tweaks of her methods. Her E-book alone has made her several thousand dollars and the earnings continue to pour in as she refines her technique and keeps writing great content.

We talked about her first $1,000 online, quitting her job to go full-time, and her favorite IM tools among other things.

I’ve posted the interview below:

1. One of the things that drew me, and I’m sure others, to your blog was that you quit your job to pursue internet marketing (IM) full-time. How did that decision come about and what led you to that point?

Well I have a background in Internet Marketing and self employment in general. My ‘career’ had always been in software development but I lost my job around 8 years ago and then fought for many years to get

it back. However a few months after getting that career back I realised that it wasn’t what I wanted any more and I yearned to be self employed again. In 2007 I participated in the 30 Day Challenge which renewed my enthusiam for Internet work and I knew then that I had to quit my job for good – so I did

2. How much internet marketing had you done before you left your job?

About three years experience but this was around 2000-2003 so things were very different back then. Nothing I did in those days has really influenced what I am doing now, except perhaps steering me away from some shady practices I was involved in back then!

3. Would you recommend the same path for others or would you recommend
keeping a job until a certain income is reached on the side?

I would never recommend that somebody cut off their only source of income without having an alternative way to support themselves. At the time at which I made the decision I knew that I had a lot of equity in
my home and that I could use that to fund my business in the initial year or two so although I didn’t have an income, I could support myself. Having said that, when you have the safety of your day job it can be very difficult to motivate yourself to build that business on the side.

4. It seems that your readers continue to climb and your earnings are coming in nicely. One of the things I enjoy about your blog is that it is a “from the ground up” scenario where you aren’t claiming crazy numbers. You are showing your readers step by step how to grow a business. What were some of the first steps that you found very important to your current success and what mistakes did you make that would have helped you progress faster?

I don’t really think I have made any ‘mistakes’ as such. I don’t believe in mistakes – everything is a learning experience. I have learned plenty of things that haven’t worked for me In the first few months I spent a lot of time reading and learning rather than doing. That time was very unproductive work-wise yet it was necessary for me to be able to find out what works and what doesn’t. I’m still trying to figure that out. People say that you must spend 80% of your time doing the 20% that works but you can’t do that until you know the most effective 20%! I’m still learning what that is so as a result, my progress is slower than somebody who already has a business model that is working for them.

5. How long did it take you to make your first $1,000 online?

I didn’t earn any money whatsoever in the first 3 months. It was 5 months before my total income added up to $1,000 and six months before I earned $1,000 in a single month.

6. What do you consider a reasonable goal (as in monthly income) for those new to IM trying to follow your example?

I can’t possibly answer that. Goals are highly personal and trying to achieve somebody else’s goal is a great way to set yourself up for pain! You should never compare yourself to somebody else. Set your own
goals that are right for you and don’t worry about what everybody else is doing.

7. You’ve made a lot of friends in the social networking circle, how important do you think Social Marketing is as part of the IM process?

It depends on the kind of work you want to do. Internet Marketing is a vast field and there are a great many ways to make money. There is a whole chunk of ideas such as Adsense Sites, BANS sites, Affiliate Marketing etc that allows you to work completely anonymously and for this kind of work social marketing is not important at all. However, for those into blogging, membership sites, courses etc where the work
involves perhaps teaching other people then social marketing is very important.

8. What are some of your “Must Use” tools or websites for increasing traffic?

Twitter & StumbleUpon!

9. What ebooks or tools do you recommend for those trying to get started?

That’s a tough one because again it depends on what your goals are and what work you want to get into. What I can do is recommend certain people. Using the examples I gave above, if you are interested in the
more anonymous work then I would recommend people like Courtney Tuttle & Josh Spaulding. If you are interested in the more social side then I would recommend Yaro Starak and Ed Dale. Most of those guys have
ebooks of some kind.

As for tools, I’m a google fan – Feedburner, Analytics, webmaster tools etc. I use Aweber for list management. I use Flickr to host my images, YouTube for my videos, Camtasia for recording videos, and of
course WordPress for blogging.

10.Last but not least, I know you have been working on a cool StumbleUpon course. Although I have used StumbleUpon extensively, I’ve yet to really
figure out how best to use it. Can you tell us a little bit about the course and how we can get a copy?

The course is nearing completion now – I am aiming for release early to mid July. It is a 20 part course with accompanying videos. The first 10 parts are completely free and the advanced lessons will have a fee, though I haven’t settled on a price yet. I’m still working out some of the technical details but for those of you who have worked through Blog Mastermind it will be delivered in a similar way with an email that links to an online article and accompanying media etc. To enroll for the free lessons just pop your name and email address into the form on the Stumble Rush website: http://www.stumblerush.com/