When constructing this blog I thought about doing a typical “About George Price” page and then thought why not just do a page that provides information about my experience and expertise in the online marketing/ entrepreneur field? Doing so would help you make a quicker decision as to whether or not you want to continue following me and my journey or if the information that I will provide doesn’t pertain to what you are doing or you just have no interest.

My reasons for entering the online marketing world maybe similar to most. Then again maybe it’s not. I provide this information to help others understand that obtaining a goal can be done so in many different ways. As long as you maintain focus and continue to include activities generated to obtaining your goal in your daily life you will see success.

After residing in Tokyo, Japan for 13 years and working as a support technician for an internet service provider and later as both trading floor support and a business analyst for a few fortune 500 financial banks, I transferred to New York in November 2012. I was extremely excited having just received a huge salary raise of $120k a year and had high hopes that my life was on a path of prosperity and lots of positive change.

Fast forward to Feb. 2013… Yup 3 months later. I was called into my manager’s office and informed that my services would no longer be needed. I was to clear out any items I had in my office and wait for my manager to escort me to the HR department to be instructed on the actions that would take place next. Feeling sick to my stomach and thinking back on all that had taken place in the past 6mos I honestly have to say I had no clue as to what to think of this situation. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t happy that’s for sure. I was totally lost. 6mos prior I was living in Tokyo, Japan working a full time job loving life. Now I’m sitting there lost. Wondering what will I do with my apartment? How will my bills get paid? I was along in NY at the time. Had no friends that I could/ would ask for a place to stay until things were sorted out. My family was down south in New Orleans. I hadn’t lived in New Orleans in 13yrs. I was not ready to move back to New Orleans.

I finally was escorted to the HR department and sat in front of the HR rep. to receive my package. How lucky was I? I was entitled to receive a package due to the salary that I had negotiated before taking the job. WOW!!! I was told that I was no longer required to report to the office from that day forth. I was told that I would receive my normal salary (which was paid every other week) until July 15, 2013. After the final pay I would also receive any vacation pay that I had not used along with a lump sum which equaled that of quarter of my yearly salary. Even after hearing this good news I was still in shock because I worked my butt off and spent lots of time preparing for my move to NY. NY is the mecca of finance. Working there for 2-3 years would allow me to move to any place in the world pretty much and do so through my company. I wasn’t even thinking about the money that I would make once I got to that level I just thought about where this opportunity would take me. The doors it would open for me. They were all now shut closed.

For the next 5mos I lived off the salary that I was making and totally wasted my time. I had money coming in and I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t planning. I was still lost. One more thing of luck… I had only signed the lease with my apartment for 6mos. So July would be the time for me to move out of the apartment. I would not have to worry about paying rent. Heck had I been smarter I would have cancelled the lease and paid any penalties. I could have used the extra money to move back to Japan. Maybe transfer to New Orleans. There were many things that I could have done, but instead I did NOTHING.

Shortly after arriving in New York I was informed that my mom had been diagnosed with Rectal Cancer. My grandmother had one of her breasts removed due to breast cancer and now my mom had rectal cancer. The first few months she did chemo treatments. She was scheduled for surgery in May to remove any of the cancer that remained after treatments. I decided to stay in New York until my lease was up on my apartment and then head back home.

While in New York I didn’t do anything in regards to planning. I spent my weeks enjoying the city. I went to baseball games. Out with friends. To nice restaurants. You name it I did it. Why wouldn’t I? I was being paid a nice salary. Living in the BIG APPLE. Had reverse culture shock, family issues, and had just lost my job.

Around June when it was almost time for my lease to be up and also my final pay from my old job I decided it was time to start looking for a new source of income. Something to cover my monthly costs once in New Orleans and allow me to save most of my package money that I was due. (It’s funny how things seem to always go in the totally opposite direction when you have no course of action planned out. I’ll be back to that in a bit.) I read through my package I received from HR and one of the items listed was to file for unemployment. I figured since I was making a pretty decent salary that my unemployment, especially coming from New York, would be more than enough to cover me weekly and allow me to save. Oh was I wrong. Long story short. I was able to collect unemployment in New York, but it meant lots of traveling back and forth from New York to New Orleans. For a little while it was awesome. I had a change of scenery and was spending time in two of the best cities in the States. With all of the fun I was having I didn’t take time to think about all of the money that was swiftly leaving my bank account. By the time I received my package from my old company and paid off bills that I had and with all the traveling I did while I was on unemployment drained my account faster than I had thought I had planned on it happening. Yes that’s right. I had thought I had planned, which means I didn’t plan a thing. Oh and I was only able to receive unemployment from Sept. 2013 – Feb. 2014.

One thing I did do when I first started thinking about generating an additional income was to come across an ad online about making money by advertising Amazon products on your own website using a WordPress plugin that was a template for an eCommerce store. The setup and process seemed simple enough so I bought it. I think it was $47 at the time I bought it. I immediately tried going through the setup of the plugin and things went well until I needed to enter my Amazon affiliate information. I didn’t have an Amazon affiliate ID. The setup videos included with the plugin I had just purchased instructed me to signup for an Amazon affiliate ID if I didn’t have one and that after Amazon’s approval I should receive my affiliate information. I was brand new to the “Make Money Online” world. I had no website. Nor any usable knowledge of what I needed to do. I had just come across this interesting advertisement about making money online using a website, which this simple plugin was supposed to create for me. As I write this I still have no Amazon affiliate ID. I was denied due to not having a site with the traffic and credibility that Amazon requires. I haven’t done any research on what it would take to acquire the information or bypass the checks that Amazon does and allow me to receive an Amazon affiliate ID. I guess you can say I followed the course of action of many new online marketers. I saw something that looked really interesting and went after it, but once I came across a problem I didn’t do any research to find a solution. Instead I paid someone for a product that they spent hours of their Valuable time creating. I was provided with an opportunity to receive pay as well had I utilized the resources available to me. Had I done a bit more research both before and after buying the product who knows what my ROI (Return On Investment) would have been?

When arriving back in New Orleans after my back and forth travels to New York (October 2013) I wasted more time. It was football season (American Football). I was home after 13 years and could either watch my local teams on TV or go and see them live. I did both. My mom’s surgery went well (May 2013) and she needed to do chemo a few weeks after she had surgery. This time she would have chemo treatments for 3mos. I drove her back and forth to her appointments. Sometimes I stayed at the hospital with her. While having lots of free time between dropping her off and picking her up from her appointments I would come home and get online. Most days it was looking at sports news and ESPN on TV. One day while going through my routine of coming home and watching TV and browsing the net I came across a group post on Facebook. I had started joining a few groups on Facebook to learn more about making money online and so I would receive some of the posted messages in my newsfeed. I came across a company called “Infinity Downline”. Once again this program seemed very simple. I even had a sponsor/ mentor with this program who laid out exactly what I needed to do in video format. The program was also only $25/mo and I would receive 100% commissions on my signups. Not all of my signups, but some. I’ll explain. With ID they had a system where you really should be able to succeed. For the first 4 people that you signed up you would pass up the 2nd and 4th signups to your sponsor. The 1st, 3rd, 5th and beyond would all go to you. You could grow your downline to as many people as you could build it up to. There was also a level up which the costs was $100 and it used the same 2 signups go to your sponsor of your first four.

Although I had all the tools available for me to educate myself and properly promote ID I didn’t follow through. I didn’t take action. I’m shaking my head (SMH) right now just thinking about how many signups I could have had if I only used the recruiting techniques that I am using now. Heck the techniques that I used 2mos ago. Once again… Money wasted. I was with ID for 3mos I think.

The more time I spent in New Orleans the more I became bored and started thinking about getting back to New York and living there. I also thought maybe it was a good idea to just head back to Japan. Either would have been fine with me. I just wanted to get away from New Orleans. I had become accustomed to spending maybe at most a month continuously in New Orleans and here it was almost 3mos and about to begin a new year. At least in New York I had a bed and my own space. In New Orleans I was sleeping on my mom’s couch and living out of my suitcase. Neither cool nor mentally healthy.

I didn’t share details of my feelings nor desire to get away from New Orleans with my family and friends. I didn’t share my interest of making money online with them either. I decided I would open a new Facebook account and use it for my new interest only. I came up with this idea while doing a bit of research (yes I actually did research this time.) in few network marketing forums. I also started to take notes on what I was learning.

Shortly after opening my new Facebook account I started joining groups based on “Internet Marketing” and “Making Money Online”. One day I received a message from my former sponsor/ mentor who took me under his wing and began to motivate and provide me with confidence that I could actually be successful online. I joined him and became an affiliate of the Internet Lifestyle Network in Dec. 2013. (To find out more about my Internet Lifestyle Network experience click here.) Joining ILN changed soo much for me. I was once again provided with training and basically a script of what I needed to do to become successful marketing online. This time I viewed the training videos and spoke often with my sponsor to learn how to make this work. Everything was going really well. I was soo pumped and learning tons daily. My spirits were at the highest I had ever experienced in my life. Soon I started meeting lots of new people and my friends list became all network marketers. No friends or family. I signed my first person up to ILN in Feb. 2014. I was soo happy. Soon after I signed up 2 more. My team was growing. I was still learning, but I was building a team. As my team grew I spoke less with my sponsor and started creating more of my own path. My sponsor to my surprise left the Internet Lifestyle Network because he wasn’t making the salary he needed to support his family the way he saw fit. I was floored. Luckily he was replaced by my current sponsor who is totally AMAZING and helps me with any issues that I have with marketing. He also critiques me where needed. I am still on my own path, but where he sees me going in a direction that will not help me or my business he expresses his opinion. This is something that I ABSOLUTELY love and try doing with my team.

I have sense built up a team of 12 with ILN and as with a lot of marketers if you do not provide VALUE then your presence will soon be no longer needed. My team dropped to 3 people. Wondering what the problem was I started trying different things. I spoke to my sponsor more. I did more research online. I visited the network marketing forums. I found some answers. I decided the way to go was to create a course. Create a system that consisted of exactly what I was doing to see success and pass it on to my team. As I began to create this course and continued doing research I came across a diamond in the rough. During my time online I mainly used Facebook messaging, videos, tweeting, and posting on Google+ to build my brand and market my opportunities online. I knew of many people that used group posting to build their networks and promote their opportunities, but I stayed away from it. Mainly because I had seen the videos and heard the comments about how little interaction there is with group posting. In order to understand how wrong the information I found was I made a video about it here.

Well, this diamond in the rough that I found happened to be an auto posting software. I had purchased an auto poster in the past, but never used it. This auto poster titled MassPlanner was free for me to review and I had full access to the software. Soon after installing the application on my computer I asked the software developer if he cared if I introduced others to use this piece of software and he allowed me to do so.

Shortly after introducing my team and a few friends to the software I decided to kick things up a bit and since I had learned from my ILN training about the effects creating a group could have on your business I decided to create a group for recruiting more people to use this software. I spoke to the developer again and he OK’ed the idea. I created the group and decided making it a place for not only providing information for people to purchase the software, but also a place where they could get support and how-to info about the software. I started the group in May and was able to generate a buzz of 83 members. The group includes the software developers and other users of the software. As of writing this the group is just short of 800 members. So I am sure by the time you read this there will be more than 800 members. How did I grow the group to this number so fast? Click here and I will share what I have done to grow the group.

The reason I refer to MassPlanner as a diamond in the rough is because as an auto posting software I was able to build both my name and the MassPlanner name at the same time all while I was generating affiliate commissions. I now had a piece of software that allowed me to be away from home and continue to promote and generate income. I was in love. Finally I started seeing success online. Success from two different affiliate resources. Since I use MassPlanner to promote both ILN and MassPlanner I am seeing both my team and income grow.

Having an auto posting software and products to promote doesn’t make things easy as I’m sure many of you know. I have been using my time lately to build up this blog that you are viewing now and also building my network. I have created a few capture pages to build a mailing list. Creating mailing lists was something also that I had not done in the past. One thing that I am finding with email marketing/ list creation is that a smart thing to do is to create a set of auto response emails for your capture pages before you actually make your capture page live. If you have no idea of what your auto response emails should be composed then create at least one thank you email to be sent once they signup to your list. Start doing a bit of research on the topic of your capture page and begin setting up your auto response email series. While you are composing these mails (It can take a bit of time to do so) send out broadcast emails to your list provide them with VALUE. Make sure the broadcast emails are ones about the topic of your capture page. If you are not sure what a broadcast email is, it’s a normal message, but you can send it immediately or scheduled and it will only be sent to the people on your list at the time of the broadcast. I have been using broadcasts to send out “General Marketing Tips” for my lists. I have read that it’s best to have around 14 messages in an auto response series. You spread the messages over a period of weeks or if you have fewer messages over a period of days. Having the 14 messages provides your list with content from you so that they can become more familiar with who you are. After sending your initial set of auto response messages which are VALUE based you can then start to occasionally send out broadcasts or create an auto response series (Use once or twice a week intervals at most. Don’t become spammy. Your lists will begin to shrink fast.) Over time you will be able to have lists that are full of buyers. Don’t worry about generating huge lists at first. Generate lists that are more targeted to what it is your are offering. This makes it easier for them to join you. A list of 1,000 that converts at 2% will net you less profit than a list of 200 users that converts at 35-45%. Another thing to remember is that lists will build over time so there’s no need to rush. Always promote links for your capture pages so that you can always get leads. As you generate leads those leads will turn into signups.

For additional Value to share I have been uploading Marketing/ Entrepreneurial Lifestyle videos on to YouTube. I started out uploading my videos to Facebook as that was the main area I used to market. I figured over time I would transition to YouTube and hopefully my Facebook following would follow me to YouTube… It’s working. The videos that I upload to YouTube I share with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest. I am averaging around 10 views a week on my videos. I upload the files from my iPhone so I am a bit limited on the information that I can enter. I enter the “Title, Video Privacy, Description, and Tags” from my phone and then edit that information after from my computer. One of the main things I edit from my computer is the “Description”. I make sure to add my contact details for all of my social networks. Facebook, twitter, instagram, Skype, and Google+. Doing this allows viewers to find me and add me on those social networks. I don’t put affiliate links in the description of these videos because I want to build trust. If I have built their trust they will navigate to my blog and signup to one of my lists. I know some may disagree, but this is the way I am doing it and it’s working for me so I will continue until I find something that works better.

I have lots of other things that I have experienced and learned in my just over a year marketing. Well, actually TAKING ACTION has been around half a year. I plan to update this page as I learn more and keep you informed of my growth. Come back frequently and feel free to use this page as a place to compare success paths. I love seeing and hearing others stories.