More Turns Then A Rollercoaster…

Thanks for stopping by and spending some time with me!  It’s Leslie Zengler here, from IMLeslieZ.com and welcome to my little piece of the internet pie.

So What’s My Story?

Well, my story isn’t a rags to riches one, but it does have a few twists and turns along the way.  I live in Indiana, just outside of Chicago, with my husband, two kids and our two dogs.  I enjoy sports which my kids are very active in, am a photographer wanna be, love traveling and love being outside (prefer my toes in warm beach sand vs being frozen off in snow).

I started in internet marketing about 2006.  Before that I worked as middle management for a technology company.  I had quit my job to spend more time with my two young kids.  It was supposed to be for a couple of months.  Unfortunately between, a downturn in the economy and the events of 9/11, I was unable to find a job.  So I began rehabbing rental properties with my sister.  We did that for about 3 years.   When the recession hit, our business collapsed.

That’s when I turned to the internet.

I tried PPC and lost a ton of money.  Then I tried SEO, social media, PPV, CPA, video marketing, reselling PLR and the list goes on.  I learned to build websites and I wrote content for them.  I did Squidoo lenses, Hubpages, squeeze pages, created videos, created slideshows, wrote articles and press releases, spun those articles and published them around the web.  My content was great!  Too bad nobody saw it.  I struggled getting “eyeballs on my website”.  No visitors, no traffic. The gurus said I needed more links to get traffic so I bookmarked, created more blogs, more articles, joined link services, submitted RSS feeds and bought a ton of products showing me the way to the IM promise land of riches.

I paid for coaching, I paid for traffic, I paid for keywords.  Nothing worked and for years I didn’t even come close to making money until (wait for it)… the Nuwave Oven.

I created a blog on blogger.com for the Nuwave Oven which I somehow stumbled upon.  Can’t remember how I did find the Nuwave Oven.  I again created articles, bookmarks, Squidoo lenses, videos, hubpages and more links.  And then the clouds parted and by some act of God, my Nuwave Oven blog actually ranked on Google’s first page.

And although I was not sure how or why I was ranking, I was actually making money with that little blog.  For six months, I made about $250 a month.  I wasn’t rich but I thought maybe there is something to this internet marketing.  And then enter Panda or Penguin or whatever Google’s update was for their search engine.  Bye Bye Nuwave Oven money.  My blog dropped to the second page and my money was gone overnite.  I was pissed, frustrated and wanted to cry.  Since I wasn’t real sure how I had gotten a page 1 blog and with Google’s interference, I couldn’t duplicate it.

About this time, I took a part time job since money was fast becoming an issue.

I then figured if I found really good keywords, I could rank websites relatively easily with less links.  So I paid for “easily rankable” keywords.  Five websites later, no Google rankings.

Then I decided outsourcing must be the way to go, so I paid $300 to have someone build me a website.  They had great reviews on the Warrior Forum so I thought for sure I had a winner.  I’d have them build me a site.  I’d make money from it and then have them build me another.  They put up some garbage website that did not rank in Google as promised.  When I started asking questions, they disappeared.  And so did my money.  I had a website that was worse then the ones I built myself and I still had no traffic.  Yeah, I agree…I was pretty stupid and super gullible.

Now, through all of this, I truly believed I was following what the gurus were telling me to do to get page 1 Google rankings and tons of traffic.  But I obviously wasn’t following their instructions correctly.  So I bought more stuff and the cycle continued.  In fact, some of the stuff I bought, I didn’t even look at.  It was pure insanity.

I’m either persistent or hard in the head.  But I kept working toward my successful internet business.  Here’s where I believe my fortune has turned.  I recently started working with my new mentor, Marc Milburn, and I feel a real connection.  Marc is a very successful 7-figure internet marketer and his coaching program is my step by step blueprint to success.  At least, that’s how I see it.

This blog is a direct result of Marc’s teaching.  I will be posting weekly my journey of going from zero income to a consistent and sustainable income from the internet.  And you can come along for the ride.  You might be thinking…”SO WHAT.  Who cares about your journey, I want to make money online“.  Well, by following my journey, YOU can follow along with your own journey and make your own mark on the internet….including making some money along the way.

My plan is within the next 12 months to go from Zero dollars currently on the internet to 6-figures and my toes in lots of warm beach sand!  I would LOVE it if you’d follow my journey.   Please leave a comment below to say hello or tell me what your internet experience has been so far.

To your success,

LeslieZ