Hey there Chris Barmby here. I really hope that you find value in the videos and articles that I have provided on my site for you. I usually try to make my website about giving you the readers valuable content that you can use to help in your business.

On this page though I would like to take the time and tell you a little bit about my online marketing background and some of the struggles and obstacles I have faced over the years.

I started my very first online business venture back in 2008. I can’t quite remember exactly how I came across that business opportunity at that time but I do remember that once I did find it I became obsessed…

I had just found a gold mine and I was going to become a millionaire!

The cost of joining that business was $1200 and I did not have that kind of money back then, so I went to my parents and sold them on this new business that was going to make me rich. Needless to say they were not sold and did not believe in it as much as I did, in fact they probably thought I had gone crazy. But they did end up helping me out non the less.

Shortly after starting this online business I got laid off from my job but rather than worry about finding work (heck I was about to be a millionaire) I seen that as a perfect opportunity. I must have got laid off for a reason, this new business is my destiny and now I had all the time in the world to work at it.

I attended every training call and webinar that there was, read every article that I could find and took massive action. I did absolutely everything that I was taught to do. Creating a blog, a Myspace account, writing articles and creating videos.

I remember back then YouTube and other video sites were just starting to become popular for building a business. And it was actually so new that it took no work at all to rank for almost any keyword you wanted to rank for. It was usually as easy as wrapping your keyword in brackets and boom instant rankings. So because of it’s simplicity that was the marketing method that I chose to focus most of my efforts on. I was creating, posting and ranking videos like they were going out of style.

But… My First Online Business Failed Miserably

After doing exactly what I was taught to build my business over the next couple of months I finally came to the conclusion that the dream that I had of becoming a millionaire with my new business was in fact a joke. And besides now I was broke and had to find a J.O.B. because I had only made $497 of my original investment back. Where were my millions that I was going to make?

Maybe my family and friends were right when they told me that it was nothing but a pyramid scheme… I remember my own wife telling me that I would never be a millionaire and I was crazy for even thinking that I could make any money online. Every time that I got around my family they would ask me “What are you even selling Chris?” But even after explaining that it wast was a digital library of eBooks and software to help people build a business, they would repeat the question. They did not see the value in it that I did. They seen it as, I was selling a business that teaches you how to sell that business.

I decided that I had to put my tail between my legs and go back to my friends and family and admit to them that the whole online business dream that I had was a total scam. They were right, I fell victim to a scam. How could I be such an idiot and think that I could make money online?

I thought now that the only people who can make money online are crooks and con artists.

Now that I look back, I thought I was doing everything right but I was in fact doing it all wrong. Actually I just went on the search to find my old videos online and I did find some of them…. HORRIBLE!!

I am surprised that I even made any money at all. I came across as a cheesy salesman trying to sell to people rather than giving good quality valuable content that people could use in their business or day to day life. I was in no way coming across as any kind of authority that could help you grow or start your own online business.

Fast Forward A Couple Years

Over the next couple of years the dream of becoming financially free had never really subsided. I knew that there had to be a way to get out of the rat race, but just did not know how I could do it. I remember a book that always peeked my interest every time I saw it, The 4 Hour Work Week.

Finally one day I decided to break down and pick up The 4 Hour Work Week. This guy Tim Ferris was speaking my language, he wrote about ways that one could become financially free with minimal effort. One of the routes that he spoke about was affiliate marketing (promoting someone else’s product and receiving a commission on every sale you generate).

This new concept “Affiliate Marketing” re-lit the fire inside of me!

I had to learn all about this new found thing called affiliate marketing. How could I start to build my own empire of affiliate sites that would generate a passive income on autopilot.

After days of research on several different affiliate marketing courses I settled on one called Moneysites by Jason Drohn. This course walked me through step by step how to build mini niche websites and get them to rank well on google. People would then read the blog posts, usually reviews, and click through to purchase a product that I would receive a commission on.

I immediately got started with two niche websites. One was promoting a marriage counselling program that I went through and the other was concrete tools because I was a concrete finisher. I worked diligently at both of these sites in my spare time over the next couple of months.

My Marriage Counselling site was a very simple set and forget website that took me about 20-30 hours in total to build out. And my concrete site was meant to be more of an authority site that I would build up over time.

Yet Again My Online Business Failed… Or So I Thought!

After a couple months of working diligently and not seeing the results that I thought I would have by then, in fact I was not seeing any results at all. Once again I gave up on my business, I guess this stuff was not for me!

Fast forward a couple of months…

I decided out of the blue to check to see if  the sites that I had built decided to change their tune a little. My marriage counselling site had produced me around $400 and my concrete site had produced me around $50 over those couple of months. I remember being extremely excited. My sites were bringing in an income and I hadn’t even touched them!

After seeing that I was making money I turned to Google to see how I was ranking for the keywords that I was going for. Both of my sites were performing really well and ranking first page of google for almost every keyword I was targeting.

This Affiliate Marketing thing works… it really works!

After seeing that I was getting results it was time to get to work. I decided to leave my marriage counselling site alone, it was performing well so why bother messing with it. And my concrete site, I knew that I had to scale it up in order to make a decent profit from it.

I went on to build out my concrete site a little more and I also created a few more set and forget review sites and created a couple of launch jacking sites. Back then it was too easy to build thin content review sites that would rank well in google.

Google Started Fighting Back

After all of my sites were doing so well I noticed that my commissions were starting to dwindle and my rankings were starting to drop. Google had started to implement a series of updates that would effect thousands of affiliate sites worldwide. The days of building and ranking thin content sites had pretty well come to an end. It is still possible to build these sites and rank but definitely not as easy as back then!

After Google had made these updates I had a number of sites that just disappeared, never to return. But for some reason a couple of my sites stuck around, I had no idea why and honestly back then I had no time to figure it out. I had a family and a J.O.B that took up 100 hours of my time every week. I could have used black hat SEO strategies and recovered from the updates but I decided to leave it alone and just collect my commissions I was still generating!

Then I Started My eBay Business

After a year or so of just collecting my couple hundred dollars a month from my affiliate sites work had slowed down for the winter and I decided to get into doing a little drop shipping on eBay. I joined a training platform called DS Domination. They taught me step by step how to build an eCommerce business.

I made $500 my very first month of drop shipping on eBay!

This new business venture took a ton of time to manage and scale up. Which at that time was OK because I was not working much at all. And hey it worked like gang busters. Find products on Amazon that are selling for more and eBay, list, sell, repeat…

The method that they taught worked really well but as time went on and more people joined DSD my sales seemed to keep going down each month. They were over saturating the eBay selling platform, when I had started there were maybe a couple thousand using the methods we used and over the next few months there were over 100,000. So as you can imagine not too many people were making money anymore including myself.

Affiliate Marketing Was Calling My Name Again

Although I was not making any money anymore with the DS Domination drop shipping methods they did have an affiliate program. So I could introduce people to their course and receive a monthly commission. I thought heck why not. All I had to do was add some value to the marketplace and show people what I was taught about building an eBay business.

Promoting DSD as an affiliate worked well, but the problem was….

Who was I to recommend this system to people when it had failed me and didn’t work as well anymore? The team that I was building was not having results with the drop shipping either. So I pulled the plug, I am not into putting my name behind a system that doesn’t work.

I wanted to promote something that people could actually make money with!

Since Affiliate Marketing worked so well for me in the past and I knew that I also wanted to learn how to scale my affiliate business with all the new changes to Google, I went on the search. I wanted to find something that offered a ton of value to its users and had a step by step system that implemented easy to use white hat strategies to build a long lasting affiliate business.

With so many different business building courses and training platforms out there I knew that it would be hard to find the “right one”. I joined and tested out a few different affiliate training platforms including Google Sniper, Empower Network and MLSP.

I Hung My Hat At MLSP For Awhile

After researching, joining and testing a couple of different platforms I decided to hang my hat at MLSP for awhile. They had 7 years worth of training in every aspect of marketing that you could possibly imagine as you can see illustrated below

I was able to learn so much about marketing in the period of time that I hung my hat at MLSP. And even though I no longer hang my hat there I have mad respect for the owners and leaders there. Each and every one of them are as genuine as can be and want nothing more than to see people succeed.

In no way do I want to bash MLSP but I just found that what they had to offer did not fit into the criteria that I was looking for. Much of their training when it came to Affiliate Marketing was out dated and did not seem to work. They are more geared towards Network Marketing and MLM business builders.

I also found that they really had no step by step system to follow that would walk you through the process. Each week they were training on a different topic or marketing platform which caused a bad case of shiny object syndrome. Even I found it hard to concentrate on my goals I had set forth, it seemed like every corner I turned the next latest and greatest marketing strategy was being taught, it was a little to overwhelming for the $150 per month price tag.

Where Am I Today?

While I was still with MLSP I always had different programs, offers and business opportunities come across my desk, but I never really did pay much attention to them. Until one day I had a particular Affiliate Training platform fall on my lap, actually to be honest I had stumbled across it many times over the years but never gave it much attention.

Anyways this platform was offering a free membership without even having to give a credit card number. So I thought, what the heck, why not have a look. Besides whats the worse that could happen, a load of spam email?

I was completely amazed at what I had found on the other side of that optin form!

In fact if I was to build my own affiliate training platform from scratch this would have been almost exactly what I would have built. Wealthy Affiliate is what I had been envisioning when it came to the perfect platform to not only help me build my business but also help others get started or grow their own affiliate sites.

After joining Wealthy Affiliate for free I was quick to go ahead and upgrade to the premium membership. After upgrading I was able to start to bring some of my old sites back to life with a few tweaks that I had learned.

I have also learned a little bit about local client seo from Wealthy Affiliate and have been building websites for local businesses and ranking them in the search engines. I continue to help people get started and grow their own businesses as well as build and expand on my own online empire.

Thanks again for visiting my website and if you need anything don’t hesitate to ask in the comments below. I would love to help out. Also feel free to shoot me a message over on Facebook

Cheers,