About Randy

I have been interested in the concept of passive income ever since I was introduced to “the plan” (Amway) a few years back.  The idea of working once and getting paid over and over again for your efforts really appealed to me.

When the internet came along I started promoting products as an affiliate.  I promoted mostly weight loss ebooks through ClickBank and ended up making thousands of dollars.  While it wasn’t enough to quit my job it certainly improved my standard of living tremendously!

My biggest obstacle was getting enough traffic to my offers.  The first web site I ever created actually ranked number 1 in Google for the term “weight loss tips” and at that time brought in about 150 visitors a day.  This was around 2004.

I got it to rank that high mostly through article marketing and building up backlinks.  I then started playing around with a piece of software (that shall remain nameless) which generated thousands of pages based on the keywords you put into it.

I went into Wordtracker and found a huge list of weight loss related keywords.  I entered them into the software, generated the pages and uploaded them to my web host.

Within a short period of time my site was getting over 1000 unique visitors a day because a lot of these pages started showing up in the Google search results.  In one month I made close to $3000.

Eventually, my ranking started to drop.  I am not sure if it was because the level of competition was increasing or it was simply because my site was blacklisted by Google because of the software.

I exchanged a few emails back then with Brad Callen who was working on marketing his own weight loss site.  He contacted me in the beginning to see if I was interested in promoting his weight loss ebook.  We also talked a little about SEO and affiliate marketing.

Eventually his site overtook mine not only for the term “weight loss tips” but for the term “weight loss” in general.  His site went on to make a lot of money and he then created his own software related to search engine optimization.

After that I tried promoting another ClickBank product but in a different niche.  This was in 2005.  It was actually a site that sold car auction listings selling seized vehicles for really good deals.

I created a simple landing page and then started a link directory with other auction sites.  It brought in enough traffic to earn between $150 – $300 a week on average.  I then let that go in favor of another project.

I will tell you a funny story though.  I used that auto auction site to create a campaign in Google Adwords using the term “auto trader” along with other variations of it as my main keyword.  It did really well bringing in around $200 a day – I was so excited!  Needless to say the campaign was shut down quickly by Google because the term wasn’t relevant to my site.

In 2006 I started up another fitness site related to losing belly fat.  It started to rank well in the search engines and so I decided I would try placing Google Adsense ads on it.  I considered it easy money because I really did not have to sell anything.

In 2007 I discovered the Google Content Network and ended up promoting another fitness product called The Truth About Six Pack Abs.  The affiliate manager (Mike Geary) was very helpful, spoke with me on the phone and even helped to modify my existing PPC campaign.

All I did was use a masked domain and redirected each visitor directly to the landing page.  All in all my campaign did very well and I was doubling my money most months.

As time went on Google started coming down on masked domains and you would start noticing your traffic drying up.  The solution was simply to buy another masked domain!  Eventually though, this technique did not work anymore as Google was becoming more strict.

You needed to create full sites (5+ pages) with a privacy policy etc.  Unless you were really skilled this would no doubt affect your conversion rate too.  And it seemed like a lot of work just for a mere test.

Lately you hear talk of Google banning whole accounts whenever they feel like it.  To me that doesn’t seem like a stable way to build a business unless you have other sources of traffic too.

Now we arrive at the present day and I really started reflecting on all of these past experiences to see what I could learn from them.  That is when I really started thinking about building a passive income.

Promoting affiliate programs with a residual income attached to it will help to keep me focused on my long term plan and my goals.  I am now involved with Empower Network and am really excited!

I am following a 3 part formula which will ultimately enable me to live my dream lifestyle.

The 3 parts consist of:

1.  Effective Money Management

2.  Eliminating All Debt

3.  Creating Passive Income

This is slowly coming together for me and I have already used some of the money I made in the past to purchase land in the Philippines.  The cost of living there is very inexpensive, it is warm and the people are super friendly!

I am also happily married and am into movies, music, video games and health and fitness…go figure!

I want to thank you for taking the time to read about me and my unique story.  I am sure you have one too.  In fact, one of the reasons why I created this blog is to connect with and learn from other like minded people.

Take action and think big!