Fellow affiliate ninjas! Thanks for dropping by my Affiliate Marketing Blog. Why not stay updated by subscribing to my RSS Feed or joining my Internet & Affiliate Marketing Newsletter? - Rian, Sept. 2007

RianBrooklyn.com is my blog dedicated to helping beginning entrepreneur’s succeed on the Internet. It is run and maintained by a single person (you guessed it, me), and I’m here to help you and to be helped.

You see, I am like you. I am a NON Internet guru trying to “make it” on the Internet. I am not rich. Nor do I live in the Bahamas, drinking from cocktails, while blogging from the beach. And I don’t have my own seminar or DVD course. Perhaps someday…

My goal for this blog is for it to become a key online resource for newbie’s getting started with Internet Marketing. I want to help you cut through the clutter, the noise of 100’s of internet marketers bombarding you with the latest “Internet craze”. I want to save you from spending hours and hours of reading long drawn out sales letters (as I have a habit of doing). I want to give you the advice and tools you need to succeed and actually start making some real money on the Internet. I want to give you the no B.S. approach to what works, and what doesn’t work. Sound good?

For those who are extremely new to this concept of making money online, yes, you can make good money on the Internet. You can make LOTS of money, given the right tools and the right attitude. But you must take action! And no, it isn’t hard, nor is it easy either. Don’t let anyone tell you that it is. There is a learning curve. That learning curve is steeper for some than others. For many, the biggest hurdle is technology. There’s a huge laundry list of things to learn here. For others, it’s marketing. Learning sales, PPC, ad writing, copy writing, persuasion, etc. And still for others, it’s taking action. We’ll talk more about that later.

These are all areas you will need to learn something about in order to master the Internet beast. I haven’t mastered them all either…so don’t feel bad. We’re all learning. But the rewards can be plentiful and worth the struggle. I hope you’ll join me for the ride as we embark together on this journey towards Internet Financial Freedom!

About Me (the man, the myth, the legend…just kidding)

Ok, so for you to come back here again and again, week after week and actually read what I write, I’m going to have to get a bit personal with you. No problem. I want to make this blog as personal as I possibly can, so I’m tearing down the cyber wall between you and me, so let’s get to it. I won’t bore you with my whole life story (yet). I’ll just give you some of the background that’s key to why I am creating this blog in the first place and why I am someone you should listen to.

So first of all and most importantly, who the hell IS Rian Brooklyn and why should you care? (I knew you’d ask). That’s a fair question worthy of a 5 page answer, but I’ll save you the long version for now. Here we go…

Hello, my name is Rian….and I’m a alcoholic…(everyone….hi Rian!) kidding. I’m 28 years old, living in the quirky land of Japan. You might have heard of it.  I’m originally from California, but have been in Japan for the past 9 years.

And for the past 12 years, I’ve been working hands on with computers. Let’s stay that computers are my “thang”. I don’t love computers necessarily, but I am good with them. I used to love them though, but after years and years behind a computer screen, our love affair has lost some of the flame it once had. So now, for me anyway, computers are simply a tool. A tool that WILL someday, oh yes, WILL someday soon lead me to financial freedom…

I’ll say it again; there is a lot to learn to make it online. Luckily for me, the technical side has been somewhat easy since I’ve already been working closely with computers for so long. Setting up email clients, web hosting, domains, redirects, building websites…that’s all stuff I’ve done since before there were cable modems. I got online very early. My first job even while still in high school was the “IT guy” for a large dental company, working with NT and Windows 3.1. That was more than 10 years ago.

So, from a technical standpoint, the Internet is something I am very knowledgeable and comfortable with. As for the marketing side of things, I’m slowly but surely mastering this beast too. I started researching how to make money on the internet about a year and a half ago. I’ve done some affiliate marketing, search engine optimization, made a bunch of money on Ebay, done Pay Per Click advertising.

But in no way am I a “guru”. As I said above, I’m like you. I’m not rich, nor do I make a full-time living on the Internet. But for the past couple of years, I’ve had a burning passion to quit the rat-race. Yes, I know I could do real estate, the stock market, a brick and mortar business. But I also know that those are the slow routes. Too many variables. Too much startup costs. The new millennium is here. There is no faster way to go from flat broke to financial independence than the Internet. Period. End of story. It’s just cutting through the clutter and sticking to something that works that will make or break your success.

During the past year or so, I’ve read almost every Internet Marketing e-book under the sun, subscribed to bazillions of guru newsletters, and have bought more “how-to” courses that I’d like to admit. But you know what? Through all that, there is still something missing. The gurus don’t give you the whole picture. They write persuasive sales copy, get you to buy their product, but they fail to reach the “average joe” Internet user. They don’t realize how non-technical most people are with computers. So when they say, “just go get a web host, a domain name, and an auto responder”, the average user is left looking blankly at the computer screen. It’s not that their courses don’t work, they’re just usually tailored to people who’ve already made some money online or to other Internet Marketers.

That’s where I come in. I hope to explain, in painstakingly fine detail, the ABC’s of what you need to know. I’ll define “domain name” for you. I’ll map out how to get started, what to read, what not to read, what guru’s to listen to, and who to ignore. I’m not a guru basher by any means, in case they read this. We need the guru’s who make millions to show us that it is possible to make a living online.

Site Concept and Design

So far I haven’t had much time to get this blog off the ground…

I want to make this blog as interactive as possible. I’m going to open it up to readers to freely post comments and get the discussions rolling. I want and need your feedback! I have hundreds of ideas, but this blog is for you as much it is for me. So if there’s something you’d like to see, a new feature added, a cool new plugin, a review, feel free to ask. I am more that willing to keep the concept as dynamic as possible.

And if there is something you don’t like, say…the fonts are too small, pages too cluttered, tell me that too. Everything is fair game…

Just to give you a taste of what I have planned:

• Time permitting, I’m hoping to post new content at least 3 times per week. We’ll see how far I get.
• I plan to implement a book room of sorts, a page with highly recommended reading material that will get you started, keep you inspired, and help you succeed.
• A forum maybe? Depending upon how many comments I get, I may open up a forum section where we all can converse together and post our own successes. And failures.
• Video posts. I am considering doing posts for some key material that could be better explained with video than by text. A Google Adwords walkthrough for example, might warrant a video post. I’ve got Camastia Studio. Now I just need a video camera.
• A beginner’s FAQ. Not an FAQ for the site per say, but a sort of a crash course of terms, and concepts with resources for the beginner to study.
• Podcasts. I’m looking into this now. It’d be awesome to get some great podcasts up here. I have a huge compilation of guru’s that I’ve listened to over the past year. If I can get permission, I’ll try to post audio calls and seminars that are essential “Must Listens”.
• More to come. If you’ve got some ideas, feel free to contact me.

Final Words

Ok, so for some final words of wisdom. As most successful people will tell you, you must take action. I let over a year slip by because I procrastinated and did nothing. I read ebook after ebook, book after book, but didn’t stick with anything long enough to make it work. Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Time is very valuable, so use it wisely. Take action sooner than later.I was hesitant to get started because I wanted it easy. I didn’t’ want to run a website, a newsletter, or DO anything that required too much “effort”, even though I had the technical skills already. I didn’t want to fail. But like anything, that’s not reality. I’ve since learned a lot and continue to learn.But this I do know…To succeed you need to have a burning desire. To succeed you must be an eternal student. And to succeed you must fail. But brush it off and get back up.As Napoleon Hill said in Think and Grow Rich, “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” So let’s get to the achieving part shall we?

- Rian (January 2007)