I was born on the 3rd of November 1983 and had been working online since 1999 – I absolutely love it!
The freedom I have is unbelievable, and I can pretty much do what I like when I like.
During the week in the day on the beach, I am often seen either skimboarding, fishing, or simply longboarding around the local area. I enjoy “my time”, and I have recently passed my Motorcycle test, which means I am spending a lot of time riding through the hills and the coast roads of the south coast of England.
I also have a kit car that I have owned since 2003 and has played a massive part in my and my wife’s lives. I have travelled all over Europe in it and often spent many hours on the side of motorways waiting for recovery trucks to bring us back home. It’s a great hobby, and I have met and have made so many great lifelong friends through it.
When I go away for any period of time, whether it’s on the bike or in my kit car, all I need is a net connection and my smartphone, and I can pretty much run my online business from just that alone, although I do prefer working with a netbook! (or soon to be ultrabook) but nine times out of ten, I can manage with just a smartphone.
Don’t get me wrong, and my life has not always been like this. I have struggled with debt and bad career choices, and I was even facing bankruptcy many years ago, as I was chasing idea after idea – and although they were great ideas, I did not know enough to get them moving!
I then had a big wake up call and decided to follow a career choice which opened my eyes and has put me in good stead ever since. I trained as a plasterer, and within a couple of years of being a labourer for a company, I broke away and started my own company.
The whole time I was training as a plasterer, I was still building my online presence, and I was earning more through affiliate marketing than I was training! However, I knew that I needed to push on keep going as I needed a trade to protect me.
My First Life Changing Experience Is About To Happen
The significant change came in 2009 – I decided to walk away from plastering and follow my dream of travelling. Much to my parents’ annoyance and complete disbelief, I walked away from my pretty big successful plastering company.
Some people have said I was mad to do this, and others just admired my ambition and stood by me. My plastering company was well known in the area, and we had a reputation for being very expensive and for delivering outstanding work. I made around £3,000 a week and had two other plasterers working for me.
When I went travelling in 2009, it gave me time to think and re-focus my energies, and at the same time, it gave me an idea of the life I wanted to lead. I had paid off over £47,000 worth of debt and had a very sizable savings account – I was in a position to achieve anything I wanted to do!
I spent my time on my travels to look at my current sites and decide which ones had potential and which ones were worth nothing and should be eradicated (bearing in mind at this point, I had around 100 or so little affiliate sites!).
While I was travelling, all I was doing was reading and researching affiliate marketing and fine-tuning what I was currently doing. Don’t get me wrong, I was earning enough to support myself while I was away seeing the world, so I was not in desperate times, and I did have a bit of breathing space.
In January of 2010, I had to fly back to England as I needed a minor operation, this was a sad time, but my travels had been outstanding. I worked even harder when I returned home, and even though it puzzled lots of people why I was not going back to plastering, I did have the support of the majority of people.
Time To Really Push My Affiliate Marketing Business
My affiliate commissions increased sharply, and I started to get noticed by some big names. I was promoting hard, and things were good.
Myself and now my fiancée Jane still had the travel bug, however, and we decided to head back to Asia to try and finish the rest of our trip. During this time, one of my sites (non-affiliate) exploded – the traffic was increasing dramatically, and I had companies offering me £80,000 for the site!
When someone offers you a large sum of money for a site, you have two options – either snap their handoff or tell them to go do one. I naturally told them to jump, and from that day on, I was focusing pretty much solely on this site.
I didn’t realise that in a few weeks time I would be in a Vietnam hospital fighting for my life
On 10th October 2010 (yes 10/10/10), I was rushed to a Vietnam hospital where I was treated for severe food poisoning. For three days, I was fighting and in excruciating pain, collapsing and generally in a mess…
On the third day of my ordeal, I was told that I had haemorrhagic Dengue fever, and if I stayed in this hospital, I would die. I don’t remember a great deal of what happened over those four days but what I do remember was horrific
I was flown out of Vietnam and taken to Thailand, where they could treat me. I was there for ten days, and my parents flew out to meet my good lady Jane and me.
As of writing this three years ago, I still have to deal with the side effects of what dengue fever did to me, and believe me, it’s tough! Every day I have to battle with my own body to keep motivated, and luckily for me, I have a strong, close-knit group of friends and family who support me and look after me when I am not well.
I learned from being ill that nobody was going to be there to support me financially, and I soon realised that the UK government was not going to help, so I decided from that day on to never rely on anybody financially.
I Made More Money In 2012 Than Ever Before
Even though I struggled with my health everyday from 10th October 2010 my online business has grown and grown, and last year saw us make more money than ever before (and this was in a recession!).
As an affiliate marketer we have had to battle with not only the recession, but also google changing its algorithm with the Panda and Penguin updates, we have also had the ebay partner network get very anal about their affiliates, and made it very difficult, however all this has done for me is make things a lot easier, as a lot of the competition is now gone, and I can push on and make even more commissions.
You are probably wondering about the site that in 2009 I was offered £80K for? – what is this site doing now? well I still own it, and I saw the potential that the other companies saw – I have grown it into the most influential site in the Plastering industry! it is my biggest headache, but its well worth it as I have met many great people from it, and it has been my lifeline.
I am a massive goal setter and I am constantly working on my goals. In late 2011 my health took a massive turn for the worst and I was constant battling and after many visits to the doctors it was suggested that I go and do some exercise. With me being me I needed something to train for and I set myself the task of doing the famous John O’groats to Lands End in 2012.
In August 2012 myself and my good lady Jane cycled 1500 miles for Help For Heroes and that for us was not only a physical challenge but also a massive personal challenge considering my health. It took us a total of 24 days to do it and we raised a little over £3,000 for doing it. I made it in to the local paper much to the annoyance of Jane as she didn’t get much of a mention.
I love affiliate marketing, and helping companies succeed! I am often helping smaller companies with marketing strategies and tactics to help them make money. I won’t say that I am a guru or anything like that, I would just say that I am enthusiastic about what I do, and I am very driven by what can be achieved.
Its not about the money but more about the lifestyle I lead.
There are lots of people online who say they are experts or self professed gurus, and I know for a fact that majority of them are full of shit! and have only made money online by telling people how to make money. I am not one of those people!! I spend my time walking the walk and doing, while on the side I update my blog and try to give as much help and advice as I can, to help new people to the industry get a taste of what its like to make money online.
I will promote products and course and tools on this site and I will probably get commissions for doing so but one thing’s for sure and that is that I won’t promote anything that I don’t use or I don’t think will help my readers.
So that is pretty much my life, I live life as far on the edge as I can take and as my body allows me while constantly looking at ways I can improve my affiliate sites, while at the same time helping people along the way.
I hope you have enjoyed reading a bit about me and my background and if you have any questions then please do contact me.
