This blog is about “How to Blog for Money” but it is just as important to know “How not to lose Money”. This article tells you why I am qualified to talk about how not to lose money. As with most successful business it is the first rule – don’t lose money.

My first venture into the Internet Business was a disaster. I invested $18,500 USD with Stores On Line to help me build three Web sites to sell products. I spent many hours (not included in the $18,500) creating the first site and did sell some product but it was hard work.

Stores On Line support was just too hard to use. It took some months to get the payment processor approved. Then it took weeks for me to have it cancelled. The coaching and marketing was a joke. It was an experience I would not want you to go through.

I found out later that a year earlier in Australia their Australian agent or subsidiary had to pay back approximately $600,000 to people who had purchased their packages. StoresOnLIne is still operating in Australia.

If you Google StoresOnLine you will see thousands of entries on them. Many they have set up themselves, to counter the negative sites. A forum is also on line so you can check it out yourselves here at the Online Merchant Forum.

Despite all of this I got bitten with the Internet Marketer’s Bug and have kept working at it. I have now gained a good understanding of the Internet.

Since then I have tried many products includes Google Cash, Affiliate Radar PPCRiches and SpeedPPC. Many I have asked for and got a refund. Some were good products whilst others looked like rubbish to me. Many were not what I wanted to do after I looked at them in more detail. But not one of them were as difficult to deal with as StoresOnLine was.

The result is whilst I have spent some money on eBooks and low cost software I have gained a good education on Internet Marketing and have decided to write about what I haver found useful and helpful that may lead to making money from a Blog.

I can also write about blogging from a Baby Boomer’s perspective since I will be 60 this year and am in semi-retirement.

In the next few posts I will talk about what software I have found the most useful for getting started on the Internet. There are many things you should know that you can do yourself or out-source.

Don’t forget to turn on your Crap Detector though!

Tags: baby+boomers, blogging, storesonline.com

The title of this post speaks volumes. I just thought that was such a great phrase I wanted to use it in my first post on this new Blog. I’d like to thank Leo Kottke for saying it on a radio program the other day. You may know him as a fantastic 12 string Guitarist (http://www.leokottke.com/cgi-bin/ontour/leotour.cgi). But my first impression of him was a guy who speaks a lot of common sense. He was talking about his profession, but the phrase is just as relevant to the Internet.. He went on to say something I think is even more profound,  ”We are all born with a Crap Detector”.

The problem is we often turn off our “Crap Detector” as we desperately try to get our Blog or Web Site up and running. And that’s when the wisdom of the two statements becomes relevant. We stop thinking and start buying, believing that the “Holy Grail” to our problems is the next eBook, or eCourse we purchase.

It never is - and it never will be. As with all good things we succed in little steps then look back and see how far we have come. As we look back we will see all the detours and all the back-tracking we did to get to where we are now. We see we have often gone a great distance but we travelled two or three times that distance to get there. This is called learning and experience and it cannot be avoided if we are to succeed.

Oh sure, we can outsource much of the technical stuff and that will give us a ride for part of the way. But at some point we have to do the walking and make it happen ourselves.

It is imperative you understand the Internet environment and work your way through selecting only those tools and services that are going to assist you achieve your goal and rejecting those tempting ‘nice to haves” that will drop in your lap to distract you, as you journey towards your goal.

This Blog will try and guide Baby Boomer Internet Newbies through the Internet. I will try and ensure FREE really is FREE and where it is not, I will try and point out how you will end up paying for it.

But remember as soon as you open up the Internet make sure your CRAP DETECTOR is turned ON!