Who Is Marcus Campbell Anyway?

Hi There.

My name is Marcus Campbell and in this blog post I am going to let you behind the curtain of my life so you can see that there really is no mystery to who I am or what I do. I’m just a normal guy with a really fun line of work that I get to enjoy from the comfort of my own home.

You could say that my “business” sense started when I was a kid. Every summer my brother and I would think up some new way to make extra money. One year we ran a carwash business and made $100 in one week… each! Not a huge amount by today’s standards but we were able to but the coolest skateboards on the block and build a pretty cool ramp to jump off.

I wasn’t the “coolest” kid in school, I would often get picked on because I was always the shortest kid in my class – so I stuck to doing ‘my own thing.’

During high school I decided I would become a magician… that was really fun and helped me deal with getting picked on. The big bad bullies seemed a bit kinder when I was able to hypnotize their girlfriends and read their minds… I guess people respect you more when you are a threat to them.

After being a magician for a year or two I decided to make a business out of it. Starting as a magician in local restaurants, I moved on to kids parties, church shows, and school shows.

Here Is A Picture Of Me As Seen In My Magic Ads… Try Not To Laugh!

I wasn’t getting rich or anything but it was fun.

Then in 1998 I graduated from high school with a whopping 2.0 grade average… not exactly college material, in fact it wasn’t even a normal high school… it was one of those… your failing… go here and try to graduate schools.

At that time I was working as a computer salesman, a magician, and I dabbled in website creation.

The power of internet marketing hit me one day when a man came in for a new computer and was talking about how he had a legal forms website and was able to sell 12-15 legal forms every day for about $7 a pop… all profit!

I logged that in the back of my mind… as I kept selling computers and trying to work at my magic business.

While all this was going on I was devoting 4-5 hours a day to the study of direct marketing, search engine rankings, and anything I could read on the subject of marketing and advertising… I loved reading about marketing, psychology, and business.

Soon I was reminded of the power of direct marketing when I changed my local ad for my magic business from:

Magic By Marcus
Magic Balloons Comedy and Fun!

To:

Make Your Childs Party Unforgettable
45 Minute Magic Show
Audience Participation
Tons Of Fun… Call Marcus Now!

Almost instantly I went from a lousy 5 shows a week… to being booked solid and going full time. From the same magazine at the same price… the only difference was the wording of my ad. That is the power of marketing… making an ad people have to respond too, making an ad that shows them the benefit right up front… in their face… with a call to action.

By 1999 I was doing magic full time… I was still broke but was having fun and paying my bills on time… for once. Still working at this “internet thing” and building websites.

In 2000 I had built a website for a local cigar company and was able to get them ranked on the search engines for words like “free cigar” and many other brand name terms… their traffic came in pretty steady. That was cool, I was able to charge them now as a SEO guy instead of just a web designer… that was a nice extra chunk of change.

After seeing how to build sites and how to get them on the search engines, I did the same thing for many other local business owners.

After a while I stopped building websites, and started helping the sites that were already around by getting them ranked on the search engines. After all that is what paid better anyway and it took less time.

In 2001 my wife and I were expecting our first child… and I was pretty much broke. So I had to make this internet business work!

With less than $100 in the bank I decided it was GO time.

So I went into paypal shops and searched for sites by category… like “snowboard shops” and “cigar stores.”

I would make email lists of all the sites in each category… from 25-200 emails each.

Then I sent each business an email saying:

“I have some ideas to get more business to your _______ website. Call me and I’ll help you!”

Because the ______ had their business name they thought it was personal and called almost immediately. Since they accepted paypal, I knew after I sold them I could instantly have them paypal me the money and drop it right to my bank account. It was sweeeeet.

I was able to make $200-300 a day in profit doing this… some days even $700 – $1200 in profit. That was enough to get me outta my rut… and my second year I pulled in a cool $67,000! But as I was doing my taxes I got to thinking… I was making about 5-6 grand a month…. Which is nice, but I have generated over a two million visitors for my clients… even at a measly $0.10 per click that would be $200,000 in revenue for me… without the phone calls, the refunds, the pain in the butt customers

I could just sit, make sites, and collect the money!

Best of all… if I did that full time… I would be able to make a ton of sites.

So I did.

I decided in late 2002 I was gonna make a site on my own to sell gas scooters… I made a site… got the rankings… and about the 2nd month I pulled in $13,000 in sales… and I didn’t even touch the scooters… I took the order on my site… forwarded it to the shipper… and paid him for the wholesale price.

Our best converting keyword was “gas powered scooters for cheap” which at that time had no competition.

I did that for 3 months and decided to make sites that were all affiliate based.

Meaning I didn’t have to take the money, the order, ship it, or anything.

All I had to do as an affiliate was to drive traffic to websites… and get paid!

This proved to be very lucrative… I made sites for cable descramblers, mortgages, payday loans, dental insurance, anything I could find a product for… I made a site. Heck I even made money on a site that sold a book for people who wanted to find out if their spouses were unfaithful.

My first year as an affiliate marketer I was able to generate over $167,000!

My second year I generated about $300,000 my third year was about $280,000, and I was living the life… no “real” business to run… the clicks just came in and went and did their thing… no hard advertising costs… just domains hosting and the occasional submission cost… life was sweet.

Then it happened… the search algorithms changed… overnight I dropped from a cool $1,000 a day profit… to about $200 a day… it hurt… I was scared, lost, and confused… I now had 2 kids, a stay at home wife and a big ole fat California house payment.

But I knew that I was a search marketer, and as long as people were still searching for things on the internet… I could make money!

So I decided to dive into the world of pay per click marketing… this was starting to get really big with google adwords, yahoo buying overture, and all the companies wanting in on the search marketing goldmine.

It started good, thanks to my background in studying direct marketing…. I read books, printed half the internet on the subject (well my wife thought it was half the internet – she’s a paper conserver), and kept reading.

About a month after my stuff took a hit (late 2004) I set up a site about mortgages and tried my hand at Pay Per Click Marketing… this site did well… made about $300 a day in profit… add that to my $200 a day left from the old stuff… and I was able to live again

As time went on I tweaked the site, the ads, and the bid costs. I was able to get that mortgage site to about $900 – $1100 a day in profit.

I continuously added sites and did really well… I even had a few mid to high 5 figure days in there… and in 2006 I had my first year over $1,060,000.

Of course being in pay per click that wasn’t all profit… but I was able to have a good 40% profit margin. About $400,000 in one year aint too shabby is it. After all most of my time was spent playing with the kids and hanging out with my wife.

Now I sit here on track to have another great year.

I decided since I haven’t yet found a complete “Make Money Online” training guide I am going to make my own so that I can help people learn to make money online and work from home.

Thats my little story… if you want to learn more about my Simple Sites Big Profits Program… Click the link below!
www.SimpleSitesBonus.com

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