About Me

My name is Leo Liu. I am a full-time internet marketer. I have been writing computer programs since the age of 18. For over 12 years I worked as a software developer for a promising start-up company which was bought by a well-known big name company but subsequently sold as scrap to a German-based firm when this big name company failed to break into an industry they had no business to get into in the first place.

After 3 major down-sizing, several years of salary freezes, a 10% pay cut, and constant worrying about job security, I decided enough was enough. I went to work for myself in the summer of 2006.

I have been investing in real estate since 1996 so naturally that’s where I started after quitting my J.O.B. I joined the coaching program by Craig Proctor who was the top agent at RE/MAX. I became a successful Realtor in a very short period of time; quickly became one of the top producers at my office. This all happened in a depressing Michigan real estate market when many real estate agents were going out of business.

My experience with Craig Proctor’s program really taught me the importance of modeling after successful people in the niche you are in; and what the right mentoring and coaching can do for you.

However, I discovered that I really didn’t like being a real estate agent. You get no respect from clients despite you work like a dog for them. This was completely different from what I was accustomed to as a software engineer. And those dreaded cold calls finally took a toll on me. I thought there must be a better way to do this.

How I Got Into Internet Marketing

In mid 2007 I opened up a junk email by accident. It was a sales letter about a product called “Pay-Per-Click Formula” by Gauher Chaudhry. I had briefly tried PPC advertising selling Clickbank products back in 2003. I think I made about $100 then and decided internet marketing was not worth of my time. Looking back I wish I had stick to it as PPC game was much easier back then.

I was floored when I saw Gauher’s sales letter where he showed he was making 6-figure A MONTH promoting CPA offers using PPC. I bought his course and started to run CPA campaigns. However, I didn’t devote all my time into internet marketing. I was only doing it halfheartedly, but I started to make small profit of about $1,000 a month.

At the same time I was looking for better ways to run my real estate business. I invested a significant amount of money into the “Income for Life” system by Rob Minton. In a nutshell, the system recruits real estate investors to buy houses and then rent them out on lease options. Since I have been doing lease options for over 10 years, I knew it wouldn’t work in Michigan’s market at the time as the numbers didn’t work. It’s just simple math.

However, since the program was backed by marketing guru Dan Kennedy, I decided, against my instinct, to join the program. It turned out to be a disaster. When the numbers don’t add up, they don’t add up, period. All the psychological crap they would have you believe would not make one plus one equals three. I not only flushed all the money down the drain, but more importantly wasted 10 months of precious time.

I was an expert in real estate myself and I should have known better not to trust someone like Dan Kennedy who doesn’t know a squad about real estate. (By the way, the mistake was all mine and in no way I am blaming Dan Kennedy for my loss. I have bought several of Kennedy’s courses myself. I can probably write a full-blown review on them. But in summary, with the risk of being attacked by Kennedy fans, I am going to say that I do NOT recommend any of his courses.)

This loss really reinforced my belief about only to learn from the expert in the field – the expert that makes money from actually “doing” the business, not “teaching” other people how to do the business while himself has never done it before.

At the end of 2007 I found another source of income by doing BPOs (drive-by appraisals) for banks. As a result I got a few foreclosure (REO) listings from Chase and sold all of them in 2 weeks. As foreclosure waves hitting the US (Michigan got an early start in 2008), I found myself at the right place at the right time. I was envisioning to be able to sell a few hundreds of foreclosures a year. No more cold calls. No more dealing with clients that treat you like dirt.

At the same time, my internet marketing business was quietly growing. I bought “Pay-Per-View Formula” by Gauher Chaudhry and started to add PPV to my arsenal. By June of 2008, that $1,000 a month has grown to about $6,000 a month.

Then, in December 2008 I caught the Christmas seasonal train and made around $20,000. This really changed my direction of business as for the very first time, I saw freedom. Internet marketing is something I can do without being limited geographically (unlike real estate), and something I enjoy doing and can apply my expertise (software development) to. I should have known that the Internet was my true calling.

2009 was a busy year for me. My wife and I decided to move to Georgia. She has been bugging me for years about Michigan’s bitter winter. But I was never able to move before because of my J.O.B. and then my real estate business. Now with internet marketing, I get to choose where I want to live. As long as I have internet connection, I am in business.

During 2009 I sold my house in Michigan, moved to Georgia, rented a house for a while, and finally bought another house. Meanwhile my internet marketing business was doing 5-figure a month on average.

In the 12 years of working as a software engineer, I came very close to make 6-figure yearly income but never quite made it. That was, of course, before all the salary freezes and pay cuts. But now with internet marketing, I was finally able to achieve it.

My Future Plans

Moving forward, I plan on growing my internet marketing business by diversifying into multiple traffic sources. In the past year Google has really targeted affiliate marketers and shutdown thousands of Adwords accounts. Despite what you may think, many of these affiliates really haven’t done anything to deserve the Google slaps. Their accounts were banned without explanations and without being giving a chance to correct any mistakes that they don’t even know exist.

It’s risky to based your business solely on one source, especially when you have no idea exactly what they want and they won’t tell you. I am now shifting my traffic sources to other forms of paid advertising and organic search. I am also looking into list building and creation of my own products.

Why I Started This Blog & What It Can Do For You

I started this blog to document what I’ve learned and am still learning in this business. I am sure you will benefit tremendously as I share my experiences.

Since I am an expert in programming and software development, I will have lots of information to help people with technical difficulty as I know many people starting out on internet marketing don’t have the technical know-how and can’t afford to hire someone. This would be an important aspect that differentiates this blog from millions of other “how to make money online” blogs out there.

So I would like to encourage you to subscribe to my RSS feed and leave your comments on my posts. This is a DO-FOLLOW blog so any substantive comments are welcome.

All the best,

Leo Liu