This is a very old “About” page written circa 2007. It is badly in need of an update….
MasonWorld.com is the personal blog of Mark Mason, and is mostly dedicated to my personal account of my latest hobby — Internet Marketing. As it turns out, “Internet Marketing” is just a fancy phrase for “making money on the internet.” I’m facinated with the process (not so much the money), and this blog chronicles that experience. That’s not to say money is bad. In fact, it’s interesting that Internet Marketing is the only hobby that I have ever had with the potential to be cash flow positive (although it is certainly not currently, especially if you put any value on my time). Now, a hobby that made money would be novel for me. Sitting on a beach with a laptop while millions of dollars automatically deposited itself in my bank account would be cool too. But for now, I am interested in learning about Internet Marketing per se.
MasonWorld.com has been around for years serving as my personal domain used primarily for redirecting email (I got tired of sending out those “my email address has changed” notices). Several times in the past, I have used this domain for static “Web 1.0” type sites. A self-proclaimed computer geek, I used to run my own Linux-based web host and router out of a closet in my study. This was in a era when you had to work for days just to get the video to work on a Linux install. At one point, I even had to add an extra air conditioning vent in that closet to fade the heat from the screaming fast 133 megahertz Pentium microprocessor and 256 Meg of RAM.
That home-made Apache server with a 1G hard drive, slow as it was, worked fine, but it was always hard to update the content. Static sites just weren’t very interesting. Plus, in the pre-blog era, there just wasn’t much to say (so I thought). On top of that, I had a real job in industry and a growing family, so time was always in short supply.
Welcome to Web 2.0. In November of 2007, I saw a clip on the Today Show about this retired guy making $11,000 per month with a website on the internet. That really got my attention — not because of the money, but because of the way the guy was making the money. Granted, $11,000 a month is nothing to sneeze at. However, this guy was making the money selling advertising through Google Adsense. I later learned that this was a small part of something called “Internet Marketing.”
So, I started trying to understand Internet Marketing. At first, all I could find were the “free money” people telling me how I could make ZILLIONS of dollars at home if I only spent $97 on their report (previously DISCOUNTED from the introductory price of $76346.) These snake oil salesmen were just like the “make money at home stuffing envelopes” guys in the classifieds. It took me weeks and months to sort through all of the noise to find the legitimate business opportunities out there, understand terminology, understand how to set up a blog, understand how to get traffic, etc. So, I thought a way to give back would be to chronicle my experiences in an effort to save those that come behind me some time.
Now, don’t get me wrong. This is not a new idea. Many have come before me and done the same thing. And, I am not an expert. I am just at the very beginning of all of this. But, that is exactly what this site is about — documenting my Part-Time Internet Marketing Journey.
Best regards,
Mark
P.S. You can find Mark Mason on Google+.
