Can I tell you a quick story?

Early in our marriage, my wife and I got deeply into credit card debt. (I’m talking tens of thousands of dollars in debt at 18% interest) We had a combined annual income of just under $30,000 and couldn’t pay our monthly bills.

We had to charge electric bills, food and other necessities on our credit cards because we were so far off budget due to the debt.  When we made a $800 payment to the credit card, about $650 of it went directly to interest payment.  We did the math:  making the minimum monthly payment (which was growing!), it would take almost 70 years to pay off.

Things weren’t looking good.

Then, something happened:  I made $12.95.

Ten years ago a $12.95 order came through a secure order form at my website.  It was for a small information product that I had put together which taught how to earn affiliate commissions with X.com (which later became Paypal).

I had to manually process that order on a credit card machine that I used for a small gift shop I owned in my home town. When the order came in, I hand typed the numbers and expiration date and then “batched” out the order at the end of the day.

The memory of my wife and I dancing in the small living room of our small home over that $12.95 order is still vivid in my mind.   We were so excited!  I had generated a sale completely online.  It wasn’t much money, but it was a start.

Paula was a few months pregnant with our soon to be firstborn son.  My hope was to get this Internet business up and running so she could quit teaching and stay home as a full-time mom.

Little did I know at the time how dramatically our lives would change as a result of that first $12.95.

I stepped out on faith, sold my retail store and went “full-time” as an internet marketer.  That was ten years ago this month.  That’s when I launched ProfitsVault.com.  That $12.95 turned into a six-figure income my first full year in business.  And that six-figure income has grown to numbers so far beyond my expectation that I still have trouble believing our good fortune.

Paula, by the way, resigned as a teacher and has been a full-time mom ever since.  She’s in her fifth year as Jacob’s homeschool teacher, and loving (almost) every minute of it.

I’ve been blessed.  Like it, don’t like it … God has been good to me.  During the past ten years the Lord has not only blessed us with a lot of income, but with some WONDERFUL friends that have come into our lives as a result of this business.

We have no debt now.  Our home is paid for.  Our vehicles are paid for. We travel a lot, do a lot of mission work and help people around the world.  Thank God!

Ten years later, our lives are much different.  That’s what we’re  celebrating this week … not just ten years online, but the result of those ten years:  freedom from debt, flexibility to do what we want.

That’s our story.

I hope it encourages, inspires and challenges you to create your own story!

Let me give you a nugget of truth to hold onto that may help…

Leading up to this ten year milestone, many people have asked me the question:  what do you do differently now than you did back then?

With all that’s changed (I certainly don’t hand key in credit card numbers anymore , much of what I do has remained the same.  When Armand Morin interviewed me back in 2003, I explained the process that I had been using for three years at that point.  Seven years later, I’m still using it…

1. Create an offer.

2. Mention it to my subscribers and lists.

3. Invite affiliates and partners to promote it.

While there are a lot of variables – and, to be sure, many of those variables have morphed into new things – the core foundation that my business is built on is unchanged.

I share that because one of the things I’m convinced of is this:  the reason most people fail in this business is because they abandon their foundation and attempt to try “every new thing” that comes along.

Sure, there is a time to experiment.  There is a time to tweak.  There is a time to try new things and fine-tune old things.

My challenge to you is this:  keep things simple.  Find something that generates revenue and then duplicate it.  I’m a big believer in this advice that I regularly pass on…

*** Strip everything down to as FEW steps as possible to get the job done well. ***

You want to do the MINIMUM amount of activities as you can in order to achieve the result you want.  Everything else is a distraction.  Everything else is taking away time from the  things you started this business to free yourself up to do!

I’d rather be playing tennis or serving on the foreign mission field than experimenting with some new “idea of the week”.

Another question I get asked a lot is this:  what “mark” have you left on Internet Marketing during the past ten years.

Two things comes to mind:

The first is “changed lives”.  I keep a copy of every testimonial that I receive.  These are personal to me.  These mean a lot to me.  When I hear success stories and see the lives of others changed in a positive way as a result of interacting with me in some way, I’m humbled and touched.

It’s exciting to see single moms be able to provide for their family.  It’s exciting to see overworked dads quit the corporate job to work from home and spend time with their family.  It’s exciting to see people desperately in debt pay it all off.

It’s exciting to hear of people dancing in their living rooms because they made their first of many sales to come.

While it pales in comparison, the other thing that comes to mind in terms of a “mark” left by me is this:  birthing the PLR industry.

In 2003 I made up the term “PLR” (Private label rights) while working with Ryan Deiss on a project.  It begin with my “Products In The Rough” package and later that year morphed into the first PLR membership site of its kind, Nicheology.com

From there, it has exploded into a huge chunk of the internet marketing revenue.

So, it’s only natural that to mark my ten year anniversary of Profits Vault that I would celebrate by releasing a PLR package.  On Tuesday, August 17, 2010, visit ProfitsVault.com for details on this package of mainly unreleased products, reports, mini-courses and articles written or co-written by me.

And, during the next 10 days, you’ll also be receiving free stuff as my way of “giving back” to everyone who has played a part in my own success either as a subscriber, customer, affiliate, partner, friend, mentor or otherwise.

We’ll start right now.

I’ve put together a package of three ezine articles that I personally wrote which you may have at no cost to you … and I’m including PLR licensing to the articles.  You’ll find that they can easily be used to promote a variety of information products.

You can download them at…

http://www.JimmyBrown.com/10-year-articles.txt

Please leave your comments and well-wishes below as well…they mean so much to me!

God bless,
Jimmy D. Brown