What a thought-provoking question.

Years ago, I worked as the head of the Internet department for a telecommunications firm. Long story short, we were in charge of rolling out a brand new interactive website that would integrate accounts, billing, etc. The company spent millions and millions of dollars on the project and then snuffed it all out.

Which means my entire department was laid off. By the way, the fiber is still out there laying across the country doing lord knows what now.

So I found myself without a job, was recently married and to make things worse, my husband worked for the same company so needless to say we were living in fear that more layoffs were coming around the corner.

I happened to work part-time with a local web design firm and did some work for them creating back end databases, interactive sites using my PHP background and such, but they were a small firm and the money just didn't roll in like I had hoped...at least not at the level my income was at. I was desperate to find another job because we were planning on having a child and I wanted to be sure we had the additional medical insurance. At that time, jobs for the kind of work that I did weren't exactly plentiful. So little by little, I started investigating other ways to make money - and that's how I was first introduced to IM.

Now, back then IM wasn't nearly what it is today and so it was slow-going to say the least. But, little by little I became almost obsessed with marketing, why things worked the way that they did, how come one site was first in the search engines and not another one and so began studying SEO and SEM passionately. I think I attribute it to the fact that I always loved figuring out those Logic Puzzles you see in the stores (hokey I know).

Slowly I began working with lots of other web design firms doing SEO consulting which helped with the bills along with the IM I was doing. But boy, did I get sick quick of the unrealistic expectations that many people had. I'm still floored at how little the general public (non-IM people) knows about SEO, why it's important, and just exactly what it takes to get where the "big guys" are today. It pretty much felt like I was working for "the man" all over again.

Now although I still do consulting on a very part-time basis through these firms, I have now put the ball into my own court and have finally decided to just put something out there for everyone - (a.k.a. my own product). I realized that I was still working my fingers to the bone and still not seeing a heck of a lot of return for my efforts - aside from making other people money that is; I wish I had the foresight to ask for a percentage of income instead of a flat consulting fee - but hindsight is 20/20.

And that was a whopping 8 years ago, so even though I am still involved in promoting other people's products and testing out different marketing ideas and methods here and there, my passion truly lies with SEO.

So that's my very short story as to how I first got involved in Internet Marketing.