An Open Letter To My Subscribers, Affiliates, Partners, Friends and Customers. Let me say one thing up front: I’m not quitting as an internet marketer.

Let’s get that settled from the beginning. This is NOT another one of those “I’m retiring from internet marketing” deals. I’ve put in almost ten years as a full-time internet marketer and I hope to have many more decades of it in the future.

H – o – w – e – v – e – r … I AM “retiring” ALL of my current products, membership sites, coaching programs, ebooks, software programs, small reports, etc.

What do I mean by “retiring”?

I mean I am systematically going to begin removing ALL of my current offers from the internet and discontinuing the sale of them. Once they are removed, they will no longer be available for purchase.

The offers will be removed, one at a time, at a rate of about every 7-10 days. Everyone on my list will be given advance notice of what product is being removed with the date of removal. This will give everyone ample time to purchase anything they are interested in before it is gone.

August of this year will mark my 10 year anniversary since going full-time. I launched ProfitsVault.com in August 2000. (As a side note, I’ll be totally revamping that site and relaunching it in August of this year to celebrate!)

I’m not “quitting” internet marketing, but I’m going to scale back tremendously.

In a matter of weeks, every single current offer (ebook, membership site, etc.) will have been removed from the Internet and no longer available for purchase.

The big question is — WHY?

There are three quick reasons that I want to share…

1. To free up time for personal interests.

I’ve got a book that’s being released in March called “Lessons That Leave A Mark” for Sunday School teachers and another one that will be done for release in July or August. I’m going back to Poland this summer as the mission trip team leader. I’ve been speaking at some churches and have a Christian based membership site that should launch sometime first quarter 2010. I just feel like my life needs to head in more of a ministry direction. Plus there are a lot of other personal things that I want to give more of my time to such as family trips (we’re gone somewhere almost every month … and loving it!) and running, tennis, backpacking. Life is too short to work all the time and we’ve been blessed enough over the past ten years that we can spend the next ten doing what we enjoy and feel called to do. (NOTE: You can keep up with my ministry stuff at my “other” blog … http://www.LifeTurns.com)

2. To streamline my business.

Despite the fact that I outsource most of my customer support these days, there are still a lot of day to day operations stuff that I’m involved in that demand my time. When you oversee more than 100 different offers, it can be time draining trying to train team members to handle new FTC rules, update sites, use new technologies, troubleshoot errors, not offend 20,000 customers who all feel like “personal friends” which require a personal response, etc. By having only 1-2 offers out there to maintain as opposed to 100+, I’ll be able to be more personal with my customers and eliminate a lot of time drain.

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Welcome to Part 2 and hope you have gleaned a lot valuable information. For those of you just getting going, I hope that this article by Marlon Sanders helped you understand the big picture of what starting a business online truly means. Although there are lots of steps to take, this is not rocket science. It’s about having the right information and taking action.

Part 2 Main Article: Marlon Sanders

I don’t think everyone should be in this business. If you don’t wanna figure anything out yourself, if you don’t wanna learn how to solve problems, if you don’t wanna learn more things about html and the computer than you really wanna know, if you can’t tolerate risk, if you need your first attempt to be a success, or even your first 3 or 4, then I don’t know, if you can’t afford to spend money on learning and education, if you can’t afford to try things that don’t work, if you think it should all be simple and easy, I don’t know if this industry is for you.

A lot of people get seduced by the lure of ez dough. The promises of zillions without learning. Just connect the dots and you too can be John Reese, Marlon Sanders or whoever you wanna choose.

Here’s the deal: People WILL sell you a turnkey system to escape your job, make zillions or whatever. They’ll give you the fish. I want to teach you TO FISH.

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Starting a home based business can be one of the single biggest decisions one can make and be one of the most gratifying experiences of your life. I have been at this game 6 years now and I enjoy the lifestyle it provides. There are some very basic ways that people go about making money online and today’s article covers them in a bit more detail and gives a good overview to get you thinking in the right direction.

This article will give you a better handle on the big picture. Having the big picture is extremely important and helps you make the decision to proceed or to back off and re-evaluate. In this 2 part article there will be an injection of reality to aid in your decision making process.

Main Article: By Marlon Sanders

There are 6 basic ways to get dough online:

1. Promote affiliate products

2. Google adsense

3. Sell a service

4. Sell advertising

5. Sell physical products (think ebay)

6. Sell information

You’ll notice that the last 4 all involve selling something. That’s the approach I wanna talk to you about today.

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I can’t talk about this subject to much. This is something 99.9 percent of all would be online entrepreneurs fall into in the beginning and it is a destroyer of dreams and creates distrust and really isn’t good for anyone. I don’t know what it is about it but for some reason creating a business online is viewed by many as some kind of magical existence online.

Building a home based business online is just like any other business and they take time to build and you need a plan. If this stinking thinking can be caught early on then you can be spared the agony.

On with the Main article:

I don’t want you to be an easy “Mark” that others can take advantage of. I want you to be educated and sophisticated in what you’re doing.If you avoid the mistakes I’m about to give you, you’ll avoid a lot of the traps and pitfalls that others fall into.

Most of these wrong paths involve the following mistakes:

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As usual at the end of every year I take weeks off in December to reflect on the past year. Going through all I have done and accomplished in the year past. Re-evaluating if I had done all I could for myself,  and my business. As  usual I came away from that research telling myself I could have done better.

But hey no one is perfect. Don’t get me wrong I had some great growth in areas while in other areas I could have done much better. But that is all part of the process,  even for someone who has been at it for almost 6 years.

So here we are with a new year ahead and many of you have taken the suggestions I have made in my post and product suggestions that I have made  done very well for yourselves and for that I congratulate you. Read the rest of this entry