Who is TheWebReviewer?

At the beginning...

It started back in early 2006. Like many of you, I reached that point in my life where I was desparate to be making more money. At this time, the thoughts of ever becoming a full time marketer never crossed my mind. What I needed was some supplemental income. I just had my second child, the mortgage payments were slowly backing up, my son needed an operation after his birth, and my 9-to-5 job showed no signs of significant raises in the future. What do you do? I obviously could not leave my job, because it was still supporting us to some degree. I really could not get a night-time job because I would never see my family. I've always been good with computers and so I went to the internet trying to find ways to earn extra money in my own spare time.

I typed in "make money online" and "home based business" into Google and as you already know, a whole slew of ideas, programs, eBooks and "gurus" got thrown right in my face. In early 2006 it was bad...now, it is 10 times worse. So after reading up on a lot of ideas, I chose two avenues to pursue:

• Paid Surveys
• Affiliate Marketing

I liked Paid Surveys because it seemed so easy. Heck, it was something I could do in front of the TV or at work on my lunch break. I signed up for a program and went for it! I signed up for about 50 sites and in about a week, I received 2 surveys. Each paid $10 dollars and took about 45 minutes to fill out. Yep, it worked, but $20 per week was not going to cut it (and frankly, they were easy, but not very interesting). So I decided to give affiliate marketing a chance!

After a lot of hard looking and research, I choose the book The Life Empowered, by John Westbrook. I liked the fact that he knew my story, and seemed supportive from a customer service stand-point. The book itself was good and it introduced me to a world I knew nothing about...and it made SO MUCH SENSE! It was about being paid for referrals! Simply speaking, if I send a visitor to a vendor's website and that visitor buys something, I receive a percentage of the sale. I loved it! No products to buy! Nothing to ship! Just get people to these sites and hope they buy something! Ingenius!

So I went out, created a Google Adwords account (to buy advertising on the search engines), and started to "direct market" traffic to these vendor websites. (This process is now referred to as the "Google Cash Method" or "Data Entry Program", which no longer works). In fact, it did not work then, either. In September of 2005, Google changed its policies to discourage this quick cash method of making money as an affiliate. It was a lesson I learned the hard way: About $200 I would say.

John (Westbrook) pointed me in the right direction by suggesting to make my own website. During this time, I was obsessed with making this work and started to buy other popular eBooks and programs such as The Rich Jerk, Super Affiliate Handbook, Wealthy Affiliate, and Become Hated. Some of these I really liked, others were just regurgitations of the same information. Still, I was learning and each program offered something new that I could apply to my new venture.

March 22, 2006: My first sale.

Yes, I created a simple (and rather awful looking) landing page and started to promote ProActiv Solutions (you know, the acne remedy). I spend about $80 in advertising, but I made my $7 commission...AND I WAS EXCITED! That first sale proved to me that this could work! But not this way! A net loss of $73 dollars is not a good business plan. At this point, I had learned a lot and the lesson here was my lack of market research. I scrapped the site, started to really research markets and tried again.

I bought MORE eBooks and kept studying. I then created another site...it was simple...in fact, it was nothing more than a blogger blog at this point (image to the left). By the end of June 2006, I had made $200 in PROFIT. I was floored! But one thing that was going on here was my knowledge not only of the business, but of the eBooks, tools and programs that were currently out there. Since I knew so much about this stuff, I chose to create another "little" side website called TheWebReviewer.com. Here I wanted to share with everyone my experiences of each one of these resources that are available. In doing so, I wanted to create in-depth reviews and recommendations for those in my same position. It was crude at first, but it was meant to be informative. (see image below)

That was then.

Here we are in 2008. TheWebReviewer really took off! People really enjoyed the in-depth looks at these products (versus the over-hyped sales pitch reviews that can be found virtually anyone on the internet these days). In December 2007, I gave TheWebReviewer a complete make-over to include more reviews (also user reviews!), a nicer looker, and a better community and resource for others.

And yes, I did "fire my boss"! Back in early 2007, the collection of sites that I had created finally started earning me enough money to pursue internet marketing full time. I started to diversify, too. I began creating Adsense sites and eCommerce sites. And in mid-2007, I decided to converge all of my experiences, studies, stories, and strategies into my own home based business teaching website called NetWebVideo. Here, I educate others on how to achieve success online through step-by-step screen capture video instruction. One major issue I found that lacked in the online marketing training world was that most of the programs would tell you WHAT to do, but few would show you HOW to do it. In NetWebVideo, I show my clients step-by-step what I do to achieve success. (To learn more about this program, visit NetWebVideo.com)

Looking back at how I started this whole adventure, I am always amazed! All I was looking for was a supplemental income. Now I found myself doing some that I LOVE to do, working from my own home office, seeing my 3 kids and wife more often than ever, and making more money than I ever thought in this business.

My purpose of TheWebReviewer is to give you the insight needed to achieve the success you desire. Finding the right instruction and the right venture that will work best for you is the first step. What are my suggestions to make this work?

1. Take Action Now! Tomorrow will never come unless you start Today!
2. More Action! Just learning this stuff will earn you nothing! Once you start learning, start trying!
3. Failure is your friend! Don't fear it! Learning from your mistakes will only make you stronger!
4. Perseverance! It is not easy at the beginning. Why? Simple, you don't know what you are doing!

No eBook or program will be able to show you a complete recipe to achieve success online. But once you start discovering your own true secrets to online money making, you will find repeating it to become very easy while you work less and make more money than you could ever image!

"If you believe it, you can achieve it!"

Cheers...Matthew Bredel

a.k.a. TheWebReviewer