First and foremost, please accept a huge warm welcome to Internet Business DiY.  I hope that your stay here is a long and pleasant one and that the information contained on this site prove to be fruitful for you in following your path into what is, Internet Business.

What follows is an introduction to Internet Business DiY, how it came about, together with a bit about my background and how I came to be running my own Internet business.

Enjoy.

How Internet Business DiY was Conceived

For the entrepreneur looking to find information on branching into the Internet business arena, efforts to find any complete and relevant information on the Internet can seem like being dragged down into a bottomless ocean of frustration and being carried by an endless array of currents that have no definite direction, or particular destination.  The continual insistence of the majority of Internet marketers to provide out-of-date software and largely incomplete information to others, not only highlights their own substandard knowledge and understanding of Internet business, but also adds to the confusion of those wishing to legitimately build their own business and wastes not only time and money, but also limits the budding entrepreneurs choices as to the available paths that may be available to them in order for them to successfully reach their much sort after destination.

Internet Business DiY was born out of a necessity to act as a “Homing Beacon” to those who wish to start their own online business and have either been bogged down with the irrelevant information they have found and almost given up hope, don’t know where to start and do not have the spare £3,000 or £4,000 ($1,800 or $2,500) that they are led to believe is required to build their business.

Who’s Behind Internet Business DiY

My name is Stuart.  I am the founder of Internet Business DiY and have been in the IT industry now for over 25 years, from being a software developer for large International Companies to an IT Manager for small independent companies and charities.  As time went on I came to realize that although I thoroughly enjoyed the type of work I was in, it wasn’t as satisfying for me as it used to be earlier on in my career.  I needed something different.

Having been a martial artist during my teenage years and during my twenties, I thoroughly enjoyed teaching others self-defence skills and assisted my instructor in running two karate clubs in neighbouring towns.  This made me fulfilled in ways that I never thought it would and it gave me a sense of achievement, impacting on people’s lives in so many ways; giving those being bullied the confidence to stand up for themselves, assisting the bullies to become better people and to understand what it’s like to be bullied and helping children with their own difficulties overcome them, while learning to take on the responsibility that knowing any kind of martial art carries.  Due to injury in my late twenties and after coming in 2^nd in a European Tournament, I was forced to give up karate being told that I would end up in a wheelchair if I continued.

I also had an interest in Hypnotherapy and Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) since my mid-twenties but not being able to find any decent type of training course at that time, I didn’t pursue that line of work – besides, at that stage of my life I was convinced that I would make a rubbish practitioner anyway!  A couple of years back I decided to pick up my interest in this field again and after finding a suitable, worldwide recognised certification path, studied for the best part of a year and attained my practitioner certification in NLP, Hypnotherapy and Time-Line Therapy.

It was then that I decided that this was the sort of path that I wanted to follow and it reminded me very much of my martial art days, of helping people to improve their lives in many different ways,  passing on my skills and thoughts to them and assisting them to build their knowledge and experience of martial arts from nothing, to expert levels that enabled them to be successful.  With NLP I could help people improve their life and achieve their dreams by teaching them the skills that they needed to get there.  In return, I got a whole load of satisfaction.

The Need for Alternative Employment

Things are never easy though, are they?  The company that I was working for as IT Manager decided that they would like to try outsourcing of their IT Management, leaving me high and dry without a job.  All of a sudden my not-so-brilliant financial situation quickly plummeted.  Over the next couple of years, I managed to find some intermittent contract work but it wasn’t enough to support my financial commitments.  I was out of work and any advancement in my NLP and Hypnotherapy education and career that I had planned, had been put on well and truly on hold.  Living in a small town and over 2.5 hours away from the City, there were very minimal IT jobs around in an already highly-saturated market.  It was proving an almost impossible and immensely time-consuming task attempting to find employment.

I needed to find a way to bring in an income that would enable me to not only pay the bills, but would also allow me to continue my certification path in NLP and Hypnotherapy, without needing to worry about where the next penny is going to come from and without the need to spend all hours of the day and night attending to it.

Although I knew absolutely nothing about website development or running a business, I thought that this may be the market that could provide the answer that I was looking for.  I had heard loads of success stories of people running successful business online, so I started to look online for information on how to run a home-based Internet business.

At this initial stage, I did not want to jump into anything immediately as I had virtually no money to spend.  I done some research, found loads of product offerings and compared their contents.  There were a couple of products that looked great and it seemed that, within a week or two, I could be running my own business on the Internet.

I invested the last of my savings only to be exceptionally disappointed and left with just more questions and confusion, rather than answers.  After 3 months of looking and over £300 poorer, I was still no closer to finding my answer on how to start and run an Internet Business.

Scams, Scams and more Scams

The more I looked for business opportunities, the more I found some form of scam.  Everybody seemed to be doing the same thing and selling the same products and telling me to start out in affiliate sales, or selling the Master Resell or Private Label rights to out-of-date products that have been being sold since 2002, to other people who like me, wanted to start an Internet Business.  These people were only interested in making easy money from people who were looking to start up an Internet business.  In other words me!

I purchased another couple of products that I was hoping would actually tell me how to start my Internet business, but I found nothing but more confusion, more questions and more confirmation that I needed to spend literally thousands, much more money that I had available to spend, in order to work for myself.

It all seemed hopeless and everybody just seemed to be out for themselves!

Cash on Demand Systems

One morning over my usual mug of coffee, I switched over to the “Entrepreneur Channel” on Sky (UK Satellite TV Provider) to see a guy presenting his “Cash on Demand” system.  This apparent step-by-step system would be delivered monthly through the door (the old-fashioned way) and have me starting my own business by the end of a year.  This seemed to be exactly what I needed!

My fiancée said that she would pay for the course for me as it looked like it could hold the answers that I’d looked long and hard trying to find.  The guy looked trust-worthy and he was on the telly!  What more convincing would I need?  Excited that I had finally found a way to start my own business, with guaranteed results in less than 12 months and a payment plan where I could pay monthly, I ordered the course.

With each part that arrived I hoped for the step-by-step system to start as had been promised.  I was looking forward to getting started, but month after month went by and after 5 months and 5 course parts I was still unable to get started due to insufficient information.  I contacted the person who had written the course and shared my concerns with them.  I was told that the course would start getting interesting from part 6 – the next part, so I waited.

Part 6 eventually arrived and the content was again unusable.  What was promised at the end of each part was severely under-delivered in the next part.  And after a year I still hadn’t started my business and still didn’t know where to start.  I was invited to keep sending my payments of £30 per month for a further 12 months, in order to receive the next 12 parts of the course.  This went against what was previously advertised and published in part 1 where it was stated that I would be able to start my own business within 12 months.  This was certainly not true.

I investigated this particular course and loads of other people were in the same boat and had been living part to part of false promises that were never delivered.  And although the course author had made over £30 Million doing this and other business ventures, it became very clear that they were extremely similar to that “Snake-Oil” salesman of long ago.  There ended up being over 24 parts to the course!  During these 12 months, I received no end of other offers asking me to buy other products and seminars for £5,000 – £9,000 ($3,000 – $5,500)!  Ridiculous!

It became clear that the course had been written in 2005.  It is now 2009 and that same course is still available, when everything has moved on and the “System” is no longer as relevant to today’s market as it may have been then.

When the Camel’s Back Breaks

Over a year had passed and money that I didn’t really have to waste had been spent on business courses that produced absolutely nothing.  Although there were people out there somewhere who legitimately wanted to help others start an Internet business, they seemed to be very few and far between and remained extremely elusive amongst the “Snake Oil” representatives that littered the Internet, lurking around each and every corner.

I did manage to find one online course that seemed very good, but again the information was incomplete, technical knowledge poor (due to the fact that all of the technical work was outsourced to other people) and some views were contradictory.

I’d had enough of this rubbish!

I had spent far too much time paying attention to those people who were just trying to make money out of others gullibility and lack of knowledge and so I decided to start looking closer to home and at what I myself could bring to the table.

What experience did I have that I could use in order to find out how to start a business and rather than spend loads of money that I couldn’t afford to set it up, how could I do the work myself initially to get me started with minimal cost?

Well, I had over 13 years experience as a software developer and 12 years as a systems administrator and IT Manager.  I had given IT training to people on a one-to-one and group basis, had taught myself the very basics of graphic design and web development at the weekends, was outstanding at producing training documentation, quite partial to a bit of photography and had a knack for finding alternative solutions to problems.  Oh, and I absolutely love a challenge!

The result was that I was able to educate myself in a 3-month period, about how to start an Internet Business by putting my mind to learning that which I needed to learn.  I learnt about web development in less than a month from a couple of books that I purchased from the bookshop and was then able to create my own website.  Furthermore, I didn’t need to spend a penny unnecessarily whilst learning (as some people will have you believe).  I educated myself on Internet marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Networking and Analytics to a level that was appropriate for what I needed to achieve.

I had done more work and educated myself much more than I was able to do with the information that I had previously found – and paid for, from articles on the Internet and books that I had either purchased, or borrowed from the local library!

Internet Business DiY was Born!

So now that I was in a position where I could start my Internet business, I couldn’t help but think about other people in the world, who just like me, where really wanting to start an Internet business and being ripped-off by the “Snake Oil” evangelists that were slithering their way through the Internet.

Putting all of the knowledge that I had gained together with my IT skills, I quickly realised that I could help people to get started on the Internet and give them all of the information they needed that would enable them to get to the same position that I had, but quicker.

Not only that, but by applying some of the principles of NLP and Lifestyle Design, I would be able to offer a complete strategy for beginning Internet Entrepreneurs to start off in business without having to spend a fortune to get started.  This would not only enable me to run my own business, but also make me feel warm and fuzzy inside, knowing that I am giving my customers solid and complete information that they can use to bring about their own success in their own way.

This to me, is a win-win result!

Now It’s Your Turn

So there you have it.  Although in its infancy, Internet Business DiY has been born to help people like you achieve Internet Business success.  It builds through its own community to help each other progress through the minefield that is Internet business, in the most simple, cheap and effective way possible.

Add the Internet Business DiY beacon to your web browsers favourites and keep in touch.

Now it’s time for you to turn your dreams into reality, limitation into success and experience the true power of your imagination and living on purpose.

Whatever you decide, I wish you the greatest success along your Internet Business path.

To your continued success,