Hello, I'm Jim Waller

[JimWaller]

Hi Everyone,

I'm Jim Waller, I'm new to this forum, but I'm not new to internet marketing. I had not known about this forum until I met KenW3 in person at a marketing mastermind I organize from another forum.

I live in Clermont, Florida. I've been interested in internet marketing for a number of years, but got caught up in the "paralysis of analysis", which is why I know a lot about the theory of running an online business, but have not implemented as much as I should.

I'm a pretty well-rounded guy with experience and/or knowledge in a number of areas. I hope to be helpful to members of this forum as well as learn from you. I'm not sure how much time I'll be able to devote to actively participating in conversations here as I'm already spread fairly thin. However, I'm willing to try.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post.

Best Regards,
Jim Waller

[Clinton]

Hi Jim, and a very warm welcome to EP despite the fact that you know Ken

Are you interested in buying/selling websites? That's the area we are best known for, but we do welcome IM discussions. What type of businesses have you run so far?

[Kay]

Hi Jim, welcome to Experienced People.

It's good that you met Ken recently. Please tell me what he looks like as I've been asking him for ages to send a photo, but he's never done it.

You were organising a marketing mastermind? That sounds impressive. How did it go? What sort of things did you discuss there? Did you find that meeting people and general networking was as useful as the talks on offer?

Whatever. Glad to have you aboard. I hope you enjoy being a member here.

[KenW3]

Jim, Welcome to Experienced-People.net! Thank you for hosting a very interesting group. It's refreshing to get away from a monitor for a while, and just get out for a bit. The contacts were helpful, and everyone I met was serious about business.

We have two definitions of IM here. One is a bad thing and one is good Internet marketing, as was discussed at the meeting, which was focused on sales of products and software (using SEM and direct advertising) outside of the MMO niche, is good. Then there are those who are selling get-rich schemes as special offers on various forums, and attempting to teach that which they themselves have not yet applied successfully.

There is a good book on this latter subject titled The Cult of the Amateur It (basically) states that expertise is being diluted to the point where experienced people are difficult to find and trust, and those with the experience to provide the quality content are having their IP siphoned off by those without conscience. This is creating a dearth of trusted quality information, all caused by the Web 2.0 structure.

It's good that you met Ken recently. Please tell me what he looks like as I've been asking him for ages to send a photo, but he's never done it

Kay, I looked for a picture and none are recent. I did ask relatives what pictures they have, not much was forthcoming. Are you on Skype? That has video. I'll dig a couple pictures out and send them to your business email. I know I have one here with a new grand-nephew somewhere.

[JimWaller]

Clinton, Kay, and Ken,
Thank you for taking the time to welcome me to your community.

Though I don't have much experience buying and selling websites, it is something I may explore in the future. I do enjoy building websites, and am pretty proficient with WordPress and especially finding useful plugins.

I am currently in a building phase for a site based on my artwork, which is something I'm passionate about. I can't remember if I showed Ken any of it or not. Most of the people I have shown my paintings are usually impressed especially since I've been using my finger to paint very small format paintings. Having an artist's eye is useful when building websites.

Ken highly recommends this forum, so I will do my best to absorb the useful information as well as contribute where I may. Thanks again.

Kind Regards,
Jim Waller

[Kay]

Hi again, Jim.

Well done - your appearance on here resulted in a couple of photos of Ken in my email inbox. LOL! It's nice to put a face to a name.

You mentioned your artwork. Is this something you're planning to do as a business or is it only a hobby for you? I'm very interested in art and would love to see your work. Any chance of PMing me a link to see any of it? You use your finger to paint? Interesting. I don't paint as often as I'd like to, and when I do it's mostly using acrylic paint applied with brushes. Sometimes I go crazy and paint a cardboard box to look like a Wild West saloon. It's all fun to do and I can understand why you're passionate about it.

We have all sorts of people on here. It would be great to have an artist aboard too. I'm looking forward to hearing more from you.

Do you ever do artwork for other people? I mean specifically for websites?

[JimWaller]

...Well done - your appearance on here resulted in a couple of photos of Ken in my email inbox. LOL! It's nice to put a face to a name.

I'm glad I was able to help.

You mentioned your artwork. Is this something you're planning to do as a business or is it only a hobby for you?

It's a hobby I'm turning into a business. There is a lot of potential for monetization, because in addition to my own artwork, I can sell other people's art as an affiliate. I can sell art supplies as an affiliate. I can create unique graphics to sell. (How cool would your site be with buttons that are actually paintings?) I can create how to material to sell or give away to build my list of potential clients. It can possibly be quite lucrative.

I'm very interested in art and would love to see your work. Any chance of PMing me a link to see any of it?

I've already done that.

You use your finger to paint? Interesting. I don't paint as often as I'd like to, and when I do it's mostly using acrylic paint applied with brushes. Sometimes I go crazy and paint a cardboard box to look like a Wild West saloon. It's all fun to do and I can understand why you're passionate about it.

As I mentioned in the PM, I'd love to see one of your saloons, they sound fun!

We have all sorts of people on here. It would be great to have an artist aboard too. I'm looking forward to hearing more from you.

Thank you, I hope you like my work. I hope to be beneficial as a member of this community.

Do you ever do artwork for other people? I mean specifically for websites?

As of yet, I haven't ventured into that arena, but as you can guess from my comment above, I'm not opposed to the idea. I have some proficiency with Photoshop, too. The graphic of my art signature on my site was created in Photoshop. (The graphic is mentioned in my PM to Kay, so everyone else knows)

While on my site, feel free to rate the art with stars or thumbs up or down. I found a cool plugin for rating things on my site, which I think will be helpful in making me a better artist.

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post, I hope you also visit my site, I'd love to hear your feedback.

Best Regards,

Jim

[Kay]

Jim, you have some great ideas there about how to create a business out of your passion for art. I would post a link to your site so the others can share, but I'm not sure if you're ready to go public yet as you're still building it.

On the subject of making money from doing what you love, you might also consider selling some of your paintings on stock photo sites. They use all kinds of artwork as well as photos. You would need a good digi camera to get the pics in the format they require. Then you post your pics for them to approve. Then they sell them for you and you get your cut. A lot of people (me too) are on the stock photo sites regularly looking for pics to buy because it's a quick and easy way to get eye candy for a website without having to create it. There's definitely a market with plenty of eager buyers. I mostly use 123rf dot com. A word of warning - only upload a couple of pics at a time. Once I spent a whole afternoon uploading stuff and one of their staff rejected the lot with one click. I don't believe that all those photos were unacceptable, more like the staff member was having a bad day. But what a waste of time.

As I said in my PM reply to you, I love how you've made your initials into a logo. I'm sure you won't mind me sharing this on here - if someone has the initials J A W, what do you think they might make out of it?

[JimWaller]

Kay,
You're right, until I can get my backlog of posts caught up, I'm reluctant to publicize my site for fear it looks like it hasn't been updated in months. It is actually about 6 weeks old if that, but as I've been painting a painting per day since January, I have been back dating the posts. It's a bit hectic trying to paint a painting, photograph it, and write about it while maintaining a full time job and working on my other sites. (Not to mention the organizing of a mastermind) Add to that being active on a couple of forums, and it's easy to see how much of my time is spoken for. LOL

I like your idea about the stock photo site. It is another tool to add to the arsenal of monetization tools. If nothing else, this conversation may give some others ideas about monetizing their sites they may not have thought of doing. I had not really thought of being a contributor to a stock photo site, but maybe that's because I can make something if I don't have an existing picture of it. Thanks for the idea.

The one click rejection must have been heart-breakingly frustrating. Thanks for the advice/warning.

As for my logo, I don't mind you sharing at all. I think it will be fun to see some guesses.

Thanks again,
Jim