My name is Dyfed Lloyd Evans and you can find a little about me here. I've been using the internet since 1990 and have been developing software since 1992. I've had my own web presence for almost seven years now and this website has been active for almost two and a half years. At work I was developing intranet software and I eventually became fed-up with writing software so that others could benefit from what I'd done. Admittedly, I started out with almost no clue as to what I was doing or how I should pursue an aim of achieving financial independence through the Intenrnet. Indeed, my first site was intended almost solely as a hobby with no thoughts as to commercialization. Being a 'geek', however, I was interested in the mechanics of the web as well as how my site was performing in the various search engines and why. At the time this was done only as a matter of interest, though it did eventually prove useful when I came to engineer this current site.

Of course, like everyone else starting out on Internet marketing and income creation I fell for more than my fair share of web scams. This, of course, made my shy of anything that might even look remotely like a scam and there are certain Web 'opportunities' that I would never even begin to consider (most of these are variants of the pyramid schemes which you can usually spot). I've also been involved with many 'business opportunities' over the years and if truth be told the vast majority of these quickly vanished without trace. Some were little more than scams attempting to part people from their money. As I was (and still am) trying to take a 'white hat' approach to my websites I quickly severed any links with these companies and tried to make as many people as I could aware of the scams being perpetrated.

Eventually I decided to take a step back and take stock of things (all the while, however, I was adding real content to my site that would attract Google Adsense traffic and increase my presence on the internet. Eventually I realized that my own strength was the ability to write software. I looked around the web to find software that I could replicate or improve on. This resulted in one of my first projects, the eBay misspelling search tool. This is based on other systems on the internet that allows you to search various eBay sites for misspellings of commont search words. Being a linguist I was able to improve the generation of misspellings whilst adding all the main English-based eBay sites (US, UK, Australia, India, Ireland and Canada). I then extended the site to make the country selection automatic, whilst adding content to my site by writing a page that informed users how to set-up country recognition for their own websites. This also led to an Amazon affiliate store which used the same internationalization technology and could be linked to regions of the website such as recipe pages and pages on building PCs. I now had income and ways of earning additional money (my AdSense income was up to $40 a week and the eBay and Amazon sites were pulling-in about $100 a week. OK, so it wasn't going to be able to quit my job and live on this, but it did allow me to clear my debts. And, perhaps more importantly, it gave me confidence.

In doing my research I'd come across something called 'affiliacy' which looked very much like franchise marketing but applied to the internet. Here you act as an advertising agent for the various companies and gain a proportion of their sales for your efforts. One of the first I joined was ClickBank which acts as an agent for a large number of products that can be delivered electronically. It's free to join them and they can give you a lucrative source of income. This is one reason I added a ClickBank search function to my auctions site. Another good affiliate scheme is DigitalRiver's OneNetwork which is more software oriented but great if you want to want to add specific ads to certain pages in your site. With the addition of the various affiliate links and searches I'd added almost a further $120 a week to my income and things were looking up!

If you've learned anything from this page thus far, then the take-home message is that there's no short-cut to making money on-line you need a website with good content that will get spidered and indexed and which your clients or visitors will want to return to again and again. You will also need to advertise your site and your services/products. In the end the Internet marketing model follows that of any physical business. If your customers don't know that you exist they will never find you. Whatever else you do, you will need to make your site known. The truth is also that you can't rely on traffic from the various search engines. This was brought home to me early this year as the latest update to Google's search and indexing system almost wiped my site from it's index. It took me almost a month to climb back to where I'd been before and it this wiped out two months' worth of income. With my 'White Hat' approach to marketing I'd essentially relied on links to my website being created dynamically, but as Google moved to a model where incoming links are more important for indexing that content alone I was left in the cold. As a result I had to build my incoming links very quickly (and this discovery is one of the reasons I started my own Links directory which allows you to add your own site for free.

Like most 'Real' internet marketers, though my income is increasing and with my debts cleared I'm in a position to move full-time whenever I chose (and when my other job becomes too frustrating) I'm definitely not at the point of working just one hour a week to make $60 000 or more in a month! In fact I dedicate almost 7h a day to the website (or the CeltNet eZine or the CeltNet Blog or various marketing strategies) and I usually dedicated about 14h on weekends as well. This is a considerable amount of time, but on the Internet contnet is king as all the gurus out there continue to tell us. I'm always looking for new tools that I can code-up and provide or new information resources that I can give my users. This is one reason I developed a package that others can use to create Adsense-targeted mini- and/or micro-sites. An example of these is the prostate cancer minisite that will eventually grow into an interlinked set of minisites dealing with a number of cancer types.

As has been intimated above, this website is growing almost daily and I'm constantly adding new content and features. This includes articles on a range of subjects from where best to place ads on your website to how to add web features and find affiliates. All these articles can be found from the CeltNet Information links page.

If you already have a business oportunity and a strong website but need some help in terms of getting new referrals or making sales from your website, then why not have a look at my website promotion page for help and ideas with your internet marketing strategies. Learn how not to waste your time on marketing that simply does not work!

Alternatively, why not try the FREE classified advertising offered on this site. You can also improve the visibility and traffic to your website by using the links exchange system offered here to improve your internet ranking and visibility. If you're interested in more exposure for your advertising then I also offer a paid classified advertising option which gets you exposure on this website for up to a year as well as inclusion in my eZine for the entire term of your advert. If you want better linking then, for a reasonable fee, you can also get One-way Links & Premium Listings in the site's directory.

Opportunities Worth Looking Into:

MaxBounty Affiliates

MaxBounty is another of the truly great affiliate systems. They have excellent products and generous affiliate rates. Not only that but their two-tier sysem means that you also gain a percentage of the income generated by those your refer to the site. As with all other affiliate systems it costs you absolutely nothing to sign up with them so you might as well give them a try.