- Internet Marketing - Commerce - Books

I, Jerry Banfield, am hoping to be of service to you today through this book! How did you get here with me? In 2011, I moved in with my wife and launched an online business focusing on video game addiction in an attempt to avoid dealing with any of my other problems. In a few months, I changed my business to selling tshirts because I realized there was no money in video game addiction. A year after starting my business, I dropped out of my criminology PHD program at the University of South Florida to run my business full time which by then had changed to helping clients with Facebook and Google ads based on my experience failing to do them successfully for myself. In 2013, I starting sharing everything I knew for free on YouTube because I hoped it would help me get more clients. By April 2014, I was nearly bankrupt after failing at 15+ different business models. I was also nearly dead from trying to drink the pain away and fortunately the fear of death motivated me to get into recovery. Being in recovery motivated me to focus more on being of true service to others and less on what I would get out of it. I started making courses online with Udemy which soon turned into my first real business. I partnered with as many talented instructors as I could and learned from top instructors how to get my courses the most sales. In 2015, I tried making some inspirational videos sharing what I learned in recovery and got an amazing response on YouTube. To make the background on my videos more interesting, I started making the inspirational videos while playing video games. To make a more helpful website, I hired a freelancer to convert the videos into blog posts including this about page originally. By 2016, the Udemy courses I was teaching had made nearly $2 million dollars in sales with me receiving over $600,000 of that. Things went so well on Udemy that Udemy decided to launch a new pricing policy in April 2016 that reduced sales by 80% sitewide which encouraged many instructors to leave. Since I did not take the hint, Udemy chose to ban me based on what they said were policy violations despite my best efforts to work within the rules. Now I am trying out live streaming video games both for the self-help message and the hands on tutorials that I watch when I am playing a new game. Again I take another leap of faith in my business online which I hope is for the right reason of being in loving service here with you.