In early April, I left my job with a very ambitious goal in mind: never work for anyone else but me. This includes contract work.

I had similar aspirations in 2009 when I gave a shot at startups with Talker. My focus, at that time, was more on building a startup and not on profitability. Although Talker turned out well in the end, it failed to support me financially and to provide the lifestyle that I wanted.

I took a lil’ more than a year to reflect on my errors, and spent a lot of my time studying marketing, advertising, business and sales.

So now I’m back at it. I’ve been working hard during my first month, trying to find something I love doing that would support me and my family, and that would help others.

How did I do? (Show Me the Money!)

So how did I do on my first month? :) I must say, this is way beyond my expectations.

For the month of April, I generated close to $12k in sales. Even more amazing is that I took about two weeks of vacation at the beginning of the month.

Here’s the split:

Of course that is not 100% profit. One of my strongest strategy for generating sales has been affiliate marketing. A great percentage of my sales go to affiliates. That leaves me with a profit of about $9400 in a bit more than two weeks (two weeks for generating the sales, not building the products of course).

It feels incredibly good to know I’ll be able to focus all of my time on my products and that all those people have trusted me enough to give me their hard-earned money.

Holy crap! How did you do this?

Although I am very surprised by my results, this is surely not an accident. The time I spent learning about marketing and sales is paying off. But, the hard part was not learning, the hard part was opening my mind to be ready to learn about this stuff.

To explain what I mean by opening my mind, here’s a brief story “from a book a read recently”:http://www.amazon.ca/Rich-Dad-Poor-Money-That-Middle/dp/0446677450:

A women who studied writing for most of her life had the chance to meet with one of her idol, a best selling author.</p><p>She asked the best selling author: “How do I become a best selling author? I studied writing for years. I wrote a few important publications, each very well received. Yet, I can’t become as successful as you are.”</p><p>The best selling author asked the women who was taking some notes: “what did you write under my name?”.</p><p>She replied: “best selling author”.</p><p>He replied: “that’s right: best SELLING author, not best writing author. If you want to become a best selling author, learn about sales”.</p><p>The women’s face became all red, she was furious: “I have a PhD in literature and you’re telling me I should take a sales class?”

I had that same exact mentality.

Affiliate marketing can be very ugly. Some people are doing shady stuff there. But at the same time, it amazes me how those shady people manage to sell crap, imagine what you can do with a good product! Big companies like Amazon and Apple are relying on affiliate marketing too. No one reads long sales letters right? Well… long copy sales, that’s a fact. You have to learn how to present it and when to use it. And… you’re still reading, right? ;).

Marketing and sales are backed by numerous scientific researches in the psychology of influence and persuasion. It is a fascinating world. But, it is extremely counterintuitive for most people.

There’s more …

Now, if you’re ready to open your mind like I did, join my newsletter and I’ll share all the details on what I learned, what I’m learning making a living with my products and of course you’ll know about my new products before everyone else ;).