About Phil

For years now I’ve been lucky enough to be living the Internet dream lifestyle, living in a great house high on a mountain range looking over the Pacific Ocean in Australia, towards the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. It’s a magical place of sun and sea and light and peace.

There are only four downsides: I get a lousy Internet connection that often drops out or slows to a crawl making online work difficult at times. Sometimes the animals (like this mother and baby possum on my deck) living in my garden and the national park which surrounds my house, get really noisy and wake me up in the middle of the night; clouds keep drifting into the house (which sounds cute, but the reality is they’re cold and wet; and just occasionally I get a feeling of isolation and itchy feet and I have to drive to the nearest big city which is nearly 8 hours away, or pack my bags and head off for a few weeks overseas (usually England, France, or Thailand).

And now and again, I fly over to the USA and meet up with my famous Internet marketing buddies like Rosalind Gardner, Marlon Sanders, Willie Crawford, Jim Edwards, Dr Mike, and Keith Baxter

I’ve been making money on the Internet since early 1997 when the ‘net first arrived in this remote part of Australia. At first all I had was email (on a very poor dial-up line) and I just used the Internet to distribute the syndicated newspaper computer column I was writing at the time. But as soon as graphical web browsers appeared, and Amazon launched their affiliate program, I realized the huge potential of the Internet, and sticking an Amazon affiliate link in my column changed my life. That week I made more in affiliate commission, for sales of a book I recommended, than I got paid for the column Everyone was happy except for my editor who told me off and said I shouldn’t do it again.

sticking an Amazon affiliate link in my column changed my life

By August that year I started my ‘Letter From Phil’ ezine, which got over 500 subscribers in a few days and made money the very first week. After that the syndicated computer computer column soon fell by the wayside. I had more interesting things to do, and more money to make. One early issue made me over $13,000 in affiliate commissions when my weekly wage was barely over $1000.

One early issue made me over $13,000 in affiliate commissions when my weekly wage was barely over $1000

Back then the ezine was called “All the Secrets” – as if I knew any – and it quickly started to earn me more than more day job as Chief Photographer for a daily newspaper and a freelance writer and photographer for numerous magazines.

Yep, I was a photographer. A dream career for many, and one that was hard to give up when I became successful online.

to be continued…

Also see -  Smashing Times: my life as a stuntman photographer (a stupid photographer more like)