It all started back at the end of June of 2004 when my mom passed on. She was 94 years old, had lived a good life, and old age just finally caught up to her.

There was a little bit of money from the estate and I begin to think about what to do about my retirement. I was 63 years old at the time. I drove a big rig (truck) and delivered to hardware stores.

What I ended up doing was going to an all day Saturday seminar here in Portland, Oregon, about selling on eBay. I came out of the seminar realizing that I needed to stop living in the big truck and get my furnishings out of storage and get an apartment.

And so, on October 1, 2004, I found myself moving into a one bedroom apartment. This was about 2 weeks after I attended the eBay seminar.

About 2 weeks later, I received an email from an Internet Marketer asking if he could mentor me. I thought it looked interesting and so I ended up plunking down $6500 for a mentoring course.

This was 12 one hour phone calls, along with 2 big manuals, that was designed to set me up to market a product. In retrospect, what they were going to teach me was “niche marketing.”

The last week of October, I went to the Dominican Republic for a week of Rest & Relaxation. While there, I got a phone call to set up the mentoring schedule.

And so I came back from my vacation ready to dive into Internet Marketing. Well, let me tell you. What an experience.

First off, while I had been using the Internet and the World Wide Web, for 10+ years, I had absolutely no idea of what it was about. Other than, I could download and send emails. And I could point and click on web sites.

First off, I had to figure out a niche. My world had been pretty limited for a few years as I had been driving (and living) in a big green truck. However, after talking with my coach, I decided to market a book I had written.

Yep, I am a published writer. My book, What Works: 5 Steps To Personal Power,” was published in 1992.

Than I had to learn (figure out) how to do keyword research.

However, an interesting turn of events occurred about the middle of November. This was 2 weeks into the program and I had had just 1 phone call with the coach. I was mucking around on one of their web sites when I saw something called, “Affiliate Marketing.” So I learned a new term.

What caught my eye, however, was one of the affiliate sites that was listed there. It was about meeting women from Russia. Now I knew about the Russian bride web sites from a friend of mine, however, I wasn’t interested in a wife from Russia.

This web site, however, had women from the Ukraine as well. And on my trip, just 2 weeks before, I had met some women from Ukraine and they were really lovely. So on a lark, I put up a few words about myself, and a 4 year old picture of me and my granddaughter – she was about 1 year old at the time – and said to myself, “We’ll see if anything happens.”

You see, I had tried several of the Internet dating sites based in the USA. Nothing much came from it. I met a couple of nice women, however, nothing of a long term relationship ever materialized.

What I didn’t know, right at the time, was that it was to be an entirely different experience with the women from Ukraine.

The next day, after posting my information, I had 6 replies. I ended up marrying the first reply that I opened. Tanya and were married in September of 2005. I’m digressing a bit, so let’s back to the Internet Dream.

Proceed to the next post, The Internet Saga Continues.”