How I Lost My Shirt on the Internet (short version)

How I Lost My Shirt on the Internet



By Gail Clute



The average brain has over 60,000 thoughts per day.


Prologue

January 2008

And so another year begins. Dad is dead. The house will not sell. My husband’s job is winding down.

I want a job. All I want to work is 20 hours a week. I want to work-at- home.

When I started looking for a work–at-home position, I discovered the hours were only evenings and weekends. There is no way to get time off or trade hours or get paid for training. For the first six months, you miss one hour and you are history.

Have you ever purchased the great gadget on television? Remember the deal, “If you call now in the next ten minutes, you get a second one free plus the bonus widget?”

Do you know who answers those calls? It may be handled by a call center or by a work-at-homer.

I applied with several work-at-home companies. They did not offer me a job.

So I continued looking, on the Internet for a fit for me.

Then the local newspaper had my solution. Ebay! Join the millions earning incomes using the Internet and Ebay.

And so I went to a convention center to learn more.


The Sad Stroy

I want to earn money. I want to sell my house. I want to work-at-home. In the past you could do mailings, type papers and baby sit. Several times when the children were young, I was a childcare provider for other children.

Today television and newspaper advertisements, proclaim that you can run a home business using your computer and the Internet. If some one else can do that, why not me?

So all of the elements were alive in my mind the day I read the newspaper advertisement declaring eBay is the way to go. Just come to the convention center and see for yourself.

There were around 45 other attendees that day to learn how to make money on eBay. There were three leaders who demonstrated how they earned lots of money using eBay. The main speaker Duane Barney claims he was a construction worker who used this program to make money. All you had to do was follow the plan and you are on the way.

Now at this time, I could turn on a computer, google information, use word and play games. That is it. I had to follow notes with clues to even log on. So there I am with the possibility of doing great and becoming a webmaster.

So I listened to these people and signed up. I said I needed to go home and get the money from my husband. They said that it was not smart to use your money to start a business. That everyone borrows to start a business. Use your credit card.

I can’t even write this with out crying. I did what they said. I was so excited and could not wait to get started.

Well the first thing I learned was that the smooth talking leader Duane Barney lied. Big time lies. He said that every day he goes to eBay and asks sellers a question. First he feigns interest in their product and then he asks them if they have a website. When they reply, Duane Barney sends them to his web site to get a free website. He claims that every day early in the morning, he did this simple action ten times. He claims he has over 500,000 email addresses. Duane Barney claims that this is the Internet business to have.

It seems that he was selling products camping tents, but Duane Barney was really selling free websites. Now if he can do this for ten people, I can do it for 15 people. But the great lie is that eBay will not let you do this. eBay considers it like spam and will close your account if you lead an eBay seller to your website.

Now since you cannot drive customers to a website using eBay, how else can they get there? I kept getting the response that I was not to worry. There are many ways to get there just be patient.

The start of the deal is learn to build a website. Now consider what you know about me and what you know about websites can you even imagine how hard this is to accomplish?
I had training cds; I had on line support and live support. I also had a huge difficulty learning this. I spent hours and hours learning.

Finally, the ways to drive traffic were reveled. Each week I was to learn a new one of the many ways. I was also to keep adding on to my website knowledge.

I plodded and plodded day after day. I was trying so hard to keep up. From the moment I got up to late at night, I sat at the computer. I even got up in the middle of the night to work.

I blogged, twittered, heliumed, blog cataloged, stumble uponed, del.icio.used, facebooked, squidooed, every day. I searched for affiliates. I hunted down drop shippers with wholesale central and salehoo. What ever the program said to do I did.

I made no headway. Guess what? Everyone out there is doing the same thing. I started getting more and more depressed. I gained so much weight that I was more than fluffy. If I only tried harder the system would work. It would make money.

At first I did earn some money on eBay. Then the market collapsed. The buyers are not spending and slowly I’m treading water. Not once did I think my lack of success was due to the false lies of Duane Barney and the company ClickIncome. It had to be that I was not trying hard enough.

My 87-year-old mother had large cell Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. So I spent 18 weeks taking care of her through chemotherapy and 4 weeks with radiation treatments. I lost my focus. I was so exhausted and deeply depressed.

As I was writhing this tale of woe, I googled the company ClickIncome. I am not alone. There are major complaints against them. Many customers like myself are upset. I will file complaints against them too. ClickIncome is a scam.

I cannot believe it took me so long to discover this fact. If I can recover some money, I will feel better, maybe. Duane Barney and ClickIncome are considered by many to be frauds. They are misleading. I will start immediately to request a refund of my money.

The complaints are many, hidden fees and charges on the credit card they encouraged you to use. In fine print, ClickIncome claims that the can just keeps adding on charges and fees.

No one made me so this. I did it all on my own. The process of writhing this paper has made me realize that there should be a self-help group in the manor of Alcohol Anonymous, for those of us with pie high in the sky dreams.

Now I am at the bottom of the pit. I had credit cards I could not pay. I called the credit card company and they put me in touch with a money management group.

Now I have ruined my good credit. I have had those fleeting feelings of suicide. I know that is not the answer. I started a weight loss plan. I have followed of the money managers. I am looking for a job.

I have always wanted to tell a story. I just wish it were a romance or great novel.
This soul searching has drained me. I am going to publish this on all of the social networks that are out there in the hope someone will be helped.

I realize that ClickIncome in promoting this plan wants to make money too. My only anger at them is the way they marketed the plan using false promises. They were aware of the eBay restrictions and yet continued to use this misinformation in their sale pitch. I wanted so badly to be a hero and do well. All that I did was fail again.

Do you have any children for whom I could baby sit? I am a good house cleaner and my rates are low, very, very low.

My life is great. I am blessed with family.



If you could spare a dollar to help me out of a huge depressive debt go to http://www.paypal.com/ and send gailclute7@aol.com help.

Thank you. See also the whole story if you want to laugh or cry with me.