My name is Marco Aspaas and this is my site.
Learning the Internet
I started my first blog in 2010 when I decided to return to school to study Digital Technology & Culture. One of my instructors had us create a blog for the class.
Blog posts became our form of class communication. She would email us links to our projects, which she posted on her blog, with assignment instructions and due dates.
Our assignments wouldn't be considered complete until we emailed her a link to our completed blog post for each assignment.
My studies focused on Digital Technology & Culture, or DTC.
DTC is an interdisciplinary degree program that combines the creative production and critical exploration of digital media.
It sounds wordy - I know.
Basically, DTC is the study of how digital media is and can be used in today's society - especially how internet connected technology is integrated.
It includes learning how to code websites, digital images, video and audio editing, creating animations and internet apps and using different softwares for system integrations.
Digital Marketing Experience
I have worked on many digital projects and marketing campaigns over my last 25+ years.
Before I studied technologies, I spent nearly 10 years in sales and marketing of major alcohol spirit brands while working at a brokerage house.
I moved on to work for a local micro brewery where I first realized the value of understanding how to use digital tools as it relates to business online. The brewery had just created an online store to sell merchandise and learning it became part of my role.
While working on marketing projects I coordinated with designers and developers to put up promotional announcements on the new website and began to learn how to manage the store. After leaving the beer company in 2009 is when I decided to return to school.
After my digital technology education, I was hired for my first job as a WordPress website developer for a large domain registrar, who were headquartered in my home town. I later became the project manger, but I was laid off not long after when a venture capital group buyout took over the company.
After that, I was hired as the webmaster to manage the corporate website for a local gummy vitamin company, which consequently was also bought up by a Fortune 500 company who had their own web team, so I was laid off again .
From there, I settled for work developing WordPress sites at a nearby Local SEO company. This is where I learned to integrate SEO principles into website development as our group navigated and interpreted the many Google algorithm updates to keep our clients ranking.
I now work for a marketing company in the medical industry. I was hired as a Local SEO specialist and through opportunity, I am certified to manage all paid ad SEM campaigns with Google for our medical practice members across the U.S.
Fortunately I was able to find some job security as I approach my 7th year with this company.
Despite the relative sense of security in my job now, I did have to deal with being laid off a few times in my career as I noted.
Ironically, the consequence of improved technological system automations is that less manpower becomes needed to handle certain trigger-based event tasks.
Up until recently, and somewhat regrettably, I haven't taken advantage of my skill set to maximize the passive income potential of just creating useful web content.
So I decided to use this blog to show some of things I have learned about digital marketing to earn extra income actively and passively.
Since the pandemic hit, it's more clear that my experience could help people who don't have a clear understanding or the technical savvy to make money running an online business.
My Side Hustle
My goal is to share my experience and the resources I believe anyone could use to build an online business, or at least earn some extra income on the side.
I believe that affiliate marketing is something that everyone should take advantage of as a side hustle to earn income by creating content for the internet.
When working affiliate marketing for commissions, you are basically an independent sales agent - akin to the old traveling salesmen of the past.
So, the channels that you market through will likely depend on your target audience.
Most companies with affiliate programs provide marketing materials to use, like a sales landing page and promotional links and other marketing assets.
The role of a good digital marketer is to take those marketing materials and repurpose them across different online channels in different mediums.
The information and opinions I provide is based on 25 years of experience in sales and marketing and nearly 15 years in digital technologies.
The not-so-secret of the internet is that content creators are the ones making money - not the content consumers.
So, instead of spending (wasting) time consuming content online, spend time creating online content to earn some income.
If you follow me, I will show you different digital strategies that web marketers use when creating marketing funnels to earn extra income on the internet.
The biggest investment of starting an online business anyone makes, is time.
Working with WordPress as a development platform, I can tell you that to get your website to work and function properly for your business ventures online, can be time consuming.
People who don’t have the time or money to invest in a WordPress developed website turn to other website or landing page builders.
But those have drawbacks as well and often have even less functionality.
Configuring plugins or third-party platforms can cause compatibility issues that most developers can figure out.
A WordPress site is capable of being configured to look and perform for just about any online need, if you understand some coding.
One of the most time consuming parts of creating a WP website for a business is troubleshooting compatibility issues while integrating third-party services and plugins to the WordPress platform, like an email autoresponder for example.
But, what if you don’t know much coding when your plugin breaks your website theme?
Most people starting out, who may not have much extra income to invest in hiring someone will try to figure out how to get everything working on their own - investing more of their time.
If only there was a platform that provided everything an internet marketer needs to have a successful business online?
Check it out here.
I can show you some of the free tools to use and steps to take to give your website content the best chance of success.
And, at some point as you grow and gain conversions, you will probably need to invest and incur the expense of running a business.
But at that point, who cares? You should be generating income and want to scale your online business.
I can show you what I believe to be the easiest way to build websites and integrate the software needed to run your internet business.
Throughout my site content I’ll share with you the softwares and teach you the steps I use to save time and money, while earning income along the way.
Thanks for stopping by, I hope you find useful information.
✌️
~Marco Aspaas
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