For the past year or so I've been studying a lot about direct response marketing (offline) and internet marketing. I guess that's not so unique. And with the proliferation of products out there getting marketed every day (hey, I just bought John Carlton's copywriting course last week alone), there certainly is a market for this stuff.

But as anyone can tell you, making money online has more to do with implementation than study. Let me share this story with you to prove the point.

A year ago just before I was heading out for vacation a good friend of mine James E. told me about a Dan Kennedy book I should buy. Well, he'd been pestering me for months to get a copy of the guy's book, so I broke down and did. While on vacation with the family I read it.

And it made all the difference.

I used the insights in there to get more clients for my offline businesses. That was certainly helpful. Then I turned online. Since that time, I've put together 10 websites or so, made some money (and continue to make money) online, began helping friends with their websites and stuff, and at the urging of a friend decided to turn that into a web marketing company.

Since launching that particular venture with a business partner 2 weeks ago, we have 3 clients and right now, as of this writing, have 6 proposals going out the door. By week's end will have 2 more paying clients.

So what about my friend, the one who turned me on to this (directly or indirectly)? Well...

We recently attended a Dan Kennedy seminar in NYC a couple of weeks back. Great event. If you've never seen or heard Dan Kennedy speak, an absolute MUST. I took 10 pages of notes, and would have taken more, but since I had 5 of the books he referenced...

My friend James?

He went with me. Had a great time. And as of this writing no website yet. He hasn't implemented a single tactic, strategy, idea since the talk. Or since he referred a great book to me a year ago.

The moral of the story?

It's not what you read about or study. It's about what you do and actu upon. Taking action is the first step.

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