Kristi  Sayles MA in Education

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My First Hundred Dollars and Beyond
By Kristi Sayles

"Jason, get off that stupid computer!"

I wish I had a luscious square of chocolate for every time my husband and I have said that.

Scratch that. I’d weigh 1000 pounds!

Jason is my son. He's also one of the most respected Internet marketing
coaches on the planet now. You can find a video that he created here...

JasonMangrum.com. But how was I to know that he would be able to support his lovely wife, Skye, and my three precious grandbabies someday with a similar glorified typewriter?

That's pretty much all the computer used to be to me.

But not anymore. Now it's a cash- making machine and my husband, Terry, is excited every time he sees one of those notifications of payment come in!
He’s even started his own site at http://TheRodSite.com . How did all that come about, you ask?

About five years ago, I wandered over to Yahoo Chat where I just kind of
lurked. Suddenly, one of the entries caught my eye. It was from a woman who claimed that she had invented a new kind of shoelace that didn't have to be tied. Now, as a second grade teacher and writer looking for content, I found that interesting, so I sent her a private message and asked if she'd like to be interviewed. Within minutes we were chatting on the phone!

I found out that she and her husband had recently opened a new shoelace
business that was booming! They had even been offered a million dollars for
the business, but they had turned the offer down flat! It was a true rags to riches story that I knew I could sell if I could find the right publisher.

To make a long story short, I sold the article to a business success magazine
and went on to write about dozens of successful businessmen and women through Yahoo Chat. One of my most memorable, was the 12-year old boy that built websites. I thought it was funny that none of his prestigious clients knew that they had a pre-teen for a webmaster! He was that good!

I had gotten paid approximately $250 each for my Yahoo Chat articles and thought that I had found the business of my dreams. The editors of the magazines were actually emailing me to ask if I had articles for them!

But then something even more amazing happened...

Jason got invited to speak at an Internet marketing seminar!

He had created a software program that generated professional joint venture letters and was so helpful to marketers, that it got the attention of some of the biggest names in the Internet marketing arena!

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t jealous of my son. I was extremely proud of him and still am! Okay, maybe I was just a tiny bit jealous. I mean, there I was feeling good about $250 or so extra a month, when my barely out-of-his teens- kid gets invited to be a featured speaker at a prestigious event!

So, what’s a mom to do?

I’ll tell you what I did. I got Jason to show me how to create software!

I was shocked to learn that it wasn’t really that difficult and that I could do it on my own in no time when I had the scripts and website building software program!

My first sale came from the Instant Query Letter Generator. To be fair, Jason actually put it together for me when I supplied him the information I wanted the software to contain. I felt good about it, because I had surveyed five editors that had published my articles to find out exactly what components they considered important in a query letter.

Just in case you’re not familiar with publishing terms, most magazine editors require approving a query letter for an article before requesting the entire manuscript. It doesn’t matter how awesome your article is, if you can’t get past the first hurdle, you can’t be in the race at all, so my Instant Query Letter Software was a hit within weeks! I had found a niche that nobody else had considered worthwhile! Nobody else was selling query letter software online, so I cornered the market.

I began testing my prices while I got busy creating dozens of other writing software programs. Although I had sold the software for as much as $95 a download, I discovered that $67 seemed to be a magic number. My know-it-all son had explained that I should end the price in a “7”, which sounded weird to me, but I tried it. He was right.

Soon, I had a whole slew of products to sell on the website that Jason had built for me. I began investing my earnings back into advertising, and my Smart Author Software company was born!

One day, I received not one, but two interesting letters from customers. Both of them requested that I teach them how to make money writing for the Internet. I hadn’t really considered coaching before, but it sounded like something I would enjoy, so I started a newsletter and called it the Writer’s EDGE Newsletter. I gathered hundreds of subscribers that often turned into customers. I was tickled!

Soon, I was being offered joint ventures from other webmasters. I discovered the joys of affiliate marketing! Not only did I sell other people’s stuff that was related to writing for commissions, I started my own affiliate program and soon had an army of affiliates selling my software! Woo-hoo!

It wasn’t long before I received offers from non-writing related webmasters. At first I turned them down since I didn’t think my subscribers would be interested in SEO, traffic generation, and such.

What a dufus!

I found out quickly that my subscribers were not JUST interested in writing, they were interested in making money! So after surveying my list, I created another newsletter called “Your Make Money Mentor Ezine.” Many of my current list subscribers joined right away. I later changed the name to “I Can Make Cash Newsletter,” because the domain name of “ICanMakeCash.com” became available. It seemed smart due to having such good keywords in the title and domain name. It was.

Now, as of January 31, 2008, I have thousands of subscribers that I love and they love me. Really. I have cultivated their friendship and trust by offering them valuable information and only reputable offers. Once when I was feeling overwhelmed with all of my activities, I almost quit the newsletter business. I changed my mind when I received a precious letter from a fan thanking me for teaching her how to make money. She had recently become unemployed, had two small children, and was alone in the world. Now, she could pay her bills because she had learned how to work online-mostly affiliate marketing with products that I had endorsed. Wow! What a rush!
I couldn’t quit. I was making a difference! Maybe not to everyone, but to that mom-what I said mattered.

Some of those subscribers didn’t opt-in to my newsletter just for the newsletter, though. I now have an online talk show called Talk with Experts.
My website is http://TalkwithExperts.com
I interview successful marketing professionals and grill them on how my listeners can replicate their successes. It’s become pretty popular, so I require people to sign up for each interview now. I have interviewed some of the most well-known marketers in the world! I actually met many of them when I attended the World Internet Marketing Event in San Francisco in September of last year and have the photos on MySpace and Facebook to prove it. Look me up at http://MySpace.com/KristiSayles 


I have had my share of exciting experiences since that first $250 check for the shoelace salespeople I found online…

I don’t want to bore you with ALL of the details, but I would like to mention that I have especially enjoyed being chosen as a Mark Joyner Space Monkey last year! Last summer I entered a video contest he held and I was one of the lucky winners! There were 16 of us, I believe, that were given the dubious title of Space Monkey-which was actually a beta tester for his new 7 Day Business Turnaround Kit.

I not only met Mark through telephone conversations, but I also met Steve Roye of the NetSlingers. He called me and invited me to be a guest on his talk show with him and Andy Duncan. I was SO nervous! What in the world could I discuss intelligently? I finally decided that article marketing would be my topic. I had been advertising with article marketing and even had an Instant Article Creator Software program to promote during the show at a special price! The show was a delightful one! Not only did we all have fun, we split over $1000 each for the sales we made during that one call!

Steve suggested that I start my own teleseminar show and I’m glad I listened! Now, Talk with Experts is yet another income stream. Thanks, Steve! You’re all right in my book!

I can’t leave this out either…
I met the most awesome man at the seminar! Sure, I met the “greats” like Mike Filsaime, Bob Jenkins, Frank Sousa, Steve Roye, Stephanie Mulac and her adorable clan, Paulie Sabol-and many others-and they were great. But, there’s one particular guy that stands out to my mind. His name is Al Altienza. Al greeted me with this…
“Oh my God, it’s you-Kristi Sayles! I’ve been a subscriber and customer of yours for years! It’s so wonderful to finally get to meet you in person!”

Wow! Of course I invited him to sit with me. I didn’t want to lose this one. He made me feel like a movie star! If that wasn’t enough, he caused me to win the brand new laptop computer that they raffled during the seminar! If he hadn’t been kind enough to write the winning ticket number in large numbers for me to see, I could never have seen them! I had lost my reading glasses somewhere between Dallas and San Francisco and couldn’t tell the 3’s from the 8’s. Contact me, Al. I want to thank you again.

So, what advice do I give new marketers that want to experience this kind of exciting, domino effects of success?
Simple. Just DO something.
Create a software, write an ebook, interview people, sell other marketer’s stuff, make videos and audios, design websites, write and submit articles-but DO something. You may not get wealthy immediately, but you’ll learn a lot if you pay attention to what works and what doesn’t. Then again, you just MIGHT get rich immediately. Stranger things have happened. If that happens, contact me. I want to interview you!


There’s two major hurdles I see to making money online:

1. STARTING
2. FINISHING

Once you have those two conquered, you’re on your way to making your first $100 and far, far more online! May God bless all of your efforts! He wants HIS kids to be healthy and wealthy! Don’t let anybody tell you differently. I’m not just a money-hungry female. I’m a Christian first and foremost. I’m even our church song leader. I praise God for the Internet! Has God blessed me with millions yet? Nope. Not yet. But, I have made enough to make charity donations, end my son’s dental problems, take luxurious, romantic cruise vacations to exotic places with Terry, supply parts for his 1967 Camaro project, pay off credit cards, and attend one of the most expensive seminars in the world-namely, John Childers Million Dollar Speaking Seminar that was held in Nashville just last month. Could I have done all that on my teacher salary?

Get real.

Now, I'm constantly buying and trying out new writing software and tools. Some are great and some are not. I feel that I'm an expert with writing software due to the fact that I've created so many of my own and have tried so many others as well. I often

set up joint ventures with other writers and writing software creators, so I feel quite comfortable in the field of writing software. 

About Kristi Sayles

Kristi Sayles is a wife, mom, grandma, and second grade teacher in Tennessee. She started writing when she produced the third grade play as a child and she’s never stopped. She’s the author of several business books, ebooks, articles, and even a children’s book. Kristi is the owner of SmartAuthor.com , I Can Make Cash.com , Talk with Experts.com, Your Child and You.com , and too many others to mention here.

If you would like to invite Kristi Sayles to speak at your function, email her

at kristi@kristisayles.com with the subject line of Speaking Engagement and

let her know about your offer.

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