After my last post, I was curious as to whatever happened to Startonix so I did some searching on the internet. It appears that there were many problems, which I will not state on this blogg. However, the stock which was listed on NASDAQ at one time for $1.50 was around $0.0001 or something like that for the last quote which I could find. The company also filed for bankruptcy in January 2002 and there is little other news on the company after that time. Their corporate website is now parked at GoDaddy and may be up for grabs in October of this year. In any case, it was a failed venture which I foresaw back in 97 and I’m glad that I got out of it when I did. 
This is another fine example of a failed business venture and am sure a lot of people lost a fair amount of money on it, whether it was the stockholders or the 1000’s of independent distributors.
My next post I’ll skip ahead a few years when I got into Ebay selling which although not very profitable, it did add to my growing education about what people want and how to market it.
I will also be adding some excellent new content very soon about the different pitfalls to avoid for newbies to online marketing.
Laters,
-Richard Gray
Back in 1997 I thought I’d try my hand at internet marketing and searched online for some good products. After several, or should I say, a lot of hours I came across a pre-launch for an item called a StarScreen by a company located in California called Startronix. It was an interesting although pricey item that was actually a decent idea. It was a 486 PC loaded up with a whopping 16MB of RAM! Remember those days? lol Anyways, what was unusual about this so-called “web appliance” was that it came loaded with what what was supposed to be everything any online internet marketer would need to run his business. The kicker here was that it would be a webphone and video conferencing device as well as a marketer’s tool including everything a marketer would require to build his business all built into one. I got into contact with some of the lead marketers and joined them in several meetings using chatrooms and ICQ. Remember ICQ? It was one of the very first IM programs, which I believe is mostly used now in eastern Europe. Anyways, I learned a lot about internet marketing thru my attempt to market the StarScreen and believe me, there was a lot less to learn back in those days then nowadays. Wow, how things have changed in the last 12 years. There is so much to know and learn and its much more ultracompetitve than back in 97. Anyways, it seems that there was a problem with the StarScreen manufacturer which if I remember correctly was a company in Taiwan. Also, the pricing they were looking at was very pricey in order to use the videoconferencing feature, and remember, back in 97 we were all on dialup, and they were telling us that we would get 30 fps? lol, I don’t think so! It was about this time, after problem after problem that I decided to get out of this venture and look for something else. As it turned out, I never did find something that piqued my interest before family commitments took me away from this.
So, my first attempt at internet marketing did not make me any money, but it did not cost me much either. As a matter of fact, it was educational and has helped prepare me for my latest foray into working online to build a decent living. Next up, what else, but Ebay, but that will have to wait for my next post.
Laters,
-Richard Gray
Well, I’m all ready to retire and this is one of the main reasons why I’m looking at internet marketing. I’ve worked for close to 36 years now as a civil servant and would continue to work for a few more years because I still have 2 kids in school and they’re still a few years away from college. But, I’ve recently been diagnosed with PD (Parkinson’s Disease) so I want to retire while I can still enjoy a relatively good quality of life. However, because I have kids who want to go to university, heck my eldest wants to become a dentist, ouch! so I’ll need to continue to work in some capacity to help pay his way thru school. Not to mention, I do need something to do, and working from home has always been something that I’ve wished to do. Having that extra income sure would go a long ways towards paying for my kids’ educations not to mention the occassional vacation. So, will working online from home, doing internet marketing or selling items be the way for me to achieve what I want to accomplish and will it succeed? Stay tuned and you will find out. My next posting will rundown my previous attempts to make a living online while working from home.
Laters,
-Richard gray
I’ve created this blog to in order to follow my adventures and misadventures along my path to creating a comfortable living online. Will I succeed or fail? Follow along and find out as I take many missteps, and learn from my adventures, both good and bad. In the months and years ahead I hope that whatever I learn and reveal on this blog will provide a learning experience for someone else whom this can help. In the days ahead I will provide a bio of who I am and a short history of my earlier experiences with internet marketing.
Laters,
-Richard Gray
