Real Experience. Practical Tools. One Step at a Time.
Welcome to Online Techniques
I've been doing business on the internet for over thirty years. One thing I've learned is that online business can be very simple, as long as you don't insist on making it complicated.
I'm the person behind Online Techniques. This site brings together what I've learned about websites, traffic, email marketing, automation, and training programs that help make those things manageable. My goal isn't to persuade you to use every tool on the market. My goal is to help you understand where to start, what to do next, and how the pieces can work together.
I actually use the tools I recommend. I'll talk more about that in a minute.
How It Started: Selling Mountain Homes in 1993
In 1993, I was a Realtor in Big Bear Lake, California. Big Bear Lake is a mountain resort community about an hour and a half outside Los Angeles. With its lake, skiing, and year-round vacation appeal, Big Bear was—and still is—a very different real estate market from a typical suburban neighborhood.
Back then, about eighty percent of people who owned property here didn't live here. Many were from Los Angeles, San Diego, or elsewhere in Southern California. They owned vacation cottages, second homes, mountain getaways, or investment properties. Prospective buyers faced a problem: they were often 120, 150, even 200 miles away.
In a typical hometown real estate market, you can call your Realtor after work and arrange to see a house on your way home. That doesn't work when seeing a house means driving into the mountains, spending a good part of the day looking around, and then driving all the way back.
So when I saw what the internet could do, the opportunity struck me immediately. We could show people photographs and videos of homes before they ever got in the car. They could look through properties from home, narrow their choices, and arrive in Big Bear with a list of houses they really wanted to visit.
That was a big deal. I had my own website in 1993, at a time when only a handful of us in real estate welcomed the internet. Many Realtors wanted nothing to do with it. I couldn't wait to get involved. I believed it would transform resort real estate, and it did. Of course, it eventually changed real estate marketing everywhere.
I didn't see the internet as a gadget or a fad. I saw a way to solve a real problem for customers.
A New Direction in 2006
For years, the internet was part of how I marketed real estate. Then, in 2006, I met Janet Legere online. She introduced me to something much bigger: using the internet to build and market businesses beyond real estate.
I followed Janet's training programs, including Contact List Builder, and began to understand the fundamentals of internet marketing in a new way. This wasn't just about putting information on a website. It was about attracting visitors, capturing leads, building relationships, and following up consistently.
Janet wasn't just a name on a training page. I got to know her and her husband Don personally. We met, spent time together, and I worked exclusively with Janet and Don for several years. That experience became an important part of my transition from a Realtor who marketed properties online to an internet marketer.
That's one reason Contact List Builder has a place on this site. It's connected to my education and experience—not something I happened to find last week.
My Advice to Beginners: Don't Reinvent the Wheel
I have a confession: I like to reinvent the wheel. In fact, building Online Techniques is an example of me doing exactly that! I enjoy building websites and connecting systems. That doesn't mean you need to do what I'm doing.
If you're new to online business, my strongest advice is to stop looking thirty feet down the road when there's a boulder right in front of your foot that you might trip over. People get overwhelmed by everything they think they'll eventually need to learn. Then they get stuck before they've even completed the first step.
Don't do that to yourself.
Start with one process. Follow the instructions. Learn one step, do it, repeat it until you're comfortable, and then move on to the next step. You don't have to invent a method when someone has already put together a practical one.
For example, Contact List Builder offers beginners training and a structured starting point. You can work with the Contact List Builder capture page, funnel setup, and downline builder, then follow the marketing instructions to begin promoting what you've built. You don't need to launch your own website or master every marketing platform first.
Will everything happen overnight? Of course not. You'll still need to put in the work, learn from what happens, and keep going. But the process becomes much less intimidating when you focus on the next step instead of trying to tackle the whole business at once.
What Online Techniques Helps You Do
1. Learn the Basics
If you're just starting out, education comes first. Online Techniques explains the fundamentals in plain language and points you toward structured training—including Contact List Builder—so you can get comfortable with the process before adding complexity.
2. Attract Visitors
A website, capture page, or offer needs visitors. Online Techniques looks at traffic sources, content marketing, and paid options such as solo ads, with an emphasis on reaching people who might actually be interested in what you have to offer.
3. Build Relationships
Getting a click is only the beginning. Email lists, lead capture, and thoughtful follow-up give you a way to stay in touch with people who want to hear from you. That's where tools such as Contact List Builder and SendShark can fit into your overall marketing strategy.
4. Put the Pieces Together
As you gain experience, you can begin connecting your website, marketing tools, automation, and tracking into a system that saves time and helps you understand what's working. Tools such as NowOS, LeadsLeap, and others can become useful when you're ready for them—not because you have to use everything on day one.
Why I Recommend the Tools I Do
I personally use the products I recommend on Online Techniques. I've worked with these tools in my own online business activities, and that firsthand experience is the reason I'm comfortable recommending them.
That doesn't mean every tool is right for every person. A beginner and an experienced marketer may need different things. I want to help you understand what each tool actually does, where it fits, and whether it makes sense for the stage you're at.
Some links on this site are affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission if you purchase through them. My recommendations, however, begin with tools I know from using them myself. You should still evaluate each one against your own needs and budget.
Where to Go From Here
If you're just beginning, don't try to do it all today. Pick one place to start. Learn the process, put it to work, and take the next step when you're ready.
If you already have an online business but feel like you've collected a dozen tools that don't quite work together, perhaps it's time to simplify instead of adding one more shiny object.
That's what I want Online Techniques to help you do: make sense of the choices, learn from experience, and build something useful—one step at a time.
