Welcome to Blog Income Life!headshot 2

I’m Valentina Bellicova.  Knowing what I now know, I believe that blogging is the best introduction to making money online.  It costs little to nothing to get started, requires only time and commitment and the willingness to learn and apply what one learns.

I fell into blogging somewhat accidentally.  The thread leads back to several years back.  I was a successful sales professional working for Corporate America.  As incomes go, mine was better than good and then a funny thing happened on the way up the ladder – my job was made redundant and the rungs were cut out from under me. My Fortune 500 – no make that Fortune 50 – company, bought a division of another conglomerate, re-engineered and sent me packing out the revolving door.

I was happy.  Although I was doing well there was always a part of me that longed to have my own business, you see, in my family mine was the first generation – and the last – to be “employed.”  My parents, and their parents and those before them had owned their own businesses and my children, after brief stints of employment during college years, now too have businesses of their own.  I think it’s just something that is in our genes.

Incredible as it sounds I went from a card carrying true blue member of the corporate world to a successful network marketer with a company that was the harbinger of the “green” industry – they started it before the word green meant anything more than a color.  It is still my primary source of income.  I still love it.

Somewhere along the way in my newly independent status I became aware of the internet and thought  it might be a good way to market my network business.  Of course I knew nothing about internet marketing, but seeing as I have a degree in marketing and some smarts I thought  it would not take me long to figure things out and set up some sort of a system.

To make a long story short I became a freebie junkie and lay claim to the largest library of free e.books (and some not so free) in the world.  It seems others lay claim to the same distinction.

It wasn’t long before I realized that my “smarts” weren’t going to take me anywhere and I signed up for a course.  That was three years ago.  It was good in that it introduced me to a world I knew nothing about.  It was a steep learning curve and I even had a practicum to work on.  Looking back on it now, it really was not all that difficult but at the time it was like climbing Mt. Everest.

I was smitten.  I attended weekend seminars held in cities that were far away and where I bought more courses.  I am ashamed to admit it, but some of them are sitting on my bookshelves with the original cellophane wrap still on them.

Attending those weekend seminars was like baptism by fire – I was quickly immersed into the culture of internet marketing and I loved it.  I learned a lot just from the presentations made by the guest speakers and vowed that I would find success in this new forum. I loved that everyone I rubbed shoulders with was  a dyed in the wool entrepreneur and I loved the octane charged atmosphere and seductive energy that is omnipresent.

Right about this time last year, that would be November 2008, I reviewed my current situation.  A small ransom had been spent to date on internet marketing yet nary a penny had I been able to earn.  It was time to stop playing business and making one.

On review and knowing what I knew, I felt that the best would be to start blogging and that is when I started this blog, which has undergone three domain name changes and a platform transfer as well.  Starting this blog was the best decision I made.  My intent was to share what I already knew about internet marketing and how that applied to blogging, to learn new things and fear be damned, to be completely transparent with what I was doing so that others might shadow my actions and learn from both my successes and failures.

I have had some good help from people I never knew existed.  I have grown.  I have developed discipline.  I have laughed and cried.  I think that you and I have a lot more in common than we know.  Join me in my expedition to living the big awesome – the Blog Income Life -  together we’ll reach heights we’ve never dreamed of.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina Bellicova
Le Grand Fromage of Blog Income Life.