About Us

ABOUT US

Way back in prehistoric times as my coworkers say, I became a computer programmer analyst. For many years I did that working with many of the largest corporations in California. Then after a lot of experience I decided to become a programming consultant. Skip ahead seven years to 1989 when my last consultant assignment ended I took a break from the daily grind of working and enjoyed a three year period of relaxation.

I was nearly exhausting my limited funds so I asked my friend, now very successful, who some years earlier, I had been a business partner with, for a temporary job to tide me over for a while. That lasted much longer than expected and after managing a warehouse and sometimes helping unload containers of coffee mugs I decided that was enough of that type of work. I went back to college, took two more classes in programming, refreshing my “C” programming knowledge and learned Visual Basic programming.

I started using the Internet sometime within the first two or three years after the World Wide Web started. I was just an observer for many years although I partnered with my brother, Warren, in about 1997 in a never completed venture of selling the horseracing programs I was writing. I had also been doing research for many years on making money from horserace betting. Over the years I had made many thousands of dollars of pocket money from my research and betting, however I decided to pretty much scrap all the research I had been doing lately using purchased computer programs, and sell my own handicapping programs.

After a year of trying to decipher and write a corresponding software program based on an almost century old book on horseracing, using numerology, I finally completed a more sophisticated software version of the book’s method and that was to be my first product. Since I was so familiar with what it took to make money at the track I decided to improve my Visual Basic programming, and proceeded to write six more rather traditional, but sophisticated, handicapping programs. My programs were state of the art. Each had a database and facilities to let the person using them determine for themselves exactly what was making the system profitable (or unprofitable). My brother Warren was the web expert and he developed a website to sell them along with some other software we wrote.

In the process we got involved with another more challenging project and worked over a year on that. It was a web based Ambulance/Emergency Room System. To our dismay it turned out that we were unable to sell it due to the extensive and complicated government control and regulations involving emergency health care. Well, to make a long story short, we had probably twenty other software programs, or more, about ready to sell when my brother decided he wanted the latest web capable system to control all the websites. As we were getting close to launching all the websites my mother suddenly passed away of a heart attack, which caused us to put all projects on hold.

My brother worked a year on a website for her creating a memorial website along with a companion business to sell a version of the website. I worked with him again on this. He was almost ready to launch it when again tragedy struck and he had a sudden fatal heart attack and passed away. Life seems so short sometimes. He was in his early fifties. Unfortunately, all the work and effort Warren and I expended over the years, all the software, all the websites, will likely be scrapped because he had modified each of them to be controlled by his new software management program. Although I helped him test it, I knew little about his management system except what it was supposed to do. It was extremely complicated, using at least five programming languages, but it was not quite finished and there was little documentation on it. That system represented at least eighteen months of fifteen hour days of his effort and maybe a solid two months testing during that time on my part.

This was February 2004 and my other brother Elliott, an artist, and I, decided we would do our own thing and hold off on trying to salvage all the work Warren and I had done. Elliott had a website he designed and a business to go with it, and he pursued that. I decided I no longer wanted to pursue the horseracing programs, although I could probably salvage them and create a new website myself. As things worked out I started looking on the Internet trying to find something that held my interest that I thought I could make a little money with. Money was not critical as I still had my full-time job as a programmer.

About the end of July of 2004 I decided to try my hand at buying and selling domain names even though I realized it would be a tough way to make money. I quickly registered several hundred domain names over the next few months, all the while examining other things of interest on the Internet, I had now gotten involved in creating a secondary website for my remaining brother Elliott, who was about ready to launch his new web business. Having had a programmer who worked for me finish that website for my brother, Elliott launched his new custom vignette business.

I was to get him the traffic he needed to support it. Shortly thereafter he received his first order, of several thousand dollars. Planning to celebrate that event and also have a Christmas party, relatives and friends were looking forward to seeing his first vignette creation. Many of his friends were to make their first visit to his custom redecorated artist retreat, high on a hill in Malibu, CA.

My sister and I, who had both encouraged him to start that business, were looking forward to seeing his custom vignette, which he had been working so feverously on. We received a phone call the evening before his showing and party that he had passed away in his home of a fatal heart attack. * We were devastated! We still have not gotten over his death as I write this. It is now two months since his passing and I am starting to take some serious action to create an income from the Internet.

I plan to retire this year and hope to produce a decent income from my online activities by the end of the year. Oh yes, as time and the situation permits, we (my sister and I) will try to continue on and run the business that my brother Elliott started. This may take some time, as we have not yet found an artist to carry on his work. www.VillageVignettes.com www.RentAVillageDisplay.com

During the year or so since my first brother passed away I have accumulated over a dozen websites. Another, www.KLTGallery.com, I had my programmer create for my sister Kay. I was to run its affiliate program. In the process of the three deaths in the family (all from heart attacks) within two years, many of the intended projects I had planned or envisioned will not happen. I recently decided to try to concentrate on one project and spend little time on all the others in the works. This site, GuruEzineDetective.com is that site.

 If things progress slowly bear with me. I still am working full time (until my retirement) and still have not completed taking care of my last brother’s affairs, with the roads to his place still partly closed from all the unusual rains we have had in Southern California. I plan to keep you posted with information from the gurus ezines and website newsletters. I will give my views on as many of the newsletters as I have time for and try to point out moneymaking info, which they write about. Along the way I may write a few articles myself as well as highlight articles from the gurus ezines and newsletters.

My goal is to inform you of the best from the gurus and help get you on track to make some serious money from your own web based business. Currently I subscribe to about fifty ezines/newsletters, most from the gurus and others I find informative or interesting. All these are basically written to help you be able to make money.

Now don’t get me wrong here. Yes, the guru newsletters and ezines are designed to help you, but in the process most of them also advertise products. Many of them their own, some from other sources. If you study what the gurus say, and do, as I have, you will see that it is truly possible to make money from the Internet. A little or a lot, depending on how serious you are in Internet Marketing and following what others before you have done to make a profit.

Due to my limited time, I have included a facility for subscribers of my website newsletter to write their own review if they receive any of the guru ezines or newsletters. In addition they can rate the guru publications and even add new ezines or newsletters to the list. Please take advantage of this opportunity by subscribing and giving your opinion. I will verify there is no duplicated information and the publications are those of gurus.

This will be a continuing journey and I intend to uncover things from the guru’s that can help you have a successful Internet business. The journey has begun, as I start working on the first issue of Guru Ezine Detective.

Charles Harmon
February 28, 2005
Lake Elsinore, California

* The above dialog where I mention my two brothers was included not only because they were an integral part of my life, but to shed light on diabetes and its complications that can lead to a sudden, often fatal, heart attack. My brother Elliott had no physical symptoms, no sickness, and apparent excellent health up until the time of death. We found out my youngest brother had diabetes which neither he nor anyone else knew about that caused complications leading to his death. Since the passing of my mom and two brothers, we have set up a new greeting card website www.KaysCreativeCards.com   where we donate a portion of all sales to the American Diabetes Association. We hope that our contribution can help in some small way toward the cure of Diabetes and heart disease.