online marketing intern Anu Pillai I didn’t think I would be introducing another Online Marketing Intern so soon, but I was persuaded by this applicant to make an exception. I had Bill Field interview her, and he was as impressed with her responses as I was from her initial application. Without further ado, I introduce online marketing intern Anu Pillai:

A little about me. My name is Anu. Home is in a quiet neighborhood in the Northern Virginia suburbs of the DC Metro area. I am in my early forties and have two children. The oldest is 21. He finished college and joined the army and is now in Afghanistan. The younger one is 13 and in middle school.

Grew up in tropical India in a coastal city in the south and completed my education there with Masters’ in English Literature, HR Management and Application Development. I am a Management Consultant by profession and run my own consulting company.  We do all manners of projects that are HR related from the Fortune 500s to midsized companies.  I lived the consulting lifestyle with the long hours and constant travel until about the beginning of 2008. I decided I wanted a different lifestyle, one that would let me work from home and spend time with family. Since then I have taken a break from real work, one where I get dressed, get into a car and drive miles to sit down at client place and open up my laptop to work or attend meetings. I have spent the past couple years exploring options, considering a complete career change, one that would let me work from home.
Yes, my work is interesting and the money is very good. However I have done this for nearly 20 years and it is no longer the driving passion it once was. I would eventually like to get away from Management Consulting and make a full time income from my various blogs. (Wouldn’t we all? 😉

I have been exploring internet marketing and blogging now since 2007.  I am fascinated with the amount of knowledge that is out there. Reading is a passion, an obsession if you will and to me the internet appears to be this vast library of books. There are all these really wonderful blogs that are both informative and entertaining. What really surprises me is that people are making good money on the internet. I was raised with the notion that one has to excel at education to be able to have a profession that helps you make good money. The internet explosion and the successful bloggers that I have read about dispel that myth soundly.

Everything I know about internet marketing and blogging I learnt by surfing, reading and from forums. I love reading, writing, cooking, eco living and blogging and hope to combine my interests and begin a new career online. Of course, I will still have to pay the bills and keep the home fires burning, so I need to be successful at this or get back to being away from home 5 days a week.

The internship came along at the right moment. It interested me for various reasons. While I know how to install WordPress, tweak themes and plugins, write some PHP code and launch a good looking blog, I never really learnt or know well how to monetize. Additionally, all of this knowledge came from 3 plus years and hundreds of hours of surfing, reading dozens of books on the subject and breaking down any number of blogs and themes and rebuilding them again. I also know there is a lot more to learn in other areas as well before I can be successful. When I emailed JT a few days ago after stumbling on his blog, it was with the hope that I would be able to reduce this long curve and gain knowledge faster and have the opportunity to learn from someone who is successful at it.

Another thing that attracted me to this internship was JT’s obvious willingness to take on interns and give generously of his time. I have not seen much of that in my surfing and exploring online.

To everyone that is reading this, Good Luck with your own online journeys! Come back and visit, I will be posting updates regularly.
Cheers, Anu

You can track all her activities on the main Online Marketing Internships page.