Ready to start part 6 of 6 in Michael Jones course

I finally got back to look at my LinkShare account and verified that my name is on the account.  I checked what the problem was.  I had given the Nutrisystem person the wrong Linkshare website ID.  So hopefully now I should be getting my approval from Nutrisystem.  As far as my weight loss progress I’m at about 183 pounds.  Not too bad considering I slacked off exercising and had been eating things like whole steaks and pastries over the weekend.  So let me get off the Nutrisystem talk and back on to the Michael Jones course on making money online thru affliliate marketing.

I finally finished watching part 5 of 6 of Michael Jones videos. He introduces methods of generating traffic to a website that doesn’t involve paying google money.  All I can say is that I am definitely learning a lot, but a lot of what I’ve heard has long faded from memory.  After I get thru part 6 of 6 in the videos, I might have to watch all six parts 2 more times before this entire course starts to stick.  Once again all I can say is that something seems just “not right” about setting these web based businesses.  Not that something is illegal or unethical.  It’s more that something seems surreal, superficial, too virtual so as to make you dissociate from reality.

From what I’m gathering a big part of the techniques of publicizing a website is to join some type of social networking website.  And then join websites that rank, reference or categorize those websites.  And then join websites that rank, reference or categorize the websites that rank, reference and categorize websites.  There seems to be an endless alphabet of networking, and publicizing portals on the internet and it keeps growing and feeding upon itself.  I’m talking about: Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and the whole list that you see below:

SocialNetAlphaSoup

That’s about 46 different portals I need to be on top of to be on top of things.  My head is spinning. In fact it’s far past spinning in a daze and just plain overwhelmed, tired, and feeling old.  And I know the Michael Jones video mentions some other social networking, internet networking websites that aren’t part of the above list.  I guess every month or someone invents another new couple of new things to act into the alphabet soup mess.  I mean are there really people out there that keep up with stuff?

So this is what I mean when I say that something about all this seems “not right”

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Rejected as affiliate of Nutrisystem and Dried Pizza

This posting expresses my own opinion and does not represent DuPont Company information, positions, strategies or opinion

So after a couple of days it happens, I get a rejection email from Nutrisystem.  They don’t like me because one of a dozen different reasons and they wont tell me which one?  I start to think maybe I’m bad mouthing them too much?  Do you have to lie and tell pretty fairy tale stories of how nutrisystem saved your life?  But the email did follow up and offered to allow me to send appeals to a particular email address.  I do that and the person replies they don’t see my name listed on the linkshare account I signed on with.  I sigh with frustration, another kind of computer snaffu with the linkshare sign up process.  So anyway I had to make a decision on how to spend my precious worn out energy:  should I hassle thru linkshare to make sure my name is on my account and to convince Nutrisystem my name is on my account or should I just enter into my blog.  I’ve been remiss too long so I elected to forego the getting my Nutrisystem affliation approval for now.

So anyway things at work have gone way over the top in demands.  A typical day is getting up at 7:30 AM with an emergency phone call, text message or email about this a website being down.  I scramble to get online to diagnose the problem.  I rush to work to consult with my boss, spend all day diagnosing the problem and figuring out the fix, and then go home in the evening to prepare to install the fix.  On the way home I get another emergency message.  I turn around to go back to work.  When I do get back home, I scarf down a nutrisystem dinner.  One nice thing about nutrisystem dinners is that they heat up in the microwave in just over a minute so you can eat a hot cooked meal, drinks and dessert in under five minutes!  Then I brace for time on the website at around midnight, install the fix and go to bed.  The next morning I wake up at 7:30 and find that I have emergency phone messages, text messages and emails waiting for me announcing the website is down again.

Meanwhile after about 2 weeks of routines like this, Virginia is starting to get upset.  She complains that my work is taking up all my time.  I have to agree it is dominating my time.  For the first time I’m looking at about 2 – 3 weeks of stored up vacation that I have to take or forfeit.  Man I’m about to turn into one of the many workaholic workers where paid vacations are silly games where you have to figure out how to put in an extra 8 to 12 hours of work to make up for each day of paid vacation you take.

So anyway this one day I pick out a dinner out of my big box of Nutrisystem meals

nutri_pizza_1

It looks pretty good on the box, especially that melted cheese.  When I pull out the pizza I’m greeted with something a bit comical.  It looks like a freeze dried wheat pitta with nothing on it.

nutri_pizza_2

I complain to Virginia about this poor excuse for a pizza.  But then I quiet down and follow the instructions to make my own pizza.  I spread the packet of tomato paste, then sprinkle the packet of grated cheese, and stick in the toaster oven.  In the end I have to say it’s not all that much different than a small slice of frozen pizza, so all in all not quite as enticing in taste as the words “THICK CRUST PIZZA” might suggest, but OK.

Oh yes I’ve been deviating a bit more. One day I ended up trading off nutrisystem breakfast, morning snack, lunch and afternoon snack for some of  my very tasty pasta, oil and garlic topped off with a nice portion of my addictive olive oil cooked crunchy garlic chicken breast chunks.  Mmmmm!  Mmmm!  The next day I snacked on a quarter of an Italian sub.  Another time I had a little Malaysian style curry chicken.  My weight loss seems to be staying stuck between 184 to 186 pounds — a bit discouraging.

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Took first step to making money & Splurging the Nutrisystem Way

Happy Halloween!

So for the moment this Nutrisystem diet is occupying my mind. Maybe it’s the food depravation I feel with the diet. I mean I can’t say you completely starve, but if you’re used to eating till your stuffed and munching on snacks when you’re a bit fidgety then it really starts to wear on you and preoccupy your mind.

But let me digress a bit because I’m finally about to take the first step to making sure when I talk about something you’re going to get some type of ad or link to what I talk about, if that something is something you can buy. So I just signed up to be an affliate with Nutrisystem. It all starts off by signing up with linkshare.com

(ah shoot! I should have signed up to be an affililate of linkshare so I could have made money on mentioning them here. Oh well).

And let me say that the sign up process with linkshare.com seems to have a lot of technical problems. During the registration it kept on complaining that I didn’t type in their special code correctly. So it took me about 7 registration attempts spread out over about 40 minutes before I finally got thru. So I signed up with Nutrisystem and am now just waiting for Nutrisystem’s approval.

But anyway back to the diet. For males Nutrisystem gives me 6 eating times a day. Those times are breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, and dessert. For all the meals except for dinner they stress fat free food items. But then for dinner they give you a larger food portion and grant you the luxury of one serving of Fat.

Ahh fat, it makes things taste so good. And after a hard day holding off on munching on snacks and eating smallish portions, Nutrisystem allows me to be bad and splurge: the Nutrisystem way.

And I look at the Nutrisystem guide as to what I can eat as my fat serving. I see there are some almonds and think great, I got a whole can of roasted almonds. And as my fat serving Nutrisystem allows me FOUR measily almonds!

Splurging on just 4 walnuts

Splurging, the Nutrisystem way

Woo hoo. Oh Boy! Oh Boy! Four stinking almonds. So anyway I sort of pass on the offer for 4 almonds. I figure if I’m going to use my Fat allowance for the day I’d rather skip the 4 almonds and get my fat maybe spread out in greater quantities of something else. Maybe when I sneak a few low fat nacho chips (ssshhhhh!). Nutrisystem doesn’t have anything like real nacho chips. But anyway they do mention I should get low glycemic carbohydrates such as brown rice. I don’t really understand the “low glycemic part” so I figure nacho’s equals carbs and being low fat means a few of these is the same as having those 4 almonds and something like brown rice. Right?

I know in not quite following the plan exactly. But it’s close enough. I mean I am actually losing weight. Today I’m at 185 pounds.

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FYI: I'm starting on Nutrisystem Diet

Oh by the way a few days ago I started on the Nutrisystem Diet.  I know I know another missed opportunity to make money for mentioning their name.  I should be putting up a logo with a link to their website and getting paid for it.  Anyway, what has taken me back is how SMALL the portions are.  When you start they ship you a big box of food.  It turns out that this big box has to last for 5 weeks.  Each food item is labeled, breakfast, lunch, dinner or dessert.

Breakfast looks something like 4 to 5 spoons of dry cereal and then add one banana of my own and one glass of fat free milk.  Uggh, did I eat anything?  Lunch and Dinner are as well proportionally tinier than I had expected.  And on top of this they recommend that you excercise daily.  Well I can see that if I stick with this plan without cheating too much (yes I have snacked on things a bit, BUT I’M HUNGRY!), then I will definitely lose weight.

So I started off at 195 lbs and now I’m down to 187 pounds. Pretty good hugh?  But as I recall the first few pounds are easy to lose because you just started to experience some hunger and if you just started picking up your exercise it’s likely water pounds that you lost.  It’s the next week or two that will really tell things.

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Getting back on the wagon: but work is crazy

This posting expresses my own opinion and does not represent DuPont Company information, positions, strategies or opinion

At my work when it rains it pours.  It seems like all kinds of errors or possible misconfigurations are coming out of the wood work because so many more people in our company are using our website.  I’m getting hit with more emergency, urgent, calls or emails.

Anyway I did force myself to take 30 minutes out of my time off to catch up on Michael Jones videos.  I’m now in the 5th out of 6th set of videos.  Why does this feel so arduous?

Some immediate immediate impressions is this program is NO piece of cake.  It takes hours of dedicated work to digest and practice.  One of he scary parts is where you turn on you website and turn on the part that pays google money for each time someone searches for something on google, they find you and click thru to your website.  You are supposed to budget $500 a day for this and if you don’t watch it carefully and it goes awry you could be making nothing and in the hole $500 a day until you get online and shut down your runaway train website!  I mean I get distracted by something and I’ve been out of touch for a week.  That’s a $3500 bill for falling asleep!

This time I learn about handling failure conditions.  Like if you suffer what’s termed a google SLAP.  Once Google determines that your website is for making money they ramp up your advertisement costs 10 to 50 x larger.  So to stay as busy you need to shell out $5000 to $25,000 a day!!  When this happens you have to abandon your website and start over from scratch. The videos also describe how you should consider writing one 450 word article a day.  So for each website I put up I need to spend a few hours a day doing research on material to fill out an article that I write.  Man this sounds like a 12 hour a day job.  The pitch that is being sold to me in these videos is that it takes hard work in the beginning but once you get going and start getting experienced it becomes much easier.  In Michael Jones words: “This is what will separate the Men from the Boys” when it comes to this business of affliliate marketing

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Falling off the wagon: Man I'm really getting swamped at work

This posting expresses my own opinion and does not represent DuPont Company information, positions, strategies or opinion

Activity with the website I support  has been really picking up and so have the website errors.  Pretty much most of my week back from vacation has been fighting fires after fires.  I mean initially there is that adrenaline rush from being under the gun to fix a problem and then at the last minute pulling out the answer seemingly from just being lucky as well as having just the right experience to see the answer.  But this is all very wearing.

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Returning from vacation

Well now I’m on a plane headed back to Philadelphia. Since I’ve been away from home I’ve still kept in email contact, and I’ve watched both Robbie Benwell and Michael Jones send me a handful of emails each trying to get me to bite on yet something even newer and more exclusive than the blogging packages I already bought from them. Because they both seem relentless in sending me emails I start to feel skeptical. I mean is this how they make money, by constantly pitching you a better opportunity to make money. They both already sold me on the superiorness of the package they already sold me. Why are they selling me something better? Was I just a sucker in buying what I already have? I mean if they are teaching me to follow how they sell by emails, and I’m only starting to feel more skeptical with each new email pitch, I would only expect my prospective blogging customers be just as skeptical.

So for now I’m going to still try and stick the course and complete Michael Jones’s videos and get my blog/marketing website setup.

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Slacking off, Sort of

View from my hotel room

View from my hotel room

This posting expresses my own opinion and does not represent DuPont Company information, positions, strategies or opinion

So I’m definitely amiss in my blogging progress. OK I admit it sounds like a bad excuse but I’m in the Bahamas for the week. This was a trip planned by Virginia’s sister to celebrate my Mother-in-law’s 80th birthday. It was a one of thoses once on a lifetime opportunities to spend some quality time with the rest of Virginia’s family. But it was also a prime opportunity to open up child hood wounds.  Let me tell you I spent many days and late nights up with Virginia as she went thru lots of her emotions concerning the criticisms of her Mom and issues with her sister. These are the kinds of emotions that can wear one out into becoming a TIRED middle aged man. I had visions of my wife fretting with excitement, next crying, next furious, moody, and me starting to get paralyzed with indecision as to how to best support her. So I definitely had reservations.

Anyway a few hours before our plane was to take off she started yelling at me that I always take my laptop with me, that I was trying to do work on my vacation. I have to admit the laptop was partly for work. At my job, I’m kind of the 24/7 technical support. So I sort of wanted the capability to handle an emergency at my Hotel room if I got an emergency phone call on my cell. Any while I was half sleeping Virginia’s ranting got me thinking:

“You know I guess she’s right. I guess I’m starting to become one of those workaholic techo geeks that works on their vacation. Plus it is kind of a pain lugging a laptop around. You never know if airport security might decide to confiscate it. And when I’m in the Hotel room I’ll always have to check it in with the bell hop to protect it from theft when I’m out of the room since the Hotels waive all responsibility for items left in your room. Taking in and out of luggage checking can be a real pain. Besides I’ll have my trusty iPhone to blog from.”

While sitting at the terminal in Philadelphia waiting to board the plane my wife is in better spirits and she asks “where’s your laptop?”. I told her I left it behind trying to let go of tech toys and their enevitable draw to make you work. She replies: “It wasn’t because of me?”

Anyway, I’m taking time out to blog about my time out as I think about the fact that I could be watching the rest of the Michael Jones videos on making money with Click Bank. Right now I’m lying in a heavily discounted but still very expensive room at The Cove in the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas overlooking the ocean.

This place has a ton of water activities and for some reason I’m compelled to not move and just sink in a couch by the balcony or lie on the bed soaking in the ambience of aqua water, a gentle ocean breeze, clear sunny skies, and the lull of waves making parts of my body seem to get weak, revealing stored up stress and fatigue. The hotel gave me free passes to golf and then time with the dolphins and I honestly wouldn’t mind just slouching forever in the bed just staring at the panoramic ocean view thru my eyelids. This is an ambience and sight that pictures just can’t seem to capture.

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Half-Way thru Michael Jones Get Rich Online Videos

This posting expresses my own opinion and does not represent DuPont Company information, positions, strategies or opinion

I’ve been fairly stressed the past few days.  Virginia’s been struggling, feeling bad about herself and she’s been a bit more critical of me.  I work much of my life professionally in front of many computer screens and Virginia makes me conscious of that fact.  This tends to discourage me from spending time in front of the computer on my off hours, which kind of tends to work against doing things like trying out internet based businesses or even writing in a blog.

Anyway I’m now about 1/2 way thru all of Michael Jone’s videos.  He continues to be very real.  He makes it clear that you need to budget an advertising budget of $500 a day.  $500 a day!  That’s a lot of money to spend!  That means when I turn on my website with advertising I need to watch things daily or risk going broke

But $500 a day does sound very real.  If you were to open up a restaurant you’d be spending more than $500 a day, not to mention the initial outlay to buy the restaurant business.  With Michael Jone’s my outlay so far has only been he $77 to buy the package.

Anyway I need to sign off now.  Last night I stayed up really late singing Karaoke on our small Karaoke machine.  So I’m about ready to fall asleep on this keyboard.  Good night.

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Does google control the internet

I have been remiss with Robbie Benwell’s “blogging to the bank”. I mean putting out stale canned blog material can’t make money. Anyway I have put Robbie on the shelf a bit. I do want to give it a fair try and not dismiss it outright. Who knows a canned blog might work. I mean I don’t think I have run across this canned blog anywhere.

So in the meantime I’ve grown interested in Michael Jones’s scheme. Sigh! I didn’t realize I spent another $77 for this. I could have sworn it was only about $30.

Anyway for $77 you get a few hours worth of video with some real meat to it. Michael Jones comes across as very real. He actually gets you to do real math and real marketing analysis using an Excel spreadsheet.

The stuff that really fascinates me is how you make plans to bid for the right to use particular google keywords that boost your ranking in a google search. So you start to see that google is the most popular way to find things on the Internet and what you find is influenced by how much somebody pays google.

So in a way information is organized by the highest bidder. If for example you are looking for secrets to happiness, I could just about corner the Internet, by paying google enough to be listed first on any keyword related to happiness. Given enough money I could just about assure that google always tries to direct you to my website.

I wonder if there was once a time that web searches were based upon a genuine search for the best information. Now web searches are based upon the best financed and promoted information.

I read about a case where an Internet business attempted to sue google, because google changed the rules of how it ranked website information resulting in some websites dropping out of the listings. Google won the lawsuit on the argument that they are trying to make sure that the truly revelant information gets ranked the highest. So google does have a fundamental altruistic goal of trying to deliver the most revelant information. However, it has an obligation to maximize profits by allowing the it’s paying advertisers to influence the ranking.

So anyway I’m about half way thru watching the Michael Jones videos. All I can say is you get very good information on what to set up. Definitely much more nitty gritty detail than Robbie. Michael Jones also emphasizes that you should try out and believe in the products you decide to sell. He touts that his plan will blow away competing blog based businesses. And his videos start to show you why. You don’t make fluff websites, you find out the product you believe in and then you tell your personal true success story with the product. In other words there us no magic, you do real earnest work.

Also you see clearly how you can easily be running a website with some $300 a day in google ranking costs. So its important that once I turn on my blogging website I need to be concious if I’m losing money rapidly.

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Please Please Bless Me with more time wasters, delays and inconveniences?

This posting expresses my own opinion and does not represent DuPont Company information, positions, strategies or opinion

I kind of had what I would call a bad/good day this morning. I say this because depending upon how you look at it I was fortunate or unfortunate and it all depended upon my choice of perception.  I was late today getting my Honda for an oil change.  I had been trying all month to get my car in for an oil change and I kept pushing it back for other things.  It was getting a bit frustrating.  Then I start the Honda and it wont start.

I think: “… I don’t believe it!  Something really does not want me to get this car in for it’s oil change!”

I flash back several days when I decided to move my parked Honda a few feet so that I could squeeze in our Toyota.  Both cars were parallel parked on the side of the road.  At that time I started the Honda, noticed it struggled a bit to start, moved it 2 feet and turned it off.  — When I remember this I wonder back, was that a bad thing to do, to start and shut off the engine so abruptly?

I think:  “damn it I shouldn’t have moved the Honda, I jinxed it.”

I flash back a week ago.  My wife tells me she wants me to start driving the Toyota more and she’ll drive the Honda, since I drive more often than she.  The Toyota is a 2005 car, the Honda is 10 years older.  I hessitate but I start doing it.  — When I remember this my mind is ready to cast blame.

“I start to think: I knew it, I should not have stopped driving the Honda.  It’s an old car and needs to run once a day or it’ll get stuck.  I shouldn’t have broken a routine that was working just fine.”

Back to me in my Honda that won’t start.  I’m ready to bail the Honda and hop in the Toyota and head for work and put off thinking about the Honda until tomorrow.

I calm down and think to myself: “… WAIT A MINUTE WILSON?! …  WHY ARE YOU IN A HURRY TO GET TO WORK?  THERE IS NOTHING PRESSING AT WORK.  IT’S A MONDAY MORNING.  YOU’VE GOT AN AUTOMOBILE MEMBERSHIP.  YOU’VE GOT THE TIME.  CALL FOR A TOW AND TAKE YOUR TIME.”

I fumble for my road side assistance number.  They call for a tow truck and tell me it’ll be up to an hour before they are here.  I think of what to do.  I’ll go back inside and work on my computer.  Then I look around at the junk I have scattered in my Honda. There’s a bunch of empty plastic bottles on the passenger side intended to go into the recycling bin whenever I had the time.  There’s a bunch of papers and some old doctor’s appointment cards. I decide why not take the time to clean out the Honda.

I start to transfer a couple bags of recyclable material from the Honda to the Toyota that’s parked exactly in front of the Honda.

I start to think: “Isn’t it fortunate that I parked the Toyota in front of the Honda.  I mean I think it’s kind of tough for a tow truck to tow a car that’s got other cars parked in front and behind.  So when the tow truck comes in I can pull out the Toyota and let the tow truck pull in and tow my Honda.  I’m glad my wife suggested to me to consider parking the Toyota in front of the Honda”  — However– The negative side barks back. ” Yeah but maybe if you never had to do that bit of abruptly starting and stopping your Honda to make room for the Toyota maybe you’re Honda would have been just fine.”

I continue to clean up the back seat of my Honda.  I think the back seats have been used maybe twice in my life.  Otherwise they’ve been mostly for storage. I find empty glass and plastic bottles destined for the recycling bin. I find a bag filled with Dryel cleaners — Wow!  You don’t know how long I’ve been trying to buy some Dryel cleaners. (Gee if I had my get rich online scheme act together I’d be putting up a Dryel ad for you to click and make me money.  But alas I don’t have my act together.  Oh well. Some day I’ll pester you with annoying ads.  Be patient.) Anyway most stores don’t carry Dryel clothes cleaning clothes anymore only Target does (Ahhh!!!  Another missed advertisement opportunity), which I never seem to have time to get to.  So now I just saved myself a trip to Target and checked off one more item in my backlogged to-do list.

Suddenly, I get a phone call on my cell.  The tow truck drive is asking where I live.  He tells me he’s in front of the building I live in.  I look up and see a big tow truck up the road, engine idling. I tell him look straight ahead at the guy waving at him.  He sees me and hangs up his cell phone.  He pulls up and I tell him that my car won’t start, but I’m not sure if it’s just a matter of getting a jump. He asks me to try and start the car.  I try and he can tells right away my car does not need a jump.  He asks if he can sit in drivers seat and try.  He touches the key but doesn’t start try to start the car.  He fiddles with a few more ignition attempts, the engine sputters and then dies.  He fiddles for another minute and tries again the engine sputters and roars to life and belches lots of smoke out of the exhaust.  The smoke clears up and then engine is fine.  He tells me probably nothing’s wrong, it’s just one of those things.  He mentions something that can happen with fuel lines and fuel pumps at times in this particular car when allowed to sit for a long time.

I thank him.  I’m happy.  I’m appreciative of fate forcing me to take the time to clean out my car.  I stop thinking of a car problem as an inconvenience or a waste of time, but fate intervening and stopping me so that I can clean out my car.  No matter how I planned it, I needed to spend at least an hour cleaning out my car and this timeout forced me to take that hour.  Actually it wasn’t quite an hour and I would have mind more time waiting for the tow truck.

Thank you God, the Universe for blessing me with car problems! Thanks for those wasting my time and giving me delays.

I drive to Honda service to get my oil change.  That was the original point of this whole thing. I mention to them my problems and ask for advice.  They asked me if my engine warning light was on.  I said no.  The service guy is frank with me and says if the engine light isn’t on they probably won’t find anything wrong with the car so it’s not worth pursuing. I’m told it might be 1 to 2 hours though, but I’ve got plenty to do on my computer.  So I go to waiting room they have with internet service. I start writing this post you are reading now.  And in a half hour they are done!

I think: “Awww! Can’t you take longer.  I was just starting to relax.”

I head out to work not ready to be out so soon.  Stopped a traffic light I pull out my iPhone (another advertisement opportunity, ahhh!) and search for the nearest Brew Ha Ha Coffee shop (advertisement opportunity,  aaaah!!) and let the iPhone’s (It’s the new iPhone 3GS that’s 2X as fast as the iPhone 3G now on sale at your local AT&T and Apple store.  Advertisement popup, Adverstisement Popup,  Click, Click, Katching, Katching) GPS direct me there. I have a cup of coffee, relax and finish this post.

Oh did I mention my Honda is a 2005 Honda Accord and I also have a Toyota Prius. (advertisment opp).  And let me talk about the gasoline brand I buy and the brand of tires I use.  One day I’ll be oozing advertisements all over my blog it will naseate the hell out of you,  HA HA HA HA!  I’ll let sponsors put ads on my clothes (pants by Michael Korrs from Men’s Warehouse and shirt from Territory Ahead) and all over my car.

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Getting a bit discouraged with Robbie Benwell

This posting expresses my own opinion and does not represent DuPont Company information, positions, strategies or opinion

Actually, I paid $27 not $29 for Robbie’s package.  I supposedly got a $10 discount of the regular $37 price.   I started listening to the Robbie Benwell videos.  One thing that is discouraging is that much of the videos are actually available free.  You just need to know the web address.  The only thing you don’t get is possibly his template of files.  The basic premise of the get rich online schemes I’m looking at have to do in someway with making a website, attracting people to it and putting something like Google advertisement on it and making a commission off the products being advertised.

Back to Robbie’s videos.  His package is called “Blogging to the Bank”.  For $27 what you get is a PowerPoint slide of Robbie’s secrets, a blog template with content, and an a never ending set of emails with tips, sort of.  Some of those email tips get you to see someone else’s success story and product ultimately getting you to buy their product.  That’s what got me to buy another product sold by someone named Michael Jones.

Hmm. An epiphany arose.  When Robbie sends me an email referring me to someone else’s website, it’s got to be actually his website or else how would Robbie be making money out of giving me an email referral.  Hmmm.  Anyway I continue.

So with Blogging to the Bank you’ll be serenaded by a series of emails stretched out over several days giving you links to his free videos.  They cover the content in his PowerPoint slides but give a much better explanation.  Each video is under 10 minutes long and you’ll see about 5 of them.  So if you’ve got attention deficit disorder you’ll manage to finish the videos before getting distracted.

Here’s where it gets discouraging.  First of all the stuff is kind of techie feeling.  It feels a bit more like I’m talking to one of my computer guru workers showing me how to configure an ASP .NET website.

“What you mean you don’t know how to set up an ASP .NET website?  Well it’s easy you just go to msdn.com and download an eval version of VS 2008 and blah blah blah”

Did I just lose you there?  If I did then that’s a bit of the flavor of how it feels when watching Mr. Benwell’s videos.  So once you manage to get over the techie anxieties, there’s the basic premise of his instructions.  He shows you how easy it is for you to come up with you own blog, gives you two money making ebooks for you to sell royalty free, and then gives you the blog content.

So I’m going to put up a “fake” blog, where there’s several days content already written and I just post them to make it feel like a real blog.  But what happens when the “fake” content runs out?  And there are maybe thousands of others with the same “fake” content.  So that means there are probably blogs with identical content.

Then the final kicker.  I read the one of his bonus books titled: “Update Report”  And it’s got a 2006 copyright.  If 2006 is the update then that means I’m using a package that’s fairly old.  Somewhere out there’s a legacy of the cookie cutter blogs with same content?  Maybe.  I can’t say I’ve seen them, but the internet’s a big place.

But let me not lose faith yet.  I’d like to give his plan a shot anyway.  Giving each scheme it’s full chance is my intent.  If after I give it the full due diligence and it fails then I can give it a thumbs down.  Who knows with billions of people out there it might just work.  I’ve seen people buy things on Ebay for more than if they bought it from a store.  So even if it doesn’t quite make sense it could still actually work.

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Signed on with Two Get Rich Schemes

Well not too long ago I got this junk mail from a Robbie Benwell and signed up to read his presentation on how to get rich blogging.  It cost me $29. As a result of signing up, I now get emails from Robbie almost every day describing yet one more money making scheme to look at and consider buying. It’s definitely get money rich scheme overload! Well anyway I followed one of these emails from Robbie and ended up purchasing another product called Click Bank Code on how to make money selling products that are sold on a website called click bank.  And now I get emails from this Click Bank Code money making scheme.

So I’m now guilty of juggling two get rich making money online schemes at the same time. I started watching some of the that Robbie Benwell had and feels like Robbie assumes that you are already a internet technical geek so he can throw at you technical jargon.  I also started watching instructional videos on the Click Bank Code product.  The speaker, Mike Jones, sounds very knowledgable.

There’s a lot of material.  And it does sound like a lot of work.

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Refreshed my LinkedIn account

Got another wake up call.  My cousin who has spent much of her life as a dancer – spiritualist sends me an email to join her Linkedin network.  Well Mr. Computer guy like I’m supposed to be is not to be stood up.  So it turns out I already had a LinkedIn account — hah!  I’m in the in.  Except I forgot I had an account and so forgot my password.

But now I’ve got my password and am back on board.  I’m part of a network of people I don’t know.  Whoopee!

So how am I benefitting from being LinkedIn?  I don’t really know.  Never mind.  I’m in.

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Compiling new web blah blah blah stuff

So as I’m trying to blog about making money online I keep running up against new stuff that I need to know about to blog competantly.  So now I came across the following new things:

-ping traceback

– sticky posts

– technorati favorites

-flikr photo sharing

I’ve got to get back and look at these.

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Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, RSS, youtube, eBay, Chat ??!?

This posting expresses my own opinion and does not represent DuPont Company information, positions, strategies or opinion

Oh geez.  It’s been a few days now and I’m feel like I’ve been falling off the pace.  You know sleep is good. Aside from that I’d been preoccupied with my wife’s family coming over this evening.  It’s been really nice to have their presence over. Actually, it was just surprising they seemed to come spontaneously over in honor of my birthday.  Work at my employer has definitely peaked in it’s technical demands of me.  Yes I’m an ASP .NET web developer.  If you don’t know what that is, let’s just say it’s pretty hardcore software development and it’s in many ways the hardest kind of software development you can do because it’s in an area that is most  likely to have bugs and errors.  But like I’ve said before I  find myself feeling way behind the times in a lot of technical areas.  I’m a mixed bag of pretty serious technical knowledge combined with large areas of being a dunce. I’m the product of many years of some tough events in my life chipping away at my life energy.  I’m tired with many years behind me.

Let me shift the topic a bit.  Maybe once again it’s the delusional view of a tired middle aged man, but where did all this internet busy body stuff come from?  You know: MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and probably a slew of other things I should be signing up with.  I call it busy body stuff because I don’t know about you but it seems that using all these services/features is a full time job.  I used to be be the computer nerd/geek, but TV personalities, people much older and younger then me seem to be more up with the technical times than I.  I’m no longer the bright geek but a tired forgotten memory of who I dreamed I would be.  Man I need to get with it!

Is it me or is everyone really smart with computers and internet related stuff?  In my rush to keep up with the Joneses I signed up and have a Twitter, Facebook, and something called Loopt accounts.  I’ve never gotten to use them so I don’t remember my username anymore.  I’ve watched youtube but feel a bit embarrassed that my cousin who was a dancer and not computer person started putting up her own movies a couple of years ago.  Movies now portray a reality where someone can catch you doing something embarrassing on their cell phone and feed it to youtube in a matter of minutes.  You can’t really do that that easily?  Can you?  Oh this should be embarrassing, but I’m feel too old and tired to be embarrassed.  I just need to get this off my just.

One of these days I’m going to be up with the Joneses.  I’m going to be twitting, myspacing, youtubing, facebooking, instant messessaging and whatever else is in vogue.  I mean a couple weeks ago I never used this thing called WordPress and now I’m using WordPress, but I still don’t know how to get photos into my blog. I can upload photos but I don’t know how to show them to you. Then I read there’s things on my page about RSS, traceback and pingbacks.  What are these?  One day I will resume my title as technical junkie and I’ll be saying to you:

“You know the other day I was linking live streaming video to YouTube and had it automatically twitting subtitles in different languages using RSS with links to Facebook, Myspace and thigamajig service.  What’s that you never heard of the thigamajig service?  Are you kidding me you need to get up with the times!  The thigamajig service is the ……. blah blah blah.”

I will become the technical Guru.  Oh yes. …. I will.

Oh yes.

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Money making scheme addict

OK I need to come clean and let you know. I think I’m a bit of a money making scheme addict. I read about someone elses fortune get a bit jealous and start saying to myself “gosh darnit” I can do that. I read how an eleven year old is making money from an iPhone flash card app he made. Then how someone hired someone to write a gratitude journal. “Damn it, I can do that.” I get motivated and I plunk down $99 to become a iPhone developer, start watching all the hours upon hours of training videos and several weeks later I’ve stopped and lost steam moving focus into easier money making ventures. Then I get an email on making money not making phone apps but selling them.

Inevitably I bit.  I mean it was only $30.  But then as I was about to make my $30 purchase another screen popped up with a special marketing offer to help bring traffic to the $30 website I was buying.  Another $30.  Well makes sense. Why worry about how to bring traffic to my website when someone else will do it for me for $30.  Then when I spend that $30, I get another special limited time offer.  For $40 I get special tall ads placed throughout the internet to further draw people to my website.  Oh that sound good, so now I’ve spent $100 total.  Hmmm??  How did $30 turn to $100?  And then another page comes up with something like:  “Hold on.  Before you complete your order you we would like to offer you an exclusive offer offered that will double the increase of traffic to your website. Hmmm. For an extra $99 I could be making $100,000 a month instead of $10,000 a month.  Things start to feel fishy.  But there’s this 30 day money back guarantee on everything.  I decide to skip the extra $99 and settle for being the poor schmuck that makes a mere $10,000 a month. And it’s on a credit card so that I can dispute if it’s fraud.  Eventually I quite and get my money back.  I’ve repeated this pattern more than once.

What always got to me was that things are harder than it seems. But to be fair to the get rich schemes I don’t quite put up the effort.  I think that it’s not so much the risk of getting scammed, but the risk of wasting your increasingly valuable time going nowhere and feeling more and more discouraged.  If a get rich scheme says you only need to spend 10 hours a week, it’s probably more like 20 hours, but then I usually put in 2 hours the 1st week, 30 minutes the 2nd and get distracted.  So I really can’t fairly poke holes at these schemes until I put in effort.

So this blog is about keeping me on track to be disciplined and try things out as I’m instructed to do.  If I slack or fall off it will show up in gaps in my blog. No more doing a little of this, quitting, a little of that, quitting, some of that, quitting,  some of this, etc.  Focus.  Steadfastness.  Discipline.  Nothing excessive, just keep walking.

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It's my birthday

So it’s that time of the year.  How old am I?  I think I’ll keep that a secret.  Oh yeah I already told you I am a middle aged man.  Today I turn 23 + 20 = 43 years old.  I put down the 23 because I guess something inside of me feels like I lost 20 years and I should be doing this at 23 years old.  Within those lost 20 years lie many of the reasons why I’m a tired middle aged man.

Last night I came home from work a bit on the late side and I was greeted by Virginia in a bad mood.  We talked.  Actually mostly she talked because I don’t talk that much and I was fairly tired.  But the conversation shifted over to kids.  We don’t have any kids and admittedly it’s a very emotional and sensitive topic between us.  We’ve wanted some. But trying to have kids in your 40’s has been tough for us. It especially hurts when we bump into so many people out there who have kids.  I feel like it’s the kids that separate the mentality of a 40 something couple versus a 20 something couple.  With no kids you’re like most 20 something couples just looking to do things with lots of time on their hands to socialize and simply hang out.  With kids you’re content to close the world around your family and you find all the socialization and hanging out you need just within your family.  You also get to join the “have kids” club.  At 40 something not being part of this club has put a drain on us. And so the conversation last night felt a bit like the wifely inquisition of “why haven’t you asked me about …” or “It feels like you just ignored ….”  And I a bit worn from a fairly intense day at work, not wishing to stir up an argument just listen and as always try my best.

Anyway I’m taking the day off today.  I woke up late today.  It felt good.  But man I felt like I could have slept forever.  I’m planning on going out with my Dad this afternoon. It gets me a bit uneasy though because Virginia doesn’t get along very well with my Dad.  So in the midst of this uneasiness for them moment I’m not thinking about this plan to try out the get rich online schemes.

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Now focusing on how to become financially independent

A few weeks ago Virginia and I saw the movie Julie and Julia. The character Julie decides to dedicate one year of her life going thru each recipe in Julia Child’s book. Sort of crazy idea with lots of heart that drew lots of attention, turned into a book and the movie itself.

Sort what’s left for a tired middle aged man left to do for excitement. Go crazy! Then came to me as I was reading thru the umpteenth get rich scheme junk email. Instead of cooking food from a recipe book I’ll go and try each of these silly money making schemes in earnest from start to finish. I get to share my experiences, struggles and learning and what the heck one of these schemes might actually work. I might actually make money. Stranger things have happened. What the heck let’s go for it!  In most case all I have to lose is around $30 (most of these offers were $30 or less) and my time (by far the most costly part).

The only thing left is to try and set up some ground rules or else it’s not very interesting.  I mean if Julie in her blog said I’ll go thru some of the recipes in the cookbook whenever she can then it’s no longer interesting. But with trying out money making schemes I can’t exactly promise to do one scheme a day.  I just need to set a pace that keeps me actively blogging on a daily basis as much as possible.  It’s got to be a base that is somewhat challenging but realistic so that I don’t disappoint readers (so far just me) or myself.  Well many of these get rich schemes have a 30 to 60 day return policy.  So let’s say for now my goal is to try out one new get rich scheme every month until further notice.

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A bit more of how I got to be tired

This posting expresses my own opinion and does not represent DuPont Company information, positions, strategies or opinion

Anyway enough rambling about the aging of my brain.

For the past couple of years I’ve on and off looked at ways to break out of the same 9 to 5 job working for someone else. When I was in my early twenties I was instilled with the goal to prove myself as a successful entreprenuer. My mother, father, all my uncles started as employees in a corporation then left to start businesses of their own and all reached millionaire level status. One of my cousins was in computers and sold a patent for a million dollars and started his own technology business. My grand father was a multiple-millionaire in China, and my great grand father was a mega multi millionaire in China. All this precedent set me up to prepare to leave my job from the very first day I was employed.

In 1989 when I started working, I looked at technology success entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs, Micheal Dell, Larry Ellison and Bill Gates and I dreamed of making my success. I mean I esteemed myself as a very bright and talented computer person. I was definitely a geek, hacker type. I was 23 and I set my goal to be a millionaire by the time I reached 30.

Well today I’m 42 (more like 42.99) and I’m still working for the same company I started with in 1989. Believe me I had tried maybe a dozen attempts to achieve financial independence, but you see no matter how talented or smart you are to be successful you kind of have to have commitment. Every computer/Internet success story was preceeded by a very driven effort to capitalize on an opportunity or vision. Hard work doesn’t mean success, but a willingness to work hard is necessary. I guess for me other things came before working hard to get rich. Like courting the woman who was to become my wife. Awww you say. Yes in a way, but it’s been a tough set of years. Maybe you to have gone thru hardships. For me these hardships combined with my willingness to not fight back sort of made me numb, allowed my energy to leak away until I entered depression. You can read a taste of this part of my journey at wakundama.

I have learned a lot. Despite the hardship those times deeply matured my spirituality. I consider myself deeply spiritual. I even wrote a book on spirituality. But for a long time I’ve been troubled with the fact that bring spiritual should somehow be at odds with making money. I think with most people the more money you make the harder it is to be spiritual. But I’m finding that I’m not like most people and so things are often opposite for me. So in some strange inexplicable way now making money is supposed to my next spiritual step. Walking the path of shameless superficial profiteering somehow is a calling. Actually I think part of this calling is for me to share thru way of a blog this journey of a spiritual man thru just doing what so many of us try to do, make more money.

So I welcome you to come along for the ride. A ride to make money. I have no expectations. I may lose money, I may make money, but I have fun sharing and maybe you gain something be it learning more about the reality of making money or simply experiencing one more shining beautiful star in a sea of beauty known as humanity.

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