Rich Twin Poor Twin

I recently went over a book by Robert Kiyosaki – I think it was “Rich Dad’s Guide to Investment – what the Rich Invest in and the Middle Class does not”. The book was released before the internet stock bubble burst. In the book it mentions the 20-10-5 trend which is really interesting. It states that for 20 years the equity market is the place to invest your money – Equity or stocks, mutual funds, hedgefunds, etc. Then comes a 10 year trend to put your money into commodities, gold, silver, real estate – basically into hard assets. And the 5 is that for every 5 years a major catastropy occurs – September 11. Looking back at this chapter I can see that we are just about done with the real estate and gold trend and will head back into stock market trend soon if this theory is true. So far it looks pretty accurate. My twin and I are already playing with automated system trading platforms and putting more cash into stocks. We also invested some money into really neat programs to backtest the forumlas we use to time stock buys.

I just joined this program today and haven’t
tested it out yet but it looks similar to chitika ad’s. A few bloggers say that
they are getting up to $6 eCPM with these ads. I’m going to put them on a few of
my sites to see how well they do right now. The signup took less than 60
seconds. The only payment option I see right now is with paypal. Signup now and
receive $25 bucks here.

**Update**

So far I just put up 160×600 banners on a few of my site on the left side. I’m quite happy with the earnings so far. I’m getting just under 30 cents per click on my US traffic sites which is pretty good. The ctr is a bit low at 1% but this is actually better than YPN contextual ads. I’ll post up some screen shots in a bit.

I have also been testing out Adengage ads. It’s been up for about 2 weeks now and the results are not as good as Widgetbucks. The ecpc is about 4 cents! even though I put them on sites with 80-90% US traffic.

I’ve been “hacking” at affiliate marketing for a month now and I feel like I need a break. It feels too much like a job. That is probably why I stopped doing affiliate marketing 2 years ago with clickbank. I like the sweet checks though. Cashing them in is always fun, but trying to scale the sales seems too tedious and not that straightforward. Increasing traffic does not equate to an increase in profit. Some people say to collect visitor emails to “hit” them up again but that is just not my style. The total profit we got through affiliate marketing last month was $5k. That is okay but looking back it was not really worth the time. I will most likely refocus on developing my sites, finishing projects, increasing my current brands, and sales of my own products and just maintain the affiliate sales.  

Competition has a lot of negativity to it these days but it’s a key ingredient to your success. One of the reasons why my brother and I mastered adsense so fast and completely was because we competed against each other to see who could earn more in the early stages of our “make money with adsense game”. Our other competitors were the guys posting on forums and thier blogs on how much they made. We wanted to beat them. But along the way, it was mainly my twin and I in head to head competition.

Even though my twin and I are on the same team so to speak we are fiercely competitive against each other and feed off of each other’s acheivements. It was Henry who first started “banking” with adsense about 2 years ago. We both had accounts that were just sitting there earning pennies a month if any for the first few months. When we got our first checks we really played to win and competed against each other and fed off of each others achievements. One whole dollar a day to 10 to 100 to 1,000 bucks a day. All throughout the way, the key driving force or motivation was competition with each other. Sharing our breakthroughs with each other propelled both of us to new levels.

I see the same thing happening with affiliate marketing right now. My twin and I are in “fierce” competition with each other for the last month or so in trying to master the affiliate marketing game. We have both setup new accounts to our favorite affiliate networks which include: neverblueads, azoogleads, clickbank, hydramedia, maxbounty, copeac. And are basically “going at it.” My strategy is going narrow in focus while Henry’s is going very board. So far, I am beating him but he is a quick learner and will adjust fast. Also its real early in the game and Henry’s profit margins are better.

We’re 25 years old and sometimes I wonder why we are trying so hard to get rich so fast sometimes. And the answer is because it is possible and easy to do if you have decided to do so. Now is really a good time to try to get rich. A lot of people just don’t care about trying to make money nor even want to think about. If I ask these guys what they want or what goals they have they usually do not have a solid answer. I just wonder what they have on their minds most o the time. I also see a lot of these guys who have a ton of raw skills. And when they ask me how to make money this is usually how it goes:

“How do I make more money?” They would ask. I will reply with: “Oh, start a business.” and then they would say: “Yea I heard that already. But what do I do? and don’t give me that baloney saying to ‘follow what I like to do’ because I do not know what I like doing and do not have the time to think about that. Maybe I can get rich slowly.”

Basically excuses to start trying, taking a chance, trying something new, thinking for themselves for once, and hell just taking control of their own lives.

But I think that making money is just a game. Many people are just too afraid to take the first step or to play their first round in the”game” because they might lose. Schools, teachers, and parents have a lot to do with this but I don’t want to talk about this right now. It might sound like bullshit but you really have to fail in order to succeed. Unlike school, the answers are not in a book, and your grades are not determined on how well you can memorize answers before an exam. You also need a strong reason why you are playing the game and playing to win.

Just an example is one of my favorite games that I still play online to relax is Warcraft 3. I picked that game up about 1 year ago after I thought I really mastered another game (Counter-Strike) and was looking for a new challenge. Well I started playing 2 v 2 games online right from the start when I got the game. I LOST 13 times in a row before getting my first victory. Right now I’m pretty damn good in the game. I play solely with the Human race and usually give newer players tips on playing. The secret to my skills in that game are from my loses or failures – over 1,000 now.

The same principles can be applied to making money online. There are a lot of ways to make money online but you have to pick one and really decide to master it before moving on. Here is a tip: fail faster – force yourself to fail faster – play more and more and continue learning. Keep what you want to do after you have mastered the game or reached the level you want close to you at all times. Everyone is different. Some people try to master a game for fame, others want to make fun of people after their skills improve, others enjoy the challenge, others master it to teach others, others just love the game and love playing it. Whatever the reason, find it first and be truthful to yourself.

There is not much progress to report from our business side. We are killing time right now. Dave and Buster’s is a new hang out for us. Check out the sweet prizes we won:

There are more prizes in the back seat of our car. The passes for Robert Kiyosaki’s seminar came in the mail. You can reserve your seat or check out seminars around your area. Its great to meet new people who share similar goals and mindsets.