Here's a video update. I discuss how the meeting with the mortgage broker went and talk about mortgage financing and such.
Sorry for the delay on it - I had wanted to post it a few days ago but I've been having major problems with YouTube, then Blogger. So I tried converting to WordPress, but I don't have PHP compiled with CURL, which is needed to import from Blogger to Wordpress, so that will have to wait.
I had to re-edit the video and re-upload to YouTube, and finally it worked. Here it is.
Good news folks. I've had so many things to talk about lately, and some of the topics have taken up so much length such as today's post, that I've had to split them up into sections. So, expect a new blog update every couple days for a while :)
Kiyosaki Controversy I few days ago I woke up early from some noise outside and for some reason decided that it was a good time to start reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
I had been eagerly awaiting to start reading the book that everyone's been talking about. The only reason I didn't start sooner was that I had been too busy (lazy) with work (games).
I read the introduction by the co-author before taking a nap. The introduction was definitely interesting and I couldn't wait to continue on.
The next day I was up at 2 a.m. and couldn't sleep, so I went back to RDPD. I kept reading straight until 5:30 in the morning. I would have kept reading but I was pretty tired at that point and didn't want to read and then forget what I had learned. When I read, I read very slowly, partly because I have to - I need full attention and often have to re-read sentences multiple times before I fully understand it, and so I really engage whatever I read with full attention and an open mind and didn't want to lose any of the focus.
As I write this, I still haven't read since yesterday. I'm still only half-way done the book so I can't give a real review of the book yet. However, from what I've read so far I can say that I love it. Kiyosaki's ideas go against traditional thinking: studying hard, finding a good job, and working hard for a promotion is what the poor and middle class do according to the Hawaiian-born retiree.
His main idea of getting rich is to simply understand the real difference between an asset and a liability, and to only acquire assets. Sounds overly simplistic right? Well, that's exactly what he advocates and says it really is that simple and that the older educated generation has a hard time beliving it because they were educated under a much older and different schoolastic schema.
I won't go on summarizing his book, partly so you'll buy it and read it for yourselves, and partly because I need to get on with this story.
After reading half of the book, getting to the part where he explains how your home is actually a liability and not an asset, unlike most people (including accountants, bankers, etc.) state. And it makes sense. JohnChow explains this in his latest post. I think it's an asset only if you make money on it and sell it for a good profit (a profit which superceeds the interest you paid out). And you're not renting it out because that'd be a property and not the home you live in (unless you are renting out a suite).
Anyhow, I was pondering on that and just generally thinking about the ideas in the book. It's accompanied by a story of Kiyosaki as he grows up and learns from his "Rich Dad" which flows along with the lessons he teaches. I decided, last night, to do a Google on him and learn a bit more about him. I was just curious in seeing his website and finding out abit more personal stuff about him. Unfortunately, I came across a site which totally flames him.
The site is written by John T Reed who apparantly is a fairy big name in the real estate and investment world. He has also written a number of books. On his site he completely and relentlessly attacks Kiyosaki.
This made me very sad. I was really enjoying Kiyosaki and wanted to believe his teachings. I felt like I wasted my time reading his book. However, as I read an insanely long page that Reed wrote on Kiyosaki, Reed's criticism had less and less importance to me. He started making really lame claims and critiques; I could spot a bunch that he was incorrect on or nitpicking, and I'm by no means a scholar or literary master.
As the site goes on, he also gets less and less professional and more and starts to sound more like a whiney kid. Nevertheless, he does have a ton of information there and I hate to believe it but I wouldn't be surprised if some of it were true.
One of the main things Reed accuses Kiyosaki of is that the "Rich Dad" wasn't real at all, but used as a literary device to help sell the book. I hope he's wrong, but now I can't stop but wonder. He also claims Kiyosaki knows absolutely nothing and doesn't believe he has the 50-100 million dollar empire that Kiyosaki stated in an interview.
This sucks, because I was enjoying the book, and now I bet I'll read the other half with a bit of skepticim and not be as motivated.
However, I then did more investigating. This time, on John T Reed. I found another site, this time accusing John T Reed of being the fraud! Aptly named RipOff Report, the site goes on to accuse John Reed himself of being sued for libel and often writing untrue and unverified claims of others.
It mentions how Reed writes all of these (there are indeed a lot of them, I could count dozens) mainly as a marketing ploy to drive links and attention to his site ("great tactic" I'm sure Aaron Wall would say). I can believe that.
Although, I believe a lot of it is also for Reed simply being very biased when writing his analyses, if you could call them that... they're more like rants. I think he just lets his emotions get ahead of him and doesn't look for both sides of the story like a real reporter.
So, I kept investigating, and found Kiyosaki's reponse to Reed, which was a bit difficult to find. You can find at the bottom of this post. To be honest, I wasn't entirely satisfied with his response, but it did provide a bit of comfort.
Finally, I went to see what the Rich Dad fan base thought about Reed's commentary. I believe most felt two things:
1. The book isn't meant to be an all-inclusive step-by-step guide on how to become rich. It's targetted to the general public and is written simply.
2. Most seem not to really care if "Rich Dad" was indeed just a literary device. They believe the main point of the book is to get people to start to really think about money and finances, as well as being a major motivational and inpsirational tool.
I plan on reading the second half of the book soon. However, I will unfortunately return to it with a bit of skepticism. Which is good usually - to read such books with a grain of salt. However I really want to believe Kiyosaki... he is so motivational and really does make me think. So far, I still agree with his ideas. There will always be naysayers - especially the bigger you are. And I believe that since he has receive so much fame recently and thus covered by all the major media outlets (#1 bestseller on New York Times, on Oprah, PBS, and countless others) that if he really was a fraud, that there'd be more public outspeak on him. So far John T Reed seems to be the only one who hates him so much.
There are other reviews of him which aren't favourable, but the vast majority of people, including professional book reviewers, investors, and rich people, seem to love his book. So I think it's safe.
What are your comments? I would love to hear your thoughts on this, especially from those who have read the book. Instead of commenting on it here, I'd like a real discussion to take place on this, so please post on this thread on PublisherForums which will cover it. Relevant URL's: Kiyosaki's Wiki Bio John T Reed's Kiyosaki Attack RipOff Report's John T Reed Attack Kiyosaki's Response Rich Dad's Forum Discussion on the Matter
BannerAgora
The following is a paid plug, written by me, but paid to do so :) However, I'm earest in what I say here:
Since I've posted the last 20 banners out of the 40 I had commissioned, I've received numerous IM's and e-mails from people asking who made them. Well, his name is Robbie and his site is BannerAgora.com. His prices are cheap for what he gives you, around $20 a banner, and his turnaround times are decent (might have taken slightly longer for me since I ordered so many).
Anyhow, that's his URL. If you use him, please tell him you found him from this blog. It will help him know how his advertising here does. Mortgage Man, I could write 10-pages on this section. But I won't, in an effort not to plug the internet up with my crap.
As I stated in my previous blog post, I'm buying a place. I'm buying a place! Haha, it's so much fun. I know extremely little about real estate, the market, mortgages, and the process involved in purchasing a home, but I've learned a lot the past few days.
Luckily I used to work for a realtor as the web developer for their company for several years and thus have access to them as contacts. Thus I can get a lot of information and such from them without being worried about being ripped off or getting bad service.
I've set up a meeting with a mortgage broker tomorrow morning. Well, actually, in about 10 hours or so from now. I can't sleep because I'm too excited, which is why I'm writing this blog in an attempt to get sleepy. I talked to her briefly over the phone and she seems to think that they should be able to work out getting me approved for a mortgage.
I talked to my dad and he said he'd be fine with co-signing for me. Obviously I want to try to get the mortgage on my own, but it's good to know I'll have a backup if I can't. You see, the obvious problem of me getting a mortgage stems from a multitude of factors. For one, I'm 22 (23 in a few days, what are you guys getting me for my birthday?), and there is a bit of age discrimination there.
"What's this punk kid doing in my office?"
Then, to insult them more, I'm self-employed!
"Oh boy. Another loser kid with a lame home business."
I'll have to answer that by saying that I'm a "web entrepreneur" and basically build and develop sites and sell advertising on them.
"Get out of my office, punk."
Heh, and it gets worse. Mye mortgage broker told me to bring the last 2 years of my income tax reports (I'm bringing printouts of my current 2006 earnings and prospective future earnings as well). I'll tell you now that 2005 was very low and 2004 was even lower. These were extremely low years. This is for a few reasons. For one, I simply wasn't making nearly as much as I am now. But also because I had a LOT of stuff to write off, which I could write off for 100% thanks to having a good tax accountant. So the numbers are misleading.
However, I have three good things going for me:
1. Great credit. I have great credit. I've never been late on a payment in my life. Not anywhere near it.
2. My 2006 earnings and prospective earnings look favourable.
3. I'll be putting a decent downpayment down. $20,000 if I buy a place in a month or so. $25,000 if I wait 2+ months. And the more the longer I wait or search for a place.
So it'll be interested what they do.
I have a good idea of the costs insofar as property purchase taxes, strata fees, municipal property taxes, etc. yet I still have a lot of questions. I wrote them down and will bring them up tomorrow at the meeting.
Here's a recent post by John Chow explaining some real estate tips and engages in the topic of Renting vs Buying.
Anyhow, market values here are pretty decent. It may surprise you what you can get here for those of you who live in New York or the UK. There's been a recent influx of market appreciation in houses and property values over the past several years, but places are still affordable to get into now.
Below are some places that I've started to look at. Nothing serious yet, just quick browses online, but these are some that interest me so far and show you the type of style and place I'm looking for. Keep in mind that these are in CDN prices (USD would be about 90% lower):
$145,000 The following ones show you what you could get for just a little bit more...
$305,000 $324,900 This one may take me a few years to save up for, but I'll be blogging from it one day, dressed in my houserobe and smoking my pipe! $750,000 This one comes with your own private beach! $959,900 Ahem.. okay, I may be getting a little ahead of myself here, but it's crazy. There are so many young webmasters out there right now who could afford these!
Anyhow, I best not write and longer. Please wish me luck on my mortgage pre-approval meeting tomorrow! I'd love to be able to get a place over $145,000 as they start to get noticably better at around that range. WISH ME LUCK!
Good luck, and good earnings!
This was not a particularly fun morning...
PayPal Freezes Tyler's Account!
So my morning starts off like any other as I turn on my computer to do a quick check on my sites and things: do a quick scan of the 'morning e-mails' to find anything interesting such as new advertising payments, check a couple affiliate earning stats, and check up on PublisherForums.
When I was checking my e-mail (I get around 60-100 e-mails a day) I saw one e-mail with the subject Notification of Limited Account Access. Oh boy, I thought. Another one of those fake PayPal scam e-mails. I usually get 1-2 of those a day. However, I always do a quick check on them just to make sure they aren't legit.
It started with:
We appreciate the fact that you chose PayPal to send and receive payments for your transactions.
However, after a recent review of your account, it has been determined thatyou are currently in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy. The Policy prohibits the use of PayPal to send or receive payments for any form of gambling activities, including but not limited to payment for wagers, gambling debts or gambling winnings, whether conducted online, in person or through any other means of communication.
"Uh-oh" I thought. Now I was beginning to think it was legit and real. I scanned further down the e-mail to see:
To appeal the limitation on your account, you will need to:
1. Remove PayPal as a payment option, as well as all references to PayPal,including the PayPal logo and/or shopping cart, from your website(s), http://www.pokerforums.org/advertise/;
Once I saw that URL I was quite sure it was real. I logged into PayPal through a new browser session (just to make sure it wasn't a false e-mail with a malicious forwarding URL) only to have my fears confirmed; my account was locked.
Uh-oh.
See, this isn't good. I'm guessing the average PayPal user has between $0 and $200 in their account at any time. If I were out $200, I wouldn't care. But you see, I keep a lot of money in PayPal... we're talking $xx,xxx here. I always have... mainly just to have quick access to money that I can use to buy things at a moment's notice, such as a domain or site for sale. I usually only withdrew portions to my real bank account when my bank account was getting low. So now you can see why I was a bit scared here.
Apparantly the problem was that I had violated PayPal's Accepted Use Policy by accepting payments related to gambling as I had set up PayPal payments for advertising on PokerForums.com.
View this for a moment. It is PayPal's gambling policy. As you can see, it is very loose:
Related Ventures, such as:
Gambling services, such as handicapping, or providing gambling tips or instructions. Intermediaries facilitating the process of placing bets or securing offshore gambling licenses. Organized forums that facilitate person-to-person betting.
Basically that means any site that has anything to do with gambling, even if you are simply providing strategies or tips and charge, say, a membership for that information, that uses PayPal, is violating PayPal's rules.
So, now what?
The next step was to go through PayPal's Resolution Center. Here they had two steps for me to undertake. First I had to remove all remnants of PayPal on www.pokerforums.org/advertise, and then I had to sign (digitally, thank God) an affidavit re-confirming my agreeance to PayPal's rules and policies.
It then said I had completed all the necessary steps and that they would review my account which usually took up to 3 business days. I didn't want to wait this long or perhaps longer, so I phoned them to see if I could expediate the process.
Their tech support guy, who was nice and down to earth, was sure that I had received a fake e-mail. He kept asking me all of these questions to make sure it wasn't fake - obviously they have a large problem with this. I can only imagine how many people fall for it and PayPal has to deal with and fix. Anyhow, after finally assuring him that it wasn't false, he responded that saying my account was functioning fine so that it must be.
Long story short, PayPal had already reviewed the issue during the time I had spent looking up their phone number and talked to them! So really, within minutes.
So, my account is back to normal status! My money is there and ready for me to do with as I please. WHEW!
I must admit, I am impressed with PayPal's process and response. Their resolution system is simple, clear to the point, and tells you step-by-step how to unfreeze your account. After completing that, within minutes my account was reviewed and cleared. Also, their phone support was great too. However, I've heard other stories from people who haven't had as good an experience.
So! What's to be learned from this? Well, obviously you should ready all the legalities and fine print before using any service. I actually usually do a good job of this - unlike the vast majority of people, I do briefly skim/read the terms of agreements on important things like this. However, the difference is that I just skim or read them quickly. I don't go over it with a magnifying glass. And with mega-corporations like PayPal/eBay, there is so much to read that it isn't really feasible for people to read everything their lawyers write up. Then there's the fact that they modify/append their rules many times over the course of a year and you're supposed to keep up.
Anyhow, as a result, I've obviously had to remove them as a payment option for PokerForums.org. This hurts a bit - PayPal was definitely my primary method of payment. However, I'm not all that worried. Almost all poker companies prefer to send payment via Neteller or bank wire, and usually do; I usually get PayPal for smaller transactions from smaller sites. And almost all poker webmasters/companies usually have Neteller for obvious reasons. However, I will probably lose a small amount of advertising business as a result, from those who can only pay through PayPal.
Again though, it's not a big worry, as I'm mostly concerned on advertising campaigns from the 'bigger boys', and they usually prefer bank wire or Neteller anyway.
PublisherForums Update
As always, you couldn't expect me to post a new blog post without shamelessly plugging PublisherForums, could you?
1000 Posts
PublisherForums has reached it's 1000 post milestone and over 100 members. It's Alexa ranking is also dropping fast (Today rank currently at: 29,195).
If you've been holding off registering and posting on PublisherForums because of size, now you don't have an excuse as it's growing fast :)
Advertising
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I'm looking to advertise on webmaster-related sites. Webmaster blogs too. MSN me at twcruz@hotmail.com if you're interested.
I've already bought about 8 slots, but am looking to buy a lot more. Tell your friends!
Advertise page up
PublisherForums's advertise page is up. It uses the site's template and SSI. I still have a few more things to add to the page, however.
CookingForums Logos
As I've stated in my last blog post, I commissioned 40 banners to be made. CookingForums.net's are done now. Below is a sample of a few:
You can view the full list here.
PublisherSpot Designer Hired
As you may know, PublisherSpot's programming is complete, and is only awaiting a design. I've finished writing up a template description and have found a designer. He only creates the PSD/mockup, and doesn't code it, but my programmer was going to splice and code it to HTML and CSS anyhow.
I've hired this designer many times in the past, but only for logos. I've seen his portfolio for web design and it looks pretty good. He said he'd have the first mockup done by around Saturday. Here's hoping I get something nice :)
Then, once the site is all completed, comes the painful task of actually populating it with content. I'm so amazingly busy already... I may hire some people to write reviews for me. We'll see.
ADRIANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!
Tyler Balboa?
Guess what? It's 6:15 am and I'm not still up from a late night. No. I woke up at 5:30 a.m (had something in my eye, ouch) and decided to try something new. So I quickly put on some clothes and went out for a brisk walk. I went out my apartment area and up about a block and back, just a 15-minute brisk walk, but it's now 7:15 am and I'm fairly wide awake, did my exercises (20 pushups, 23 crunches) and a walk, and am off to start work (and play) for the day with a glass of orange juice and cold water in front of me. Now, the question is, will I be able to do these early morning brisk walks/jogs every day? And more importantly, will they give me the much needed energy that I seek so badly? I have kept up with my daily routine of 20 pushups, 23 crunches, 3 glasses of water, and 2 fruits or vegetables a day though. Going on around 3 months I believe (I have the logs in my hallway). I haven't noticed any direct affect from them yet but hopefully if I keep at it and keep slowly adding to them I will.
I'll do anything to get me energy. Energy = focus and foocus = money. Money money money.
Like that Rocky-Tyler pic? Hehe. Not too bad for a 4-minute job in Photoshop, eh? :) Anyhow, I doubt that I'll be able to continue with the morning brisk walk thing, I was after all woken up by this strange eye thing I get on occassion in the middle of the night (it's still bothering me right now.. ugh, I hate it whatever it is) but we'll see what happens...
PublisherForums Updates PublisherForums is doing well. Here are some updates:
Growth
As of this moment, PublisherForums has 765 posts and 82 members, compared to 43 members and 232 posts nearly a month ago. I consider the growth very good considering I haven't held a contest or started to advertise it yet. It's spreading by word-of-mouth, me mentioning it here on my blog, signatures from my posts in various webmaster forums, and by a couple plugs by some collegues (Thanks Anthony and j0n, although you could put it back up on CWD.. :P).
The thing I like about not holding a contest is that people come to the site not to win a contest, but to really contribute meaningfully or to read and learn. Members like the site because of it's sharp, professional, yet pleasing design as well as the content which is very good. This was the plan.
I've already signed my first private advertiser. $10. I'm rich! Haha. Hey, it always starts at $10... oh, and don't worry about getting too many ads on there. It won't be anything like PFO. It will remain clean and crisp as it is now. All the ad slots you see now are most likely going to be the only ads slots ever on the site.
Banners
I hired a guy to make me 40 banners, 10 of which were for PublisherForums (the other 30 being 10 for CookingForums, 10 for MovieForums, and 10 for PublisherSpot). They are complete now, and with a bit of guidance from me as always, they turned out well. Here are a few:
You can view the full list here.
Advertising I'm looking to start advertising PublisherForums.com now. If you have a webmaster related site, I'm interested in buying some advertising on it.
I'm interested in any kind of site, with any traffic, as long as the site isn't brand new and you have no plans on selling it (at least anytime soon). I'm willing to pay for 6 or even 12 months up front.
Please note that while I'm looking to advertise on any site, that my offer will vary greatly depending on your site/exposure.
If you are interested, please MSN me at twcruz@hotmail.com. Please have ready your site traffic (preferably with screenshots) and a price you want. Also, just a warning but I may be cheap - so just be prepared for that. I'm also looking to advertise on blogs... anything webmaster related.
PublisherSpot Update
PublisherSpot's programming is 100% complete. Now all that's needed is a skin for the site, so I'll have to do some hunting for a good designer. I'm going to be hiring from a company this time or a freelancer with a nice site and portfolio and such. That means I'll have to write another descriptive project description, which typically takes me a couple of hours when focused, but it tells exactly what I want.
Then I'll have to hunt down somebody.. but the good news is that I'll only need a PSD mockup; Zeeshan will code the HTML and CSS for me, and I wouldn't trust anyone more than Zeeshan in being clean and valid :) Makes it easier on the designer too -- he can focus on the design and not worry about having to code it.
I hope to find somebody within a week.
So, in the future my videos should have sharper resolution and look a lot better (you won't actually notice a size difference as YouTube automatically enlarges the 160x120 to a larger size, however pixelization occurs of course; the 320x240 won't have as much pixelization).
Finally, now that I edit the videos, I've fixed the audio problem YouTube creates.
On a side note, I've been contemplating buying an actual digital video camera instead of my digital photo camera, but I can't see myself spending money on it just for this blog. Maybe I should open up donations... :) Anyhow, without further adieu:
This first video is just me showing how to open a bottle without a bottle opener by using another bottle, on-topic web stuff is in the second one below which is 6-minutes long.
PublisherForums Skin Up!
While it took a while to get up, it actually got up sooner than I had expected.
It's not 100% done, there is still icon imagry to go, and a few things I'm not happy with yet, but those things should be done by tomorrow. I thought I'd post it up now, early, anyway. It'd say it's about 94% complete though. Tomorrow it should be 100% complete if everything goes on schedule. How do you like it?
How do I plan on marketing it now? Well, my next step, once it's finished being skinned is to get some banner creatives commissioned for it. I've had to wait for the skin to be completed so that the banner designer has a proper theme to go with.
I'll then probably look around and find relatively cheap webmaster-related sites to advertise on and just do a bit of advertising. Nothing major or anything, just to get the word out and to establish a bit of branding in the community.
I stated before that I didn't plan on holding a posting contest for this one, unlike Lee's EarnersForum and Jon's WickedFire. I have two reasons of rationale for this:
1. I'm aiming for a decent level of quality on PublisherForums. Ideally it'd have very high-quality discussion, but for it to be successful it's not realistic to have such high expectations; most people just don't post like that and it quickly becomes more of a burden to post long well-written posts than it does not to. By holding a posting contest, even if you stress awards would be given to the best posters and not necessarily posters with the highest post count, the very nature of it all will inevitably bring forth a lower quality of posts, even if you try to limit this.
2. I'm trying something a bit different. Lee and Jon aren't the first ones to come up with a forum contest; I did it before with DomainForums, and I'm sure many people did it long before me. Right now both Lee and Jon are holding large contests, and since I don't make nearly as much as them, I can't really compete against them.
I'm also trying to go on the hope that people will come to PublisherForums not just to win a contest, but to go for the quality content. There is quality content on both of those other forums, but there is also a lot of useless information as well. By not holding a contest, people that do decide to post on PublisherForums will not have an alterior incentive to post (ex. money).
Now, this isn't to say that I won't hold a contest later on. Lee's contest ends in a couple of days, and while I'm sure he'll launch another one, the competition in both Lee's and Jon's forums is tough since there are many members there already competing for a prize. And I've always believed in contests - they are great. I'm just not sure I want to hold one for PublisherForums.
$18,000 in 28 days
Just over a week ago I had mentioned how I made $11,000 in 20 days. Now I'm proud to report that I've made $18,000 in 28 days! That's an average of $642 a day!
Okay, well, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit. Or am I? How would you guys do this in accounting?:
My recent big advertiser decided to renew for a month and paid me another $4500 today via bank wire. This payment is for a renewal of their current campaign which is set to expire August 10th, and set to renew until September 10th. So, I've been paid today, in July, but it's actually for a campaign which will run August-September. Would you put that in your accountings under July, when it was paid? Or in August, when the campaign starts? I have the same thing for another advertiser; they paid me two weeks ago but I'm awaiting on their creatives still.
If you count them for this month then I'll have made over $18,000 this month. If you don't, then it'd be closer to around $12,000. What do you guys think?
Anyhow, I apologize if this just sounds like one long annoying bragging post. I'm not trying to brag... I'm just happy and excited. That's a lot of money and it's always great to beat your best-month-ever record. And obviously this is just a really really good month. This is nowhere near my average of course, lol.
The money is definitely needed. It helps pay for the disaster Replayer.org site where my developer ran off with my money, and gives me seed money to help launch my other sites.
Hiring a Web Designer for 10 Sites
If you watched the video in my last blog update you'll know that I'm planning on trying out the PPC Arbitrage arena. I plan on jumping into 10 different niches simultaneously, and will therefore require 10 sites for each.
Thus, I'm in need for a web designer to design (and code) these 10 sites for me. Those that know me will know that I have very high expectations when it comes to design work and programming. Well, these projects are a bit different as quality isn't my main concern here. However, I'm still looking for a designer that can deliver a decent site with short turnaround time and low costs. Especially since I'll be paying for 10.
So, if you're a web designer, here are some of the things I'm looking for:
1. Online most of the time and available via MSN 2. Able to provide the PSD source 3. Proficient in CSS 4. Clean and oraganized code and commented. 5. Good integration of AdSense, to be inserted via SSI 6. Quality designer that can also have fast turnaround times
Now, that being said, I'm not looking for the next eBay or YouTube. I'm planning on having around 10 pages per site which would just work off the same template with minor modification of the front. Each site will need it's own unique and creative design.
Payment would be sent via PayPal after each project is completed (If you can't trust me to pay you, then I don't trust you.) Prices are definitely negotiable, but I'd expect some decent bulk discount since I'd be purchasing 10! I'm not looking to spend more than $300 tops for each design, so don't bother contacting me if it's above that. Also don't just quote me $300. For $300 I'd want something really nice, so quote me something realistic like $100.
The hired designer would need to promise to an honorary NDA as to not leak out what sites they are making. This means it could not appear in their portfolio either.
If you're interested, e-mail me at tylercruz @ gmail.com (so much spam lately). Do NOT IM or PM me please. Provide your MSN name, your quote, turnaround time, portfolio, and anything else you deem useful.
*I'm also looking for a good banner designer, capable of quality animated banners in various sizes such as 468x60, 88x31, 120x60, etc. Would want very fast turnaround on these. Interested parties can e-mail me at the e-mail above as well.
Lethargy Strikes Again Sigh....
How many times have I talked about this? Too many. Guys, I'm so lethargic and distracted. I have been for probably the past year. I'm not sure if it's from moving out and having a lot more things to do and get used to or what. I think it's a combination of the following:
1. Lack of exercise 2. Poor diet 3. Too many things to do (as in recreation; Computer Games, GF, XBox360, Movies, TV, Books, etc.) 4. No driving force (rent is easily paid for now; nothing to be scared about) It is extremely frustrating because I have a million ideas, enough sites to work on as it is (20, with 10 about to be added!) and lots of work I could and should be doing... I just have no energy or focus most of the time. I honestly feel that if I had a decent amount of energy and focus that I could get so much accomplished that it'd be scary.
I do so little work these days. I'll check my e-mail, hire a couple people to do a few things, update my blog, sign up advertisers, etc. but not really any real work. "Real" work I'll spent maybe an average of an hour a day doing if that, which is stupid. See, it's not about 'having' to work, it's about being able to. I'm not able to work when I want to, and when I am able to work, it isn't often or for long periods of time.
Now, I've done something about this. Well, I've been trying.
1. Lack of exercise and Poor Diet The past couple months, every day I've made sure to do 20 pushups, 22 crunches, drink 3 glasses of water a day, and eat 2 fruits or vegetables. These quotas started lower but throughout the weeks I've gradually increased them. I also started to do a bit of fast-walking on a trail that circumnagivigates a lake here which is 6.7 Km, although I haven't done that in a few weeks. Maybe I should again. I haven't noticed any energy changes. Physically I've noticed a few small things, but it's energy that I care about. A week or two ago I noticed I had a bit more energy and concentration and was able to get a bit more work done, but this week I've been sluggish as hell again. What's worse, even though I've been on this, not missing a day, consistently for around 7 weeks or so now, my little workout never seems to get easier.
Now, I hope if/when I increase those quotas to have my fruit/vegetables at 3 or even 4, that that will then show a difference, but for now, I'm not noticing anything.
3. Too many things to do There's not much I can do about this one. I've considered getting rid of my cable, but the problem there is that I do enjoy watching the news when something is going on, I watch a bit before I go to sleep as it helps put me to sleep, and it's useful for guests/visitors. I simply need to organize my time better. I've been going on the computer less and less, which does help me get a lot done.. maybe I should try doing that again. I'd still be on most of the time, don't worry (hehe), but taking long periods of time from the computer can help me get a lot done. 4. No driving force
When I was around 16/17, I got so much done compared to what I get done now it's scary. I could work 3-4 hours straight reading programming books and writing a fairly complex Perl application, and I could work for the majority of the day being focused. This was probably because this was all new to me back then and it was new, exciting, and I enjoyed the challenge. At 19-20 I worked very hard as well, however a large part of this was a driving force stemmed from the fact that I needed to make money to pay my parents rent, as I only had a couple of part time jobs (Internet Access Centre supervisor, Web Developer for a local real estate company, and I had a little local Photo Restoration business.) and working on building my sites to generate more revenue became more of a real-life importance. Now I'm making enough money without having to put any effort in that I have no driving force anymore. Am I motivated? HECK YA! I'm motivated as hell, which makes this all the more frustrated. I know that if I had more energy and concentration that I could be making mid 5-digit figures each month with a year or two, but I just can't put myself to work. But not having any 'threat' to push me seems to have made me too relaxed in a sense.
Anyhow, I believe that eating better and getting more exercise is probably the biggest key here. We'll see if I can work my way up to 3 fruits/veggies a day and if that does anything for me.
Wish me luck, and energy.
Well, that's it for now. I'm going on a little vacation (vacation Tyler? From what?!) with Lisa up island for a few days on Monday in case anyone tries to get in contact with me during that time and can't. I'll be bringing my laptop along though and probably making video entires related to my blog then anyways.
Good luck and good earnings!
