You can’t get rich without increasing your income

The first thing that we think of when we start to feel pinched financially is that we need to get a better job, we need to increase the amount of hours we work or that we need to secure a loan to see us over this particular bump in the road, this is ultimately what keeps the vast majority of us poor, and let me define that, poor is a state of being, it is the description of a quality of life, rather than a quantification of money earned, many people who are on smaller incomes are in fact richer than some people that have double or even triple the income.

The reason is debt on liabilities, cars, houses, clothes, holidays even meals out all go on credit cards or finance agreements, in some ways not being able to obtain credit can be a blessing as you can at least say that the money you get in each month is yours, if you earn £200 a month and your outgoings are £100 then you are far better off than somebody earning £1000 and paying out £990, but to the outside world you are doing better, however the latter person will never be free, as they will continue to be kept down by the system, and make the credit companies rich through interest payments, whereas the person with £100 left over can invest in their future and become free if they choose to do so.

So what do you do if you are the person on £1000 ? well you find more sources of income, more streams that can be run with as little intervention as possible, even the smallest increases can start to change your financial balance, and the beauty of the internet ? it’s all there to be found if you care to look, right now while I am typing this in the background I am getting paid to watch videos and the money is probably the equivalent of 3 or so dollars a day, but the site I am using also offers paid surveys and other ways of making a little bit of money with very little effort, I have included a link at the bottom and yes it is an affiliate link and will benefit me should you sign up through it, but what have you got to lose ? you can run the videos in the background and use the affiliate link to sign people up, it is never going to make you rich but it will assist in that endeavour, plus while you are surfing or writing or sat watching the videos, you have turned that time where you are burning electricity and spending time into instant income, real tangible money that can be paid through paypal, and this is money you didn’t have before and that is a very good thing.

So go ahead and have a look if it’s not for you then that is cool, but it is really easy and can be run in the background, work smarter not harder!

It does push gift cards but the option to be paid through paypal is in there it is just buried deep is all!

End of the Affiliate Journey – For now at least

Possibly not the update that anybody was expecting, but life has a funny way of telling you things, small signs here and there that the direction you are taking is not the best path, I have spent some considerable time now with the Affiliate Marketing and the initial idea, which was to use paid for Facebook ads to promote a product and use Clickbank to get paid for doing so.

Things to consider when starting

  1. This is not going to be for free, Websites, YouTube videos and Guru’s sometimes try to push this message and it is fundamentally wrong, this business requires just one ingredient Traffic and this traffic needs to have some value, as in it needs to be directed, simply throwing 1000 unqualified leads at a landing page is highly unlikely to get any result, and traffic costs my friend, either in your time to build up a following on social media or in cash to by advertisements.
  2. The second thing is really an extension of the first point and was ultimately my undoing at this time, you will still need Time and quite a measurable amount too, think about it, you have to create landing pages, creatives and static ads (these can be done for free) and then place them and monitor the spending, as a side note you will notice that the majority of the success stories start with the phrase “I lost my Job” or “when I was eighteen” or some such other narrative that when you scratch beneath the surface implies that they started with a lot of time on their hands.
  3. Nearly all of the videos on YouTube are only half of the story, and in fact I would say it’s not even half more like one quarter, I promise that the curse of the blank page is nothing compared to staring at a video ad looping over and over and not knowing how to make it feel right and professional, and hiring somebody to do it is more money.

One of the conclusions I came to was this, the vast majority of the affiliate programs are centred around selling more affiliate training programs, I actually have a moral issue with this as it adds no value to peoples lives, These are nothing more than pyramid schemes in my opinion and ultimately although they can make money for some they do not for the vast majority of people involved.

I am not saying that affiliate programs are not viable in any way, I have links on this website to books that if anybody bought through me I would receive money, it would not make me rich but it would be earned simply as a by-product of something I enjoy doing, and as the reach of the website increases the scope for more people to see the links and click them also increases, this provides potential return on one time effort, and this is probably as close to Passive Income as it is possible to get.


In summary I feel it only right to say that the path to affiliate marketing that I started to take is best described as cynical, it would have worked with a larger budget and a smaller moral stance, quick money can be made this is true, but quick money is Small money, along the way I have spent time listening to giants of business and investing and a lot of their words have rung true with me, I understand the need for a side hustle if you have a day job as this is the only way to start on the road to financial freedom as all too often we start looking for money when we have grown out of our current income, and I also understand and would happily advise anybody that has the time and the freedom to dedicate every waking moment to affiliate marketing should do so, success stories are not always a tissue of lies to extract your hard earned money, a good amount of the time they are true and a reflection of what that person managed to achieve with their particular circumstances, just remember that their circumstances are NOT yours and you need to evaluate carefully what you can sacrifice in order to reach your goal, I am going to move toward the side hustle and will happily share any successes I have with you all on here, as well as getting on with the other side of the traineesuperhuman, the fitness and life motivation.

Till next time, run as fast as you can but make sure you have the right road!

Tired of procrastinating To overcome it take the time to understand it |

Another amazing article and possibly one of the most valuable lessons of all, without the ability to control procrastination we literally wont get anything done, ever, period.

I agree largely with a lot of the points raised and want to share it so we can all challenge ourselves, and see if we are standing in our own way.

Don’t start doing, just DO because the alternative is years of reading stuff on the internet trying to decide which path to take, meanwhile days months and years will tick by, others will advance, some will fail, but you will do worst of all because you will stay still.

Affiliate Marketing Guru – And Skint!

Only a quick update tonight, I have spent the last couple of days chasing down YouTube videos and reading blogs from some of the biggest names in affiliate marketing, and I have to say that I am far from impressed with what I see, there are some who say that affiliate marketing is dead and that it is almost impossible to make money from it these days, and there are some that say it isn’t, it is simply the effort that you put in that determines your outcome, and there are still more that quote affiliate businesses that make exceptional amounts of money 24hrs a day 7 days a week.

I, for the most part am a busy man, and when I am not busy I, like others am sleeping, my work takes up the vast majority of my time during the day and when I get home or finish for the day if I am working from home, I like to spend as much time as possible with my family, once the children are in bed I then return to the computer or go to the gym depending on which day it is, so if I am going to invest time in something, let alone money it has to be at least logical, and while I am happy to lose money while learning something it is important that there is the hint that the leap of faith is worthwhile.

This is where the problem comes in, and to demonstrate I will re-cap something I have said before, the gurus all seem to be selling the same thing, and as long as you can work out that you need to pull your pants down before sitting down on the toilet, you could work it out yourself and in the meantime save literally thousands of dollars (which is what this all works in) .

The Formula

  1. Sign up for an affiliate program
  2. Get social media accounts
  3. Find something to sell
  4. Create adverts or self promote through videos
  5. Sell your products

Oh and I forgot the most important part of this, go on to do this sat on a beach in the Bahamas.

My point is this, if you have 1.2million followers on Instagram or YouTube or indeed on WordPress, you Don’t need to find affiliate programs because you will have every company in the world that sells something to do with whatever you have done to get that audience kissing your ass, and probably a few companies that have nothing to do with what you do.

So what if you don’t have a million followers ? well you Pay for adverts and this is another point that I don’t think could ever be classed as a eureka moment, I mean do we really need to spend $1299 to be told to find a paid advertising solution ? hell no and if you have got that much money knocking about it would be better spent on a holiday to get over how skint you are (broke) or better still giving it to the one place that can help you sell stuff, number 4 on their 5 step plan…… wait for it………. Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, disappointed ? yeah thought so.

The more cynical people amongst us will start to wonder which came first the affiliate marketer or the guru ?

I have had two affiliate links on this Blog since pretty much when it began, for two books that I have read and they have received zero clicks, not a single one, why because the internet is a numbers game and the people that control the numbers control the money, I have 120 followers and so of that maybe only 10 percent will check out what I write and probably only 10 percent of them will look around and now I have run out of 10 percents, you get my point?


I am not saying that affiliate marketing is dead, or that you can’t make money from it, I intend to keep looking at it and I have found plenty of places that you can make videos to upload to YouTube and quite a bit about YouTube and Facebook ads, Instagram is still a bit of a mystery to me but I will look at it, no, my point is this, back in the old days of the Gold Rush, many people came to prospect and most lived their whole life to find Gold, ultimately dying alone and hot under the desert sun without a penny to their name, and some turned up went out in the afternoon struck gold and went back to their families millionaires or more, but each and every one of them had to buy picks and shovels, this blog and the reason for this slightly down beat post is simply this, I think it is the right of everyone to live their life happy and free from pain, if that means that you only want enough money to get by or you want to be a billionaire then so be it, it is in the power of everybody here to achieve wealth and happiness just like they can achieve physical fitness, and I have no issue with paying for knowledge, after all if it is true knowledge then it is worth every penny, but life is too short to be dragged in and rinsed by people, which given half a chance they will.

The gurus you see are almost all millionaires, and the ones that claim they are while sat in a bedroom, with bad audio and grainy webcam are just laughable, but you can’t get rich ripping people off with their image because they have already done it, however the fact that they keep going means that there is enough new people coming onto the net to support us all.


Perhaps we should all sell picks and shovels ? disagree with me or are you making loads of money online ? I would love to be proved wrong please comment below.

Affiliate Marketing Deep Dive – Starting out

I am not an affiliate marketer, yet, I have looked very closely at several types of online business and after a while this is really where I settled for a variety of reasons, some of which I suggest you consider too.

There are a plethora of ways to earn money online, and given enough time and effort I am sure that for some the rewards are there and huge no matter which one you choose, if you spend some time looking through YouTube the evidence is startling, I watched a couple of videos just the other day that demonstrated the runaway success that some have had, but I, and you have to be practical, Gamers that started casting their gameplay early on have made a mint, and when you look back over some of their videos you can see the evidence of how much money they are making just in the surroundings, the houses some of these people have would make Grant Cardone jealous! but at the start they were mostly sat in their bedroom in their parents house, now this is where the practicality comes in, are you any good at games ? I know I am bloody useless and I have not got the time to sit and play for hours in the hope that I get better, now if you are good then crack on just start, get a microphone, as voice overs add so much value to these videos and record your gameplay, but be warned this has been going for sometime now and I would suggest that to get to the top would take as much luck as effort, but for me it would be pointless, a handful of subscribers that felt sorry for me and a couple of views a week will buy sod all!

I am not outgoing enough to spend enough time in front of the camera, or have the time to post every five seconds on Instagram to become an Instagram star so that is out, but again if that is you then don’t read any further, close this s**t and get on Instagram, fortunes large and small are being made by people that command huge followings and there is no reason in hell why you would be any different, content appears to be content and if you are comfortable producing it people will watch, humans are voyeurs, it is in our nature, so if it is something you can do, do it, I can’t so I won’t.

Whereas Affiliate marketing looks to be perfect, it is formulaic, and crucially doesn’t rely on my personality, which is good cos if it did then I may as well hang up my laptop now!

First Decision

First decision is which affiliate program to go with, well I chose Clickbank this was a fairly easy decision actually as pretty much every program that is advertised on YouTube mentions Clickbank, names like Stefan James and John Cristani talk almost exclusively about it and it is as far as I am aware the largest one, the time and effort that is going to be required as well as financial investment means that I do not want to pick a program or platform that is going to screw me out of the money I make, and I doubt that appeals to you either.

In fact when you sign up for Clickbank there is a lot of information to help you, they have videos and written tutorials and so on all geared toward affiliates from starters to experienced looking to increase their sales.

You will also notice that the link to Clickbank above is NOT an affiliate link please feel free to look around yourself but Clickbank is simply a suggestion based on the reputation and popularity it seems to enjoy among affiliate marketing course providers and protagonists alike.

Second Decision

What to sell? What is your niche? well it would be so tempting to pick whatever you think is going to be the best seller and what has the highest percentage commission, but how are you going to design a landing page or create sales copy for a product you don’t use or like or a potentially completely unfamiliar with? whereas (and this has been the focus of my reasoning) if you pick something you are passionate about, or a product you use, it will be so much easier to create an engaging advert, because you will have seen and responded to adverts yourself for these items, I have made no secret of the fact that I will be using affiliate links in places on this blog and website, these will be centred around the things I discuss, so health, fitness, mental health and strength, and making money, these are my passions and these things form my goals so it follows that I will find it easier to promote products that I can get behind personally, and the good news is that the vastness of the internet and the diversity of the user base means that you could pick any niche and with the right effort and techniques make your fortune with it.

Consider this as well, the side hustles as you make your way through this journey you will be forced to learn new skills, copy writing, SEO, web design, even how to obtain and configure hosting, all of which once you are proficient you can sell as a service to people like yourself looking to shortcut the learning curve.

And of course that is something you can do too, fiverr is an awesome resource for people that will set up your hosting and web site to driving traffic to your site, usually the cost is not exorbitant but you do have to take your chances that you get someone who knows what they are doing.

So I hope this has been useful and given you a direction to head in, please feel free to comment any questions you may have below and if I can answer them I will, but for me I am going to start by researching my niches and creating copy and sites to direct my advertising toward.