Category Archives: Money

It’s Been Awhile…

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When I first started this blog/website way back in 2006, my intentions for it were for it to be some sort of online business.  Seven years later and I have not earned a red cent from this blog.  As a matter of fact, I haven’t really tried that hard, but that’s mostly due to my various medical conditions stemming initially from a brain tumor I had about 10 years ago.  I get bad eye strain from typing for too long, and writing 1000+ word blog entries just didn’t seem appealing at times, and I didn’t really have anything valuable to share, at least nothing original.  But then again, there are hardly any original ideas out there anymore.  Everyone is a collection of everyone else’s ideas and thoughts.  I’ve heard from someone that most people go through their entire lives without having an original thought.  Isn’t that pathetic?

For the past six months or so, on and off, I’ve been going through Steve Pavlina‘s archives.  I started way back in 2004, and now I’m somewhere in the late 2008 phase of his blog.  That man is a true legend in the blogosphere and in the personal development field.  For me, he’s the person who started me on the right path after I was expelled from college for doing things that I would describe as bullying and passive-aggressive behaviors.

Now I’ve got a job that pays decent enough, I’ve saved over $26,000 in the past 4 years, and I can genuinely say that I’m happy where I am in most aspects of my life.  Sure, I may work the graveyard shift, and I may not always feel my best, but I definitely feel my life is far more under control than it has ever been before.  I enjoy the one person I work with each night, and there have been many that I have worked with.  I’ve accepted my disabilities and my limitations, and people who know what I have been through consider me a miracle, an inspiration to others not to give up.

For those of you who do not know, I had a pineal gland malignant germinoma, which resulted in me going through a very traumatic brain surgery, where the surgeon actually separated the two halves of my brain in order to pull out a piece of my tumor to see what kind it was.  It was a 9-hour affair.  I’m just glad I was out for all of it.  They took the back of my skull off my head and went all the way into the center of my brain to pull out what I believe was a few pieces of my tumor.  I certainly wouldn’t recommend it if you don’t have to go through it.

After that ordeal, I had 30 days of radiation treatment, 15 days which were whole brain radiation, and the second 15 that were targeted radiation treatment to specifically melt the rest of my tumor.  I was 16 years old when I had the surgery, and 17 when I had my radiation.  It was one of the hardest challenges of my life, and it has affected me in oh so many ways, both positive and negative.  Sure, I might not have a college degree or a high-paying job, but I can say for anyone who is going through a similar experience that I never, ever gave up.

I am in no way perfect, but that’s not the point, now is it?  I’ve simply done the best I can with the cards I was dealt.  At least I have a supportive family who will stand behind me.  And I’ve got tons of interests in various things, including the nature of reality, reading (audiobooks mostly), writing from time to time, music, comedy, David Icke’s material, healthful eating, meditation (to the degree I can focus my mind), raising my level of consciousness, personal development, and others I can’t really think of right now.

Mama always said that God only gives people the things they can handle.  I guess God thought I could handle brain cancer.  I’ve only met one other person who has ever had a tumor in a similar part of the brain, and he had a far worse cancer than I did.  My type of cancer and its location were one in a million.  And I was born with it, and it slowly grew up until I was about 16, and that’s when it started pinching off a ventricle in my brain, causing headaches you can’t even imagine.  It’s been a long journey getting back to where I feel like I found a job I can do and have been doing for close to 4 years now.  As for making money from this blog, it’s not a pressing issue, although the extra income would be nice.  I’ll have to give that some consideration in the near future.

Peace out, world.

Steve Pavlina’s Passive Income Series

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Steve Pavlina has been writing an entire series on passive income lately, and although he hasn’t exactly got to the how-to aspects yet, his posts are pretty enlightening on this subject.  First, he is trying to weed out the pretenders, the people who are considered self-help junkies, those who consume vigorous amounts of material, but never do anything meaningful with it.  I am truly enjoying the posts he’s written so far, and it has helped me really see the mindset of someone who earns passive income, rather than active income.  The series starts here.  So far, there’s been around 8 or so posts on the ideas of passive income, and these will help you build a foundation to figure out if you are the kind of person who wants to earn passive income.  I’ll definitely be following along myself, and even attempting some of the passive income streams on this website if I can figure out how to implement them.

This blog has had its successes when it comes to traffic, but it has also had its lulls in traffic.  It is partially my fault for not shamelessly marketing myself constantly.  I’m sure if I got my blog in the hands of more people, it would pick up steam.  I could make a million excuses for why I haven’t marketed myself as much as I could, but the truth of  is that having a blog is easy, but running a business is hard work, and it requires a ton of work that I don’t even know about.  There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes on that is barely noticeable to anyone who doesn’t run a business.  That, and the fact that I’m not the most apt when it comes to HTML and other programming languages.  I’ve thought about joining SBI!, but I’ve gone through their tutorials, and I don’t think I’ll be able to create a website based on some niche topic that I would easily get bored with quickly.  The best ideas I have for a website involve the concepts of comedy, subjective reality, and personal development.  I could create a website that encompasses all three of those things, but I don’t want to be limited by those things.

My writing is very stream of consciousness, and it has to do with whatever is on my mind at that particular time.  Sometimes I’ll just start writing with a blank slate and see what comes to mind.  One example of this is the post Prison Reform.  I had no idea I was going to write about how horrible prisons are and how that system isn’t working until I took a look at what my biggest fears are.  And that’s when I realized that my biggest fear is going to prison.  Above all else.  And it’s fucked up that prisons are filled with violence and rape, among other things, where you are stripped of all your individual rights and pretty much a slave.  And  most of those people are not beyond redemption.  Most of those people can change for the better, if they change their environment and the people who surround them.  Most people in prison were born into that way of life, living in places where there are no jobs, no way to escape the turmoil of a life below the poverty line.  But those in power try to keep those people down, in order to maintain power over.  What those in power fear the most is a truly equal society.

Like I said, I have so many ideas floating around in my head, and so many statements to make about the culture we live in that all I really need to do is find a way to put it all under one umbrella and then I could start a website that actually makes sense from a passive income standpoint.  If I could earn a couple thousand dollars a month from this website, or another, then I could really start to save some real money and get myself financially abundant.  I just need help in achieving that goal.  I need to learn from others’ mistakes and my own mistakes as well.  It’s all about creating a brand that is uniquely me.  I’ve seen it done on numerous websites and blogs.  The woman who used to write on Violent Acres turned her abusive childhood and unique sense of humor into a very popular and profitable site.  Steve Pavlina created a website based on his hobby of personal growth.  Leo Babauta created a wonderful site called Zen Habits simply by writing about his passion of simplicity and fulfillment.  He’s made enough money so that he doesn’t have to work anymore, except on his blog and whatever ebooks he wishes to create.  There are a wide variety of ways to create an income-generating website, and I just have to figure out the formula and learn all the hidden tricks for high web traffic and I’ll be golden.

I love to write about a variety of topics, and my small audience seems to appreciate it as well.  I write for myself as much as I write for anyone else, as it allows me to create something that otherwise would not exist.  I’m at least throwing myself out there to an extent.  But I know deep down that if I am to earn any kind of living from this kind of work, I need to figure out a way to build traffic and monetize this website to the point where I’m making enough to cover all my expenses and then some.  Sure, it will be a lot of work up front, but once I have the traffic rolling in, I’ll be pretty much on autopilot.

Anyway, check out Steve Pavlina’s Passive Income Series and see if you also would like to create some passive income in one way or another.  It certainly beats active income, where you only get paid while you are working.  It could be the best thing you’ve ever done for yourself, and the downside is pretty limited.  The upside is almost unlimited, so where is the risk really?  If it doesn’t work out, it’s not like you’ve risked anything but a little of your time.  Until next time…

If you found this post insightful, helpful, or thought-provoking, feel free to donate to my site.

Let’s Start a Revolution

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I find it funny, even hilarious at how low this blog ranks in search engines.  Last time I checked, it was somewhere in the rankings of 3,000,000 when it came to websites.  I mean, that’s not bad, but it certainly won’t earn me any money, nor will it generate any buzz.  I could promote and market my site, but that seems tedious and pointless, so I’m just going to have to stay content being off the map.  And I’m fine with it, but eventually I’ll want to grow this cash cow into something that actually earns cash.  A million dollars would be nice, more even.  Just so I can live my life any way I please without many negative consequences.

Once this million dollars comes into my life, I plan to get a nice piece of land out in the country and build a small, modest home on it.  When I say small, I mean it.  Maybe 500 square feet, maybe less.  Perhaps a little more, but I’m sure most of that space will go to waste.  I plan to live there and write/explore.  I find that writing has a lot of solace in it and I enjoy it immensely.  I may write for others, or even just myself.  It won’t matter, because I won’t need any more money for the rest of my life.  I’ll eat very healthily and be at my physical peak, whatever that means for me.  And I won’t invest or anything, I’ll just have a savings account where it will earn interest at least equal to inflation.  I just need to get this damn blog on the map and watch the cash roll in.

It would be nice to be able to devote my entire life to what I believe in, but right now I still have to earn a living.  Earning a living takes a lot of energy out of me, and I can no longer work as hard on other pursuits.  We should be on the  front lines starting a revolution, but we have jobs and cars and homes to pay for and it seems only the unemployed have any free time.  These are people who are most likely wasting much of their free time drinking alcohol or using illicit drugs.  No offense intended.  I’m sure there are a lot of good workers who lost their jobs, and I’m not referring to them.  Why aren’t these people rioting in the streets?  Why aren’t they protesting our governmental tyranny?  Why aren’t they defending the Earth from corporate enslavement?  I don’t know.

There are some people out there who do make a difference, but the problem is that there aren’t enough of them.  And these people are mostly fringe, which gives them far less credibility than Noam Chomsky.  I’ve read articles about the freegans, who live without money, or as little money as possible, living off of the throw-away culture that we have created.  Here’s an article from the NY Times about this:  The Freegan Establishment.  They are considered modern hunter-gatherers.  They are living what the perceive as an ethical life with hardly any money, and people like me, and some others who are far worse, can’t see themselves doing this unless they had a windfall of money.

These people are squatting abandoned homes, eating food out of dumpsters, and traveling across the country while the rest of us are stuck at our soul-crushing jobs so that we can afford our mortgages and car payments.  They are doing what they believe should be rights to food, shelter, and autonomy.  But this world we live in denies those basic human rights to anyone who isn’t willing to become a corporate slave or scammer.  And believe me, there are plenty of scammers out there, especially on Wall Street.  This world is insane, and yet we are forced to go along with it or be shot, jailed, or simply bent to the will of our corporate masters as they kill the Earth with a giant smile.  It makes me sick, but hardly anyone is revolting.

Is it ignorance?  Is it hopelessness?  Is it depression?  What in the world is holding people back?  Do most people actually think this world is sane?  Is that the case?  Seriously?  Just take a look around you.  Look at the history books (that ironically have been edited from what truly happened, substantially).  Read books about forbidden history, the stuff that people who wrote history didn’t want you to know.  Realize that this world is under control by sinister forces, with questionable origins, and that they are conditioning you every day with their constant propaganda of telling you how to feel, what to think, who to admire, and who to condemn.  That is part of the reason I stopped watching television altogether, save for a few instances.  They can’t get to you if you don’t play their game.

When I read about people breaking free of the system and living a different way, it inspires me.  It gives me hope that there are cracks to break through.  The few people who do live on the fringes of society seem to have more fulfilling lives, because they actually stand for something.  Most people do jobs that are meaningless in the context of the meaning of life.  They usually do things that anyone could do if they had the necessary skills, and most jobs are less than extraordinary.  They are a means to and end, a fucking paycheck that most people spend completely before the next payday, thereby perpetuating their need for continuous employment.  But there is a better way.  You don’t have to let the system hold you over a barrel.

You can live very well cheaply while still working and save tons of money.  I’ve done it.  Others have done it.  You just have to adjust your thinking from the high-budget lifestyle to the low-budget lifestyle.  I haven’t bought new shoes in over 2 years.  I haven’t bought new clothes in longer.  I receive clothing as gifts, which I wear.  I eat a pretty healthy diet for less than you would expect.  I do own a car, but I bought it cheap from my grandfather for about half its value.  I very rarely buy things I don’t need.  I hardly ever go out to eat.  I am mentally out of the system, but I still hold down a job and do it well.  I just am not as dependent on it as others, whose life would fall apart if they got fired or laid off.

I’ve got some links in my sidebar about how to do this, and the most pivotal essay is Ran Prieur’s How to Drop Out. He articulates better than me, but we have similar messages.  He is in his 40s, but it feels like his consciousness is somewhere in the mid 20′s range.  This guy is what I do to the extreme.  He even bought land that he is building a cobwood house on.  He may be a semi-dropout, but he makes a hell of a lot more sense than those indoctrinated politicians, and by following this guy’s example, we can create heaven on Earth, instead of this toxic and unstable civilization.  Read some of his other essays as well.  Some very interesting stuff there.

Talkin’ bout revolution… Let’s do it!  We just need to get enough people aware of what is going on in the world.  And we need to get these people to start living the way us “dropouts” do.

If you found this post insightful, helpful, or thought-provoking, feel free to donate to my site.

You Don’t Need It

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In this holiday season, people may go out on spending sprees, going into debt, and spending the rest of the year paying it off.  We are the consumer culture, buying things we can’t afford made by people in third world countries we’ll never meet.  It’s just the newest chapter of exploitation and greed.  Imagine a world where we didn’t do all of this.  Imagine a world where we were happy with what we had, and didn’t constantly need a new product to make our lives feel whole.  Imagine a world where we saved money, instead of frivolously spending it on things we would later regret buying.  We buy and buy and buy for others during this holiday season, when what we could give them is much more meaningful than a gift.  You could cook them a meal, make them some cards, or just tell these people how you feel about them.  You could have a nice family meeting where everyone goes around saying good things about each other.  There is plenty you can do in lieu of gifts.

For the past few years, when people have asked me what I want for Christmas, I’ve often said, “I don’t know.”  The only thing I would possibly want would be maybe an Amazon gift card to add a few more books to my Kindle, or something that I will get continuous value from, like a mug warmer or a new desk for my computer.  But I don’t really need those things, I just want them.  The desk I have is okay, it works, and I would have to get rid of this one in order to get a new one.  What I could really use is a small filing cabinet that could fit where the tower part of a computer would go if I had a desktop computer.  That way I could be a bit more organized.  Ever since the drawer bottom came out of my one drawer in this desk, I’ve been using a box on the floor.  But it hasn’t caused any suffering yet.  It’s just a minor inconvenience.  And I could easily head down to the Salvation Army and find a file cabinet that fits my needs and I could easily afford it.

What is it we actually need?  Food, water, some kind of shelter, people who support us, and fuel for those terribly cold months some areas of the world experience.  That’s pretty much it.  It is not required to have an iPhone or a Sony Entertainment System.  Those are things that can easily be done without.  Most of us would say we need a computer or a television, but that is simply not true.  Even though today’s world is full of them, and many people’s jobs rely on these new technologies, are they really necessary?  No, but they are still worth having sometimes because we all like to use them every once in awhile.  Self-deprivation is no fun, and we should have things we use, but things we do not use or will never use should be donated, or simply thrown away.  Or even recycled.

Many people today are minimalists and they don’t even know it.  There are people who are minimalists by necessity, because they have very little or no money.  Then there are those who are very wealthy who own very little, because they’ve seen beyond the socially-conditioned way of life and choose to only own what is useful to them.  It’s all about the mindset.  Not to mention that it is wise to save money and buy less now before the complete collapse of the economy.  It won’t take long for this to happen, just a few decades at the most.  We have no idea of the times that we are headed for.  Things certainly haven’t gotten any better, and if that’s any indication of how our future will be, then we need to stop spending fast.  I just hope our government stops printing money so that we don’t experience hyperinflation, which will make all the money we saved up essentially worthless.

I’m trying to justify minimalism in these hard times, because it will be best for us when it all comes crashing down.  And that all this spending, all this debt, is exactly the problem.  Stimulating the economy through credit cards and loans is not going to solve the problem, but just make it worse.  Do you hear that, Washington?  Stop all the spending and maybe someday we’ll get out of this recession.  Stop spending all our hard-earned money on things that don’t benefit us, like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Those wars haven’t helped the American people one bit.  In fact, it has crippled them.  So has all this outsourcing to China and other countries that will willingly exploit their people to send up cheaply-made merchandise.  Is this the world we were meant to live in?  I think not.

Why aren’t people willing to do the things that are necessary to creating the world we were meant to have?  It’s going to start on a conscious level, moving down to the physical.  We need to have a global rise in consciousness before we can get anything done.  We need leaders to get those who are not quite there yet up to our level.  We need to educate people about what is really going on in the world, so that they can make informed choices on what to buy and what not to buy.  Not only that, but what to do, and what not to do.  If we stopped buying things from the corporations who exploit other nations and other people, then they would have no power whatsoever.  If we all stopped going to Walmart and Target and Best Buy, then perhaps we would see a change for the better.  If people would actually think of why something is so cheap and think of the people who actually have to produce these things, there would be the start of a consciousness revolution.

It sure is a mad world out there.  And most people would rather be left in the dark about it, because if they don’t know, they don’t feel they are contributing to it.  But that is sheer willful ignorance.  We are all contributing to this world in one way or another, and we can decide in which way we want to contribute.  We can move towards fear or we can move towards love.  We can keep going on this suicidal trainwreck, or we can stop the train and figure out which steps need to be taken to restore the world to what it once was.  For the benefit of all creatures, not just our narrow, unenlightened self-interest.  Why is it that everyone who ever told us to live together in harmony either got shot or killed in some other way?  When are we finally going to be ready to hear this, much less do it?

How to Build a Low Traffic Blog

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I’m sure I can write a coherent article about building a low traffic blog because I’ve had one for around 4 years now.  Let’s not play dumb and pretend that my traffic is sizable.  It is not.  Check out my Alexa ranking.  Right now it is in the 5 millions.  I was actually surprised to see that because before it was in the 6 millions.  So I guess I’m moving on up.  My website is viewed not very often, I assume.  If there are 5 million other websites getting more traffic than me, then perhaps I’m doing something wrong.  Or maybe it’s just that people would rather read more established websites.  Perhaps my content has not been constant enough for the average reader.  I’ve talked about way too many different things on here, but that’s who I am.  I’m not a robot who only wants to write about one topic and stick to it.  I like to mix it up and go through phases, such as my anarcho-primitivist phase where I blasted humanity big time for probably about a year.  But I always said there was a better way to live and there is.

Let’s take a look back at the history of this blog.  I started this blog sometime in 2006 to make money and eventually be able to live off of it.  That was my primary intention.  I wanted to help people, too, just make money as well.  I figured that I’m a pretty good writer, and I have ideas about things, so why not offer them to the general public?  So I did.  Within a year, I bought my first domain name and went from Blogger to WordPress.  I did okay with traffic for a little while, mostly because I was posting on topics that people actually wanted to read, like Personal Development and comedy.  It was a time when I was starting to truly build a small, but sizable following, and my ranking was somewhere in the 1 millions.  I still hadn’t made a dime from this site, but at least I was getting somewhere in terms of success.

Then I started really enjoying nature and started reading stuff about simplifying my life and how we humans are destroying the Earth, which is still true regardless of how few people want to hear it.  I got my inspiration from people like Dave Pollard and Ran Prieur, both who run pretty successful websites, at least compared to mine.  Dave Pollard has been running his blog since 2002 and Ran Prieur’s website has been up around just as long.  I totally resonated with what they were saying and jumped on that bandwagon pretty quickly.  And I still feel this way today, to a point, but the more I rant about it, the more people don’t want to read it.  I know the old adage that people will listen when they are ready and only when they are ready, but the planet is dying, for God’s sake!  And there isn’t much being done about it.  But that kind of talk still falls on deaf ears I guess, or maybe, just maybe, people are so entrenched in their current way of life that they would rather die than give it up.

Finally, I started talking about stuff like who are we, and what is reality?  I guess that’s what caused my traffic “spike.”  I’ve been steadily increasing in traffic for the last few months, although it is a small increase.  I’m still not an A-list blogger, nor do I think that will ever happen with this blog, mostly because my past entries are way too chaotic and I don’t have a good framework for high page views.  I tried installing plugins like ‘Related Posts,’ and it ruined my site until I was able to remove it.  It caused all the blog entries to become incoherent lines of code.  I have no idea why all the sidebars disappear when I click on just  one entry and read it.  I am clueless when it comes to computer programming and I hate it with a passion.  I’ve never been a fan of programming, and I don’t think I ever will.  It’s just so tedious and exacting.

I wish I had the work ethic or the programming skills to make this website better, but I don’t.  I wish I had someone to do it for me, but I don’t.  I am thinking of creating another website so I can start over from scratch, but without my name attached to it, so that way maybe I can rebuild some traffic and have mostly articles I know people want to read.  Not only that, I want to create a website that is much more technically sound than this one, and I have to learn all these skills before attempting this.  I want to still keep this website, but as a secondary one.  I’ll still post here semi-regularly, as I have for the past 4 years, but it will be less of a disappointment if I can get another blog off the ground where I can actually build sizable traffic.  It will be a whole new format, a whole new platform for me.  I won’t be linking to it from here.  I’ll be promoting it elsewhere, far far away from the stigma of a low traffic website.  It is going to be completely original because I know exactly what it is I want to do with it.

I’m going to have a central theme on that website.  It will be unavoidable.  But I’m not ready to actually create this website yet.  I might just create a free blog and post there for awhile until I figure out exactly what it is I want to do with this new direction I’m taking my blogging.  I’m going to learn from the mistakes I made on this blog, albeit 4 years later.  I’m going to market it better, have a bigger following, and create truly meaningful content.  Maybe I’ll even make some money from it.  That would be nice.  Because this website has made me nothing, even when I had ads on it, and I’m so anti-advertising that I would balk at even placing an ad in the corner.  I won’t make a dime without traffic, so that should be my main concern, and creating and delivering unique and valuable content.  Content that has high social value and high personal value.  I’ve often thought I mostly blog on here for myself and whoever might want to read it.  But perhaps I’ve been doing it all backwards.  I don’t know, but I sure as hell have a great example of a blog that hasn’t really blossomed the way I hoped it would and it is nice that this failure of a blog will be here for years to come.  It will be a good example of what not to do with a blog if you want to make money from it.

Here is a list of things I have done that I suggest nobody does if they want to build a successful, high traffic blog:

  • Not having any central theme whatsoever
  • Not posting with any regularity
  • Creating content that you know is not your best
  • Ranting and raving about the same thing for over a year
  • Not knowing how to make your website have all the neat blogging gadgets
  • Being afraid to offend anyone
  • Taking all negative feedback seriously
  • Writing about things most people aren’t ready to hear
  • Not optimizing anything or marketing whatsoever
  • Thinking that blogging will be easy
  • I hope you get the general idea…

I know that some people like this blog, while most either don’t like it or don’t know about it.  I’ve received tons of feedback, most of it positive.  My next website will not allow comments.  Why?  Because I don’t want to spend my time moderating them.  I still like this blog, I’m just admitting that it isn’t successful.  And that’s okay.  I’m not willing to say that it has been 4 years wasted.  I have shown flashes of true brilliance on this blog and I can’t deny that.  I just didn’t always have brilliant posts and some of them were simply too similar to the previous posts and that is where I think I lost a lot of people.  But that’s fine.  I’m going to start fresh soon with a whole new blog and do my best to correct the mistakes I am aware of and try to find the mistakes I am still unaware of.  Just scan the archives to see what the progression of a long-term low traffic blog is, because I am a prime example.  At least I admit it and at least I am trying to learn from it.  My next blog will be at least a little better and I can move on from there.  Maybe by 2020 I’ll actually be earning money from a website, or maybe from a book I write.  Who knows?

If you found this post insightful, helpful, or thought-provoking, feel free to donate to my site.