Tom’s Blog

I turned 26 on Monday 15. Well I know it’s not a bog deal, it happens every year… But this place is my personal blog and I don’t update it very often with something new and personal. So… Happy Birthday to me ! (damn I’m late, it was 5 days ago !)

It’s been a very long time I didn’t update my personal blog. I wrote on my internet marketing trip blog that I’m not a blogger? I’m very busy building websites (actually other blogs) for affiliate marketing purpose, but I have to say that reporting my adventures is not something I really think about.

Anyway the title of this post is Happy Birthday. Well one of my previous post was already called “Happy Birthday To Me”, so today is not my birthday, but it’s officially the first birthday of my small business launch.

The 19th september 2007 (so yes I’m late) I created my affiliate marketing small business and it seems it’s still alive. I’m still not a big player in the industry and I don’t want to take the place of any guru or whatever. I just want to live the life I want and having enough money to realize my dreams. I just want to do my own thing, live my own way.

So I hope this business will still be alive next year and the ears to come.

This morning, I finally had an email of ClixGalore, one of the affiliate network I am working with. They sent me $1,947 to my PayPal account. That’s cool. Yeah, and no.

Actually, I am happy that these last month earnings are finally arriving, but last month, before payments start being processed, I asked them, since I broke the $1,000 commission mark in a month to directly transfer this to my bank account.

After an email from me and them, I gave them my IBAN (International Bank Account Number in case you’re wondering). I sent another email to get confirmation they well received it. They said yes, so I was just waiting the money to appear in my bank account.

There is no really much difference that it comes to my PayPal account or directly in my bank account. But it just seems like I wasted my time to ask them for a wire transfer, giving them bank informations and that they confirm they will do it, and actually didn’t.

I emailed them again, asking to solve this, but then I saw something interesting and have to email them again to tell them it was okay for me to get my funds with PayPal.

ClixGalore doesn’t transfer funds instantly, they pay with a deferred wire. So I first receive an email telling me I WILL receive money, but have to wait one more week to have the transaction completed.

ClixGalore would have taken a $35 fee to send me the funds to my bank account. In PayPal, I saw that the fees were only $5. This is because on deferred payment, fees can’t be more than $5. Well it’s written, no more than 5 Euros, but I got a $5 fee, which is better than $35.

Then, transferring the funds from PayPal to my bank account will be free. I’ve always been paid by ClixGalore since I’m using them. It’s quite long to wait for payment but that’s the way it is and ClixGalore is currently the network I’m making the most of my money.

I’m using a lot of other networks but for now, they don’t made me as much. I need to find the offers for each networks that will make the difference.

I’m a little late, I know. Sorry for the delay, but it’s better late than never. So HAppy new year to everyone.

I’m currently not at home. I visited friends for the holidays and I should be back Saturday. Working online gives  this advantage to work from anywhere in the world, providing you have an internet connection. I even don’t have a laptop, but my friends let me use their computer to update my websites and blogs.

That’s cool, and it’s a nice way to keep some social life. It’s true that working from home can keep you away from your friends and family. When I am at home, I spend most of the time at my computer. I think that being able to work from the home of others force me to work faster, and spend some times with them, cause I can’t just say “Hey I use the computer all day long, see you tonight”.

Well my vacations are almost over so I still have some little times to have fun.

Bye.

Merry Christmas !

Celebrate with all your close and loved ones  tonight, hope you’ll get what what you asked to Santa. If you don’t, kick his ass. If you have too much, send it to me.

Have fun !

That just makes me sick. I guess we will never understand what went through their minds, may be they just can’t think.

I was on digg.com 2 minutes ago and reached this article from the first page : Two Teens Kill 7-Year-Old Girl with Supposed Mortal Kombat Moves.

Two teens, a girl and her boyfriend killed the 7 year old sister of one of them. Their defense : they imitate Mortal Kombat moves. How mad is that ? It can be real or it can be just lies, this is just mad.

I like video games, few years ago I played a lot to it, not really now, but I know the violence of some. My point of view : VIDEO GAMES DON’T CREATE VIOLENT OR STUPID PEOPLE.

I played all the Doom games, I played all the GTA, I played Street Fighters and Mortal Kombat, I played a lot of games where people get killed, that never made me a murderer. I never woke up with a blood thirst too.

Some people think Rockstar Games (creator of GTA) influence kids to become gangsters or murderers. Hey, when you buy a video game, the gun is not offered in the box as an additional gift.

It’s bad that they had to claim they were imitating some Mortal Kombat tricks, this will just add some bad reputation to the video games and their influence.

From the article we can guess the poor little girl has been hit more than once. The teens may only be 16 or 17, don’t tell me they are not responsible from what they’ve done. None of them even stop the other one from slamming a child. None of the two of them thought they were doing something dangerous.

If you think movies or video games are the problem, then you have a problem.

I hate that kind of story. We’re in the 21st century.

I don’t really know what to blog about, well just now, because I blogged on another blog. (It’s a lot of “blog” words don’t you think ?). I came across the website Crack Smonkin’ T-Shirts a store for “Funny and Offensive T-Shirts That Get attention“, and here is one that get mine.

Crack Smokin’ Shirts is a store that will allow you the possibility to choose the style of your T-shirt. The home page only displays the basic T-shirt style, but if you click on an article, you actually choose on what style you want the pattern to be printed : basic t-shirt, ringer, spaghetti strap and baby dolls for girls or hoodie.

If you need some attention, then you may found something special there.

Yesterday was my birthday, I’m 25, a fourth of a century. I didn’t celebrate it with friends or family. The last time I can remember I celebrated this with friends was for my 19. I think I don’t see as many people as I did at this time.

I ended school in 2002, and since then, lots of my relationship faded, and some have be completely erased. The total number of people who thought about me yesterday is 8.  4 were my family (father, mother and 2 brothers), then 4 friends gave me a call or sent a sms.

I don’t really care not much people thought about my birthday even if I almost never forget others, I think I get used to this. What about you ?

Happy birthday to me.

There are some times you feel you didn’t work at all. You did some few things but results are not immediate and you think you didn’t achieve anything.

It happened today for me.

• I blogged about article marketing at imtrip.com,
• I blogged on another topic on a new website too,
• I did some keyword research for this same new website,
• I wrote down few ideas,
• I tested a new Adwords campaign (just entered keywords, build an ad and see traffic and cost estimations) - want to be ready for the Christmas rush,
• I updated affiliate links another website,
• I finally join Commission Junction, I almost joined all the other big networks and am not sure why I didn’t get in earlier. Plus there is a CJ France, that’s cool.
• I emailed TradeDoubler to become an international affiliate. Yeah, there is a TradeDoubler France too, but most all of my websites are in english.
• I re-joined Amazon affiliate program. I did a long time ago but never used it, so I wanted to start from the start and ask them to close my current account, and today opened a new one.
• I am writing this post

Well, all these things are little things, and don’t bring any results. Of course these things will be useful for the next days, but there is a feeling of “I can’t get no satisfaction” that stays in mind.

What is the purpose of this post ? I’d say it is to give advice : Focus on your goals, all the things you are doing seriously for your business (or any project) are useful. Even if some errors occur, you’ll learn from them.

Be patient, and the effort you’ll put in your work will pay.

That would be a nice gift for me. You see, most of the websites I made are in english, and most of the offers I promote are from US merchants or at least paid in USD. This wouldn’t be a problem if we were back in 2002.

At this time, we, Europe people, just switch from our national currency to the Euro and $1 = 1Euro. It’s not true anymore. The Euro is very strong and kept getting higher versus the dollar, or maybe it’s the dollar that gets lower, and I think it’s even both. The European economy seems going better than the US one.

The currency is just one reflect of the economy and, well, I’m not an economy analyst so I’ll stop figuring why and how it happened (I’ve read newspapers and watched TV news). At the exact time I’m writing these words $1 = 0.67 €. Ouch ! 5 years earlier I would not have to do the math to know how much I earned.

This last week has been very profitable to me and I saw one product I’m promoting bringing me more than $1000, and sales are still coming. What a great news I said, then I just thought about the dollar/euro rate.

Since the payment of these commissions should be in my paypal account around the 20th of December, requesting a transfer should make the funds in my bank account close to Christmas.

So PLEASE, Santa, hear my prayer, make the dollar stronger for Christmas !