Today I have been listening to Cartel - Matter of Time. That song freakin’ rocks.

My week of posts is ending with this post. I can say that as of now, it has become not such a hard task to keep posting. Most of the time, though, I would just come up with the topic of the post just after I had started writing it. Today is no exception. 

Today I was catching up on Lost as finally the fourth season is on. I don’t really watch TV nor any other TV series (I do sometimes watch a few Anime but that’s not often anyway) but Lost is just interesting. I don’t like the fact that they are still releasing it and I kinda waste time every week (watching it at once would be much better) but hey, whatever.I guess that’s it. Nothing informative today. I was thinking of extending this a post a day experiment but I finally decided not to do it this week. However, let’s see if this week makes me post to my blog more often…

P.S. Weekly TO-DO lists are worth trying. :)

Today I had almost forgotten that I need to do a post and just now, with only a few hours left, it dawned on me. I don’t really have much to say today either. So, I have let myself wonder a bit and see what has come out.

The thing is that I am still uncertain about a lot of things in my life. I am just seeking for answers if I could call that ’seeking’ and ‘answers’. My best bet now probably is to experience more different things to find out what could stick for me. If that doesn’t work, I don’t know what will. I am, however, realizing that nowadays life isn’t this “choose this path and follow it blindly” thing but rather “do many things, change”. Or perhaps I only want it to be so.

Still…I have also been reading about NLP recently and I got another interesting part of this: the visualizations. To put it pretty simply - if you don’t like some event in your past (i.e. it brings you negative emotions), say you got blamed for something, you imagine the person blaming you, in your mind you make the image really small, remove the colors and hold the image still. On the other hand, if you want more of something, say you achieved a goal and was in the state, you imagine yourself at that moment, intensify the colors, make the image brighter, closer to yourself and moving. This way your brain can process information and you can get over your past, triggering positive emotions. That’s what theory says.

Does it work? I am not sure. I think it might have something to it. Currently, I have been trying it a few times but as with most things, it’s hard to keep at it. But I wonder if I could get rid of more negative emotions using this kind of technique. After all, aside from that “always be effective” generalization crap, this was at least something possible to put into practice that I could pick up from the NLP stuff. 

Today I checked a few popular blogs and I’ve made an assumption which I find hard to deny that they have all got this “I’ve got it goin’ on already” attitude. Seriously, can you name a popular blog of some guy who doesn’t (sub-)announce himself as an expert in the field he’s blogging in? People don’t really care that “you’re learning”, they need you “to deliver” and they hope to get something from you. Most of the time they don’t. Reading the experts is often a time-waste and that’s why I have unsubscribed from most of these ‘expert’ blogs.

I always wanted to use ‘perhaps’ instead of ‘maybe’ more often because ‘perhaps’ sounds cooler but now I am beginning to see that I use perhaps too often. 

Okay, I have a story to tell!

I had set-up two affiliate advertising campaigns in Adwords last week. I kept logging in from time to time to check the statistics of those campaigns but I kept seeing 0 clicks and the costs as $0.

Then, today, before going to do my stuff, I logged into my affiliate account and I saw this:

Okay, the first two were organic sales I had made (yup, I’m starting to get some luck reward there too!) But the two for the last period, that is, $49.59 couldn’t have come from organic sales.

I logged into adwords to check the statistics. I kept saying 0, so, I wondered, what’s going on. Then, I changed the data display period for the whole month and I saw that I had actually received 152 clicks on one campaign with the total cost of $16.35 and also 48 clicks on the second campaign with the cost of $12.25. I checked out and noticed I had made one sale in the latter one to the total of about $30 while I lost money on the first one. Overall, I spent $28.5 to earn $49.59 which is a return of 74 percent.

Now, I know not that much about affiliate marketing, I did not do much tracking and my campaigns were not tweaked that well. But, from these results, I can see how I am getting to start it!

If I learn to manage the campaigns better, do better tracking and continue on organic sales, maybe in the end I can get my own product and get myself and later, affiliates to promote it for passive income! If that’s the case, I can actually manage to make a living like this!

Now, these are just baby steps and they are quite late but I am getting to get it and so this really motivates. I think I’m gonna keep on doing some more stuff from now. Wish me luck! :)

P.S. I checked the first campaign in Adwords and noticed (as I was doing placement-targeted advertising) that I was losing big on all the other sites except one where I was getting very cheap clicks. I cancelled all the other sites and left that one only. Too bad it isn’t getting so much traffic… About the second campaign, well, I can’t really do much because it’s keyword-targeted (except to search for more keywords). We’ll see.

Fifth day and I know not what to post again. I’m not really on the right mood and it seems I am continuing it just because I have made a commitment to do so. I’m going to, therefore, get away, by simply linking to a picture I page I had found quite some time ago along with a quote of Carl Sagan on that page. It’s called Pale Blue Dot. Makes you wonder…

Let’s talk about something else today related to yesterday’s topic.

It makes sense, that our beliefs determine how we act and what outcome we get. But, listening to Logically Critical, I realized that a question he had asked was reasonable: can you really choose your beliefs?

Sure, they can develop as we get exposed to new information. Say, a belief that “everything that happens is to the better” - seems like a nice one but how do you go about it? You can try to think that it’s true but it’s not like you would believe it just because you think it’s a useful belief to have. You may say you have the belief but do you really have it or do you just say you have it?

Generally, to have a belief, you must be persuaded. At least, I think, that’s the case for me… Maybe that’s why we don’t really see people getting new beliefs everytime they decide it would be good.

P.S. A short one for today. Posting everyday is becoming not as bad. Perhaps I’ll begin covering some different topics in the upcoming days. So far, only 3 days to go and we’ll see if we continue this.

Hurry hurry, let’s make a quick post today. Today I got to sleep a lot but afterwards I have been pretty busy (and it’s not over, although I’ll get some rest in the evening, probably), tomorrow is likely to be non-stop. So, I just have a few minutes to write a post fast.
(Edit: This post was totally not what I really wanted to talk about but whatever has come out, has come out…)

Since I could find myself interested in the topic of personal development (personal growth, constant and never ending improvement, KAIZEN or whatever you might wanna call it), I thought I’d throw in a few quick ideas I had on it today.

First of all, first time I attended a seminar on that topic, I observed the people around. But, duh, they were just ordinary people. Like, people into self-development should be all bumped up, smart and way better than simple people but they had all the problems and all the drawbacks of simple guys. What is it, then?

Another time I attended one (don’t think I have attended that many, I have just gone to a few (nearly) free ones), the lector told a story of him power-talking and one guy asking whether he could leave. To a question “Why do you wanna leave?” (just like in a sect, lol) the guy replied “To go achieve my dream!”.

I don’t know whether this has really happened or not but let’s imagine it did. So, the guy went on. You’re out of the building. You know your dream. What else? Okay, maybe he made some telephone call or whatever. Perhaps he has written a page or two. And then? Oops, he hasn’t got anything yet… “Need I make another call?” - he was probably thinking. I am pretty sure that in a day or two he would be on his previous track and the dream would not be achieved whatsoever. In other words, can you divide your life into “the day before I was not working for my dream” and “the day when I dived into completely achieving my dream”. Can you?

Next, I don’t think there is that much to know about and if there is, noone knows it anyway. For people who do well at certain areas, most of the knowledge is, in any case, subconscious knowledge and you can’t really get subconscious knowledge except from experiencing something directly.

Now, I still think life’s great (the last statement depends on large part on my mood but the mood is often getting better in any case) and it is possible to achieve “your big dream”. Just, likely, not overnight.

Talking about “the big dream”, I quite realize I ain’t got any. Like one guy, for now “I just have a direction I wanna go”. Hopin’ that will do…

Remember remember the fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.

(From V for Vendetta)

And why the hell did I start doing this? Anyway. I’ll just share some of the movies you should could see. In fact, you shouldn’t anything. You either can or may want to or may not want.

I watched V for Vendetta recently. The first few minutes of the movie were inspiring, the rest, I don’t think s worth watching. In any case, talking movies, here are a few I liked and, I thought, could share.

First, watch Lord of War. A few years ago, when I watched it, I really liked it. Then, The Pursuit of Happyness is quite a new one and it’s inspiring. Also, I have done a few movie reviews on this blog too, you could check them out too.  Another good one, off the top of my head, is Requiem For A Dream (watched this quite a while ago). Don’t really remember many more at the moment.

It’s kind of hard to create posts for me. It’s just like I have to work to figure what to write and it doesn’t come naturally yet at all. I noticed like writing but doing it constantly just doesn’t come good. That’s why I wouldn’t think blogging is a good thing for me. I wonder if it would change during the course of the week. Maybe I’ll get down to even more chit-chatting in the future posts. Maybe not. I guess we’ll see.

Finally, check this one out - it’s about the thing I was talking to you before. Try username: test and password: test. Cool, init? And works simpler than Google Notes. I coded it in, perhaps, an hour or so. Does anyone need this service, though? Some time ago I was thinking of releasing it to the public (slightly improved) but then I hadn’t even had it coded and I was lazy anyway.

P.S. Another quote from my driving instructor:

You mustn’t drive on the straight white line in the middle of the road. Be it that straight line, or be it green grass. I did drive on the grass once. That was when I was running from the cops, though…

Getting the best education ever, huh.

Yesterday I was thinking that I post to my blog quite rear and that it would perhaps be interesting to see if I could post more. Without thinking too much, for one week, I came up with this plan: I’m going to post at least one post a day! Sometimes one post a day would seem easy but other times I don’t have much to say. It would be even tougher, though, if I had also added making those posts constructive. I haven’t.But I’ll try to make these constructive, nonetheless.

What are we going to talk about first? Oh, lucid dreaming. Sure, let’s pull this out of the shelve. Why? Well, I’m sorta trying for lucid dreams again. How? I’m journaling my dreams for the past few days and I plan to continue it for some time (this week at least, lol). 

So, what is lucid dreaming? Dreaming and knowing it! Simple. The answer to what’s in it for one is also simple: dream control. How to have lucid dreams? First step, for all techniques, begin journaling your dreams after you wake up! Then, there are a couple of techniques. I suggest you listen to this short  podcast that I found quite some time ago (I have started not really liking some of what Steve Pavlina is saying but that podcast is a good motivator anyway - although the technique mentioned did not really work for me). Also, there are techniques like WILD and DILD. You’ll have to google msn yahoo search this!

 I had my last lucid dream about a month and a half ago and I want to catch up a bit. Generally, I am not that good at this (rephrasing: my perception of me is that I am not good at this but I don’t know of a way to change that perception so I’m stuck) but I could sometimes pull a lucid dream here and there. Anyway, perhaps, I’ll let you know if I get lucid dreams this week (to make this a double-experiment).

These posts are not about that, however. I’ll try to hit you up with different areas from different fields of information during this week. If not, I’ll at least post something! That should make me find out how fun it is to be posting every day…

Long time ago I watched some TV program, movie or whatnot about playing Tennis and one quote has stuck:

 When I start thinking, I know I have lost.

Wish I could use it for many things in life… 

I was doing some stuff today so I didn’t do all of it. Enough excuses, I was lazy. In any case, I said I would be getting back at you, so I am.

Concerning my last post, I found a product. I then found some ways I could promote it. Then I set up a page with a redirect to the affiliate page and programmed a counter to gather some small statistics about the visits. When the counter gets 200 uniques, I should have made a sale. Let’s see if that will be the case.

Tomorrow is the big promotion today. I’ll add more to the post in order not to expand too much.

UPDATE: I’m getting really little traffic. Getting those 200 is way harder than I thought. I guess I’ll have to leave some time for the traffic to gather and extend this for, perhaps, tomorrow. Gotta do more. In any case, traffic ain’t comming that easy.

(More to be covered when the project is finished.)