You can’t change your entire life.
You can only change your next action.
—
You can’t change a relationship with a loved one.
You can only change your next interaction.
—
You can’t change your entire job.
You can only change your next task.
—
You can’t change your body composition.
You can only change your next meal.
—
You can’t change your fitness level.
You can only start moving.
—
You can’t declutter your entire life.
You can only choose to get rid of one thing, right now.
—
You can’t eliminate your entire debt.
You can only make one payment, or buy one less unnecessary item.
—
You can’t change the past, or control the future.
You can only change what you’re doing right now.
—
You can’t change everything.
You can only change one, small thing.
And that’s all it takes.

Courtesy of Mnmlist.

That sentence is like music to my ears. For more than a year now I have put up with their uselessness. I had almost every domain I owned hosted with them and they continued to get me at boiling point on dozens of occasions. Their incompetence cost me money, time and energy. They are now out of my life.

Believe me, I could rant all day long about this worthless company, but they aren’t worth any more of my energy. I finally took time to move my sites onto a VPS with Servint. I’ve had nothing but a happy experience so far and am pleased I finally got off my arse and mate it happen. It took a couple of days, but I got there.

Today I worked on the other half of the problem. I have about half a dozen domain registrars. You see, whenever I win a domain auction, the sneaky little bastards sign me up at a new registrar. That new registrar will then charge 40-60 bucks a year to renew it. It’s highway robbery, it really is.

I transferred all of my domains onto Namecheap from these registrars and Godaddy. This way I can keep track of everything in the one place. Yes, I could have used Godaddy, but their 10 pages of sales ads to do something pisses me off. Interesting way to keep customers happy eh?

One of the main selling points of Namecheap is that they have free private WHOIS. I’ve never bothered with it before, but somehow I don’t think the world needs to see my name, email address, phone number and my Mum’s address. Kind of scary when I think about it.

Making small little changes like this go a long way to making me feel in control of my online business. I’m still sorting out my Neteller account which will help as well. Next thing on my list is to get all my bank wires going into my shiny new business bank account.

How Being Emotionally Stable Accelerates Growth

After writing my epic post last night I was fired up for the day ahead of me. I got up early and headed to the dentist. After finding out that Angelina Jolie is a psychopath and she is a home wrecker (I love you Jen), I was in the surgery with only a couple of minutes delay.

I quickly found out that my teeth were in a lot better shape than I expected and I had no cavities to be worried about. Then comes the news that my exceptionally sore mouth is because of my wisdom teeth coming through.

I go get an X-ray at another place and return. I find out I’m up for $1384 to get my 4 wisdom teeth removed on February 9. They give me some details for pain killers and I’m on my merry way to the chemist. The whole morning was smooth and the dentist was hot as well, which never hurts.

The chemist lady strikes up a conversation with me about my travels and she is a delight to talk to. I finish all my errands around 11am after spending $240 and have a giant smile on my face.

Smile on my face? Do you think bad news is funny? Truth be told I was counting my lucky stars! How bad would it have been if I had arrived in Thailand and need to get my wisdom teeth removed? Piece of string on one end, elephant power on the other?

I was in a fair bit of pain today but the pills I bought at the chemist seemed to do the trick. I even managed to eat a steak today instead of the chicken caesar salads I had been making.

Hey, you said accelerated growth

Yep, and that’s exactly what I meant as well. You see, if I hadn’t walked out of the dentist with a smile on my face I wouldn’t have had a happy conversation with the chemist lady (who put a bigger smile on my face). After that I wouldn’t have had an enlightening conversation with one of my friends on Skype.

He really got me thinking about life and how I need to relax. Relax in terms of putting pressure on myself, I always thought I would have “made it” by this age. I was always a high achiever at a young age, but never seem to finish anything. His wise words of “forgive yourself” have worked wonders for me for a second time. Many thanks my good friend.

But wait, there’s still more. I ended up talking to Carly tonight as well. It started out really well until she read last night’s blog post. Apparently she didn’t like me calling her unambitious. The conversation doesn’t end well, I’m in a “meh” mood, but only with her. When I get off the phone with her I return to my steely swagger.

I then strike up a conversation with another friend on Skype. She said she enjoyed my post last night, and shares an equally personal moment with me. Already I am feeling love by simply opening myself up to others. I like how this works.

After that the ball keeps rolling as Tak hits me up on MSN. This is Jim’s fiance and she tells me how grateful she is that I made a donation. This makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside because I was able to help someone out with just a small gift like that. Her reaction was worth 10x what I donated. My condolences to you and your family Tak.

Hazo’s brutally honest blog steams ahead

It seems as though people can relate and feel my writing when it is written like it was last night. I much prefer to write openly, speak the truth and give my opinions. I’m going to stick with it.

I love the fact that I couldn’t give a shit about what the search engines think, if it is SEO’d and what I’m ranking for. It’s a blast being able to express myself with my writing, not to savagely attack people, but to explore my inner workings.

It’s even better that I have no thought of monetizing this thing, nor do I care to. I don’t write a blog for a reward. That’s just what some people don’t get. They don’t understand the concept of giving without a clear return or reward. Surely you can help people without shoving Clickbank products and adsense down people’s throat? I guess I’m just naive because at the end of the day it’s all business right? Not in my books it isn’t.

So how do I feel after what happened today? Despite the financial situation I’m in, I am getting stronger each day. The $1650 bucks is not a welcome surprise with just over 6 weeks until I leave the country. I still have a trip to Sydney and Melbourne to contend with and I have just spent 5 grand getting ready.

Not to worry though, all my thoughts are positive. My subconscious mind is gravitating towards what needs to be done. I catch myself working out what I need to get sorted before I leave, what articles I am writing next, what site to throw up and which domains to keep. I’m feeling alert and unbeatable. I have that steely feeling inside of me when I know I am going to make it. I know this trip will happen despite all the hurdles being thrown at me. Every time shit gets thrown at me, I laugh and move on. I’m in a happy place.

The situation with Carly is a weird one. I’ve moved on from the emotional feelings I had, to more rational ones. I can see the situation clearly now and can act accordingly. Even though our conversation didn’t end well, it didn’t bother me too much. The only thing that is getting to me is how I can go out of my way to be kind and it still ends in an argument. I guess you can’t please everyone.

All I can do is concentrate on being the best person that I can be. I think I’ve done well in the past 24 hours, but the key for me (as you should know) is consistency. I’ve missed the last couple of days in the gym and I need to catch up with some content.

I’ll be waking up early again tomorrow and getting some articles done before lunch time. Something that affiliates sometimes overlook is how important it is to get the day off to a sparkling start. If I wake up late, I don’t get anything done till after lunch, then it’s catchup for the rest of the time. Usually when this happens I get almost nothing done.

I can forsee myself getting uptight within the next week or so as the financial situation worsens. I have to raise a few extra grand than normal to pay for these added expenses and to have money to travel with.

As long as I’m aware of the situation and monitor it I’ll tackle it head on. It’s better that I know the details, and what I’m going to do about it. Normally I would block out my thoughts and not worry about it. When it becomes too late, I start pointing fingers and getting angry. This isn’t going to happen this time round.

I still have a smile on my face and I will be going to Thailand in 6.5 weeks. I can’t ask for much more than that. I’m a lucky guy.

I haven’t posted on here since November 9, 2009, but a lot has happened in my life since then. Before I get onto that though, I want to tell you a little bit about the direction of this blog.

Some of you might have noticed that the catch line of Successful Affiliate is now “Personal Development for Affiliates.” The core focus of this blog will be about life as an affiliate. I think there are plenty of other blogs around that cover topics like affiliate news, gambling SEO and other work related topics. Me personally though, I prefer to write about personal development stuff and life as an affiliate so that’s what most of my posts will be about.

There are a couple of things that I don’t like about writing on this blog even though most of the time I enjoy it. The first one being that bloggers stick to one topic during a post. I don’t function like that all the time so you can expect that I will be talking about multiple topics in the same post.

The second part is I’m not happy with the standard of the posts I make all the time. Sometimes they are rushed, have several typos and generally have been thrown up. I want to make this a resource where fellow affiliates can count on reading top quality material every time they come here.

How My Life is Changing

Towards the end of November I stayed for about 10 days with my girlfriend in Sydney. We were looking for a place to live together and I was seriously contemplating getting into real estate. By the end of the trip (after playing several rounds of golf) I decided that I didn’t want to go down that path. I have lived with my last two girlfriends, it wasn’t a happy environment and both relationships didn’t end well. I know I shouldn’t be letting that cloud my judgement, but I didn’t want the pressure of another relationship being so serious so early on.

At the end of November I flew to the Gold Coast where my grandfather lives. During this time I was reading “4 Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferriss. While floating in the ocean at the beach it suddenly dawned on me what I really want to do in life. Travel.

That night I went on the Internet and saw there was a special on to Thailand. I was initially going to go to Canada, but made the decision to start off with cheap living while I can increase my income to enjoy more expensive countries later on.

It’s kind of weird because when I went to Cronulla beach when I was in Sydney my girlfriend persuaded me to go to a tarot card reader. I don’t believe in that kind of stuff but she was spot on with a few things. She even said that she sees me travelling to South East Asia. Also, that a bearded man will be the guy that helps me change industries and I will make a packet load of money. Interesting.

Christmas I spent with family, and I had a fun NYE with my girlfriend and cousin. Not much happened during this time besides the normal get togethers and nights out drinking.

At the end of December I finally took the plunge and bought a Macbook. I needed a laptop to go travelling with and I already have an iPhone that I’m happy with and made the switch to Apple. So far I’m ecstatic with it, except I think the battery on both the iPhone and Macbook blows. I also got a sick backpack that’s hybrid because it doubles as a suitcase and a new Canon digital camera. So I’m almost set. I just have to get my visa sorted and that is just some paperwork and only takes a week.

This past Friday though was a much different kind of experience. I broke up with my girlfriend of 6 months because I couldn’t see any way it was going to work. We get along great mostly, but there just wasn’t a “workable” solution. I’m all about experiencing life, hence why I’m travelling. I don’t think that I can do the things that I want while being in that situation. It was hard to do, but I think it had to happen at this stage in my life.

I’m 23 and have been going from relationship to relationship since I was 16. I’m not sure if I subconsciously seek out girlfriends or what I do. Perhaps it is because I don’t like superficial experiences in life and need that connectedness with someone. Once I’m travelling and have a better lifestyle than I do now, my outlook might take a different course of action.

So How Hard Have You Been Working Hazo?

Not very. Without making too many excuses I’ve had to take this time to really understand why I am an online affiliate. It is because of the freedom, the passive income and the ability to pick up and go wherever I want. So why am I sitting at home all day? My point exactly. I can be doing this work from anywhere in the world. I’m only 23 so now is a perfect time to go.

My income has been steady and January seems to have picked up nicely for me thus far. I have 7 weeks exactly before I leave so the whip is out. I will probably start doing extra work on top to raise extra cash. I can see myself making a few minisites before I leave to get a bit of a buffer in my bank account.

Before I leave I want to show the readers one of the best blog posts I have ever written. It was almost as if this girl was talking directly to me. I have never been touched like that from a blog post before. She calls me a flake, who knew? I hate flakes so maybe I hate myself. She made me understand that there are other people like me and there is a reason why I don’t do work all the time. It isn’t because I am lazy, it’s because I need that intrinsic motivation to get there. Now that I have sorted out the end result, I’ll be firing on eight cylinders. Before I just sat here and thought, why am I doing this? Here is the post she made about being a flake.

I’ve been eating pretty healthily of late and just started going to the gym. It’s making me feel a lot better about myself and the lifestyle I have is getting better. Spending some time on the golf course and at the beach helped me out a lot.

Hope everyone had an exciting festive period. Make 2010 better than any other.

My biggest problem has never been not knowing what to do. It has never been knowing what not to do. It has always been achieving the desired outcome consistently. Just in the past week I have developed myself even further. The problem though is that I am volatile.

The first half of last week starts of as best as I could have hoped for. With the reading of a fantastic book called “The Greatest Salesman in the World” by Og Mandino and the introductory part of Eben Pagan’s “Wake Up Productive” course motivation levels were at an all time high.

I was waking up early, doing Yoga, getting work done through the day and at night I was meditating. That was until outside influences come into play.

I need to develop a more solid framework so I am not so easily thrown out of my routine and habits. That’s the key word there, habit. I have not been practising these new ways of life enough for them to be a habit.

It was either Wednesday night that I had a fight with my girlfriend that went well in to the night. I woke up late, so I didn’t get much done during the day. I got a little bit done on Thursday night and went to sleep late. Again I woke up late and ended up going out with friends for a night out. I didn’t get to sleep until around 4am Saturday morning either.

Saturday was spent recovering from the night before and Sunday is usually the one day I try to take things easy on. I didn’t get to sleep until around 5am this morning and woke up at 2pm.

It’s now 4pm, Monday afternoon and without even realising it I am back where I started. I was making an concerted effort to keep things in check and on task. Even just writing this makes me feel weak. I mean come on, you have a fight with your girlfriend so you don’t work for 4 days? That is just ridiculous.

I’m sure that people who are successful in business don’t let things like this throw them off so badly. What I am struggling to understand is how things like this affect me so badly. I moved out of home at 15 and have always considered myself a bit of a hard arse. Somewhere along the way I’ve started letting these little things get to me.

During the past few days I’ve seen myself visiting the forums more often as well. I even had to delete a post because I knew I just didn’t want to get involved. I wrote a post the other day about increasing productivity. In that post I quite clearly said that forums are a waste of time.

Maybe my opinion on forums is jaded by I don’t think I have ever received much value from them. Of course, I have met fantastic people and have been able to get in contact with affiliate managers.

In terms of actual quality learning I think not. I actually think it has been detrimental to me more than anything else. The few times I have asked for help when I was new, in terms of a site review etc, I got replies like “awesome site!” That was despite the fact that there were several crucial and costly mistakes being made (which I didn’t know at the time).

So where am I going with this rant? I have changed my password so I can’t login. I don’t know what it is so I can’t post anymore. Apart from PMs (which I get emailed) and the market place I have no reason to be there.

I write this blog to give back what I can to people that want to read it. I don’t need to post on there “to give back.” I have what I consider to be some really great friends on MSN and Skype. I am at a point where outside misinformation and gossip is just adding to the mess.

What’s going to change this time?

The reason that I haven’t started week one of Pagan’s course is that I still haven’t completed the introduction activities. On the list that I had created were several items I have to clear up in my life so that I can move on with a clear mind. A lot of the things on the list were to do with setting up my bank accounts properly and my business legitimately for tax purposes. I seem to always be in a mad rush that I overlook the basic steps.

I try to rush on to the next task just so I can finish and will achieve results quicker. It just doesn’t work like that. I end up having a life of half arsed, half finished tasks.

The other thing that I have noticed is that I am using Google Chrome a lot. I know why that is. It’s because I have blocked myself from websites using Firefox.

I only just picked up on that so I have started using Firefox again so I can block myself from time wasting activities during the day.

The Bigger Picture

I understand that I can put almost anything in place to stop myself doing things. The big picture though, is why do I want to keep doing those things? I have to actually want to make the change. I need to be motivated about my work, about doing the best I can throughout the day.

Writing another poker review does not really excite me in the slightest. It is not fulfilling to me and makes me feel like “is this what I do for a living?” It is probably because I have over a hundred pages that needed to be written in a short space of time. All I can see is a mountain of work and yet another article to write.

I tend to get caught up on “what ifs” a lot. Focusing on one day at a time, what needs to be done and actually doing it is a key point for me. It is easier said than done though.

They say that you need to be passionate about what you do in life to be able to perform at your best. I think working online and managing a network of businesses both online and offline is something that I want to do. What I am not particularly interested in though is sitting in a small, hot room all day pumping out articles while being isolated to the world.

Perhaps I am coming across as trying to run before I can walk. Maybe it means I don’t work hard enough, that I am being too lazy and short sighted. I just know that sitting here thinking to myself “I have to write reviews and mundane articles today” is fucking boring. Who wants to wake up, think about what they are going to do all day and know that they have to sit in a room and write gambling reviews?

I find myself putting a lot more effort into this blog than my own sites. That is purely because I enjoy talking more about personal development and helping people if I can. It isn’t that I don’t want to work. I am on here 16 hours a day. It is that I need to be passionate about what I do.

I have made some progress by implementing some of the copywriting and website usability things that I have learned recently.

If I can work towards being a world class copywriter, SEO or entrepreneur then I’ll be more than happy. Writing gambling reviews to make a few bucks isn’t fulfilling to me.

I have always had high expectations for myself and been my own harshest critic. Perhaps being my own harshest critic demotivates me because I put myself down. That being said, I have done a two things recently to improve my situation:

• Working on 2, big sites. These will be a real source of information and big money makers. A “xxx bonus” site excites me none.
• A new business venture. I am working on an industry service that will be more like a business, rather than a website.

I think that by trying to slowly work towards things that I am excited about is definitely the best move. I am way too volatile to try to continue to do unfulfilling tasks. I am the guy that is the best or the worst. At the moment I am the worst. There doesn’t seem to be an in between with me. My goal is to be the best I can, all of the time. Can’t ask for much more right?

Even though I lot of this post has a lot to do with me personally, I hope readers can get something out of this. Whether you can relate to it or perhaps it keeps you on track so you don’t stray from your path; let me know what you think.

I know that consistency will be my key to success. I can’t be consistent unless I am fulfilling my aspirations. To do that I need to be excited about what I am doing. This all goes back to creating your business to shape how you want to live your life. Not what other people say is the best way to do things.

Consistency is the key.