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Got my estimated tax bill for this year, so pumped about it. My quarterly paid tax estimations were WAY low because I made a lot more this year, so I pretty much have to pay it all at once.

Who else is lovin’ 2008 taxes?

Popularity: 11% [?]

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve rarely been present here in the past few months it seems like. Posting has gone down a lot, I’ve been posting a lot less on UberCamp, and I just feel like I’ve been “absent” for a while. This is due to a number of reasons in which I will explain in what will probably turn out to be a lengthy post; but it seems like some of you guys care so I’ll talk about it. For those who will comment and say “nobody cares what you’re up to”, I always think to myself if you care so little, then why waste the time to post something? Anywho, onto the reasons for the absence :

Spending time working on my own projects.

This is probably the biggest reason, I certainly don’t make my living off the revenue I make from this blog. The projects and campaigns I wanted to work on just kept piling up, and spending an hour or 2 blogging every day was certainly slowing down my progress a lot. As I started spending more time on the projects, the priority of the blog dropped a lot. It’s just how it turned out, it doesn’t mean I don’t want to help people like I did before, that’s why I spent months creating the UberCamp tutorials and released them completely free.

Hired my first employee.

I finally stepped up and hired my first employee to work for me. He’s a really smart guy and I’ve been training him nonstop, teaching him all the ins-and-outs of affiliate marketing. In a couple of months he should be knowledgeable to manage all of my campaigns and work on building new ones out with me. He reads this blog as well so what’s up Matt ;). For those curious, he’s a college student and I’m paying him hourly for the first few months as I train him and he gets used to it. Eventually I want to give him a percentage of the company to keep him working with me and not wanting to go off on his own. Perhaps as I get more experienced in being an employer, I can start blogging about keeping your employees happy etc. and with you. My guy is getting a 100x better job with higher pay, more flexibility, and a fun job. Why doesn’t he just quit and do it on his own? Because he’s happy and has a secure job. Affiliate managers know all the campaigns that make money and can see all the referrers…why do you think almost all of them stay with the networks instead of going off and doing it on their own?

So yeah, training him and getting all of the paperwork (payroll) taken care of is taking a while.

I HAD a puppy.

Little story here. My friends are foster parents for puppies all the time. In this case, the mother died right after giving birth and they got the black lab puppy at 2 days old. I spent time with it since then all the way up until he was 8 weeks old, which is when I took him to my house. I spent hours a day with him for almost a month, trying to train him into being a good dog. Unfortunately there was something wrong with his personality/behavior, and he had some problem with aggression and learning not to bite. NOTHING that I tried worked, he simply didn’t listen and wouldn’t stop biting. I seriously tried everything for 3 weeks, and I’ve had 6 dogs so I know what raising them is like and I knew something was wrong with this guy. So I was the foster dad and took him into the SPCA and told him I couldn’t adopt him, I had spent hours a day away from my job trying to train him and nothing was working; so I wanted him to go to another family. They called me the next day and told me he was inbred, had serious problems, and had to be put to sleep. It did suck because I had spent the first 12 weeks of this dogs life with him, but it was taking up a ton of time and wasn’t going anywhere positive.

Being a homeowner kinda sucks…

Owning a house is a SERIOUS time-killer. I can’t even begin to explain the investment of both time and money I’ve put in. Getting a fence put in, getting landscaping put in, maintaining the landscaping, growing a yard, maintaining the yard, appliances, cleaning the house…I can’t even begin to list all of the things that need to be done. Oh, and having a dog for a month made it all about 20x harder.

Lack of ideas to blog about.

Hence my post the other day asking what I should blog about. Blogging every day for so long about affiliate marketing tips that I could reveal left me kind of empty-handed after a while. I felt like I had blogged about almost all that I could without giving information that would seriously compromise any of my businesses. You have to realize that this blog is completely free of charge, I don’t have any monetary motivation to write ANYTHING. I have all the contacts I’ll ever need, and I’m not out to prove anything to anybody. This blog is out here solely for the purpose of helping other affiliates.

Feeling kinda disappointed.

Honestly, some of the motivation has died off in general with all things “uber” after the re-launch of UberCamp. I spent literally MONTHS writing content for the tutorials that I was planning on launching with another huge guy in the industry, and I ended up just giving them away completely free. I can’t even count the hours I spent writing those things and I guess I was just let down by the response. It seems like not that many people even know they exist, nobody has really blogged about them or mentioned them anywhere. Fo real guys, it’s a step-by-step guide on how to set up successful PPC campaigns…it’s what most of you guys have been asking for. Anywho, time to wipe the tears away.

I do have a life.

You would think that all the above points (without even blogging) would leave me with zero time for my personal life, but believe it or not I do have friends, a girlfriend, and a family. I try and make a lot of time for all 3 of those, so if my 2 hours at night comes down to spending the time blogging or going out with my friends…which one would you choose?

All right that was a long post as expected, but I just felt like I needed to update you guys with what was going on with me. Certainly don’t take this post as “hey guys, I’m not going to blog anymore and here’s why”, because I definitely am going to do my best. I just wanted to let you know that I’m not neglecting the blog just because I’m sick of it and would rather sit on Xbox, I’m just insanely insanely busy.

Aight, take it easy.

Popularity: 5% [?]

So lately I’ve been crazy busy with life, work, workers, blah blah blah. You probably noticed by the fact that I haven’t blogged in forever. So now you tell me what you want me to write about.

Just post comments with what the article should be about.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I made a post earlier asking your opinion on whether or not I should make UberCamp public.

I was in the middle of switching servers and my DNS updated after the post and reloaded yesterdays information, so the post was lost.

No biggie, I’ve decided to NOT make it public and there will be a small (but different) initiation step. Still feel free to post your thoughts on how members should be let in/accepted.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Alright so after people bugging nonstop to see the house, here’s a video. Still messing around with getting the Flip to show the best quality on Youtube, so it’s gettin’ there.

Popularity: 6% [?]