WalletRehab - Ways to save money

I realized today that I am not having enough fun with this blog, and it really shows. I do care about saving money, and making money, but I have been writing in an impersonal style. It’s felt cold, even to me, and I’m the guy writing.

Even though I’m writing about money, it doesn’t have to be boring. It doesn’t have to be dry, and I’m going to try and change that. Though, there seem to be a number of you who don’t think I’m boring or dry, just VERY LONG WINDED.

The Challenge

I talk about this blog and blogging in general with my friend Harry. We talk about ways to monetize blogs, advertise products and affiliate programs. We talk these subjects to death. If you were to look up analysis/paralysis, you would see a picture of us analyzing the dictionary.

We are just that bad.

Both of us know a lot about computers and the internet, and we do have a fair bit of business savvy. We’ve made decent change in real estate (at least enough to buy a car), but haven’t yet made any money on the Internet. It’s frustrating, and I feel like a hypocrite.

Sure, saving money using the Internet is easy. But making it? Like running a restaurant, internet businesses take a lot of hard work. The people who are successful on-line are successful because they have spent a long time working at it. They spend hours listening to podcasts and reading ebooks, while posting thoughtful questions on message boards.

• Harry and I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts and reading ebooks.
• We do post thoughtful questions on message boards.

There’s no reason why we couldn’t make decent money on the Internet.

So, to get us off our collective asses, I challenged Harry yesterday to an on-line challenge. The goal is to ignite our competitive streaks to get to work. To start applying all this knowledge within our heads to the world without.

Harry Park, I challenge you!

Part I - Popularity Contest

For the month of July, we will endeavor to build the most popular website, and measure traffic for the first week of August. The person whose blog/website gets the most traffic will get a visit from the other within the year.

If we were both living in America, that wouldn’t be much of a wager. The thing is, I live in Vietnam, so whatever happens, one of us will be flying across the world to see the other guy. The trip will cost at least 2,000USD.

Part II - Who can earn the most

We haven’t totally defined this part yet. In essence, it will be about who can make the most money in a defined period of time on the Internet. When we decide on details, I will post them here.

I will be your case study

Harry and I are doing this to learn from each other, leveraging our own innate competitive streaks to push us beyond analysis/paralysis. We are going to tell each other everything to maximize the benefit for each other. I am going to go one step further and list the steps I’ve done in the previous week here each Friday.

I will explain what I have done in the past week, why I have done it, and how I hope it will help me. Hopefully, you guys will learn along with me too, and give me helpful tips along the way.