Million Dollar PortfolioReal Strategies for Making Money Online

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Remember this early internet money making opportunity? I was one of the first adopters of All-Advantage back in the day. I actually made money too. It certainly wasn’t a million dollars, but I made a few bucks. Well, its’ back and the company is using a new name called AGLOCO (A Global Community).

The idea is simple. Build a network, use a toolbar and advertisers pay for your eyeballs. What could be more beneficial to advertisers than a captive global audience. Billions are spent every year on advertising whether it’s through PPC (Pay Per Click) methods, television, online banners or radio. It all costs advertisers billions.

Now, you can get in on the action. AGLOCO is a way of making a small percentage based on what the viewbar makes. The viewbar is still in a limited beta but here’s a screenshot:

Since you can’t download the toolbar yet, which I think even looks nice compared to the toolbars we usually see…what’s the point in signing up? The bigger the AGLOCO network is, the more eyeballs advertisers will be able to reach. By signing up early, your network can grow to be potentially thousands. There are millions of internet users around the world so I want to be an early adopter. It’s not much different than trying to get lots of myspace friends…so sign up now and pass it along.

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A few months ago I opened an account in the World Stock Exchange which is a virtual exchange that exists in the “game” Second Life. I use the word game in quotes because it’s not really a game. Second Life is more of a virtual world. If you have ever read Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash or Neuromancer by William Gibson you know what I am talking about or at least have an idea.

In Second Life you can build just about anything you can imagine. You have an entire world, such as it is at your fingertips.

So along comes the World Stock Echange, formerly the World Currency Exchange to entice investors into putting their hard earned lindens to work in stocks of companies that exist in Second Life. I began my investing modestly, with a few thousand dollars that I parlayed into a few thousand more in a short amount of time. At this point I had about $L50,000 lindens which is approxamately $181.00 USD. I decided to keep this investment routine going using the same principles I use when investing in real markets.

I bought as many shares of a particular company I found undervalued and i alone drove the price up, probably far beyond what most people expected. Then a couple weeks ago I invested about $950 US into this same stock, once again driving the price up beyond the levels most expected. Each time this happened, a flurry of investors who had small stakes in this stock flooded the market with their shares. What’s interesting about how they did it, is that each one of these shareholders would list their stock a penny or a few pennies lower than the last guy…driving the stock price down until it was at levels where I had bought up shares to begin with.

So what’s my point in all this?

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I watched the premiere of Fox’s new reality show “On The Lot” tonight. It’s actually a decent show, fairly entertaining and it definitely has some gut wrenching moments as you just start to like someone and then they blow it royally.

It got me thinking though about these opportunities we have in our lives to do something special or “make it big” and how a lot of the time, we blow it because we put so much pressure on ourselves. When we get so worked up about something really important, something strange happens to us. First we get nervous because hey, I have this HUGE thing to deal with now…I’m on the spot, I have to produce something! That immediately puts us in panic mode and once we are there…forget it. Game over.

So how does one stay out of this mode? You just have to step back and take a breath. It reminds me of art school. Every teacher I had always gave me so much work it seemed impossible to be able to do all of it each week. So to keep from being overwhelmed I literally did one thing at a time. I think my drawing classes were the hardest because I was really only good at certain media and had to focus and concentrate very hard and work very hard to use the media I wasn’t so good at. And in time, these moments all passed. Looking back on it now, I still wonder how I managed to get through some of my classes. I wasn’t the most talented student but I worked hard and really focused on what I was good at. When I did that, I produced some great work.

So, again relating this to my experiment on this blog, we must be aware of ourselves and our surroundings and find that inner calm, that peace that allows us to project outward the confidence we have inside. When you can harness that confidence and clarity and calm…that’s when you can do really great things. Didn’t Yoda teach us all this in the Empire Strikes Back?

Truth is universal, and the universe is listening.

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I came across an interesting site the other day that displays the highest paying search terms. I assume these are Google Adwords. Number one on the list right now is “Austin DWI”. I looked into the store and apparently this guy was arrested recently for a DWI and it turns out he has about 10 others. Now this is in Texas and their DWI laws are quite a bit more lenient than other places. The article even pointed out there is a prison inmate in Texas that has 23 DWI violations and STILL has a license. Absurd.

The second highest paying keyword is “school loan consolidation”. This actually doesn’t surprise me. Since the subprime meltdown earlier in the year, it’s likely that people are defaulting on loans now more than ever. Interest rates are still much higher than they have been in the past and with the riskier borrowers defaulting, a lot of people are probably looking to consolidate their loans. The rest of the high paying keywords are similar variations on “school loan consolidation”.

So what does this have to do with the Million Dollar Portfolio? Part of this experiment is how to market the information I am keeping track of. That involves discovering what people are searching for. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO is the way you deal with making the information you create searchable by engines like Google. There are several ways of doing this and I am really only learning. One way is to use Google Adwords. Adwords are the little text advertisements I am sure you have seen which is one of the main ways Google makes money.

The most successful and really the best way to get traffic is called organic search. This is a lot more guesswork than purchasing adwords from Google. Organic search is basically the way people think. Search terms only go so far. To really make organic search work, you have to try and figure out the way web surfers gather and use information. It’s a long slow process and a lot of trial and error but in the end it’s worth it to create that long-tail effect.

So relating these ideas to the Million Dollar Portfolio is easy. I need to boost my traffic, utilize the right keywords, create interesting and compelling content and retain readership. That readership in turn hopefully gets some interesting stories and gets to see how this all unfolds. You can always donate and know that you played an integral part in this blog generating $1,000,000.00.

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Today a friend of mine came over to tell me that he bought a newer bigger TV than the LCD one he currently has and wants to give me his old one. How can I say no? The current TV I have is great, really nice picture and it has a built in DVD player, but the player has trouble with some discs.

I know it doesn’t really count toward the Million Dollar Experiment, but it’s still positive energy coming back to me.

I heard Russell Simmons say something on Bill Maher tonight that really struck me. I am paraphrasing but basically he said about the world…that if you look around you and you percieve that things are good, and that you feel good, then the world tends to be a good place. And the opposite is also true. If you always see the bad things in people and in life, then in general you will percieve the world as being a bad place.

I think that’s really profound because I don’t think we really take stock of how we feel about things in general. In terms of how the world works and how we treat others, A lot of how we feel is dependent on how we percieve the world around us. If you walk around feeling scared and unhappy then you are sure to continue feeling those things because you see the world as oppressive, unhappy, overcrowded, and generally not going in the right direction.

I don’t look at things this way. I like being positive, I like to believe that we are good people by nature and that sometimes we just make bad decisions. I know that sounds simplistic but think about it. We all basically know right from wrong.

A friend of mine said it best when talking to his 10 year old son. He said, “If you think you are doing something wrong, then you are.” Doesn’t that just sum it up nicely?

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I Won!

Well, kind of…I bought a “Big Spin” scratcher and doubled my money…so it’s not exactly a huge win, but everything counts. So this new dollar is being added to the total in the sidebar.

Now, another thing has happened that I didn’t want to write about until it actually happened, and that is it turns out my work owed me overtime pay for like 3 years….talk about a bonus. That total has also been added. So as you can see, the Universe really is listening…you just have to be aware of things and take advantage of the situations as they arise.

This new money is going to pay off debt (of which I have a ton…hence the reason for this blog). In fact, if you netizens out there are interested in helping me become debt free you can simply use the paypal donation box on this site. Any donations also go toward my Million Dollar Experiment. Imagine if one million people all donated just $1 to this experiment, it would do great things! I spend a lot of my time donating to charity in both time and money and it always makes me feel good because I know that I am helping someone else out in the world.

Even with my collective debt, I manage to find a way to donate money to others. Sometimes this means buying software or utilities that I find useful…after all, those people put time and effort into creating all the products and services we love to use so why not help them out.

So with my new money, I am paying off some of the debt and I am investing the bulk of it so that I can earn more money and pay off more debt. Hopefully all these efforts will have me debt free within the year. Wouldn’t that be nice. It could of course happen sooner if I start selling the ads in the ad-icon space and if the donations work out. I wish everyone the best and hope you can share in the Million Dollar Experiment.

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I truly believe the Universe is helping me out lately. For the second time, I found a dime on the ground that was right in front of me once I stopped pacing at the bus stop. It just appeared there, where I hadn’t seen anything before.

Then when I got home and checked the mailbox, I had a $108.00 check from Cafepress for my T-shirt sales.

Today, when I stepped off the bus and was walking to the train a guy was handing out free issues of the San Francisco Chronicle with a $5.00 Starbucks card attached. How very cool. I really needed it too because my bank account is nearly empty (I get paid Friday) so now I can get lunch tomorrow.

To repeat the mantra here:

The Million Dollar Experiment centers around the following intention:

In an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all, I intend $1,000,000 to come into my life and into the lives of everyone who holds this intention.

Awesome.

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