Great expectations

While Pip was having great expectations of wealth and power, I was having great expectations of pips, of the Forex kind. Currently, this still remains as expectations only. After the excitement of the first week, my second week so far has been a bit dull. You see I went into trend trading and also took a hedging position and this can take days before you can close your positions. As they say, plan your trade and trade your plan and most important of all, stick to it. So I'm sticking to it , like a leech!The EUR/USD is now on a sideway waltz but I was almost taken out by my stop-loss when it went on one of its upward swing. And hedging is a bit like insurance so it is not a short term thing so it may take weeks before you see the results. The good part is that you can do your other things while the battle is ranging in the Forex market. On the other hand if you look at the charts, you'll see many instances where you can make a killing in a matter of minutes. That's what scalpers do. But then, any fool can tell you when to buy and sell looking at historical charts, after the fact but trying doing that when it's live.

Now onto the other PIP, my PIPS. Is more time on the Warrior Forum and trying to read up on topics that caught my attention. One thing I learn from comments in the Forum is that it is not necessary to submit your URL to the search engines; no need to find them, let them find you. You need to get plenty of backlinks to your site and you'll rank high. So my task is to submit articles to e-zines. Heck, my line is very intermittent so I better post this before I get kicked out.

Ronald Kwok
http://cbpirate.com/s/cbp/ronaldkwok

I'm a Warrior

Well, my first Forex trading week has ended and I can take a breather. It was the most exciting, adrenalin pumping experience that one can get if you choose to watch your profits rise and fall with the market all the way down to a minute by minute tracking, 24 hours a day. I experienced the four cardinal sins of trading - fear, hope, greed and doubt - and being unable to control them at times, I was at the losing end. But thanks to stop loss, I was bruised but not beaten and I survived to trade the following week. Since my first trade was a loss of 110 pips, I was determined to ensure my second trade is a win so I manually close my position (USD/JPY that was moving up and down like a roller-coaster) when I caught it positive. So it was a win of just ONE pip! A win is still a win. I've been taught to overcome my emotions but heck, I'm only human. In Forex, he who trades and runs away (with stop loss), lives to trade another day (and take profit).

Yesterday, I finally became a warrior, no, not a Forex warrior but I joined the Warrior Forum. This is one of the elite internet forums where many of the internet marketing gurus hang out so you can rub shoulders with them if you so wish. But being the small pips that we are, the forum also has a special section for PIPS member to post questions and exchange ideas before they more to higher ground. Here you can also have backlinks to your website which will hopefully boost your search engine ratings. If you get a hosting service from Host4Profit, you'll get a free membership to this Forum. And again there is so much posts to read and I feel so overwhelmed. My unread e-mail is again building up.

Money Saving Tip. There is one very important point that you must remember if you ever subscribe to those free for a week or so trial offers. Make sure you mark you free expiry date and unsubscribe before that or you'll find yourself charged for the monthly fee. They never remind you of the free expiry date and time really flies when you're on the net and it is very easy to miss the date. But if you do get caught, then grab whatever benefit you can from your subscription and unsubscribe before the next round unless you find it worthwhile. The same applies to those money back guarantee that has a deadline for products that you are not happy with.

It is now Income Tax submission time again. Why must I leave it late as usual? That's bad habit, no good for trading! Now I need to look up all my receipts for my claims.

Ronald
http://cbpirate.com/s/cbp/ronaldkwok

A Tale of Two Currencies

It wasn't the best of times, it was the worst of times, it wasn't the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it wasn't the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it wasn't the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it wasn't the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. And so my dear friends with this opening, you can guess how my first forex trade ended. The two currencies, GBP/USD, that I traded was closed by my stop-loss with a loss of 110 pips. Even though I was mentally prepared for the loss, it is still very disappointing as I have hope for a profitable maiden trade. (Why is it that all the demo trades turned out beautifully but when it come to the real stuff, things go awry? Is Mr.Murphy also in the Forex market?) Well, the one good thing is that it proved that the stop-loss worked and this is very important in any trade as your loss is controlled. Even though the general trend indicates a Buy, I entered at the wrong time. The GBP fell to a multiday low against the USD and I was caught in this down swing. (Actually, despite the bleak opening lines above, there is no bitterness in my part, just disappointment.)

So I took the loss of pips in my stride and carried on with my life, my life with PIPS. Since Suzanne has optimised my PIP site I must now resubmit to all the search engines and hope that this will get me more traffic.

Meanwhile, the great Ewen Chia just launched his latest item, "Working From Home Secret Report". This guy is great, you can really learn from him by just following his sales strategy from the e-mails you get from him. I could not get into the website promoting this for a day or so as it was so jammed. Now traffic has eased, so you can give it a try at this link. Actually for USD9.97, it is great value as he throws in a lot of other free stuff, as usual. The price is supposed to go up pretty soon so be quick. Anyway, he is giving a 100% money back guarantee so you have really nothing to lose. (I can tell you this is genuine as I have recently asked for a refund for something else and I got it with no questions asked.)

Excuse me now, I need to read the Secret Report myself.

(P.S. I found this Debt relief community so I know where to turn to in case I run into debts (heaven forbades) in my Forex trade.)

Ronald Kwok
http://ronaldkwok.atomicblog.hop.clickbank.net/

My first Forex trade

My live account with Interbank FX was activated last Saturday but since it was the weekend where there was no trading, I had to wait. Well, I placed my first live Forex trade today which is a buy on GBPUSD! But alas, it is currently on a downward path but hey, I am not taken out yet by my stop loss so I will just let it run its course but it is really dangerously close. So I thought I better write my blog instead of watching the red candlestick lengthens. As a Forex trader, you must be able to accept some losses as there is no 100% formula that you will win all the time. I was hoping that I can announce my first profit in my first trade but looks like it is not to be.

Now back to my Plug In Profit Site. It is now just over a month old and it is also running its course but there is no sign of any opt-in subscriber, let alone any sale. I have already submitted my keywords to Suzanne to optimise my site to see if there is any improvement. The next course of action is to promote my site in all the ways possible, first starting with all the free promotion acitivities before going into Adwords promotion. But first I mst read all the e-mails and e-books on this subject of website promotion and there is a lot of catching up to do. There are also tons of reading material from all the affiliate program that I joined and in fact most of them I have yet to open their FAQ's and the Starter page.

To make it easier to read and to retrieve all the information, I have invested in a new Samsung Laser printer ML-2010 (mono, of course) so that I can print and file a hard copy since you may remember seeing something important but cannot remember where in you PC or the web page that it is in. And since my laptop harddisk is filling up rapidly with all the free downloads, I also bought myself a Western Digital portable external harddrive (160G Elements) to store even more downloads. So now it is off to some more reading. You can read some users reviews on the Samsung Laser printer in Amazon here.


Ronald Kwok
http://cbpirate.com/s/cbp/ronaldkwok

It's only words.....

I was fascinated (and at the same time frustrated) by this keyword business that I actually took up the free 7-day trial of Wordtracker that was offered. You can give it a try if you are interested but be warned, you may be so enthralled that you may spend a lot of time playing with it. Also you must cancell you free trial before the 7 days are up or you'll be charged a monthly subscription fee unless you want to continue to use it after the 7 days. You can also enjoy some free videos and ebooks on the subject (SEO) during the trial. The best part is that you can test out all your keywords, for free.

So I am still looking for my elusive keywords for my website before I send the words over to Suzanne to optimize my site. You can actually do this yourself if you know some basic HTML (she has the instructions in her e-book) but since I've already paid for this service, I might as well make use of her expertise.

Now onto the other front of Forex trading. I applied for a trading account at Interbank FX and was quite worried if it would be approved since I'm a retiree and has only a small monthly income from my pension. You can imagine my relief and joy when I received an email that opens, "Congratulations, your application has been approved ............" Actually it was pretty fast considering the different time zones involved; I submitted my application at about 11.00am local time and got the approval at 9.30pm the same day, well within 12 hours. The next stage is to deposit some funds into this trading account. So I went over to my friendly neighbourhood bank and did a TT. Once this is transferred and my account set up, I will be able to start trading. So watch out for my first trade which will hopefully be on this coming Monday.

Ronald Kwok
http://ronaldkwok.atomicblog.hop.clickbank.net/

The strange world of SEO KEI

At last, I graduated from my Forex workshop. Apart from the revision on the materials covered in the first two days, the third and final day was all about money mangement and trading psychology, two very important aspects of Forex trading (and I believe for any trading where money is involved.) My next step is to open a live trading account with InterbankFX.

Meanwhile it is back to my PIPS website. Well, my website was upgraded to include more than 10 pages of additional profit-pulling items and home business articles. You can take a look at my upgraded site here, the additional items are listed under the Site Menu. Alas, sad to say, there are still no new opt-in visitors and the next logical step is to optimise my site to get better search engine ranking i.e. back to the dreaded SEO or Search Engine Optimization. To find an easy way out, again I turned to Suzanne Morrison to do the job. Thus I forked out another $49.95 for her SEO service. I was disappointed because I thought everything would have been done for me without having me to lift a finger like in her website upgrade but instead I was given a list of keyword phrase (about 1,600 of them) related to home business from Wordtracker, the industry leader in keyword research. I was asked to choose a keyword pharse for my website and Suzanne will optimize my site base on this. Her accompanying e-book gives tips and guide on how to do this.

Each keyword phrase has a KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index), a predicted number of searches for that keyword phrase over a 24-hour period and the number of web pages that already contain this keyword phrase, i.e. the competition. To learn more you can visit the Wordtracker Academy site here where there are some interesting articles and free e-books on the subject. I am sure I have some other free e-books on this and I will post them in my blog later when I'm more organised. Since I have already paid for the SEO service, I have no choice but to plough through the 1600 keyword phrase and choose the best one (hopefully) for my website. Or contact Suzanne for help.

Ronald Kwok
http://cbpirate.com/s/cbp/ronaldkwok

Viral butterfly

Did I promised not to join another affiliate programme? You know what, I just joined another one this morning! Well, like Swift said, promises and pie crust are made to be broken. The one that I joined is Butterfly Reports that is suppose to increase tarffic to your website using viral marketing and since traffic is everything, I had to join and further more it is FREE. Actually I didn't know that there is the affiliate part (silly me, I should know by now that affiliate marketing is everywhere, almost.) For a limited time you can get access to Mike Filsaime and Rod Beckwith's Butterfly Reports at this site. This will allow you to instantly brand high quality viral reports in various niche markets. There are other viral marketing tips that should boost traffic to your site. Give it a try while it is still free. (As usual, you'll get better benefits when you upgrade for a fee.)

Another great step forward for me (or for this Blog) is that I joined Technorati, the "Google" for blog searches. It is suppose to improve your blog's presence and will rank your blog. (Mine is ranked 10,280,644 so nothing to shout about but at least it is ranked!) Notice the cute Technorati button on the right just below the blog archive? You can click it if you want to be my fan and if you do it now, you may be my very first fan. Sorry, no prizes but I may consider sending you an e-book.

Enough for today since I need to do some revision for my last day in my Forex Trading workshop at Forex Investology tomorrow. What's more, Liverpool is playing Bolton in the EPL now and I need to enjoy my little distraction. Will tell you more on what I did today to show that I mean business in my (online) business in my next blog.

Ronald Kwok
http://ronaldkwok.atomicblog.hop.clickbank.net/

Making sense of AdSense

Now that my Adsense account has been approved, my next task is to prepare this Blog to accept ads from Adsense. This could easily be done by adding page elements (AdSense ads is one of the elements) at the Layout options. There are two types of AdSense ads, ad units and link units of various sizes so you have to experiment to see what is the best arrangement. Of course you can get a lot of information from the Adsense site. Here's one important point I discovered (actually buried somewhere in one of the Adsense pages) - you can only put a maximum of 3 ad units and 3 link units in any one page.

Another point is that you can block competitive ads from appearing in your page, see details here. You do not want another PIPS member advertising in your page and take away you potential customer.

Remember I mentioned I need to add the bells and whistles to my site to make it different from the other thousands and thousands of similar PIPS sites? Stone Evans recommends the web updating service for PIPS sites by Suzanne Morrison (don't worry, not an affiliate link but I would have joined if she offers one!) Come to think of it, if every PIPS owner gets Suzanne to update their web site, are we not back to square one with again thousands of similar updated sites? Better not imagine this. Anyway, there are a lot of useful information in her website and is worth visiting even if you do not want to update your site. (Hey Suzanne if you are reading, free ad for you; hope you'll return the favour!)

So this sets me back $49.95 but I think it is worth it. What I like is she throws in an e-book on how to update the PIPS site yourself in future and another one on blogging. One of the new page in my website will be one for Maximum Paid Survey where you'll get paid for doing surveys. See, this is one of those "no sales business" that you can get started in making money online without having a website. Or you can also become an affiliate just like me here.

Talking of being an affiliate, I think I must stop joining new ones since I can hardly keep up with all the e-mails and getting started guides from those that I have joined. But then you keep seeing new sales pitch wherever you click and all are so tempting and hey, you've got nothing to lose by joining as most of them are free. Seriously, I must now focus on those that I have joined and keep away from new ones however attractive it may look. I promise.

Ronald Kwok
http://cbpirate.com/s/cbp/ronaldkwok

No Sales System (Mine)

Well, it is now 3 weeks since I first started my online business and I can now challenge even Ewen Chia's No Sales System as I am having my own No Sales System - it is making no sales so far! Actually, I think there is nothing wrong with this PlugInProfitSite (PIPS) system but it will take time before it will show any results. Further more I have not done anything really to promote my web site other than starting this Blog and I don't expect people to flock here to read an old man's musing. This doesn't even have pictures, let alone audio and video! Didn't I say I am a newbie?

Let's face it, there are hundreds, if not thousands of similar sites waiting to opt-in their customers so I must focus now to promote my site. I have decided to add in the bells and whistles and since I cannot do it myself, I have to get somebody else to do it.

I have also joined the Reverse Funnel System (RFS) for FREE in a joint-venture with Stone Evans, the creator of PIPS since I want to keep my money for other ads and promotion on my site. But if you have some spare cash and like vacation, you may want to look at the Reverse Funnel System (RFS) here which can also make you even more spare cash.

I received one piece of good news though. Google has finally approved by application for Adsense after it was rejected because another account was already active with the same physical address. (I believe they have this policy of one account per physical address in some countries, including Malaysia, probably because Malaysia has one of the largest number of active bloggers per population.) That account actually belongs to my son and since he is not so active now, he has agreed to pass that account to me. Good lad.

I discovered that Amazon has also approved my affiliate application last week but since I was flooded by e-mails (alas, not by my potential customers but by my potential sellers since I have opted-in to get many of the freebies on offer) I did not notice that e-mail.

Another piece of good news today, Liverpool beat Arsenal in the European Champions League this morning. So, despite having no sales, life is not too bad after all.

Ronald Kwok
http://ronaldkwok.atomicblog.hop.clickbank.net/

No Sales System on sale

I managed to browse through Ewen Chia's No Sales System which is detailed in a 61-page e-book. If you expect an easy windfall by reading this book then you'll be disappointed. You need to put in some effort before you can see any results and as they always say, the more you put in, the more you can take out. You do need some basic skills so this may not be for everybody. But there is no harm in giving it a try.

The gist of it is about advertising and for ethical reasons, I cannot disclose more. So why not download a copy by checking this link here and see for yourself if it is workable for you? Even if the projects that are described do not bring in the profits, the many tips on increasing traffic to your website will definitely help in your own sales business. What more, Ewen is offering a full money back guarantee if you are not satisfied within 14 days, so you have nothing to lose.

Now I need to try out some of the projects in the No Sales System to see if they work for me. Good luck to me and to you too!

Ronald Kwok
http://cbpirate.com/s/cbp/ronaldkwok

Back from (respecting) the dead

I was not able to blog in the last two days as nothing much is happening in my web-site while there are other happenings outside. For this year, April 4 is the day of Qing Ming (or Cheng Beng) which is the Chinese version of All Souls' Day when the Chinese visit cementaries or temples to pay respect to their deceased family members. One can do this 10 days before or after the actual date of April 4. (The date will change from year to year as it is a movable feast since the Chinese calendar is lunar based.) My family and I also paid our respects to my late dad in this annual ritual.

Meanwhile, I've joined as an affiliate of Amazon, Clickbank, and Ewen Chia since I'm mainly into affiliate marketing in my online business. In the case for Amazon, I've applied as an affiliate since they would look at your website before they approve the application. I've used this blog in my application so I do not know if they think it is suitable as I've yet to receive their confirmation.

Why have I selected these three? Well, everyone knows Amazon and they are BIG and one of the early birds in affiliate marketing. ClickBank is the internet's largest digital marketplace (that's what is stated in their homepage.) And Ewen Chia is known as the world's No.1 Supper Affiliate so why not join the best?

Affiliate marketing is all about selling products or services but Ewen Chia has just come out with a No Sales System that makes you money without selling any products. Unbelievable? So I took the plunge and will plough through the e-book to see what it is all about. Hopefully I will talk about it in my next blog. Now I need to watch the Arsenal-Liverpool EPL game that is on live. Life is full of distractions and this make life more interesting. So enjoy!

Ronald Kwok
http://cbpirate.com/s/cbp/ronaldkwok

PIPS vs pips

Well guys, I'm back after my two days 'distraction' at the Forex Workshop that is run by Forex Investology. The third day will continue on 14 April. From now until then, we are supposed to spend our time testing out the strategies and practise with our demo accounts before we put in our real money at Interbank FX, the chosen online brooker. I can now also look at my web-site. Still no opt-in yet, sigh.

As promised, here's the breakdown on the starting cost of having my first web site at ProfitNetBusiness when I opted to sign up for PlugInProfitSite (PIPS).

1. Domain Name - $15 for a year (from Host4Profit)
2. Web Hosting - $24.95 for a month (from Host4Profit)
3. Affiliate for SFI - $2 donation for a 14-day trial

Thus the total start-up cost is $41.95 and if you sign up the same day,
you get a rebate of $25 from Stone Evans, the creator of this PlugInProfitSite system so you actually only pay $16.95 to have your own web-site! Pretty cool. (I did get back my $25 rebate in my Pay-Pal account so this is for real.) You also get a free autoresponder (GetResponse Free) but you would want to upgrade to a Pro version for $17.95 per month, which I did. As usual, there will be a lot of other goodies and bonuses to sweeten the deal and you can check out all the details in the PIPS web-site.

Granted, you can get cheaper domain name registration and cheaper hosting elsewhere but you need to use Hosting4Profit to host your web-site since this is part of the PIPS deal. You can use your domain name registered somewhere else but there may be some hassle to get it transferred to Hosting4Profit.

From my experience, you should think of a suitable domain name beforehand and checked for availability or if necessary to have it registered first so that you are not under undue pressure when you decide to opt for PIPS. And give yourself plenty of time so that you need not rush to complete the setting up process.

So now I am at the start of two roads leading to my financial freedom or rather two main streams of income (when they come). First is the road of affiliate marketing using PIPS that will give me passive income and second is the Forex trading using pips that will give me active income. (For those new to Forex, a pip is the smallest unit of price in any currency and profit or loss is measured in number of pips.) My strategy is to make pips to grow PIPS or to make active income first so that it can be used to grow and promote my website to generate passive income. Or, if I can make sufficient active income, it itself can generate passive income in terms of interest when kept in the bank. Which one will it be? Only time will tell.

Ronald Kwok
http://ronaldkwok.atomicblog.hop.clickbank.net/