I also wonder how many people will say “Yes. I saw that amazing place!” and turn around say “Nuh. I will never be able to go there.”

[Update] Here is an other shot of the awesome place. Click to find the original resource. http://www.zadan.nl/pics/mount/

Well this picture brings up a good question. What is the purpose of my life?

I found a great personal development blog by Steve Pavlina. I also found his method to identify the purpose of your life in 20 minutes. I think I found mine.

Travel Around The World And Bring Happiness And Excitement To Other People’s Life.

This finding really changed my point of views about what I do for living. If what I am doing doesn’t serve the purpose of my life, I am wasting my time and life achieve nothing but other people’s purpose. I know I love traveling and taking photos, but I haven’t really thought about why I like it so much and the real reason why put up my digital photography blog and the happiest blog on earth!

Today I was all alone for the Christmas. So I went on a discovery tour to visit the Talking Stick Casino in Scottsdale AZ. I took some photos and was able to sit on their balcony for a while to think about what Steve said in his article. Watching people dumping their precious money into the slot machine, it makes me wonder what the purpose of those people’s life are? Seeing people waiting in line for over an hour on Christmas day and pay for $42 for a NOT very healthy over-eating buffet, I bet they don’t know their purpose of life.

While I was trying to find out my purpose of life, I realized the purpose has to ADD VALUE TO OTHER PEOPLE’S LIFE. Not mine. It really makes the purpose searching process much easier. Give it a try!

There is no guarantee that I will be able to achieve the purpose of my life, but it means I am willing to die for it. It’s crystal clear. By looking back my life, there is a lot of stuff I have to get rid off. Or I’d better change the way I live and do business. It’s killing my dream.

At the moment, I still don’t have the guts to put everything behind me and go for a ride like I did in 2006. At current age, it’s hard to draw a line between brilliant brave and impulsively stupid, and chose the right side. I will find out that pretty soon.

What’s the purpose of your life?

Have you visited Mt. Roraima, Venezuela Guyana? If so, please tell me about it.

Image Credit: Property In Europ

I know this title sounds horrible. As I am on my way to invest more real foreclosure properties for rental and cash flow, I also have bunch unwanted Internet Assets and Web Properties to get rid off. A successful entrepreneur should knows when to get started and when to exit. I am about to lose my control and destroy my own hard work by owning too much garbage web properties.

It’s almost 2012. It’s time to review what I got myself into in the past 6 years, and how I plan to clean up my own inventory.

Here are the accumulated assets in the past.

• 30+ registered domains. This does not include subdomain and those domains on blogger, tumblr, wordpress.com and so on.
• 15 active websites, including my personal blog, digital photography blog, online stores, passive income niche directories using DirectoryPress, business websites, few clients website.
• 15 inactive websites that I have no time to implement
• 70+ third-party websites on other domains for SEO and automation purpose
• 26 Twitter accounts
• Maintaining 40+ Gmail accounts for different purpose
• Operating 4 Google Voice #
• Managing Several Facebook Accounts for different businesses and clients
• Administrating 21+ clients’ Facebook fanpages
• Monitoring 21 personal profile page all over the place on Internet. Thanks to my pool management of personal branding strategy.

I know what you will say. What a mess. Honestly, this is how I got myself in troubles.  And it certainly was the main reasons I can’t move faster on my major projects. This is the #1 cause of self-excuses not to move on. It is simply too much work to do and I chose to do them all. And I end up get nothing done!

So now you know. You should not make the same mistake like I did here. It’s time to clean them up or just get rid of them.

Other than those inactive web assets, domain hanging there generate no cash flow. The rest of are actually not that bad. Most of them do generate Google Adsense income and some are creating monthly recurring passive income. The biggest issues is that I miss use my time on not-so-profitable projects and miss my own deadline on the profitable projects. On the other hands, I was spending too much time on Facebook and Google+ trying to get something out of there. I truly wonder how much pro-claimed social media expert got from those two places.

This is the biggest mistake!

The reality is this. If you have to spend 40+ hours a week working your ass off to achieve your dream. You are NO success entrepreneur. At least, you are just a slave of your own creation. From my perspective, a really successful entrepreneur achieves their goal and have time to spend with their lovely families, friends and enjoy their life without work. That is how the 1% lives!

I need to foreclosure or short sale those unwanted properties. At the end, there will just be few projects to work on.

1. Real Estate Property Investment
2. Project A -Internet advertisement
3. Project B – Niche Directories
4. Project C – Content Distribution and Automation
5. Project D – Luxury and High End Online store

This is going to be enough for me to focus on! I also need to fire some customers that keep dragging me down. That’s for now.

How many Internet Assets or Web Properties you currently own? Do you overly brand yourself and end up not going anywhere? Tell me how you solve it!

I know I will piss 99% of the people who read my blog post. That’s OK. My blog is for people like me, who wants to be the 1%.

Personally, American dream isn’t about being the 99%. It’s about being the 1%.

You can blame on richer people or politicians, but you can’t deny the fact. They’ve achieved what the 99% can’t not achieve. It’s the reality and it’s just like the food chain. You have to work your way up. The brutal world isn’t fair. You have to put your effort into your future.

Put yourself in the 1%’s shoes. You will see the world differently.

The fact is that poor people becomes poor, because they make the wrong decision. Really. If you have that much time complain about the 1%, why don’t use spend those time to become the 1%.

If you chose to be the 1%, you will have chance to be one of them. If you think you are the 99%. Sorry. You will never be the 1%. Don’t complain your condition just because you are the majority! Your future is in your hand. Don’t occupy the street. Do something!

I love to hang out with the right people with right mindset. You can call me BS or dislike me. I said what I said and I am telling the truth from the bottom of my heart. You can choose not to listen. It’s your choice.

Be the 1% isn’t easy. The candy bar isn’t sweet until you taste it. You get the point.

Image Source: Cash

This is a guest blog post from a friend of mine, who is an expert in Feng Shui. Donna Stelhorn wrote books about Feng Shui and Space Cleaning.

By focusing a little on the external you can make a big internal shift that will bring you more business and open the flood gates to money.  Want to know more?  Sign up for Donna’s Feng Shui newsletter at Feng Shui Form.

Your environment affects you. Feng Shui is the simple idea that if you change your environment you can change your life.

You have the drive and ambition, you have the equipment, and the expertise, but the money is just not flowing in. There’s a block. Here are three easy steps you can take to tear down that block and let the money come streaming in.

1. Clean up your office. You think you are productive in that archeological site you call an office? A desk stacked high with paper, unfinished projects cluttering shelves and the floor, nagging sticky notes stuck to the bulletin board, all scream one message to you…you’re not effective. There is no such thing as a neutral environment.  Your office space either supports your productivity and success or it depletes your energy and zaps your strength.  Grab a box and clear out anything that you haven’t touched in a month, any unfinished projects, anything that is not directly related to your business endeavor.  Make some space for money to flow in.
2. Turn your desk to the “CEO Position”. When you’re the boss your desk is positioned so you can see the door.  When you are an employee you sit facing a wall with your back to the door, in the “Cubicle Position”.  No CEO would ever sit in the cubicle position.  And if you are trying to build a business while sitting in this secretarial position your business will end up owning you.  Turn your desk around so you can see the door and have a view out a window.
3. Your daily list of priority things-to-do should fit on a sticky note. Most people fall into one of two groups.  Either they have no list of daily priorities and they just wander from one task to another never accomplishing what they want OR they have a list that can stretch from here to the Moon and they get bogged down doing tasks that don’t lead to money.  To be really effective in your business, each evening write out your top 3-5 most important tasks on a sticky note. These should be tasks that lead directly to money.  If, after you finish this list, you still have time then you can move on to tasks that lead to future money (writing your eBook, updating your website, reading my blog at Feng Shui Blog, etc.)

This is going to be a short update on what I have done in the past 100 days to change my life as my 2011 resolutions.

I have to admit that my life has not changed dramatically, but I have achieve some of the goals.

• I am very close to my ideal body weight, which is 147lb.
• Eat healthy at home 5 days a week.
• Join golf membership and commit to practice twice a week.
• Officially becoming a Real Estate investor.

One of the achievements is to use my money to roll into bigger money. I truly believe that rich people will become richer faster, if they really put their money in the good use. Building a wealthy life can not be done by 9-5 full time job or 401K. Investment is the only way to accomplish that.

Recently, I invested some spare money on the Tax Lien properties. Now I am the lien holder of 5 properties. The return is only 5%, which is still better than putting money in the bank. I also don’t hope to own the properties free and clear. It will take too long to get return. It may seem like a small amount of return, but it grows bigger when you put in more fund. I have seem investor putting $m dollar and getting 13-16% out of it. I am still new to the tax lien sales investment, but I am moving fast. It’s much lower risk than investing on stock option.

My target properties has the following characteristics.

• 100% residential property
• Built after 2000
• Has good records on paying property taxes.
• Face value is between $4000 and $10K
• Improvement value is greater than $300K.

It’s amazing how many individuals and companies are investing tax lien sales. With housing market going down, the opportunities are much greater now!

The tax lien sales isn’t really that difficult to understand. Especially, it’s all done online. In the next few days, the clean-up sale will be held online, which will give me more opportunities to win the auction at 16% return. I have my eyes wide open and finger crossed.

My next goal is to increase the sales of my online services. Being an affiliate marketer in the past to sell other people’s products, I am finally moving forward to become the provider in the affiliate marketing world. It’s inevitable trend!

That is for now!

If you are reading this post, you are definitely someone like me, who wants to live the dream lifestyle. You are interested in knowing how you can make a lifetime wealth in matter of very short time. You want to be a successful entrepreneur who live the dream lifestyle.

The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime By MJ DeMarco is, indeed, a book that DON”T teach you how to GET RICH QUICK.

• It’s not a midnight infomercial product.
• It’s not a book ask you to buy more books, DVD, subscribe to affiliate program or anything.

If you want to be someone like MJ, this is a book you need to read. It tells you the brutal and bloody truth about many young people get rich so fast and last so long. You won’t find success story about buying lottery ticket, buying stock trading program, or sell MLM supplement. You will find the truth about why and how Fastlane business can change your life.

I felt that the book is specifically written for me, because I am doing what MJ was doing. Except that I did not see what MJ saw and did not do what MJ did. I am few years behind what he has accomplished.

Is this book for you? It’s definitely for me.

I am on my way to be free. To have the freedom to do whatever I want and to NOT working for anyone anymore.

Even though I am far from reaching the goal, I am working day and night to get there.

The book mention few very important points.

• Time is the most important thing in the Fastlane.
• Impact millions. Make Millions.

They made perfect sense!

I don’t want to go over the detail here. It’s up to you to discover the goldmine and work on it. Like MJ said in the book. Most people who read the book may not become what they want to become, because they still don’t execute. Are you one of them?

MJ Demarco is the owner of the TheFastlaneForum.com. You are more than welcome to join the community. You will find many like-minded entrepreneur, who are few steps away from reaching their dream and living the dream lifestyle.

Do yourself a favor. Order the book. It may change your life just like it changes mine.

To achieve my dream lifestyle to travel around the world, passive income is the only way to make it happen. In the past few years, I have tried many things and now identify the direction. I am learning it the hard way. I should know better few years ago.

Regardless which method you choose, there are bottom line requirements to make this true passive income business.

1. Automation – The only way to make passive income is NOT to work on it. Or simply spent few hours a week to do minor tasks.
2. Outsource – Let other people do the work for you
3. Scalable & Profitable – The only way ensure your business model can last a long time, the business must be scalable and profitable.

Basically, it follows The 4-Hour Workweek principle.

Here are the methods I am working on.

1. Advertisement

Running a popular niche website and generate advertising revenue is probably the easiest way to generate passive income. Using Google AdSense, and many other advertising medias or affiliate programs,  a website can generate pretty good income. The challenge is to make the website popular and convert.

2. Subscription based Membership website

Create a niche community for people who have common interest to exchange information or added value will bring in good passive revenue as well. It doesn’t matter if the community is B2B, B2C or C2C, the idea is to have user generated content to drive the revenue.

3. Licensing & Franchising

In my opinion, this is the most difficult method to generate passive income, but it will generate most revenue. For example, if you created a software or script that can be licensed to other people for a recurring fee, you can generate great revenue on this.

What about e-commerce?

To be honest, I haven’t really found the unique niche to make e-commerce a passive income business. There are few main reasons that a small e-commerce will never generate good passive income.

1. Inventory – Handling inventory is very expensive. It not just cost money to manage the stock, it also cost money to keep unsold items.
2. Customer Service – You should never outsource your customer service to third party. Handling shipping, return and complaint cost most of the the money in this type of business.
3. Not scalable – If your niche is not very much scalable, you won’t be able to make huge profit, even your items have higher profit margin.

My take on creating a passive income business is now solely based on the following guideline.

1. User generate content
2. No inventory
3. No shipping and return
4. Less customer services
5. Information only

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying they are the only few passaging income business model. I do believe they will work the best for what I know and what I do.

What is your passive income business?

So I decided to start playing golf. Recently, my wife and I signup golf class. We should have done this a long time ago.

Where am I now?

To be honest, I am far from success! My two online stores recently got hacked twice in two weeks. Nothing is outrage at the moment, but the admin password were changed and locked me out. It also doesn’t generate the expect income. So I should either shut them down once for all. My newest project to help local business is getting stronger. Although it’s hard to get local business to pay me, I do get more potential customers interested in using my services to gain the search engine ranking and long term exposures on social network.

Where am I going?

Last month, I discovered the power and the gold mind of using Facebook social search. After implementing the strategy to my website, I can see the referral traffic from Facebook has jumped 970% comparing last month. This is a significant change to the search engine landscape. With the proper implementation, a local business can get FREE traffic from Facebook to their website with just one click.

At the moment of this writing, many customers took my suggestion and recommendations and start seeing the traffic boost from Facebook. It is still too early to tell how Facebook want to use the massive information for their own good.

So my plan is to continue dig into Facebook Graph API and implement custom app to help local business getting massive exposures from Facebook and increase click through rate and conversion rate.

Lately, I also dig into creating custom fan page and landing page to see how people interact with it. That’s the silver mine from my perspective. Many local company start charging for customize fan page and newsletter. It’s an inevitable trend. Gonna catch up with that too.

I encourage my readers to follow me on my personal Fan page.

To have a better success, I can’t simply ignore the fact that people wants to know who I am, what I do and how I can become an example for other people to follow. I was thinking to hide behind the scene. Now I have to make changes.

Here are my next moves:

• Consulting – I will be offering consulting services (like always in the past 15 years) to help local business optimize their Internet appearance and get more exposures. Help local business setup and optimize their Google Local Listing, Yahoo Local listing, Bing local listing, and many other free local business resources such as Yelp, MerchantCircle, Yellopage, SuperPage, etc.
• Branding – I will start seriously branding what I have done and my personal image. I can run, but I can’t hide. So I will just be straight out of the cave. It’s better to be known as an entrepreneur than an mystery CEO. I have learned many things from the Club Entrepreneur Network founder Peter Burns, who has been a role model to me in the Entrepreneur World.
• Marketing – I have the best product out there, but it won’t make me a penny without a great marketing plan. There must be ways to create buzz and generate demand to the good use. Marketing is the #1 factors to a great success. Period!
• Outsourcing – I am tired doing everything like the rest of struggling entrepreneurs did. No one can do everything. Outsourcing tasks to really talented people is the out way to get me out of my own business bottleneck.
• Investing – I heave hard many time that the best recession prove money maker is to become the lender. Using the money in your hands to bring you more money is the true smart ways to not just survive the slow economy, but also to be on top of the food chain.

It’s almost the end of 2009. Things is going as planned at very slow pace. It’s time for setting new pace and goals.

Initially, I was not interested. So I did not take the challenge in 2008. I know it’s an very intense training that you have to learn so many thing in 30 days and make real money in 30 days. Why I decided to join?

While my wife in Hong Kong for personal event, I have about 25 days to work solo and get my stuff done without any excuses not to. I really only have 25 days to get all my to-do list finished. There is always things coming up that takes away my time.

My current update:

• I haven’t really got chance to dig into stock to invest. I am watching the stock goes up and down in the past few days and can’t really punch the $ into it.
• The blog network I built for my main projects seems all got Google Indexed. I can see that Google is coming to crawl the site. That’s a good start.
• This blog is back in the PR game. Sent a letter to Google webmaster for re-consider for page ranking. It does works. Now I got PR3 back. There is no more garbage links on this site.
• The first few days on 30DC has taken most of my time to play with their software. Now I can see some benefit by using their software. So I went in and update the main keywords for my project. Hopefully it will gain some organic search engine traffic as well.

After reading a great story about a self-made millionaire on one of the Millionaire forums, I definitely see myself on the same path as the one who made his way up at age 28. Only I am much older. All his hard working pays off in few years. The question is how I can duplicate his success with my own.

Now it’s on Day 5 of the 30DC. It is leading me to where I am not going to. Becoming Internet Marketing experts using article, affiliate programs and so on is not my option. No. That’s too much works for me to make too little money. How are you going to make $20M in 5 years by selling someone else products? No way! You need to have your own products. You need to be the drive, not the passenger.

I am not saying 30DC won’t work for people. Everyone is different. If your goal is to make good extra money (maybe $30K/year), you can definitely do it with the program. However, you may end up creating so many Squidoo lenses, Hubpages and posting so many automated articles to flood the Internet and kill yourself doing that over and over. If you stop, your cash flow stop. That’s no entrepreneur!

To be honest, I already know a lot of stuff in the process to make a web site and optimize web pages, but it took me a lot of time to watching the videos and practice. I decided to lead the training video on to my iPhone and only watch that at Gym. It will save me 2 hours of time to do something more productive.

So I am back on my feet to get my project moving forward. I can see the main keywords have jumped 40% in search engine traffic. I am on the right track. The real challenge goes on. I really need to focus on getting the billing done. Time is ticking!

Here are things I can do to help to focus on my project:

• Stop checking Google AdSense revenue. It eats up my time. I will check once a month from now on.
• No TV
• Exercise 2 hours everyday
• 2 Meals a day – I already lost two pounds in the past week.

My real challenges:

• Time management. Without doing all the stuff wasting time. I should have enough time to focus on my project. If I sleep 6 hours, 2 hours for exercise, and 2 hours for eating lunch, dinner and breakfast, I should still have 14 hours a day to focus on my work. Why can’t I write one piece of code in the past whole week? I need to manage my time better.
• Outsource. I have to invest on Internet Marketing and Sales pitch. There is no way to get a great products out without good marketing strategies. Going to post a local job on Craigslist to see if anyone is willing to take my challenge and turn it into cash.