Not too long ago, I wrote a blog post titled How Do You Really Feel About Money. The reason I wrote it was because at the time I was reading The Science of Getting Rich and from it I had gained a whole new perspective on money and wealth creation in general, and I just felt I had to share it.

What made me write this second post was that the original post got such a large number of visitors from Twitter and I felt a bit more clarification was in order.

I guess its no shock that most people are trying to get more money into their lives. Money is one of those things that most people have very intense feelings about. They can love it with a passion or hate it so intensely that they don’t want anything to do with it.

I am not sure why we have set ourselves up to have a particular belief about money but my feeling is that it all relates to how we were brought up. Now I am not here to blame our parents for anything ….they had their beliefs based on how they were brought up and so did their parents…so no one is to blame here….and in fact, if you are going to start blaming your parents then you probably need to make sure you aren’t doing the same thing with your own children.

Have you ever gone shopping with the kids and listened to how you actually communicate your feelings about money to them? The conversation usually goes something like this..”Mom, mom I want that new Lego toy.”…”No, you can’t have that, it’s too expensive, we can’t afford it.”…or you might say “Well you will have to work hard to save up for it and then you might be able to buy it” or “That’s way too expensive for us” or “Money doesn’t grow on trees”. What happens is that you set your kids up to believe that money is in limited supply and that they have to work hard to get it.

Of course you don’t want to just buy everything in the store just because your kids ask for it, but just be aware how you respond and see whether you are actually setting them up with negative beliefs about money….a simple “No, not today” is a good response to these sorts of demands.

I have studied this topic quite a bit because as I said in my previous post, we were stuck in a situation where the amount of income we were generating from our websites just wasn’t increasing. This was despite the fact that we were working harder and longer hours to do just that.

Now I had read in numerous self improvement type books that you don’t really need to work hard to make money…but since I was brought up to think that working hard makes you money that was a belief I held and it was difficult to get rid of.

At that time I also read Steve Pavlina’s post titled The Power of Now which talks about a very similar situation he was going through. He didn’t speak so much about making money but more about creating a shift in thinking that changed his life.

So even though I didn’t quite believe it at first, I could see that it was starting to ring true for me that I didn’t really need to work as hard as I was to make a successful living online. So what I did was start to take more time to enjoy myself rather than sitting in front of a computer all day.

Bear in mind, however, that I love sitting in front of a computer so this is not necessarily all work to me. In the morning the first thing I do after having a shower is turn on the computer, the first thing I do when I come home is turn on the computer and the last thing I do at night is turn off the computer. The computer is on all day in my house because I love it. Even so, I realized that just about my entire time was devoted to working online and I needed to relax with other things.

This was also an issue with Wanda (my best friend and business partner) who felt guilty anytime we did something other than work on our online business. She is an absolute dynamo when working on our business and can get through a ton of work in a day. For her, taking time out was a difficult concept but slowly she also started to relax a little more and work less on the business.

So did this make a difference to our income?…you bet it did…at this point in time, we are working much less on our internet business than we used to and spending more time relaxing and having fun and yet the money is increasing.

I really feel that the combination of releasing that blockage I had about having to work to make money, not working as hard and reading and applying the concepts in The Science of Getting Rich made a big difference in the amount of income we are now receiving.

So what’s blocking you from making more money?

Just knowing how you feel about money can release the blockage. So sit for a minute and really think about your beliefs about money. When you talk about money what sorts of words come out of your mouth? Here’s some that I can think of:

• You need to work hard to make money
• I never have enough money
• I only ever have enough to pay the bills
• I’m living from pay check to pay check
• Money doesn’t grow on trees
• My parents always argued about money
• When we argue it is always about money
• Money is only for the rich
• Rich people are evil
• The rich are hoarding all the money so there’s not enough for the rest of us
• I worry that I won’t have enough so I save and don’t spend anything
• There’s never enough money to go around
• Money is the root of all evil
• And one that I really love is “Money doesn’t make you happy” – maybe not, but would you rather be unhappy with a lot of money or unhappy with no money?

If you are trying to make money online some of the words coming out of your mouth might be:

• They got in early which is why they are making all the money
• It’s too late for me to make any money online – all of the good ideas have been taken
• It’s takes a lot of hard work to make money online
• It takes years to make a good living online
• The only ones that are making money are the ones that tell others how to make money
• Making money online is all a scam

Remember that your sub-conscious is an amazing thing and will give you exactly what you ask for. So when all you think about is that you never have enough money then that’s what you will get.

To have an abundance of money requires a change in thinking. To some extent you have to learn to love money. This doesn’t mean that you have to roll around in wads of cash and admire it lovingly all day. It just means appreciating it for what it can give you. It has the ability to give you an amazing feeling of freedom…wouldn’t you love to be able to buy whatever you like whenever you like, to look after your family and friends in times of need, to give money to charity without being stingy, to travel the world at a moments notice without having to save for it first or worrying about whether you can get some time of work?

The paradox is that many people say they hate money but they are constantly moaning about how they never have enough and that they need more. Money will not come to you if you hate it. Money will not come to you if you consistently talk about the lack of it and it will not come to you if you have negative beliefs about it.

You need to change your thinking in order for money to come to you in abundance.

Resources you might like…and all free!

I really recommend reading the Science of Getting Rich – this is a definite must for anyone who wants to change their thinking about money. The Science of Getting Rich is a powerful book written in 1910 so can be a little wordy at times but the concepts are still as current as they were a hundred years ago. Apparently The Secret was based on this little book.

It’s also freely available so you can download it from a variety of sites on the net. Just type into Google “science of getting rich download’ to find it.

You can also sign up for the free Bob Proctor 7 Day Course on The Science of Getting Rich which I thought was very good. He also has a paid version but I haven’t signed up for it so can’t say whether that is worth the money or not. If it is as good as his 7 day course then I would have to say that it is.

There are also free audio versions of the book which you can download here:

• Spooky Action – This site has the recordings by chapter which I like as you can just download the chapters you really want to listen to again and again.

• Internet Archive – You can download the full version in one file from this site or alternatively you can stream it.

FINALLY RELEASED - Our complete guide to making money online by promoting Amazon products. Head over to the AMAZONIAN PROFIT PLAN website for all the latest info.

In the past couple of weeks we have been working on our Twitter accounts a little more seriously so decided to change the backgrounds on a few of them. Well it wasn’t as easy as we thought.

There are plenty of Twitter background sites out there but we wanted something a little more unique and professional…and something we could customize.

So in my search I came up with 10 beautiful and professional looking Twitter backgrounds and decided to share them with you. Just be aware that if you have Photoshop 6 some of these templates may not work for you.

1. Boinbong – has two different Twitter backgrounds both with a very simple but professional look.

2.  Design Freebies – This background comes in three different colors – blue, green and orange and offers the ability to customize the Polaroid shots in the corner to whatever you like.

3. MXM-Studios – This is a dark template but very cool looking. The template fits a large screen of 1700 x 1050px but the designer says it works equally well on screens that are 1024 x 768px.

4. Paperworks – Another beautiful template from Design Freebies.

5. Shades of Blue – three beautiful blue backgrounds from Design Freebies.

6. ChethStudios – This is just one of four beautiful templates at Cheth Studios.

7. Christmas Theme – Save this one for Christmas. This is cute but professional looking.

8. The Internet Genius Background – Simple but classy looking.

9. Digital Design Advice – This is a fun background and very easy to customize.

10. Manifestbozeman – This is a basic Photoshop template which defines the ‘safest’ areas for adding content. A great one to start with.

We have multiple Twitter accounts – one for each of our websites – and we’ve been looking at different tools and websites that will help us with these accounts.

One of these websites was a site called youradder.com who claimed they could get us more followers. And a bit recklessley we registered with them without reading the ‘rules’….bad decision!

Within a few days one of our Twitter accounts was inundated with spam messages. You’ve probably seen the type we mean – “Finally found the BEST way to get tons of followers for FREE!” or “I just become a member of this AWESOME site that gets you TONS of followers”.

The unfortunate thing for us is these messages were posted almost continuously on that Twitter account causing us to look like spammers.

The ‘rules’ that we failed to read before signing up are listed as follows:

Rules:

1. You agree to submit your twitter accout credentials.
2. You agree to allow us to store your account information in our database.
3. You agree your account will be used to automatically tweet an update on your account for promotional purposes every 6 hours with the exception of VIP members.
4. You agree upon loging in you allow us tweet an update on your twitter for promotion.
5. You agree when buying vip there are no refunds or returns what so ever.
6. You agree to allow us up to 6 hours to put your twitter user name on the vip section.
7. You agree if you spam our site you will be banned from our service forever with out hesitation.

As you can see Rule #3 is the nasty one. However, even if we had read these terms and accepted the ‘one post every 6 hours’ we still would have been pissed off as the number of posts actually averaged about 4 every hour. We were looking like big time spammers.

The only way to get rid of it was for us to change our password on that Twitter account.  This seems to have fixed the problem although we will be keeping an eye on it over the next few days.

There appears to be a chain of these sites all doing the same thing and it is really clogging up Twitter. Here are the spam messages I have found so far on unsuspecting Twitter accounts.

• Its truly amazing, I got 1000 followers in 2 days forr FREE: http://www.extrafollowers.com
• Finally found the BEST way to get tons of followers for FREE! http://www.youradder.com
• Sign up free and Get 400 followers a day using http://tweeteradder.com
• Finally found the BEST way to get tons of followers for FREE! http://www.addfollowers.info
• Get Hundreds of Free Followers A Day! http://www.iwantfollowers.com
• CHECK out this site, im a member of it, It gets you more followers: http://AddFollowers.net
• You need to check out this site if you want more followers: http://AddFollowers.net
• Sign up free and Get 400 followers a day using http://tweeteradder.com
• Get allot more followers! You should check out this site : http://AddFollowers.net
• I just become a member of this AWESOME site that gets you TONS of followers: http://followersnow.com
• I just become a member of this AWESOME site that gets you TONS of followers: http://vipfollowers.com
• I just become a member of this AWESOME site that gets you TONS of followers: http://morefollowers.net
• Hey fellow followers If you want MORE followers check out this site: http://AddFollowers.net

So we have learnt our lesson on this one – we aren’t going to sign up to anything with our Twitter account without first thorougly reading the terms and conditions and even then we are going to be extremely careful.

Tonight I read a forum post by an internet marketer who found that although he was making money online and was successful at it, he found it all incredibly lonely. He was so lonely that he was asking for suggestions from readers as to how he could get around this problem.

What the…?! was my initial response but as I sat and thought about it I realised that in fact, working from home can be very isolating for many. As the ‘Lonely Affiliate’ said, the ‘grass is always greener on the other side’. In other words, those lucky people working a 9 to 5 job have got it all when it comes to social interaction – they get to communicate all day long with other people…they get feedback and hopefully lots of recognition for the good work they’re doing. They get to chat about the latest fashions, which celebrity has just died and gossip to their hearts content about the latest office relationship. 

If you work from home, you don’t get any of that. The feedback especially is non-existent and you are often left wondering if you are doing the right thing for the most part.

For this reason, working from home is not for everyone. If you don’t like being on your own, and I know lots of people like that, then you might have trouble adjusting to this sort of lifestyle. I personally like being on my own…not all the time of course, but when I am I relish it.

I don’t feel isolated…I kind of figure that I have millions of people right inside my computer if I want to interact with any of them. And as for face to face contact?…well there are plenty of options open to me if I choose to take them and the same applies to the ‘Lonely Affiliate’. How about taking up a hobby, or joining a gym, or getting involved with your local community centre or joining a club. The possibilities are endless.

I know that I will never get bored or lonely working from home – there is so much more to life than that…but what about you…are you a ‘Lonely Affiliate’?

I have been on the net for quite some time now – since 1994 to be exact…and during that time I have seen every end of the spectrum when it comes to making money online. I’ve seen some people make massive amounts of money in short periods of time whilst others struggle for months or years without ever making a cent. So what is it that makes one person get all the money while others flounder? Is it a matter of luck, expertise or is it something else?

Since we were at the point where we needed to move to the next level in our affiliate business these were questions I was starting to ask myself. I wondered why we were seemingly ‘stuck’ making the same amount of money even though we were putting more effort into the business.

During that time we attended an internet marketing conference in Sydney where one of the presenters spoke about releasing blockages to making money.  He made each of the audience members go through a simple exercise to see how we really felt about money. After the speaker finished, the lady next to me told me how she didn’t realise how she had always unconciously given away money, in one way or another, as soon as she received it. Her reasoning was that as a child, although her parents made sufficient money, whenever they argued it was always about money. Forever more, this woman equated money with something bad and so was always either repelling it or giving it away.

Personally, I have always liked money. For me it is a means of having complete freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want…within reason of course. So if my problem doesn’t relate to not liking money then what is holding me back from moving to the next level of affiliate income? I knew I had to find out.

Fortunately when you start asking questions like this the Universe invariably starts pushing things right under your nose to help you answer them. For me it was finding a free ebook on the net called The Science of Getting Rich. This little gem was written back in 1910 by a man by the name of  Wallace D Wattles.

The book details how, if you do things in a Certain Way, you can become wealthy.  Apparently it was one of the inspirations for The Secret so if you have seen the movie you will have some understanding how this all works. This book was that good, I literally read through it in one sitting.

After finishing the book my enthusiasm increased dramatically and I was really pumped. I felt like this was they key I was looking for. Interestingly enough, an hour or so after finishing the book I checked my Amazon sales for the day and we had one of the best days ever….was it just coindence or was it the effect of reading the book?  Who knows, but I wasn’t complaining.

I immediately emailed the book to Wanda (my business partner) who read it the next day. She also read it in one go and her response was “Wow, that’s pretty powerful stuff!”

So all this happened a few weeks ago and from just reading the book and absorbing the concepts we have already seen our sales increase. It is amazing what a change in thinking can do. I am so enthused about it that I am currently rereading the book and highlighting important bits as I really want to ensure I am doing things in that Certain Way.

This is well worth a read - I highly recommend it! The book is available free on the internet. I downloaded mine here but just have a search in Google and you will see plenty of available downloads.

Paula and I recently took part in the James Martell Bootcamp on affiliate marketing.

This was one of the most informative exercises the we have undertaken in relation to our affiliate websites, where we learnt how to rank highly in google.

At the end of the course James and Arlene sent us our Certificates showing that we had successfully completed the course and an ‘Easy’ button.

So now whenever we complete a task we press the button that says “That was easy”. It’s a great little motivational tool that I think everyone should go out and buy one. The easy button is available from Amazon.com and Staples stores.