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How to Make More Money With an Amazon Affiliate Site

Aug 30, 2021 | Affiliate Marketing

Do you feel like your site should be earning more?

Hey, you and everybody else. We can’t help everybody else, but we can help you.

In this post, we will show you how to make more money with your Amazon affiliate site. These are the same tactics that we use to boost our affiliate sales and give your site the maximum chance for success.

Read on to learn how you can earn more money with your Amazon affiliate site.

Focus On High Converting Content

Marketing is the art of showing the right product to the right people. And your product (content) might be great, but what if it’s bringing in the wrong people?

Earning more with Amazon doesn’t start by improving your content…

It starts by improving your keyword research.

In our experience, two types of articles perform are highest-converting affiliates:

Best X for Y. This is the stereotypical buying guide. Something like “best family tent for bad weather”.
X product review. This is where you review a single product. Something like “coleman weathermaster tent review”.

These types of keywords are the bread-and-butter of affiliate marketing. It’s not that we can’t earn money with other keywords, it’s that these keywords are the sweet spot where we solve someone’s need.

Have No Fear, An Affiliate Is Here

What value does an affiliate provide to the world?

I’d be willing to bet that between the Facebook ads showing lambos and the YouTube ads showing lambos, not many affiliates have given it much thought.

The value we provide to the world is simple, but profound.

We help people save time and make decisions.

Someone wants to buy a new bed and a new chew toy for her kid and for her dog. She decides that the kid will be good with any chew toy, but the dog needs a great bed.

She knows what she needs (a great dog bed), but she doesn’t know which one is right for her.

And instead of making her open up 20 tabs on Amazon, read through product descriptions, check the reviews for anything less than 4 stars, and compare pricing…

We affiliates say “Hey, I’ll do that work for you. I’ll produce an amazing write-up and you can just check that out instead of wasting hours of your time.”

This brings us back to our high-converting keywords. Because what will this lady search for online when she needs a dog bed, but isn’t sure which one is right?

She’ll search for something like “best dog bed for long-haired dogs“. And once she finds one she likes, she might search “Woofer long-haired dog bed review” (We just made the company name Woofer up).

And she’ll land on an affiliates page.

The reason these keywords convert better is because they have buyer intent. The Ahrefs blog has a great article on search intent, so I won’t go too in-depth here.

The gist is this: People search some keywords when they want to spend money. They search other keywords when they just want info.

This also explains which kind of traffic is going to be the highest-converting for us.

We’ll put it this way:

Social is sexy, but SEO pays the bills.

SEO traffic often converts at higher rates than social traffic. This is due to the reasons why people use search engines versus social media.

When someone is on Facebook, Pinterest, or name-your-platform, they’re often there to hang out. They want to see their friends, learn what’s up, know new people.

Except on TikTok, where they just want to know new people in a biblical sense…

People aren’t often on social media to buy.

But when someone searches on social media, we can filter out all the people who aren’t looking to buy. We can find those who are looking to buy and make sure that they’re the ones who land on our site.

Search engine traffic (SEO) will almost always be the highest-converting, consistent form of traffic for affiliates. It’s too easy to get our right product in front of the right people.

So we as affiliates want to target the keywords where people want to spend money. In particular, the keywords where they know what they want to buy, they just don’t know which one they want to buy…

So how do we find these keywords in droves?

Finding Magic Keywords

Think I’m exaggerating when we say “magic”?

I’m not. The difference these buyer intent keywords made in your business will be life-changing.

It all starts with a keyword research tool. Ahrefs is our preference, but any keyword research tool where you can see the SERPs at a glance will be perfect for this.

We’re going to start by putting in a seed keyword (just a basic term for your niche) or a series of seed keywords. In the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, I typed in “camp, camping, tent, sleeping bag”.

And we hit search. Ahrefs will show us their analysis of these 4 keywords, but this isn’t what we’re interested in.

Click on “All Keyword Ideas” over to the left of the screen.

And we’re going to end up with a lot of keywords (I got 3,336,256 keywords), so we need to add some filters.

I’ll use the following filters:

KD: 0-10. I don’t trust keyword difficulty scores on any tool, but they are super useful for broad filtering.
Word Count: 3+. This makes sure we’re getting long tail keywords. Sometimes I like to go to 5+.
Include: Any of “best”, “review”. This makes sure we’re getting the buyer intent keywords that we’re looking for.

My final results look like this:

And this is where most keyword research stops…

Most people download their filtered list and are off to the races…

But not us. We’re find the best of the best keywords.

First we need to click that little SERP button to the right of the page:

That little button is going to show us the entire first page of Google for each of those keywords…

And it holds the secret to improving your Amazon earnings.

Go through the first page of the Keyword Explorer and open up a bunch of keywords. We’re going to be on the lookout for a few things:

We want to find keywords with at least 2 keywords under Domain Rating (DR) 25 on the first page of Google
We want to verify that these low-DR sites don’t have many backlinks or referring domains (RD). I prefer that sites have <5 RD to the page we’re looking at. I like to look at RD more than backlinks, since additional backlinks from the same site decrease in power

Once you find a keyword that’s good, it will look something like this (red are columns we look at, black are low-competition results)

These are the keywords you need to target. Several low DR sites ranking, none of whom have many referring domains linking to them.

That’s a low-competition, buyer-intent keyword. Targeting those is the first step to increasing your Amazon Associates earnings.

We include keyword research in all of our content packages, so let us know if you want us to do the keyword research for you.

Audit Your Links

The only thing sexier than an audit is the extra money in your bank account next month.

You might need to repeat that a few times to help it sink in. No one loves an audit, and I don’t suggest you do one by hand.

I don’t even suggest that you hire a poor soul as a virtual assistant to do it for you.

But site audits are powerful for a few reasons.

Your products might be missing affiliate links (or have affiliate links that aren’t yours – sometimes those writers have a little too much hustle)
You might be linking to products that are out of stock
Your pages might be missing appropriate disclaimers

All of these are devastating to any affiliate:

Missing or incorrect affiliate links robs you of the income you should be earning. In our experience, no one thinks they have missing or wrong affiliate links…

But almost every site does.

This could be caused by a simple mistake by a VA to malicious intent; it’s surprising how often site owners realize that their writers are inserting their own affiliate codes.

Or perhaps you’re linking to out of stock products. Instead of landing on the page they want, visitors hit a dead page…

And instead of buying, they bounce. They’re gone.

You lost a conversion.

But perhaps worst of all, missing disclaimers could get you banned from Amazon or even put you in trouble with the SEC.

Instead of trying to audit every page and link on your own, we recommend using SiteBuddy.

SiteBuddy will scan your site and tell you a few things:

Sign up for SiteBuddy (click here to get the free version that rocks), download the results, and hand it off to the VA to fix.

There. Audit done.

Now let’s chat about the winning-est strategy…

Win By Outproducing

Remember those low-competition keywords we found a ways up the page?

You’re about to need more of them.

A lot more of them.

Because at the end of the day, he who has the most content…

Wins.

Shameless plug: we can produce content for you. And we’re pretty good, really.

The key with content is to find the right balance between quality and quantity.

It’s great to have a bunch of posts…

And it’s great to have a single amazing post…

But the sweet spot is somewhere in between those two things. The highest ROI often doesn’t come from maxing out on quality or quantity, but on combining them.

Strive to produce amazing content for your audience. Be the best in your niche if it’s possible.

But don’t waste weeks or months on a single post. Crank it out, get it done, move on to the next one.

There are a few ways to produce quality at scale.

Remove fluff from your content. Don’t stuff word count for the sake of stuffing word count. Every word should add value
Be graphic. Show some images, slap some color on that page of yours. But don’t download these from Amazon
Explain which product is best for which person. Instead of having a top 5 list in order of 1 to 5, explain that this product is best overall, that one is best for long haired dogs, another is best for short haired dogs, and that one over there is the best budget one
Be honest with pros and cons. Readers can smell a sale from a mile away. Be honest in your explanation of cons for the product.
Add some personality. Be yourself. Don’t be robotic; show that you’re a real person with emotions. Add humor if you’re funny. If you aren’t funny, pass on the jokes. Lots of laughs can fall flat in writing

If you’re hiring out content (like with us), then it’s wise to have a “brand package”. Explain who your target audience is, what your brand’s personality is, and how to connect with your audience.

This ensures uniform content and helps keep all new content in line with your aim.

How Much Content Is Right?

Let’s get to it: how much content do you need to make big lambo bucks and be surrounded by supermodels?

We’ll tell you when we get there.

Seriously, it’s tough to say how much content you’ll need to make $X per month. It’s different from every niche.

Some people we know make $700/month just from 10 blog posts. That’s a non-standard result, but it happens.

In general, we recommend setting small goals: Try to have 10 posts, then 25. Go for 50, 100, 1,000.

We don’t know anyone who has 3 digits worth of quality posts that isn’t seeing a pretty serious ROI.

At the end of the day, it’s hard to place an “upper limit” on how much content you should have. But it’s also hard to place a “lower limit”: what is the minimum viable product?

If you’re producing content yourself, strive for 1 post per week. More is great if you can, but 1 per week will be awesome.

Most people getting into affiliate marketing are inconsistent; they’ll publish 4 posts the first month, then 2 the next, then 1, then…

Next thing you know, they’re complaining in a Facebook group how the model doesn’t work.

The truth is that they were inconsistent. If you’re on a budget and writing yourself, try to produce 1 post per week, every week.

No exceptions.

The truth is that it isn’t hard to outproduce most websites. People are lazy. Exploit that by working hard in your free time, and trusting that the process will work.

And then once you have some cash you can invest in your site, content is a good investment. Each new piece of content is another opportunity to rank on the first page of Google.

At the end of the day, the winning-est winners win by outproducing the competition.

Hard work scales. Use it to win.

Wrapping It Up

There are a few tactics that have outsized risk vs reward profiles:

Targeting good keywords is one of them. You can do this with new content or by revamping existing content.

Site audits are another. You’ll be surprised at how much money you’re losing, so give your site a quick glance with SiteBuddy.

Content production doesn’t have this same asymmetric reward to risk, but it is the overall winning strategy. Again, we can produce content for you.

These sites might not be easy. But they are worth it.

How To Use Solo Ads From Udimi To Make Money With CPA Offers – $150 Spend to Generate $1000 in Revenue!

Aug 30, 2021 | Seo

This is a step by step tutorial that teaches how I used UDIMI Solo Ads to Make Money With Financial Lead Gen Offers from Supremedia

If you are into funnels, lead generation and email list building the chances are you might have heard about UDIMI. It’s extremely popular resource for Funnel Hackers and Clickfunnels users. A lot of Clickbank affiliates also rely on this service to drive traffic. But did you know you can use UDIMI solo ads and drive traffic to CPA Offers that pay out $1000 or more per conversion?

In this guide I am going to introduce you to an amazing opportunity to make money online using financial lead gen offers and promote them using SOLO ADS traffic from UDIMI.

In order to get started, you need to have a few things.

#1) You need to have an account on UDIMI, click here to create one.
#2) You need to have an account at Supremedia, click here to sign up.
#3) Domain Name & Web Host To Host Your Landing Page

Gathering The Marketing Materials for My Solo Ad Campaign

Talking To Your Account Manager from Supreme Media is the first step, you may reach them via Skype or Telegram or Email. (I prefer telegram).

I started out by asking what geos had the highest payouts and my rep (Ilano) told me that Australis is on fire right now, and he can offer to pay $XXXX for an active lead. He also told me that DESKTOP traffic does best and has higher chance of conversion.

When I asked if he has any proven landing pages / angles that work he sent over a ZIP file containing the best landers to use right now. (This is awesome, because coding and design isn’t my favorite thing to do, and I really suck at it).

I looked at some of the angles, and really liked the one where an average joe heard about an investment opportunity and made a few million dollars after trying his luck at this investment, so I asked my rep if they could upload it on my domain name for me and add in my tracking link that points to my Supremedia account.

They just needed my FTP information, and a few minutes later he informed me that everything is ready to rock n roll.

Buying the Solo Ad Traffic From UDIMI

NOTE: After you’ve signed up, you will need to verify your account and fill out your profile. This can take some time, and it costs $10. Alternatively you may order a small test of traffic for around $25 to get it done faster.

Assumming you’ve verified your account (or did a test order on Udimi) it’s time to start finding solo ads sellers to buy from.

We’re going to be testing traffic in Australia for this offer, so what I want to do is click FIND SELLERS, then click the down arrow to expand the advanced search options and look for MAIN TRAFFIC SOURCE and select AUSTRALIA.

I received a result of 12 matches as follows:

financial lead generation using udimi solo ads

So What I will do is reach out one by one via Live Chat to each of them and ask something super important.

NOTE: Many newbie solo ad buyers believe good quality solo ad is High Opt In Rate, and Tier 1 Country. They don’t really look at or care what device the click came from; but we do because our AM at Supremedia told us that DESKTOP converts the best. So logically thinking, we need AUSTRALIA and DESKTOP traffic only. NO MOBILE.

Communicating With the Solo Ad Sellers

When reaching out, my initial message is simple:

After you send out the DM’s youll have to wait for a reply. The thing with solo ads is you really have to dig for people who are honest and sell real solo ads.

There’s a lot of scammers that re-sell other peoples solo ads, that sell you a mix of solo ads and funnel clicks, and/or paid ads. Then there are the really big scammers that sell you íncent traffic that will never, ever engage on your follow up sequence.

I’ve got a reply like this (them wanting to know what I need traffic for, so they can confirm they have the right audience for my offer)

There was a lot of back and forth, out of the 12, 4 didn’t respond after 8 hours and 4 said yes, and 4 said no. Sadly none of them said yes to both Desktop & Australia so I went with AU & Mix of Desktop & Mobile.

I’ve made sure that my landing page is fully responsive and looks good on Mobile & Desktop equally.

I’ve used a special click tracking link where I tagged the URLs on the landers so I know which seller is sending what traffic so if there’s conversions I can track it back. I didn’t use redtrack now, because I wanted to do a quick test. For big click buys in solo ads, I highly recommend using a tracker to filter for scam traffic and bots, but for this tiny test it’s not worth my time to spend setting up tracking.

NOTE: If you are interested in how to use RedTrack to track your SOLO ADS campaigns, check out this tutorial here.

Anyways, I’ve placed my order as follows. You can use the following spreadsheet layout for your own SOLO ADS buy from Udimi:

The Results Are In – $150 Spend and $1000 in Revenue!?!

After I placed the orders I sent a message to all the sellers to ensure, we’re 100% clear as follows:

“Hi, i have ordered – as discussed – AUSTRALIA only. Schedule so clicks are delivered from 10AM-8PM AUSTRALIAN timezone. This is VERY VERY important.”

Australia is many hours ahead of me (I am based in Central Europe). After i went to bed, the clicks started at around 4AM my time. Which was Noon in Sydney, Australia.

I woke up at 7:30 AM and made my coffee, then checked stats.

GOOD NEWS: It turns out from the $150 spend that got me 300 clicks I ended up getting one active conversion which resulted in $1000 in revenue at Supremedia. I honestly was not expecting a conversion, that’s why I have no idea which device/OS/platform/what time of the day the conversion came in.

However, I do know which seller it came from since I tagged my sellers with their own offer URLs at supreme media.

Key Takeaways from my $150 Test with SOLO ADS in Australia

-Always use a 3rd party tracker like RedTrack to be 100% in the know when it comes to who converted.

-Test sending to advertorial vs sending direct to offer page. Again you never know. I ran advertorial here, expected nothing because I was just testing to see who has traffic in AU and if they can deliver. But it resulted in 1 active lead, which is insane.

-Solo Ads from UDIMI do work, IF YOU DO things differently than most people that don’t have a clue about solo ads. (Ask them for country specific traffic, ask them for device breakdown).

How to Scale Up A Solo Ads Campaign on UDIMI?

It seems to me that SOLO ADS sellers mostly have Tier 1 traffic. They all focus on American subscribers most of the time, which makes sense because American visitors tend to whip out their credit cards easily and buy anything and everything -but that doesn’t mean there’s no opportunity outside of the US-

It’s actually a benefit that most people buy USA traffic because that makes Solo Ads for Financial Lead gen in other countries a really great option especially for those on a budget.

Here I spent only ~$150 to generate $1000 in revenue, sure I might have been lucky but that’s how affiliate marketing works. Best, you can optimize your luck by doing small tests in different geos using the top landing pages / angles you see working on Facebook Ads, Native and Push Ads.

Can You Make Money Using Solo Ads & Financial Lead Gen Offers?

As You Can See, You Can! It’s Also 10x Easier Than To Buy PPC Ads Because You Don’t Have to Come up with Ads/Angles, Design Creatives, Setup Campaigns or Worry About Getting Your Ad Account Banned.

With Solo Ads, You just really have to do your solo ad seller vetting process really good and make sure you get high quality solo ads clicks.

Udimi’s PRIME account system can give this to you. You can buy it for each solo ad order or just get the monthly package which makes it cheaper. I’ve used it along to make sure I get premium traffic, and well it worked (which shocked me tbh for this first run).

To get started with solo ads, click here to create a UDIMI account and make sure you sign up for an account at Supremedia, right here to get all the high payout offers.

Investment: How I Invest my Money

Jul 4, 2021 | Affiliate Marketing

I’ve seen several friends lose thousands of dollars since the year started.

It wasn’t because of job loss. It wasn’t because of the pandemic.

It was because they invested everything they had into stocks like GameStop and AMC. And I saw this happen last week with Dogecoin.

By the time the general public starts investing, it’s already too late. They’re left holding the bags.

It’s easy to make fun of these people, but here’s how I see it.

Some people were never taught anything about money.
Society has trained us that it’s not appropriate to talk about money.
They don’t see other paths to wealth. They’re desperate.

Social media has made it easier than ever to get caught up in hype bubbles!

If you click on one GameStop video or article, then the social media algorithms will keep sending you more of them.

You get sucked into this bubble of confirmation bias.

People have asked me over the years about how I invest my money.

I’ve always been hesitant to talk about it because of imposter syndrome. I’ve never had any formal training in investments.

I had to learn about investing the hard way. Here are some mistakes I’ve made along the way.

I wrote in detail about how I lost money in cryptocurrency.
I bought a ton of Apple and Amazon stock in 2009… and I sold them in 2011.
I didn’t know how retirement vehicles worked. I invested after taxes money for years rather than invest directly into my retirement accounts.

Over the past decade, I’ve devoured countless sources of information in regards to investing, and feel comfortable enough now to talk about it.

So I’m going to share my personal portfolio and my thought process behind it.

This is the article that I wish I had to guide me years ago.

A few notes:

This is for informational purposes only and not investment advice. It’s intended to show you how I approach managing my money. Any investment comes with risks. Do your own research.

And second, you have to figure out what works best for you. I don’t know your goals. I don’t know your financial situation or how old you are. I want to plant some seeds with this article, and you can do more research on your own.

Where I Invest My Bread

Here’s a peek at my personal portfolio.

This doesn’t include assets from my businesses.
The % changes daily because of volatility in Crypto and the Stock market.

Cash

The inflation rate is now around 2.5%. It’s possibly higher since the government keeps printing money.

This means your money in the bank is losing value.

I keep enough in the bank for my day-to-day, and we have some savings for our wedding. Experts recommend 6 to 12 months of living expenses saved up.

Hopefully, the pandemic woke everyone up to the importance of an emergency fund. An emergency fund makes your financials more robust.

I can’t think of too many emergencies that can’t be solved with credit cards.

Unless of course, someone mugs me and demands cash… ”Uhhhh… do you guys take Venmo?”

Stocks

Warren Buffett is the most successful investor in history. What does he recommend that the average person invest in?

“Invest in low-cost index funds.”

Buying an index fund share means you have a piece of ~3000 different companies. It’s an easy way to keep you diversified.

I don’t know much about the stock market. I can’t read candlestick charts or do any technical analysis.

But investing in index funds means I outperform over 90% of stock experts.

This study shows how index funds have outperformed hedge funds for the past decade.

One thing you have to watch out for is fees. They’re the silent killer… way worse than farts.

Some funds are managed by people. These suits do analysis to determine which stocks to invest in. This increases your fees.

Index funds are managed by algorithms. That’s why the fees are so much cheaper.

My Vanguard index funds have an expense ratio (fee) of 0.15%.
The average mutual fund has an expense ratio of 1%.

That 0.85% matters when it’s compounded over decades.

Do you want that 0.85% difference to go towards your future or to pay for the fund manager’s sugar baby’s monthly allowances?

Read the following article to see how important expense ratios are.

The True Cost of a 1% Expense Ratio

Next, which funds to invest in? Here’s what I do:

70% VTSAX (index funds for American companies)
30% VTIAX (index funds for international companies)

You can buy these at Vanguard.com. Why do I use Vanguard over Fidelity or their competition? Vanguard has a unique ownership structure. It’s owned by the customers. Their long-term incentives are aligned with mine.

You should figure out how to balance USA vs. international funds. I like 30% international. Most future growth is happening over in China and India. I want exposure to those markets.

I don’t own any bonds. Bonds can balance out the stocks in your portfolio. They’re much safer, but with less returns. Right now I’m young and aggressive. I want maximum growth. I’ll start allocating parts of my portfolio towards bonds once I’m in my 60’s.

Some experts recommend 110 – your age = % in stocks.

For me it’d be 110-36 = 74% stock, 24% bonds. Once again, I’m more aggressive than the average investor.

Investing in a Tax Efficiency Way

The government always wants a piece of the pie. You can invest in tax-efficient ways to legally lower your taxable income.

Here are the ways that I do it:

SEP IRA via Vanguard: 25% of my salary

(If you pay yourself $100,000 a year, then you’re able to invest $25,000 a year through a SEP IRA. There’s a catch, though. You have to extend this to every full-time employee in your company. If you’re a small operation and only work with independent contractors, then SEP IRAs are the way to go.)

Traditional IRA via Betterment: $6,000 (Max allowed)

Health Savings Accounts via Lively: $3,600 (Maxed allowed. Only if you have health insurance that qualifies)

Now that I’m about to get married, I’m slowly combining my financials with my fiancée. We’re maxing out her 401k through her work, and she has an IRA.

I actually can’t touch most of my investment funds until I’m 59.5 years old. This is a good thing. It keeps me from fucking around with my investments.

What if you want to retire earlier? There are some legal hacks.

One of the more popular ones is called a Roth IRA Conversion Ladder.

I invest a lot into my retirement. I want to make sure that I can take care of myself when I’m old. I don’t want to be a burden on my kids.

So many people don’t have retirement plans and will have to depend upon their kids. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

What if you’re estranged from your kids?
What if your kids won’t make enough money to support you?

The greatest thing you can do for your kids is to not be a burden to them.

You have to take care of your own future, old ass. The government is stupid—they can’t even reliably send stimulus checks to people. You don’t want to depend on them when you’re old.

Speaking of kids, how can you invest for your kid’s education? The best way is through your state’s 529. I live in Georgia, so I’m using this site.

Money Hack: You can invest for your kid’s university before they’re born. You simply open it in your name and start investing. Once they’re born, you can transfer the account over to them. Those few extra years can mean an extra 5 figures due to compounding.

The biggest thing I’m wondering about is if higher education will even be relevant two decades from now. There’s now more and more higher education alternatives such as Lambda School. Google is getting into certifications and treating them as if they’re college degrees when hiring.

Colleges are getting too expensive for the value that they’re offering. I won’t be pressuring my kids to go to college.

Cryptocurrency

I was heavy into crypto in 2017, like the rest of the affiliate industry. What a hell of a rollercoaster ride.

I invested money into Bitcoin early. Then I transferred some of those Bitcoins into altcoins. Those altcoins exploded… and then some of them crashed. Some of those altcoins I invested in turned out to be scams.

My portfolio at one point became 100% alt coins because I got greedy.

So how do I feel about crypto now?

I am bullish on cryptocurrency. I took some L’s, but I’m a better investor because of it.

Boomers were able to generate massive wealth through real estate.
Generation X were able to get into stocks during the 90s.
Cryptocurrency is our generation’s opportunity for massive wealth.

What happened in 2017 with crypto?

It reminds me of the dot-com bubble. There was too much hype and speculation before the technology and adoption were ready.

The bubble deserved to be popped.

It helps to visualize crypto like the stock market.

Coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance, Vechain, etc. are like the FAANGs. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google.

They’re the safest bets in a risky investment class.

Investing in altcoins is like angel investing. Sure, you might discover the next Uber or Airbnb. But there’s a higher chance of your coin becoming the next Enron.

There has been a lot of great progress in crypto over the past few years. Look at Decentralized Finance. There’s so much inefficiency when you cut out 5+ layers of middlemen.

Crypto is here to stay, but I don’t know which projects will be around ten years from now. That’s why I’m a lot more conservative with my investments in crypto.

If you want to keep it simple: 50% BTC, 50% ETH. Put it in a Ledger wallet. Don’t touch it for a decade.

Another way of allocating Crypto is the 50/25/25 portfolio.

50% BTC: The KING. You can’t talk about crypto without talking about Bitcoin. Network effects. Institutional investments are going straight to Bitcoin. The most battle-hardened and proven coin. This provides stability to your portfolio.

25% Ecosystem play: Ethereum, Binance Coin, Vechain, Cardano, etc. These guys are like different operating systems for blockchains. Think of it like crypto’s version of iOS vs Android. I’m personally invested in the Binance Smart Chain Ecosystem (BNB)

25% Small Cap Coins: Go to CoinMarketCap. This would be something in say #11-100. More risk, but also potentially higher returns. I’m personally invested in PanCakeSwap, and do a lot of Yield farming.

A few lessons I learned about Crypto:

Know when to take profits. When are you going to cash out? I’ve set different formulas for myself so I don’t get caught up in emotions. For example, if / when BTC hits $75,000, I’ll cash out a percentage of my portfolio.
Keep a certain % in Bitcoin. When there’s a bull market, the altcoins are going to rise the fastest. It’ll be tempting to move over Bitcoin -> altcoin. But sooner or later the bears will come. Bitcoin provides stability.
Don’t get scammed. Take your coins off exchanges and into cold storage.

Real Estate: 0%

I’m not into real estate. (Although, I’m sure I have some REIT’s due to my index funds)

I like to keep my investments as simple as possible.

We’re living in Atlanta now, but we’re not sure if we’ll be staying here. So it doesn’t make sense for us to buy a home until we’re 100% sure where we want to be.

I’m not interested in being a landlord, ever.

The pandemic revealed some risks of being a landlord that I never knew were possible.

If someone doesn’t pay their rent on time, you can evict them. But then the pandemic happened. People lost jobs and couldn’t pay their rent anymore.

The CDC banned evictions. So you have landlords who are subsidizing the rent of their tenants. They’re not getting any relief from the government.

I don’t know what the answer to this problem is. But my point is that the pandemic revealed some unrealized risks in being a landlord these days.

You can always invest in REITs if you want real estate exposure, without any of the headaches.

Other Thoughts on Investing

Here are some other principles I have when it comes to investing.

Create an Automated Financial Machine with Dollar Cost Averaging

Let’s say you have $6,000 to invest this year. Most people will want to know WHEN they should invest their money.

Should they invest it all now? Will the market dip at the end of the year, and they should buy then?

I try to remove as many emotions out of investing as possible. I do dollar-cost averaging instead.

Spread that $6,000 out over the year. Automate your accounts to invest $500 every month and forget about it.

I spend less than an hour each month on my personal finances. Everything’s automated.

My bills are paid automatically. Investments are made at the first of each month.

I don’t think about money because I know my machine’s working. My emotions aren’t affected if the market’s down for the day.

Pay Off Your Debts Before Investing

I know many people are in debt. You might have student loans and a mortgage. You want to save up for a wedding, but you also want to save for retirement.

How do you balance everything?

Imagine trying to run but your foot is chained to a cannonball. That’s what it’s like to invest while you have debt.

You should figure out what your interest cut-off is. The stock market has averaged 7% returns over the past century.

4% is a solid cut-off rate.

Let say someone has the following debts:

Mortgage: 3.5%
Student Loans: 7%
Car: 8%

They should not invest at all until their car and student loans are paid off. Investing comes with risks. Paying off the car is a guaranteed 8%.

But of course, money is not just math. There’s a psychological component to it. Realize that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You can always put money towards the loans, and some money towards retirement.

Emotional Simplification

I designed my investments to be as simple and boring as possible. I don’t want to touch my investments outside of re-balancing it once a while.

I don’t want my portfolio to be fun or interesting. I don’t want to get dopamine fixes from my investments.

Checking my portfolio 20x+ a day isn’t productive. Bad market days can completely drain your emotions.

So that’s why I don’t invest in individual stocks like TSLA or GME. It’s why I don’t invest in altcoins anymore.

I’d get too emotionally invested.

It’s why I don’t seek alpha. Seeking alpha means to look for returns beyond the standard. I’m merely trying to “match” the standard with index funds and safe cryptocurrency.

It’s important to stay within your circle of competence.

My time and energy are better spent improving at business and marketing. That means more money I can put into the market to invest.

Once you get to a certain milestone, don’t fuck up. Meaning, I’ll reach my net worth goals soon if I stay on the path.

I won’t reach it if I start doing stupid shit and taking unnecessary risks.

Protect Your Money

Imagine if you got into a car accident tomorrow.

What happens to your money?

Can your loved ones afford a funeral for you? Or do they have to go on GoFundMe?
Can people access your bank accounts? What about your cryptocurrency?

Will the government take a huge % of your money due to estate taxes?
Will you family have to lawyer up and go through probate court?

Tony Hsieh is one of my heroes.

He did NOT leave a will for his family.

Fortunately, his father and brother were able to gain custody of his fortune.

Now people are starting to sue his estate to get a piece of the pie.

The solution is simple: create a will.

Hire a lawyer. Seriously, don’t print some shit from the internet and hope that’s enough. Hire a lawyer.

I spent several months working with a lawyer to establish my Living Trust.

This means my family avoids lawyers and probate courts. As soon as I die, everything goes immediately to them.

Put More Coals in the Fire

This is the compound interest formula.

Principal = How much money you put in.
Interest Rate = Your rate of return. For example, investing in TSLA or Bitcoin would’ve gotten you an insane return!
Time = How long you’re in the stock market.

I focus on two things.

First, I try to put as much money into my investments as possible. That’s what I mean by putting more coals in the fire.

This is as simple as increasing your income, and decreasing your salary. But sometimes simple is the hardest.

Living in the Present vs. Delaying Gratification

I was hanging out with some friends over the weekend. We were talking about how do you balance out living in the present vs. delaying gratification?

Investing is delaying gratification. That $19,000 in your 401k this year is $19,000 that you could use to live it up now.

Some people don’t believe in delaying gratification.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be alive several decades from now”

or

“I don’t want to travel the world when I’m old. This is the healthiest that I’m going to be”

There’s no correct answer to this because it’s a philosophical one.

Here’s my take on it: I try to find a balance. One framework that I’ve come up with is the minimum effective dose.

I learned about this from Tim Ferriss. Basically, what’s the least amount of effort that it takes to start getting results?

Water boils at 212F. Boiled water is already boiled. Making the water hotter will not make it “more boiled”. Instead, it’s a waste of resources. Basically, there’s a “sweet spot” before you hit a point of diminishing returns.

Let’s relate this to money.

John wants a new Tesla. Let’s say it’s $55,000 with all the bells and whistles. What is the Minimum Effective Dose? What’s the cheapest car that he’d be satisfied with?

Let’s say it’s a used Audi for $22,000. No, it’s not a Tesla and doesn’t have auto driving. But it’s still a nice and comfortable car. He scratches the itch of driving a luxury car.

But the difference is he can invest the $33,000 instead.

$33k at 7% rate of return over 20 years is $127,700. He can buy his Tesla then, and have an extra $72,000!

This is one of my approaches to decision-making.

I love staying at the Ritz Carlton and other fancy hotels. But I’ll only stay there if it’s free via credit card points. I can’t justify $500 a night for a hotel.

$150 a night in a modest hotel is good enough for me, and I rather invest that $350 a night. That’s the minimum effective dose in action. I find the “sweet spot” where I’m content, and I invest the rest. I don’t feel as if I’m sacrificing at all.

Becoming Wealthy is a Responsibility

My parents were refugees from Vietnam. They came to American with nothing.

I experienced bitterness throughout high school and college. Some of my friends got allowances and didn’t have to work in college.

I had to work at the gas station every weekend for $8.25 an hour. I was envious whenever my friends got expensive gadgets for Christmas.

And this envy put a chip on my shoulder. I channeled that energy into working 12 hours a day after college. 8 hours a day at my day job, 4 hours at night trying to run campaigns.

Eventually, I became successful.

Looking back I realized that I developed this relentless work ethic. I observed it from my parents growing up. I developed it by having to juggle so many responsibilities in college.

I view success as a duty and a responsibility.

The world has changed.

My parents didn’t have access to a 401k or know about the stock market. They just knew to buy property or to buy gold.

The world has changed. We will be going through a period of exponential growth.

So, I view it as my responsibility to understand how the modern world works.

I have a responsibility to take care of my parents when they’re older.
I have a responsibility to my future wife.
I have a responsibility to make sure my future kids learn what I was never taught. And to surpass me.

I hate when people try to virtue signal about money.

“Money doesn’t make you happy.”
“Money is not everything.”

It’s true that money alone doesn’t bring you happiness. But having money means you’re free from all the negative emotions and stress of being broke.

Where I Read About Money

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