HotStrategies.com

When I started trading about 7 years ago by opening a trading account, the first I did was read as many books on trading as possible. It took me a while, and speedreading might have come handy if I had thought about it. Anyways, the first thing I had noticed that was very clear to me back then was that there were basically 2 ways to profit from the stock market: technical analysis and fundamental analysis.

If you have been in the trading scene long enough, you are probably aware of them. Technical analysis makes use of graphs, indicators, mathematical formulas and quantitative trading to predict trends, whereas fundamental analysis makes use of news and psychology of trading to predict stock trends. There is obviously more to it than just a few sentences but these are the general ideas.

In almost every book I read on one subject or another, the author was always criticizing the other method and explaining why his or her method was better. People on the technical side would argue that news effects are included already in the charts and the prices and there was no reason to analyze it separately; people on the fundamental side would argue that news is what makes the graphs and anticipating the movements before it was reflected in the graphs was the key to making money in stocks.

What amazes me is that 7 years later, when I browse trading forums such as EliteTrader, there are still the same on going arguments about which technique is better. Some so called ‘professionals who trade for a living’ are spending their time arguing like little kids on forums to prove that they are right and the other one is wrong. What’s even worse is that it’s always the same old arguments that are used now, and that were used in the books I read 7 years ago, and that will probably still be used in the future by people who have nothing better to do than argue on forums.

For me, this debate is very simple, just use both. Simple as that. Why? Because both work! I don’t understand how someone can call himself a professional in a field by totally ignoring one big chunk of a field. It’s like a computer professional who says he knows everything about computers except he doesn’t care about computer hardware but simply masters software and programming, or vice-versa. It’s okay to be great one side of a field, but one should still have a good amount of knowledge and recognize the other. In trading, you might be an expert technical trader creating and testing hundreds of trading systems, but you must also acknowledge that there is serious potential from someone who analyzes fundamental analysis. How many times have we heard on television, “This company just made this major announcement and the stock moved of whatever percent.”

Having the knowledge of both sides gives you twice the amount of opportunities to make money and at the end, you are just a better trader.

Reading is skill that is required for everyday life. Reading is the only way we can get information from text to our brain. If you want more knowledge, you need more reading. Now what if you could read faster? What if you could absorb a huge quantity of knowledge, or read more stories than ever by developing and improving your current skills. I for one would love to be able to read faster.

It has been a while now that I’m trying to gather information on reading faster and improving your reading skills. There are many books out there, many companies and tutorials that are supposed to make your reading speeds skyrocket.

I have come across techniques from different resources that all have the same goal which is to make you read faster; everything from “try reading 2-3 words at a time” to photo reading where you “mentally photograph a whole page of text”.

Right off the bat, I will tell you one thing, all the books that you will read will contain 95% filler and 5% actual helpful information. That is, the ‘real technique’ or the ‘essence’ of the book can most of the time easily be reduced to 2-3 pages or even less, but who would pay $30 for a 3 page book?

Some sites, like photoreading.com, say on their front page that with their techniques you can read up to 25,000 words a minute. This equals to 416 words a second. To give you an idea, a full page, filled to bottom, in a word document, single spaced, font times new roman size 12 is around 600 words. Being able to read two thirds of 8½ X 11 filled page in 1 second is something that I consider close to impossible. To give you another example, they are basically saying you can read a 200 page regular size book in 3 minutes. THREE MINUTES!

I will tell you one thing, some of the methods I found over time by questioning people and reading books do actually work, but you need a lot of practice, so much that you actually wonder if it’s worth it.

However, there is a clear distinction that has to be made. Reading faster is one thing, absorbing the information is another one. Being able to “photo read” a page in a second by knowing that it’s talking about cars is one thing, but being able to read it and actually understanding the complex explanations about the cars is another. I doubt anyone can read a page in a second by fully absorbing and understanding what they just read.

If you want to read faster and actually not make your reading a waste of time with some magic techniques, read everything by groups of word. Start small, like 2 words at a time. After you get comfortable get to 3 words a time, etc…You will see an improvement of speed pretty quickly. Most every other methods you will come by will either be just like this technique or be a waste of time and money.

Domains are the virtual real estate. Many people complain that all the good domains are gone and there is no more room for money in domains; those who were lucky to get the good domains in the early years are the only one to profit from domains.

Nothing could be further from the truth!

Unless your goal is to just go to a registrar and try to register a prime domain, then yes you are out of luck. On the other hand, if you want to invest in domains either by reselling domains or by making money parking domains, now is as good as anytime.

You have to think about domains and the internet as real estate. Domains are virtual real estate but they have many similarities with actual real estate. The argument real estate investors use to explain that no matter what happens to the price of housing, in the future, it will always go up simply because there is limited land and a growing number of people who want houses; you can not create land. This reasoning can be used for making money with domains as well; all the good domain names are already taken, so you can not re-create them, on the other hand, very few people can argue that the internet is bigger than ever and will keep growing. With this logic, a good domain that you buy now will inevitably increase its value simply with the rule of supply and demand.

I find that a great resource for learning more on domains and discussing with top players is at DnForum. You can find many bargains and there are many opportunities to buy and sell domains for profits with a small investment.

In every field there at least one huge player, and in domains, the domain king Rich Schwartz is the man. Here is someone who saw the opportunity of domains before anyone and took the plunge. Was he right? You bet. His portfolio of domains is now worth over 1 Billion dollars. You can find out more at eRealEstate and his personal blog at RicksBlog.

Making money with affiliates is, if you ever tried, not easy. The reason for this is pretty simple: it was never meant to be easy! A lot of people think they can just go right at it, set up their Adwords account, make some Adgroups, throw in a couple hundred keywords and let the easy money come in.

Wouldn’t it be just too good to be true if that worked? I believe the main reason people think affiliate marketing is easy, and of course give up when they realize it actually takes work, is its simplicity. When you think about it, what’s really in affiliate marketing? You set up a page, on that page you have to put your affiliate link, and if people buy after clicking your link, you make money. The whole process of opening an account with an affiliate to make money and setting up the links takes no more than 5 minutes. Then there’s the marketing part, which most users just open an Adwords account and make their ads, this could take 20 minutes.

So after 25 minutes of work, our great marketer is now waiting for the money and a lot of sales. A day passes, no sales; 2 days pass, no sales; a whole week later, still no sale, but the Adword bill is now in the hundreds of dollars. 0 conversions after hundreds of clicks, what went wrong? Easy answer: NO WORK!

Despite it looks, affiliate marketing is nowhere close easy. It requires constant work, deep research, lots of trial and error, countless hours, and a good amount of money to start.

What you need to do is to learn, read and never stop! NEVER. You never know when the profitable niche market you are in can fade out. General and broad markets are less and less fructuous as they are saturated markets. Don’t become another one of those.

Another thing, learn from the best! There are very competent and successful marketers out there who are not only good at marketing, but also share step by step their success stories. ShoeMoney has a great analysis and discusses it in great detail.

The $10,000.00 experiment with ppc Part 1

10k ppc experiment part2

No matter how you put it, there are 2 areas in affiliate marketing that will take you considerable amount of work.

1)Researching Your Target Market

This is by far what will determine a big part of your success. What markets convert well these days? What are the products that people are buying? How many competitors do you have?

2)Your Landing Page

A good landing page is a page that is at the same time attractive, brings in curiosity, and ultimately convinces the reader to become a buyer. This one works with trial and error and tweaking. Again, it takes time and good energy. You might need to fail 5,10 or 20 times just to succeed once, so do not be disappointed and do not give up if you are not making money right away.

Benjamin Franklin once said that there are 2 certain things in life: death and taxes. We all know we have to pay tax when we are doing our business or working at our job. Income taxes are an integral part of our life and we have to pay them whether we like it or not. Depending of where you live, the income tax rate is different, and if you live in a tax haven, good for you. Most people however have to deal with tax rates that are in the range of 20-50%, and some places even more.

These are not negligible percentages. If you make 20,000 and you are in the 25% tax bracket, your income is now 15,000. And if you make 100,000 and you are in the 45% tax bracket, your income after tax is now 55,000. Most people know what tax percentage they have to pay, but they don’t really know how this affects them, especially the ones with the lower tax brackets. They think since they aren’t making much, they won’t pay that much.

The real problem arises when people do not consider their real income after tax when they make purchases. Many people have their gross income on their mind all the time, whether they invest or spend, and at the end of the year, they are always surprised where the money really goes.

An individual making $30,000 as gross income per year may want to invest 20% of its yearly income before expenses to a project he just started. This translates to $6,000. After his regular expenses (rent, food, cloth, car, etc…) and the $6,000 for the project, he is left $12,000, which he thinks is not so bad. He would be right, except that then you start accounting income tax of 30%, what he is left with suddenly drops down to $3,000. At the end of the year, he wonders how he made this foolish mistake.

There is yet another group of people who totally forget about any type of expense and tax. You know, the kind of people who say, “I’m making $40,000 a year and in 5 years, I’ll be having $200,000 and will invest in this great sure fire business”. I heard this one from the friend of my cousin when we all went out dining once. I didn’t make any comment.