Wow! Where the heck did that year go?

Just like that, it’s the end of January which means it’s also the end of this challenge!

Modified Challenge: Eat a minimum of 2,000 calories of Raw Fruits, Vegetables, nuts and seeds for a whole 30 days and document any changes.

I’ve tried a variety of diets, some have worked others haven’t but the problem I’ve always faced was consistency.

I always start off strong but then after a few days I’ll crave all the things I can’t eat simply because I have it in my mind that they’re the ‘forbidden foods’ and so out of curiosity my mind would start wondering and start craving.

Being able to eat basically whatever you want is probably the weirdest diet ever but it’s the first one that’s kept me this consistent and feeling amazing.

The catch is, I’m too full on raw fruits and vegetables to indulge in heavy unhealthy eating. I can’t have a box of pizza to myself because after a piece or two I start feeling the smoothie I had just an hour ago.

The biggest trick into all this has been to keep full.

Keep full on good food. Never let yourself feel hungry. It’s only then when you’ll start wanting to eat everything in the house.

Outcomes and Effects

So now what? What did I actually achieve physically, emotionally and mentally?

• Never feeling Tired: This is by far one of my favorites. I used to feel lethargic all the time. Usually because I’d eat heavy south asian meals which are bad for the digestive system. My mind would always want to put me to sleep so it could digest it all. I don’t feel this anymore. In fact, after a massive meal, I actually get an energy boost ready to do physical activity! This is what food is meant to do. Not make you feel sleepy.

• Brighter eyes, skin and stronger hair: These are some physical benefits I’ve noticed. Been told by at least 3 people that my eyes and skin have become smoother and lighter. Maybe it’s from all those green juices but it definitely makes sense. My hair has become way thicker. I was afraid I’d start losing it but now I’m pretty confident I can keep them for a long time with a good diet.

• Beating my Cardio Times: I use an app called freeletics to keep fit. It gives you a bunch of strength and conditioning type work outs which you have to time yourself while doing. The aim is to continually improve by beating your previous time. It actually works great! I’ve been smashing my previous records even when I thought I was at the peak of my fitness back then!

• No Need for Naps, Early Wake ups easy: Even though I can get up relatively early, I used to always wake up feeling sluggish. Nowadays, if I can stop eating at around 7pm max and keep it relatively clean, (no heavy plates of rice or noodles or takeaway), coupled with 2,000 calories of raw, my body always wakes up right. I might feel it a bit for a minute or two but once my body start to wake up, it wakes up! I’m ready to go.

• Started The Year off with a Win: Even though I had at least 100 instances where I really wanted to break the diet, I wanted to start off this year with a win. I was going to have it no other way! It would set up the rest of my year and give me confidence I could keep up with these challenges. The mind is an interesting thing. After a while of keeping a successful routine, it makes it way easier to keep it. Keep failing and it’ll snowball into a failing attitude.

Overall, I’m going to stick to this. It doesn’t even feel like a diet anymore to be honest. I feel like I’m just eating breakfast, lunch and dinner like normal people and having small bites of delicious meals whenever I feel like it.

If anyone wants to start this, here’s some tips.

Keep it simple

For the most part of the diet I had these,

I varied it up a little but not thinking about what to make made it a whole lot easier. I don’t like complicating things and if I enjoy something, I’ll stick to it. I’ve been having the same smoothies for breakfast for almost a year now and I still love them!

Never be Hungry

The biggest mistake most people do when on a diet is they starve themselves for too long. Being hungry is like being drunk, you just stop thinking rationally. If I’ve come home to pizza from a hard days working without eating breakfast and skipping lunch what’s the chances I’ll eat it? 100%.

For me, it’s 100%.

That’s one thing I had to eliminate. No more being hungry. Being so full on raw food that even the most enticing foods didn’t feel as enticing anymore. I can easily walk past a whole box of pizza without taking a piece.

Be full on healthy food, at the end of the day, your food needs energy and sustenance, don’t deprive it of them.

Don’t be Hard on Yourself

I’ve gone back and forth on this diet for years. Each time I stick to it for a day or a month, I’ll learn something. it’s a constant process of learning and incorporating new beliefs and information. Be patient with yourself. If you end up failing, then give it another shot when your ready.

Do it With a Friend

While I was doing this diet, one of my best friends was doing a no rice challenge. It was fun to go out and laugh about our crappy diets and how much we missed our foods.

It was also motivating and encouraging to know we were both going strong. If I felt like breaking it, I’d call him and he’d convince me not to. We’d keep each other in check and enjoy the process even though it was frustrating at times.

Ending Remarks

Overall, it was a great way to start the year. Now that my body is ready to go, it makes achieving my financial goals that much easier.

I’m able to be motivated enough to continue, focussed enough to solve problems, energized enough to wake up and get into the right mindset and just generally a better machine in terms of my output capibilities.

It all adds up and eventually you’ll reach a point where you’re being conistent and extremely productive in your business. That’s the point that will make the difference.

Thanks for following this challenge.

Mateen

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With my Raw Challenge almost over, it’s time for a new one.

This time, I gotta get my affiliate marketing game on and there’s only one thing to do and that’s,

Launch more campaigns

I’ve been playing it slow for the most part of last year and subsequently there’s no surprised I’ve had no crazy profit or crazy loss days.

It’s just not as exciting working on this long term stuff all the time.

So while I’m running my blog and my other side hustles, I’m going to back to what I do best and that’s launch tonnes of campaigns.

I’m going to be launching 5-10 campaigns every week day and spending about $30 on each. Sometimes I’ll spend less, sometimes I’ll spend more. It depends on the results I get.

I’ve got accounts with PPV, PPC and social media traffic sources. I’ve got accounts with most of the top CPA networks and it’s time to get in touch again.

Back in the day, I’d launch all kinds of campaigns. I’d find little gold nuggets here and there to the point where I’d be making a healthy profit.

I’m going to be launching all types of campaigns and blogging about the results. How much I made, How much I lost, what I think my angles should be, even sometimes, what offers I’m promoting.

It’s going to be a great way for you to get an insight into how many affiliate marketers run their business. For the most part they launch campaigns like mad man with little regard for their spend. They’re still calculative, but they’re not afraid of spending 10k on a campaign to find out valuable information that can potentially earn them 10 times that money.

Affiliate marketing is all about spending money to learn more about how to make money. If you’re not willing to spend, you probably won’t see much success.

Naturally, there will be plenty of failures. It’s not uncommon to lose my whole spend which will be around $3,000 on campaigns without seeing any profit at all. I’ve done it before.

I’ve gone a whole 100 campaigns without seeing a profit. This is just how the business works.

That’s why you have to be a damn good saver in this business. You can’t do this on an empty bank account. You might get lucky and make some money but make sure you save a big chunk of that. You don’t want to be in need of thousands of dollars to scale your campaigns which you just don’t have.

If I didn’t have my 20-30k saved in the bank when I needed it, I would definitely not have made my 143k in 2014. It comes down to many factors and knowing how to save is one of them.

One minute your swimming in money, the next you’re cruising through the next three months with 0 income.

Affiliate marketers keep going knowing this. They believe they’ll find their gold mines. They know that their losses are capped at how much they’re willing to lose but their winnings are uncapped. They can scale them to the moon and back and for that reason, over the long run, there will always be a healthy profit at the end of the rainbow.

So stay tuned for this new challenge. I’ll be starting it in February some time. For now, I’m getting in touch with my Network Managers and Traffic Source reps to get some information on what’s working out there.

Let’s see what happens 😉

Mateen

Modified Challenge: Eat a minimum of 2,000 calories of Raw Fruits, Vegetables, nuts and seeds for a whole 30 days and document any changes.

We’re almost nearing the end of this challenge. In fact, as I write this, there’s 2 days left till the end of the month!

This challenge has opened my eyes up to a much healthier lifestyle.

I’ve heard of a few people getting sick amongst my family friends and it’s best to prepare early so you can be fit and healthy even when you’re 60!

I believe this diet allows you to maintain high energy levels even during the later stages of your life. There are just so many people on the internet I’ve read about on forums that are ages and are still competing in different sports. They claim they feel as healthy as they did in their 20s and after experiencing this diet where most of the days I’m 100% raw, I don’t doubt that claim.

The days I’m 100% raw I can feel a surge of energy within my body. There’s zero feeling of tiredness and my eyes normally burn in the mornings from waking up too early but when I’m raw, I don’t feel this as much.

As soon as I eat too many cooked meals in a row I feel sluggish and sleepy and even a little down.

There’s something about knowing your healthy that makes you feel better. I can’t pin point what it is. Maybe it’s just a subconscious thing or maybe it’s spiritual. Whatever it is, it’s there.

If I ever, (god forbid), got really sick or even depressed, I can see my switching to a diet like this. There’s just so many benefits and the new changes I see in my body almost every day gives you that feeling of life is getting better.

Since I’ve started,

• My hair has gotten much thicker
• Skin has become lighter, (some people have pointed it out)
• Eyes have gotten slightly lighter
• Almost no lethargic feel unless I have too many cooked meals
• Energy levels are huge. I’m breaking my workout records where I time myself to complete certain exercises. Some, I’m even smashing.
• Boxing has become a lot easier, I feel like I can fight in the ring for a lot longer than I used to be able to.
• I just feel on another level compared to others. If I need to compete with someone with sparring, I already feel ahead because I’m on a diet, they’re not on.

I can probably list about 10 more benefits but you get the idea.

I’ve still maintained a decent amount of raw calories. My diet has still remained the same.

• Plate of fruits
• Fresh juice
• Bowl of nuts, dates, apricots, raisins
• Smoothies

I still eat pizza, rice, wheat and all sorts of things I would generally avoid but because I’m so full on raw food, I eat one third of what I’d normally eat.

I don’t smash down a whole pizza or double up on McDonalds burgers or anything like I used to before. I eat a small portion that gets digested fairly quickly and I’m ok.

I don’t know what you’re diet or health is like but if I would highly recommend transitioning into a higher raw calorie diet. Try it for a couple of weeks. It’s easy to incorporate and like I’ve listed, the health benefits are just too damn good to pass up!

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I still remember that first dollar I made on the internet.

I was so proud of myself I went out with my friends and paid for lunch. I think it was like $100 or something but at that point, I felt like I had made it.

It was $1.17 to be exact. Something I would not bat an eye lid over these days but back then it was like the whole world had suddenly come together and given me the result I desired so much.

About a year later, I hit my first $1,000 revenue day and a couple weeks after that, I hit over $10,000 in revenue in a single day!

The funny thing was, it didn’t feel as exciting as the first dollar I earned. I still went out on the weekend and bought myself whatever I wanted. I spent about $500 but that was it. I saved the rest. More testing money, I thought to myself.

So what made the difference in work ethic compared to the first year I was making a hundred or so a day to the day I made over $10,000?

Surprisingly, not much. I just happened to be doing the right thing at the right time. In saying that, I was working some long long hours launching campaigns like a mad man.

I was still pretty much doing the same thing.

Exploring the affiliate marketing terrain, reading success stories and articles and a very high focus on launching campaign. I didn’t care what I did in the day, as long as I launched a set number of campaigns and spent a set amount of money on testing, I felt like I accomplished more than most people.

Affiliate marketing is a big world. In this big world, we set out to find our fortune. Some of us give it an hour a day, (5 hours a week). Some of us give it 10 hours a day, (70 hours a week). If there’s a big gold nugget out there ready to be picked up by someone, who’s more likely to find it?

Let’s compare two more scenarios to make the point a little clearer.

Let’s also pretend we’re bird photographers that would get aid a million dollars if we were to spot and take a picture of a Double Headed Eagle. (Let’s pretend there’s only one of these in the world).

Scenario One,

You work 2 jobs, you have a family and you regularly go to boxing, swimming and chess classes. You don’t prioritize bird watching but you do it occasionaly just incase you get lucky. You know about the $1 million bounty. You’ve heard someone else take a picture and get it, so you want to do the same.

You’ve searched ebay for the best camera,paid $1,000 and every now and then you’ll do a round of your local park to see if you can find it. All up, you probably spend 3 hours a week doing this.

Scenario 2:

You’re not married, you have no debts and no commitments. You have one obsession in your life. To find this damn bird! It’s what you live and breathe for.

You don’t bother buying a $1,000 camera. Equipment is not as important as the result. You know that working hard is more important. Your smartphone is more than enough.

You wake up at 5am every morning, just as the sun is rising and set out to the most likely spot you think this bird is going to be in. You keep a spreadsheet of all the places you’ve visited. You’re analytical. You spend the next 14 hours till the sun comes down trying to find this bird. You eat dinner, call it a day and set out the next morning. You do this for 7 days a week. You can’t afford to miss the opportunity.

Who do you think has the best chance of finding the bird?

If you get paid $1M every time you spot it, who would spot it more frequently?

This is affiliate marketing. You’re setting out on an online quest, spending money, learning, being analytical and trying really really hard.

I was doing the above for months and finding small nuggets of gold. It was only a matter of time I found a monster campaign.

I didn’t do much of this in 2015 and thus, made a lot less than a year before.

The more you search, the more you’ll increase your chances of finding a unicorn, (or a double headed eagle). That’s the only philosophy you should go by.

I searched hard. High and low. Some days I found $1, some days, $1,000. Once in a while, $10,000. But I searched harder than 99% of people in the IM world. That’s all it came down to.

I hope you guys find your unicorns.

Mateen

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