Recently I had a caricature drawn of me by Stéphane Kerwer‘s artist.  You can check it out at the bottom of this post.  I don’t know who this artist is, but he’s good!  You can check out some of the other caricatures he’s done by viewing DukeO.com’s Who Is? series.  I think the idea he has came up with is awesome.

He’s looking to get some exposure and traffic to his blog from popular bloggers.  Instead of paying to do guest posts on the blog, he recruited an artist to draw caricatures of popular online marketers and do a summary of their online advertising career.  I must hand it to Stéphane, he nailed mine, except for one minor detail that is still pretty private for the most part and is still brand new. Overall, I was pretty impressed with the research he did and the thoroughness of his post. I also like to see what type of image I’m portraying to the public. So far, I’m coming off exactly as I had hoped.

If you’re looking to have your own caricature done by Stéphane, he’s offering to do paid Who Is posts.  You can click the link for more information.  He also has been having contests where all you have to do is review his blog and you’ll be entered to win you’re own caricature!

As most everybody knows I became a full time affiliate just a little over 5 weeks ago. The changes from having a day job and affiliate marketer by night to being a full time affiliate are pretty drastic. Since I have done affiliate marketing for right at a year and a half with tremendous success, I’m finding it awful tough to sit down at my desk to get work done. I know that I can work for 3-4 hours per day and duplicate my previous success. So why would I want to force myself to sit at a computer and work for 10-12 hours per day when its not necessary. This is what’s killing me right now, especially when I get on the computer first thing in the morning and I spend a couple hours dicking off on Facebook, Twitter, AIM or checking out what’s going down in the hip hop industry.

I find it extremely tough to give myself that kick in the ass to start getting work done.  Once I’m able to get in that mode though, I’m pretty efficient and can get quite a bit done.  It’s extremely hard for me to just start doing that work.  I do find that I’m slowly getting more disciplined day by day.  Another thing I’m working on getting back to normal is my sleeping schedule.  By nature, I’m a night owl and I’m most productive from 10pm – 3am.  Even as a baby, my mom said I would sleep all day and be awake all night.

My biggest pet peeve are the people thinking, since I run my own business and I work from home, that I don’t have a job. This is legitimate work and I try to put in at least 8 hours every day of the week, including weekends.  It seems like a couple days a week my friends will always call me at 9-10pm on a weekday and they’ll want to go have a couple beers.  Well guess what… I’m hitting my prime productivity time, I gotta do work.  Their argument is always, you own your business, you’re your own boss, you work your own schedule and this always baffles them that I’ll choose work over a couple hours at the bar. Or even worse, on the weekends they think that since it’s the weekend, I don’t have to work.

I like to think that I’m working on my self-discipline and slowly, but surely I’m getting to where I want to be. I’ve found that if I have a bad couple days I will work a lot harder to make sure my net income gets to where I want it to be.  Another personal issue I need to work on is being too complacent once I have a few campaigns running smoothly that are raking in the income.  I need to expand into more niches, find new traffic sources and throw up more campaigns.

What are some of the things you guys use or do, to limit the distractions and make yourself more productive?

At my day job, we’ve been going through layoffs for the past year because our business has been slowed. I started in April 2008 and we had about 30 staff members, we grew to 70 within a year and are now back down to the high 20′s, I forget the exact count. I’ve survived many rounds of layoffs and haven’t really been worried because I know I’m in a good position to last until the very end. However, I have decided to volunteer for the next round of layoffs at my company, should they happen. They’re expected to happen by month’s end, but we haven’t received the official word, yet.

I have decided the time is now to see if I want to be a full-time affiliate. I’m going to take this summer to see what I’m able to achieve as an affiliate now that I’ll have the entire day to work on researching, developing and optimizing campaigns instead of a couple hours every night. Although I hate change, I’m extremely excited for this to happen.

I also am interested in pursuing my MBA in Finance, so I’m going to see if I can get accepted into graduate school as well.

Only temporarily…  In reality, I took a much-needed vacation.  It was a 5-day cruise down to Progreso and Cozumel, Mexico.  All I’m gonna say is cruises are not made for 20-something singles.  They’re designed for couples and older folk. I don’t wanna go into every single detail, but I made the cruise fun by drinking, A LOT!  I’ll include an overview of the days, but that’s all you guys get. If you have specific questions post a comment and I’ll answer.

I drove from Tulsa, OK to Galveston, TX on Friday night to get there Saturday at noon for.  It was about a 10 hour drive and wasn’t as bad as I thought.  I was so tired from driving all night that I ended up sleeping the entire first evening of the cruise and missed the best event, the only event for singles the entire trip. FML!  Oh well…

The first full day was a Fun Day at Sea.  They had activities during the day for you to participate in, but they were geared towards older folk.  They included events such as an Art Auction and Comedy Routines.  Once we got up and around we took the Vodak we smuggled on the ship and drank 3/4 of the bottle and decided to spend the day find out what the ship had to offer while drinking as many beers and Strawberry Daquiris I could.

The following day we had our first stop, in Progreso, Mexico.  I signed up for a shore excursion called the Corona Beach Party that lasted 4 hours.  They took us to a small beach and we had an open bar with all the Coronas, Margaritas and Pina Coladas we could handle.  We had all the usual beach activities such as volleyball, singing, tug-o-war, waverunners for rent, etc… The best part of this excursion was the fact we walked into town and talked with the locals.  They tried to sell us everything, including pipes, weed, cocaine and pills.  It was probably my favorite part about the cruise.

The next day was a stop in Cozumel, Mexico.  I signed up for a Sail, Snorkel and Beach Party shore excursion.  A boat took us down the coastline about 20 minutes where we could snorkel for about 20 minutes.  The waters were as clear as everything advertises they are.  It was amazing.  We could easily see the bottom which was probably around 40 feet.  Then they took us to a secluded beach and there were toys in the water such as trampolines, a wall to climb on and other things.  We had enough time to rent waverunners this time and they were a blast.  It was the first time I’ve ever ridden one and now I want to buy one.  They finally took us back so we could board ship and we at at Three Amigos before boarding.  Since me and the guy I went with forgot our watches we didn’t know how much time we did or didn’t have to mess around, so we boarded the ship and we were about 2 hours early.  We were already drunk and decided to take a nap before dinner.

The next day was another Fun Day at Sea which I made fun by probably being the drunkest person on the ship.  I spent the day playing roulette and running up a $250 bar tab that day.  The nightcap was dancing my ass off at the Stripes club on the ship.

We docked on Thursday and spent the weekend relaxing in Galveston and came back home Sunday.  One of my most favorite places to eat is Pappadeux.  If you’re ever in or around Houston or Dallas, stop in and eat there.  You will not be disappointed!

The pictures from my cruise are below.

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P.S. I’ve got some good posts coming, so stay tuned!

The guys from Revenue Ads scored some playoff tickets and invited me down to watch the game.  The Oklahoma City Thunder are playing the Los Angeles Lakers in the First Round of the NBA’s Western Conference Playoffs.  This is a big deal for us Oklahomies.  This is our first professional sports team and the first professional playoff game ever played in Oklahoma.

Now I have a dilemma because my favorite team is the Los Angeles Lakers and always has been since I was young.  But, I ALWAYS root for the home team.  I decided I was going to root for the Oklahoma City Thunder because it was our state’s first playoff game ever, and I’m pretty confident that my Lakers will win the series.

The Lakers came out strong with a 10-0 lead and it looked like we would never score.  We would keep getting within 1 or 2 possessions, but every time we would gain some momentum Kobe would shoot one of his daggers and kill it for us.  There were a handful of great dunks, notably one by Russell Westbrook, of which I’ve included a video below.  The Lakers were up 5 to end the 1st quarter, 7 at half time and 1 heading into the 4th quater.  We didn’t sit for a large portion of the game and not at all in the 4th quarter.  We were finally able to take the lead with around 8 minutes remaining thanks to our defense and Kevin Durant finally getting into a rhythm after slumping all game long.

It turned out to be a freaking awesome game and I couldn’t have asked for a better game to attend.  The environment was absolutely insane.  The noise level was off the charts.  After the game Kobe Bryant was quoted as saying, “It was one of the loudest crowds I’ve ever played before in the postseason.“  And every seat had a blue Rise Together shirt on the back of it, turning the entire arena into a sea of blue.

I’m thankful for Clay Bennett and his desire to bring the team to Oklahoma City.  This Thunder team really has a lot going for them.  They had a 50-win season, made the playoffs and are the youngest team in the NBA if I’m not mistaken.  Their really young nucleus will allow for us to build an even better team in the coming years.  Even their coach, Scott Brooks, was awarded the NBA Coach of the Year award in the pregame ceremonies.

Thanks again Revenue Ads!

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