The Pathetic Truth

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First, as a computer guy for all my life, one of my biggest pet peeves is someone telling me I'm "playing on the computer". I very rarely play games on the computer, basically not playing any until my mid-20's and then it was just a couple RPG's for a few months. What I do on the computer is work, and even though my wife knows that she will inevitably say it and piss me off, even when she's not nagging me. The owner of my company (day job) also says that shit all the time, and I hate it. [rant over]

Next, I know this post was just to let people know where you stand, and not looking for advice. I did want to say a little about my experience for anyone that feels like reading.

I'm trying to help a friend that wants to learn more about getting out of debt, saving money and developing some income outside of his job. He goes through a lot of similar things with his wife, and we've spent a lot of time talking about it. Looking back on how my relationship with my wife developed, I saw how important it was to get her to really buy-in not only to my money making schemes (and there are plenty) but to my life goals in general.

I may have gotten lucky, because her parents were so fucked up financially, nearly 200k yearly, but they have no equity in their house, 6 figure credit card debt, two big car loans, etc. By the time we got together, she was ready for someone to teach her and to never get in that situation again. I got her to read some of my books about finances etc, and told her about my plans on working 9-5 while also trying to make some money on this side, and eventually investing in real estate (not flipping, but buying/developing/renting, hopefully commercial) and things like that. Once she understood where I was coming from it was a lot easier from then on to get her in on my individual plans.

I've been trying to get my friend to get his wife on the same mindset, but he says he just can't get her interested at all, so I don't really know what to tell him. I assume you just have to start at the big picture and then start moving down the ladder from there. I also think Maverick had a very good point in getting her involved, not only from an aspect of the big picture, but like he did by getting her involved in her own project. My wife had her little blogger blog, and I helped her turn into a full blown wp blog with her own domain, and added adsense, and gave her some affiliate stuff to promote in posts. Now not only is she making money from that, but she's been paid for posts, and been sent products to review. That keeps her very happy, and she is now getting involved in my other projects (WF Case Study lol). She doesn't understand everything that I'm doing, or even really care about all details, but it makes for a much more stress free marriage compared to my friend who is going against the grain in his house.
 


I think it's also interesting that you see your business increasing the less time you spend on it. I think that there are many instances in life where people run into similar issues. When I was playing poker for a living, I got some advice from a player much better than me, and it was basically to stop playing super long sessions, and to just play shorter, focused sessions and my win rate would go up. At the time, I was playing 5-6 hour sessions a couple times a day. I started going back through my hands database and looking at my records, and it was immediately obvious that I made most of my money in the first hour or two and that after 2 hours my $/hr went significantly lower, and negative in a lot of cases. I changed up the way I went about my day. First I would eat breakfast in a quiet room and take an adderall.

Then I would go to my "office" and turn on some music and start reading my emails and browsing. While I was doing this I ran a program that would go look at all the tables available at the limits I played, and see what players were there. My tracking software basically kept track of every player I played with, and then would identify the weakest tables overall. After about 30 minutes of dicking around, I would pick out the 12 highest ranked tables, and sign up for the waiting list. I'd set an alert to let me know when I had played 1500 hands. At that time I was playing 8 tables of short handed no-limit, so it would usually take just under 2 hours to finish my 1500 hands.

After I was done, I would spend some time reviewing my hand history, and I had developed a circle of players (and a mentor) that I would chat with and discuss things, just to learn as much as I could. Altogether, I would spend about 3 hours total in the morning. Then I would be free all day to get other shit done, eat lunch, read, workout, etc. Then at about 9 every night I would go back into the office, fire up the table selector and repeat the process. On the weekends, I would start a little earlier for my second session and then try to do a third session around midnight.

Once I took these steps to setup a schedule and treat it like a business, my hourly rate shot up. I was happier all around also, because it really did away with a lot of my stress and gave me free time to do other things. Before I got to that point, I always felt like any time I wasn't playing I was missing out on money. Focusing on shorter sessions became infinitely more productive.

There might be too many details in this post, not all of what I did for that is really applicable to AM, but I wanted to show how exact I was (and wasn't), so that people could understand how my thought process I guess. I haven't gotten this organized with my marketing, and I think right now I'm spending too much time on it; however, most of what I'm doing now is to learn the business. I feel like once I find the area I'm most comfortable, I will be able to come up with a system, and once I have a system, I'll hopefully be able to compartmentalize. I also love the fact that there are so many ways to outsource in this business, which I hope will eventually save a lot of my time and sanity.

Added note - I also condone drugs. Particularly Adderall XR and the new version called Vyvanse. I grew up hating to see doctors prescribing these drugs (it was actually ritalin back then) to every kid who misbehaved, mainly because I think everyone is ADD to some extent. Now that I'm older, I just look at them like a performance enhancing drug for anything you need your mind/focus for. I was turned onto it by a friend of mine who was a high end chess player, and I started using them while I was playing Magic: The Gathering tournaments at a high level (yeah I'm a nerd and traveled all over to play MtG). I continued to use them when I converted to poker as my full time job. Now that I'm doing this AM thing, I find it highly useful to take one, mainly because I stay focused. There are so many areas of AM, and so many places to branch off of each project you could work on, I was having my mind work overtime on all these possibilities. Taking a Vyvanse virtually assures me that I'm going to be productive that day, and it's been well worth it. YMMV.
 
oh my, sorry to hear that Mike

Just my wish for you to get out of this mess soon. Anyway, maybe just bought her something she really want now and say the money comes from your online business. Hope that helps, but you might wanna consult to old geezer like emp first, who has been married and life long enough so he is more experienced to stuff like this not like a brat like me :D

Good luck pal :)
 
I feel you Mike. A big difference between internet marketers and the rest of the world is that we use computers for 'work' and everyone else uses computers for 'leisure', mistakenly making the assumption that everyone else is using the computer for leisure as well.

I think I've found a good balance between work and family. Basically my schedule looks something like this:

6AM - 7:30AM: Make coffee, answer emails, put together a plan for the day.
7:30AM - 9:00PM: Play with my son for a while, make breakfast, let wife get ready for the day.
9:00AM - 4:00PM: Work, Lunch, Gym, Etc. I still do a lot of seo consulting work as well as financial services on top of the affiliate marketing work I do, so anything that makes me money happens here.
4:00PM - 9:00PM: Family time. Make dinner, play with my son, wife, do stuff around the house, etc.
9:00PM - 12:00AM: "me" time. Glass of wine/scotch/etc, answer emails, answer emails, catch up on industry news, etc.

Weekend: Very little affiliate marketing except for perhaps in the evening 9:00PM-1:00AM if I don't have anything going on. I concentrate on family, giving my wife a break from our son and getting stuff done around the house.

As far as my wife is considered, she (like I) has a taste for the finer things in life and knows what I need to do to maintain and build on that lifestyle.

Here's my reccomendation, and it's worked really well for me:

Include your wife in your affiliate marketing endeavors!

Don't totally ignore her while you're on the computer, and don't make the assumption that she won't get what you're doing. Connect the dots for her and make her understand how it works, and what your role is in bringing home the bacon.

Ask her if she has some ideas for cool niches, and explain to her how she can be a part of it. Perhaps she is really into diet + exercise, or sewing/knitting, or watching movies. The possibilities are endless how you could include her and make a little extra cash. If she doesn't want to do that, just get her feedback on the sites you're doing and see if she can suggest improvements.

That's my two cents, I hope it's helpful.
 
I'm getting divorced. Can't wait. We don't argue about my computer time. We argue about other stuff. But it doesn't really matter. In the big picture the arguments are just a symptom. The topic of the arguments aren't very important. For me, if we weren't arguing about 'X' we'd be arguing about 'Y'. A busted marriage has lots of arguments (this is divorce #3; yes, I'm a real catch ladies). In any relationship I've been in, any time I've changed behavoir to appease, a new conflict about something else was always just around the corner. Guess I'm pretty cynical when it comes to relationships. I'll just stick with internet porn.
 
Family first I say. It would be different if she was just your girlfriend and you had no kids. If I had a 9-5 and a family I wouldn't spend more than 1-2 hours (late night) a day on the internet (unless I was hurting for money).

You're obviously spending some time fucking around, as you average 6.5 posts a day on wickedfire and probably read a shitload more than that. I know this is a great place to get connections, but if you're hurting for time, wickedfire is a luxury.

Put down the banhammer and spend more time with the family :)
 
Here's what has worked for me and my lady...

Setting and managing expectations upfront. And keeping promises. Seriously. It sounds trite, but it works.

I run my life based upon this. Some of the expectations I've established include...
  • all phone calls go to voice-mail during business hours. 90% go to voice-mail during non-business hours. All are returned within 48 hours.
  • if I say I'll do something, I'll do it (no exceptions, precluding death or injury)
  • I don't yell. I expect the same respect from others.
  • business hours are for business. Exceptions happen, but rarely. If they do, they're exceptions, not new expectations.
  • emails are answered within 24 hours unless I've notified you that I'm on vacation.
  • if something is bothering you, it's your responsibility to bring it up. I'm not a mind-reader.
  • if we're spending quality time together (dinner, movie, coffee, with friends, etc.), no personal email, phone calls, or texts.
That said, when I'm with my lady, I'm focused. Work is put away and I'm completely attentive to being a tender, loving companion with her.

We've been together for years and continue to grow closer. For us, it's been largely due to setting reasonable expectations upfront and keeping promises (showing respect). That, and mutual mild disrespect for emotional reactions (they only confuse things).

That's the long path toward resolving the problem. Here's the key to making this path work...

It requires a logical person. It will not work with an emotional person.

But, wait! There's a short-term solution...

Just let your wife read this thread. That will give her perspective.
 
SEO_Mike said:
Somehow, I need to figure out how to keep up with Clients / AM / Work / Kids / Wife / Cleaning and still find sometime for myself.
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shouldn't that be Wife / Kids / Work / Cleaning / AM / Clients?

as ben said, i think it is family first.

do you make that much money, that it would justify not spending all the free time you got with your family?

kids grow up so fast and you need to make sure, that you do not ask yourself one day, where all the time went that you wanted to spent with your kids. money can't buy you back time.


maybe you are struggling too hard to get a grip onto this business which ultimately may not be something for you to be involved in.
 
I feel for ya Mikey boy... Just don't look at it like a mountain of work, and don't take anymore new clients on.

You need to get some order in your business life so that you can keep yourself focused and in that "zone" that we all get into, where we can ignore everything around us and just get our shit on the computer done.

Make a list of all of the sites you need to get done with, and break them up into 5 sites at a time parts.

Also, you should have a list or at least a figure of how much time vs profit you are pulling in from each completed site you're making.

For all you know, it may make more sense to just outsource it to the glorious nation of India or one of the war torn cheap labor places in the world. Let those guys assume all of the work, and just deliver you the finished product. They are very good at boring, repetitive work, and for a fraction of the price. You can totally get away with paying them a few bucks for each one made, or less.

Everytime you complete a site, cross that fucker out, or highlight it, something that would be visually stimulating for you to see and be proud of so you can get that much needed sense of accomplishment... then when you're done, show your not very understanding wife that while she may clean the house, her paypal account doesn't go anywhere, but when you sit at your computer "playing games" your paypal account magically rises. Warning on this one though, it may cause a fight, which I will NOT take responsibility for starting, so use with caution!

The more you feel guilty and bad about yourself and your situation, the harder it will be to get things done at a good speed. Your life is not over. Your rep is not gone. You are not pathetic, stop whining like a little girl Mike. You're a big boy, so act like one. Feeling bad for ones self is a sign of weakness, and weakness is a very infectious and tough feeling to kick. Don't go down that road brother. We're family here, so listen to your peers.

If you say that you're pathetic one more time, I'm taking your mod powers away and putting you into the corner to cry, where you belong. Don't be weak. Only the weak fail, and you're not a failure.

Just use this as another life lesson... don't bite off more than you can chew.
 
mkrongel said:
Do something for her out of your earnings, maybe hire someone to clean your house. this way it benefits both of you. Tell her during these times i need to work to pay for the extras we have in life, and only work during those times, you need to balance life with your family as well.

Just my .02
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Was Dani watching you like a hawk when you wrote this? Hahahaha!!
 
I feel your pain as well.
I'd say get yourself a home office, and make sure to get dressed and all before going to work in it. Makes it seem more official.

Or if all else fails, do what I do.
Start->Run-CMD->ALT+ENTER(full screen dos)->dir /s
Makes a recursive list of all the files on windows, fullscreen in dos. You can get really fast at it. And it looks so official, no one thinks you're goofing off.
Even if it's the least productive part of your day ;)
 
it's a paradox. working hard on a computer appears effortless, and in reality, your wife is right... this whole thing is a game, so it is like playing, and it can definitely be fun.

with all due respect to your wife, she is simply coming from an outdated paradigm that believes that work should not be fun, enjoyable, and effortless (in the eye of the beholder).

i had an ex-girlfriend that had a similar attitude. she grew up on a farm and was ignorant about anything to do with the internet. working on my websites did not compute in her mind as real work. we broke up and she ended up marrying some guy who was in the banking industry. i guess that fits the traditional view of a 'working man'.

we live in a new world, and unfortunately, we are at a point in history that is still transitioning from old world thinking, so there are no doubt still some people who carry obsolete beliefs.
 
Isn't this the typical conflict of marriage? Guy works for money, female keeps the home running. Your working a full time job and coming home and working again, not turning on the TV and kicking back.

Sounds more like a communication problem, both parties need to understand that each other is working hard -- but what do I know about marriage.
 
Mike

Try this one. I have run into the same problem and we have found an anwer in our house.

Set up a monthly budget for the family and how the money is going to come into the house. Then when the discussion on shared responsibilities gets going, show her that to hit your commitment to her you need to be doing the affiliate work.

This way everyone understands why you are on the computer working and that it is not just a game but actual work. The key thing is to explain what you are doing and why you are doing it. If her anger is from not understanding or fear then it is your job to explain what is happening in terms that she can understand.

My wife is close to technologically illiterate. I had 2 long lunches without children before she had any concept of what I am doing and why I am doing it.
 
I hate to say this but I divorced mine when I first started out. Granted it wasn't ALL because of me working a fulltime job, managing a company and trying my hand online, but it damn sure had ALOT to do with it.

I was divorced for a month.

So your shit is not as bad as it seems (LOL)...

I am back with her now but I tell you, the divorce straightened that shit out real quick.

Now though I take the route that AIM above has stated. I'll start talking and try to break it down for her. She's really straightened up though. Most of the time she just says that I am not as smart as I sound, cuz if I was, I would not have to work all the time. I don't think she realizes how ambitious and how much I WANT to do what I do.

Again though, she'll figure it out or find out how cold it is outside.
 
just get a real office, it works wonders. my dad has a free apartment in my local town that i just converted to an office and am only there when working. gives much needed structure to this life we lead..
 
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