One of the most difficult challenges a blogger faces is losing your focus. This is especially true for an Internet Loser like me. It’s hard to maintain your enthusiasm for a project when you don’t see any rewards for your efforts.

Once you start down the slippery path of losing your focus, it usually leads to distraction. Distractions are a bloggers worst enemy. I think that I have many more distractions than most and I need to come up with creative ways to combat them.

Living in Thailand creates its own set of distractions, there is so much going on around me. I will constantly get interrupted by every day occurrences. For example, while setting up some advertising campaigns yesterday, my wife called me to come and look at the baby elephant outside our apartment.

Most bloggers face distractions, how many times a day do you check your email, Facebook or visit your favourite bloggers site? How you deal with these distractions inversely affects how successful you will be online.

Most distractions are avoidable using sheer willpower but others need a change of environment. I would love to say that I live in a Penthouse apartment in the heart of Bangkok, with rooms to spare for my work, but the truth is that I live in a shitty Studio apartment on the outskirts. Not having a dedicated area for working is a serious problem.

Now here is the catch 22 situation, to be able to afford the space to work in peace, I would need to be successful. To be successful I would need the space. Maybe this is the wrong mindset to take, but I feel like I’m trapped in a never ending cycle. So if you have any tips on being more productive with my limited resources, I would love to hear them.

Being an Internet Loser, I’ve become quite familiar with Affiliate Program rejection letters. I get one practically every week. I must admit my heart sinks every time I get one, especially when I know the program would convert really well on one of my sites. It always feels like a stab to the heart.

You may be thinking that my sites don’t qualify for the programs and that would be my first thought too, but usually I am rejected simply on the basis of my location or nationality. 95% of my web site traffic is from US or European visitors, which is pretty much the Holy Grail of internet traffic to any Affiliate Program.

While I understand the reason for some rejections, usually involving local laws, some simply baffle my brain. As an example, I cannot apply to gambling programs as gambling is illegal in Thailand, but getting rejected for a travel program makes no sense at all.

Now, many successful Affiliate Marketers all recommend Commission Junction, www.cj.com, as the best place to find Affiliate Programs to promote. What do you do if 95% of the programs reject you as soon as you click the apply button?

I have applied to a few programs, most of which need you to call or fax them before they approve you and I’m hoping that I will not have to face another rejection letter this evening. Here holding thumbs that they think things through. Wish me luck…

Where would a blog about being a loser be without some proof about my lack of success. While browsing the net today, looking for ways to make money online (almost a full time job for me), I decided to check my AdSense earning and low and behold, there was a click, someone had clicked on one of my Ads. Yippee! Time to break out the party hats, fine champagne and grab my wife so that we can dance for joy at out new found fortune.

After the euphoria of the initial surprise started to wear off, I decided to look a little closer. Yes someone had clicked on an Ad, but it was worth absolutely nothing, not a cent, zero, naught or whatever you want to call it. I wonder how much Google made of that click… Talk about keeping 100% of the profit while I do the work.

I know we are near the middle of the month, so it’s either too early or too late to supply an income report, but I figured what the hell. I may as well celebrate this little victory and share it with all of you.

Total Income: $0
Total Expenses: $15

Total Profit: -$15

After just over a month of life, the blog has made $0 and cost me about $15, which gives me a net profit of -$15. All of a sudden that warm fuzzy feeling has left me and I’ve come crashing back to earth.

I’m not sure what’s going on lately regarding my sleeping habits. I used to love sleeping; I always used to be able to sleep for at least 8 hours a night. Not anymore though, now I’m lucky if I get 4. While I must say it is not affecting me to badly, I still function completely normally, it is just damn annoying.

I’m one of those who believe in the concept of “Early to bed, early to rise” and I rarely go to bed later than midnight. I’m always up before the wife in the mornings. While it hasn’t affected my performance, it is apparently having an affect on my boyish good looks. My students have noticed the dark rings and are starting to give me all sorts of sleep inducing advice. For example:

1. Exercise before bed
2. Drink warm milk
3. Meditate etc.

Now one thing I’ve noticed is that Thai people never have any sleeping problems. They can sleep anywhere and anytime. I’m so envious of that. My wife just has to step into a moving vehicle and she will instantly fall asleep.

I’m considering heading to the pharmacy to go buy some sleeping pills…

Well for once I think my luck is turning. I’ve been browsing the net looking for an affordable and easy to use video camera when I noticed that my “online idol”, John Chow, is giving not one but two Flip Video recorders away on his blog.

The Flip Video recorder would suit my needs perfectly. I need a camera that is small enough to carry with me everywhere I go and also easy to use. Judging from all the reviews this camera has received all over the net, this seems like an awesome little tech toy.

While you are not going to be ale to shoot a Hollywood blockbuster on it, it still manages to take relatively good quality videos and stores them on its internal memory. The camera has a built in USB connector, so you don’t have to carry around any extra cables when you are out on the road.

John is partnering up with BIC Promo Pens to bring us all this great offer. BIC is probably one of the best known companies in the stationary world. I remember using BIC pens when I was in school. Now the chance to promote you business using brand-able promotional pens from BIC will really be of a benefit to most businesses.

After selling my old Acer notebook to my brother in April, I have been relying on my aging iBook for my day to day computing needs. My wife has also been using the iBook for her university projects. This had led to various issues and time constraints which has had a serious affect on my productivity.

To combat this affect, I decided to invest in a brand new Lenovo ThinkPad about a month ago. The main aim of using the ThinkPad, was to aide my online money making ventures. I think it has had the opposite result though. The switch from OS X to windows XP has been a nightmare for me and the “cherry on top” is that my brand new notebook seems to be dying a slow painful death.

About 2 weeks ago, I noticed that the screen had developed 2 dead pixels. While these were annoying, they didn’t affect me too much. I also noticed that the screen was getting unusually hot. Even though, I wasn’t subjecting the notebook to any really processor or graphics intensive tasks. When I booted up the notebook last night, I noticed that the amount of dead pixels have no multiplied to about 12. This has now become a problem, being in Thailand and not speaking much of the language has led to even more problems. The store I bought it from simply referred me to the Lenovo helpline; they in turn referred me to a service centre consultant who can not speak any English.

Well it looks like my weekend will be spent personally visiting the IBM service centre and using a series of hand gestures to explain the problem. Oh, what joy…

Ever get the feeling that the walls are closing in on you? I have that feeling at the moment. As some of my regular readers may know, I got married to the girl of my dreams a few months back. She, being being a girl and all, always wanted a fairy-tale wedding. So I left the planning in her capable hands. A mistake I am beggining to regret.

Instead of having a single small wedding we actually had 2 weddings on the same day, that means double the expenses, which forced me to borrow money from all my friends. Well, those friends are now collecting their dues. I understand that they need/want their money and I have no hard feelings about it. I just don’t have the cash right now. I am down to the wire on my monthly spending and the bulk of my paycheck goes to them.

To make matters worse, the stress is affecting my job. I simply cannot concentrate. Luckily my main job is pretty easy but it is having a serious effect on my part-time work. I’m making tiny mistakes which are costing me valuable time. Arrggghhh, I need a break away from it all for a while.

I’m a sucker for taking on work for friends and family. Usually I do this work for free as I feel it is almost expected of me. This undoubtedly affects my ability to make money online. Late, last night a friend of my wife called me to do a project for her. Being the fool I am I got right onto it without even talking about a price. Would it be wrong if I call her up and talk about a contract for the work?

I have done countless projects for free and many of these projects have gone on to become massive successess, but not a penny has come my way. It does make me feel bad, I know it was my fault for not setting up a formal arrangment, but I also feel that I should be offered compensation.

Today is the day that I put my foot down. If someone wants me to do work for them, I will charge. Except for direct family. I don’t feel this is unreasonable, as I waste my own time and resources to make these projects work. I should be compensated for all of this.

There comes a time, in everyones life, where you feel the need to make a quick buck. Be it to pay for an emergency or simply to buy something that you’ve always wanted. Most people turn to a second job or a home based business, but some turn to the internet.

The internet is full of stories of people making countless riches overnight. While this is true for some, those people are far and few between. Unless you come up with a great idea, the odds of making truckloads of money are really slim. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, I know. I have read countless eBooks on how to make money online and guess what, I haven’t made it yet.

People will tell you anything to sell their product. And let face it, all of us are looking for hope. So we are suckers for buying into products that promise us the world. If you found a great way to make money, would you tell anyone? No you wouldn’t, you would keep it to yourself and exploit it for all it’s worth.

I know many will disagree with me and I welcome your comments.

For the last few days I have been trying my hand at completing paid offers. Some have paid while others have definitely proven to be scams. I have started noticing a set pattern amongst all of them though. All of them offer very few opportunities and keep their minimum payout level very high. I’m sure there must be thousands of members on all these sites who are about $2 away from their first check, but the offers have dried up.

To make real money from these site, you will have to refer a lot of new members. But recruiting these members can be a problem when you can’t even prove that you have ever been paid.