Back in November 2006, I was sitting in front of my computer and doing something of high importance.

I didn’t know back then how it would turn out. So, I innocently clicked the “publish” button for the very first time on November 15^th 2006 at 10:45 am. This post was more than ordinary, it sucked. On top of that, my English writing skills were horrible too. But there was more to come from The Financial Blogger…

This simple motion created a huge mushroom effect and has resulted in a 1,337 posts blog with 10,143 comments, 982,418 visits and (most importantly) $271,202.34 made online, so far!!! (from March 2008 to October 2011)

But back in 2006, my blog was nothing. Nothing more than some kind of a bet to prove to my friend that I was able to keep up with steady work and was worthy to partner with.

He had doubts.

Big time.

I actually can’t blame him as many people fail online everyday.

He thought I was no different than the others asking him to partner with him, a proven online mogul.

He asked me to blindly follow him. To open my first site and to start writing. He wanted me to learn the hard way.

What’s the hard way? It’s when you check out your Analytics at the end of the day and you have 4 visits… 3 of them coming from your own computer and 1 coming from a spambot.

The hard way is to write for 6 months before hitting your first day with 100+ visits. Waiting 2 years before making any kind of money. You read that right, I had to write 397 articles before I cashed my first online dollar.

It’s funny how it seems easy now to make $10,000 in a month from my online business right? I guess you read my blog income report thinking that you would be able to do it if you had access to the same network. I guess this is why it is so important to remember how it all started:

With faith and passion and NO INCOME!

That’s all you need (oh… and LOTS of patience!). Today, there is a lot more competition but there are lots of resources as well. I see “young” bloggers succeeding much faster than I did and often stop at one point because they are burned out. Because blogging ain’t that easy and requires a lot of willpower to keep going. But I’m sure you can do it .

Dude, Where’s the iPad Giveaway?

Nope, it wasn’t just a catchy title, I’m definitely giving an iPad to one of you

How can you win? It’s pretty easy:

You must be a newsletter subscriber at the time of the draw (December 1^st)

You can sign-up here:

25 Entries for telling me what is your favorite post on TFB. Here are a few suggestions:

How I run multiples blogs and makes money without burning out

Blogging Reality Check

The Dream Crashers

My blog Income Report

Hitting 6 Figures Income at 28

How I Get a Huge Income Raise Each Year

Making $125K Online in 12 months

How I Buy Blogs

Most Debated Articles: The Primerica Saga

How I Have Survived My MBA

10 Entries for telling me what you like best about TFB

25 Entries for Retweeting: TFB 5^th Anniversary iPad Giveaway @financialblogr  http://bit.ly/vbJfH9

I can’t wait to read your comments!!!

You have until December 1^st to participate.

BONUS: I lied to You, I’m giving away TWO iPADS!

There is another giveaway at The Dividend Guy Blog

Make sure to participate in both!

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This morning, I want to share a slice of life with you.

I wrote the article you are about to read last Friday afternoon. I usually write when I get to the office (see how I manage my day job and online empire here) but on Friday, I couldn’t come up with anything. It is very rare as I always have a dozen of topics and ideas stocked in my USB key. Therefore, I rarely land in front of a white page. But it happened on Friday and I didn’t know why.

Now I know.

Because inspiration was scheduled in my agenda this morning at 11am… with one of my client.

We were discussing investment strategies and risk tolerance as he is officially retiring this year. The client has a fairly aggressive investor profile and definitely enough money to live a very comfortable life.

This is why I asked him “don’t you think it’s time to secure a portion of your portfolio since you are showing gains? I think it’s time for us to review your investor profile to make sure you are on the right path”.

He smiled back and answered: “I have a very unusual investor profile now that I don’t have any “life expectancy””.

Without changing his face, without losing his smile, without tear sin his eyes, this guy just told me that he has an incurable cancer and that he doesn’t know if he will live 3 weeks, 3 months or 3 years. He has accepted his fate and is ready to enjoy life… as long as life wants him on this earth.

We often hear spiritual questions such as

What would you do if you if you had cancer with 3 months to live?

Or

What would you do if you had 1 day / 1 hour /  1 minute to live?

But this guy’s perception was different. He knows his cancer is incurable. But he is on medication that prevents him from having complications. Therefore, if the medication is right, he could live a few years without any problems. In other words; the doctor didn’t give him his expiry date.

So my question for you today is;

What would you do if you knew you were going to die but don’t know when?

This sounds silly as we are all going to die one day and don’t know when… But this question leads to deeper thoughts:

Do you live the life you want?

Are you proud of yourself?

Is there anything really important you need to do before you die?

Is there anything holding you back from doing what you really want to do?

I know I almost live the life that I want.

I know that I’m very proud of myself, my wife and 2 children.

There are tons of important things I need to do before I die (attend my kids’ weddings, play with grand kids, sponsor a “children wish” by myself, etc.)

Is there anything holding me back? Yeah… this is called a good job…. And I don’t know what I’ll do about it to be honest. But at least, I’m fairly satisfied with my life. Would fairly be enough if I die at the end of this Monday? I don’t think so.

So this morning, before you finish your coffee, tell me;

What would you do if you knew you were going to die but don’t know when?

image credit

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While I was on vacation I was asked by Tom, at Canadian Finance, to write about my 7 links projects. This is an article that will relate 7 of my articles answering 7 questions. I think it’s a great initiative as it gives an opportunity to newer readers to discover what we consider to be our best articles so far. So here we go!

Your most beautiful post

In the blogosphere, I am known to be good at increasing my income. In fact, in a single year, I managed to get 3 income raises. In this post, I made the analogy of poker and how to ask for salary raise. From 2003 to 2010, my day job income has gone from $30,000 to over $100,000 last year. I share my secrets in this post.

Your most popular post

One of my most popular posts is from last year when I declared that my online company went from 18K to 124K in a single year. This was my second full year as a corporation. At that time, our income was quite irregular and we finished the year with a big boom!

Your most controversial post

My first success on The Financial Blogger comes from my highly debated Primerica Reviews.  I had so many comments in this series that I closed a few comment threads (one of them is over 700 comments!). Regardless if you are Pro Primerica or against it, I think you need to read this series. The comments are very interesting too (from both sides!).

Your most helpful post

Last year, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income challenged people to write a “pillar post”. This is an article that explains a specific topic. I wrote How I run my multiple blogs; a complete guide to how I run my business and make money online. I think that anyone who wants to manage more than one blog and make it a success should read this, it will be of great help!

A post whose success surprised you

It was a big surprise and it did not even come from me; 30 financials moves before 30, written my MD at studenomics, gets constant traffic month after month. It seems that it has touched the younger readership and I must admit that MD hit right on the nail.

A post you feel didn’t get the attention it deserved

A while ago, I wrote a 4 article series on How to buy blogs, at that time, TFB was not oriented towards a ‘make money blogging’ audience and it has since picked up the steam I wished it would. I hope that a few of you will go back and look at this series as I detailed each step I follow in order to buy blogs.

Nominees

Now it’s my turn to nominate 5 bloggers for the 7 links project:

Phil Taylor at PT Money

MD at Studenomics

Crystal at Budgeting In the Fun Stuff

Sunil at Extra Money Blog

Corbett Barr at Think Traffic
What’s your favorite post on The Financial Blogger?

I’m curious to know what is your favorite stuff on TFB? What do you appreciate the most? Let me know so I can write more about the things you like!

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In a few days, it’s going to be my birthday. A birthday that is a little bit more important than the others as I’ll be turning 30. Thirty is a big number and it means a lot to me. Not because I’m afraid to age or that I feel older (mind you, I can now talk about what happened 25 years ago, that is scary ). 30 is an important number as it starts the countdown of my life, the M-35 countdown.

M-35 is the name of my online company. What does M-35 stand for? It stands for millionaire at 35! By the end of this year, I should worth about $200K. Therefore, I need to multiply my net worth by 5 if I want to reach that level. Why is it so important to become a millionaire? Because I want to live THE life. Because I want to experience everything that is cool in life. Last weekend, I had a glance at that life as my wife offered me the birthday present of a lifetime.

Escape to NYC for a weekend

When I got home on Thursday night, my wife was waiting for me with an envelope. In the envelope, there were 2 airplane tickets for NYC. We were leaving the next morning at 2am to make it to our hotel by 8am to spend 3 days in this beautiful city. This was my very first time in New York and I had the time of my life. I’m not going to tell you everything I did in New York, but I will tell you about my Saturday night dinner at Daniel, one of the best restaurants in New York the World.

More than a dinner, more than a restaurant; an experience to put on your bucket list

For those who don’t know about this place (I didn’t either before I sat down at the table!) Daniel is a very high class French restaurant in Manhattan. The food is incredibly good, the service is better than that offered to the Queen of England and…. My best friend (and partner!) was waiting for me inside with his wife to share the moment. They were coming back from their vacation and stopped in New York to dine with us. What a perfect evening!

I’m not going to lie to you, this place is crazy expensive. It exceeds any logical reason to pay such a high price to eat in a restaurant. You would probably tell me that it’s crazy and useless to pay so much just for food. And this is where you are wrong. As I mentioned, this is more than food on your plate; it’s an experience in and of itself.

Money does buy happiness

During our delicious meal, I was telling my partner about how great it would be to go there once a year and to be able to afford such a huge expense without having to plan for it in our budget. This requires being rich and financially independent. And this could probably only happen if we work hard for several years to grow our online company and to make it all happen.

The time we had in this restaurant last Saturday night cannot be described with words. The surprise to see my friend and his wife there, the high quality service we enjoyed (they even found a French waiter to explain the menu since my wife doesn’t speak English very often) and each time my fork was reached my mouth, I was eating a piece of pure happiness.

Last weekend, I had the time of my life, the birthday of my life and definitely by far, the dinner of my life. I will keep these unforgettable memories with me until my very last minute on earth. These emotionally charged moments couldn’t have been lived without money. And this quick vacation will definitely hit my next monthly net worth statement. However, there are no credit card bills that can convince me that it wasn’t a good idea.

Create an emotional rush to improve efficiency

I don’t know how you work in order to perform in your day-to-day life but I use a reward system. Each time I work very hard for something, I reward myself. It could be a golf game, a nice restaurant, a spa day, etc. Anything that I can enjoy that will give me energy to keep moving.

This weekend was like injecting the juice of 10,000 batteries into my brain. I was already fully charged from my vacation in Virginia Beach a week ago, now I’m like a volcano ready to explode! While we have spent a considerable amount of money during these 3 amazing weekend days, I know I just gave myself the gear to crush it until the end of the year and generate even more income!

Instead of cutting expenses on my budget, I prefer to find ways to increase my income. After living such a crazy life for 3 days, I just want to repeat this scenario many times moving forward. I just want to enjoy such moments and live THE life. And the only way to do it is to hustle and grow my own company.

Are you there yet? Are you ready to crush it?

I’d be curious to know if you share my point of view about money. Do you think it is important? Do you think you can live without having so much money and that you can live similar feelings? If you do, are you willing to crush it to make it? Where are you at in your world domination plans?

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The other day we discussed how cutting out your Starbucks won’t make you rich. The post is a look at how daily frugality is great, but it won’t get you rich in the long run. Simply put, if you enjoy your morning cup of java, why should you stop? Do you have a morning cup of coffee?

Let’s jump into the Yakezie posts:

1. Roadtrip Budget Breakdown @ BITFS.

2. 9 Ways For Students To Get Textbooks For Less @ Free From Broke.

3. The Dow Was Up 429 Points So Now Is The Time To Buy Right? @ Buy Like Buffet.

4. The Best Retirement Plan For You @ KNS Financial.

5. We Bought Our First House! @ Life and My Finances.

6. How To Deal With The Schizophrenic Stock Market @ Retire By 40.

7. Fuel Economy Tips & Tricks @ Canadian Finance Blog.

8. In praise of idleness @ ERE.

9. Assets in Trust? Easier Said Than Done @ Wealth Pilgrim.

10. The Death Of Random Travel Experiences @ Wandering Earl.

11. Retirement Savings By Age: Are People Saving Enough For Retirement? @ Smart on Money.

12. What are the Perks of your Job? @ Young and Thrifty.

13. Sell High, Buy Low @ Money Crush.

14. Would you Walk Away from a Mortgage? @ Ultimate Money Blog.

15. Are Fax Machines The Biggest Waste Of Money For A Company? @ Not Made of Money.

If you liked this articles, you might want to sign for my FULL RSS FEEDS. Then, you will get my daily post to your email and can read it at any time. To subscribe CLICK HERE

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