It’s been ages since I’ve posted here. I know. Don’t get me wrong, not due to a lack of interest, more or less no time and to much going on. Since the beginning of September, I’ve traveled like crazy. From Dublin, to London, Curacao and London again. Enough to write about, just no time.

Anyway, something cool came up two days ago, which I wanted to post here.

I was able to visit my new apartment again, and boy is it coming together. I bet that for all you people it’s just a pile of crap and dust. But I love this place already. I took my parents up there, so this was the first time they got to see where I’ll be moving into in a couple of months. I was kinda stumbling around there, cause I was operated on my toe one day earlier. So sorry for the shaky camera movements..

The camera performs great with a good light source, which wasn’t here so that made it all a bit difficult. I tried to brush it up with Pinnacle Studio Plus 11, since this is the only editor currently supporting AVCHD files. If anyone has experience with that, please drop me a line. Well at least we know the night vision mode is working

For a couple of years now, American Express has served as my loyal business partner and up until now I’ve never said anything but good stuff about them; But that’s changed now.

After Mastercard and Visa, American Express is the biggest Credit Card issuer in the world. Taking on a smaller issuer as a partner has proven to provide me with a little extra flexibility. As a company I spend over $450.000 USD per month on numerous of ventures. Seeing my uncommon situation, I’ve had nothing but respect for AMEX for taking such a professional and supportive attitude. I told my business partners, I told my friends and a few of my friends ordered an American Express card because of that.

Now all of a sudden, without zero communication their Financial department blocked my cards for over-exposure. At least that was their initial analysis. This heavenly fairytale has been going on for over a week now, and it’s going from authentication problems to talk about bank statements.

I’m not as cocky that I expect a red carpet for every service, but I do expect a company to take care of it’s big clients. Definitely considering that this is for corporate use and you are actually influencing revenue margins and therefor profit numbers.

It looks like the worst is behind us now, but it will definitely be a wile before you’ll hear some recommendations from me again..

Yesterday I received a colored sketch from my Interior Architect to give me an impression of what the interior is going to be looking like.

The whole place is finally coming together, and with a little delay on the building site, I just extended my current place for two more months so I can move my stuff without all the hassle. Even though my friends want me to stay here, I cannot wait to get settled in. For me, this has been a 2 year project of the first real money I made, and a huge learning process. But I’ll save the EMO talk for my house warming party

Here’s the sketch..

Losing money is never fun, it just sucks.. But in this industry you always have to invest to see if you can make money on some items or not.

Being one of the bigger affiliate I only go for the big money, since one big cash cow is easier to manage then 20 smaller ones. Per performance marketing basically means that the responsibly lies with the affiliate to make money, which is a good concept compared to flat rate marketing. But it doesn’t always mean YOU make money and sometimes this doesn’t even have to be your fault. Which can make it even worse if you don’t have any grib on the situation.

Let’s say your clients conversion is starting to drop. What can you do about that ? Nothing..

Don’t forget, you client is still monetizing your traffic, as he is always paying you less then he makes on the lead or sale. So who ends up with the loss? That’s right.. You.

I’ve found some clients generous enough to reimburse you for lost sales, but a lot of them don’t do that. I guess what I’m trying to say that after you have lost a month worth of profits and sales still don’t pick up. You need to draw the line, screw traffic numbers or sales amounts. Just monetize everything again and make sure that you start earning some money again and not your client alone..

Last Friday, I finally got to visit my new apartment in the Apollo tower in Utrecht. The apartment was glass-closed a couple of weeks ago and I believed this was the opportunity to check out my view.

As you can see, the view is absolutely gorgeous; it is overlooking the Rijnsweerd national park, which is something completely different then overlooking a city or residential area. It is hard to make a good impression with no inside walls, and all grey walls. I was lookin from the side of my kitchen all the way to the end of the master bedroom, and kinda had the feeling did I really pay that much money for this? While discussing some problems with the radiators, we went to the 4th floor of the building where they already finished an appartment almost similar to mine and I saw how big it really was. The appartment was painted with a white structural paint and you could really see the amount of light that entered the apartment and how beautiful spacious it was.

Now I just cannot wait to move out there.

Anyway, I took a couple of shots to show you guys..

Recently I started calculation ROI on one of my sites, I send Adwords traffic to. Along the way I discovered that the ROI on the keywords were far from logical.

For some keywords, phrase match generated a lot of profitable sales, where on another keyword broadmatch or exactmatch would determine everything. I guess, this learned me that you never know before hand what is going to convert and what is not. Just throw in all the keywords you can think of and fine tune along the way. You might be surprised with the outcome of your new campaign.

Since I cannot attach an adwords tracking code, to the billing page yet I cannot view the ROI inside of adwords and I have to calculate everything manually, which is time consuming ! If somebody knows of a way to automatically calculate ROI without having to fill everything into Excel manually, I would greatly appreciate it

In oppose to where I would normally get drunk with my friends on New Years Eve, I decided to spend the turn of the year with my girlfriend on Times Square.

It’s cool to finally be with a girl that can get me off my lazy ass and to actually see something of the city For me this was the 2nd visit to the city, but I finally got to see the view from the Empire State Building (Even though we had to wait in line for over three hours - Blowing Hubba Bubba Bubbles )

But my gf should feel lucky they would let somebody her size on the ESB, you know with the heavy winds and all ;)New Years Eve was fun ! My buddy Adam hooked us up with a couple of tickets for the Whiskey Lounge (Where the Bartenders are always friendly) - Thnx bro.

I think I have now almost seen everything in NYC, but I’m going back with a couple of friends in April to do the Brooklyn bridge walk, which I didn’t get to do because I had to give my gf some ice skating lessons. Which I rock at by the way

Anyway, check out the compilation below and notice how much of a gentleman this bachelor veteran has become

Next Monday, the 6th of November I’m going to Los Angeles  for the yearly Westcoast WMA, to discuss business with some of my clients, to network a little bit and ofcourse to have a lot of fun !

I’ve started taking my B vitamins, because we have a parties scheduled every night  For the day-time sight seeing I have rented a Audi A6 quatro to help me show myself around.

Because I hate check-in stuff and airport delays, I’ve decided to take a privium subscription at Schiphol Airport. Privium is a business service that allows passenger to use valet parking, business class check-in, customs control by iris scan, privium lounge access and some other extra’s. This afternoon I had an appointment at the privium service desk to have my iris photographed. Everything went so fast, but I was really amazed by how far our technology takes us.  Because of my ICT background, I know some of the stuff is out there but I had no idea of how far along we really are. So after checking in Monday, I should be able to pass customs within 20 second’s. We’ll see

Little side note; the system is only available on Schiphol, but I hope they’ll make it compatible with overseas systems soon. That way I can finally loose important documents without having to worry about it

I almost feel like a woman writing this. It’s true though..

I hate fashion, and all the “hip” and “trendy” stuff. Where are the times that it was hip to wear your casual 501? Well, for 3 months now I’ve been looking to get new jeans. Now don’t get me wrong; I don’t walk in every store, every week to look at jeans. But getting a new pair was a little bit overdue

By now you all now how picky I am, not to mention a real pain in the ass. But when I have set my mind on something there is no living being on earth that can set it otherwise. I wanted a pair of Diesel jeans that I know I like because I already own a few pairs. But apparently Diesel decided they aren’t in style anymore and taken them out of production.

Screw fashion and screw style.

Local Jeans store was lucky I have a weakness for cute girls that tend to talk too much Good job store manager for hiring cute staff. She made me walk out with 2 boxers, a belt and two new pair of jeans that highlight my ass in an obvious yet classy way

I believe in doing what you do best and outsourcing the rest.

Last week I launched two brand new sites for a niche market segment. I know my way around in Photoshop so I did most of the basic design work myself. In my own way, and I need everything done perfectly.. so I asked a designer to build me a beautiful, smooth and creative header for those pages.

In addition, I like to provide my websites with hand written unique content. Not the shady shit all the copycat, num minded losers take from other websites and make their own. No.. I am talking from-scratch, exclusive content.

I am no writer, hell.. if we’d take my blog and put it through a spell checker I’d swear the thing would beep 24/7. So who’d be better to provide my pages with content then a professional copywriter? My pages are already up and running, complete spelling mistake free and professionally written.

Plus, all this managing and organizing really makes me feel like that year of International Business and Management Studies (IBMS) wasn’t a complete waste of time