Hopefully, that answers your question. But if you're interested to learn more about me, keep reading…

A Little About Me

I'm Chinese, born and raised in Malaysia. For a long time, I've wanted to start a blog. But because I was too insecure about being judged for my poor English (Chinese is my native tongue), I'd been putting it off.

So I took a good few years to learn, improve, practice, and sharpen my English skills. Although it's still not very good, I've gotten more comfortable with the idea of starting an English blog and putting myself out there.

Anyway, enough of trivial details about me. Since making money online will be a big topic on this blog, let's talk about how I even got here…

My Journey

In 2006, I stepped into society after graduating from high school and decided not to pursue higher education.

I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had no skills. No credentials. I was just a young man from a small town venturing into (relatively) a big city — Kuala Lumpur.

I'm trying to think of some exciting stuff and memorable stories to impress or entertain you, but honestly, there weren't any.

Looking back, all I did was wasted a decade of my life jumping from one job to another, thinking about many things that I aspired to do but took no action, and getting involved with drugs and alcohol.

Over the years, I've tried many jobs. Most of them were sales jobs because that's what pays the most. And I needed money to feed my ego and splurge on material possessions.

But I hated it. I hated selling. I hated talking to strangers. I hated my life.

(Well, I was an ultra introvert with low self-worth. What do you expect?)

Today, I do have a little higher self-worth. But I'm still an introvert. Maybe a super introvert now instead of an ultra one. Better, right?

So, fast forward to 2016, I was brought into the internet marketing space by a good friend. I didn't know anything about internet marketing back then; all I knew was SEO is the abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization.

But my friend was very active at CPA marketing at the time, and he was making pretty good money. So I followed suit.

And, for an entire year, I was making money like this:

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If you don't know what CPA marketing means, it basically means Cost Per Action marketing. As a CPA marketer, my job was to get people to take a particular action (could be signup or a purchase), and the product owner/company will pay me a commission.

I was able to generate daily income like that for a whole year because I believe I was one of the pioneers who started promoting those affiliate offers using Facebook ads while most other marketers were using SEO, email marketing, etc.

To give you some idea, I was spending $750-ish on ad spend a day. The ROI was insane. And to get ROIs that insane, you're either stealing, robbing, or doing something shady.

Yep, I was promoting some shady offers for crazy commissions. Actually, I wasn't even aware of that at the beginning, but when I was, later on, the money was too tempting for me to stop doing it. So I kept going.

But the problem with Facebook ads — or any paid ads for that matter — is that it's too easy to spy on and copy others' ad campaigns. As soon as people knew how much money I was making (my fault), they started copying my ads and became my competitors.

And that's when Facebook started taking action.

Exactly a full year later, Facebook shut down my ad accounts and my personal account. Obviously, they didn't like what I was doing on their platform.

So all of a sudden, my income halted.

And because I was so complacent with my “wonderful” life over that short year, it took me a while to face the music.

Actually, it's way longer than I expected…

Hidden Crises

After losing my sole source of income, I wasn't quite ready to give up. I was still looking for other ways to continue promoting those shady offers.

But the niche was getting darker and darker. More ridiculous offers were popping up. Affiliate networks were raising their payouts here and there to attract affiliate marketers to promote their offers.

That's when I started to sense that things were going to an end.

I was right, and I'm glad I didn't pursue that path further. But I had more significant problems to deal with — my finance and my confidence.

I grew up in a poor and broken family. My dad left us for unknown reasons when I was a month old. And my mom passed away in a car accident when I was 12.

I was in that accident too. I was lucky to have a leg broken and survive, but my mom wasn't so lucky.

The heart-aching part? My mom was having a baby — which was my little brother — when she died.

So my sisters and I were brought up by my late grandpa and late grandma, although my mom wasn't even their biological daughter.

My grandma was the most kindhearted, honest, and genuine person I've ever seen. She and my grandpa took care of us with love and provided us with everything they had. I'm forever grateful for that.

But here's the thing:

My uncle (my grandma's son) migrated to Singapore at a young age and lives a great life there. Every month he would send some money back to my grandma for living expenses. The money was for my grandparents to live a decent life, but instead, they spent most of the money on us.

I didn't mean to bore you with self-pitying stories, but the point I'm trying to make is this:

I grew up living under someone's roof and being looked down upon. I had very little self-worth, and I was super insecure about myself and everything in my life.

So when I finally had a chance to make some good money on my own, I earned myself some self-respect and confidence. But at the same time, I got a little overly egotistical, and I started judging other people for not having “success” or being ambitious…

I also started buying things that made me look good on the outside, or at least I thought I was looking good. I was trying to impress others for whatever reason. I was too arrogant to take advice from people that genuinely cared about me.

In hindsight, it all happened on the subconscious level, but I was setting myself up for failure.

Even after I lost my source of income, I still wasn't willing to confront my problems. Or maybe I should say I wasn't consciously aware of my problems.

I lucked into a fortune and inadvertently built an arrogant identity around that. I fell in love with my egotistical self-image. I thought I was intelligent and successful — and that I was destined to do great things. What a goddamn fool I was!

It wasn't until a few years later when I'd tried multiple business ventures and failed at all of them, that I realized I wasn't actually as smart as I thought I was. The “success” I had was essentially a fluke.

And when I was finally willing to start accepting the truth and myself, my confidence crumbled. I lost faith in myself. I was back to the point before everything began, if not lower. I was afraid of taking on new challenges…

What if I failed and looked stupid again? Or worse, what if I succeeded and did stupid things and lost it all again?

I was so afraid of being judged because of how much I judged others when I thought I was a successful self-made millionaire.

To make matters worse, I made many stupid financial decisions and lost all the money I made over that year, which made me hate myself even more. It took me years to embrace myself and all the mistakes I've made and be able to even talk about it.

But since you're reading this, I believe things will change in a good way. 

At least I'm starting to let go…

What's Next?

Frankly, I don't know. This life is a long journey. I feel like I've just been given another chance to relive my life.

As aforementioned, I've done many jobs in the past, and I've tried different things in the internet marketing space. I know I want to be a content creator — both written and video content. So moving forward, this blog and my YouTube channel will be my main focus.

I don't know where this all will lead, but I'm tired of trying to predict what's going to happen in life and to control as much as I can. After years of doing that, I don't think that's a healthy (and happy) way of living life.

I'm going to do my best and let whatever happens happens. At the end of the day, I don't need to be “successful” or have millions of dollars to live a happy life, do I?

Wrapping Up

I have to admit — it took me quite some time to muster enough courage to write this all out for the public to read and potentially judge. So if you made it this far, I genuinely appreciate it.

Let me tell you a little secret — I actually launched this blog about a year ago. But after publishing three posts, I abandoned the blog because I couldn't cope with the tremendous self-doubt.

So this time, making a comeback, I feel stronger. And I hope I won't abandon this blog again. If you're kind enough to be interested in keeping in touch, you're welcome to subscribe to my email newsletter.

That said, thank you so much for your time. Take care! 🙂

Until next time,
Kim

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