A Little About Me

I was 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 spent 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 a blog in English and putting myself out there.

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 waste 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 money was what I needed the most to splurge on material possessions and feed my ego.

Flash 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, lol.

But my friend was very active at CPA marketing at the time, and he was making pretty good money. So I hired him to teach me do that.

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

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 a 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.

When many people were running ads for the same (shady) offers at the same time, Facebook started noticing those ad campaigns.

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 only 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. As more new affiliates were coming in and trying to promote those offers, it became more and more competitive.

Affiliate networks had to raise their payouts here and there to attract affiliate marketers to promote their offers. At some point, the commission rates they offered were 2x or more what were offered a year earlier.

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 don't want to bore you with my family drama, but growing up, unhappiness and insecurity were my best friends.

And when I became an adult, all the negative traits I had developed over the years were now ingrained.

The crazy part?

It all happened without my knowledge. Yep, our subconscious mind is a bitch.

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.

For whatever reason, I was trying to show people that I was successful because man did it feel good! I was too arrogant to take advice from people that genuinely cared about me.

In hindsight, I was self-sabotaging and 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 still 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 one-time 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 led to even more self-loathing.

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 are starting to move in a positive direction. 

At least I'm starting to let go…

What's Next?

Frankly, it's too early to tell. This life is a long journey. I don't want to pigeonhole myself in the future because of something I say now.

But as aforementioned, I've done many jobs in the past, and I've tried different things in the internet marketing space. I want to try something new.

Something interests and excites me more than anything I've tried.

And then I discovered NFTs at the end of November 2021. As I dove deep into it, I was hooked.

It's amazing how investing in NFTs allows you to achieve different things at once:

• Join communities & mingle with others
• Collect amazing (or weird AF) digital art & show off in any way you want
• Get access to the utilities, perks and benefits it offers while enjoying the appreciation gains
• Etc. etc.

I'm still very new in the NFT space, so I don't really have much to say. But I plan to go after the crypto/NFT niche and publish content on a regular basis.

At the end of the day, you need a healthy amount of money to have great fun in the NFT space.

I don't know where this all will lead, but I'm going to do my best and let whatever happens to happen. Focus on the process (input) and let the outcome (output) take care of itself.

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.

I launched this blog in June 2020. After publishing three posts, I abandoned the blog because I couldn't cope with the tremendous self-doubt.

But every time I make a comeback, I can feel myself getting stronger. The future of blogging is bright, though the path is ridiculously rough.

And I believe that so long as I don't give up and keep trying, eventually, I'll be there. No matter how long it takes.

If you want to follow along on my blogging journey and have enough patience, I'd love for you to subscribe to my email newsletter.

Thank you so much for spending your time with me. Take care! 🙂

Until next time,
Kim

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