my appreciation for my husband Steve Trapero

You know what I like about blogging? You can write whatever the f*ck you want. Whatever that interest you or whatever that's on your mind. I read somewhere that you shouldn't write about your husband, your kids or things like that no one would be interested in reading. What they are trying to say is that you should only blog useful information and try to drive traffic from your blog to your site. Well, I'm passionate about my husband and my kid. There's no way that I'm going to write and not write about them. They are a very big part of my life. My husband Steve always say:" I don't make the rules, I just break them."

There are so much I can write just on my husband alone. Well such as our love story, our stupid fights and lalalala... For that, he's a better story teller and I'll let him tell those kind of story.

What I want to write about is learning how to be a wife. We've being married for a little over 5 years now. And I think I just really start learning about how to be a wife or a good wife. Dr. Laura Schlessinger, one of my favorite author on marriage, once wrote something like this: "Man are simple, doesn't mean that they are stupid, but they are simple. All they need is food, sex and appreciation." I agreed. One night I sat down and start to list all the things that I'm grateful for or what I like about my man Steve and here's the list.

1. He loves me
2. He loves our son
3. He pleases me
4. He wants me
5. He puts up with me
6. He's patient
7. He's very talented at what he does, no matter if it's photography or design.
8. He thinks stuff through before he does it
9. He's reasonable
10. He cooks and opens car doors occasionally for me
11. He is very practical most of the time
12. Unlike other guys, he's not into sports, and I don't have to go to sport games
13. He is very intuitive
14. He's sensitive
15. He loves God and gets the Gospel
16. He preached
17. He's passionate about life, about God, and about what he does.
18. He's a good lover
19. He eats everything I cooked no matter how horrible my cooking skills are at times. He finishes most things on his plates when I cook too.
20. He has great people skill
21. He's pretty macho and know how to fight both physically and emotionally
22. He's smart
23. He's funny
24. He's creative
25. He protects me, and I know he would fight for me if necessary.
26. He respects me
27. He's brave
28. He trust God
29. He never cheat
30. He's very ethical
31. He always tells me the truth, even when he knows that the truth will hurt me.
32. He's a good dad
33. He never complain how messy I am
34. He won lots of awards
35. He encourage me to cook and never complains about my cooking skill
36. He's true to God and true to himself
37a. He speaks his mind ( this is a weakness too, so I'm not sure this counts)
37b. He works hard
38. He makes my coffee sometimes in the morning
39. He let go of stuff pretty quickly and never hold grudges against me
40. He always hugs me at night even when we've been fighting during the day.
41. He's pretty balanced emotionally. Willing to go to counseling when things are tough.
42. He puts our marriage in front of everything
43. He understands Chinese culture very well.
44. He's willing to live with my parents
45. He's very open to try new food
46. Childish or childlike. young at heart
47. Very open person, you can read him like an open book. He's happy most of the time and when he's not, you'll know it too.
48. He mentored a lot of his students.
49. He doesn't see money as God or important
50. He romance me.

The reason why I did this list is that many times husbands were so unappreciated. Everything they do, it's like they suppose to do it and not get any appreciations from what they do. It's like they suppose to work har, they suppose to make money, they suppose to take the trash out and lift all that heavy stuff. Who says so? I know my husband does a lot of things to please me because he loves me. But if you are a wife or a girlfriend, you should tell him how much you appreciate him at least once a day. I know I don't tell my husband how much I appreciate him every single day, but I do check the three thing very often... food, sex and appreciation. I find this three things is a good but simple checklist to remember.

I gotta go, It's 1:09 in the morning.

my early affiliate marketing adventure

One of the first thing I did was I went to Barnes and Nobles to see if there are books written about affiliate marketing. I found one in the entire bookstore and it's called "Affiliate Millions". I bought the book and spend the next day reading it. After I did some initial research, which is about 40 hours of learning and researching, I launched my first affiliate marketing campaign. I launched this small campaign on a weeknight around 5pm. When I woke up the next morning, there is $2.40 in my affiliate marketing account!

I'm one of those people who celebrate all the little success. I was really encouraged by this $2.40, so I decided to do more reading and researching. Until this day, I'm still learning. I'm learning about how to get traffic, SEO, internet marketing and more. I really wish I have all the time in the world on this subject but I don't. I have a house, a lovely family, a good husband, an adorable son, a business with many different services, you get what I mean. I got a lot to joggle.

At this point, you might be wondering what exactly is affiliate marketing? Well, basically it's selling other people's stuff or service online. They pay you a commission. You mean a salesman? yes and no. Yes, that you do have to promote other people's stuff. No, you don't have to do any cold calls.

Anyways, the book"Affiliate Millions" did give me a good introduction on affiliate marketing. Leave me a comment if you are interest to hear more about this topic or if you are currently also in affiliate marketing.

What really pushed me to finally blog is the movie "Julie & Julia". It's a great movie. It inspired and encouraged me a lot and again, that's really what pushed me to start writing.

My very first blog!

Wow! Never thought blogging is this easy! Hahahahaha... so happy. I keep telling my husband Steve Trapero that I will start a blog for him and I. His response was always:"get that newsletter out first, dear~." The newsletter is out and now it's blogging time! By the way, "that newsletter" is Pinnacle Design Center's first newsletter and you can read it at:

http://www.PinnacleDesignCenter.com/newsletter/newsletter1.html

If you don't know what's Pinnacle Design Center, well, go to Http://www.PinnacleDesignCenter.com to find out more.

I thought I wouldn't have anything to write about at first but now I simply don't know where to start because there are too many things on my mind.

10 minutes later...

I have decided to write about how did I end up blogging now. 

Part 1 of the story

Two month ago, a business friend invited me to a lecture. It's one of those "free lecture" held in a Hotel conference room and before you walk in you know they are trying to sell you something. The lecture is titled something like : how to make money online for free. The entire lecture was in Chinese. What they are trying to sell is a one day seminar to teach you how to do affiliate marketing online and they are asking $1600. They'll also include a mini laptop that's worth $300 too! There are few reasons why I went to that lecture. One is to check out what they have to offer and more importantly I think they might know something that I didn't. I like to go to these kind of lecture to learn how to present or give public speeches. I also like to see how other people do businesses.

The only interesting part of that whole 1 hour lecture is when the presenter log in to his bank account to show how much money he makes from affiliate marketing online each month. It's a very interesting yet persuasive selling point. I didn't buy what they are trying to sell because I know I'm a smart woman and I believe that I can do better than him without his help. I spend two days the next week learning about affiliate marketing online. It turned out to be this 7 billion dollar business online each year. There are people making millions of dollar each month online from affiliate marketing. 

The idea of sitting in front of my computer and making money interest me a great deal.  and the story is to be continued...

Yvonne Xu