Posted on

Is the Wealthy Affiliate a Scam or What? – Our personal experience

Wealthy Affiliates Review – Let’s Dive into It

There are many online Affiliate Marketing programmes and courses out there that claim to “make you big bucks” online. But to tell you the truth, not all of them are what they claim to be (so please be careful of them).

Personally, we (myself and my wife) went through a number of them (read our story here) and all of them resulted in 0% income and instead we lost a lot of our money. Then we came across Wealthy Affiliates.

We did our comprehensive research and read many reviews, but came across nothing substantially that was negative, which itself was a surprise to us. But, still we joined with caution (because of our past experiences with other scamming Affiliate Marketing programmes) and signed up to the Starter Membership, which was totally risk free as it did not cost anything (totally FREE for life). The rest is history – read our journey to Wealthy Affiliate.

What is Wealthy Affiliates?

Wealthy Affiliate is an online platform, where you can learn and build your  online business for FREE. They have all the latest tools, technology and software, such as WordPress, SiteRubix, Jaaxy etc to help you learn, build, manage and grow your online businesses centrally from one place (which is your wealthy affiliate account). They even host your websites and provide you with two FREE Domains/URLs. Click here to continue reading about ‘Is the Wealthy Affiliate a Scam or What? – Our personal experience’

Posted on

Topcashback Review

Topcashback is one of the most generous and highest cashback giving sites. They do cashback on literally everything from travel, broadband, mobile networks, hotels, food, entertainment, and shopping to insurance.

We discovered them for about 5 years ago. Since joining them then we have claimed cashback of good few thousand pounds, so we wish we had discovered them sooner!

If this sounds interesting to you… then continue reading…

Topcashback enables you to claim cashback on almost whatever you are shopping for.

The Simple Process to Join

  1. You simply sign up for free
  2. Create an account entering your details
  3. Once you are on the Topcashback site you can browse through and select what brands you want to buy
  4. Then you get directed to the particular site
  5. You buy as normal
  6. As a result, you get your cashback paid directly into your bank or PayPal account
  7. The pay-out can take from few weeks to few months

It is as simple as that!

Your cashback percentages can vary from products and services. Generally you can get cashback from 1% to 100%! Scale is really that big!

Just to make you aware that the 100% cashback will be mainly for in store purchases. There is an additional tab for ‘in-store’ on the left side if you are accessing the Topcashback site via the mobile app. For your guidance refer to the photo to the right:

Pros:

  • It’s free to use. Or you can upgrade for £5 a year for additional cashback
  • Various brands and services to choose from and there are literally thousands
  • Flashback offers on best cashback deals from time to time AND for new members
  • No minimum amount required to transfer into your bank account or PayPal
  • Additional cashback via the referral link

Cons:

  • There is no cashback guarantee and it doesn’t track sometimes. So a piece of advice would be: don’t buy anything just for the sake of a cashback. Look elsewhere or in store first as it might be cheaper elsewhere anyway.
  • Cashback process can take several months sometimes

This is our up to date review. Please let us know your experience or if you have any questions. We will try our best to answer. Happy shopping 🙂

Habib and Rani

Posted on

Best Money Making and Saving Tips

Money is an asset and if one is not smart enough about their spending, you soon are out-of-pocket whether you have a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars.

In my humble opinion being clever with money is the only way forward. One of the good old proverb narrates something like this; ‘money is like sand in your hand. If your hand is not controlled properly, the sand will soon roll out without you even noticing much if it’.

By saying the above, by any means I am not promoting that you should deprive yourself from the life’s necessities. We should all enjoy the life’s bounties to the max. But here what I mean to say is: spend your money sensibly on the necessities and enjoy what brings true value into your life. Read that again…

However, sometimes the materialistic stuff that we often THINK as a necessity is not what brings the actual value… as these days we are very much influenced by the social media and society, and assume everything that looks shiny is going to shine our life. But I will let you figure that out yourself as you are the master of your own life…

While you figure that out, let’s dive straight into how we, as couple, manage our finances and save some serious money.

1. Look at Your Finances 

We first look at our monthly figures and see what comes into our bank accounts and what goes out. We mainly look at the bigger, important and more regular spending’s e.g. mortgage payments, bills, food shopping etc. and put the money aside for these areas first.

Then we look at what we have left and transfer 20% of the amount into the savings account. Whatever is remaining after that we can enjoy on days out, eating out, birthday parties, shopping, holidays etc.

We also tend to save from this for big holidays etc. I’m aware that we are all on a different journey in terms of managing our finances, and therefore I would recommend having a really good think about the stuff where you are spending your hard-earned cash on, and have a think about if you really need to spend on every aspect of it?

  • Is it necessary to begin with?
  • What value is it bringing into your life?
  • If it is, then what else can you cut out from other areas of your life in order to manage you spending on this?
  • Can you cut down some of the spending completely or even by half!?

When I say this, I mean you can cancel any unnecessary monthly subscription of TV channels, Sky boxes and magazine subscriptions. If you really want to come out of the comfort of your convenience and realise that in today’s time and age, most of the information are at your fingertips in the name of the internet where you can get most of the magazines related juicy gossips.

Information about health and social can be accessed from any social media apps these days. YouTube would be the best platform to access most of the current programmes/shows/soap operas.

A lot of News channels nowadays have live news on YouTube as well. Some of the relaxing meditation types of YouTube channels are also offering live streaming. So you don’t really need to buy those expensive meditation apps etc. and spend your money unneeded.

2. Build emergency funds 

Work out how you can save a little bit every day, every week, or every month and transfer it into your savings account for rainy days. Ideally you should have between 3-6 months amount of funds saved and put aside for just in case.

3. Schedule shopping money and stick to it!

Once you have a clear budget you will spend less on junk and unnecessary stuff that may eventually end up in the bin because of the impulse buying. Keep a shopping list handy and schedule a day to do all your grocery shopping.

When it comes to clothes shopping, limit your clothes shopping to maybe every 3 months or every season. Get to know your personal style and colours for your skin tone.

Invest in quality rather than quantity. This way your clothes/accessories will last longer and ultimately you will be spending less in the long run.

Here is another handy tip – say you have seen something in a shop or online and you really want it. Write it down and give yourself 14 – 30 days and if you still want it after this period of time then go ahead buy it. Through this method you will be making an informed choice and ultimately you will use it longer hence making the most of your spending.

4. Don’t bulk buy grocery

But obviously it doesn’t apply to everything. Most of us get tempted to buy everything we see on sale or get attracted to an item that has a red/yellow tag on. I would recommend doing your research first. It may not be cheap after all!

Secondly it may not be worth buying it in bulk as it may have a short expiry date, and you may not be able to use it within the use by date and ultimately y end up throwing it away anyway and wasting your money.

5. Try using discount codes and coupons

This one is very handy especially for online shopping. Most of the time, there are coupons available exclusively from bigger retailers, or when new products are launched. Personally we have got up to 90% off in some cases or even for free!

6. Use library rather than buying books

Library is a great place to borrow books, audio books, DVDs, magazines.

7. Meal planning

Plan your meals around what you already have in the fridge/freezer and what’s on sale at the time. For example, Aldi has “Super Six” fruit, vegetables and meat offers every 2 weeks.

You could plan your meal and work lunches around that. Also, when you cook meals, try to cook some extra for your work lunch too. Or alternately you could cook a couple of dishes during the weekend and leave them in the fridge for your lunch. This way you will be saving tons of money in the long run.

As a result it’s a healthier choice for your body and obviously for your pocket!

8. Online Purchses

Purchase goods from places such as Gumtree, Shpock, Depop, EBay, Amazon market place, where people are selling goods that are hardly or ever used at the fraction of a price.

9. D.I.Y

This could be from anything to cutting your own hair, doing your nails to painting/decorating your home to sewing your clothes, cooking, making cleaner sprays, hand soaps etc.

10. Swap Skills

there are plenty of forums on social media these days of your local area/ neighbourhood where you can swap skills for free.

11. Swap things with your family and friends

This could be home stuff, clothes shoes. You will be trendy for less. Have a try.

These are our tips and tricks for saving big money. What are yours?

Please share in the comments section below. Take care of your finances 🙂

Habib and Rani

Posted on

How to organise your life and feel good?

How to juggle/manage and organise the following?:

  • work
  • develop a business in spare time
  • home/social life
  • healthy eating
  • staying fit
  • personal development
  • and so on..

Here is my take

Time management is something that doesn’t come to us all spontaneously. One of the main reason for this can be that there is so much to do and achieve in life, but we have very limited time and we find it difficult to fit all aspects of life in one time.

Therefore, we feel unfulfilled and underachieved. Does this sound familiar to you? If so, continue reading.

What is time?

In my humble opinion, time is an illusion, which we must utilise to schedule tasks and create a successful and fulfilled life. We achieve goals, shift our perspective of life from A to B, which means we learn and develop, and fulfil our destiny.

What to do with the time?

We can best optimise time by scheduling important tasks necessary to move forward in life. Tasks can be combined but not multi tasked.

I mean if tasks can be combined simultaneously. For example going for a run or a session in the gym with your partner, friend or a family member, you’ve combined staying fit and relationships together.

If you listen to an audio book or a podcast or even your favourite comedy show, you are combining personal development with relationships. But make sure these tasks are fun and enjoyable.

How to schedule life?

That is the real question; My personal experience to achieving the scheduled tasks is to get self-disciplined. Self-discipline is like a muscle, it takes time to show on the surface, but the perseverance and consistency is the key.

When you push yourself
to get a task done when you don’t feel like it, that’s the mind-set which will make you grow and become a goal achiever.

Self-discipline will help you become more driven to success by getting the tasks done and achieving goals.

This process will help you develop self-belief, confidence thus positive habits. So it’s a win win situation. Being clear on what is important for you and committing to it, is vital part of the self-discipline.

An example of this could be, is to be accountable of achieving a goal and rewarding
yourself.

You can even announce your deadline to the people in your social circle. So, they can remind you from time to time and keep you motivated of fulfilling their expectation of you. This way you will feel more accountable and get self-disciplined in no time.

Set routine and tasks

Having meaningful tasks and routine can set you to success. Break down your big goals into smaller chunks and incorporate them into your daily routine. Even if you accomplished a smaller part of your bigger task every day, you’ll have your 7 pieces of it done by the end of the week. That’s not a bad progress.

You can also have set jobs per day of the week. For example:

  • Saturday – family time/outings
  • Sunday – cooking/meal prepping cleaning, getting ready for the week
  • Monday – you can set aside an hour to plan for your side hustle e.g. if you are a blogger, then planning
    how many posts you want to do in a week. In that week plan by writing down ideas of your posts, getting the relevant materials ready images, videos, research
  • Tuesday – set aside 30 minutes to write a post and 30 minutes to edit and upload
  • Wednesday – go for a run
    or gym session with a friend and listen to the motivational podcast audio books to and back
  • Thursday – do a blog post and take as much time as you need
  • Friday – engage with your audience, reply to their comments etc

This is my typical weekly routine. I need to give up on the unnecessary distraction in my life in order to achieve my big life goals and feel good. What about you?

Another aspect to being productive whilst feeling good is to guard the time. Whether you are working for someone as a 9-5 job or working for yourself.

It’s amazing to have technology at hand these day, but try not to get tempted to check emails during out of work time.

As Mel Robbins states in her The 5 Second Rule is that we often fill up the time with whatever we need to accomplish. In other words, whether a task takes an hour or 10 minutes we are likely to use that whole chunk of time.

I would recommend setting a time of each task and getting a job done within that time. You will soon realise you will be using the mad-brain power to shrink that time container and saving yourself some ‘me’ time to take a break as a priority.

It’s important to have a cut-off time from your daily chores and to look after yourself. Remember if you don’t fill your own cup, you’ve nothing left to offer from an empty.

The jobs, the to-do lists you are trying to accomplish are always going to be there. But taking the time out to enjoy life is crucial for a balanced health and wellbeing.

I hope this post has helped you to organise your life and feel good about it.

Kindly leave a comment or further question and I will get back to you.

Rani

Posted on

Best Tried and Tested Remedies to Cure Stomach Problems!

My personal take: ‘when nothing works this works’!

Does food make you sick and you feel helpless as nothing works to cure your stomach problem? Then, carry on reading for a quick remedy.

Personally, anything I ate made me feel bloated, lethargic and low in mood.

After many years of this digestive problem, I’ve finally found a couple of very simple remedies that cured my sensitive/hyper stomach.

I first tried the Centaurim drops by A.Vogel when the stomach issues were unbearable.

Energised Me!

After the first usage I felt more energetic and felt the food digested better and I felt my normal self. This bitter herb is particularly effective for the acid reflux from my stomach to my throat and helped promote a good digestion.

Ginger!

Alongside the Centaurim drops by A.Vogel, I introduced the ginger remedy or shall I say I ate it accidentally and guess what, I felt fantastic! Then I tried it again, why wouldn’t I!?

It worked again and again. All I did was juiced the fresh ginger with some fresh, preferably organic carrots and voila! I had this fresh carrot/ginger juice first thing in the morning.

Ginger Contains a property called a Gingerol. This Substance has very powerful medicinal properties especially in treating inflammation, chronic indigestion, and morning sickness.

A Final Word

Personally, I would advise you give it a go to the herbal or home remedies but do your research first to make sure you’re not allergic to anything or if it is not going to interfere with any other remedies you’re taking.

I usually tend to always gravitate towards more natural/herbal remedies, which have the fewest or no side effects.

Best wishes to your poor tummy 🙂

Rani

Posted on

How to Cure Stomach acidity / indigestion / IBS

Do you suffer from stomach acidity / acid reflux / gas / indigestion / IBS (irritable bowel syndrome)?

Then you have landed on the right website – because I’m going to give you a very simple and cheap solution!

Here goes my tried and tested natural home remedy to help or even cure the above mentioned issues or symptoms.

The answer is GINGER!

Ginger is a staple to Chines medicine. When consumed in small doses, it helps to alleviate acid reflux, reduce the swelling of the oesophagus, ease nausea and muscle pain. But if you use in high doses, it can make your symptoms worse. So please don’t go crazy with ginger consumption.

How I use it

Once peeled the skin, ginger can be grated, grinded, blended, shaved to add in your food. I personally tend to chop it up in small pieces and add it to my smoothies.

I hope this little post will be helping you out and get rid of your stomach acidity / acid reflux / gas / indigestion / IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).

I will appreciate a comment left further below, letting me know how you got on 🙂

Rani

Posted on

How to Manage My Time Well

How to overcome the overwhelming feeling – MANAGE YOUR TIME WELL!

Reduce your anxiety immediately by this simple and effective formula below.

My Own Formula

If you have a lot going on in your life and managing your chores is something that makes you anxious then here is the simple, but tried and tested idea:

  • Write down all the jobs you have to do in the day on a piece of paper.
  • Then next to each job write down roughly how long it will take you to complete the job and be realistic about it
  • Also don’t cram things in unnecessarily as this will make you even more on the edge!
  • Just prioritise the tasks based on the time you have in the day and leave the rest for the next day and so on.

Hope this helps you the way it has been helping me. Since I’ve been following these steps it has made a massive difference to my life, and now I have more time to do things I couldn’t fit in my daily routine.

Video inspiration

Watch the video below to be inspired and respect the time you have or maybe wasting at the moment:


If you have a comment or question, please feel free to leave it in the comments section below and we’ll get back to you.

All the best,

Rani and Habib

Posted on

Most Effective Carrot and Ginger Juice Ever

What are the Benefits?

This quick and simple recipe helps with bloated stomach (and burns stomach fat in some cases!). It gives you instant energy and mental clarity, and even helps manage your hangover! This is why I call it the:

“Most Effective Carrot and Ginger Juice Ever”!

All you need is:

  • 3 medium to large sized peeled carrots (preferably organic)
  • a thumb size piece of peeled ginger

Juice, both ingredients together in a juicer and drink the juice on empty stomach half an hour before breakfast.

Have you tried it?

This carrot and ginger juice will do wonders for you. Try it and let us know in the comments section below, how it has benefited you.

Keep on juicing them carrots and ginger every morning 🙂

Rani

Posted on

Pineapple and Cream Dessert

Healthy and Simple Dessert using Pineapple

This yummy, delicious, healthy and simple dessert or a snack recipe can take only 5 minutes or less to prepare.

You need only 2 ingredients:

  1. Tinned pineapple 250g (or fresh)
  2. 150ml of double cream (or single if you’re very health conscious)

Method:

Cut the pineapple chunks into smaller pieces and mix the double cream:

Voila! (done)

Your simple and delicious snack or desert is ready to satisfy your sugar cravings in a healthier way.

Let us know your feedback in the comments below 🙂

Rani and Habib

Posted on

I Created Our Website in 30 Seconds – How long will it take you?

Is it difficult to create a website?

You may feel daunted when it comes to creating a website. I know exactly how that feels, as I have been there myself at the beginning of our journey. Actually this was one of the reasons, or should I say the ‘main reason’ for not starting a business online many years ago, was not knowing how to create a website, even though I am a tech savvy, well kind of. I thought back then what you are thinking now! “IT MUST BE VERY DIFFICULT TO CREATE AND RUN A WEBSITE”. How wrong was I, and you will also experience this after joining and creating your own website, and say the same about yourself!

“I created our website, www.lifestyletipsandhacks.com in 30 seconds, but can you create your website in 30 seconds?”.

Click here to continue reading about ‘I Created Our Website in 30 Seconds – How long will it take you?’

Posted on

Learn What is Affiliate Marketing – A Beginners Guide

Affiliate Marketing, FREE for beginners

It is interesting to see how many of us have got no clue about what ‘affiliate marketing’ is, yet most of us are shopping online by clicking on affiliate links.

The most recent and interesting example happened to my very own self only a couple of days ago:

Interesting Visit

I went to see my General Practitioner (GP) for a routine check up. As recently being on a high dose of affiliate marketing, I was desperate to pour out my wisdom of affiliate marketing to anyone and everyone. I was even tempted to convert people I was meeting in the lifts, or colleagues at the reception of a health centre, with whom it would have been very strange to talk about this out of the blue, this was one of the reasons which refrained me from pouring out my excitement, as well as being labelled as ‘nerdy’ (which I think I am, but no one else needs to know that, apart from myself and yourself)!

Shocking Discovery

Anyway, I went to see my GP, who coincidentally happens to be an extremely friendly doctor, and him knowing that I also work in the same field as him, he sometimes even asks ‘ME’, what should he be recommending me in terms of medication! it was very nice and ‘friendly’ of him, but out of friendliness he, I think (in my opinion) forgets that he is the GP not me! Anyway on this occasion, you can imagine what might have happened? OK, I’ll let you visualize, while I explain….

To be honest I was more interested to share ‘our’ (he knows my hubby too) venture of online marketing than getting the routine check up done. As I was telling him, he got more and more excited (as if, it was his own business)! I told him what kind of stuff we were doing, e.g. building a website, writing contents, blogs, reviews etc. He continued listening to me, with full interest and after ten minutes of my ‘hyper active speech’ of affiliate marketing, he interrupted me with the following question…

“Is affiliate marketing something to do with mindset and motivation?” because he is very aware that I have personal interests in these areas. At this very moment I felt I must have been talking in a different language in excitement and I didn’t realise that he hasn’t understood me.

Anyway, after this experience with my GP, it helped me think and I put myself in the GPs shoes (only imagined) that how many other business terms out there do I really know about? If they don’t concern me, would I really be learning about them? My honest answer would be NO! The only time that I’ll actually be looking into something, is, if I have a personal interest or benefit.

I can honestly admit, that I never knew about affiliate marketing until my burning desire to change my lifestyle really encouraged me from within, and hit the Google search engine of “how to make money online”, the rest is history.

So Let’s get into the actual purpose of this article, which is ‘What is Affiliate Marketing’?

Affiliate Marketing is one of the major business idea of the Online World. Affiliate marketing is when you promote other peoples or companies products on your website by reviewing, testing, comparing or via personal recommendation.
Often you’ll need to write blog posts and reviews to discuss pros and cons before publishing them on your website.

“IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT ALL YOUR REVIEW POSTS ARE HONEST AND INTERESTING”

Then the next step will be to advertise your website on other social media platforms, such as Google+, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Pinterest and even the old fashion way of word of mouth. Also, Via Google rankings to get the traffic flowing into your website.

Customer Trust

The key to building a customer trust is by giving value to the people who are looking for genuine reviews, recommendations of the products/services they are looking into buying. If you have been honest with your reviews/recommendations and people bought the product(s) via your affiliate link(s) within the review/blog, and they are happy with the product/service, they will come back again and again if they are looking for something else. This is because you have become an authority in the visitors eyes and have built a trust with them. “HONESTY PAYS ALWAYS!”

In the online affiliate marketing business you’ll be acting like a ‘middle person’ of the sale and be viewed as a store front of the company’s product you’re promoting.

As part of an affiliate marketers role you’ll be required to be interactive with your visitors and customers to help them with the buying cycle (researching, reading reviews and buying).

In order to generate revenue from the affiliate links, you’ll have various posts/blogs to help and support the people with the buying cycle. You can promote anything, but it’ll be an advantage to promote products and services that you use or have used in the past. This way you’ll have enough knowledge and confidence to support people in the decision-making.

Products can be from any niche, as there are tons people looking for whatever you’re promoting.

You’ll just need to make your contents around the products interesting and interactive in order to convert the searches into sales.

The only expense you’d need to consider is buying a domain (website address) and hosting your website. However, the good news is that if you join our personal tried, tested and recommended, which is wealthy affiliate, where you’ll be able to get not only 1 but two FREE domains (website address) and hosting is also included all for FREE.

Yes, I know it sounds too good to be true – read our full review of wealthy affiliate and you’ll understand further what I mean.

Opportunities in the online world are limitless, so think how much you can do with two free websites.

Generating an income via affiliate marketing would be a dream come true even while you’re sleeping! You can work from anywhere around the world so long you have an internet connection and a technology device (laptop/PC, tablet or even a mobile phone) and you’ll be up and running.

So just to sum up:

Affiliate marketing means you’ll be promoting others products online by writing contents around them. You’ll need a website to do so as this is where you’ll publish it. A business can be setup up for free (just need your time and commitment).

If you are still interested after reading my post 🙂 then give me the honor to help you succeed and make your dream come true. Try Wealthy Affiliate for FREE here.

Here at lifestyletipsandhacks.com we wish you all the best and sincerely want to support you fulfill your dreams of achieving wealth, time and freedom successfully – exactly what we have achieved.

Please leave a comment or any questions you may have for us. We would love to help you out.

Your buddies

Rani and Habib