Posted by Ruddy on Jun 15, 2009 in
Chit Chat The bigger internet becomes, the darker it will be. The day of internet where everyone can speak anything they want is no longer exist. People can talk about freedom of speech when they are gays and lesbians, but once you talk about politics or someone else’s dark past, people would try to delete your content. It happens everywhere right now while I don’t think it’s a good idea to be naive like this. Internet was built based on freedom of speech. Although I was still a kid when internet boomed, I still remember how people kept talking and flaming each other without boundaries.
That’s what internet should be about. Lift your mask and shout anything you want. Nowadays it seems harder to “provide” the real freedom of speech policy. When you deny holocaust, no matter how good your argument is, people would criticize you until you delete that content. When you talk about a scam scheme of one big organization, you wouldn’t be heared either. In fact, once people start hearing about your problem, websites will try to filter your content.
Facebook nowadays often filter certain contents. If we were talking about adult contents, I can understand. Adult contents should be filtered because we don’t want children to see them. But Facebook (and lots of other sites) filter comments and articles that talk about important issues. It’s totally unfair to make negative arguments about one specific issue (especially when the writer had a very good point). Well, internet should be the place where everyone can talk anything they want. It’s good, actually. But when it gets bigger, dumbasses will try harder to protect something they care about (you know what I mean) by filtering your contents.
Posted by Ruddy on Jun 9, 2009 in
Chit Chat I haven’t had enough time to make a post lately…or at least I always thought so. It’s 3:30 AM today but I can’t sleep due to various things happen lately that really distract my attention. So here I am, making this post 
You know, lots of things have changed in the past 3 years. Things were looking good sometimes but I always remember the days when I had nothing, when I screamed at God and asked “how will you pay my hard work?”…These days, sometimes I feel that kind of situation haunts me back. I work hard, really. I plan hard, really. And I also try to diversify my attention by going to a language course and still try to refresh myself sometimes by playing with my friends. But it looks like things are going down for me. I know there’ll be a light at the end of tunnel but I just feel tired with the daily work circle that keeps distracting my attention in living my life.
Well, I have to admit..I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t prepared to become what I am today. I just wasn’t prepared enough. I do regret it but everyone has their own regrets. I learn so much lately and I know I still need to learn much more in order to be “prepared” in my own level.
I remember the day when I lost few hundred bucks in my saving account which left me only $10 with an old PC and a very poor internet connection. I cried. Nobody heard though ..Then I started to 100% focus on what I was doing and I know I had a big achievement. A very big jump, I must say. Well, now I feel the same pressure although it is for different reasons. I hope with this pressure, it’ll help me maximize my potential so I can achieve what I want and what I need. I live to win, not to not lose. By losing once or twice, it’ll pump my motivation to achieve even more in my life. Well anyway, thanks for reading.
Posted by Ruddy on May 25, 2009 in
Chit Chat It’s always interesting for me to look at one person based on his background and what he exactly wants from his life. From what I’ve seen so far, most people want safety. Safety for their family, safety for their money, safety for their love story, and safety for everything. If you ask me, this kind of people are losers. They are afraid to lose, they don’t live to win. They work for others because it provides certainty for them. They get the same amount of money every month, they pay the same amount of rent every month, and they go to the same place everyday.
Sometimes, entrepreneurs also do the same thing. They chase the same market, they don’t want to sacrifice their primary business model, and they only work in one niche simply because they know it’s where they good at. Even though one day they grow in terms of earning, but basically they don’t grow as a human being. They keep the same habits for years. They may be having a successful career but what’s the point if what they do is just go to the same place everyday to work, go back home at 5, have fun with family until 10, and make new plans for tomorrow’s work, and go to sleep?
Well, as an entrepreneur and investor in various sectors, I know what “lose” is. But I probably would never know what “win” is if I was only trying to not lose. I learn from my horror stories. I lost all of the money in my saving account back then in 2005 when I was only 18. But if I never lost the money, probably I would never had a thought to start an online business with $10. Same story with my investments. If I never lost a single cent in my first investment, probably I would stay investing in low or medium risk businesses and would never try to learn risk management. There are lots of ways to learn how to make money but in the end the most valuable lesson is experience. You learn from your good stories but you learn and motivate yourself from the bad ones.
Unfortunately,things are not going smoothly, never were, and will never be. When you were 16-18, probably you have a dream to stop working before you get old and enjoy your life. I had a dream to stop working and made enormous amount of money before I turn 30. But things are not as simple as that. New problems will always come to your door everyday and it changes how you think about yourself. A regular employee probably had a dream to make $10,000 a month. But once he becomes a CEO, he would want to make $1,000,000 a month. And once his company grows much bigger than that, he would want to make a lot more.
This is normal but sometimes we don’t realize these things consume us and our time. In the end, it’s not about “I want safety” or “I want to make money passively” anymore. In the end, you are just trapped in that kind of life. The question is, do you live to not lose or to win? Well, I chose the second path since 2 years ago.
Tags: inspiration, life
Posted by Ruddy on May 23, 2009 in
Chit Chat Man, haven’t opened my blog in the last 2 weeks then suddenly now all of the posts (that I made this month) are gone. I don’t know what happen but I think it’s domain and server related issues. I mean, I changed the host of this blog earlier and of course I set up everything necessary (changing the nameservers of the domain, change the IP of the NSs, etc.). But I have no idea why when liquidweb deleted the earlier VPS account around 1-2 weeks ago, suddenly all of my earlier posts were gone as well. I’m quite sure I ping this blog before I made the latest post and it showed the current VPS server. How could this happen to me…lol.
Tags: ruddy setiadi gunawan
Posted by Ruddy on Apr 8, 2009 in
Chit Chat Man…I was thinking about who I was 4 years ago, I realize things have changed. So quick and so weird. Well, back then, I even never thought I would become an internet entrepreneur. I didn’t even know how to make a site. I was a fool, complete idiot. Nothing else. I remember the first day I spent my money to rent a cheap host and buy a domain. I remember the day I tried to convince everyone I could become someone from nothing. I remember the day where everybody else went to seminars while I was just sitting in front of my computer.
I just realize now things have changed. People give me more attention just because now I make money and some of them even try to be close to me just because they know about my profession. Everybody thought I was only a clown, now it’s just ugly to see some people try to think I’m an asset or something. Also, I was not circumcised and now I have been circumcised. Lol…and I still remember how I was not able to speak a single character of Mandarin language and now I can type pinyin.
Man, I was thinking that in just 4 years, things have changed. Now I’m not as brave as I was. I care about my image now, I care about how do I look, I care about what I own, and I feel I have more and more responsibility. One thing for sure, I’m also fatter now. Man, I think I need to go swimming 2 times a week and also do some gym stuffs. But above all, to be honest, I miss the old times. I miss how I could entertain people. I miss how friends were like family, not like now where everybody’s busy with their own schedules. 
But ok, this is life. So interesting. I can’t wait to see what will happen in 4 years from now. One thing for sure, I won’t get married when I’ll be 25 
And if someone invent human clone technology by then, I would be happy to clone myself and kill that clone immediately.
Posted by Ruddy on Apr 6, 2009 in
Chit Chat There’s a saying “Once you go Mac, you’ll never go back to Windows”. Well, for me, I still use both of them although I must say I love Leopard much more than Vista. I’m not a big fan of Apple products but I just have to admit, every Mac software suit me more than anything else. The spaces layout, the much better security, the cool softwares such as xBack and Little Snitch, everything is here. For some crucial softwares such as Adobe and Ms Office, I also have them on my iMac. So I see no reason why we shouldn’t switch to Mac. In every aspect related to works, Mac is better than Windows.
However, I have a laptop and it’s not a MacBook. I use Alienware Area-51 M15x and it’s installed with Vista automatically when I bought it. And no, I never regret using Vista. It’s actually a good software and the main reason why I feel it’s good is because you can play latest games with it. Games like GTA IV, Fallout 3, or Call of Duty games, they are created for Windows so it’s easy to install and play them here. But well, if I’m working from home, I will definitely turn on my iMac, not my Alienware.
So basically the saying “once you go Mac, you’ll never go back” is true for me. However, since I love to switch gadgets, I love to play games, and just to refresh myself from specific OS, I still use Vista. It’s good of course compared to XP. Much better. If you want to use XP, you can use it from Leopard actually.
Posted by Ruddy on Apr 2, 2009 in
Chit Chat I don’t know why suddenly I have a thought to write this but probably it is good for all of us. I just want to say it’s annoying to see stupid dumbasses who are looking to make quick bucks. They are disgusting and just look stupid to me because they are kind of people who will do everything for couple hundreds/thousands of dollars. What make them look more worthless to me is because lots of other morons will try to follow the other stupid people. I mean, look at how the email spamming world grows. These people keep spamming us as long as they get conversion. They even don’t care if their conversion is below 1%. What they know is if they send one million emails, several would reply and one would buy in the end. (i’m not talking about email marketing, but spam email marketing)
Recently, I have found lots of stupid search engine optimizers. I don’t say they are stupid because they are using the oldie techniques to get high SERPs. No man, they are stupid because they keep sending me the same PMs in forums and messages to my email address. I approved several friend requests in GTalk and I don’t know why but these SEOs kept giving me the same messages every day. For example, they would always began the chat with “Hi Ruddy, are you there?” After I replied, he/she would ask me if I need any links. You know what, every day they would try to send me the same messages through GTalk as if I never chat with them earlier. I mean…cmon, I talked to them just 24 hours before and they sent me exactly the same messages?
I ever asked 2 of them if they were bot or something and they actually were not. I knew they were humans because they responded when I changed the subject. However, because I felt they completely annoyed me, I just blocked this kind of people. You know, this is not a good business practice. Just be honest with you. They look like bunch of morons, completely not professional, and they expected to make money with this technique? Man, I just don’t get it why these morons never learnt something.
In the real world, actually it’s just the same. You can see lots of morons everywhere. I have a friend, never met him anymore in the last one year but I heard the latest news about him just few weeks ago. He was very successful in his business although he was only 21 or something (he’s one or two years older than me, so he must be 22 or 23 right now). But his parents always tried to force him back to college although he didn’t have passion in stuffs like school. In the end, because he said he was so busy in school, he just let his business die. I asked him why he just left his business? He said because his parents and even himself believe we can’t predict the future and college gives us a “guarantee”. But I heard now he’s just working as an employee to a big company here. Although it’s big but what’s the point if you work for less than $2,000 per month? I mean, he can surely get a lot more if he never stopped his own business.
LOL. I can say he was hardworker but he was not smart. I mean, he was just moron. There’s no such thing as guarantee except your brain, your hard work, and your dedication. Everyone who uses his potential and work hard always ends up living a good life. I can guarantee this because I’ve seen too many examples in my life. Yeah of course the case will be different if you use your potential to work as an employee forever. But I’m telling you the truth, when you get an opportunity to maximize your potential, and suddenly someone else tells you to just stop your business, you should just disobey it. No matter who the hell this person is, your father, your mother, your girlfriend, it doesn’t matter. Just ignore it and just focus on your dream. You’ll end up being the smart guy, not one of the morons
Tags: dreams, Marketing
Posted by Ruddy on Mar 28, 2009 in
Chit Chat Holla everyone! I just want to make a post about my holiday trip next July. I’ll be going to Hong Kong! I think I’ll be there from 16th July but I haven’t decided the date yet. I’m going to “waste” 4 days of my life there before I come back to my usual life I don’t know why should I post this but as I said earlier, I only post something that I want to share. So this is it: I want to go to Hong Kong! I’ll also meet Howard there, my programmer from China.
If you know me and you want to join my trip, let me know, OK? Btw today is Saturday so I want to say, “HAVE A NICE WEEKEND!”
Posted by Ruddy on Mar 24, 2009 in
Chit Chat I learn something very useful in the last one week. It’s about business planning. OK, don’t be skeptical yet…business planning is just a usual thing and very common practice in every commerce world nowadays. But do you realize how many times we forgot about our own business planning when we are already in the middle of our business? For example, you target 10% growth for your traffic every month but if for some reasons you couldn’t achieve your target, you just simply forget it. This is stupid but most people do not realize they repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
When you plan your marketing tactics and if it doesn’t show a satisfying result, you couldn’t just give it up and make plan B. Instead, you should just modify your business plan a bit to make it more realistic but you must remember to always thinking outside the box. I mean, big dreams will make you achieve much better results than just normal dreams. Even during the global financial crisis era, you should still believe you have the power to make you dream comes true. Do not follow what other people told you to do but follow what you want to be. Nobody wants to be a receptionist or security officer, you know what I mean? Even if one day you fail in your business planning, you just have to double your motivation in order to achieve the next goal.
Tags: business, planning
Posted by Ruddy on Mar 20, 2009 in
Chit Chat
I rarely think about this but sometimes I felt so bored with my life. Doing the same routine in the last 1-2 years. I can’t imagine if I were working in an office, wearing suit. I might have already killed myself! I’m just a type of person who never felt satisfied with what I have. Well, although sometimes I went on vacation or business trip to outside the country, but I still easily get bored. One of my dreams, as always, is to stay in different countries anywhere I want. For example, I want to work from Spain with my laptop. Then 3 weeks later, I move to United States for another 2-3 weeks. Then I move to China to work for another weeks. This sounds fun although it might distract your focus on your job.
But I will do it one day, maybe next year, maybe in the next 2 years. Even if I manage to build my own established internet company, I would still want to work like this. I know how the world works though and I know it might stop my ambition. All the stupid routine stuffs that force everybody to look busy, to stay in the same country or city for years. It’s just stupid actually because I feel it’s just a cage for our desires. As a man who works from internet, I feel I can break that cage if I want to. Well, what I need is just a laptop and internet connection then I can work from anywhere. But sadly, I’m still dreaming to do it. I still don’t have courage to do it. Maybe because I’m afraid that I won’t get good foods and good place to live if I work like this Also because I don’t want to keep losing money just to pay for apartment/hotel…
It’s the same with my job. I am happy being an affiliate marketer because I make money, some people even say I make shitloads of money. But that’s not the point. I’m getting more and more bored with how the affiliate system works, SEO, adwords, facebook ads, everything. The motivation keeps fading away but I’m glad I found my motivation back in Hymoo. This will be my first step to create a gigantic social discussion platform. I’m glad I fund the project, no regrets
