Here's a nifty tool that allows you to create nifty little cash sites and landing pages with opt ins to popular autoresponder services like Get Response.

Its called Blink Web.

I spent 30 minutes tinkering around with it. Nice!

Click Here For Blink Web

There's a few ways to get more traffic to your website. For small businesses, or to test a few things on a website, we might send some traffic on our own to a certain website. After a while, when the numbers start to add up, we can decide whether or not to continue generating the traffic on our own, or outsourcing this aspect to professional companies or individuals. Lets have a look at a few outsourcing traffic generation tactics we can use once a business model is working.

• Increase Website Traffic #1 TIp: Pay per click marketing such as ABC Search, Google, Yahoo, Miva can be outsourced to professional PPC companies. Naturally, it does cost to have a PPC company handle your campaigns for you, but if you're looking to target a chinese 1.6 billion audience with Baidu, and can't handle the chinese interface, then it might be a good idea to have a PPC company handle that for you. They have professional tie ups with PPC companies and could get the best rates for you and your keywords.

• Increase Website Traffic #2 Tip: Forum marketing is as simple as having a link in your signature box and answering questions that forums goers might have. Its important to allow your signature link to show naturally, then allow it to be a ad. Once people respect your answers and assistance, they will be interested in your website and services. You can outsource forum answering to professional forum posters. They usually are from Philippines.

• Increase Website Traffic #3 Tip: Offline advertising is perhaps the least used. The most effective way, I feel, is to hand out flyers that lead to a landing page with an incentive or benefit which makes it worthwhile for a visitor to provide you their contact details. This is usually an ecourse or preview of what you can offer. If your benefits are good enough, they will purchase your product.

Outsourcing is a very important part of expanding your internet business from 3 figures to 5 figures quickly. Once operations get larger, allow others to join your business and share a piece of your pie for greater profits!

Download this report that tells you what you need to know about Article Marketing and Duplicate Content.

• stay in good standing with the search engines
• boost your rankings
• drive loads of traffic to your site

To Download: "Right Click On This Link & Select Save As"

Enjoy!

So you heard about Success University. Lets have a look at the business side of things and what it takes to break even.

You'll need your thinking cap.

Compensation Plan - Since Success University is a network marketing company, you get compensated for referring others to the company. Once you get the ball rolling with Success University, you get paid for every 6 person cycle that forms in your downline. Success University pays you well when you can get pass the initial stage. If you don't get pass the initial stage and personally refer 6 persons, then have those 6 persons stay active and also start working hard, you will not earn any profits from the 7 month on and will be losing money from the 1st month.

Here's a typical example:

Lets say you refer 3 person at the start who join the business at $149.50 + $55.00 each (if no price changes). That earns you a fast start commission (around $19.99 per pax), but you won't qualify to earn that 6 cycle commission because you only have 3 persons in your downline. When in the 4 month you don't refer anyone, then you won't earn a commission. 5th month passes and you won't earn any commissions when someone joins, while you continue to pay the membership (your upline still earns though so long as you form part of their 6 personally enrolled members), then in the 6 month you refer 3 persons, you now qualify to earn the 6 person cycle commission, because you have a total of 6 personally enrolled members which covers the 2 months you did not enroll anyone (1 person for each month until 6 months). Your commission for the 6 person cycle is about $40+, not yet to cover your monthly membership which is about $55+. In other words, for 6 months, you would have spent $149.50 + $55 x 6= $479.50. Your commissions for referring just 3 person in the 1st 3 months then 3 person in the 6th month is $40 + (4×20) = $120 (not counting the commissions you lost when you referred no one for 2 months).

So that means you've lost $359.50. (ie 479.50 - $120)

The only time you're considered "reasonably safe" is when your downline starts to get their 6 and this must be done in the 1st month you're with Success  University. Otherwise, you'll find yourself able to earn a commission this month, then unable to earn a commission the next because you're fluctuating around the 6 active members cycle.

Once you have referred 6 active persons, you get to earn a commission for life, so long as those 6 personally sponsored members don't leave your organisation.  Anyone else in your group that refers and creates a 6 person cycle earns you commissions. This is where if you have 6 hardworking members, you will continue to earn an income that just keeps growing.

6 is the magic number!

In my view, Success University is a do-or-die MLM. There is a life time to the amount of success education one can receive. So after some time, the sustaining factor is to make money from the business, rather then the products. Products that you can use for life are mobile phone subscriptions, domain names or food consumables. Education, well there is a limit to it. Once you have a degree in lets say accountancy or law, you won't need to study law again so you stop paying for tuition fees.

How You Get Paid - Success University pays using a Global Cash Card. This card if dormant withdraws money from your internet banking account. Whenever you withdraw money as well, it also deducts money from your bank account. This is another problem that I see and unless Success University finds a way to allow its members to accumulate commissions before withdrawing, many SU members will pay their tuition fees and leave after 3 months, the best will stay till around 9 months to try to get 6 front line members, which is still insufficient to pay for the membership, not to mention the banking withdrawal and dormant fees deduction which comes to around $5 per mth.

More Typical Examples: Success University fees is around $55/mth. Most actually pay around $149.95 (one time) + $55 (per mth) at the start to earn double commissions. Banking Fees where your comissions are stored costs $5/mth. Any withdrawals will cost about $5 and if you have a withdrawal fee charge, you won't be charged bank dormant fees. So yes it makes sense to withdraw your commissions every month.

In order to do this, you MUST earn more then $100/month, so you'll be in profit after all the little deductions from everywhere. Lets look at the numbers on a "per month best case scenario" basis where you actually managed to refer 6 persons in your 1st month with Success University.

Your Success University and Cashcard transaction fee cost: ($149.95 + $55.00) +($5.00) = $209.95

Compulsory 6 active members in your downline to earn the 6 cycle commissions: You earn $160 your 1st month (you get this only if you paid $149.95 for the one time business upgrade. So you earn $40 from the 6 person cycle and $20 x 6 in fast start bonus cash, assuming best cash scenario that your 6 members all paid $149.95 instead of the normal membership)

$209.95 - $160. You're still $49.95 deficit. This is not taking into account any money you spent in advertising, or adwords, or stuff like that. Its the pure business aspect of how much you made even though you referred 6 persons to Success University and met their qualifications to earn a commission with them for life. Which as you can see, its not easy if you have no existing base or contacts to leverage on.

You will succeed in Success University's business only if your downline are powerful network marketers with existing teams in other business that join this business. Or there is a proper plan to grow this business and targets to meet.

So long as you have a plan to get pass that intial hurdle within the 1st month, and those you enroll are powerful marketers, you will be safe and can expect to earn a huge commission on autopilot with the 6 person cycle compensation plan that goes to infinity.

You cannot expect to build Success University slowly, because your commissions do not accumulate, its a build 6 persons quickly and make sure those 6 start building, or you will surely lose money. This to me is the strangest part. If I referred 6 persons to a business, I should expect to break even immediately. In Success University's case, you will still find yourself in $49.95 in deficit unless your downline starts building.

Here's a target you must meet if you decide to join Success University: Refer 6 in your 1st month, and you'll still lose $49.95 in your 1st month. You MUST refer 6 in your 1st month and have those 6 refer 6 in their 1st month, only then are you safe and in profits. You'll have 42 persons in your downline and counting just the 6 person cycle commissions will earn you around $280/mth.

There is no try and see in Success University, either you build quickly in your 1st month with Success University or I would recommend you try something easier to earn your 1st 6 figures online.

To your success!

Sherman Choo

Payoneer Affiliate Mastercard

Some networks issue a debit master card so you can collect your commissions.

When you 1st receive your Mastercard, you will need to activate it at www.payoneer.com and select your pin. See the sticker.

This pin is going to be the pin that you enter when withdrawing your affiliate commissions from your local ATM using this card. The card can also be used for Credit Card type transactions.

It comes with the 16 figure digits, month/year expiry, 3 digit security Code, the whole works.

Bear in mind though that you should only opt to receive monthly commissions with a Payoneer card once you have a minimum steady income of $500+ commissions/mth with the network you're working with. This is because there're dormant fees incurred even when you don't make a withdrawal.

Otherwise, I recommend its better to accumulate your commissions and go for the check option that comes by mail. That'll put more money in your pocket.

To Your Internet Cash!

Sherman

How To Make Payment Online.

When making payment online, you can use 1 of 3 modes. Debit/Credit card, Paypal or Virtual Visa.

Let's jump in.

1. If you have a Credit Card or Debit card (see your local bank), these are the most straight forward mode of payment for online transactions. If you don't have either, carry on reading.

2. If you're from the USA, things are much easier because you just need a Paypal account and simply T/T funds from any US bank into your paypal account. Then use your paypal as your internet business account. Before making payment, you just need to make sure of 2 things.

• There are funds in your paypal account. (naturally :))
• Check that the amount you're going to pay the merchant is the correct one.

In this case, you won't need a credit or debit card.

Click here to set up your PayPal account

3. If you cannot fund your paypal account via T/T because you're not from the USA and you don't have a credit card or debit card to fund your paypal account…

Then purchase a prepaid VIRTUAL VISA Card. It works exactly the same as Mastercard and Visa.

Click here to purchase your Virtual Visa Card

How To Spend The Money You Make Online On Gas, Mcdonalds, That New Mobile Phone, Cool Watch, Milk From a Shelf in Walmart.

Since this is an affiliate money magazine, i'm gonna have to assume that you're selling a company's product. After you've made money online, the merchant will send you the money in 3 ways, the 3rd way I don't recommend if you're new to the internet industry and your checks/commissions are not yet consistent.

1. Your commissions are credited into your paypal account. You'll be able to withdraw your commissions from your paypal account into your banking account (there is a "Withdraw Funds" tab in your PayPal account, just click on it and you'll know what to do instinctively). After 5 days, visit your local ATM and use your ATM card to withdraw this money. Spend that money at Walmart on that delicious bottle of low fat milk or the installment for your new car or home.

2. A check is mailed to your home. Cash in this check at your local bank. Visit your local ATM and use your ATM card to withdraw this money. Spend that money…you get the idea.

3. The 3rd way merchants pay out is by cash cards such as Payoneer, Global Cash Card. I don't prefer these payment styles for the simple reason that these modes of payment take money from you even when you don't make any withdrawals. So if you had $10,000 deposited into these accounts lying dormant, you'll find your balance dwindling each month simply for keeping funds in the account. I would only recommend you use cash cards to receive your commissions if your monthly commissions are a stable $500+ per month or more, then the withdrawal fee of about $5.00+ is neglible. But for those that have little commissions, you may find that whatever commission you have earned goes to funding your account. You won't be able to accumulate your commissions to a few $100 before withdrawing since the funds are constantly being nibbled away by the payment provider. Of course, this is my experience and feedback to you…you're free to use this payment style if you like

So there you have it, Affiliate Marketing - The Dummy's Guide To Making Online Payments and Actually Spending the $10,000 You Made Online! Hope this post clears up any cloud and mystery about how money from the internet appears magically in your hands

By The Way…

Whether or not you decide to make online purchases using Paypal, its still a good idea to setup a paypal account. After all its free. And you never know when you might need to use it to receive your $1,000s of commission dollars. Set it up here

That's the tips I have for today.. stay safe. Think I better dance now

*Thanks for your questions, I've answered all queries by email. Offer Closed Till Further Notice*

From 26th July to the end of this month, I am open to take questions
contributing to the growth of member's in your GDI (Global Domains International) downline.

If you need help in growing your GDI downline to refer 100s automatically or
if you don't have more then 10 or 15 people in GDI, this will help you.

I will compile a list of good questions and answer them individually
by return email or blog.

Example,
1. A good question would be,
-Which countries should I focus on when targeting prospects via PPC
-When should I increase the cost of my keywords?
-How much are you bidding on so and so keyword?
(It shows that some homework has been done.)

2. A not-so-good question would be something generic,"How do I grow my GDI downline?"
(Because of time restrictions, I have to pass on this. I do recommend going through
the resources already available.)

Send your questions to shermansecret (at) gmail.com with SUBJECT: GDI GROWTH
Lastly, this is open only to the AII team until the end of July 2008.

All the best to your internet business.
~Sherman

Traffic Secrets was created by John Reese. I've taken a look at the course. Here's my take on it.

1. You're just starting out…

If you're just starting out online and you're thinking of going into any one of these industries, then you may want to throttle down a little on your expenditure, especially if you don't much money to spend in the 1st place. (the course isn't cheap)

• Ebay
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Authoring an InfoProduct
• Blogging For A Living
• Selling Membership products either as an affiliate or owner

Here's why.

Take for example someone who is just getting into the industry. Mr Blogger works hard on his blog because he was told that blogging is a web 2.0 social media that allows him to generate free search engine traffic. He works hard on his blog, day and night, trusting that Google and the other major search engines will pick up his blog.

After all content is king.

And Google does index the blog.

He gets traffic, puts up some adsense, and earns about $50 to $100. (In fact, I believe the figure is alot smaller, especially if you're working with Adsense.) So he starts to try to ramp up the traffic and purchases the course to learn how to do so.

Here's the thing.

At this point, ramping up traffic is not the solution. This is because, the amount of effort we're going to have to put in to implement the traffic strategies taught in traffic secrets 2.0 course is going to take time and money. In order for the income to increase to full time, you will have to outsource the techniques taught, otherwise its very easy to be stuck at your computer for 10 hours a day.

A very likely scenario is that we will try to implement everything found in the course, from social networking such as twitter, to PPC, to article marketing, to blogging, to creating widgets and software, in the end, what will likely happen is that we either run out of time, or money, or we try a 1000 things and don't know what exactly is profitable.

And then we throw up our hands and think the traffic secrets 2.0 does not work, which is not true. Most people want more traffic because they feel traffic will give them more money, and when they don't get the end result they're looking for, they most likely will feel that the course does not work.

So, what is the solution.

The business model comes before learning how to drive traffic.

Knowing what makes you money and being good at it is better then trying to implement a 1000 ways of driving traffic. A course that allows you to quit your job will teach you how to drive traffic and convert it into a sustainable business model.

So if it were called Traffic Conversion 2.0, that might be something worth dishing out $997 for the beginner.

Here's what Traffic Conversion 2.0 will look like:

Blogging (traffic) -> Selection of products -> Connecting with the audience with arguments that solve their problems -> sales

Pay Per Click (traffic) -> Selection of products from Link Share, ShareaSale-> Connecting with the audience - sales

If you only have knowledge of traffic, it will look like this.

Traffic Secrets 2.0 (traffic) -> ???? (spending hours on your computer with insufficient income)

With no idea what the needs of the market is, and a focused plan of attack, its very hard to earn a good living. Carpet bombing is not possible for many people that don't have that luxury. You'll realise that a focused tomahawk way of attack is far better and cost/time efficient to getting the results we want (money), especially true if we only have 1 or 2 hours a day aside from our actual day job.

What im trying to share is that having a realistic view of what to expect is important. If we're getting the course in order to learn how to generate traffic, thats great. But if we're getting the course to become an overnight millionaire, thats not what the course is really about.

2. You've been online for a while…and have a business model in place

If you've been online for awhile and are already earning a sizeable income then this can help you. I've a friend who earns $15,000/Mo from selling EBAY phone covers, since he already is earning good amount, then enhancing his traffic will increase his earnings.

He will generate traffic from these new sources he may have never heard of, and analyze whether that traffic is converting for him. If it does not work, then he still has $15,000 from the original traffic, which covers the cost of traffic secrets 2.0.

So if you already have a business model in place that's earning at least a STABLE $2,000 per month and you want to explore new ways to take it further, then get the traffic secrets course.

Click here for Traffic Secrets

If you have no idea how to make money online, and hitting your $10,000/Mo income is your main objective, I recommend to get the conversion blogging course by Yaro Starak. Its a focused way of making money and uses just a single funnel way to do it. After you have made your $10,000/Mo online, you can still get the Traffic Secrets course.

Click here for Conversion Blogging

I was checking out couple of new affiliate networks to explore. Found a couple of posts about commission junction where affiliates were taken off the network (commissions forfeit?)

1. http://www.keithbond.co.uk/totally-pd-off-with-commission-junction-deactivated-advertiser-emails/

"Is it just me that is fed up with the standard Commission Junction deactivated advertiser email?

You have received this email because one or more of the advertisers you are affiliated with in the Commission Junction network has recently been temporarily deactivated.

Why CJ just can’t let us know who the merchant is, what the problem is it would save a lot of logging on and searching for the report."

2. http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/08/24/affiliate-programs-commission-junction/

"Cons of Commission Junction

• perhaps a downside of the variety of products on offer is the overwhelming nature of CJ
• slightly more complicated interface than a program like Amazon
• they deactivated my account!
• application to programs within the larger Commission Junction network can be frustrating and a long process"

3. http://nostatus.com/2008/04/02/commission-junction-deactivating-accounts/

"I recently received an email from CJ stating that they would deactivate my account because the lack of activity. This means that they will deactivate my account because I haven’t been making sales. It didn’t really make much sense to me why they would do that so I emailed them back as I was given an opportunity to appeal."

Editors comment: This is one of the strangest, I never knew an affiliate network would deactivate an affiliate account with funds in it for sales inactivity? Gotta read the fine print carefully.

4. http://www.v7n.com/forums/marketing-forum/45344-commission-junction-sucks.html

"I rarely sling bad things about a company but Commission Junction really pushed all my buttons… the wrong ones, that is! It's so frustrating to see how fast they "deactivate" your working account whenever there's an alleged period of "sales inactivity"."

5. http://www.webmasterworld.com/advertising/3282352.htm

"It's so frustrating to see how fast they "deactivate" your working account whenever there's an alleged period of "sales inactivity"."

Can you imagine having your earnings forfeit without recourse?

I would recommend trying out other affiliate networks. You can find similar advertisers on other networks as well. For example, if you want to promote Dell, they can be found on networks that do not have similar affiliate woes compared to CJ.com

1. Linkshare
2. Trade Doubler
3. Performics
4. AI Income

Piggy back on the experience of others and stay safe

Entrepreneurship, starting an internet business, product creation, authoring a book, affiliate marketing requires a certain dedication…or passion to see the project to completion. Sometimes, we may feel that certain tasks are too difficult to learn, that we want to stop.

But when we stay stagnant in the mud and get comfortable for too long, the only way is down, slowly but surely.

Given that if we struggle, sink faster we may…but wouldn't you trade that for just 1 shot at achieving a target, a goal that could change your life?

Below is the Harvard commencement speech by JK Rowling. With a good dose of reality, she recounts her journey from a single parent of 1 & near poverty to… what I like to call her, the $2 billion dollar lady.

I hope this 20 minute video will inspire you to never stop pushing towards your entrepreneur endeavours…whatever it may be. Enjoy

JK Rowling's Commencement Speech at Harvard Part 1

Copyright of JK Rowling, June 2008

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the
Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents,
and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only
has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks
of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving
this commencement address have made me lose weight. A
win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep
breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into
believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter
convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility;
or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own
graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the
distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock.
Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing
this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a
single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me
to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently
influence you to bandon promising careers in business, law
or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay
wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay
wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary
Warnock.

Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought
to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had
known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I
have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that
day and this.

I have come up with two answers.

On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to
celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to
you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the
threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to
extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please
bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is
a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that
she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an
uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and
what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever,
was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came
from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been
to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was
an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage,
or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I
wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached
that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study
Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the
corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and
scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying
Classics; they might well have found out for the first time
on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they
would have been hard put to name
one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to
securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not
blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry
date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong
direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel,
responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot
criticise my parents for hoping that I would never
experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I
have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is
not an ennobling experience.

Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression;
it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships.
Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed
something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is
romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty,
but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at
university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar
writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had
a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had
been the measure of success in my life and that of my
peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young,
gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or
heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated
anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a
moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence
of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard
suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure.
You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a
desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might
not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so
high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what
constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give
you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to
say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years
after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An
exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was
jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be
in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my
parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had
both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the
biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure
is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no
idea that there was going to be what the press has since
represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no
idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any
light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply
because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I
stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than
what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing
the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at
anything else, I might never have found the determination to
succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was
set free, because my greatest fear had already been
realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter
whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea.

And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I
rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in
life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing
at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might
as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by
default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained
by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about
myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered
that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had
suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value
was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from
setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your
ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or
the strength of your relationships, until both have been
tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all
that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me
than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my
21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing
that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement.
Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you
will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the
two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s
total control, and the humility to know that will enable you
to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance
of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding
my life, but that is not wholly so.

Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last
gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader
sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity
to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of
all invention and innovation. In its arguably most
transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that
enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we
have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life
preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I
subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in
the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was
sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid
the rent in my early 20s by working in the African research
department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in
London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters
smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who
were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of
what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who
had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their
desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw
pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten,
eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of
kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people
who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile,
because they had the temerity to speak against their
governments. Visitors to our office included those who had
come to give information, or to try and find out what had
happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man
no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill
after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled
uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the
brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I
was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job
of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards,
and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took
my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future
happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an
empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed
door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard
since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her
head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young
man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that
in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his
country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded
how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a
democratically elected government, where legal
representation and a public trial were the rights of
everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind
will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain
power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about
some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty
International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been
tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of
those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to
collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners.
Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are
assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they
do not know, and will never meet.

My small participation in that process was one of the most
humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn
and understand, without having experienced. They can think
themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves
into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional
magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an
ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to
understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all.
They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their
own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel
to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to
hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their
minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them
personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way,
except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares
than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a
form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors.
I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They
are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable
real monsters. For without ever committing an act of
outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own
apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics
corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search
of something I could not then define, was this, written by
the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will
change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand
times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our
inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that
we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely
to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your
capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and
received, give you unique status, and unique
responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The
great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining
superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you
protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government,
has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your
privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your
voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to
identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless;
if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives
of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not
only be your proud families who celebrate your existence,
but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have
helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to
change the world, we carry all the power we need inside
ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is
something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I
sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They
are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been
able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind
enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death
Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous
affection, by our shared experience of a time that could
never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we
held certain photographic evidence that would be
exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar
friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember
not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca,
another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the
Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search
of ancient wisdom:

"As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters."

I wish you all very good lives.

Thank you very much.

~JK Rowling 


Closing thoughts: A remarkable woman with the power to imagine better. If you want to spread the word and learn how you can help, please visit http://www.oxfam.org/en/getinvolved