After maybe 4 months of soul searching I’ve decided that I will go through and monetize the website in some ways because it doesn’t even make any common sense not to put in a few entries for cash flow. For the longest time I have been very adamant on not turning this website into a source of cash flow and steady income for me on my future projects but I now feel that I have been maybe too naive and innocent over this.

I’ve put in at least 1000 hours of work in turning this website into the most complete, best resource and ultimate guide for the subject of height and height increase on the internet space (at least for websites in English). It has real resources for almost anything that a person would need. I was listening to The Lifestyle Business Podcast and something just clicked inside of me earlier today and I decided to turn this website into something more professional, clean, and streamline.

The “Supplements Guide” section and the “Exercise Program Guide” both have Amazon Affiliate Links now, there are now at least a few “Donations” button scattered around the website on various posts which are linked to Paypal Accounts. I know that if I decide to integrate the Google Adsense service to this website I would start generating 10X as much in money as I would with just Affiliate Links. There is still no Ads, no fees, or products that I am pushing to the readers. Like I said on the message at the bottom of the website, I will NEVER endorse a product which I don’t truly believe in or have not done real research on.

As a reader, you will never be forced or required to ever pay for anything on this website. No one can tell someone else to buy something that they don’t want. Everything is free and the value that will be provided will only increased and get higher quality over time. If you as the reader chooses, you don’t have to use any of the affiliate links or donation buttons that are on this website. You can always choose an alternative resource to pay at.

I don’t consider myself a sellout but as a average, flawed human being at a deep level I feel a little selfish and would like to profit a little from this project. At least enough to pay for the website hosting fees, podcast episode hosting fees, and make some extra to pay for some bills and maybe even start to pay for a portion of the rent. But that type of “dream” won’t occur overnight but will probably take at least a year or two.

The audience to the website is getting bigger and I am now put under far more obligation and have more responsibility to the readers and future readers to only produce high quality posts from this point on. I have had even real Doctors approach me and write to the website email on how great and important this website is to them since there is finally a resource like this on the internet. There are more people everyday who write to the website email asking me to review articles and products they’ve found on the internet. I in turn have granted all of their request and done the best I could to give them what they really want.

As a business man who owns over 4 separate businesses and working on many other projects, I do think in terms of profit/loss and want to make sure that this venture over the long term is profitable for me. Of all of my businesses and projects, this one is the closest to my heart. It has been something I wanted to build for the longest time. All the other businesses, some which are in import/export, cosmetics, consulting, renting, and footwear were all started because of the money. This website was started for the impact, and in the long run I know that this website will probably grow to be the biggest and most impact ful of all of the businesses that I own.

At the end of the day, maybe 10-20 years from now I would wish 3 things for myself professionally.

1. I have been able to give the world a real gift in some way making a big contribution.
2. I would have gone back to school and gotten the advanced degree (Ph. D) in research and engineering.
3. I would have reached financial freedom through proper investments, allocating my assets properly, generating multiple streams of income and cash flow, and build systems and businesses that are automated.

This website is a way I can help achieve two of those goals, reaching financial freedom and making a big contribution It also in a way helps prepare me for the course work and science material for graduate school as well.

Something I learned early on during my past few years going through the self help and personal development phase was this idea of the Pareto Principle aka the 80/20 Rule. This was a principle that would come up over and over again in any community I got into, and it has to do with trying to optimize one’s effectiveness using the right amount of leverage in the right areas using the least amount of energy and effort.

What I am talking about it this. There is now over 650 posts on this website/blog. From the statistic analysis programs that are used to track the traffic and visitors of the website I can see that in terms of the numbers, a small percentage of the writing posts get most of the visitors, as well as comments. This is why I have decided to rewrite, edit, improve, and add upon 20-300 of the top visited and commented posts on this website. Now that is only about 3-5% of all the posts but that is where most people who are searching on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines are getting to first when they arrive to the site and I do want to make the website an attractive place for visitors. First impressions do matter a tremendous amount, and this effort in making the most popular web posts even better will only help the website and the future readers later on.

For the current readers you will not be effected in any way since the changes are invisible for people who only read the most recent articles. I think this is a good investment of my time and a smart move to make the website better. So Work Smarter

That is a question I have wanted to answer ever since I read on Tyler’s blog that Quercetin can help increase height. After I put up the “Supplements Guide” section I got a comment where Tyler says that Lithium and Quercetin don’t act synergistically to help increase height since they seem to inhibit/ cancel out each other’s effects. Lithium seems to be for height increase for people before growth plate closure and quercetin is for people after growth plate closure. This is one of the only supplements that seems to have a chance of doing it so the research for this post much be as accurate and detailed as possible.

First, we see what good old Wikipedia has to say (source).

A few key points derived from Wikipedia…

It is “a flavonol, is a plant-derived flavonoid found in fruits, vegetables, leaves and grains. It also may be used as an ingredient in supplements, beverages or foods.” ( Flavoids are a class of plant organic compounds that are not directly involved in the normal growth, development, or reproduction of an organism)

It is a naturally-occurring polar auxin transport inhibitor. Polar auxin transport is the regulated transport of the plant hormone auxin in plants. It is an active process, the hormone is transported in cell-to-cell manner and one of the main features of the transport is its directionality (polarity). The polar auxin transport has coordinative function in plant development, the following spatial auxin distribution underpins most of plant growth responses to its environment and plant growth and developmental changes in general. Auxins are a class of plant hormones (or plant growth substances) with some morphogen-like characteristics. Auxins have a cardinal role in coordination of many growth and behavioral processes in the plant’s life cycle and are essential for plant body development. The (dynamic and environment responsive) pattern of auxin distribution within the plant is a key factor for plant growth, its reaction to its environment, and specifically for development of plant organs

Quercetin itself (aglycone quercetin), as opposed to quercetin glycosides, is not a normal dietary component.

Quercetin has neither been confirmed scientifically as a specific therapeutic for any condition nor been approved by any regulatory agency. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved any health claims for quercetin

Me: It seems that the rest of the Wikipedia article just report that Quercetain has been reputed to be able to help prevent or decreased risk of Cancer, inflammation, fibromyalgia and may also be antiviral. This news would suggest that it might even cause height inhibition. Most supplements and processes I’ve seen that can potentially help increase height also has been shown to possibly increase the risk of cancer because of its anabolic effects. So a quick look at wikipedia gives no indication that Quercetin has any chance of causing height increase.

So we must see what exactly would lead a researcher to claim this. Let’s see what HeightQuest has to about it. In a recent post entitled “Grow Taller With Sophorae Beans (Quercetin)” the idea is that quercetin has the ability to inhibit the beta-catenin. So far I have not been able to get to doing a full research on the Wnt/Beta-Catenin Pathway but let’s first assume that the pathway does cause the inhibition or the loss of ability for chondrogenesis (and possibly chondrocyte differentiation, chondrocyte proliferation, or chondrocyte hypertrophy in some way) If this compound which is sold as a supplement in most GNC stores can inhibit the pathway it should not be enough evidence that it would work in causing the chondrocytes to start being formed and differentiated. It would only stop any inhibition but sometimes an effect can be happening and there is already no or a limited amount of chondrogenesis to begin with. What you thought you stopped inhibiting was itself not inhibiting anything in the first place. Since this idea was for bones with no more growth plate ,we can assume that any bone marrow in the epiphysis where the load would be would probably not be creating much chondrocytes anyway. Who then can really say that it is the Wnt/Beta-Catenin pathway that is supressing chondrocytes from being spontaneously being formed at a dramatic rate if their effects on the inside of the epiphysis were inhibited in some way? Of course anything is possible and it has to be proven who really is right with some experimentation He states “Sophorae Beans, although this may be mostly due to Quercetin, increase TGF-Beta and IGF-1 levels. ”

From the University of Maryland Medical Center there is a page dedicated to Quercetin which seems to say many of the same things over like that it is an antioxidant and has possible anti-cancer forming properties. There is also a very small section in claiming it has anti-histamine properties, prevents the damage of bad cholesterol (LDL) , has beneficial effects on hypertension (high blood pressure), rheumatoid arthritis, and heart disease due to how it removes the blocking of blood flow in veins (atherosclerosis). There is even a study that shows that this compound may be better than even reservatrol in helping in prevention of cancer occurence.

As for the sources which contain naturally found quercetin, you find…

So over the last few months I have been subconsciously looking around the city to find any type of device that can operate on the same basic principle as the proposed Lateral Synovial Joint Loading device and the closest thing that seems to be these large massagers I’ve  found.

I got them uploaded to the Natural Height Growth Youtube Account (source) and I’ve embedded the video below. Like I said in the video, I’m having a little bit of trouble calculating what would be the proper Force and Frequency we should get on it because from only the few sources of devices out there, we might have to make compromises for frequency or loading.

The recommendation has been 5-15 Hertz which is actually 5-15 times the moving part of the device clamps down, retracts, and clamps down again.

Now below here is two videos from the Progressive Automations Youtube Account (source 1, source 2). You can see that with these large devices they are a lot slower, but have much larger force. The maximum force for at least this company based in Vancouver, CA is around 2000 lbs.

From the Progressive Automations website (source) . We have these types of specs….

Heavy-duty linear actuators are very powerful units with ability to push, pull and hold large amounts of force.  These actuators are ideal for use in industrial or commercial applications were large force and stability is required.  If you require this model to have a built-in potentiometer please call us to have it modified.  Heavy-duty actuators can be combined with PA-27 control boxes, rocker switches and mounting brackets.  The mounting brackets are specifically designed for our actuators and allow 180 degrees of rotation.  For more information on wiring the actuator to the rocker switch please view our wiring diagram.

Specifications:

• Voltage: 12V dc Linear Actuator
• Stroke Size: 2″
• Load Capacity: 2000 lbs
• Speed: 0.24”/sec (no load)
• Type of duty: 20% 
• Operational temp: -25ºC~+65ºC
• Protection class: IP65
• Certification: CE
• Built-in limit switches, not adjustable.

Me: I would recommend the stroke size of 2″ to make the complete device more compact but still giving some room for the variation in limb width. All of these devices work on DC Power so there is a AC to DC power converter we can buy. However, I think we can solve the DC issue from the 2nd video where you just strip the wire and connect it to a Integrated circuit board and make the device possibly move faster than it was designed (if that is even possible). Ultimately the problem is the speed or frequency. That can be solved with those large massagers in my videos but they don’t have the type of loading power that these real Actuators have. 

In the 2nd video you can see that there is even control boxes you can buy which can simultaneously control the linear actuators but they are really slow in movement.

Note: To see the report from last month, go to “Natural Height Growth October 2012 – Monthly Website Traffic Data Report.”

The visitors in the month of November has also increased like every single month so far. Unlike the last two months, October and September, the traffic did not double but still increased by a dramatic rate. The month of November has 30 days and for me in Asia right now, the numbers above only take into account 1/3rd of the entire day. That means that by the end of the day, it would probably reach about 600 total visitors/day.

I did finally figure out how to configure the date range to give the total month instead of just the 28 days I did for previous months. One idea I have thought about doing for the end of the year is to do a yearly report in the month of december to show how the blog/website has been progressing and growing over the last 4 months or so.

As the numbers show, the average number of visitors to the website had been held steady around 400 total visitors/ day for a while, around 3 weeks. It reached almost to the 600 mark a few times. Only this last week has the traffic jumped up to 500/day , and then 2 days ago the traffic reached slightly over 700 total visitors/day. However the numbers really average out to be around 600 total visitors/day. This shows a 50% increase in visitor traffic from last month.

I guess what I would like to see is that by the end of the year, the total number of visitors to the website would surpass the 1000 total visitors/day mark. That will show that many people are coming back and revisiting the website. What is good news is that the bounce rate has dropped a little to just 24%. One thing that I have been very surprised in was that there is so little traffic coming from China. Then I realized that China has a firewall that blocks out many websites. I would assume that if China loosened its restrictions on the websites that can be shown in the country, the website would get more traffic from China. For most countries like India, Philippines, and other asian countries the bounce rate has almost always been lower than average. The surge to 700 visitors/ day I saw in the traffic yesterday was mostly from a Japanese website that has linked to the website. I really don’t know why or how they found out about this website.

While I was scouring through Google again today looking at the connection between quercetin and possible height increase I came across this website that seemed to be offering another E-Product which is a book on how to grow taller.

From a just the first few glances, it looks far more credible than almost any other E-Book that I have found in a long time. The website is DrBenKim.com. The E-Book he says he wrote up and is putting up for sale is “Maximize Your Height: Four Keys to Growing as Tall as Your Genetics Will Allow“. Here is the issue with a curt retort that this guy is another scam artist trying to take your money.

• He seems to have some real credentials witha doctorate degree in Chiropractor.
• He claims that the book is written for parents who want to help their kids who are still growing to maximize their growing potential.
• His website seems to be a real authoritative website for Natural Health Medicine. From a quick look there seems to be almost 30,000 people who like Dr. Kim’s website and Facebook profile!
• He has his own podcast and seems to really know what he is talking about.

The book is sold for around $20. Apparently there seems to be an entire natural medicine and supplement online store on his website selling stuff like Quercetin. There is a specific checkout and payment software that is integrated into the website and the website is not the usual WordPress based platform website but made using the computer language Drupal, which I have only a little bit of understanding on. While This Dr. Kim calls himself a doctor, we do note that he has a doctorate in chiropractic which many MDs in the established medical community might say is not a real Doctor. However I don’t want to try to argue whether this Dr. Kim is a “real doctor” or not.

Conclusion: This E-Book would go on the list of books which I have already looked at which has nothing new to deliver. From Amazon we already have maybe 3-4 books already out by Pediatricians and General Physicians which wrote a relatively thick guide on how to maximize the height of one’s child. The four keys are always proper nutrition, exercises through stretching, sleeping, and probably supplement taking. It is probably not a scam, but for the purposes of our website and what we are trying to do, it is not very helpful. However I will be putting this book in the product and books listing place to let parents of children know that there is a resource for them if they are just starting out understanding Auxology.

From the website HealthierTalk.com there is a short biography on his education and credentials.

Biography

On the Product Webpage….

Maximize Your Height: Four Keys to Growing as Tall as Your Genetics Will Allow