About Aure's Notes
I started this website with the desire to tell people about the things I wish I knew when I was younger.
It has now transformed into my personal Wikipedia where I curate and share everything valuable I learn every day.
About me
Hey, I am Aure!
I have lived in 8 different countries (Belgium, Australia, Spain, Netherlands, France, Colombia, Poland, Estonia) since 2013. I have a Bsc in communication, an Msc in business economics, and another Msc in political science and European studies.
I have worked as a comedian, a tour guide, a cooking teacher, a manager in a translation company, a customer support agent, a chief marketing officer, and for the European Commission.
I also coined the term “progradict” to describe someone who is addicted to progress and moving forward in life and who abhors not doing anything. Eg: “My progradiction is out of control!”
Despite all that, I remain a completely average guy with all of his flaws, doubts, and insecurities.
Use and abuse the information on this blog as much as you want. It’s free and ad-free.
But beware of taking me as a model.
What to Expect Out of Aure's Notes
- No ads
- Quality over everything else: I only publish on the blog when it is worth publishing. For entertaining articles, check out my Medium. You can read the Medium articles for free when you subscribe to my newsletter.
- Transparency and honesty: All opinions are genuine and honest. That doesn’t mean I will not change my mind in the future. No one paid me to write any of the things I am writing.
Everyone can read Aure’s Notes, but the blog is written from a European perspective, with everything it entails.
Where to Read Aure's Notes
- Blog: the best of my content, for free, and ad-free.
- Newsletter: everything I have written everywhere 100% free + fun bullet point facts.
- Twitter: things that cross my mind.
- Medium: entertaining articles. Free to access if you sign up on the newsletter.
- Substack: best of Medium + blog. Free to access.
If you want to read other writers on Medium, you can sign up with my affiliate link. The platform costs $5/month and I get 50% of your subscription as affiliate commission. You can read thousands of great writers and get MUCH more off your money on Medium than on Substack. I read Medium everyday!
How to Use Aure's Notes
The section summaries contains summaries of books and videos.
The section articles hosts all of the articles I have written.
The section resources hosts how-to guides as well as directories of websites, books, Youtube channels, newsletters, podcasts, people, and tips and tricks on various topics.
The section Billionaire Series is a series of twenty one articles that analyze and deconstruct how billionaires started, grew, and scaled their companies.
Finally, the podcast is me interviewing people that build stuff (entrepreneurs, scientists, creators, etc).
Visual and Non-Visual Glossary
“<” means “is smaller/worse than”. Eg: Vegan diet < keto diet. Translation: vegan is worse than keto.
“>” means “is bigger/better than”.
“X” means “time” as in an equation. 3 X 5 = 15.
I use the 00h00 to 23h59 European time system.
5h00 is 5am, 15h00 is 3pm. 00h00 is midnight, and 12h00 is lunch time.
There are a series of terms I cannot write or I may be deplatformed by G-00-gL€. So I write them in a different way.
That big country in the east that invented gun powder, for example, is written as Ch!n@.
When something is important, I put it in bold or in giant quote. When something is capital, I put it in red (unless otherwise specified).
What's the Newsletter About?
The newsletter is sent every 1st and 15th day of the month, no matter what the day of the week is.
Here’s what you get when you sign up:
- Free access to the paid articles I post on Medium.
- Compelling insights from the books I am reading.
- Bullet list facts about anything interesting I find in the darkest corners of the Internet.
I keep it under two minutes because I don’t like long emails. And it’s free. And there are no ads.
Interested?
Check out the newsletters archives before signing up.
Does the Website Make Money, and if Yes, How?
The website itself makes little money, €10 to €30/month.
What makes the most money is the idiocies I write on Medium, which make anywhere between $200 to $1500 per month (which is insane).
On the website, I use a combination of low-key affiliate marketing, info products, and donations.
For example, the links that send you to Amazon are affiliate links.
This means that if you buy what Amazon sells after clicking on the link, I will earn a small commission.
Another example of affiliate marketing is my Medium link.
I earn half of people’s memberships that sign up with my link (you can also earn money when you write there!).
I also have a Gumroad page where I sell the Summary Database.
Finally, people have made donations on my Buy me a Coffee page.
Why isn’t the website more monetized?
Because its purpose has never been to earn money, but to learn SEO, content, and online writing.
This explains why it reached 20k viewers/month after only 19 months of lazy work and without any backlink strategy.
This site is my child, the database of my learnings, thoughts, and mistakes.
I may sell courses or more expensive products in the future, but I don’t want to defile the blog with ads or dumb product reviews whose purpose is to get affiliate commissions.
Whatever I do here must deliver value to the reader, that’s the only criteria.
I only want to sell stuff that genuinely help people, and the reason why I sell almost nothing is that most things for sale is complete trash.
This entire project was built on transparency and value.
I’d like it to stay this way.
How Is the Website Built?
The website is built on WordPress.
The hosting company I use is Hostinger because it’s European and it’s the fastest in Europe.
The theme of the website is OceanWP (free) but I built the landing page with Elementor (free). Here are the other plugins I use:
- Akismet
- Display posts
- Elementor Header and Footer Builder
- Forminator
- Hustle
- Jetpack
- WP Rocket
- Manage Notification E-Mails
- Ocean Social Sharing
- Rank Math
- Read Meter
- reCAPTCHA
- Unlimited Elements for Elementor
- Updraft Plus
Want to Get in Touch?
I am always happy to discuss with readers!
Use the form below. I answer as fast as I can!
If there aren’t enough characters, just ask “I have questions about xyz, can we speak?”
NB: I do not accept guest posts, backlinks, and do not need marketing agency services. I will not answer these emails.
Actually I may answer these emails with “🤡”.