New local business guide

There is a brand new local business directory for the UK. If you know of a business that would appreciate a free listing within their local town category, get them to include their details on this brand new uk advertising network it's easy to submit your details and have your free advert up and running in no time. The site is not simply a list of random businesses, there are local restaurant reviews, links to local places of interest and links for places to stay. In short, there is plenty to entice visitors to stay on the site and browse around.

Turn-around week

I've had a good few days this week, I picked up a couple of jobs on my website amounting to about $150 over a couple of days - that was good enough, but then a remarkable thing happened... I have been moping for about four months over losing pagerank on my two blogs, but now it's back and better than ever!!
I went from PR2 to PR1 on this blog and PR2 to PR0 on another blog in June. That's a loss of 3 PR points over two blogs. Imagine my delight at getting a new rank of PR4 on this blog and PR3 on my other blog, making a gain of 6 PR points, and a net gain of 3 over where I was before. This will enable me to pursue what I had always intended to pursue, ie. my investigation of paid posting on a free blogspot blog - what's more I have two healthy blogs to do it with!

Samsung Queue Jumpers

To publicise the Samsung G600 Camera Phone, Door security personnel from across the UK club scene have been provided with a free phone to take shots of their favourite ‘Queue Jumpers’.
Jump across to the Queue Jumpers Gallery and vote for your favourites, the top fifteen will get to win the fabulous G600.

If you want to get in on the action and haven’t been snapped jumping a queue, then get involved by taking part in the G600 Queue Jumper application poll on Facebook. Fifteen winners from the facebook poll will join the other fifteen to win a photo-shoot and model-book portfolio worth £10,000.

Samsung has also got a list of the top thirty clubs in the UK for you to peruse - No excuses then, have a look at the list (no doubt these are the ones with the bouncers armed with G600's), get down to a club and have yourself 'snapped' queue jumping. Win yourself a cool new camera, a photo-session and a model book - If you're on a roll, there's every chance that a modeling contract will follow... so that's this weekend sorted, what y'gonna do next weekend??

All this brought to you by the Samsung G600, the brand new sleek refined camera phone with a 2.2” LCD screen with 16 million colours, a 5 megapixel camera and FM radio. This phone also features a music player and internet connectivity.

So there's a couple of ways you can get one of these phones for free, amongst other prizes, but I guess if you really want one, you'll just have to go and buy it...

Being more organised

I really like the concept of blogging on specific topics on specific days of the week. However, I have not gone down this path as I anticipate the unwelcome pressure of a deadline looming without the requisite material having been finished ready for publication.
On reflection, I think having a rigid structure would actually enable you to focus a bit better (if you already know what themes are to be addressed), and would enable you to store up posts ready for future publication on a specific date. The advantages to your visitors are also obvious, they are more likely to come back if they know what they're going to get.
In conclusion, I could try this for a month in the future using the possible themes of a day for Software, a day for Contests, a day for Reviews, a day for Hints & Tips and a day for random stuff, leaving the weekends free for whatever comes along...
Having given this some further thought, probably the best compromise would be to be rigid about just three subjects for a Monday, a Wednesday and a Friday, leaving the other days free for random stuff and paid posts and whatever else comes along...
Have you tried this, did it work or not? let me know...

Hotels in the UK

If you have considered travelling to the UK, you may have wondered where you could get reasonably priced London hotels, Edinburgh Hotels or Glasgow hotels. These are three destinations that should be on your travelling agenda, but three places where normally you would find it difficult to find a hotel that didn’t break the bank. Surely anyone planning to visit the UK, would probably have London as one of their must-see destinations. Instantly recognisable landmarks such as Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar square and many more are here packed into busy, densely populated London. Nightlife to rival anything the rest of the world has to offer, museums and art galleries in every district, restaurants, clubs, theatres and cinemas of all types to suit every taste – all this and more in England’s capital. Moving north to Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh is graced with the Queens’ own Holyrood House right next to the new Scottish Parliament building. Cobbled streets and ancient buildings such as Edinburgh castle, are complemented by bustling nightlife stacks of culture a fantastic museum and impressive scenery. Venture across to Glasgow for a lesson in the art and craft of Charles Rennie Macintosh. Glasgow is a city famous for hosting festivals such as the International Jazz Festival and the Festival of Celtic Music and Culture, and was European city of culture in 1990, the only British city to have held that honour. All-in-all you will have a hard time finding time to visit all the best places, one thing for sure, is that you won’t be disappointed.

Waterproof memo boards

The waterproof memo board is a new product offering a way to make notes or keep scores in an environment where traditional note-taking methods are just not suitable. The concept is both simple and effective, both the pencil and the memo board are unaffected by water. Whether the water be due to adverse weather conditions or a body of water such as a pond, river or the sea, the waterproof memo board could prove invaluable. You are able to make notes with this memo board exactly as you would with a clipboard, but without having to worry about keeping it dry.

There will be many uses for this product ranging from construction sites to swimming pools to school sports day, why not visit the website for more ideas and more information about this new product.

If you have your own blog, maybe you'd also be interested in the blogging competition for prizes ranging from $5 up to $25

Your mobile number as an email address

Where your phone number and email address are the same

The people at RedInbox are launching a new idea to combine email addresses and mobile numbers. They are offering a free service to mobile owners comprising a '@redinbox.co.uk' email address that forwards to an existing email account. The email address will be your mobile phone number, making it easier to pass on contact information to friends, family and colleagues. You could simply hand people a card like this:
Both your mobile number AND a valid email address included in one simple line....neat!

Cash Contest at Romance Tracker

Well Phil Van Treuren has been showing his feminine side at Romance Tracker, and as you would expect from the contest blogger supremo., he has an awesome $100 hard cash prize contest running... True to requirements for the best contests, it offers hard cash and is easy to enter:

There are two different ways to get your name in the hat to win 100 bucks from Romance Tracker:

1. If you have a blog, link back to the Romance Tracker homepage using the anchor text "love“. It can be a mention in a post, a link in your sidebar, or whatever!
2. Subscribe to the Romance Tracker RSS Feed

If you do just one of the things above, you’ll get one entry in the 100 buck contest. If you do both of the things above, you’ll get two entries in the 100 buck contest. Easy, huh?

Funny thing was, the word 'dude' didn't appear once in any of the posts over at romance tracker - maybe it's a different Phil Van Treuren altogether.... you gotta love his style...

Great at coming second..

This has to be one of the most disappointing weeks in English sports history. On Wednesday the England football (soccer) team lost a qualifier which has all but denied them a chance of competing in the European Championships - only if they get a lot of good fortune can they possibly make it now, and we won't know until 21st November...



On Saturday, the England rugby team lost the World Cup final to South Africa, losing their title as the reigning champions at the same stroke. To be honest, it has been a roller-coaster world cup for England with no-one really believing that they would be in the final anyway - a superb achievement, but nobody remembers who came second in the World Cup do they?

On Sunday, Formula 1 golden boy Lewis Hamilton sadly failed to pull of one of the greatest sporting achievements ever. Two races ago, he was expected to take the World Champion title in his first ever season of racing in F1. The tenacious youngster had to pull out of the last-but-one race of the season, then had difficulties in the final race which saw him drop to 18th place. When the car appeared to have recovered, he managed to get up to 7th place and finish the championship on the same points as his team-mate Alonso, taking second place ahead of Alonso due to his better record of second placed finishes.


England expects, and sometimes expects a bit much from it's sporting heroes - I just wanted to take the time to say 'Well Done' to those that proudly perform for their country whether they come first or a creditable second, or even lower in the ranks. Hats off to the men and women that work so hard and make their countrymen proud.

Turning your photographs into art

In the age of digital photography, all of us have the opportunity to hone our photographic skills without having to spend a stack of money having films developed and processed. Producing the perfect image is within reach of all amateur photographers. That said, actually printing the images themselves for display is an art in itself and that’s where 'learn to dream' can offer a service. Learn to dream offer a quality printing service for the images that you have taken on your own camera, not just on standard glossy photography paper, but a host of exciting media that you wouldn’t be able to produce at home.

Learn to dream can also transform your photos onto canvas, textured art paper, acrylic blocks, silver finish, parallex or lusion – jump to the website to find out more about these finishes and techniques guaranteed to make your own artwork stand out from the crowd.

If you’re not sure what effect will work for your picture, they also offer a consultation service to ensure that your finished product meets or even exceeds your expectations. In my view, there are a number of reasons for using a service like this. A wedding present, house warming or significant birthday present, or even if you are planning to redecorate and would like to add a personal touch – maybe a favourite holiday snap or much-loved pet.

The website itself is easy to navigate and very well put together with good descriptions for each product choice and some examples for you to peruse. I recently took a family photo that I think would look good as an acrylic block, though I would really like to have it wall-mounted. Using my own printer, I can only manage A4 size, but for a truly stunning visual effect, A0 size (over a metre high) in canvas would be just amazing if only I had the room to mount it…

I'm no pro-blogger, but....

If you are serious about your blog, then you should post everyday.
I don't pretend or even aim to be a pro-blogger, but if I wanted to be, posting every day would be an absolute requirement.
I don't really have a niche theme - but if you want to be found by search engines, then you should gear up your blog for SEO and pick a niche theme.
I don't aim to be picked up by search engines - but I know a few bloggers who use the following tactic:
News, by definition is fresh every day, throwing up new keywords that people will use as search keywords - however quick webmasters are, they can't really use a lot of keyword promotion for a fresh news story, so you have as much chance of your website being thrown up as a search engine result as any other site if you pick on a hot news story for your latest post.
The best way to use these tactics (IMHO) is to combine breaking stories with niche, that way you get a better chance of getting visitors from search results.
I've not tried these tactics myself, though I am toying with the idea of a niche blog on a theme which interests me and may be newsworthy. This means I will be able to search for news on my niche subject and post fresh information and maybe pick up some passing traffic.
The essential element of course, is to have your site monetised so that you have something to show for all your traffic. For this you will need adsense, and depending on your niche, maybe amazon or auction ads up and running to maximise your revenue.
I hope I find time to slip this project in with all my other ones... I would like to try it on a free site and maybe transfer to a domain if the site got the traffic I was hoping for.
Leave me a comment if you have some hints and tips on this subject.....

Munny4Hunny update

When I started this project to find out if it was possible to make money via paid to post programs on a free-hosted blog, there seemed to be an array of different schemes for paid to post revenue. As the project has progressed, it has become clear that some schemes seem to be dead-ends and others are worth sticking with.
I am really only using three schemes at the moment:

Payperpost: By far the most active source of paid postings, if you don't have PPP, you will be struggling for income.
Smorty: A slow start, but gathering pace now. They are not high payers with each post worth $6, but the real advantage here is that once your submission has been approved (usually takes a couple of days), payments are made on a weekly basis rather than monthly as with PPP.
Creamaid: This works in a different way to most of the other schemes available, but they do have a bonus referral scheme that rewards you if other bloggers participate in the same campaign via your post. Rewards with Creamaid vary in the extreme with campaigns paying anything from $1 up to $10, but you get paid ALMOST IMMEDIATELY which is a really nice feature... The bonuses get paid at 'end of the campaign' which could be anything from a week to a couple of months...
There are more schemes that are worth investigating, and some limited schemes are still worth doing just because they offer some (limited) income opportunities. Overall, these are the three that I am using, though I haven't really pursued these opportunities with any real intent for quite a while. Of course, my PR is limited and this has a bearing on which schemes are worthwhile for this blog. Hopefully in the future, the PR will build back up and the opportunities will increase accordingly -this might make other schemes viable, that I currently have no joy with.

Shopping Cart solution

One of the things I discovered very soon after developing my own website, was that it is very difficult to be the marketing man, the webmaster, the site designer and planner all at the same time, never mind doing any ‘work’ as such.

In my experience anything that appears to be a bit ‘tricky’ just doesn’t get done, one of those tricky tasks would be setting up your site for e-commerce.

If you have been thinking about having a shopping cart on your website, then you don’t have to worry about coding and security if you employ the services of Ashop shopping cart software to do all the tricky stuff for you. No knowledge of HTML or coding is required, and you can pay for the service on an affordable monthly basis.

Not only will you get the front-end shopping cart, but also full sales reporting and marketing tools included in the package. Ashop even host the shopping cart on their own servers with full back-up and guaranteed uptime.

I was particularly taken with the video tutorials that can be seen on their website, they also have some demo websites that you can browse through to see how your site might look. Full technical telephone support is included and the software will even integrate with all major banks and courier services covering every angle and giving you complete peace of mind.

Stainless Steel Cabinets from the Car Guy

I was browsing a friends blog the other day when I came across an article about products from Car Guy Garage - this site has the coolest stainless steel cabinets I have ever seen, I honestly spent about 15 minutes browsing through the pictures and imagining where I could use these cabinets if I had some.
The obvious home for these would be in a nice big garage (if I had one) and they would certainly look the part in a professional garage. When I started thinking about the possible uses, it struck me that you could make a very hard-wearing kitchen from these products, and how fantastic would they look in your home office, or even in a really avant garde boardroom where you wanted to make a statement. I have to admit that we are basically talking 'boys toys' here and it might take some persuading to get anyone else in the house to agree with me, but we can dream and drool can't we??
The one I have posted at the top here is called 'diamond plate garage cabinet' and looks just incredible, but then how about the one below for an office environment? This is high quality heavy-gauge equipment too, not the sort of thing that will wear out in a hurry. So if you buy some, make sure you really like it, because I don't think it's a short-term investment....
One other touch I thought was really nice, is that they have a range of light switch covers and socket outlet covers to make the steel cabinets. Pay Car Guy Garage a visit and let your imagination run wild...

Blogging for the environment

When I registered approximately a week ago to blog about the environment today, 7,492 other bloggers were also committed to posting an environmental post on the same day (October 15th 2007) as part of Blog Action Day.
I am sure all of us are 'concerned' to an extent about environmental issues in general, but how many of us really strive to make a significant difference? If we all make a small step today, future generations can reap the benefit in the future - if we don't, well in simple terms our children, or their children or their children will certainly suffer. So what are some of the things we can be doing to help to keep the planet healthy. In simple terms add more than you consume... Think how much we consume in an average day in terms of food, water, packaging, emissions, fossil fuels etc... Then on the other hand think how much you are saving or contributing. Each small thing you can do to redress that balance helps to sustain the planet. For instance some of the things you could do would be to install a composter in your garden, or a water butt to collect waste and/or rain water. You can start a regime of recycling, or pledge to buy goods that are responsibly produced. Walk to more places, for instance pledge to not use your car just for one day each week. Of these ideas, I have tried the following:
Composting - I wasn't good at it and I am now contributing to a local composting scheme instead
Water Butt - I collect rain water and even bath water to water the plants in our garden.
Recycling - I am not the main instigator of this regime in our household, but am happy to report that much of our waste is recycled very diligently.
Walking to work - I did this once a week for several months and hope to get back into it, it's actually quite surprising how much better-prepared you are to start work if you walk a mile or two first...
Why not take up the challenge and help put something positive into the environment today.

Another win!

I'm a bit shocked to have won another contest, that's one last month and one this month - no big deal you might think, but I'm not one of those people that wins competitions. There ARE a kind of people who win competitions aren't there?? A tribe of winners who relentlessly work hard at winning all the stuff I would like to win, but never do... maybe not, or maybe I have just managed to get into a winning mentality. I won the prize over at Ellies blog ThePinkC, which just happens to be one of my favourite blogs and one of the best blogs out in the blogosphere IMHO- which is good news because my prize is a variety of prominent promotional positions on ThePinkC. I get a sidebar text-link and RSS text link and a 125x125pixel banner position for a full three months.
I joked about getting a banner designed ready for when I won the prize, but didn't actually do it... So I have been frantically working away at a new design today - I am quite pleased with the result, but then I am easily pleased...
Let's hope the winning streak continues, and I might be able to pass some more winnings onto others by having more competitions of my own.

What kind of blogger are you?

I took this quiz on the 'BlogActionDay' website today and found out that I am a purist expert socialite blogger...

What kind of blogger are you? Click on the image to take the quick quiz and get a widget to place on your blog telling people what they can expect from you...


It's only about half a dozen multiple choice questions so should take you less than half a minute to complete - give it a try and us know who you really are.

MyLot

It's a while since I even mentioned MyLot, and I am inspired to do so again, just for those that have not discovered it, or who are thinking of taking part. First off, let me say that the attraction of MyLot for me, is not the fact that you can make money online just for taking part in discussions about anything from warts to existentialism, or from gardening to World war Two. No, the reason I am attracted to MyLot is the interaction, the ability to express yourself in many many different topics that might interest you... and then.... you get paid too! the subtle difference is that I enjoy the discussions without payment, so any payout is just a bonus. And here's the real deal, you won't get rich on Mylot, you can't even make decent pocket money on MyLot unless you have a huge downline of referrals (which I don't, but if you want to be referred, be my guest....). The truth is that you may have to take part in about three hundred or more discussions to make the $10 payout (it takes much longer if you don't post 'good quality' comments), but the chances are that once you make a few friends and get stuck into some good debates, you won't even notice the slow build-up of your income.
It may not be for everyone and I have blown both hot and cold about it myself, but on the whole if you like getting involved in discussions and you think you have something to offer in terms of either questions or answers, then why not give it a try?

Portable DVD player

One of the newer innovations for in-car entertainment has been the introduction of the portable DVD player. In the days of video, it would have been unthinkable to watch a movie on a long car journey – such luxuries were reserved for long-haul flights!

Nowadays it is not unusual to find that you are travelling alongside a car on the motorway where the occupants of the rear seats are watching a movie or cartoon or some such visual entertainment. On night-time journeys, it is now quite common to see flickering screens from all directions emitting from various vehicles fitted with in-car entertainment. Of course the entertainment is not limited to passive viewing, as there are many interactive and educational DVD’s that can be watched on a portable DVD system. Similarly, the entertainment is not limited to in-car as such a system could be used in a caravan, holiday home or picnic.

These systems though originally expensive, like any technology, have now reached ‘affordable’ status for many people – one such system is the portable 10 inch DVD player on offer from Digitalframez. Typically, such units include rechargeable batteries, connections for your car battery and remote control.

Winners!

Laura over at Laura Williams' Musings won the $25 cash prize in my blog contest and Ellie over at ThePinkC won the $10 random second prize. Thank you both for your contribution, and I must say I am pleased to award the prizes to the authors of two excellent blogs. Thank you to everyone who took part.

September 2007

The first prize ($25) and the second prize ($10) in the Livewyre.NET competition have been paid out (winners to be announced tomorrow). Thanks to everyone who took part, this has been a learning experience for me... in all I benefited from enough links to justify the prize, and I think I made enough during the month to cover the prize anyway, especially since winning a cash prize of $10 myself...
Once again, I have not done a lot of paid posts this month, as my focus has been mainly on promotion of my website 'portfolio'. I have included my cash prize (less paypal fees) into my earnings, but the prize will be taken from my 'livewyre' budget rather than my 'munny4hunny' budget as the intention was to promote Livewyre not Munny4Hunny.