2008 Summary

A while ago, I speculated on how many posts I would have completed by the end of the year, and I am pleased to find that I have exceeded expectations. I expected to have 935 posts under my belt in the two years I have been blogging, but can reveal that this is my 957th ever blog post (488th on Munny4Hunny)... and I have earned almost USD2000 from my blogs in that time.
I have reported my earnings every month since the first dollars hit my Paypal account on this blog, my other blogs are less blatant ;)
I run a separate internet enterprise and earn some Adsense from other sites which has generated more income which I do not include as part of my blog earnings. My philosphy is not merely to amass income, but to do so in a way which remains enjoyable to me. There are certain subjects that I will not promote even when the pickings are rich, and I am not a big fan of PTC sites even though many of my internet friends use this method (one even started a PTC site...).
I hope my observations and experiences have been useful to someone somewhere as earnings has never been the only motive for this blog even though sometimes the content does not seem to reflect those ideals.
It remains to say Happy New Year and happy blogging and browsing in 2009.

The lull before New Year

I am getting ready to write up my summary of 2008 and preparing for what 2009 has to offer. It is his time of year that has us thinking about how we are going to do things better in the future. Our New Years resolutions may well include some ideas about how we might work better, get fit or encourage healthy cooking in our homes.
A healthy mind and healthy body are effective for success in all walks of life and should be the starting point for future planning. We are usually indulging ourselves with left-over turkey and boxes of chocolates in the lull between Christmas and New Year - what better time to work out how we are going to sort ourselves out financially and physically in the next 12 months?

Christmas Survey

To get you in the mood for Christmas, here is a Christmas survey from dNeero. Don't forget you can earn money for completing surveys, and more money for posting them on a blog or social site. Just click on the survey below to take part...

Diet pills

I have taken a few days off to do my Christmas shopping and my brain is being taxed to the limit as my family have not given me many clues as to what they want for Christmas. I like to buy practical gifts, but prefer to be told what someone wants rather than waste money on something that is not going to be used. Some of my more imaginative presents would include diet pills which should be particularly useful at Christmas (or at least the new year!), fake snow because we rarely get snow where I live, and ear-plugs to ensure someone gets the rest they really need during the holiday season.

More Tech Advice...

One more tip for getting the most of your older PC set up involves your virtual memory or 'swap file'. Your PC virtual memory is a memory file set aside on your hard-disk (C:Drive by default) this memory is utilised by programs that you have running. I can offer no advice on the size of the file (something that can be configured within the virtual memory management), but I have come up with two good reasons why you might consider moving the location of this file.

1. You may be getting short of space on your main drive, moving what is often a very large file, can free up some vital room.
2. If you have added hard-drives (as I have) you may discover that later drives actually run faster, offering a chance to speed up the entire system a little. I checked this out on my PC and found that my original hard-disk was 5400rpm, whereas the disk I had recently added was 7200rpm.

You can even assign virtual memory to an external drive if you want, but I settled for this newer internal drive that I bought primarily just for extra storage. My computer/C: Drive/properties/hardware will give you the names of your hard disks. I Googled these names to get the spec. including the speed of the drive.
Control Panel/System/Advanced/Performance settings/Advanced/Virtual Memory/Change - gives you your current settings. If you decide to move the file, keep the settings the same just add the same settings to another drive and select 'set'. Don't forget to remove the settings from the previous set-up otherwise you end up with two swap files running at the same time (like I did! - don't worry, it doesn't do any harm...).
You will need to restart your system for the changes to take effect. On my XP pro installation, the virtual memory is identified as a 'pagefile.sys' file, on my previous Win 98SE installation, I think it was called 'swapfile'.

Home networks

More and more people are building or buying servers for home networks as IT begins to infiltrate the home. A few years ago, you would be one of the few if you had a PC and internet access at home, it is now the norm to have broadband and a wireless network. As more home users are added, more PC's will be in the home requiring a network to share an internet connection. Not many homes run a 'proper' server network, but with the advent of media-sharing and component sharing (ie. one printer shared by the PC's in a house) the more it is likely that homes will start to have their own dedicated servers like business networks. You can create a low-end server from an old PC, or a piece of discarded business equipment like a used cisco or blade server. To buy a dedicated network Operating System will cost several hundred dollars, but XP pro will run as a server O/S with just a few adjustments. Linux is another alternative for those who don't want to spend a lot of money, but you would be well-advised to join some linux forums first, as support for free software is in scant supply....

For the man who has everything

If you need a Christmas present for the man in your life, but his tastes are expensive and he has already bought himself everything he wants, consider his hobbies...
Does he need some of those mufflers he can put on his golf clubs? Does he need a silver spoon to eat his caviar? or some Ferrari parts for that yellow monstrosity gathering dust in his garage??
Even rich people need accessories that don't cost the earth, though admittedly a set of tires for a Ferrari would not doubt cost more than 6 months of my wages...

Dream Holiday

Holidays are not really on my agenda until we have dispensed with our frugal lifestyle (ie. when we finally find ourselves with some excess money!!), but we can dream...
I would love to go back to a few places that we visited when we were younger and a little more reckless with our money. Southern France calls me as do the many friends we should revisit in Malta, I would love to see more of the US, and my little one would be particularly impressed with any Disney vacations that might be on the horizon.
I have visited some of the Northern states of the US but have not yet had the good fortune to head for the beaches of Florida. there can be no more complete holiday for a child than one that features Mickey Mouse...

Still not want to go Vista?

I am one of those who is very happy with my XP installation and have XP Pro on my works laptop and both of the PC's that I use at home (one of those PC's is too old to run Vista anyway). Despite thinking seriously about Linux for some time, I still haven't had the courage to go down that route yet.
I am not yet ready to embrace Vista unless forced to and will be contect to wait for the next generation OS to come along from Windows. So how do we keep XP running in the meantime? There are a number of routine steps that you can take to keep your XP installation in tip-top condition and some of these are listed below:

• Have sufficient anti-virus and spyware cover - I use two free pieces of software to do this AVG FREE for anti-virus and SPYBOT S&D (Google for them if you want to download them) both of these programs are highly-rated and highly effective and offer free updates.
• Keep your disks uncluttered and well-maintained. If you have on board disk management so much the better, but there are some simple steps you can take to keep your disks running to their optimum. Use the Check-disk facility (my computer/right click on the disk/properties/tools) regularly - you may have to restart the PC for this to work. From the same tools tab, use disk defragmenter regularly too. To clear off unwanted files from your disks, try 'CCleaner' - this can dig out Megabytes of filespace and free it up for a cleaner system.
• Once you have been through all the maintenenace steps (scanned for viruses and spyware, checked and defrag'd your disks and cleaned out the redundant files - create a system restore point so that you can go back to those settings if anything goes wrong in the future. Having an up to date clean system restore point will means that recovery from errors will not be too much hard work. (Accessories/System tools/System restore).

These three simple steps will keep you ahead of the game and help to keep your XP O/S up to scratch pending a shiny new system from Windows. If you have to reinstall your O/S (which is a good way to 'clean' your system anyway..) it makes sense to create a new XP disk incorporating SP3 to speed up the process - there are other short-cuts you can introduce when creating your new start-up disk, but I will save the details for another day probably after I have tried it myself and can report on how easy this is to do.

Looking for work

Looking for a job in these financially tight times is a task for which you are going to need some help if you want to be effective. Firstly you need to sketch out your resume and have an idea of the job and salary that you are looking for. Next you should sign up with some job websites related to your specific field of work or geographical location. Many sites have an option for you to post your resume online to enable prospective employers to short-list for example from a list of Dallas resumes or engineers resumes etc...
The more specific area that the website is aimed at, the better chance you have of getting short-listed for the job of your dreams. If you have been out of the job-market for a while you may need to brush up on your interview technique too. get friends to help you. or some work agencies may be able to help you with that too.

Even more diet pills..

I am starting to get goggle-eyed over the many different forms of diet pills there are out there and ever more tongue-tied with their names. the latest one I have come across is called Ephedra eca stack and contains caffeine and aspirin (Ephedra Caffeine Aspirin - get it...??)
Now you know right off that some people are sensitive to aspirin, so it is as well to be informed about what these medications consist of. From what I know, caffeine is used as a stimulant to push drugs around the body quicker, so that explains what the caffeine is doing there. There have been restrictions on the use of ephedra/ephedrine in some places in the past so make sure you do your own thorough research before taking anybody's word for the effectiveness of this drug.

An unsafe world

If you have felt the need for some personal protection as part of your job or day to day life then there are a host of self defense products you can carry to help give you a little more confidence while roaming those mean streets.
You may have read about the latest stun gun disguised as a mobile phone, and thought about carrying a pepper spray or other self protection devise. If you decide to purchase a device of this nature, be aware of how it can be used safely and local restrictions on these products. In many countries you would not normally be permitted, and some US states do not allow carrying stun guns.

November Earnings

Earnings took a bit of a drop this month, but to be honest I put less effort into paid blogging and concentrated on other online projects. On the positive side I have been paid by Adsense again this month - the fourth payout in 2008, and that will help to see me through the Christmas period. I should just point out that I don't record Adsense earnings as blog earnings except where the earnings are directly attributable to blogs rather than other online projects.
This months' total earnings were just a little over $73, which is lower than recent months. The majority of earnings coming via PayU2Blog. I am working out a new blog project at the moment which is going to be considerably different to previous projects, I'm not even sure if I can monetise it as yet and it may be a while before I am ready to unveil anything. I am thinking of going 'Wordpress' for the first time and am researching the most cost-effective way of doing that. Most services seem to charge about $6.95 a month to host Wordpress, and I was disappointed to find that GoDaddy seem to be more expensive as they are my favourite domain-purchasing service. More about this to follow...

Diet supplement

Are you aware that 97% of diet supplement don't work? You have to look long and hard to find something really effective that is going to suit your body and lifestyle. You should get a lot of good advice before embarking on any course of treatment which includes supplements or medication of any sort. Don't forget that on 3% of what is available on the market is in any way effective, so there is a much better chance of being ripped off than there is of having good results.
How do they get away with it? Basically they exploit a weakness, they know that their clients won't make a fuss and will think it is their own fault if they don't lose weight, and they are happy to peddle useless pills and potions on a basis of empty promises.

dNeero surveys

With the demise of one fixed adverts scheme last week, it's going to be difficult to find a replacement - I am thinking of looking at some new affiliates maybe shifting out some old ones that don't work. One scheme that does provide a few cents here and there is dNeero surveys, they are mostly extremely simple to complete, and very easy to display on your blog (although you can still earn something for the survey without displaying it). It will not replace the type of income that fixed adverts do, but there is the advantage of earning from your downline up to three tiers and I am happy to say I have a downline that includes eleven individuals (of which three are active) which generates a few cents for me. I have not made payout yet, but I am getting there slowly. You can join the scheme by clicking on the survey below take a few surveys and see just how easy it is...

Site Maintenance

Well I finally got around to removing my 'matched.co.uk' adverts today and also am happy to report that they did pay my November payment after all a couple of days after the closing down announcement. I worked out that in the short time I was signed up to them, they paid out £175 (couldn't guess what that is in dollars now...). In the current economic climate, we are better off with dollar-paying schemes than UK£ payouts at the moment. I had got used to accounting for all my £ earnings at a basic $2=£1 rate, this is no longer the case.

Of course, as I was converting all my earnings to £ anyway, I am now getting a much better rate for the US$ payouts. This is welcome news as I await a Adsense payout next month, which will be the fourth one in a 12 month period.
My next task must be to find all the 'matched' affiliate adverts and remove those, I will them try submitting new pages to the other fixed advets schemes that I use - you can see more about monetisation for websites on my 'livewyre.net' pages. The end of the month is drawing in, and my paid to blog activity has been low this month compared with last month and the earnings will no doubt reflect that.

Holiday plans

I find Christmas holidays a difficult time of year where the winding up of the years business meets the endless list of parties, gatherings and performances to be endured or enjoyed. Suffice to say I get somewhat stressed over how I am going to fit everything in. Life has been hectic enough in the last few months, add to that a host of dates to cram into the first three weeks of December along with all the regular commitments and the whole thing is enough to make you succumb to whatever bug is currently doing the rounds.

The good news is that I have a week of holidays left over (not that I can afford to go away - although that would get me out of a whole load of obligations!), in which I will be expected to do all the odd jobs around the house that have been building up. The bathroom light fixtures need some attention, the woodwork in the hallway needs replacing after we had new floor tiles - there are a million and one other little tasks, but I find setting a realistic target of just a couple of jobs allows me to relax in the knowledge that I have at least got some of these jobs cleared off my 'to-do' list before the New Year kicks in and the 'to do' list starts again...

Christmas Present Ideas

I think I am easy to buy for at Christmas as I have always loved traditional man-gadgets ie: watches, pens, briefcases the sort of item that makes a subtle statement about who you are and what you are about. I like classic styling with a twist and I like certain brands:
Pens: Parker, MontBlanc or any other recognisable make
Watches: Swatch is my favourite
Briefcases or suitcases: Has to be Samsonite
These are the type of item you can buy duplicates of, never mind if your man has a watch, if it's more than 12 months old, he will be thinking about getting a new one anyway.. You can have as many pens as you like, and a new briefcase is always welcome. Those are my tips for man-gifts this Christmas - and... Please don't buy your man moisturizer whatever the TV adverts say!!

Matched.co.uk is no more...

What a shame, a nice little earner providing fixed adverts for fixed monthly payments has closed down this week - emails were sent to publishers, and I am gutted to have missed the last months' payment. This is what the email said, and is now posted on the matched.co.uk website:

It is with much regret that we announce that Matched.co.uk has closed.

Matched has been running as a beta experiment for some time and, after much careful consideration, it has been decided not to progress the project to the next stage.

I wondered if they are planning to sell the domain to matched.com?? but if that were the case, they would surely just move their operation to a new domain... These are not the only provider of this type of service, and hopefully this won't be the start of a trend. Having fixed adverts at fixed rates brings in a guaranteed monthly income which can easily cover any hosting costs a small site may have. Matched used to pay £3 per month for each advert hosted up to a maximum of £75 per month.

Spy Camera

When I was growing up, the world of secret spying, invisible ink and the spy camera were just fantasy play ideas. You could buy toy kits with plastic cameras and other spy paraphernalia, but now these things are widely available for real and at a price your average person can easily afford. Whether for industrial alarm systems or domestic surveillance/protection, you can easily pick up a quality multi-camera system for very little outlay. Not only that, but this type of equipment is not even difficult to set up. You don't have to be a security expert to have a system up and running in no time. Expanded memory avaialability also means that images and audio can be stored on hard-drives negating the need for endless piles of tapes lying around the place.
Todays surveillance systems are inexpensive, high quality and easy to install which accounts for why there are so many of them installed.

Travel Plans

In the current financial situation, there is little chance of me requiring any travel insurance for a while. Other related issues are that I have not bothered to re-new my passport, and have cancelled European cover on my car insurance as it's not likely to be leaving these shores any time soon..
It is important to take a good hard look at your financial situation and 'cut your cloth' accordingly. If you do plan some foreign travel, then it might be a good idea to get your own travel cover that will save you from having to pay the default insurance every time you book a flight or accommodation - you can save a lot of money by having your own cover and what's more, you get to choose cover which is appropriate to your own needs and circumstances. One of the problems with just ticking to box for standard insurance is most people never bother to see what the terms are until they need to make a claim!

Promotional Writing

It occurs to me that paid bloggers are similar to advertising copywriters writing adverts for radio, although I admit that the quality of the copy varies quite a bit...
When I started writing blog posts, I thought that I had to make them like little adverts promoting a product or service and saying how great it was whether I believed it or not. In recent times I have come to understand that it is really the anchor-text that is the valuable thing to the advertiser, not so much the text that surrounds it.
Many advertisers say that a neutral post will suffice, and the reason for that is that they are not expecting lots of your visitors to take a lot of notice of the 'advert', but they need a link for a specific keyword to push their site or a specific page up the SERPS (search engine results position).
My posts now are much more personalised, as long as I get the link in and it's not out of context, the advertiser will probably be happy. There is no need to 'promote' the link, but equally it would not be helpful to be overly negative. Placing an out-of-context link would be unhelpful as there is value in the surrounding text that search engines can pick up on.
Occasionally when an advertiser wants to create buzz around a new site, product or service they actually request that you log-on to a site and test it. In these cases you are given much more direction, but generally you can slip your link into a related, but not necessarily overtly promotional post. Where I have to say something positive, I often put myself in the shoes of a voice-over artist for a radio advert. They don't need to mean what they say and nobody has any problem over them being paid for their time - There is no need for me to feel cheap about promoting something I don't actually like or enjoy as long as I do a good job. That said, there are certain things that I won't do, hence on numerous occasions I have turned down lucrative opportunities for promoting gambling sites and will continue to do so.

Upgrade your laptop

It's coming up to Christmas and you need a new laptop - great!
It's coming up to Christmas and there's a global recession just around the corner - not so great!
There are plenty of ways you can lick that laptop into shape and have an upgrade that can take you through the next 12 months no sweat!
Here are the steps to take:
Think about asking for some laptop memory for Christmas
Maybe upgrade to VISTA if you feel brave
Ask someone to stick a bigger hard-drive in your stocking!
In my experience, laptop hard-drives need replacing every couple of years, and it would make sense while you have the precision screwdrivers out, to add a little memory in there too...

Losing Weight

Hydroxycut is yet another diet supplement available on the internet, and again we are obliged to ask readers to exercise caution when deciding to use unregulated medication. Note that this product advertises itself as a 'supplement' which indicates that medication alone is not sufficient to achieve weight-loss goals.
Good advice on medication, diet and exercise should 'supplement' your chosen medication, and you should strive to get all the information you can before introducing new chemicals into your body. Check that the medication is compatible with any medical conditions you may have and make sure you understand the effects that the medication will have.

Size Zero

I heard something said the other day which I feel I must address, the implication of the piece was that women pursued 'size zero' at the behest of men - As a man I refute this entirely, I know of no man who would specify a size zero on their list of attractive traits in a female.
So where does this idea come from? In a word 'fashion' - sometimes it is 'fashionable' to have curves, other times it is fashionable to look like you should be in rehab. My supplementary point is this...
Do you believe the fashion industry to be dominated by heterosexual males??
I thought not... so I rest my case, size zero is a preference expressed by the fashion industry and is demanded by fellow-females and men who are not especially attracted to the female form.
When we are looking for someone to blame for the proliferation of diet pill and diet plans, don't look at your average bloke. You will find more about this fascination with size in any womens magazine than you ever would in a mens publication, and I would say again Do you think your average bloke even reads a mens mag?
Now I would not refute that men might be more interested in enhancement than down-sizing, but I would refer anyone to those TV programs where women are considering enhancement procedures. In almost every case, their male partners did not want them to go through any surgery - so if not for their partners, why do they want to be a different shape? The answer in almost every case is for confidence, confidence in the presence of men?? No think again...
I don't wish to try to make out that men are blameless, but let's redress the balance of thinking a little here - I am happy to state that I believe that men are not responsible for the size zero phenomenen.

Fantasy Holidays

With a recession just around the corner, long distance holidays are a dream for me at the moment, but I console myself with dreams of the holidays we can take when our finances are more stable.
I would love to visit friends in New York and New England, take in the sights of the Mid-west and take a trip to vegas Apart from that, we have friends to catch up with in Malta and I would love to take another road trip around France, maybe taking in Italy along the way.
The reality is, with a little one now in tow, we are more likely to stay firmly on British soil, and our next planned holiday is a freebie on the Norfolk Broads..
Apart from that, we are only likely to be able to get away for day trips here are there, so the bright lights of Vegas will have to wait.

Progress in safety equipment

The world of functional safety clothing has evolved over the last few years as safety has become more prominent in everyone’s mind. With some type of safety equipment required for every type of work-based task, manufacturers have realised that safety supplies are in a market which will be expanding for the foreseeable future.
You will note that new safety equipment is designed to appeal to the wearer, rather than just been plain and functional. Safety glasses are constructed with the same design and flair as sunglasses, safety helmets come with zany designs instead of plain colors.
This trend has started with the more commonly-used items but is also spreading to the specialized areas such as fire resistant clothing. This type of equipment traditionally has had a few items on offer which had to cope with all tasks. Now you can even get fire-retardant fleece-jackets and sweat-shirts, along with several designs of fire-retardant cotton or ‘Nomex’ shirts to wear under your fleece. The offerings to this market have increased with demand and competition.

Weight issues

I can't believe that there are so many products available for weight loss nowadays. I have not come across alli weight loss before, but it's just one of a whole host of products available. Other products include names like NOXYCUT and OROVO, with so many on the market thorough research is needed before buying any of these products.
There are two areas which you will need to investigate:

• Do some research on exactly what is in each product and the possible effects/side effects that it might have - try Googling for 'effects of....' for a start.
• Ensure that you ONLY buy from a reputable vendor who is qualified to sell such products and can give advice on the best product to use in your circumstances.

Earnings Oct 2008

In attempting to keep my 'off-line life' on an even keel, I have not been blogging too much this week - and in fact, forgot to do my monthly update.
Some significant differences this month - I did a lot more PPP so that I could have enough posts completed to add another blog to my PPP profile. As it turned out, the blog was not added to my profile as it did not meet the criteria. The blog in question has an editted template to make it less blog-like, and one of the features I have 'turned off' is the automatic dating of posts. This gave PPP a problem, and I am still debating whether I want to put the dates back so for now I just have one PPP blog (not this one...). In fact I will probably put dates back, the blog is concerned with current news, so being able to follow the blog chronologically would be sensible.

PayU2Blog remains the best earner, they sent me some bonus tasks this month, but have been fairly quiet since then. Adsense and other advertising continues to bring in a few much-needed dollars, and I had a new sponsored review op this month for one of my blogs.
As can be seen from the diagram, this months earnings were $142.46 which is above my rolling average of around $100 per month lately - most of this was due to the increased activity in PPP and the sponsored review opp. Blogsvertise has recently come back to life since I have some PR on some blogs - it will be interesting to see how long that PR remains...

Making ends meet

As the recession starts to bite each and every household will need to make budgets and watch very carefully where each little portion of their income is spent.
A good place to start is all those monthly bills in your list of direct debits. Make sure you get the best deal for utilities for your home, and get some competitive auto insurance quotes to see if you can shave some money off your car insurance, the same applies to home insurance. I have always said that the quickest way to make money is to look at your budgets and see where you can save yourself money - instant returns!

Good Blogging Advice

Although admittedly, not ALL my blog posts have exactly been from the heart... many may lack finesse and prose and even sincerity...nonetheless, I was interested to find that this is my 873rd ever blog post in a little under two years. In fact I have already completed two posts that will be published next week, so I guess you could say that this is my 875th... I have no idea how many of those were paid posts, although I do know how much I have made through paid posting in that time, and I may be prepared to expand on that at the end of 2008.

My point is though, after all this time I should have come a long way from those first tenuous forays into the world of blogging - my first blog was about my experiences building a website, and is geared towards websites, SEO and related topics. It wasn't 'til March 2007 that I started to get into the world of paid blogging with this blog.
My intention for this post was to give a few pointers from my experience of a little under 1.3 posts per day over two years... at this rate I should have completed 935 by the end of 2008.
So here's my ten blogging pointers:

1. Unlike this blog, niche blogs get better traffic and can earn more from adsense.
2. It is not easy to get on-topic paid blogging opportunities for niche blogs - although you may get some decent paying offers if you can get a decent PageRank.
3. You may be throwing away your PageRank if Google detects paid posts or links.
4. Leave lots of relevant comments on blogs operating in the same niche.
5. Give your readers something good to read - opinion is fine, but how about helpful tips and useful links too?
6. Make sure your blog is good to look at, but don't change the look too frequently.
7. When starting a niche blog, make sure you pick a subject that interests you
8. When starting a niche blog, if you are blogging for money, make sure that you choose a subject that can be well monetised.
9. Resources are important for niche blogs, both physical and online magazines can be invaluable, but always do good research using several sources and write the article with your own angle.
10. Finally if you write paid posts, make them fit your niche, often the client is just looking for the anchor text in the link, the rest of the post should be well written but does not have to read like an advert, try to keep it natural...

Well, I hope this is useful to someone, please feel free to leave your own tips in the comments.

Free eBook for bloggers

Ellie from the PinkC has released a new eBook called 101 steps to becoming a better blogger. Ellie is an experienced blogger who is an expert on configuring a Wordpress blog to get it looking exactly right. She tags herself as the ultimate geek girl and has a wealth of knowledge that she is willing to share for free in her new eBook.

Not only should you be taking advantage of this free offer, you should also make regular visits to this blog especially (but not exclusively) if you are using Wordpress. Ellie has used a host of plug-ins and knows exactly how to tweak a blog to get it running smoothly. Not only that but she knows how to write a good blog - always something fresh and new at the PinkC...

Blogging tip

I have noticed that I go through a ritual when posting on a blog, and I wonder if enough people do this? I first write the article, and more often than not, go looking for a suitable image to post alongside the article - a picture is worth a thousand words and all that... If the blog has a themed look I will probably import the picture into fireworks and manipulate it accordingly - which usually entails cropping, applying a colour tint and shrinking it to an acceptable size. If the picture is crucial, I might then host it myself so that a reader can click on it to expand it - otherwise I let blogger host it for me.
I make sure that there are tags - on my niche blogs I only ever add a new tag if I really must, mostly I pick from the existing tags. On my latest blog I also add some links to similar articles at the end of the post - this achieves two goals; good practice for SEO to link similar articles on any website, and also it gives the reader somewhere to go if the subject interests them - after all, I am hoping to get some search-engine traffic and where one blog post has been picked up in the search results (rather than the home page) - it makes sense to draw the reader in with your closely -related content.
When all of this is done, I will post the content (often I have posted the content, and then decide to add some links to other pages), and crucially I will then proof-read the whole post, and this is the thing that I notice other bloggers have not done sometimes. I will correct all the spelling and grammar mistakes and maybe change something that doesn't scan properly, then post again and read again until I am happy that it meets my standards.
This does not mean that my posts are faultless, but it does mean I am careful to give a good impression. I am put off by 'lazy' posts that do not scan properly, have bad spelling or use text-speak and I would expect my readers to be equally critical. If I want to establish a style and demonstrate my writing skills, proof-reading will help to give me an extra edge.

Paid posts or non-paid posts

That stalwart of paid posting programs PayPerPost has definite rules about the ratio of paid posts to non-paid posts that you are allowed on a blog. The reason for this is fairly obvious; you are not likely to have a great readership if your content is all advertising. Everyone knows that if you buy a magazine or get one of those free papers posted through your door, that there will be a certain amount of advertising - and there should also be a decent amount of content otherwise why would you bother reading it at all?
I have seen blogs that are pure monetisation and NO other content, and I spend less than two seconds working out that there is no value in re-visiting. Other sites have an identifiable amount of advertising, but enough content to keep you returning. In light of this, PayU2Blog have also requested that bloggers do not use their blogs entirley for paid posts offering no content of their own invention.
In my experience readers return to a blog for a number of reasons which include:

• they like the style of writing, the humor or prose used to get a message across
• they find valuable information about a topic in which they are interested
• they 'connect' with the writer

If you are not actively trying to at least one of these things then your blog has little value either as something people would want to visit, or as a platform for advertising revenue.
This is not to say that a blog cannot be 'used' as a service site purely for generating links, but if this is the case, the content should still form part of that strategy and only having paid posts will not satisfy that criteria. I have seen some blogs that are full of widgets such as the Creamaid and the dNeero ones, these can take ages to load and if there are more than two on the homepage, there is every chance that a reader will immediately browse away rather then wait for the widgets to load.
Please note that PayU2Blog have stopped short of imposing any rules on this, but they have indicated that these 100% paid posts blogs are likely to get very few opportunities in the future.

Christmas Ideas

Thinking of buying me a present?... I thought not, but just in case you're struggling for ideas I love cooking even though I rarely have time to do much. I made pasta for the family today and would love to branch out into Spanish cooking if I had a paella pan. Paella is a traditional dish which varies from region to region but in it's finest form holds a whole host of absolutely amazing ingredients including shellfish and snails.
Having watched Paella being made in a huge pan, I am keen to have a go, but I have tasted snails before and I really would not recommend them. I am always keen to try something new and I will happily eat mussels or winkles, but believe me, snails are not in the same class. If you think of a snail as a slug with a shell, I can believe that snail actually tastes pretty much like I would expect slug to taste like... YEUUCH!!

Clever Google

Despite the fact that Google rules the world of the internet, I have to admit that I am a BIG fan... I don't know how we could have survived without it. I'll give you an example:
I have a vague memory of when I was younger and going to a number of comedy nights around my home town of Birmingham (UK, not AL). I saw all sorts of people who are now considered British comedy greats as they honed their performances. I remember seeing Newman (as in Newman and Baddiel), and Jack Dee as well as a confusing encounter with 'Vic Reeves Big Night out' which, when you see it for the first time leaves you thinking 'what was that??' - it's only when you see it for the second or third time that you start to get it. There was a bunch of people at the front of the stage who knew what was going on and they were shouting 'what's on the end of your stick Vic?' and other responses which to the uninitiated seemed very funny, but you couldn't work out why....
Anway I digress, as part of this venture into comedy as the new rock 'n roll, we went to some smaller venues and I remember one in particular where a comedian invited a member of the audience up and got them so ill (smoking something questionable) that they had to be taken home in a taxi. I remember the night was hosted by Frank Skinner (in the days where if you didn't swear fifteen times a minute, it wasn't comedy) and for years I wondered whether the comedian in question was American Denis Leary, but couldn't figure out why he would have been in Birmingham all those years ago (I reckon it would have been around 1987...). Anyhow, on the off-chance, after seeing a news article about Denis Leary, I 'Googled' Denis Leary and Frank Skinner to see if there was a connection and sure enough there was, they used to share a flat!

Mystery explained, no doubt Frank got him the gig and it really was Frank Skinner and Denis Leary me, my mate and a motley bunch of random Brummies all those years ago in the upstairs room of a pub watching this poor girl go through her first experience of getting stoned live on stage, in an act which clearly had little rehearsal, but was nonetheless pretty funny in a raw kind of a way.
I have long suspected that it WAS Denis Leary, but you know what it's like when your brain suggests unlikely memories, and you start to doubt your memory banks. Thanks to Google I can confirm that I have not mis-remembered the details of that random night twenty years ago.

Activities for children

Being responsible for a child means being in charge not only of their health and their education but also their entertainment. It's very easy to stick the kids in front of the TV or DVD player and I will own up to relying on this medium heavily to free up some time, but kids also need regular external stimulus.
There are any number of options to choose from and in my estimation a child should have two or three regular activities per week to look forward to. Currently for us, this is:

• Gymnastics on a Monday
• Swimming on a Saturday

and in the past we have done Tennis and plenty of trips out. some I have considered for the future are learning an instrument, horse riding (if we can afford the horse supplies), and sports like soccer or netball.

More diet pills...

Every couple of weeks I see websites claiming to have the best diet pills and offering the best advice. I would stress that plenty of independent advice should be sought (preferably from a health professional) before embarking on any sort of medication. It is important to understand exactly how the treatment is going to affect you both in positive and negative ways before you subject your body to something new.
A good diet plan includes healthy eating and regular exercise, medication taken should fit into a whole lifestyle plan, after all you don't want to medicate after your diet is over so a healthy lifestyle is essential.
Not all treatments are suitable for all types of people, for instance some medical conditions will preclude you from taking certain types of diet pills, so it makes sense to get some advice from your GP before buying medication over the internet.

Body building

I am more into regular exercise than muscle building, but if I needed to build muscle I would need bodybuilding supplements as my natural frame is slight, and I don't have any spare bulk (ie. fat) to turn into muscle.
If fitness is your thing, then moderate use of supplements with a regular exercise regime and a really good diet should help you to get to to a good level of fitness. It is important however to get good advice and take things steady. It is too easy to get carried away in the early stages and do yourself some tissue damage by going at it too hard. Muscles are developed by the existing muscles actually tearing and then reforming in a larger form. Steady tearing will be reasonably painful, but is to be expected, excessive exercise can give you long-term problems.
It is important to understand exactly what the supplements can do to your body in both positive and negative ways before you start using them.

PPP revival

Having moaned at the fact that PPP dropped munny4hunny, I should point out that they were quite justified in doing so, and I will be able to limit paid postings on M4H to just PayU2blog opportunities.
You have to complete 10 posts on a PPP blog before you can add an extra blog to your PPP account, once M4H was removed, I was left with one blog registered with PPP which only had three paid posts on it. I have had to complete another seven posts just so that I can register another different blog for PPP opps.
On one hand it was a bit of a pain, but as it happened I managed to find posts quite quickly and of course, it means that I have generated some PPP revenue this month which will help to boost the monthly earnings.
I will take more care of the paid post ratio in the future, but would point out that if you plan to use PPP and PayU2blog on the same blog, you are going to have to generate an awful lot of content to keep the paid to non-paid ratio acceptable for PPP. Hence I will not be mixing these two schemes on the same blog for the future.
Those blogs that I may use PPP on, will have regularly generated new content anyway so there will be less pressure to scout around for fresh material. However, they both have a PageRank, so it will be interesting to see if the PR will be sacrificed as has happened previously.

What's next?

You have started to make a bit of money on the 'net, so what's next??
There are a million different directions in which you can go, some remain internet based and others move out into the high street.
I have watched a few different career paths and would say that there is no one particular formula, it's more about your vision and ability to realise your dreams that makes you successful. I know some internet entrepreneurs who have started with a blog, expanded into several blogs and then launched into forums and websites for income generation. As with all paths, some plans work out and some lead to dead ends. I have come across very successful bloggers who have maintained a decent income by remaining with blogging for earnings but just expanding into several blogs, others I have seen develop into 'paid-to' start-ups and progress their earnings that way. Once you have gained a bit of self-confidence from your initial projects, you can develop by putting your money into franchises or some other start-up business, even creating your own franchises if you are successful enough.

Football or Soccer

The UK and the US are often described as two nations divided by a common language, and nothing illustrates that as well as the confusion over the use of the word 'football'. For the rest of the world, football is absolutely synonymous with soccer. For the US, football refers almost exclusively to that peculiar game with the wrong-shaped ball, which is neither soccer or rugby or recognisable as any sport played elsewhere.
The popularity of what the rest of the work knows as 'American Football' has ebbed and flowed on foreign shores. Occasional games are played abroad to publicise the sport internationally, and many countries have their own specialist leagues. These leagues are hardly mainstream, though naturally they have their own football trophies and league tables.

ShopWiki a new shopping experience

Shop Wiki is a shopping search engine which searches the web democratically rather than just showing results that have been paid for. For instance, Christmas is not that far away and you might need to find a good deal on an XBox 360 or DVD recorder.

The site gives lots of information on your potential purchases and compares prices to make it easy to find the best deal. You can narrow each search down by price or brand, or even color if it's appropriate. I narrowed my DVD recorder search by brand (Sony) then selected a specific unit (VRD-MC5) and was offered 41 on-line stores to buy this one product from - each one with the price clearly marked, so finding the best deal was really easy.
Not only do you get all these listings, but there is an overview of the product at the top of the page indicating the price-range and giving all the technical data. If you don't have a specific model in mind, then you can take a look through one of the wiki guides like the Computers and Software Wiki which outlines differences between desktops and laptops and covers hardware and software issues. Even if you don't really know what you are looking for, ShopWiki can help guide you through the whole process giving you lots of gift ideas.

Shift of emphasis

Over recent months I have been exploring niche blogging as a way to raise revenue and have reached the point where I am beginning to get some results. I have discovered that niche blogging is largely a trial and error pursuit, some niches work and some are a washout or need to be exploited in a specific way.
I have broadly looked at the areas of sport, travel and finance, and of these the finance niche has given the best results, but each blog has it's own market and personality stamped on it, so simply pointing to 'finance' as being a successful niche is really only a fraction of the story.
Any niche can be successful if approached in the right way, and the following points sum up my approach to this type of blogging for the future:

• It is far better to blog on a dot com with a strong branding which will help people to remember your URL without even using their 'favourites' - this is becoming increasingly difficult as more domains are being sold each day...
• Integrate monetisation and adverts into the blog so that they flow and look as professional as possible (Adsense etc..). Try to keep adverts/links within your niche.
• Have good resources available to use for research for your posts - but write everything in your own style with plenty of your own opinion and personality showing through the content. This includes any paid postings you might be doing. Customise your template so that you are not simply using a 'look' or template that your visitors will have seen before on a hundred other blogs.
• Don't forget to go and find like-minded blogs and sites, leave your comments and offer links and link exchanges to the best ones.

Using these methods I have discovered that you can get reasonable Adsense earnings from blogs, I was previously of the opionion that this was only possible with a full-blown website... I still do earn more from my website (I also get more traffic to my website), but I am discovering for the first time that I have at least one blog that is contributing well and enabling me to currently be paid by Google around once every two months or so. I will probably let this particular blog run for a few more months and then do some meaningful studies to see if there are specific lessons to be learned that I can share...

Job Description - who are you?

Job descriptions help to define us, not only in a work context but also in society as a whole. You can be sure that the nagging question a stranger will always want to ask you soon after starting your first conversation is 'What do you do?'
What they really want to know is what your job title is...

I happen to have a job that has multiple roles, I can be working on the technical side maybe on a construction site all kitted up with safety gear. I could be at my laptop submerged in a website adding content and optimising for SEO. I could be on the 'phone offering sales and technical support to our customers or in the workshop helping to develop new products...

I struggle when it comes to providing meaningful job descriptions as my role frequently changes not just from day to day but often hour to hour.

Quality car parts

Quality cars are worth keeping on the road, but few of us are in a position to buy one of these vehicles with a comprehensive warranty. Those that would like to own a car such as a Mercedes or BMW will often have to rely on aftermarket sales, and take a risk that the car has been well-maintained and is not about to need some major repair work done. The last thing you need to hear on your first trip to the garage is that you need a new Mercedes gear box or a BMW steering rack. That's where (if you are unlucky enough to need one) a non-dealer independent supplier can be invaluable.
Having the prestige auto is all very well, but paying dealer prices for the parts can be financially crippling. Those in the know will find a good source of replacement parts before buying a car that they cannot afford to run...

Do slimming pills work?

There are a host of slimming aids on the market and it is probably true to say that although all of them may aid weight-loss, not all weight issues can be solved by simple diet pills. Everyone serious about weight loss should first of all consider their intake of food and the amount of exercise that they take on a regular basis.
First of all, you should consider the fat and sugar content of the foods that you regularly eat and consider changing to healthier foods, cutting out some of the worst sugary and fatty foods altogether. Next you should look at introducing gently exercise into your daily routine building up into regular strenuous exercise over time. Vigorous regular exercise and good eating may mean that you don't have to take any steps towards a diet, after lifestyle change will be more effective than a crash diet. Only after looking at the food you eat and your exercise routine should you consider medication and then you should get the best medical advice you can before you start on a course of pills.

Earnings Sept '08

Much in line with recent months, September has yielded approx $100 in a mixture of paid postings on various sites and Adsense income which is an ever-improving source of revenue. I have received payment today for my latest Adsense earnings making this the third payout received in 2008 and am over half-way towards the next payout already.
A tiny proportion of monthly earnings can be attributed to surveys etc.. in view of the lack of significant contribution from these I will probably review these schemes after each one has actually reached payout.
I aim to have another blog on PPP hopefully sometime next month, which may give me more options for paid blogging. The main problem with earnings from blogs is that you can only make a reasonable level of earnings if you have a good number of blogs and the time to constantly update them. Currently I am running four reasonably active blogs, and one considerably less active, along with two websites which generate passive earnings - one of which should be regularly updated, but rarely can I find time to do it.
The $100 quoted covers earnings from blogs alone, other earnings include fixed adverts on various websites ($70) and other Adsense which probably nets altogether another $100 a month. I aim to look into increasing passive earnings again this month and have looked at three fixed-advert schemes to see whether I can squeeze any more income from these. I currently host a total of 11 fixed adverts on various pages which accounts for the $70 monthly income, I will post more about these schemes in the coming month.

Pop-up TV's

The world of entertainment is changing on an almost daily basis with the advent of flat screens, plasma TV's, digital TV signals, DVD, hard disk recorders and Blu-ray to name but a few recent innovations ...
In order to accommodate all this new kit, our living-rooms must change to suit the new equipment. The days when an entire corner of the room was dominated by the old cathode ray tube are gone, nowadays the flat screens are easily accommodated simply by hanging them on the wall like a mirror, or in one of these pop up tv custom-made cabinets, many of which actually incorporate a lifting mechanism which can be remotely activated. Ironically, these state of the art entertainment systems can now be incorporated into a high quality piece of furniture which itself is timeless and would fit seemlessly into decor that was centuries old.

Feeling Windy?

Latest survey from dNeero, my favourite survey people...
This survey looks at some of the practical aspects of alternative power sources and wind power in particular - get paid for completing and posting this simple seven-question multiple-choice survey (click below to start).
Like all of the recent dNeero offerings, you need to get your thinking cap on to think up a related question of your own right at the end of the survey.

PayPerPost too fussy?

Since PPP were no doubt the market-leaders about 12-18months ago, there was no problem with them making their 'posties' jump through hoops to get approved. You had to have a ninety-day old blog, there had to be so many posts and you could not have more than a 1:2 paid to non-paid ratio etc.. etc..
They seemed to relax their rulings a little after the great 'google slap' where, let's face it, having PPP on your blog was the main reason for losing PageRank. Presumably at that point PPP lost a lot of blogs and relaxed the rules to try to pump the numbers back up. I doubt whether many of the blogs that left have yet gained their PR back, but that's another story...I have found it a lot easier to complete PayU2blog opps in the meantime, they come thick and fast, and are very easy to complete and have very quickly proved to be at least as good at income generation as the slightly jaded PPP - plus they pay in two-week slots so you get paid a lot quicker than with PPP.
Due to the rate of paid posting on this blog generated by PayU2blog, PPP have deemed this to be against TOS and munny4hunny is no longer a PPP participant. Is this fair? Yes...why not their money, their rules. In the words of a well-known UK comedian: Am I bovvered? Well, I was a bit put out, but I am making very little from them and now at least I don't have to worry about their TOS and about placing the IZEA rankings code on my blog signalling to Google loud and clear that I am a paid blogger and don't deserve any PR!
Talking of IZEA, I don't know what you have found, but I have not found it to be a welcoming experience more of a totally confusing one, and couldn't even be bothered to do the one opp I was offered which was to post about how great IZEA is... I can see how they are trying to combine a social experience with paid posting opportunities, but the result is a site which honestly does neither thing terribly well - I have found other paid posting sites to be easier to use, and I have found other social sites to be better for finding like-minded acquaintances.

No holidays for a while....

In the current economic climate, and since we have decided to survive as a family on my income alone, we have not been even thinking about taking a foreign holiday for a few years. There is every chance that the holiday industry could be a casualty of both the credit crunch and the hike in oil prices, but for the majority of people the family holiday still remains a priority.
There was a point where we spent at least one holiday a year abroad in sunnier climes, and we have a list of friends abroad that we have promised to visit in the future.
I look forward to when we are financially strong enough to afford such a holiday in the future, and particularly look forward to one of those luxury cruises I have promised myself at some point...

Longer lasting vacuum cleaners

Sebo are marketing their vacuum cleaners as environmentally friendly because they last longer and therefore use less resources and produce less waste. This is a refreshing change from the 'throw-away' society that should be maturing into a 'greener' frame of mind.
There are many many consumer goods produced in the last four or five decades which have been made with an element of 'built-in obsolescence' which is no longer an acceptable way to produce goods if we are serious about preserving life on this planet in the longer term.
With this type of thinking, Sebo vacuum cleaners are showing the way froward for other producers who should take responsibility for producing better quality products that will lead to less waste and a better environment for all of us.

More diet pills?

I wonder if you can actually get fat by eating too many diet pills??
The prime factor in using a weight-loss product is that it be confirmed as safe and that it comes with well-defined instructions and a full diet-plan explaining how it should be used just like alli diet pills. I would urge folks not to just listen to hearsay and then go online to make a purchase based on rumor, but to do some proper research and get some good medical advice before putting any medication into your system.
The Alli diet pill system website is clear about when NOT to take their pills and even gives a full run down of the side effects that you might experience.

Letter to the Bank Manager

This made me laugh so hard...an elderly lady actually wrote this letter to her bank. The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in The Times:

Dear Sir,

I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I endeavoured to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three 'nanoseconds' must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honour it.

I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my Pension, an arr angement which, I admit, has been in place for only thirty eight years. You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account £30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank.

My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways.

I noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, when I try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, re-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become. From now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person. My mortgage and loan payments will therefore and hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank by cheque, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate.

Be aware that it is an offence under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope.

Please find attached an Application Contact Status which I require your chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative. Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Solicitor, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof.

In due course, I will issue your employee with a PIN number which he/she must quote in dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modelled it on the number of button presses required of me to a ccess my account balance on your phone bank service.

As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Let me level the playing field even further. When you call me, press buttons as follows:

1-- To make an appointment to see me.

2-- To query a missing payment.

3-- To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.

4-- To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.

5-- To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.

6-- To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.

7-- To leave a message on my computer (a password to access my computer is required. A password will be communicated to you at a later date to the Authorised Contact.)

8-- To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through 8

9-- To make a general complaint or inquiry, the contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service. While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration of the call.

Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an
establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.

May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous, New Year.



Your Humble Client

.....Even better when you know it was written by a lady who is 98 years old ! I pray that I will have half as much wit should I ever reach her age...

Pimp my ride

19However sad it might seem, I have to admit that one of my favourite shows on TV this year has been Pimp My Ride where some banged up motor is turned into a dream machine by a bunch of custom professionals. I often browse over to TMF to see when the next episode of Pimp my ride is going to be shown and love to settle down to watch the tansformation.
There are UK versions and US versions of the same show and both have pretty much the same format. The presenter starts at the door of the unsuspecting car owner with the news that their car is to be pimped, and their reaction is the first bit of entertainment especially as some of them don't hold back on expressing their delight!!
Then the presenter (Westwood in the UK Xibit in the US) drives the car back to the 'shop where they are greeted by whoops of derision from the mechanics. then the car is stripped to the chassis and totally rebuilt an repainted, reupholstered and has a whole load of gimmicks installed. Sometimes they get an airbrush paint job in a theme suited to the owner, they have some huge gleaming wheels fitted and maybe a games console or DVD player or mini PC fitted just for good measure. the show is rounded off by the resulting re-build being revealed to the owner and here is another chance for the owner to express their glee with various whoopings, quite a few choice expletives, some dance moves (one low-slung individual lost his pants in his celebratory dance...). The ecstatic owner then gets to drive his car back to show his friends who in turn express their disbelief - good wholesome entertainment with great feelgood factor..

Dreaming of rivers of wine...

I seem to be constantly reminded of the things I am missing since we have been living frugally, and the one thing I have been allowing myself as a treat now and again is a bottle of wine..
I got into wine at a late stage really, as I have never been a drinker in my younger days. I started off by trying white wine and finding it quite refreshing, I then graduated onto red wines. I began by working my way through French wines and finding them a bit 'hit and miss' when it comes to consistent quality. However, I then broke into New World wines and was converted on the spot, firstly by Californian wines and latterly by the wines of South East Australia. Now I am no wine buff by any stretch of the imagination, but I find Australian wines not only really tasty, but to be of supremely consistent quality. I have never yet found an Australian red wine that I disliked, even the relatively cheap ones...
One of the things I have promised myself when I am better off, is that I am going to join one of those wine of the month club schemes and have at least half a dozen wines delivered to my house each month - as long as I can find one that specialises in Australian wines, though I will take Californian if push comes to shove.

Bookworm

Recently I seem to spend a lot of my spare time taking my 'spare' PC apart and trying to make it better, or 'Googling' for articles that hep me understand how I can 'fix' it. I am one of those that like to badger away at something, so I will not be satisfied until it is the best I can make it.
This has a detrimental effect on other things I should be doing, such as the long list of DIY tasks for the house and garden.
What also suffers is my reading, I take a similar approach to reading as I do to any other task, once I start I like to devour the book as quickly as possible and generally get really caught up in the story. I also like to find the books from a single author and try to read them all. In this way I have read pretty much everything by Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and by John Grisham. I read them so intently that I am always disappointed when they end (apart from the Thomas Hardy ones, they are so depressing that I often want them to end sooner but I persevere nonetheless...).
Despite the fact that I was really bad at English Literature at school, at least a grounding was provided so that I could get 'into' books later in life when I had become a bit more patient. I believe there are therapeutic properties in calmly sitting down and reading a good book too.
In truth, I probably haven't read a book for more than a year - How about you? What sort of books do you read? Does it say something about you?

Ebaying

I have been doing a lot of eBaying lately selling of some stuff the little one doesn't use any more, and some stuff that I don't use any more... I like to take as professional approach as I can with my eBay sales. I email all purchasers to tell them that their goods are on the way. I always include some paperwork in the package, and I always pack the goods as well as I can.
I figure that I get a good buzz from a package that has been thoughtfully prepared, so I assume my clients will feel the same. I always use clean packaging where possible, and always try to find the original box and instructions for the item as that always gives the impression that you have looked after it well. All my sales go out in shipping boxes that give the right impression to make sure I keep that all important 100% satisfaction rating.

Earnings August 2008

If nothing else, earnings are steady for me month in - month out at the moment. I am averaging about $100 a month and this last month brought in $99.60. In a change of pattern, much more of these earnings are now attributed to adsense and I have reached payout again this month. I would still stress that the majority of my adsense earnings are NOT from blogs, but that balance is beginning to change and it seems that a decent niche blog may be able to yield reasonable adsense earnings - it's not going to make me rich unless I can manage 1000 good niche blogs at the same time, but I am seeing much better results even if Google are no longer including 'blogger' hosted 'dot com' blog keywords in their search results.
Earnings were scattered around paid blogging, adsense and surveys in that order. Surveys just come along when they are suitable so there is not much you can do about increasing activity there, so my focus will be to try to maximise paid posting (blogsvertise sprang back into life again for me this month having ignored me since December) and having a little PR on some of my blogs will help (but for how long??). Adsense is the real aim for me as there is nothing as pleasing as passive income, though to be fair the amount of work you need to do to even make a cent with adsense hardly qualifies as passive...

Making money online

Since I started my own 'make money online' project about two years ago, the dynamics for making money online have changed considerably. This has come about mainly through Google moving the goal-posts by punishing paid links.
Paid posting alone could net you a decent online second income in those days, but those that were doing paid posting are now forced to diversify. I have never been keen on 'paid to click' or paid to read' programs as I can't see any real benefit IE.. I wouldn't feel like I was contributing anything for the payment (also the pay sucks...). So my second stream has been paid surveys and I will talk through the schemes that I use or have used:
Ciao - I used to do these surveys and cashed out twice, but I became frustrated by the amount of times I would spend more than ten minutes on a survey only to find I was not eligible for the survey and would not get paid... The annoying thing was that it was always the same type of questions and if they paid any attention to my profile they would know full well that I would not be eligible for the survey - enough about them, I dumped 'em and will not be going back!
PureProfile - much better system where you get paid for filling out certain parts of your profile to start with and they use this data to filter the surveys you are sent. Not only this but they pay you a small amount even if you turn out not to be eligible to complete the survey. It may take me a while to reach payout, but the process is painless, no problems so far with PureProfile.
dNeero - this is a great scheme and likely to payout quicker than other schemes. the surveys are always short and easy to complete occassionally requiring you to sign up for something, but nothing too onerous. They pay you a set fee for the short survey, then you can earn more by posting the survey widget on a blog based on the traffic it receives. Not only that but you get paid a percentage of the earnings of your referrals. You get a referral when someone joins after clicking on a survey widget on your blog... like this one:

or if you send them an invitation email.
YouGov - The lastest scheme have tried... Like Pureprofile, they pay a small amount regardless of whether you are eligible for the survey and mostly they send surveys which are geared to your profile. Like PureProfile, I think it will take me a while to get to payout, but I have had no problem with this scheme so far...

Am I covered?

If you have seen one of those lists of 'things to do before you're thirty' or 'things to do before you die...' then you will no doubt have considered some of the more risky ventures proposed in those lists. Maybe you are hankering for a bungee jump or want to have a go at sky-diving?
If you've discussed it with colleagues or friends I bet somebody has piped up 'your insurance won't cover you for that!'.
On a more serious note, some medical conditions can make it very difficult to get insurance cover, and in these circumstances you may have to consider the benefits of high risk life insurance. after all, you can get insurance for more or less any circumstances, it's just that it may be more costly and you may have to shop around a bit to get the best deal...

Bedfordshire Uni Clearing 2008

It’s clearing time again, and a last chance to be considering a course in this coming school year. Once again the University of Bedfordshire will be recruiting via the clearing process from 14th August to the middle of September 2008. The University is rated highly for its’ Sports and Media courses which are proving increasingly popular, but is diverse enough to be very well regarded for its’ courses in Journalism, Law and Business. Over the last few years a lot of investment has gone into the university facilities to make the University of Bedfordshire one of the leading educational institutions in the area.
If you are thinking of taking a course, why not give them a ring on their free-phone number and take it from there…

University of Bedfordshire - Clearing 2008 on 0800 013 0925

Mozilla Email client

One of the things that I needed to do when I was trying to recover my online life after the failure of my main PC was to retrieve my emails with POP3 access as opposed to internet emails. I set up some accounts using MS Outlook Express, but for my online income mail I tend to use MS Outlook too.
It was easy enough to recover connection details (although I couldn't recover addresses or the mail archive) for Outlook Express and was up and running in no time. The version of Outlook that I had on my spare PC though was sufficiently different to my current version for me to end up in a frustrating loop whilst trying to set it up. So I took the step of deciding to dump Outlook and try out Mozilla Thunderbird.
Thunderbird turned out to be easy to download and set up and packed with some great features including automatic detection of junk mail. It looks and feels very much like the Outlook software and many of the features and set up are shared. I didn't get a chance to try email rules (which I like to use for spam), but am sure that Thunderbird functionality is at least as good as the Outlook family - and it is of course, completely free!
So Firefox and Thunderbird, two great pieces of free software but where do they get the names? Something from nature combined with an animal: Fire-Fox, Thunder-Bird what other names could Mozilla utilise - how about Mozilla WaterFrog or Mozilla TyphoonBat? Sure beats 'outlook' and 'internet explorer' for imaginative naming anyhow...
Of course Linux users will have been using this software for a long time, and there are more email programs out there that are probably worth mentioning, but if you use Windows in some form the chances are that you will be using the default MS software. I am here to say that there are good reasons to step outside the box and consider other software providers. Next to MS, Mozilla are probably one of the prime most-trusted software providers and all their software is free. If you take the plunge you may be surprised at how good this software is - and if you think MS software is free (because it was pre-loaded onto your PC) just take a look at the price of MS software disks in your local computer shop...

Why Acne?

Acne is a subject that most people are aware of without any in-depth knowledge. For instance, we usually associate acne with teenagers going through puberty, but it can have an effect in later life too.
The basic cause is blockage of the follicles and can be seen primarily on the face, the back, chest and upper arms. Why it is that some people are affected more than others is not clear but could be linked to genetic makeup, stress, ingested medication (including steroids) and factors affecting hormonal activity.

What every man wants...

Call it mid-life crisis if you like, but what man doesn’t get to the stage where he thinks ‘Hmmm a Harley….I could probably afford one of those now…’.
That of course is the sentiment of a white-collar worker, a blue-collar worker may already have an almost-assembled Electra Glide in his garage which has been there for a decade already and has just needed those one or two all-important Harley parts for most of that duration. In many cases your white collar worker will move on and end up with a motor home instead, and the blue collar half-built Harley in the garage will probably end up on eBay someday. the few however, could end up like the guy in the picture...
Such is the stuff of dreams and romance for your average man entering the middle age.

My PC adventures

I am pleased to report the the PC that I created from old parts and a £10 motherboard from eBay has been working perfectly (if not a little slowly) whilst my main PC has been at the menders...
I got a call from the computer shop to say that he had a spare mobo with CPU and RAM left over from a recent upgrade (ironic because the 'old' kit left over from the upgrade was actually better than my original one..). He fitted the new mobo and got it all running for a grand total of £50 which I am more than pleased with.
I have three new 512MB SDRAM chips coming from eBay to add the final touches to my spare PC and I am considering putting another GB of RAM onto my recently refurbished main machine. I was mightily relieved to find that we didn't need to reload the Operating system and all my programs and data are intact..but the lesson is learned and I was glad of the trial run at recovering my online 'life' after a major PC crash. One thing I discovered is that certain parts of my backup system had not been working properly, so that has been all put to rights now. I can certainly see the value of having a 'spare' PC and keeping it up to date in case the same type of thing happens again, and you don't need to spend much to acheive this. Another discovery is that actually computers are not as scary to fix as you might think, and OK we are not getting down to component-level here, but when you consider that parts that make up the whole, ths system is relatively simple to grasp.
Maybe I will start building that dual-core machine...the only thing that stops me is that it is so damn cheap to buy on off the shelf anyway at todays prices.

Moving on from text-speak..

The latest dNeero survey introduces the idea of using images to convey a meaning for those that find typical internet abbreviations or text-speak a bit of a turn off.
The 'talk it up' survey involves a new website that allows you to create visual messages online and then send them to your freinds. Is this the type of service you would enjoy using, are you fed up with text-speak... Well RU ??
Have your say by joining in the conversation and being compensated for your trouble...

Formula one push chairs

The culture around children has changed out of all recognition in the last few decades whether it be as targets for the lastest games and gadgets (PSP, Wii, X-Box etc...) or the amount of effort that now goes into producing some thing like the Maclaren stroller. The equipment that your child wears or travels in is now under scrutiny for development in terms of state-of-the-art materials, technology and most of all...fashion.
In years gone by, the teenager emerged as a target for producers to create products such as the Sony Walkman. In more recent times, this target has widened to include Nike trainers for those that can't yet walk... As with everything, there are upsides and downsides. On the downside is the proportion of our diminishing disposable income that is now ring-fenced by toddler-funding. On the upside is that push-chairs riddled with carbon-fibre and proper tyres with air in them are quite pleasant to use.

A bit fishy....

Well everyone has to have a hobby, and if you take your hobby seriously, you will spend time and money in the pursuit of it. Combining a hobby with a pet or pets is a neat way to have a hobby with added interest. If that involves an aquarium, then it's guaranteed that this is a pursuit that will keep you happy at home, apart from those frequent trips to the aquarium store.
In fact there is a lot of technology involved in keeping a good quarium going, and my preference is to consume rather than observe sea-creatures. However I can see the attraction of maintaining the best conditions to keep those beatiful tropical fish healthy and happy. There is the cleaning and the aeration of the tank to consider, the lighting and heating too. It's not just a case of whether to go for the sunken galleon or the figureine of King Canute resting on the bottom of the aquarium.
I prefer the great outdoors myself and would plump for a dog rather then a home-bound pet, but then you have to spend a lot of time exercising a dog, so the fish are starting to look more attractive.