Car Insurance

Everyone is using price comparison sites to get an auto insurance quote, house insurance and even quotes for utility bills. It is a sign of the times, that we are always shopping around for the best offer to save some much-needed money. As bills such as insurances come up for renewal, it makes sense to try a number of vendors to get a better offer. What the comparison site does though, is gives you all those vendors, and allows you to compare without going to several different sites and having to re-enter the same set of data over and over again.

Appetite suppressants

I get a bit concerned when I see the term appetite suppressants as opposed to simply diet pills or fat-burners. These are obviously intended to interfere with the bodies natural craving for food and therefore need to be treated with caution and respect. Medications whether on prescription or bought over the counter or over the internet should always be accompanied with advice on how to use them properly.
Always read the instructions and take proper notice of recommended dosages, find out the likely or possible side-effects and above all get good professional medical advice. Most medications available are perfectly safe and well-tested, but many are very effective and should always be treated with proper caution and respect.

TV keeps evolving

As the UK spends the week frantically retuning their 'freeview' digital TV receivers, we are left to ponder the power of Television and the way it shapes our lives. It is a phenomenon that is ever-changing and all-consuming, providing entertainment and news often in a way that makes it difficult to distinguish one from the other. We have welcomed cable and satellite TV, and are now in the process of completely phasing out analogue TV altogether. We have seen the advent of the flat screen, the plasma screen and have plasma mounts specially designed to hold them. Having slimmer TV's and a way to keep them from hogging too much of our living area contrasts the way in which TV is becoming a bigger part of our lives. I reckon probably about 50% of our conversations are informed or inspired by TV, and most of us would be lost without it.

The best fat-burner

So which is the best fat burner available? Is it a pill or is it the sort of physical exercise that makes you sweat? Everybody has an opinion, and probably the best approach is a combination of factors:

• A diet of sensible food, cutting out 'silly' foods but still retaining a reasonable intake of healthy options (raw carrot replacing chocolate, a salad bowl instead of a 'fry-up')
• A good regime of exercise - walking instead of using the car, going for a run a few times a week
• Medication (in extreme cases and with professional advice) the key to using medication to burn fat is to get good advice about what would be best for you. Self-medicating may be a risky path to take.

The best way to start a weight-loss rogram is to have a 'buddy' who can accompany you when exercising, help you to exercise discipline and ensure that you get the best advice concerning medications.

Using affiliates

I am not a great advocate of affiliates like some people are, but I do see their value. I have cashed out twice from my favourite affiliate scheme, shareasale.com and just received a 'check' for $53. Actually cashing that cheque proved to be highly problematic and quite expensive. I had to drive to a branch of my bank and spent £3.50 on parking ($5), added to that, the bank charged me £8 (£11) to pay in a foreign currency cheque, leaving about $37 remaining from the original $53.
Never mind, next time I will take the option of a direct bank deposit which costs just $7 if I select the option from my Shareasale account.
ShareAsale have lots of different affiliates on offer, affiliates work best if they are very closely associated with the niche that you are working. Although I have tried a lot of different affiliates, only a few actually come to fruition - the more closely they are associated with your site visitors needs, the likelier you are to achieve some sales and make commission.

Fat burners

Whether you are looking for a fat burner or a 'performance enhancer', the world of internet purchasing is rife with unregulated medication. Whilst many providers of this type of medication are no doubt reputable suppliers, caution should be exercised. Only buy from sites that have a trading history and contact details that include a real address. Only buy products that you have researched and found to be suitable for you specifically - and best of all, get advice from a medical professional.
Don't forget that however good a product may be, there are always some side effects that make it unsuitable for certain people groups. Always check to make sure that you don't have a pre-existing condition that precludes you from using the medication in question.

When will I have the time?

I have been 'doing up' my house for more than 10 years at not too fast a pace... My lack of speed is not entirely due to my laziness, a lack of funds has also played a significant part. In that long time, I think we have managed to completely refurbish three rooms, leaving us four rooms and the hallway and landing to complete. The current project is the hallway, it has been stripped and we had some tiles laid down to replace the exisiting floor tiles.
The current project has been rudely interrupted when I got distracted by the renovation of our outside toilet which seemed to take up the best of the Summer months this year.
One of the major problems with my method of working is that I am too thorough, not content to replace carpets in our dining room, I ended up taking up the floorboards and replaced the flooring joists too - a task which took me several years to complete.
There is little chance that I will ever complete the house at the current rate of working, so I will need to either speed things up or become a lot more wealthy so I can pay someone else to do all the work.

OpenOffice

As part of my 'useful free software packages for a fresh PC install' CD that I have made and have given to a few friends, I included the OpenOffice package as an alternative to MS Office. I have just discovered a useful feature of OpenOffice which makes it even more essential. At work the other day a client sent us a MS Excel file which had been created in the latest version of Excel, and as you may know sneaky MS have added digits to their file extensions so that older versions cannot open the files. For instance, the file we were sent had the extension 'xlsx' instead of the old 'xls' extension.
As we have no plans to buy the latest version of MS Office, eventually I fired up OpenOffice which was immediately able to open the file. Not only tha,t but I could export the file as an older format so that my colleagues in the office who didn't have OpenOffice could open the sheet in their older version of Excel - another triumph for 'Open Source'.
This got me thinking, why would anyone even bother with these expensive software packages when free versions are so much more flexible??
For those who don't know, OpenOffice is a freely downloadable suite of programs that replicate all the functionality of MS Office and will seemlessly import most MS Office documents whether they be WORD, EXCEL or POWERPOINT etc... there are actually six programs in the suite including drawing and database programs.

College Degrees Online

Hold on... This is not a post that is going to replicate one of those dodgy emails that somehow find their way into your inbox - this is about real colleges that can offer a real Online masters degree from a real highly rated school.
The trouble with the culture that has grown up around online education is that very few quality colleges are offering online qualifications because of the association with scam emails offering qualifications for cash.
Gonzaga University is a real institution with a campus a football team, a student union and every other attribute that you would expect. They also have worked hard to be able to offer some of their courses in an online format for busy professionals who otherwise cannot make the commitment to study in conventional programs.
So if you had given up on online education believing that all online 'courses' are a scam, think again because there is at least one genuine institution out there which can offer you the real deal.

Online purchasing

Is it despite the current economic climate or because of it, that there seems to be more and more online trading and less high street trading. We are now well-versed in the fact that anything from weight loss pills to new cars can be bought online, but we need to take some precautions in the online trading world.
We are far more susceptible to all sorts of fraud in online trading than we would be using more traditional methods, here is a short checklist:
Does the trader have a good track record?
Is the product offered, also available on the High Street?
Are transactions taking place on a secure server?
Do you have the physical address of the organisation you are dealing with?
Online trading can save you a lot of money as long as you are aware of the potential pitfalls, and as with any purchases, get lots of advice before you buy...

Home-building

I have been very pleased with my latest DIY triumph..
I renovated our ancient outside toilet which had become more of a storage space. I was originally just going to clean it up and tidy up the wiring in there (I had previously put in a fuse box to supply electricity to the garden shed). After a bit of thought, I realised that it was no good having a working toilet unless there were taps and a sink for hand-washing. So I ended up plumbing in hot and cold water and a basin with outflow, making the whole job somewhat more complicated.

Of course, we are not talking about a chic stone sink as something very petite was required in order not to take up too much of the small amount of room available. I ended up using a 'hopper' from a rain collecting gutter-system as it was small and happened to have the right sized hole to take a bottle-trap. The end result would not win any design awards, but I felt that considering the small outlay, the finished article is very pleasing. I used tongue and groove panelling to cover all the pipework, and put all of the wiring into ducts and junctions into sealed boxes. The woodwork was stained a dark mahogany and I am pleased to say that the facility has been getting plenty of use as it is always handy to have a spare convenience...

I had one last trick up my sleeve... the hot and cold taps are both the kind of taps that you can connect a garden hose to - that way, when we have a paddling pool in the garden, we will be able to put warm water in there as well as cold water...

I now have three PC's!...

...and two laptops....
I was actually offered an intel PC last week for £25, which was tempting, but I already had two PC's at home, a third one in bits and two works laptops...
I have assembled my third PC just to test everything is working before putting the parts on eBay, and all went well which means I currently have three desktops on the go.... I must now break it down again before placing the components on eBay. Like cars, you can get more for your PC if you break it down than if you sell the whole thing as a working unit...
I will soon have a 1.8GHz AMD Athlon to sell and an ECS motherboard (both socket 939) I have loads of other components, but to sell them off individually would not be cost effective, so I thought I might advertise them as add-ons to the motherboard and CPU. For instance, I seem to have endless supplies of CD ROM drives and PC Power supplies which are individually not really worth anything, but might sell alongside another component.
I also seem to have a plentiful supply of network cards and modems, but I don't think there is much of a market for dial-up modems nowadays - if anyone has any ideas of where all this junk can be offloaded, please let me know!!

Losing fat...

I am always amazed at the endless advice on how to lose belly fat as I personally have always had problems increasing my weight... Although in latter years to be fair I have been known to look at 32" waist trousers to replace some of my tighter 30" pairs...
My preferred method of keeping belly fat off is to exercise like a lunatic twice a week when I play five a side football, although I do understand that for others, popping pills seems to be an easier route.
Using medication is all very well in principal, but this approach should be used cautiously - only buy from reputable sellers and get all the relevant safety information before-hand. Some medications should not be used by people with specific medical conditions, so advice from your doctor should also be heeded.

Cutting back

Even the wealthy are looking to save money on Ferrari parts and caviar in the current economic squeeze. If there is one people-group who know how to save money - it's the wealthy after all, how do you think they got wealthy in the first place??
If you check all your outgoings whether it be your regular food-shopping, your insurances or car expenses, there are sure top be places where you can make savings, and the Ferrari-drivers are just as likely to be looking for a bargain as you are... My motto has always been 'the quickest way to make money is to save money' - take a look at your outgoings, find the cheapest suppliers for all your needs and you should find that you have a few extra bucks in your pocket at the end of the month.

Personal Injury

Gone are the days when accidents just happened, modern society demands reparation for every accident and incident that impacts on our daily lives. Whether it is through a crack in the pavement or a whiplash injury in your car, every inconvenience can now be recovered by a personal injury lawyer.
There are national an no doubt even international companies that will deal with your case, but having a local lawyer within easy reach should get you a more personal touch. If you require a personal injury lawyer you would be well-advised to do an online search by 'Googling' for Seattle personal injury lawyer for example...

Get yourself noticed

Getting visitors to your site and backlinks makes up much of the 'back-room' work that goes into creating a successful website, and of course those 'in the know' have methods to make this process as painless as possible.
Posting comments (including your URL) on sites that allow commenting is one method that many bloggers use, getting a directory listing on a renowned directory is another.
There are plenty of directories around so it pays to look for the best ones rather than wasting your time adding your site to useless ones. There are free directories and paid directories, so which ones are best to promote your site?
I have used auto-submission software that can speed up the process by saving your details and populating the submission forms for you and I can recommend that method for getting yourself added to a lot of directories quickly. Also it makes sense to find directory sites that are specific to your niche market if possible - it's all very well having a back-link, but a quality back-link is so much the better.

August 2009 earnings

The diagram is pretty self-explanatory... PayU2blog remain ahead of the field for earnings for me, I have not visited Sponsored Reviews lately but plan to do so hunting for new higher-paying opps.
Contextual adverts have continued to produce a small amount along with surveys and other paid-to-blog services.
I haven't really taken all the opps that I could have done or really pushed my earnings at all this month as I am continuing to concentrate on other projects. I have continued to report earnings in dollars which means the reports are not as accurate as they could be, I am still considering a different way of reporting earnings which may incorporate all earnings (and maybe even outgoings) from other projects as well as blogging. If I choose to do this, it will probably be 'paid out' amounts rather than 'earned'. Many schemes wait about 30 days before paying out, so being able to report these as 'earnings' does not accurately reflect actual cash dropping into my PayPal account. One advantage of doing things this way is that Paypal will convert the dollars into UK£ for me, so I will only have to report one currency and there won't be any guesswork involved, the amounts will reflect actual earnings. The disadvantage will be that the survey companies typically take ages to pay out and the payments (when they come) will appear suddenly without warning.