Page Rank

Page rankings have been recently reassessed so I was looking for a page rank checking utility on line. Of course, for the paid blogger, page rank can be an important factor. A year or so ago, I was surprised to find that my page rank had come back (The history of my page rank has taken up quite a few posts on this blog..).
I checked my rankings again here: http://www.pagerank.net/pagerank-checker/, and am delighted to find that my PR has now risen to 2... I am sharing this link because most PR checking utilities make you fill in a captcha for every submission - the link above has a captcha, but they allow you to submit 20 URL's in one go - more than enough for me to check all of my domains.
I have not really paid so much attention to PR since Google started punishing all paid bloggers, and still find it ironic that Google doesn't like paid posts, but happily pays us to host Adsense on our sites. However some advertisers will still specify a minimum PR when they are looking for paid posts, so PR still has a value - I refuse to make any concessions to Google's preferences, but if they are happy to award me a ranking, I am happy to take it..

Baby Announcements

Friends over the 'pond' have recently had their second little girl, and we are able to keep up with baby announcements and pictures via the wonders of social media. However, for to closer to home births, traditional cards and physical photographs are still the norm.
The growth of social media as a way of staying in touch has not been at the expense of traditional greetings cards and paraphanalia, except at the very edges of that market.

For instance, there are contacts in social media that you would not normally send a physical card to, so an online greeting is perfectly adequate - however if it were a family member or close friend, you cannot substitute an online birthday greeting for a physical card arriving through the post.

Back to School

Tiredness seems to be the theme of this week.. Last week (the first back at school for kids locally) was a week of new exciting things, this week we seem to have hit a bit of a wall. If you don't have someone at school in your household then you may not be quite on the same wavelength, but I feel like I am ready for another holiday already.

Actually I still have (I think) more than a weeks holiday to take, but I am hoping to save them for sometime closer to Christmas. That's right Christmas is on the horizon and my seven-year-old is already asking how many days to Christmas - to be fair though, she has been doing it fairly regularly since last January...

Collection Agencies

One of the biggest problems for businesses both small and large is 'cash-flow', which is why some companies end up engaging collection agencies to keep their debtors to a minimum. It can be a real struggle to balance the money you have to spend, with the slow rate at which your clients are paying you - one of the best ways is to offer early or prompt payment discounts.
However when companies stubbornly refuse to pay, often they will take the debt more seriously once it gets into the hands of an agent

CURT Hitches

Ever since I 'inherited' the company car I have now, the towing hitch electrics have not worked. To make matters worse the hitch sticks out a mile and has come in for quite a few unscheduled meetings with both moveable and immoveable objects alike.
I have been reading up about curt hitches, and I think I may be on the verge of having the old hitch taken off and a completely new one fitted...

Peer to Peer decline?

'The Man' is clamping down on peer-to-peer it seems. My favourite service for watching sports on the internet has been shut down, and this is making viewing very difficult.

Naturally the major broadcasters want to protect their investment, but before the organisers started exploiting their monopolies, all sports used to be available on TV for everyone to watch.

Some years back it would have been assumed that for instance, any England football match would be broadcast on a free TV channel for all. The modern reality is that more and more matches are limited to pay-per-view services leaving the majority turning to Radio 5 live... or searching for a peer-to-peer broadcaster.

I am inclined to think that eventually broadcasters like Sky Sports will be forced to accommodate the peer-to-peer model as it feeds a considerable market which cannot be ignored. The 'market' is those people that don't want to pay to watch a game, but will tolerate watching adverts and sketchy quality broadcasting. I don't think it will be too long before broadcasters could be considering a low-quality alternative to pay-per-view HD broadcasts during which viewers must endure a couple of adverts. Offering a viable alternative is a much better solution rather than bullying free service providers operating outside the confines of the broadcasters franchise.

Instead of trying to close the peer-to-peer sites down, I think the Rupert Murdoch's of this world should adopt the maxim: 'If you can't beat them, join them' and just provide a better service.

Air Ambulance

Hopefully you won't need an air ambulance service on your next holiday, but wouldn't it be a good idea to sign up with an insurance service that has these facilities available just in case?

If you get ill abroad, or even at home, it costs an incredible amount of money to airlift a casualty, and whilst no-one expects to need this type of facility, how reassuring it would be to know that you have that type of backup behind you.

Everlon Collection

September is often an expensive month for me as I have three family birthdays including both parents and my wife in the space of seven days.

Normally I would not really consider jewellery as an option other than for a very special present (like a significant birthday), but the everlon diamond collection from 'Reeds' represents great value for money as they are heavily discounted, often as much as about 35-40%.

Getting the priorities right

As we approach the anniversary of 9/11, we are reminded (or should be) that life is not all about what we can 'make' for ourselves, but much more about the connections we make with others through our lifetime. I don't know anyone who lost a friend or relative in the tragedy, but I do know people who were in New York at the time, and I recall distinctly first seeing the horrific images on the TV screen with growing incredulity that this could possibly be happening.
Unlike a natural disaster like the awful Tsunami and subsequent flooding, this disaster was deliberate and intended which is why it is all the more horrific.
In our current economic climate it is even more imperative that we all look beyond our short term well-being, and work towards a future that is politically and economically secure for the generations to come. It's all about engaging with society even if you don't agree with everyone, we can agree that we all want to make the future more secure, and go from there. The recent riots in the UK (actually there were similar events in other European cities), are about the opposite, promoting anarchy and disengagement with the established society.

Whilst revolution may be on some folk's minds, you only have to look at the recently blood spilled in Libya, Syria, Egypt and similar regions to know that revolution should be a last resort in a region where torture and murder of citizens occurs on a daily basis. For these people revolution was a self-defence mechanism, not an opportunity to grab an Xbox game from a broken shop window.

August 2011

Being away at the end of the month has delayed my monthly income report, and to be fair, since I was on vacation, I have not even been thinking much about what my earnings for August might have been.

Altogether, it has not been my busiest month on all fronts, nonetheless, earnings have continued to come in.. a modest £79 is still a welcome addition to the coffers. This month has seen a small return on some of my expenditure on faulty laptops, but for the moment, I am not including these figures in my 'earnings' report. I think it may turn a small profit, but on the whole, I don't think there are vast amounts to be made from this venture, yet I am glad that I gave it a go.

This month, I have reached (yet to be paid) another payout for Adsense which is always a welcome landmark, I have done a few tape to CD conversions and a few paid postings, for some of which I will have to wait a month for payment. I have been assessing the effectiveness of affiliates and am pleased to find that I am getting great results from one of my affiliates and am expecting to be able to report more earnings next month - not massive earnings as yet, but this may be an affiliate that might be worth spending a bit more time and effort on. Ultimately affiliates are the perfect goal as they are true passive earnings once they are set up. However you can never really leave this type of project completely alone, traffic does not usually arrive of it's own accord.