Just For Fun - Interactive Map of Europe

Follow the link for a simple political map of Europe with some interactive features. As you mouse over each country the name and capital will appear. You also have to option to turn major city locations on and off.

This might not just be for the kids! How familiar are we with all the changes in eastern Europe in the recent decade? Check it out.

Interactive Map of Europe

Gone Hiking

I've gone hiking again! There are a some posts scheduled for while I am gone, but I won't be able to update the income tracking every day. Thanks for stopping by!

Don't forget to take the poll.

What is Entrecard Up to Now?

All Entrecard users received another cryptic message from the new owners yesterday. It says "We are pleased that many members are taking advantage of Entrecard services and that Entrecard is able to help users increase traffic to their blog. However in order to continue providing this free service, we will be taking 15% of our entire ad network inventory for sponsors as of Sept. 28"

It does explain that we will be able to "disable sponsor ads" that we don't like.

No one knows what this means, really. There is some discussion going on at the forum, with the return of paranoia too. Several negative posts have not been approved, and people are wondering if we are back to the old days of censorship.

I am concerned that "disable sponsor ads" means that they will run until we see them and block them. Two of my blogs are specifically focused on quiet outdoor recreation, and I don't want certain kinds of ads there. EC has promised no nudity, violence, or anything illegal. Well, there is a lot of sleaze that doesn't quite fall to those levels that I really don't want to advertise.

Most people think this will mean that 15% of the time an Entrecard paid ad will show instead of one purchased by another blogger with EC credits. So the value of those credits, which are already the lowest since I joined, will go down even more.

My blogs get very few click-thrus from other EC ads any more anyway, even though total hits from all sources are up. The value seems to be mostly in banner exposure. I hate to have that reduced to 85% of what it is now.

I would be willing to display paid EC ads 100% of the time IF they were something like this mockup. No links here... this is just to give an idea of what it would look like. These would be my conditions:

1. There was an ad or ads appropriate to my topics
2. I could choose what ads to display ahead of time
3. It was a two-box system- similar to my mockup.

What do you think?

web ad income Sept 21 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.29 Adgitize $.55 Project Wonderful $.01 Shareapic $.01 Chitika $.31 ______________________ Total: $1.17

Access Tip - Ordering Items in a Form Combo Box

When building an Access database you may create what's called a combo box to provide a drop-down list of choices for a field in a form. Note that in the picture above, the list of choices is conveniently in alphabetical order.



However, in the table from which that combo box is getting its information the list is not alphabetical. Of course, you can choose to order that table alphabetically for that field, but this will NOT make the choices alphabetical in the combo box. So how does one do that?



Here are the steps:

• Open the form in design view
  
• Select the field you want to order and right click
  
• Select Properties
  
• Select Data- this will give you the image above
  
• Under Row Source, hover at the end of the row and click the little box with three dots
  
• This opens a query- see the image below
  
• Under Sort, choose Ascending

Make sure that you choose to save the changes made to the design of the form when prompted. Your Access drop down list should now be in alphabetical order.

An alternate way would be to build an intermediate query from which the combo box reads, but this way is more economical.

web ad income Sept20 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.13 Adgitize $.59 Project Wonderful $.03 Shareapic $.02 Chitika $.02 ______________________ Total: $.79

Project Wonderful Denies Application

As I mentioned last Tuesday I had not signed this blog up for Project Wonderful ads, so I put in an application. That application was denied. Here is what they said.

"Our website review process forms an assessment of a website using a variety of criteria. These criteria include, but are not limited to, suitable content, ease of site navigation, and the website's potential value to Project Wonderful and the experience of its members. Unfortunately your website, at http://justthrowmoney.blogspot.com, does not currently fulfill these requirements."

OK, so I won't get an extra penny a day. It's hard to care. But I am curious as to what elements of this site are problematic. I checked out the standards they use to evaluate sites.

"Adult content" - none of that here
"Sensitive content" i.e. hate speech, etc - none of that here
"Not enough content" must have at least 30 quality posts - This is post #129
"Duplicated content" - all my posts are original
"Clean site design" - I think it's fine>
"Sponsored content" - this has to be the problem. The standard continues

This one mainly applies to blogs. There are blogs which have accepted money in order to link certain products. This can take a few forms: "review posts" (usually with affiliate links), links to other sites through click-tracking relays, double-underlined links on keywords, and so on. We have found that such tactics are very anti-reader and cause any additional advertisements (i.e., ours) to perform very poorly. If you have such posts on your site, it's unlikely we'll be able to have you as a publisher.

I'm a bit shocked at this even so... Of my 129 posts, there is one which is a paid product review, and one which is a paid article. There are no double-underlined links. I don't even know what a "click-tracking relay" is, but I don't think I have any- can't be things like AdSense because lots of PW members use that. I don't have any popup ads. I sure am trying to NOT include "anti-reader" tactics!

I found several blogs on PW that are similar to mine including Internet Report About My Idea, and Indocontest, and possibly more (I got tired of working through the list.)

Anyway... it looks like if you have a blog that focuses on making money by blogging that you won't be approved by Project Wonderful. Corneymans Moneypage was also recently declined.

See Changing My Project Wonderful Strategy

web ad income Sept 19 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.11 Adgitize $.60 Project Wonderful $.02 Shareapic $.01 Clixsense $.05 Chitika $.03 Microworkers $.20 ______________________ Total: $1.02

First Results From Chitika

A few days ago I signed up with Chitika, an adserver that shows results only to viewers who come from a search engine. But it takes several days for the results to begin to show in your report. Now I am seeing the results.

So far, as a total over the six days that I've had Chitika on pages of my Get Off The Couch web site, there have been 11 clicks on ads, and I have earned $.18. I am pleased.

I still don't have the code on all the pages of that web site. It has a lot of layers. So it's possible that my average return will improve a little bit as I get that job completed.

You can label the code so that your results show what "channel" (page) the results come from. I'm pretty sure that I read you can have up to 1000 channels, but I can't find that information now. With PayPal you are paid 30 days after the end of a month in which you earned income, if the balance is over $10. That's lots more reasonable than AdSense where you have to wait to have $100 to cash out.

See Chitika

web ad income Sept 18 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.12 Adgitize $.55 Project Wonderful $.02 ______________________ Total: $.69

Watch out for GreenAV_install.exe

I received a popup telling me that I had 14 files infected with a virus. It asked me to download and install GreenAV_install.exe. I managed to check on this file despite the difficulty of working around the popup box. Here is what I found.

This appears to be a totally fake virus scam. There are messages posted on all sorts of boards, but very little definitive information. But you certainly do NOT want to download this file, no matter how official the virus check page looks.

It seems to be showing up mostly to FireFox users, but it doesn't seem to matter very much what you are doing. You may see the popup appear at any time. DO NOT download the GreenAV_install.exe file.

See Mozilla Forum

web ad income Sept 17 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.12 Adgitize $.53 Project Wonderful $.03 Chitika $.03 ______________________ Total: $.71

Trying Associated Content Slide Show to Monetize Images

I've been a writer at Associated Content for over two years, and have mixed feelings about the venue, but they have recently added the ability to create slide shows.

This presented itself as another possible way to gain income for showing my images. You can earn for "performance payments" only, and the rate is the same as articles. That means you get $1.50 for 1000 views. So this morning I set out to create a slide show there to see how much I like it.

First of all, you can't get the interface to work in Firefox. They don't say that anywhere; I had to communicate with an author friend to find that out. So you have to use Internet Explorer. I haven't tried it in Chrome yet.

Their terms for image use are quite strict. Even if you only use your own photos, if there are people in them you are supposed to be sure to have permission from each person to use the photo. This is really the way you are supposed to use photos anywhere, but AC will suspend you in a heartbeat if someone complains that you posted a picture of them without permission. That's not like a law suit, but it would be the end of that income stream.

The interface to create the show is as cumbersome as any of these sorts of photo upload sites. No big surprise there. But another real annoyance is that you only have 255 characters to label each image. You can use as many images as you want, however, in a show.

Here's the biggest drawback in my mind. I want a way that people can see a larger version of a picture that I might use on a blog. This is not going to do that for me. The images are displayed in a tiny thumbnail strip at the top of the show, and then the "full-size" display is no larger than what I can put on a blog. So that hope is completely dashed.

Perhaps the only use for it to link from a blog would be to show additional images on a similar topic, rather than clogging up a blog post.


See my first Associated Content slideshow Flickertail Observed in Minnesota
See I Love/Hate Associated Content

web ad income Sept 16 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.13 Adgitize $.54 Project Wonderful $.02 Shareapic $.02 Clixsense $.01 ______________________ Total: $.73

Shareapic vs Shared Images

I've been only moderately happy with Shareapic, and have been looking for another image host that would pay for views. While cleaning out some emails today I discovered that I already was a member of Shared Images (sharedimages.org). I believe that I signed up for them as the result of a writing assignment many months ago to review the site.

Well! I liked what I saw about the payment options, although it is difficult to predict exactly how well one would do there since there is a scale that measures "quality of traffic." And I'm not even going to tell you more about this site because I really don't want to go back there, or send you there. In fact I've asked them to delete my account.

I had set up an album there as a result of the assignment, but had never uploaded a picture. So I did that. It was mildly annoying since the maximum size is 1MB, which meant that if I were going to use them every photo from my camera would need to be resized and saved before uploading- a real space waster unless I took the time to delete each one after uploading.

But the final straw was when I viewed the image to see what kinds of ads they would serve to gain their income. It was pornography, plain and simple.

I know that the ads at Shareapic are sometimes a bit racy. I know that they accept ads from some places that I believe to be scams. But at least the girls in their ads have a few threads of fabric over certain places. No such luck at Shared Images. And the poses are not artistic if you get my drift. I'm no prude; I'm fine with fine art. This was not art.

So for now I will put up with the inability to organize my galleries (albums) at Shareapic, and the sometimes annoying ads. But I'll keep looking for another option to earn a few pennies with my pictures.

Shareapic Temporarily Suspends Payments

web ad income July 15 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.15 Adgitize $.56 Project Wonderful $.02 Shareapic $.02 Clixsense $.04 Chitika $.09 ______________________ Total: $.88

The One Million EC Blog Contest!

Cornyman has devised an interesting new type of blog contest, where some winners are determined by commenting, and larger prizes by random draw. The current one runs from September 15-21. So get ready to play!

For this week, until Sept 21, you need to go to the following blogs and look for the list of their entries on which they desire comments. Comments must be at least two sentences long and relate to the post- NO SPAM.

Business Sphere
Your Daily Photo Depot
Lunaticg Banknote & Coin
Frugality is the New Reality
Business Sphere
Blogging Tips

One other sponsor The One Minute Guide is providing an extra 500 EC each week for a random winner, no comment needed.

The rules are a bit complex. Before jumping in, it is recommended that you go to Corneyman's Money Blog and read the complete rules. Contests will continue with a new one each week until the end of the year!

web ad income July 14 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.14 Adgitize $.53 Project Wonderful $.03 Shareapic $.02 Clixsense $.05 ______________________ Total: $.79

Changing My Project Wonderful Strategy

I've had an account with Project Wonderful for five months now, and I've earned $10.46, and spent $3.04 on ads I've placed on other blogs. I haven't withdrawn any funds yet. (There is a $10 minimum withdrawal and a $1 processing fee.)

As I explained yesterday, one site that I had Project Wonderful ads on was delisted. I finally have figured out that the problem with counting visits is that I did not have an ad on the index page, but only on sub-pages. Their system will count sub-pages as part of the parent page, but not child pages at an equal level.

I regularly make about 3 to 5 cents a day on My Quality Day, but the Get Off The Couch News blog often is running ads that cost the advertisers nothing. In an effort to gain at least a bit of income from that page I've reduced the number of ad boxes there to one. That way, every time another advertiser selects that blog it pushes the price up by a cent. And, even though it's not a great fit, I placed it in the Travel category, rather than leaving it uncategorized.

And, I also realized that I don't have this blog signed up with them. So I put in an application (each blog must be separately approved). It can take up to four days to receive an approval, so it will be a few days before I can place an ad box here.



Project Wonderful
Project Wonderful Connects Advertisers with the Web

web ad income Sept 13 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.11 Adgitize $.53 Project Wonderful $.03 Shareapic $.01 Clixsense $.11 ______________________ Total: $.79

Trying Out Chitika, Cutting Back on Project Wonderful

Today I signed up for Chitika to replace Project Wonderful on my web site Get Off The Couch. Chitika serves targeted ads to a blog or web site, but only to those who come to that site through a search engine.

This may sound odd, but what this means is that regular site visitors will not be assaulted with as many ads. But those who search for something specific will be shown ads that match well with their search term. You are paid only for clicks on the ads.

Chitika IS compatible with Google AdSense. Both may be used on the same page. I signed up today, and despite a "warning" that it can take up to two days to be approved, I received my approval in just a few hours.

I figure that I can't do worse than I was with Project Wonderful on that web site, since I never made anything there with them. Even worse, for some reason the Project Wonderful visit counter would not register most of the traffic there, and disabled my ads on that site twice. I discussed this with the PW managers, and they assured me that with a couple of tweaks that my ads wouldn't be disabled again. But just this week they were. My Google Analytics tells me that the site is getting plenty of traffic, so the whole thing is a mystery.

Chitika is my potential solution. It will take me a while to get the code on all the pages of Get Off The Couch, but I've put in on some of them today. It takes three days for statistics to begin to show up. I'll report again when I begin to see some results.

Chitika

web ad income Sept 12 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.15 Adgitize $.59 Project Wonderful $.04 Shareapic $.01 ______________________ Total: $.79

What is a Reasonable Ad Price on a Blog? You Tell Me!

There is great disparity in prices for 125x125 ads on blogs. I am curious to see what people think about what an ad should be worth.

For those who use Project Wonderful, most ad slots seem to settle in at 2 to 3 cents a day, which translates to less than $1.00 a month. A few blog with very high traffic seem to be able to command a higher price.

I've seen people advertising private sell ads for anywhere from $3.00 to $6.00 a month.

Many bloggers are familiar with Entrecard and CMF ads which use an internal accounting system. CMF has recently switched to a cash system rather than points. Many ads there run 50 cents a month, but ads are likely to be shared and not get full-time exposure.

Adgitize ads seem to cost more at $14.00 a month, but with the incentive to click on other ads in the system the cost can be recouped for those who also wish to take the time to do so.

Of course, the worth of a blog as an advertisement venue also depends on the amount of traffic a blog receives. Ways to evaluate this might be Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, unique visitor count, or pageviews.

I am adding a poll to my sidebar to run till I get home from my next hike. Let's assume that a blog has a Page Rank of 3, an Alexa Rating of about 150,000, and receives 150 pageviews a day from 80 unique visitors. In other words, this would be a blog that does a bit better than average. What do you think would be a reasonable price to charge per month for an ad on that blog?

web ad income Sept 11 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.31 Adgitize $.56 Project Wonderful $.02 Clixsense $.07 ______________________ Total: $.96

Free Page Rank Checker

Recently, the free service I had been using to check my Google Page Rank went belly up, and I needed to find another one. At Page Rank Checker you can enter any web site or blog URL and find out the rank of your page.

Page Rank Checker also offers three differently sized "chicklets" to place on your site and continuously show the page rank.

Google page rank depends to a great extent upon the number of backlinks to your site. Ranks go from na (essentially zero), to 10, a rank held only by the very busiest sites. For a blog, a Google PR of 3 is very decent, 4 or 5 is exceptional. The ranks are not updated very often.

This, the newest of my blogs still has a low ranking. I was very pleased to see that in the recently updated rankings my three other blogs each have a Google Page Rank of 3.

Page Rank Checker

web ad income Sept 10 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.05 Adgitize $.55 Project Wonderful $.02 Shareapic $.01 Clixsense $.04 Microworkers $.07 ______________________ Total: $.74

Is Your Friend Stranded in London?

I received an email from a friend the other day, saying that he was stranded in London, had all his documents and wallet stolen, and needed money. Right away I was quite sure that it was a hoax, because the writer does not sound like someone whose first language is English, yet this came through with the correct email from that person. That's a bit scary!

I emailed a couple of his friends who live near him and asked them to let him know about this situation.

Since then, I've found out a bit more about this newest hoax. Apparently this can come from someone hacking into Facebook accounts. However, the friend I received this from is not on Facebook, so there are apparently other sources.

There is a news item about this scam in the Orlando Sentinel (see link below). A friend of the writer's actually sent some money! It's not new advice. BE SAVVY about your emails.

Facebook 419 Scam, from the Orlando Sentinel

web ad income Sept 9 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.03 Adgitize $.54 Project Wonderful $.02 Shareapic $.01 Microworkers $.14 Pine Cone Research $3.00 Associated Content $2.58 ______________________ Total: $6.32

Squishy Cash is Just Plain Annoying

Squishy Cash is just plain annoying. I read on a blog much like mine about someone who made some reasonable daily cash there- several dollars a day. So I went to check it out.

You can earn money by completing surveys, playing in site lotteries and contests, and a few other tasks. Payment is through Amazon, Check or PayPal, with a $20 payout minimum. However, most of the paying opportunities are by signing up for various offers. I am rather leery of these kinds of things anyway, even though my email is pretty much available to anyone who wants it. But when I started looking at them there was a lot of information needed for most of the offers. Many of them are the kind of deal where you have to sign up for 3 of these offers, and 2 of these offers, and then you get something else. They take a lot of time, and most are worth less than 50 cents.

There are five daily surveys that you can take which are worth 50 cents each. However, unless you are in some other demographic than I fit into, you will have to fill out 5 or 6 screens of information and then will be told that you don't qualify for the survey.

I just don't feel that it's worth my time, and I think that's saying something since I do a number of other small-paying offers. However, if this kind of thing appeals to you, Squishy Cash has collected a lot of these offers into one place.

Squishy Cash

web ad income July 8 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.18 Adgitize $.48 Project Wonderful $.02 ______________________ Total: $.68

"Honest" Traffic

It is always a difficult question- "how to generate traffic to a web site?" In my personal opinion, traffic that comes from searches, direct interest in a person's blog, and voluntary clicks on links or ads are of a higher value than those from traffic exchanges. They just seem more "honest."

On the other hand, you can't get people to come back to your site if they've never seen what you have to offer in the first place. I've used plenty of traffic exchange sites as I have tried to build my blogs' reputations.

However, I am now very happy to say that I seem to be generating almost the same level of visits without using the traffic exchanges that I was before I went hiking. I believe that some of this comes from the increased number of advertisers in the Adgitize network.

However, it can't all be attributed to that, since I only have an ad for My Quality Day with them, and not my other blogs. Most of my traffic on MQD comes from Adgitize. Most of the traffic on Get Off The Couch News comes from Google searches, and visitors on North Country Trail News come equally from searches and direct traffic. I just added this blog to Google Analytics, so that I can track it too.

At any rate, I am very happy to be getting more of what I call "honest" traffic. I'll keep trying to provide quality content. Now if I could just get an Affiliate Advertiser to accept the blogs!

web ad income Sept 7 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.34 Adgitize $.49 Project Wonderful $.05 Shareapic $.02 Shared Reviews $31.57 ______________________ Total: $32.47

How Did My Blogs Fare While I Was Away

I was asked in a comment to discuss what happened with traffic to my blogs and income while I was away hiking. I was away from blogging for the entire month of August Each blog had a message that stated that I was away and suggested that people play the scavenger hunt I had running on My Quality Day.

The results are actually quite mixed, so I'll discuss each one separately.

The blog Get Off The Couch News lost about half of its traffic. It is a long-established blog, with posts going back to June 2007. Quite a few of the hits there are on older posts coming from searches for specific topics.

The blog North Country Trail News dropped from an average of about 500 views per day down to about 200 per day. I was kind of disappointed about this. I did some promotion among trail people, and thought that would show up as a spike, but it didn't. This blog has been running since November 2008, not even a year yet, and its readership has tripled, but being gone for a month really hurt. I did manage to put up a couple of posts from the trail. It's coming back up, but I know I'll have to demonstrate a commitment to good articles. It's something of a niche blog anyway, so I don't expect it will ever have a huge readership.

The blog My Quality Day suffered the least. Of course, this is because I had posts scheduled that went up every other day with the scavenger hunt clues, and I managed to add a few "live" posts from my hike. Nevertheless, my Alexa rank there had risen to 81,xxx, and now it has fallen to 91,xxx. Still, that's under 100,000, so I can't complain! Views had been averaging about 1000 a day, and dropped to about 500.

This blog, Just Throw Money, suffered the most. It is the newest, and the traffic dropped off to almost nothing. I can understand that, but I'm trying to build a readership here too. The premise here is, can a blogger make money without signing up for thousands of sleazy offers, schemes, and time wasters. The verdict is still out on that.

So what happened to the income? It pretty much dried up. All the sites where I need to do something to generate income were unattended. Even on Adgitize, I only managed to click ads a few days. I made $6.94 in August, not enough to offset the $14.00 I paid to continue my ad. AdSense trudged along bringing in its two to five cents a day. I returned home in time to do what I could to gain income at Shared Reviews, but our earnings from SR for August haven't been posted yet. I expect to know that in the next couple of days, and am anticipating something in the $20 range. There isn't much of any way to compare this with a "normal" month there because they just came back to paying after a long hiatus. I did make $31.57 there in July, and it was just paid to me today. (But it's a lot of work for that money... yet most of these online earning deals take way too much time for what you get.)

My conclusion is that leaving a blog pretty much unattended for a month is really a serious wound. Not a death blow, but it can cause a lot of damage to whatever reputation one has built up. I wish I could have scheduled more posts ahead of time, but I'm right out on the edge of what I can keep up with to maintain four blogs, so it just didn't happen. I continue to try to maintain fresh content, without participating in weekly memes. I enjoy things like "Looking at the Sky Friday," and others, but my ego is large enough that I just want original content. We'll see if I can continue to deliver.

web ad income Sept 6 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.04 Adgitize $.54 Project Wonderful $.05 Shareapic $.01 Clixsense $.07 Microworkers $.07 Textbroker $39.40 ______________________ Total: $40.19

Check Out Life For Technology Blog

Check out the blog Life for Technology. The site offers a collection of interesting news headlines, humor and techie tips with several new posts daily. Recent posts include the auction of dinosaur bones, a cartoon about image formats, and creating visual sound.

I would like to see links to the full articles, not just headlines, but I guess you can search the web for more information if you are interested.

Life for Technology

web ad income Sept 5 (4 blogs, 2 web sites): Adsense $.05 Adgitize $.52 Project Wonderful $.04 Shareapic $.01 ______________________ Total: $.62

Shareapic Temporarily Suspends Payments

I signed up with Shareapic in early July. My reactions to how it works have been mixed, and now they have temporarily put payments on hold. Not that I've earned enough money yet to get a payment...

The reason quoted for the payment suspension is: "Shareapic is temporarily ceasing the issuing of payments to members in order to pool money to fight a pending lawsuit. Members will still accrue their image view & referral earnings as usual, however payments will be put on hold until further notice." Despite their strong warnings about members posting copyrighted material, some people will do it, and someone is suing Shareapic for not catching the offender soon enough.

It may not affect me at all, assuming they can get this settled and resume payments. My account is not growing very fast, and there is a $20 minimum payout. Despite their example calculation that they pay $2.00 per 1000 views, there is a big disclaimer about the source of the traffic. They pay less for views from the Far East. And what they distribute is a percentage of what they take in, not an absolute value.

The reality is that I've had 1260 image views, and have earned 26 cents. The site is awkward. You can created unlimited galleries, but there is no way to organize them, or to organized pictures within the galleries. I've labeled pictures by leaving the first comment under them.

Their revenue comes from showing ads. So far, people who have viewed my pictures there say that the ads are not too annoying.

Also, they state "no adult content." This translates to no hard porn. The site is full of racy pictures that are definitely soft porn. Of course, no one needs to look at any of this to see my images, but with thousands of this kind of picture being uploaded to the site, you can make some assumptions about the general quality of the membership.

Nevertheless, assuming they can get the law suit settled, it is a way to earn money with picture views. They have been around for several years; in other words, they are not a new web start-up company. They claim over 250,000 members. This gives the site some credibility in my mind. I think I'll try to wait it out and see what happens.

Shareapic.net

web ad income Sept 4 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.06 Adgitize $.53 Project Wonderful $.04 Shareapic $.01 ______________________ Total: $.64

Can You Map the States?

Here's a small diversion that is not only fun, but educational. This is a puzzle, with nothing to download. You are presented with a blank map of the United States, and the idea is to place the states on the map in the correct locations.

Shapes of states will appear in random order at the top of the screen (so it's a little different every time you play). You just drag and drop them onto the map where you think they should go. You'll be rewarded with a phrase like "excellent," or "good," if you get the state in the correct location, and it will snap itself to a perfect fit before the next state appears.

At the end you'll be shown your score. Have fun!

US State Map Puzzle

web ad income Sept 3 (4 blogs, 2 web sites): Adsense $.46 Adgitize $.52 Project Wonderful $.03 Shareapic $.01 Clixsense $.27 ______________________ Total: $1.29

Textbroker Freezes Author Acceptance

I have been writing for Textbroker for almost a year. Their service is exactly what their name implies. Client need material written, people want to write. Someone in the middle needs to broker the transactions.

Authors are rated based on the quality of their work at levels 2-5. Higher level assignments pay more.

Recently, Textbroker began a blog to better communicate with their authors. Today, they have announced that they will no longer accept authors except as needed. Currently, over 23,000 people write for Textbroker. Despite the large number of writing orders Textbroker receives, it is difficult to provide enough assignments for that number of writers!

Interested writers may submit a writing sample for approval, but will only be moved into active positions as old ones become available.

Textbroker

web ad income Sept 2 (4 blogs, 2 web sites): Adsense $.04 Adgitize $.51 Project Wonderful $.02 Shareapic $.01 ______________________ Total: $.58

web income August actually cashed out (4 blogs, 2 web sites, other writing): Adgitize (income - ad cost) -$7.06 Private Ad sold $35.00 Associated Content $2.98 ______________________ Total: $30.92

Signup Under Me at Shared Reviews

Shared Reviews is a product review site that is working hard to reward their writers. Things do change a lot from month to month, so it's hard to predict how much someone can make. It takes some study to figure out the system. I made $31.57 last month.

However, this month, if people sign up under me and write a review or two it will help me! And it will give anyone who is interested in writing product reviews a foot in the door!

Sign up at Shared Reviews