Just Throw Money

Notifications for Moderating Comments on Blogger

2012-01-23T09:19:00.002-05:00

I'm posting this because I just discovered (face all red) that there were 14 great comments, not spam at all, from you faithful readers that had not been approved because I goofed.

I had not entered my email to receive notification of comments that needed to be moderated. I ran across them today while looking at my Blogger Dashboard.

So, in case you have also neglected to enter an email where comment notifications should be sent, here's how. From your Blogger blog's dashboard, click on Settings. It has a picture of a wrench. (It's not under Comments.) Then Click on Posts and Comments.

Then you will see all your options for how you want the comment box to be displayed, who can comment, how much you want to moderate, etc. There is a box where you need to enter your email, if you want to be sent notifications.

Really easy... one just has to do it.

2011 Earnings from Pine Cone Research

2012-01-08T14:38:00.001-05:00

In 2011 I completed 13 surveys for Pine Cone Research at $3.00 each for a total of $39.00.

This is a lot less than I made from them in 2010, which was $67.00. Still, it's pretty easy money! This is an arm of Neilson Ratings, and you must be invited to join. If you ever see an ad for their surveys, click it and get yourself in.

Inporting CSV Files into Gmail

2012-01-07T20:24:00.000-05:00

Are you trying to import an address book from some other email program, or from Google Groups into Gmail? It can be pretty frustrating when you follow the directions and it won't work.

The Google Help file only says to save your other mail list as a comma-delimited file, and then import it into Gmail. Even if you know what that means, it may not work. Why?

First of all, a comma delimited file just means a file where each item that would go in a spreadsheet field is separated by a comma. For example,

Name	Address	email	Phone
Joe Smith	800 W 4th St	joe@mail.com	555-555-5550
Jane White		sweetgirl@mail.net	555-555-5551

would simply be: Name,Address,email,Phone,Joe Smith,800 W 4th St,joe@mail.com,555-555-5550,Jane White,,sweetgirl@mail.net,555-555-5551

Notice that since we don't know Jane's address there are simply two commas with nothing between them.

So, the first step is to export your address list from whatever source you want and choose to save it as a comma delimited file. This will have the file extension CSV. Let's pretend we named this OLDBOOK.csv

Now, open your Gmail account and put in a couple of contacts manually. Anything will do- if you make duplicates you can always delete them later. Do put something in each field that you plan to use, including any custom ones you want to create. Now export this as a comma delimited file (extension CSV). Let's pretend we named this NEWBOOK.csv

Open both files in Excel. Now you can see the contents of each address book. You must use the format from the Gmail file to make a CSV file that it will read.

Use the NEWBOOK.csv as a template. You must fill the fields you want from your OLDBOOK.csv. You can just copy and paste each column, but make sure you paste them in the correct row, or all your addresses (for example) might be one entry off when you import the file. Save the NEWBOOK.csv file you just added to.

Now, this file will have all your address info, and it will have it in a form that Gmail wants. From your Gmail account, import this file, and all your data will be there!

Choose Where to Download Files in Firefox 6,7,8,9

2012-01-05T11:45:00.002-05:00

Have you downloaded a new version of Firefox (I believe this info is good for Firefox 6,7,8 and 9) and discovered that it wants to put files you download in a place you don't want or can't find? The default is in the Downloads Folder, which is under "Users" in Windows 7, or YourName Documents in Windows XP.

It's easy to change this. Find the orange bar in the upper left that says "Firefox." Click on it and then on the Options choice.

This will open the box you see in the second image here. If "General" is not the selection that shows, choose it now (the one that looks like a light switch). Then, in the middle of the box, you can select whether you want downloads to go to the file of that name (and whether you want the downloads window to stay open or close), Or if you want to specify a different location to be used all the time, or if you would like to be asked every time.

I dump downloads on my desktop. That way I can find them easily, and then move them or trash them after I've looked at the file.

Adgitize to Close

2011-12-27T08:43:00.003-05:00

Here's one of the saddest pieces of news I've gotten in quite a while: Adgitize is going to close at the first of the year.

Owner and founder, Ken Brown, says, "We have enjoyed working with all of you over the last 3 years and we hope that you have enjoyed our services. Adgitize tried to fill a niche market but the costs to run the business were more than the revenues generated."

This is really sad news. Entrecard is all but belly up with new blogs not being approved, and no response from the managers on any questions. CMF Ads folded earlier in the year.

This really leaves only Project Wonderful and AFTR, both of which I use, but neither one appeals to me very much. Adgitize has been more than an advertising means, it has been something of a family. The forum has been a lot of fun, and I've made several blogging friends there, or strengthened relationships.

Ken has always acted responsibly and treated his users with respect. For some reason, advertiser numbers have continued to decline to the point where the project cannot sustain its needs.

Adgitize will be missed.

Read the full news at Adgitize to Close

Why Clixsense is the Only PTC I Still Use

2011-11-29T08:29:00.001-05:00

I just got $23.02 from Clixsense, and that's with a standard membership. Took 14 months to accumulate that much, but there were no hassles, and the fees are much lower to cashout than they used to be.

ClixSense now has PayPal available, and it only cost me $0.73 processing fee, much less than it use to be with AlertPay. In addition, they pay every Monday, so you don't have to wait a month to get your cash.

And, I have the answer to another of life burning questions. Does anyone every win $5.00 in the ClixGrid game? I had previously won anywhere from a dime to 50¢, but last week, yes, I won $5.00. That was certainly nice!

If you want to upgrade your membership, it now costs $15 a year. I'm still not convinced that's worth it unless you have a lot of referrals.

Anyway, I am happy to add $23 to my wallet!

Sign up for ClixSense under me. If you are thinking of signing up, it helps me and doesn't hurt you at all to use this link.

Why You May Not Earn Money on Adgitize

2011-11-16T11:38:00.001-05:00

Just because you see Adgitize ads on a blog does not mean that blog is earning money. There is even a possibility you could be publishing Adgitize ads and not earning money. Do you know why?

Adgitize seeks to provide surfers with quality, original reading material. The standards to be an Adgitize blog just make sense. There are real humans checking the archives who are currently culling blogs that have fallen below the minimum standards.

There could be some serious, substantive reasons why your blog will not do well on Adgitize. Let me list a few.

Reasons Your Blog Won't Even Be Approved on Adgitize

Your blog is a collection of things you have snagged from other sources. All approved Adgitize blogs have original content. That doesn't mean you can't occasionally use something that came via email, or post the rules to a contest from another blog. But it does mean that the vast majority of what you include in your blog is written by YOU.
You don't post something very often. Blogs that want to earn with Adgitize need to have a post at least once every three months. Many blogs that have applied in the past are way beyond that limit and may have been turned off.
You are a photo blog with little text. Adgitize believes in authors writing text. Photo blogs are fine, but Adgitize will not approve them unless you include more than a couple of sentences of text about the picture(s). You need to tell us why that picture matters, or where you took it, or... something.
You are running ads with popups, redirects, music or sound that plays automatically. All distractions of this sort will keep your blog from being approved.

Reasons You May Think You Should be Earning, but Aren't

Your feed may not be entered. You must have a valid blog feed entered in the Adgitize system. This is used to check for publication of new posts so that points can be awarded. Go to "Manage Blogs" and you can see if you have a valid feed entered.
Your content may be too old. If you haven't published in more than 3 months, your blog may have been turned off without sending you a notification. If your blog has been turned off it will no longer be listed when you click on "Manage Blogs." You will need to re-apply.
You need to publish ads.You can not earn the full potential on Adgitize unless you publish their ads on your blog. You can choose to display up to 10 ads, in various configurations (but no more than two groups). You do have the ability to choose or block certain ads that may be more to your liking, or not appropriate for you.

Adgitize is not primarily a money-making site. It is about advertising high-quality blogs. That said, you can make a few cents there by publishing ads and clicking up to 100 advertisers' blogs a day. You can make a little more if you publish your own ad in the system. Then you only need to click up to 50 advertisers blogs a day, and you will earn back everything you spent on the ad.

If you see a blog that does not meet Adgitize standards that does show their ads, there could be a couple of reasons. The blog might not have been approved, but the blogger did not remove the ads (thus they are simply providing free advertising for the blogs in the Adgitize system). It's also possible that they are a member but have changed something and now violate the TOS. Sometimes people add popup ads on purpose or it happens inadvertently when they join another network. You are always encouraged to contact owner Ken Brown with any concerns.

Again, there are real humans who will address your question promptly. That's one reason Adgitize pleases me, for sure.

Sign up with Adgitize

Working Around Errors Uploading Images to Blogger

2011-11-02T11:23:00.001-04:00

The extremely annoying problem of not being able to upload images with Blogger (discussed at Error Uploading Images to Blogger) can be worked around.

First open your Picasa page. Maybe you didn't know you have one. But if you've been using the blogger image uploader, you do. That's where they are stored. Go to this URL https://picasaweb.google.com/home . If you are logged into your Google account it will automatically bring up the various blogs you have under that ID. Click on the blog you want to add a picture to.

Then choose "Add Photos." I've circled it in the image below that shows my Picasa page for Grazing the Ditches

This will take you to a screen where you can either drag the image from your folder into a large box, or browse your files to find it. When the image (or several) shows in the box, click OK in the lower right corner. This will throw you back to the upload screen.

Now you need to get back to the album you want. The only way I've seen to do this is click on the Home tab, and then the Album for the blog I just added to. Once you have that open, the picture you just added should show in the thumbnails. Click on the image and it will open in a larger size. You can then right click and choose Copy Image Location (or whatever your browser calls it).

Paste this into your blog.

If you don't know how to code it to show up, follow this example: <IMG SRC="http://your-picture-url.jpg"> (or gif, etc. insert the correct URL for the image)

You can force it to align to the left or right by placing the following between IMG and SRC: ALIGN="LEFT" (or right)

These commands to not need to be in capital letters. I just did that to identify them as tags.

Of course it would be nice if the uploader would work, but this makes it possible to post when we are ready, not when Google decides to work.

Error Uploading Images to Blogger

2011-10-30T10:25:00.001-04:00

Have you seen this message? I've been using blogger for 3 years now, and had never been stung by this until this month. Now, I'm getting it a lot. Of course it's annoying, but even more annoying is the length of time the problem has been ongoing. It's particularly maddening if you are trying to upload several pictures because it kicks you back to having to start all over again, and get all the images from your computer back into the interface. This can take several minutes if they were not all located together on your computer.

I found reports of this problem from as long ago as Sept 2009 in the Blogger help forums. Google has not provided any real answers, and has closed threads where people have reported it.

Apparently it became critical in June 2011, because on June 29, Google posted it on their "known issues" blog and said "Update, 10:50AM PST: We've released a fix and image upload should be working again without issue. Thanks for your patience."

As many of us have discovered, it's not really fixed, and it means that it's difficult to complete a blog post when one wants to do so, if there are pictures to display. The image on this post is being hosted on server space of my own. I was unable to load the image to blogger. I'm also waiting for this to post to another blog.

It's nice to have free image hosting space, but not nice to have so many problems.

First Impressions of FoodieBlogRoll

2011-10-26T10:40:00.002-04:00

I joined FoodieBlogRoll last week, with my relatively new wild foods blog Grazing the Ditches. They claim it will produce some revenue, and is compatible with Google AdSense, as long as you use only text-based ads from Google. So I decided to try it. They claim over 12000 food blogs as members, and with a human-reviewed approval process, I have reasonable assurance that the junk is weeded out.

The sign-up process was pretty simple, and my blog was human approved promptly... within a couple of days. The approval process requires you to add their widget to your blog. The widget is 200x260, which is a little larger than most advertising groups, but not unreasonable.

Once you have done this, if you want to earn money you have to be approved for the Publisher Program. That took another few days. At that point I was able to learn what the requirements are to be a Publisher. Basically you HAVE to display one ad widget, and you can optionally add two others.

The required widget is large, 300x250 pixels, and it must be placed above the fold. I've chosen a template with a rather tall header (and I like the template a lot), so the only way I can make it work is to place it in the body (post) section above the regular entries. One it is installed, you MUST send them an email, and they manually check it again. Paying ads will not run until you do this.

The second one they want you to use is a 728x90 banner ad, that also must go above the fold. They want you to put it in your header. I'm not going to do that because it will mess up my graphic header, and make readers scroll a lot to get to the meat of the blog.

The third one is a tower, 160x600 pixels, that can go in the sidebar and does not have to be above the fold. It's not clear to me if you are allowed to use that one without the wide banner.

I've have the first widget installed for a day now. My first impression of the ads being served is not so great. I thought they would be food related, but so far I haven't seen a single food/cooking ad. Of course, I haven't continually refreshed the blog just to study the ads. However, I've seen three for online advertising, one for an online university, and one for a movie. None of these have been inappropriate material (I'm what a lot of people will call a prude), but they aren't what I would consider high-quality ads. I don't mean their graphic quality... I mean the quality of the product.

So, how is the ad performing? Here's the rub. I won't know for possibly 3 months. They do not post any figures until revenue and results are verified, and that is 45-60 days after the end of the month. I understand why. People have complained when estimates don't match with verifiable results. Some other revenue sites do the same thing. But, it means that I can't even gauge whether this is worth it for quite a while, and yet people will see those ads that I'm not quite happy with for all that time.

Stay tuned.

What's Up with Entrecard?

2011-10-24T10:52:00.001-04:00

Entrecard has certainly gone downhill, if that is possible to believe. About half the time, when I try to do my dropping, I can't click to another blog because the ad doesn't appear in the window. I've seen other bloggers complaining about problems with Entrecard, too.

A number of times, while trying to get my dashboard to load, I get this error message:

"Entrecard is having technical issues. Any of the following may apply:
We may be suffering extreme load (lots of people)
We may be upgrading our server software
We may be suffering from a serious bug
We have on-call people watching the system, outages are unlikely to last more than 10 minutes. We apologise profusely for the inconvenience. "

Since I've been seeing that for weeks, I doubt that they are working very hard on it. I've been a supporter of Entrecard, despite their shortcomings, but these conditions are really not good for advertising.

If the ads don't appear in the widget, not only can I not click, but it means that others are not seeing my ads which I paid for with ECs. Others, who have paid money to advertise are getting no value at all. And those of us who use Entrecard know that ECs are paid for with plenty of time.

I've sent a feedback message about my concerns. But, whoever runs EC these days is unlikely to do much unless a lot of us send messages.

They also have yet to release a toolbar that works with FireFox 7.

I feel caught in a tight spot. I continue to get a lot of exposure through Entrecard and don't want to abandon ship, but I'm thinking about it.

XXX

Bux.to is Not Making Me Happy

2011-10-08T10:10:00.004-04:00

Bux.to has rolled out their new changes, but so far, I have not been able to re-register and sign in.

They say that you MUST use the same email and password as previously, or you will lose all your accounts. Fine. But it will not accept my password. It keeps saying that it is not alphanumeric, which it is, completely. (Thank goodness! What are people doing who had other characters in their passwords). It also rejects my entry of the captcha code about 2/3 of the time.

I am not alone in this nonsense. There was a whole thread on the forum about it. But, of course, they closed that.

I've sent two emails to support, but so far no response. I hope you are one of the lucky ones who was able to re-register.

Here's hoping I don't lose my $62 ($52 already in a payment queue), but who knows.

Big Changes at Bux.to

2011-09-23T10:20:00.003-04:00

The Bux.to PTC site is temporarily closed down. They have a splash page explaining what is happening. After being in business four years (an old man of PTC sites), they need to make changes.

In an effort to weed out dishonest members and bots, the site is being restructured. Some of what they say is easy to understand, some parts, not so much

They want to make cash-outs faster because audits are taking too long. (Ask me... I've been waiting since July 19 for my first cashout to be audited).

But some folks are likely to be unhappy with the changes. I'm not sure if I'm in that group. I think they are saying that all Standard and Standard Pro members will be able to use their balances for advertising or buying referrals (I have $52 due in a cashout and another $10 in my account. I sure hope I can get some of that in cash).

All Standard Members who had previously purchased referrals will automatically be made Standard Pro Members. I will have this status, since I did purchase referrals once.

However, all referrals older than six months are going to be eliminated. If you made any purchases of referrals in the past six months you will have a percentage of inactive ones replaced.

They predict changing the earnings per click (probably read "less money"), and new cashout options (probably read "fewer ways to actually get cash").

Well, they've been down for two days, and don't give a firm date for when they will be back. I hope I can at least get my $52. That's a significant pile of money.

Bux.to

Why You Should Choose Adgitize in Light of CMF Closure

2011-09-20T10:14:00.000-04:00

With the news that CMF ads is shutting down bloggers are probably looking for the best place to advertize. CMF has chosen to endorse Project Wonderful, but I think there are good reasons to choose Adgitize instead.

To the credit of Project Wonderful, they allow you to target where you want your ads shown. You can research blogs that match the topics you cover and choose to advertise only on those. They are also incredibly cheap, free (if ad publishers are silly enough to allow this) or just a penny or pennies a day. And, not only that, but their engine will track the timing and let you spend portions of pennies over just a few hours. So, ok... it's cheap to place ads, but you have to do a lot of research and requesting.

On the flip side, if you choose to publish ads with Project Wonderful, you are only going to make pennies a month, unless your blog gets a huge amount of traffic.

Frankly, I think it devalues the whole blog industry by promoting the idea that it's OK to receive less than 50 cents a month for a banner ad. That said, I still have PW ads on one of my blogs. It's the one with the best traffic, and even with ads that get cancelled the minute the price goes above 3 or 4 cents a day, I still make about 2 cents a day. Whoopie. Come to think of it, maybe the next time I cash out, I'll just cancel it too.

So, why choose Adgitize? Adgitize is a blog advertising network. It's about advertising- you are not going to get rich there either. But it's a lot less work, and if you are willing to click just 51 ads a day you can at least break even, and maybe make a couple of dollars.

Adgitize serves ads to all the blogs in their system that publish ads. The membership just broke 10,000, with over 18,000 blogs logged. Not all of those are active, but let's say that half of them are. Your ads will be shown on 9,000 blogs without you needing to do anything at all after you create your profile and banner, and pay $14 a month. (There are shorter plans, if you just want to try it out.)

Since advertisers who want to get paid enough to get back their $14 have to click ads, you will get traffic. There is always the argument about whether it is quality traffic. I say, "You have to get people cruising through to have a hope of creating readers out of them."

If you don't want to advertise, you can choose to just publish Adgitize ads and click 100 ads a day. If you do this you will earn a few cents, which eventually ads up to enough to cash out. But, remember, the point of Adgitize is not to make money, the point is to advertise.

You are allowed to block any ads in the system that you feel aren't appropriate for your blog. All blogs are checked by a human being within a few days of their applying to the system, and ones which do not adhere to the standards are turned off. (the biggest issues are original content, no popups or autoplay, must be safe for work, and current material) There are some other customizations available.

Owner Ken Brown says, "We are currently working back through our membership base, now four years since our launch, and are removing blogs which are no longer active or following the standards." That will be a long haul to complete, but it's nice to know that someone is trying to pay attention.

To summarize, I think that Adgitize gives bloggers a lot of exposure for very little work. With only $14 in hand you can start building recognition and getting traffic that will never cost you money again as long as you click those 51 ads a day.

Adgitize

CMF Blog Advertising Network to Close

2011-09-17T17:49:00.001-04:00

CMF, one of the largest of the blog advertising networks plans to shut down in October 2011. Says owner Ben Barden, "For several months we have noticed a sharp decline in activity... It’s reached the point where we can’t ignore it any longer."

Various functionalities at the site will be phased out between now and October 30. Everyone will be allowed to cash out, but you do need to make the requests in a timely manner. For regular cashout, requests need to be made by September 25. After that time, anyone with more than $1.00 in their account will be able to place a final request by October 23.

Also on October 23, widgets will be disabled, and the network will close completely on October 30.

CMF Ads has been a solid advertising option for bloggers for a number of years. It's too bad that more people did not take advantage of the options there, and that it has come to this end.

Read the full schedule of shutdown events at the CMF Blog

Shared Reviews is Back On Line

2011-09-11T00:15:00.001-04:00

Shared Reviews is back online, with the all-new format, and all content in place under a new category structure.

At this time, no authors can log in, till a few more bugs are worked out. Soon, a few beta testers will be given the privilege/ responsibility of being allowed to sign in and check out all the internal features. Once they determine that the new features are working correctly, Shared Reviews will be completely opened for all authors.

The new site looks great! The colors are smart, and I like the blues much better than the previous orange and gray.

At this time, we can't see anything about how the "game" is going to work. The promise is that it is going to be fun to write for rewards that can be exchanged for either real cash or certain perks. Payment in real money based on readers will continue, and hopefully increase.

A new linear system of levels has been revealed, but not yet fully explained. It goes from 1 to 50. 1 would be a true newbie. Peter Ejtel, owner and editor-in-chief, is at 50. My current rank is 33, the highest of any author to date. But I don't know yet what that will mean.

The new category structure is completely different, and it may take some shuffling to get all the content in the right place. Instead of each category getting more and more specific, they are now larger and broader. Under each category, such as Business & Office, there are only a few sub categories. In this case: Workplace & Operations, Careers & Work, Marketing & Advertising, and Other. Within each subcategory there can be product reviews, service reviews, general articles, how-tos, and opinion pieces. (roughly speaking... some review types don't fit all categories).

The beta testers were going to be announced by now, but they haven't been. I'm pretty sure I'm one of them, and I'm actually excited about Shared Reviews again. There's been a long dry patch that hasn't been much fun, but I think the new site is going to make up for that.

Like any content site, you have to build a body of work to earn very much, but it is possible to make more than a few dollars a month there if you work at it. The link below can be used to sign up under me, although right now no one can sign in or sign up. Check it out, though, and get ready for the all new Shared Reviews, a fun place to write.

Shared Reviews

Shared Reviews Down to Install Site Redesign

2011-09-06T08:54:00.001-04:00

Shared Reviews, which began as a site to review products, is temporarily offline. The site expanded a couple of years ago to include writing of articles. Because of the structure, traffic was not hurt by the Google shakeup in February 2011 as much as some of the content sites. Users are paid a percentage of the monthly revenues.

For months, CEO Peter Ejtel has been working behind the scenes to bring us a new interface. The promise is that this will be much more fun, faster, cleaner, and more bug free. Those of us who are active on the site can't wait for the changes!

The message claims that the site will be back by noon today, September 6, 2011. However, there's a typo in the notice which says "Easter Standard Time." Those of us who have watched delay after delay as changes to the site's code proved knotty, will see this as a great joke. We do hope Shared Reviews will be back before Easter!

When Shared Reviews comes back on line, everyone will be able to read content. However, the plan is that most authors will not be able to log in for an additional two weeks, while testing takes place. A few authors have been selected as beta testers. These people have agreed to accomplish a certain number of tasks during those two weeks in order to try to ferret out the bugs that will be inevitable. Hopefully, after that, the site will be back for all authors, established or new, to write and earn.

The changes include a complete category re-design which should make it much easier to place content. It's much less specific than the old structure, which required the making of new categories whenever someone wanted to write about something that didn't fit anywhere.

Peter has promised games, more instant rewards and a bright pleasing design. Here's hoping Shared Reviews becomes recognized as the great place to find quality content that it really is.

(Aw, shucks... he fixed the typo)

Shared Reviews

I Am So Done with Neobux

2011-09-05T09:54:00.000-04:00

Finally, I have reached the next payout level at Neobux, and I am calling it quits. Since the big changes they made in March, I've been hanging on until this day when I could cashout and leave. I only get $4.90 of my $5.00 because they charge a transaction fee. The good news is that they pay instantly, which makes you believe that they are not hanging on by their toenails, paying the merest top of some payment queue whenever they actually get income.

In March, Neobux devalued their guaranteed clicks to $0.004 per day instead of $0.04. Yes, they cut it to a tenth of the value. Their claim was that there would be lots more ads to click on, and really denigrated anyone who chose to suggest otherwise in the forum. I have been able to average less than $0.015 per day from them since that time. Of course, I'm not willing to stay logged in to the site all day and continuously check for new ads. I have a life.

I really didn't want to lose the $3.00 I had in my account, so I stubbornly kept clicking until today. However, I have to say that for the return compared to the time, this was a total waste. I should have let the $3.00 go and spent the time picking up cans in the ditches. I would have made more money and gotten some exercise.

If you are higher than a standard member, or have a lot of referrals, you may be able to do better. However, if you don't want to do pay-per-click for a living, Neobux is no longer a good option.

Goodbye Neobux, and no regrets.

Second AdSense Payment Received

2011-08-27T09:03:00.001-04:00

Here's the entry from my bank account showing an EFT transfer from Google Adsense. The first time, it took me three years to reach the $100 payout threshold. This time, only 15 months. Right now, I'm on track to make the next payment in a little less than a year if things stay about the same.

Am I going to get rich from Google Adsense? Not on your life. But, it does pay some of the expenses of sites of mine that I host, and that's a big help.

Where do most of my clicks come from? Actually, not on any of my blogs. Most ad clicks are on my West Michigan recreation site Get Off the Couch. I think that is because it is very specific, and ads can be targeted really well.

If you are going to use AdSense, just be careful to follow the rules. For example, this blog does not show any AdSense ads, because I talk about Pay-to-Click sites here, and that is a definite no-no. People have wondered about Adgitize ads and Entrecard or CMF. But I've been using those right along and they've never balked at them.

I do use Chitika ads along with AdSense, and that seems to be ok. Those are targeted in a different way from AdSense, so apparently they don't see it as a problem.

If you see yourself into blogging or having web sites long term, and have good niche sites, AdSense can be a legitimate way to earn.

What Happened to Blog Traffic?

2011-08-25T09:18:00.002-04:00

{EAV_BLOG_VER:70c9cf8e4db13e29} just ignore this verification code for Empire Avenue, please

I realize that you probably can't really read the dates on that graph, but that is take from Google Analytics, for my primary blog My Quality Day, showing the past year. The graph is actually of the number of hits per visit, not visits, because the drop is much more obvious on that metric. But you can clearly see that there was a significant and permanent drop during the past year.

And what is the date around which that phenomenon occurred? March 2011... What else happened then? That was right after Google changed their algorithm. Interesting coincidence, or does it really mean something? I sure can't say with any kind of certainty.

Google's own spreadsheet shows blogspot receiving a small rise (12%) in traffic after their change, so that doesn't fit. But, clearly, something happened that was not just a blip.

A couple of months prior to that I took a part time job which curtailed my blogging a bit, but it did not affect My Quality Day, as I've maintained that as the highest priority with a post every day.

The reason I went exploring this question is that my Alexa rank has slipped on MQD as well, which seems odd, because traffic has actually risen a bit over the past month or so according to my Adgitize stats. I also learned that traffic has not increased according to Google stats, so there is some kind of discrepancy in those algorithms.

I offer no theories or conclusions. It's a bit of a mystery!

Giving Empire Avenue a Try

2011-08-20T19:45:00.000-04:00

I just joined a site called Empire Avenue. It's sort of like a combination of a Social Marketing site and a game. The idea is that you buy shares of other members, and they can do the same for you. It's like a mini stock market, but doing well will give you social currency- in other words, you can get added visibility for your blogs, your photos, your works.

You are rewarded for having active blogs, using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flikr, YouTube, Foursquare and Instagram. The currency is called Eaves. They say that they don't translate into real cash, but it looks like there are certain things you can buy with them.

It may be more than I want to deal with, but it may be just enough fun to participate. If you want to join, see Empire Avenue.

OnBux Seems to Be Dead

2011-08-16T09:04:00.002-04:00

OnBux hasn't paid anyone for months and months, and now seems to be totally off the web. The URL returns a page not found error.

I had $5 coming from them, and kept clicking while waiting for that payment with hopes of the rumors being false, so all that click time is lost. This is always the chance one takes with pay-to-click sites.

I'm trying to see it as extra time opening up in my daily routine. Now I just need something good to replace it with.

Advertising Space Purchase Comes with Qualtiy and Reputation

2011-08-04T00:54:00.002-04:00

One of my other blogs will soon begin featuring an advertisement from an outdoor equipment distributor. I did not pursue this opportunity, but was contacted by them.

I'm not going to list particulars yet... it all seems to be a done deal, but I haven't received the code or any money yet.

However, I am going to make the point that it takes time to build a blog reputation. This blog has been live for two years and has earned a PR3. Success takes time.

Use About.me as a Hub of Public Info

2011-07-29T09:46:00.003-04:00

If you would like people to be able to find you and manifestations of your diverse presence on the web, about.me may be a good option for you.

About.me allows you to create a consolidated personal profile, and a dashboard to edit and track all of those components.

You can create a list with links to all of your blogs and web sites. Profiles to quite a few social media sites can be added, including at the present, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,Wordpress, Blogger, tumblr, posterous, flikr, typepad, foursquare, formspring, YouTube, vimeo, last.fm, daily booth, Instagram, behance, and fitbit (they have not yet added Google+, but technically that's still in beta). If you add a blogging service as an import, it will add that logo and a feed of your blogs.

Links to any URL are fine too.

You can add a custom background, choose from several fonts, and move elements around to some degree.

There is a statistics page showing how many views there have been of your profile, and how many outgoing clicks on your links and services.

About.me is not quite as versatile as one might like. In the forum one can read about a lot of features that people would like to see added. However, it is a great way to connect all of your identities for people to find.

Be sure to choose a username that you want people to remember you by, because it will be a part of your link. I may end up using this on my business cards rather than listing several URLs, so I chose joan_h_young. This makes my about.me link http://about.me/joan_h_young

How to Add Google +1 Button to Blog Posts

2011-07-24T11:17:00.004-04:00

If you have see the Google +1 button on some blogs and other sites, but it doesn't appear on yours, maybe you would like to add it.

Google Plus One is a new way of indicating that you like an article, similar to the thumbs up or "like" on Facebook. It connects to the new Google Public Profile interface. At this point, you need to be invited to join this, but you can consider yourself invited, by clicking http://gplus.to/sharkbytes.

If you would like to add the button to your blog, here's how. You need to add one line of code to the blog HTML template. The easiest place to put this is right before the </body> tag- just scroll to the bottom of the template, and you'll see this. Add the following code <script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script> Don't forget to save the template! (It can be placed in the <head> if you prefer.)

Then, in the post where you would like to have the button show, add this <g:plusone></g:plusone>

You can see that I successfully added it to this post. If you want it to appear in every post, make it easy on yourself and put the <g:plusone></g:plusone> code in your post template- that template of items that you want to show in every post.

You can also add the Google+1 icon to regular web sites, using the same method.

If you found this helpful, maybe you would click the +1 button below for me!

Google +1 FAQs

Adgitize Focuses on Providing Blog Ads

2011-06-11T22:07:00.002-04:00

Ken Brown, Adgetize owner, has announced a return to the point system in use prior to Summer 2010. It will begin July 1, 2011

Adgitize is a great, low or no-cost way to advertise a blog on thousands of other blogs. The number of views and/or clicks one can receive for $14 a month is unlimited, and can be considerable. With the point system it is even possible to earn back the cost of an ad, and receive all that benefit for free.

Adgitize will never find itself in the position of promising more payouts than it can deliver, because the points determine a percentage of the daily revenue available. The daily earnings are based on that calculation. Each day we will take the total number of points in our system. We will calculate what percentage your earned points represent and then multiply that by the amount of revenue available in Adgitize that day for payout to the publishers. Points can be earned in several ways which includes clicking on ads within the system.

Since the forum opened, points have been awarded to posters. This part of the point system will be ending, and the focus will return to providing advertising value through the large system of over 15,000 member blogs.

Those who advertise more than one blog will receive extra points.

This active program will be known as Adgitize4Blogs. Adgitize4Business will be a passive earning program designed for those who wish to advertise sites which are not blogs.

I have been advertising through Adgitize since August of 2009, and can attest that it will make a real difference in the amount of traffic you will see. It's up to each blogger to present quality material which can convert lookers to readers, but Adgitize will definitely get people looking at your blog.

Give it a try for a month!

Adgetize

Broken Control Key - Now What?

2011-06-02T16:30:00.001-04:00

So, the Control key on my laptop keyboard is dead. Not dirty, dead, D-E-A-D. I'm a keyboard person. Do you have any idea how annoying that is?

How to get the Task Manager? Right click on the Task Bar (the bar at the bottom of the screen) and choose Task Manager. Or, do Start > Run > taskmgr.

Copy? You can use the mouse to highlight and then choose Edit/Copy, and the same to then paste it. Puleeeze! Too slow. Highlight, right click choose Copy, and then the same to paste it. A tiny bit better.

I am waiting anxiously for my next credit card cycle so I can get this keyboard replaced. Meanwhile, I've can at least limp along until I have Ctrl+Alt+Del, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V back!

Cashium and PalmBux Both Belly Up

2011-05-31T09:56:00.000-04:00

Two PTC sites that I was using have gone away. Cashium is probably no surprise. I was, however, mildly surprised at PalmBux's demise.

Cashium has had problems off and on for a long time. A new owner managed to pull it back from the brink of disappearing. But, just as I cashed out $2, the site stopped loading, and has never reappeared. Needless to say, I did not get my money.

PalmBux had been stable. They had a core of advertisers so that you could be sure of a few clicks every day. I had some referrals, and had been paid twice by them. However, about a month ago, I noticed that the daily clicks for standard members were dropping from 5 or 6 to 2 or 3. This probably was not enough regular advertisers to support the site. They also disappeared without any warning. I've waited to write about it, thinking that it might reappear with new owners or a new model, but it seems to be really gone.

Total money lost between the two sites? I had over $4 in my PalmBux account, so my total loss was $6. Of course, this isn't life or death, but I do resent how much time I spent to build up those amounts only to lose them.

Moral- don't rely heavily on PTC sites for income. That opportunity can go belly up faster than a dimestore goldfish.

Cashing Out Swagbucks

2011-05-08T10:57:00.002-04:00

I am in process of cashing out two more $5 payments to my PayPal account. I like getting cash better than other things. Once I figured out the verification process, all further cashouts have gone smoothly.

Swagbucks awards you points simply for using their search engine. The drawback is that several of the top results presented will be filtered through their own advertising, but you don't ever have to click on them.

When you have enough points to cashout, simply go to swagbucks.com and look through the rewards until you find the one you want. Be sure you have enough points to cover it, then click it and follow any additional directions. Note that there is usually a time limit to claim the award, in addition to the verification process. Click "Snag it."

You will be shown a shipping address confirmation screen, and then the notice that you must verify this order. What this means is that you will receive an email from swagbucks, which contains a link that must be clicked. If you don't receive this email, check your junk folder, because you will not be able to claim your reward unless this step is followed.

Once you click the verification link in the email, you will see that your order is verified.

It still takes several weeks to get it. Sometimes up to 2 months. Still... money for doing almost nothing is pretty darn good! This will make $40 I have received from Swagbucks since I signed up.

Swagbucks (if you sign up under me it helps me, and will never hurt you in any way.)

Update: I was paid on May 13.

My Survey Ends Affiliate Program

2011-05-03T11:18:00.001-04:00

My Survey, my most favorite survey site, has just announced that they will no longer take members through affiliate links.

They write:
"Thank you for your participation in the MySurvey.com Affiliate program. We have enjoyed working with you to bring new members to MySurvey.com. It is our hope that the affiliate program has been a successful and rewarding experience for you as well. Over the past few years there have been many changes and advances in the internet and we have begun using a variety of new methods for finding new MySurvey.com members. At this time we have decided to focus on these new methods and will therefore be closing the MySurvey.com Affiliate program."

Despite this change, I am still very happy with My Survey. Over the years I've been a member, I've cashed out over $200.00. There are no long preliminary surveys only to be told that you don't qualify for the survey that actually pays money.

My Survey

ClixSense Highly Improved

2011-05-01T09:03:00.004-04:00

While several PTC sites have recently disappeared or made things more difficult for standard members to earn, ClixSense has greatly improved their interface.

In the first place, they've redesigned their logo, and the site, to be more visually attractive, and it's much easier to navigate.

Most importantly, it is now a dynamic interface. Of the PTCs I still do, it's the best one as far as ease of use. When you log in you are shown several things on the same page. Your current account balance is displayed at the top. This amount will change with every click you successfully view. The number of ads currently available to you shows in a blue box.

The knockout new feature, however, is dynamic refreshing of the ads. Once you log in, you may need to wait a few seconds for the site to find you. But then a number will appear in your "View Ads" blue button, and you can click it to see the ads. Any ads you see will be good ones- no clicking and waiting, and then getting the annoying message that the ad is no longer available. Once your ad click has been validated, that ad will automatically be removed from the available list and be placed below, under "Ads Clicked in the Last 24 Hours" and grayed out.

You will randomly be asked to match a picture after the click timer has run down, to verify that a human is clicking. This works smoothly, so far I haven't seen any failed loading problems with the frame (an annoying problem with some verification schemes)

The ClixGrid game has been improved tremendously. No longer do you have to click around that stupid monkey, always wondering where you have already clicked. With each click a different, lovely, picture will be shown. The grid lines are visible, including an address for the one you are on at the bottom. After you click a square, it changes color, and your remaining clicks are immediately revised and displayed, so you don't have to track your clicks on a separate piece of paper. I don't often do the Grid (I've never won anything there), but I may just do it occasionally now that it is more interesting and less frustrating.

They have also added micro-ads, worth only a tenth of a cent, and minis, worth half a cent. But this has not taken away from the number of one cent ads available to standard members. I am actually making a tiny bit more there than I was before the changes.

The first year I belonged, I upgraded, but this year I've just kept a standard membership, not having seen a difference in the net profit. But with these changes, I might consider it in the future.

ClixSense

Find Your Amazon Listmania! Lists

2011-04-23T19:14:00.001-04:00

Why is it so hard to find Listmania! Lists on Amazon? They encourage people to make them and then make it impossible to find.

Listmania! is a great idea. You can make a list of any sort of collection of books that you want, and then other people can see your selection. I've made two lists:

Adventurous Women
and Books by People I Know Personally

But once you make them... it's like they disappear into a black hole. Here's how to find your lists, so you can edit them.

• When you sign in at Amazon, click on Your Account in the upper right corner.
• Scroll down to the section marked Personalization
• Under Community, click on "Your Public Profile"
• If you have written any reviews and/or created Listmania! lists, they are accessible under the labeled tabs

If you have not created any Listmania! lists, it's fun! Create a Listmania! List

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Part 7

2011-04-20T10:12:00.000-04:00

Part 7 - Alternative Multiple List Option

This option does not require you to do any coding, but it will only work well if you have a short number of top categories. On my blog Shark's Short Story Reviews, that is the case. To be specific, I have three top categories: Authors, Topics, Anthologies.

All posts are labeled at least with an author name, and one or more topic labels. If the story came from an anthology which I also want to feature, then I add that label.

I have used the Blogger/Blogspot gadget for creating a list multiple times, once for each top category. The example shown is for Authors. Then choose Selected Labels, and click "edit." This will present you with a list of all your labels, and you can choose the ones which fit the list.

This gives me three separate lists of labels, with the appropriate ones in each top category.

This also takes some maintenance, because every time I add a new author, topic or anthology, I have to remember to go in and edit the list to include that new label.

So, the advantage is that I don't have to do any coding. The disadvantage is that there are multiple lists. However, I decided that on my Short Story Review blog, this really made quite a nice division.

Category Tree Tutorial Index

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Part 6

2011-04-19T10:40:00.001-04:00

Part 6 - Maintaining a Category Tree

Whenever you write posts with labels that already exist, you don't have to do anything.

If you add new labels
However, if you decide to add a new label, you'll need to add that category to your code. This should be really easy to do unless you add another whole top category and perhaps need to edit the labels on some of the other posts a bit. Once the tree is built, keeping this up isn't burdensome, unless you let the changes pile up and forget them.

Splitting categories
If you begin to get a large number of posts in any one subcategory, you should probably consider splitting it into more specific groups. We all know that if your link isn't on the first returns from a search engine the chances of it being seen are nearly nil. It will work the same on your blog. Aim for the returns fitting on one page. You have the ability to set the number of blog posts that are displayed on the landing page, and the number of posts in a subcategory shouldn't be much more than this number.

Dealing with Pages
Just a couple of notes on how to deal with Pages in Blogger/Blogspot. If you want to edit the page you do so from Posting/Edit Pages/Edit. This will get you to the code.

However, if you want to change the order of the page tabs, this is done from a different location. See graphic below. Go to Design view, and you'll see the gadget marked Pages. It should be located under your header. If you click on Edit a box will open which allows you to choose which pages to display, and to change the order in which you would like to have them presented.

This completes the basic tutorial of how to build a category tree for Blogger/ Blogspot. There is one other alternative which will be the next post.

The next topic is Part 7- Alternative Multiple Listl Option .

Category Tree Tutorial Index

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Part 5

2011-04-17T14:54:00.003-04:00

Part 5 - Where Should I Put a Category Tree?

There are two good choices of location for a category tree.

You can put a category tree in one of the sidebars, or you could make it a separate page on those templates which offer good visibility for page tabs. Either of these is easily accessible. Of course, the sidebar option is in full sight, without expecting readers to click to see it, but it will create a large number of links coming off your landing page. Google PageRank may be affected negatively by more than 100 links from a page.

If you haven't done so yet, get rid of any label list or tag cloud widgets. These are now superfluous, and they will be too stuffed to be of much use. I've also removed the archive widget, because finding posts by their chronology is nearly impossible for a long-lived blog too.

To add the category tree to a sidebar
• go to the design page and click "Add a Gadget" in the desired column
• choose HTML/Javascript and click on the + sign
• this will open the box where you can enter your code
• paste in your category tree code
• add a title such as "Category Tree" if desired
• choose save
• you can preview if desired, move the gadget to the desired position in the sidebar, etc. just like any other gadget

To add the category tree to a separate page
• under the "Posting" tab, choose Edit Pages
• click add a new page (up to 10 allowed), and title it as you will- eg. "Categories"
• be sure to chose the "Edit HTML" tab for the editing box (not "Compose")
• paste in your category tree code
• preview if you want, then publish the page

Your category tree has now been created. You can tweak it with spaces, heirarchy, etc. until it looks the way you want. If you have carefully grouped and labeled all your posts, it will offer readers access to all your current content.

There is some maintenance you will need to perform if you add new labels, and that will be the topic of Part 6- Maintaining a Category Tree

Category Tree Tutorial Index

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Part 4

2011-04-16T15:43:00.002-04:00

Part 4 - How to Code the Tree

I suggest beginning to build your tree in a text editor such as Notepad. Once you understand what you are doing, then you can cut and paste the code into an HTML widget.

Use your outline to guide the build. In fact, you can paste that outline right into Notepad, and then add the links around the words/phrases you have chosen.

Call Labels or Search Results
There are two basic choices of ways to pull content from your blog, and those go back to The Difference Between Search and Labels in Blogger.
• You can call all posts which have been given a certain label.
• Or you can call all posts which contain a certain word or phrase.

Using the choice to call a label is preferred, but there might be times when you would want to call a search.

Write the Code
Here is how to call all the posts with a certain label, for example "spam."
<a href="http://yourblogurl.blogspot.com/search/label/spam">spam</a>

Just use that format and substitute whatever label you are listing for the word "spam," and your own blog's url for "yourblogurl.blogspot.com" You can make it so that each result will open in a new tab/window by inserting the 'target="_BLANK"' code:
<a target="_BLANK" href="http://yourblogurl.blogspot.com/search/label/spam">spam</a>

To call a search use this code:
< href="http://yourblogurl.blogspot.com/search?q=spam">spam </a>
with the adaptations noted above.

To move the text to the next line (like hitting return) add <BR>

To make a heading bold, surround the text with <B>Make this text Bold</B>

Create Hierarchy
There are three ways to create hierarchy for your tree. You can use an unordered list (with bullets), and ordered list (with numbers), or manually add bullets with the desired number of space you want to indent each level.
• For bullets with the default indent (may be wider than you want), surround your entire list with <UL>Your list</UL>, then begin each item with <LI>
• For numbered items use the same structure, but substitute OL for the UL
• To manually place bullets use • , you can use the space bar to put one space before and after the bullet, if you want more spaces use   for each desired space.

Example
If you look at the graphic in this post, it's the code for the first section of the category tree in the right column. I've highlighted the code for the title line "Blog Analysis" in red. You can see that I chose to also make the title a link for a label that includes all the posts from the whole category, and that I've chosen to make it bold.

You can see that the subheadings are bulleted by manually adding my own bullets.

Once you have gotten a good start on coding your tree, you can place in in your blog. More on that in Part 5- Where Should I Put a Category Tree?.

Category Tree Tutorial Index

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Part 3

2011-04-14T15:38:00.002-04:00

Part 3 - How to Work with Labels

Over the life of your blog, you may have chosen and used labels carefully, or you may have been more willy-nilly. Either way, there are bound to be changes needed when you want to organize better. It's quite simple to add, remove, or change labels in Blogger/ Blogspot.

First of all, you need to choose the Posting Tab, and Edit Posts. That will present a list of your existing labels on the left and your posts in the middle (maybe multiple pages of them, if your blog has been around for a long time).

To add an existing label to a post

First, you need to mark all the posts to which you want to apply the existing label.

If these are likely to be a subset of some other label, you can click on the label in the Labels column, and only the posts with that label will be listed on the right. You can also use the search box, which is above the list of posts to help you narrow the choices.

If none of these help, you can just do a "brute force" visual scan of the titles. If you miss labeling some post on the first pass, it's no big deal to catch it another time, or to fix one that you might find later. But the better the job you do with your labeling, the better your category tree will be.

To add an existing label:
1. check the little box beside the post(s)
2. pull down the list of Label Actions and find the label you want
3. click on it, and your checked post will have that label applied

To add a new label to a post

This process is very similar:

To add a new label:
1. check the little box beside the post(s)
2. pull down the list of Label Actions and find New Label
3. click on it, and a little box will appear
4. enter the new label and click OK

To remove a label from a post
1. check the little box beside the post(s)
2. pull down the list of Label Actions and find Remove Label at the very bottom
3. click the label you wish to remove
4. note that if a label is removed from all posts, it will automatically be removed from the list. There can be no labels with zero posts.

If, immediately after doing one of these actions, you realize that you made a mistake, there is an Undo link at the top of the Posts column which will allow you to reverse the last action.

With these tools, you should be able to add good labels to your posts in Blogger/ Blogspot, and remove poor ones.

The next topic is Part 4- How to Code the Tree

Category Tree Tutorial Index

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Part 2

2011-04-12T11:11:00.002-04:00

Part 2 - Change the Way You Think About Labels

A good strategy for the use of Labels to go in a tag cloud or the Blogger Labels widget is usually to use as few as possible with high levels. This reduces the number of total labels, so that people aren't overwhelmed with choices in a list.

However, as you'll note from the graphic, you can only order them alphabetically or by the number of posts under each one (frequency). You can choose not to list all labels, which has possibilities, but since you can't nest these widgets it means that if you want a category tree, you'll have to do it by hand. We're getting there!

I'm proposing that to make an effective tree you need to change strategies, and apply more labels to posts. In fact, each post should have a minimum of two labels. Here is how you should choose them.

First, you need to analyze your blog. A good way to do this is click on the Edit Posts choice under the Posting tab. This will give you a list of all labels on the left, and all posts on the right (if you've been blogging a long time, the list of all posts may have several pages).

Look at your label list. Make an outline- yes an old fashioned outline- with your main categories and subheadings. Keep in mind that your labels as they exist may not be the correct choices. If you have a sports blog, you may need to have top categories of Basketball, Hockey, Baseball, etc. On the other hand perhaps your slant is better suited to top categories like Pro Sports, College Sports, Intermurals, Kids Sports. You can see the ones I chose for this blog in the Category Tree in the right sidebar (still under construction right now). A mommy blog might use things like Food, Activities, Discipline, etc. The primary thing to remember is that these should be the most broad categories possible that make sense.

Next, choose subcategories- and you may need lots. These will totally depend on the things you have blogged about. And you can always add more as your blog grows (although you will have to manually add new ones to the tree with this method). Suggestions might be- under Basketball: Technique, Players, Strategy, etc.

Once you have created this outline you are ready for the next step, which is "How to Work with Labels" in Blogger/ Blogspot

The next topic is Part 3- How to Work with Labels.

Category Tree Tutorial Index

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Part 1

2011-04-11T12:11:00.003-04:00

Part 1 - What is the Goal?

The overall goal of building a category tree is to create a framework that organizes the content of your blog and presents it to readers in such a way that they can easily see what your blog offers, and find topics of interest.

This is different from a plain list of labels which are not collected by topic.
Think back to your school days. This goal is simply known as an outline. On the left is a portion of the category tree of this blog, which I am building in the right column.

When it is complete, it will have a number of top level categories, with sub-categories under those. You can have as many levels as you desire. The more posts your blog has, the more you may want to break this down so that if someone clicks a sub-point they will be shown fewer than 10 posts. A goal might be that all the posts under a lowest level sub-category would display on one page (I can't state a specific number, since you can choose how many posts show on one page).

If you create a good category tree, you can remove the archive widget, and the label widget, because this will be a much better way for your posts to be organized. The easier it is for readers to find useful posts, the more likely they are to read more, which will lower the bounce rate, resulting in better rankings for your blog.

Go to Part 2- Change the Way You Think about Labels.

Blogger Category Tree Tutorial Index

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Index

2011-04-11T12:07:00.008-04:00

I am creating a tutorial series on how to build a category tree on Blogger/ Blogspot blogs. Since it has several parts, I'm presenting an index to the sections. Not all links will be live until the series is complete.

Before you begin, read: The Difference Between Search and Labels in Blogger

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger- Part 1 -What is the Goal?
Creating a Category Tree for Blogger- Part 2 -Change the Way You Think About Labels
Creating a Category Tree for Blogger- Part 3 -How to Work with Labels
Creating a Category Tree for Blogger- Part 4 -How to Code the Tree
Creating a Category Tree for Blogger- Part 5 -Where Should I Put a Category Tree?
Creating a Category Tree for Blogger- Part 6 -Maintaining a Category Tree
Creating a Category Tree for Blogger- Part 7 -Alternative Multiple List Option

The Difference Between Search and Labels in Blogger

2011-04-10T15:44:00.002-04:00

Have you wondered when you should use the search box, and when you should click on a label or an entry in a tag cloud? Which one will give you better results when you are trying to find something on a Blogger/ Blogspot blog?

When you understand the difference between the two it can help guide you. These two choices are also the basis for how to build a Category Tree in Blogger/ Blogspot, which I am going to explain in my next post.

The search box, in the upper left-hand corner searches only the text of the blog. It is not case sensitive, and it will return posts which include all the words you enter, in any order. You can also filter, as in camera - canon will return all posts that include the word camera, but not the word Canon. It will NOT find posts which are labeled camera, but which do not contain the word camera in the text.

The other sorting choice available to readers is to click on a label. All the posts which carry that label will be presented. There are four ways bloggers may show labels:

Some bloggers don't use labels at all (all bloggers should as it helps search engines find their content).
Some bloggers offer a list, or partial list of their labels in one of the sidebars.
Some bloggers offer a tag cloud, where the labels are displayed with their relative size indicating the number of posts so labeled.
Some few bloggers actually use labels to build a category tree

Labels tell you a lot about a blogger, because if there is any kind of list you will know at a glance what topics are important to the person. You will know what the blog is really about, no matter what their header may say.

Labels are only as valuable as the care with which the blogger applied them. If a blogger wrote a post about Pull-Ups Diapers, and labeled it with Diapers, but not with Potty Training (when such a label had already been created), then someone who clicked the Potty Training Label would not be shown the post about the Pull-Ups.

Used correctly, labels can be powerful.

Category Tree Tutorial Index

Neobux Makes Changes- Bad for Standard Members

2011-03-28T08:54:00.001-04:00

Last week Neobux made huge changes to their earning structure, and none of it is good for standard members. In my opinion it has toppled Neobux from one of the best PTCs for people who don't want to make a career of it, to one of the most useless.

Without any warning, we learned on March 13, that our four guaranteed clicks for the day were now going to be worth 1/10 of a cent each instead of 1 cent. Yes, only 10% of what they had been! They claim this is a good thing, because they will be offering many more kinds of ads, and that a person can earn lots more than the past guaranteed 4 cents a day by coming back all day and clicking the increased offerings.

Advertisers are happy... they are going to get more value for their money. Neobux claims that via a poll more people are happy than not happy. Here's how it worked out for me.

I thought I'd give it a try, even though I don't want to keep going back to their site all day long. I was fine with a few minutes for 4 cents with my coffee in the morning, but not a continual nagging commitment. Since then, I've visited the Neobux site as often as I remembered. Some days, I'm on the computer almost all day, and just kept going back. Some days, that's not what my life is about. I've managed an average of 4.04 cents a day since then, with a much larger investment of time. Not good.

A piece of me wants to hang in there till I make the next payout, but I'm not sure it's worth it.

Neobux

Five Tips for Getting Comments on Blogs with Photos

2011-03-26T10:17:00.000-04:00

I love pictures. I love blogs with pictures. But I don’t love blogs that are overloaded with pictures and no explanations. These are some tips for all of us who love the visual aspect of blogging.

1. Don’t use more than four pictures per post (generally). Adding a post to your blog once every ten days with all the pictures of your last fantastic hike or outing is just overwhelming. There is too much to absorb and no mental or emotional space for a reader to take it all in.

2. Concentrate on one theme. Focus on sharing one part of your experience. If you saw dozens of beautiful flowers, post about the yellow ones one day and the blue ones another day. Or separate them by botanical family if you are more scientifically minded. If you saw vistas and waterfalls on your hike, show us one of these on one day, and the other another day. Or group them by trail sections. My point is, give the reader a handle to attach to the content.

3. Add descriptions. Don’t make people guess what the pictures are (unless it’s a game you are running). Even if you don’t know the exact name of a flower, insect, etc., tell us what you do know. Or point out what interested you. “See the oddly bent antennae?” “Note the contrast of the red body with the yellow belly.” For scenery, tell us why you took that picture. Where is it? Do those hills have a name? Is that building historical, or the best known for something? Or did you just like the way all the elements were arranged. Get involved with the photograph and let the reader know why you are sharing it. This will bring you into much closer relationship with your readers, and they will be more likely to return.

4. Ask questions. If you ask a question you will get better responses than “lovely picture.” Adding descriptions is a good beginning to give people a reason to say something. But you will get them even more involved if you ask a specific question that requires more than a yes/no answer. It’s just like making a conversation with a stranger. You have to draw the reader out. Especially good questions will ask the reader to share something from their experience that directly relates to your photos. If you have pictures of interesting masks you might ask, “Did you ever wear a costume mask for anything other than Halloween?”

5. Memes are not creative. Sorry, but I’m not a big fan of memes. Bloggers use them as an excuse for not thinking up something personal to write about. Give us a photo for a reason you choose, rather than giving us a reason to think you are a lazy blogger.

In conclusion, even blog readers who love photos will only skim yours if you display a large pile of unlabled pictures. Just think of how you feel when an acquaintance thrusts a photo album into your hands and wants you to look through it, but they don't sit with you and point out the good parts. Don't create that kind of atmosphere for your readers.

Post Zoom- Good Traffic for Minimal Work

2011-02-27T09:40:00.001-05:00

In mid-October, 2010, I signed up with Post Zoom. This is a blog link hub/community of sorts. You can enter blog posts into their categories (2 per day per blog allowed) and these will be displayed on their site, in the category of your choice. The posts also are shown on member sites which have the Post Zoom widget installed, if there is an image associated with the post.

How has this worked out for me? Very well! For My Quality Day, since October 12, I've received 1697 visits through Post Zoom links. That works out to about 12 hits a day. On this blog, I've received 144 visits through Post Zoom links. That's just over one a day, but I don't post as often on this blog, and the topics are of less general interest. My other blogs fall somewhere between these two numbers.

PostZoom Pros:
• Free traffic for minimal effort- I have to add the posts to their system manually, but then I can choose the category and customized the tags.
• Niche tags- If a tag is used on more than a total of eight posts that tag is added to their tag list. With custom tags you can quickly create a niche entry in their list.
• No clicking to do- add your entry and leave- there is no requirement to click other sites to maintain your status
• Owners are open to adding top categories if you can convince them that something important is missing
• You can choose the categories of posts that will show in the widget you place on your blog

PostZoom Cons:
• You do have to enter your posts manually
• There is no outgo of cash, but there is no opportunity for income either
• Site is a bit awkward to negotiate
• It's not listed how many blogs/posts are in the system. I'd like to see counters of some kind to gauge the growth of the site.

If this sounds good to you, check it out. This is not an affiliate link of any kind. I get no benefit if you sign up, other than that there would be more participation in the system.

Post Zoom

How to Use the Janome Memory Craft 9000 Sewing Machine

2011-02-14T14:50:00.002-05:00

I've recently purchased a used Janome Memory Craft 9000 Sewing Machine, and discovered that there is a pretty steep learning curve for those of us who have been used to fully mechanical, non-electronic sewing machines, which were the standard for 150 years.

I've begun a series of tutorials on sewing with the Janome MC9000, and will index the entries here.

Threading the Sewing Machine
Winding and Threading the Bobbin
Using the Automatic Needle Threader

Third Neobux Cashout

2011-02-14T08:44:00.000-05:00

I'm not getting rich from any Pay-to-Click sites, but I don't mind clicking a few ads while I drink my morning coffee, and getting paid to do it. This is my third payout from Neobux, one of the most stable of the sites.

Last year, I did a lot of experimenting, and calculating whether it was worth it to rent a "downline" (referrals- people who are under you and whose clicks also give you a little income). My conclusion was that it was not worth it, at all! The only way to benefit from a downline on Neobux is if people freely sign up under you. So far, I don't have anyone. I've earned a total of $9.00, and wasted almost that much more in my spending of earned money to rent referrals.

Those $9.00 are not going to change my life, but I'll take it. You do need to check in at least once every 60 days or you will lose your cash and your referrals. This is one of the harshest membership policies on these pay-to-click sites.

If you would like to sign up under me, go to Neobux (and wouldn't you rather sign up under a friend than be rented to a stranger?)
Losing Money and Wasting Time
Neobux Again- Going the Right Direction?

Blogger Photo Uploader Rotates Pictures

2011-02-08T09:22:00.002-05:00

A widespread problem is occurring when uploading photos through the Blogger/Blogspot platform. Pictures often auto-rotate to an orientation that you don't want. Efforts to resave the photo and upload again don't seem to do much. I uploaded this humorous shot three times for use on another of my blogs, and it simply refused to load in landscape mode.

There are many theories as to why this is happening, with no real answers. Google has pretty much ignored people's questions on their forum, since the issue was first reported in March of 2010.

Meanwhile, other users have suggested a number of ways to fix this, but only one of the suggestions really works consistently. Here is the best way to deal with the problem.

The way Blogger hosts your pictures is through a private Picasa Album. Using your Google ID, log into Picasa and click on My Photos. You will discover that each of your blogs (if you have more than one) has its own album. Click on the correct one.

You can then locate the picture that is rotated. Click on it, and it will expand. Then in the upper right corner you will see a button marked "Edit." Click it. This will launch the Picnik editing application. You can then rotate the photo to the way you want it to be. Save it back to your album.

Then you can right-click on the photo and get it's URL to use in your blog post. This is a ridiculous amount of work to deal with a problem that you didn't cause, but it's the only reliable solution.

If you are able to host your photos somewhere else, and not use the Blogger uploader at at, this would be the ideal solution.

Picasa
Blogger forum

Creatively Honest Spammer?

2011-01-28T09:29:00.000-05:00

I got this comment on a blog today:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "XXXX":

It's so hard to get backlinks these days, honestly i need a backlink by comments on your blog / forums or guestbook to make my website appear in search engine. I am getting desperate Now! I know you'll laugh while reading this comment !!! Here is my website Vimax I know my comments do not relate to the topic, but PLEASE HELP ME!! APPROVING MY COMMENT! Regards: PoormanBH2011"

At least he gets points for honesty, but I still didn't approve the comment.

Second Payment from Onbux

2011-01-26T10:41:00.000-05:00

I continue to keep a few pay-to-click sites going- they are a mindless thing to do with my first cup of coffee. OnBux continues to be one of the stable ones. Onbux clicks are worth a penny each, very straightforward. There are four ads available to click most days, for those with a basic membership. Occasionally, there will be five.

As you can see, I just cashed out $2.95. This was what remained after a 12-cent processing fee. My balance was $3.07. I had to be over $3 to cash out this time.

I'm not ever going to be one of those people who invests hundreds of dollars in these sites, trying to make a living. But I don't mind a few extra bucks every so often! If this interests you, why not sign up under me. If you don't your account will just be rented to someone you don't even know.

Onbux

Take a Chance on KlickBuck?

2011-01-06T03:38:00.000-05:00

I sure don't know if this PTC site can survive, but I just cashed out $5.08, so right at this moment, it's working.

As the banner says, you can earn up to a dollar a day, but that won't happen unless they get a lot more advertisers. Early joiners did manage to "bag a buck" a day. Now, however, they have lots more members and click opportunities are gone within seconds of being posted.

The idea is that there is a gameboard grid of 25 squares worth 4 cents each. When an ad is available you can click on it, and a square is then filled- you can't click that one again for 24 hours. The most I've ever made in one day is 64 cents, and the least... nothing. The only way to grab clicks is to see them right after they are posted. So you have to keep this open in a tab and keep refreshing it mindlessly all day long. (No ads are posted between 1 and 6 am Eastern Time.)

It's a pain to keep refreshing, and the site logs you out about every 30 minutes so you have to keep logging back in. But... I made $5 in 3 weeks, with no referrals under me. That's really fast.

They say 2-3 days for payment, but I got mine in about 2 hours. AlertPay cashout only.

If you want to take a chance and try to get $5 before they go bust (can 4 cents a click really last?), sign up here for KlickBuck

Year End Report- 2010 Online Income

2010-12-30T18:01:00.009-05:00

The original purpose of this blog was to track whether I would be able to earn enough income online to sustain life. The big answer is, so far, no.

Earlier, I was reporting the amount earned every day, even though it was pennies. This took way too much time, and was impractical. But, for any faithful, or incidental, readers I may have I’d like to provide a year-end report of my efforts. It's long, but some of you have indicated that you are quite interested. So, here it all is... my successes and other attempts.

There are several categories of income included here: Online writing venues, pay-to-click, and other- mostly blog advertising. I’m not going to post proof of payments... You can either believe me or not, and I have no reason to make any of this up. I will make a few comments about each income source.

Total online income for 2010 is $2666.79. All in all, not bad, but not enough. If I were to write content for eight hours a day I could probably double that, but I would go stark raving mad at the tedium. I’m currently focusing on Shared Reviews, where I think I have the best chance of building significant residual income.

Highly recommended earning sites in green! Not recommended in pink! Your may or may not like in yellow.

If any of these appeal to you, might I ask that you sign up under me? Many sites will just sell your referral to someone else, so why not help a friend? It will cost you nothing. The site names are links, with referral info if applicable.

Online writing venues
for a comparison of four of these, see Comparing Four On-Line Writing Venues
Textbroker: reliable income for decent writers, payouts twice a month. You write, you get paid. No residual income.
date	income	outgo
9/21	$98.03
8/21	$39.07
7/21	$62.71
4/21	$30.82
4/6	$33.52
3/21	$75.06
2/21	$192.75
2/6	$66.03
1/21	$131.24
TOTAL	$729.23
Shared Reviews: reliable income for diligent writers, payouts seldom on time, but always come eventually. Residual income increases as the body of your work increases. See How to Write Excellent Content for Shared Reviews
date	income	outgo
12/9	$102.44
8/26	$64.69
7/26	$35.73
6/19	$40.18
5/21	$55.00
5/18	$36.45
4/7	$42.14
3/29	$33.80
3/9	$15.00
2/18	$51.87
1/14	$60.25
TOTAL	$537.55
Helium: horrible rating structure which is required for residual income, very frustrating. I reached payout threshold, and will not go back there.
date	income	outgo
12/9	$27.88
TOTAL	$27.88
Associated Content: submit for upfront pay (slow response time), or page views only. All carry small residual income which increases as the body of your work increases.
date	income	outgo
12/9	$7.06
11/10	$5.44
10/18	$2.30
10/13	$5.00
10/13	$4.11
10/11	$4.49
9/28	$2.97
9/22	$4.35
9/21	$4.02
9/15	$4.45
9/14	$4.64
9/8	$5.65
9/8	$4.61
8/11	$4.01
7/14	$3.62
6/9	$3.12
5/12	$3.02
4/14	$2.93
3/10	$4.98
2/10	$7.55
1/13	$9.14
TOTAL	$97.46
Seed: I haven’t had a lot of luck getting content accepted here
date	income	outgo
8/17	$12.50
TOTAL	$12.50
Vertical Blogger: was offered two assignments, and then no others
date	income	outgo
2/5	$45.83
TOTAL	$45.83
Advertising
Adgitize: primarily for blog advertising, not income, but advertisers who also participate can recoup expenses and make a little money
date	income	outgo
12/23		$14.00 for ad
12/6	$ 20.85
11/24		$14.00 for ad
11/7	$21.20
11/21		$14.00 for ad
10/9	$16.50
9/21		$14.00 for ad
9/9	$15.69
8/22		$14.00 pd
8/7	$23.01
7/19		$14.00 for ad
6/14		$14.00 for ad
6/9	$10.99
5/16		$14.00 for ad
5/7	$16.97
4/16		$14.00 for ad
4/7	$20.53
3/10		$14.00 for ad
3/6	$18.96
2/7	$17.93
1/30		$14.00 for ad
1/6	$28.56
TOTAL NET	$57.19
Project Wonderful: makes pennies a day, but it’s quite trouble-free, and I did better in the second half of 2010
date	income	outgo
11/2	$20.00
TOTAL	$20.00
Chitika: contextual advertising, similar to and compatible with AdSense
date	income	outgo
10/31	$11.27
4/30	$10.50
TOTAL	$21.77
AdSense: needs large traffic numbers, very strict regulations about click fraud and content
date	income	outgo
5/25	$102.56
TOTAL	$102.56
Private Client
date	income	outgo
12/10	$55.00
TOTAL	$55.00
Surveys
PineCone Surveys: you must be invited to join this Neilson survey site which pays $3.00 for most opinion surveys
date	income	outgo
12/23	$3.00
12/8	$3.00
11/24	$3.00
11/2	$3.00
10/20	$10.00
10/19	$3.00
10/7	$3.00
10/6	$3.00
9/7	$3.00
8/23	$3.00
8/6	$3.00
7/12	$3.00
6/28	$3.00
5/24	$3.00
5/14	$3.00
5/3	$3.00
4/8	$3.00
3/12	$3.00
2/8	$3.00
1/7	$3.00
TOTAL	$67.00
My Survey: I’ve been a member for many years. You don’t get paid a lot per survey, but you don’t fill out multiple questionnaires just to be told you don’t qualify. If you are shown a survey, you will be paid
date	income	outgo
9/22	$40.00
TOTAL	$40.00
Pay to Click
Cashium: pay to click- not very stable (I make about 3 cents a day)
date	income	outgo
12/13	$2.29
TOTAL	$2.29
Neobux: pay to click- reliable, need either basic membership or natural referrals- rented referrals lose you money (I make about 4 cents a day)
date	income	outgo
11/17	$2.97
9/10	$1.97
TOTAL	$4.94
Buxto: seems reliable- I bought permanent referrals, but payout threshold is $50, so I haven’t reached that yet (I make about 15 cents a day)
date	income	outgo
11/12		$18.00 to buy referrals
TOTAL NET	$-18.00
Clixsense: reliable, Alertpay charges processing fees, so this was my net from $20.77 worth of clicking (I make about 4 cents a day)
date	income	outgo
1/9	$18.50
TOTAL	$18.50
PalmBux: has had outages, and lost money for some investors (I make about 4 cents a day)
date	income	outgo
12/13	$2.29
TOTAL	$2.29
OnBux: seems reliable (I make about 4 cents a day)
date	income	outgo
11/11	$2.11
TOTAL	$2.11
Other
Swagbucks: get paid for internet searches- all it “costs” you is that their suggestions are the top few choices returned in the list
date	income	outgo
10/4	$10.00
4/28	$10.00
1/26	$10.00
TOTAL	$30.00
Microworkers: I made cashout and will not return- too many offers are illegal or shady
date	income	outgo
3/12	$10.69
TOTAL	$10.69
Other: not at liberty to disclose source- online employment, not permanent
date	income	outgo
3/24	$600.00
2/6	$200.00
TOTAL	$800.00

The "New" Shared Reviews- A Pay-to-Write Success Story

2010-12-20T09:50:00.002-05:00

Shared Reviews is a content writing site, where you can earn money based on readership, rating of other content, and various achievement levels and contests. If you were familiar with the "old" Shared Reviews, there are quite a few changes.

I’m really happy with the new SR, and not just because I’m in first place. Here are some reasons:

1. You don’t have to beat out your friends to do well (which you had to do under the old voting system). This is, hands down, the greatest plus. Anyone who wants to put in the time can excel, if they are a reasonably good writer. Yes, I can write, but I’m in first place because I’ve spent a ton of time rating and writing. And my success doesn’t preclude anyone else from reaching the same level of ranking or payment or participation.

2. Your destiny is largely in your own hands. This is a corollary to #1. Except for receiving a certain number of rates, a person has great control over their own success. There isn’t full control over the number of readers we receive, but there is some. Writing good titles and using keywords is critical. You can make your content discoverable, and promote it. I should do it more!

3. The new system has a much more sustainable basis for payment. Now that the site has been around a while, Peter Ejtel (owner) knows pretty much what to expect from month to month in terms of income.

4. The rating system is constructive. With only a few exceptions, I think it’s working smoothly. Reviews are being improved in several ways. They are often made more discoverable. They are often made more understandable (key elements of SR writing included). The mechanics of the writing is improved.

Types of writing allowed

1. The site originated with product reviews. This is still the bulk of the content. There are almost 400 categories in which to place a review.

2. General content articles were added in early 2010. There are quite a few categories, and more are coming. You aren't limited to given titles (like you are at Helium). There is no upfront payment, but everyone is paid based on readership (previously only top reviews in each category received compensation)

3. Within a few months there is going to be content writing for upfront pay offered to those writers who qualify. This has gone through Alpha testing, and people who qualified for that were paid quite well.

Rating system actually works

Members who have achieved a certain level of experience and skill earn the title of Publisher-Rater. As such they have the privilege (and responsibility- but it's a reasonable level) to rate other articles. When an article is rated, the author is notified, and he or she can edit that article, making the changes noted by the raters. Raters also earn on the readership of content they've rated (at a lower level than the author). This not only generates more income, but it improves overall content on the site.

Articles with high ratings are queued higher on searches, so that people see good content first.

This would be a great time to sign up at Shared Reviews

Video Made in Windows Movie Maker Won't Upload to YouTube?

2010-11-26T09:36:00.000-05:00

Have you edited or created a movie in Windows Movie Maker, tried to upload it to YouTube, and received the cryptic message "Unable to upload for unknown reason?" Yesterday, I learned one possible source of the problem. If you have created an extra audio track, such as a voiceover, read on.

When I went exploring for possible reasons why my video seemed to be uploading to YouTube just fine until the very end, I discovered that one possibility was that the audio and video tracks were not of the same length.

After a lot of fooling around, trying unsuccessfully to get my voiceover track and the dual video/audio track from the camera to end at the same 100th of a second, I tried another solution, and this one worked.

This is what the timeline will look like when there is a problem. My voiceover track is the bottom bar. Note that it extends beyond the camera track. Your video will play perfectly on your computer, but YouTube won't take it.

To fix this problem, just leave the camera video/audio track a little longer. Those tracks are synced internally, and will always end at the exact same time. I managed to achieve this by inserting another tiny clip of film, which you can see, just before 1:58:00 on the timeline. The timeline is expanded, so this clip is only about 1/10 second long, but it made all the difference. YouTube accepted the video in which the camera track was longer than the voiceover track.

Windows Movie Maker is an extremely basic video editing software, but, even so, good things can be accomplished with it.

Shared Reviews Update

2010-11-21T01:04:00.000-05:00

In October, I posted about a major change at the Review and Content site known as Shared Reviews. Those changes are now in their second month of being live, preceded by a month of beta testing.

I think that the system is working quite well. You might think I'm saying that because I'm currently in the number ONE spot. That's certainly nice, but it's not really why I like the changes.

Although not as many previous members have checked in to see how the site now works as would be ideal, the people who are participating are sure to see the rewards.

Rating
One of the new keys to success is to be able to objectively and constructively rate existing and new reviews for content and writing expertise. Only people at a certain rank are able to rate other reviews. When content is rated, the review/article is unlocked for editing. The author may then make changes to improve the content. This raises the overall quality of material on the site.

Readers
Payments for pageviews are only awarded for views from "readers." This is strictly defined to prevent gaming, traffic exchanges, etc. No internal clicks from Shared Reviews count. The tradeoff is that each time a page is "read" it's value is going to be higher. That value will depend on the amount of money in the monthly pot.

Payouts
Due to database issues, we still don't know what we made for October. Owner, Peter Ejtel, says they are trying to get the problems sorted out by the end of November, and process payments. But, here's how it works. Each month there is a pot of money, guaranteed to be no less than $1000. (Based on $2 per new content item, but never lass than $1000.) Half of that goes to authors, based on their readers. The other half goes to raters. Each content item can be rated by up to five members. Those five people will split the other half, based on the readers. If a review/article does not have five rates, the unused payout will be rolled into the next month's pot.

Quick estimates place the first month's payout around $0.01 cent for each "read." Here's how I figure that. Estimated official readers for all of Nov = 100,000. With $1000 to share, the minimum ever (allowing for rollover), $1000 / 100,000 = $.01, a penny per read.

So let’s speculate that in a month a person has 2000 reads of their own content, and 1000 reads of content they’ve rated. If a read is worth 1 cent then the writer will get $0.005, and a rater will get $0.001.

2000 x $0.005 = $10
1000 x $0.001 = $1

for a total of $11 a month.

My total for October should come in somewhere around $24. (Plus my level completion bonuses.)

Ratings will stay with a content item forever, so I will continue to earn with my ratings given for as long as the site is viable. With unused portions of the monthly pot rolling forward, and increased readership and authoring, the potential earnings should only increase.

With more time than sense (or cents) this month, I'm doing a lot of rating. I consider it an investment.

Check out my recent content. Sign up, if it looks like fun!

Bond Falls- A Scenic Treasure in Upper Michigan
Franmara Beverage Stirrers - Easily Re-Used
Staples Hanging Folders - Lightweight Archiving
The Dark Crystal - Special Edition - More to Love
OSN Cleaning Cloth - Safe for Lenses, Screens, CDs
Hart-Montague Rail Trail - An Easy Rural Ride
Memorex CD/DVD Sleeves - Color-coded Storage
Lowfat Butternut Squash Soup - Autumn Comfort Food
Augusta Rose - Outstanding, Friendly B&B
Japanese Technology Returns Plastic to Oil
Lowering Your Chances of a Car-Deer Collision
Eighteen Practical Uses for Used Coffee Grounds
How to Wash Dishes by Hand
Walgreens' Anti-Fungal Spray - Relief, but Messy

Shared Reviews

Advanced Plagiarism Checker- Not the Best

2010-11-17T16:03:00.001-05:00

I was looking for a plagiarism checker to use since Copyscape has severely limited the number of times you can use it for free. What I found is the Advanced Plagiarism Checker, by seachenginereports.net.

It allows you to enter text in a box, a URL, or a text file, and then it will search the web for duplicate content.

There is a bar where you can set how stringent of a control you want on the content.

The results are not as straightforward as Copyscape. It returns a list of phrases, and then a link which you must click to look at a search engine result of pages which have that phrase. When I entered the text of an article I posted on a content site, I had to bump it up to the highest setting, and then it did not return a match to my on-line article for all phrases.

So, this tool is definitely not as good as Copyscape. I wouldn't want to stake my reputation on the returns from the Advanced Plagiarism Checker.

Bux.to - The Best PTC?

2010-10-26T11:13:00.001-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across bux.to. This is, by far, the biggest PTC penny generator if you don't want to get involved with maintaining a big downline of referrals below you. Whereas, the other sites I've kept up with (believing a few to be worth doing with my morning coffee) average 3-4 cents a day, bux.to has been averaging about $0.17 a day.

Each click is worth a cent. After finding that there are a lot of PTC sites that don't even pay a penny a click, this is good news. Even with a standard membership, you will see 12-25 links that can be clicked every day.

The "downside" is that you can't cash out until you reach $50.00. However, that doesn't take an unreasonable amount of time when you are making four times as much each day. In the two weeks since I've signed up, my account has risen to $3.28.

It is a little harder to tell which links you've clicked. They don't change color or icon, but you can usually keep track. If not, refresh the page, and the ones you've clicked will have a line through them. In fact, when you think you are all done for the day, it pays to do this, as a few more links may appear.

Payments are through AlertPay which does take out more of a service fee than PayPal.

If you are willing to spend a few mindless minutes a day poking buttons, you might as well make a few cents doing it!

bux.to

Post Zoom - Ad Exchange Option

2010-10-19T10:34:00.001-04:00

Post Zoom is a new blog link exchange that seems promising. Basically, you put a widget on your blog, add your posts to their database, and for every click that arrives on their site from your blog your blog will be shown in two other widgets. In addition, people may be surfing directly from the Post Zoom home page.

I've decided to give this a try with a couple of my blogs. The widget is small. You can choose 1x1 up to 1x5 in either orientation. The size of each block of the widget appears to be about 100x150. You can serve your ad with an image or not, and the image can be from your blog or from a separate URL, making this quite versatile.

I placed the widget on My Quality Day about a week ago, and have received 5 visits through Post Zoom, as recorded by Google Analytics. The Post Zoom stats says that 2 clicks to them have come through my blog, and 9 views of my blog have been posted through the widget in that time. In my opinion, this isn't too bad for a really new site.

The owner (well, the person who answered the contact form), Eric Castelli, has been very responsive to comments, always a good sign! He quickly agreed to add an Outdoors category, which fits my other blog well. They are open to adding other categories as the need arises.

The site is organized fairly well, but you have to get used to it. When you go to the home page you will see the posts currently being served. These are ranked both by newness of posting and highest popularity. If you want to register or log in, you must read some very small print in the right column.

You can see a 1x1 widget in my left column, just under the CMF ads.

Benefits: It's pretty early to tell, but if it becomes a popular place for surfers to check in for content, it could be quite useful.

There's not a huge time investment- no sites to click, etc.

You can place each of your blog posts in any category, individually. This is nice for eclectic bloggers, such as I am. If I post about flowers one day that can go in Outdoors. If I talk about something I baked that can go in Food & Drink, independently.

You can limit the categories from which the widget on your site will load, to tailor it to the content of your blog.

Drawbacks: You must load your posts on the site yourself. This means that you have to remember to do so, and take the extra couple of minutes required.

Post Zoom

Big Changes at Shared Reviews

2010-10-08T01:19:00.004-04:00

I've been a member of Shared Reviews since a couple of months after it first started. I joined in October 2007. Currently I have the #1 ranking at the site. (This could easily change!)

Since August, owner Peter Ejtel has been working hard to roll out an all-new payment and status structure. It's been tested in pieces, and the system is now live, and mostly working properly. It's a complete change from the previous method, so if you didn't care for Shared Reviews before, you might find it more appealing now. If you were involved there some, everything is changed. In either case, pay attention!

There will now be cash awarded on a monthly basis in proportion to the number of readers who visit your reviews from valid referrers. This basically means through searches or links, but not any PTC sites or link exchanges. This will be more fair. Previously you could only get paid if your review was in the top of each category.

You can also earn cash rewards for reaching specific challenge levels. It's a complex system, but basically you work to complete levels, and there is some reward at each completion. Sometimes it's points, sometimes it's cash. These awards are independent from the pageview cash awards.

If you were used to the old voting system (which lent itself to "corruption"), that is gone. In its place is a rating system. Members who have a high enough rank can rate reviews for their quality. When a rate is made the reviewer has an opportunity to edit the review to improve it. This is a long-overdue need, since there are a lot of sub-standard reviews. There are also a lot of really good ones. The current review total is 46,354... there's plenty of room for quite a range of quality!

Pageview cash awards are split between the writer and the raters. If a review has not yet been rated, the writer will still get 50% and the rest will roll over to the next month's kitty.

This explanation isn't nearly complete, but it will give you a sense of the sweeping changes. Pageview payouts are percentages of the monthly revenue, so we don't yet know what the payout will be. This is the first month of the new setup, so I don't think anyone has a clue what we are likely to earn. But the one thing we do know is that more people will earn a share of the pie.

Of course, if you have a higher rank you will earn more from the challenges earned, and the fact that you are allowed to rate others.

Check it out if you want... it's a good time to jump in. Meanwhile, here are my new reviews in September and October:

Wireless N Home Router - Basic, Sleek
Big Agnes Fly Creek Tent - Good Design, Ultra-Light
Pendaflex Sure Hook Files - Possibly Better
Hobby Lobby Raffia Basket - The Right Shape
Sleepyhead - Cute But Not Outstanding
Revere Ware 1 Gallon Steamer/ Canner - Useful
Harmony Kingdom - Tin Cat I Figurine Box - Sharks
White Acorn Squash - Bland, Disappointing
Trapped in Death Cave - Believable Adventure
Magnetic Storage - Not Just For Locker Organization
Tips for Choosing Flowering Bulbs
Hands of Jesus- Christian Bird Lover's Ideal
Pendaflex Hanging Folders - An Office Standard
Role for the Government in Controlling Sugar?
IMToo MOV Converter- Not the Best Deal
Comparing Four On-line Writing Job Venues
Little Quack's Bedtime - Cute Toddler Bedtime Book
Murders in the Rue Morgue- Classic, No Extras
Points to Consider When Planning an Autumn Hike
Adidas Defender Bag- Adequate, Too Soft
Experiment- Making Homemade Peanut Butter
Ten Relatively Painless Tips for Cutting Calories
Universal Food Grinder- For the Manual Kitchen

Shared Reviews

Adgitize Adds Way to Earn Points and Gain Exposure

2010-10-03T08:53:00.006-04:00

Ken Brown, owner of Adgitize, has announced a new way to earn as many as 100 points in a day. You just have to participate in the Adgitize forum.

His philosophy has always been to not only provide advertising, but to help bloggers become better bloggers. His system promotes:
1. Regular writing on your own blog (100 points a day for a post)
2. Visiting other blogs (up to 100 points a day for clicking other blogs in the system)
3. Now, you can gain name recognition by participating in the forum (up to 100 points a day)

A post with 200 words is worth 100 points
a 100 word post = 50 points
a 50 word post = 25 points
and a 25 word post = 10 points, up to a daily maximum of 100 points.

Brown explained that the monetary award per point will be reduced slightly, across the board, so as to stay within the budget. But that for people who participate in the forum, they are likely to see their earnings increase.

One of the things that attracted me to Adgitize early, and has kept me there, is that the system is stable. Brown calculated how the system would function at all levels before he launched the program, and developed a way for it to pay for itself. Unlike some other systems which suffered from inflation, or collapsed for lack of funds, Adgitize is stable, any changes are announced in advance and are not knee-jerk reactions to crises.

This is an even better time than ever to sign up and buy a monthly ad on Adgitize. You can't go wrong- your blog will be advertized across 5000 sites, you will make blogging friends, and you will probably end up being paid to do so if you are active.

Adgitize

Technorati Claim Code

2010-09-30T09:01:00.000-04:00

If you aren't trying to wow the entire blogosphere, I'm not sure just how much benefit there is to being listed with Technorati, but I've got most of my blogs claimed there now. Due to the backlog, it takes them a long time to process a submission, or as they call it, to "Claim a Blog." I forgot that I hadn't entered my claim code for this blog, it's been so long. So, this is just a post to enter my Technorati claim code of C37JKXGFJ98T.

Technorati

Troubles at Palm Bux

2010-09-27T09:34:00.002-04:00

Palmbux has recently changed owners. The good part of that is not everyone will lose money. Maybe. On the forum, several people who invested amounts, sometimes exceeding $1000, with them, are up a creek. The new owners aren't making good on losses that the previous owners incurred.

But they promised an "all new" site on Friday, Sept 24, 2010, with the ability to cash out, which had been locked for quite a while. Sure enough, some things were new. After a few days of an inability to even click ads, that was open again.

The new owners seem determined to succeed, but I'm a little annoyed. The said that cashout would again be open. But any funds one had in their regular balance has been moved to a place called "Reserve Balance." This will be fed back into Rental Balance, 10% per month, plus a 20% bonus. If everyone tried to cash out their balances immediately, PalmBux would go under immediately. The owners stated that the total would be $121,000 dollars if that happened.

So the good news is that people did not lose all that value. The bad news is that it can't ever be gotten out in cash, because rental balances can't be transferred back to the Main Balance. I think this is true... it's true at most of the Pay-to-Click sites. But, I can't check, because the Help Page at PalmBux still isn't working.

Well, this will never be on my list of favorite PTC sites. You get too little cash for the time. Most clicks are worth either $.002 or $.008- yes less than a penny. It's really disheartening when to get several in a row that don't even add up to a cent. So why do I keep doing it? Probably just curiosity to see if I can ever get any money out of it.

Palmbux

Poll Results- Reactions to Blog Load Speed

2010-09-26T09:32:00.001-04:00

I'm sorry to say that only three people participated in the poll, so this is certainly not an adequate sample size. But, for what it's worth, here are the results. It was a complete tie. So, the best I can conclude is that loading speed is not a problem for some people. Loading speed annoys some people enough to stay away, and other people just try again later.

Not exactly news, is it? Well, we don't always find out new information!

Does It Matter How Fast Your Blog Loads

Set Search Bar Default in Firefox

2010-09-23T11:31:00.000-04:00

Does your preferred search engine in Firefox sometimes revert to one that you don't want to use all the time? This can easily happen when an update is performed, or sometimes if it locks up and has to be shut down by the system.

This is an annoying little problem. It's easy to pull down the list and click on the one you want, but how do you get it back to being the default search preference?

Using the picture above as a guide, you will notice that at the bottom of the list is a choice called Manage Search Engines. Click on that and you will see the box as below.

Then you can select the search engine preference you want and move it to the top of the list. That will make it the default search engine choice. You can order any of the others as you wish, too.

This is very simple, but it's difficult to find the instructions for how to actually do it.

Adgitize Your Blog and Bring in Readers

2010-09-21T20:23:00.002-04:00

There is no better time to advertise through Adgitize than right now! But you may still be wondering what good it does to put a little picture square into the Adgitze system.

One thing is certain: you may have the best blog in the world, but if no one knows it's there, you aren't going to have readers. How can you get readers? Advertise. It's that simple. But why should you choose Adgitize over other systems?

You are practically guaranteed some great traffic. While it is true that you will experience some bounce traffic- people who leave quickly, just after clicking on an Adgitize ad on your page- many people will read your content. If they like it, they will come back regularly. Some people may find your blog marginally interesting (let's face it, no one can write a blog that everyone in the world will love), but gaining the point for visiting your site may be enough to pull them in for a quick scan.

Best of all, if you advertise for a month, at just $14, click 50 Adgitize ads a day, and post on your own blog, you will at least break even. So the advertising cost will be nil- just the time to view some other great blogs.

How does it work for me? The blog which I advertise with Adgitize gets 42% of its traffic from those small but effective ads!

Adgitize

Does it Matter How Fast Your Blog Loads?

2010-09-18T05:00:00.004-04:00

I've found myself lately refusing to visit several good blogs because they load slowly. I have pretty good connection speed, wireless, not dial-up. Yet, when these sites grind and grind for 5 minutes and still aren't loaded, I tend to just move on.

What I'm suggesting is that bloggers should consider how many fancy applications or widgets they should add to a site.

One of the worst hoggers of load time are the glitzy slide shows. I pretty much just don't even try to load those blogs any more. It's too bad. There are at least three that I enjoy the content, but waiting interminably just isn't worth it.

Adding music files that play automatically is also a killer for loading time, not to mention that it's very intrusive. I keep my computer sound turned off, so I don't hear them, but it slows everything down.

I've come across a web site that allows one to test their blog/site as to load time. It's free, and I get nothing for referring you there. I just find it useful. By way of example, it tested this page as requiring 52 seconds to load at 128 KBPS. A site with a slide show took almost 3 minutes.

I've added a little poll. Does it matter to you if blogs load fast?

Test your blog's loading speed at Web Optimization

Getting Paid by ClixSense

2010-09-16T11:43:00.001-04:00

I took my first payout from ClixSense, and it went smoothly enough, but there were hidden costs. I had set my payout at $20, to avoid taking a real hit with the payout fee. I had planned to use a paper check, with a $3 fee, but in the end, I opened an AlertPay account. I had been resisting doing this, just because I don't want to have a whole lot of small accounts to track. But I figured that to save $2.50, I could do it, and AlertPay looks stable enough.

Anyway, after I did that, on the 10th of the month, after my ClixSense account passed the $20 I had chosen, the money was passed to AlertPay. You can see that the balance must have been at $20.27, so that $19.77 was paid.

Then I transferred the AlertPal balance to my bank, and they took out another $1.27 fee. Well, I still saved $1.23 overall, by using this method over a paper check.

At any rate, I did end up making a small amount of money through ClixSense.

Neobux Payment

2010-09-10T10:54:00.003-04:00

OK, after I got mad because Neobux took away all my money after a 30-day hiatus on my part (I was away), I went back. I mean... I can click 4 things while I'm reading my mail and drinking my coffee, without ruining my day. Now, I'm taking my first cashout, and it went smoothly enough. Of course, they keep another 4 cents for the processing. I know that they really do have to pay a fee with PayPal, but it's just more nickel-and-diming of the user (or panny-and-half-pennying).

So I clicked "yes," and within 5 minutes the notice came that the money was in my PayPal account.

You may remember that I've tried renting referrals there and never could come out ahead of the game by doing that. I think the only way to have a profitable downline is if people sign up under you of their own accord.

You can take your first payout at $2.00. After that the minimum increases by $1.00 each time until it reaches $10.00, and then it remains at that amount. They pay to PayPal or Alertpay.

Over the months I "wasted" close to $10.00 buying referrals, and I lost $5.00 in the hiatus fiasco, but if you stick to the rules, the site does pay. And they pay more per click than most similar sites.

My First eBook!

2010-08-27T17:39:00.001-04:00

I published my first eBook today through Smashwords. I am pretty happy with the whole process, and will be writing more about that. It is already available on their web site, and should be placed in their Premier Catalog within a week. It has to be manually approved for that to happen, but then it is shown on several other major eBook distribution sites.

This book is a collection of 10 short devotions with themes that will appeal to hikers, backpackers, campers, and walkers. I've sold quite a few of the print copies since publishing it in 2006. It weighs just 0.3 ounces in print format- light enough for most packers. However, if you are going to carry a digital device, or just want to use the devotions for every day, you can now buy it digitally for just $1.89.

I'm also working on "Get Off the Couch with Joan," a collection of several of my previously published columns from the local newspaper, The Ludington Daily News. I've been writing for them for over four years now, and it's time these essays earned their keep a little better.

My Smashwords

Vacation Ideas

2010-08-23T11:03:00.000-04:00

Are you running out of ideas to perk up some family travel? Try these:

Play "Let's Get Lost"

Another Souvenir- Where Will You Put It?

Collect Gastronomic Experiences Instead of Souvenirs

How to Maximize Your Adgitize Experience

2010-08-11T19:22:00.001-04:00

Adgitize is a blog advertising network that can provide you with a great deal of exposure. With just a little effort on your part, it can also be free!

Tip #1: Design a Catchy Banner
Use good graphic principles- clean lines, clear colors, a graphic that reflects the theme of your blog. Text may or may not be appropriate, but make sure it is readable and crisp. Although several size banners are supported, the most popular size is 125x125 pixels.

Tip #2: Buy an Ad
It seems like this is a no-brainer, but it is possible to belong to Adgitize simply as a publisher. You may earn a few pennies a day, but your web/blog will not gain any significant exposure. The most economical is a full year at a time at $12 a month, but the most popular format is one month at a time for $14.

Tip #3: Post Once a Day
You get 100 points a day for posting to your blog. You can have multiple blogs in the network, so you only need to post to one of them to gain the 100 points. (More than 100 points are not given for multiple posts.)

Tip #4: Click 50 Ads a Day
If you are an advertiser, you only have to click 50 ads a day to gain 100 points. This is not too onerous. I don't have a super-fast connection, and I can get this done sort of behind the scenes by having two tabs open and loading while I'm doing other things. You MUST wait until the page finishes loading or your click will not count. You can also only click one ad per page.

Tip #5: Accept Adgitize Ads on Your Site
You are not required to do this, but other members who need to click ads are more likely to visit your site if they know it will lead them to another ad to click.

You also earn points for traffic to your sites, and from displaying Adgitize ads.

The Adgitize Point Guarantee
Ken Brown, founder of Adgitize, has stated that what began as a summer promotion will continue into the future. If you accumulate 300 or more points a day, you are guaranteed at least $0.47 cents. This totals $14.57 for a month of 31 days, recouping your investment. Higher points will result in a profit.

Why not give Adgitize a try?

Shared Reviews to Revamp Earning Opportunities

2010-07-27T23:21:00.001-04:00

Peter Ejtel, Founder and Editor in Chief of Shared Reviews, has announced upcoming major changes to the site. Beginning with a two-month earning hiatus and transition period, then, on October 1, the new changes will go into full effect and the prediction is that members should be able to earn more than ever before.

In addition to writing reviews, the "Bounty" program will go into Beta mode. This allows writers with a high enough rank to complete writing assignments for third party clients. Payment for successful Bounty articles will be prompt.

The system of voting for reviews for monthly rankings and payments will end. Instead, revenues will be distributed proportionally to all writers based on page views from general web traffic.

Rather than voting, members will now respond to other reviewers by anonymously rating reviews with a numerical ranking and short text message.

Ejtel said, "Rank Badges will be earned through experience, such as Publishing, generating Page Views, Rating other Author’s content, acquiring Referrals, and receiving positive Ratings from other Authors."

For August and September, members will be asked to participate on a volunteer basis in order to test the new system and become accustomed to how it will work.

For the past two years, I've been ranked in the top 5 on the site almost every month. My monthly income has been between $25-$50. With the hope of increasing that amount, I am willing to continue my involvement until the return of payments in October.

If you are looking for future opportunities to write, with earning potential, this is a good time to sign up, start writing, and learn how the new system will work.

See the full announcement at the Shared Reviews Blog
Sign up at Shared Reviews

IMToo Audio Converter

2010-07-19T09:31:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I wanted to convert just the audio from a movie in .wmv format to an audio file, and went looking for a free way to do so. I already use IM Too movie format converter, so this seemed like a good choice. IM Too offers a free download, which met my needs. The limitation is that you can only convert 3 minutes of sound. This was plenty for what I needed to do.

The entire program sells for only $23.95, so if I decide that I need to have this functionality often, it won't break the bank.

The use was easy (of course I was already familiar with the movie converter). You just import the file that you want to convert, choose a new format and destination, and then click the button.

The website says :
Convert between different audio files (incl. MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC, FLAC, OGG, APE)
Extract audio from different video files (incl. AVI, MPEG, WMV, MP4, FLV, MKV)
MP4 to MP3 Converter to convert MP4 to MP3, M4A to MP3

I converted WMV to mp3.

IM Too Audio Converter

Recovering Lost Stickies

2010-07-17T12:02:00.002-04:00

A few days ago I told you about a great little piece of Freeware called Stickies 7.0. But I mentioned that there was a bit of an issue with apparently losing all of your stickies on occasion. For some people (like me) who really use this software to organize their life, that can be a real problem!

The first time it happened I angrily headed for their support forum, and discovered that the recovery is simple. Ahhh.... something that works, and is easy to fix when it does break. Software doesn't get much better than this.

Here's how to recover if your stickies suddenly come up blank. First, you need to be sure that your display options are set to show hidden files and folders. To do that, click Start/ Control Panel/ Folder Options/ View/ Show Hidden Files and Folders. If your settings do not allow for these to show, the path to the stickies recovery folder will not show up.

Now click on My Computer / C: / Documents and Settings/ Your User Name/ Application Data/ stickies. If Application Data is not in the list, you have not successfully made hidden files show.

You should see a list like this.

Now you have several options. But before you try any of them, make a second copy of stickies.bak, stickies24h, and stickies1wk. This just helps insure that you won't accidentally dump those backup files yourself! Rename one of these three files as stickies.ini. Which one? Stickies.bak is the most recent. It will have the most up-to-date information from your stickies. Occasionally, this will be empty. In that case, chose stickies24h, which is all the data from 24 hours ago. As a last resort, stickies1wk is, logically, all the data from one week ago.

I have had stickies.bak be empty after a bad crash, but I've never had to recover anything earlier than the 24 hour file.

Stickies 7.0- Free, Great for Organizing Desktop

2010-07-13T20:55:00.002-04:00

Have you tried the free program which places electronic sticky notes on your desktop? It's the only organizer program that ever really helped me keep all those scraps of info and a to-do list so that I can find them. And, it's free!

Developed by Zhorn, Stickies is a small, simple program. It does not write to system files or the registry. It simply stores text in an ini file.

You can set the colors of Stickies. You can arrange them anywhere on your desktop. They can be set to open at a particular time with both visible and/or audio signals.

You can attach one to a web site or document, and it will then only open when you open that document in the future. They can be sent to other computers which are networked, and a long list of other capabilities.

I've been using Stickies for about two years, and I'm really pleased. It does have one real bug... occasionally all the notes will disappear! This sounds deadly, but recovery is really easy. Tomorrow I'll tell you how to do that.

Stickies 7.0

Comments- Just a Comment

2010-07-09T10:25:00.000-04:00

I recently read an excellent blog piece from Jen at Redhead Ranting, How Can I Get More Comments. Her main points are:
Dispense with Word Verification
Write Shorter Posts
Post More Than Pictures
Make it Easy to Figure Out How to Comment
Cut Down on the Reviews and Giveaways
Cut Down on the Memes with Many Rules
Ask Questions that Invite Responses
Respond to Comments
Don't Overdo the Ads
Don't Use Too Much Offensive Language
Don't Be a Bore

Really, you should read it... whether you agree with her or not. (And I don't necessarily agree that all her points are hard and fast rules... after all, Jen rants!) But, I would like to just add another thought to that list.

When people regularly visit your blog and make comments, make a point to return the favor. Really. There are at least three blogs on which I comment almost every post, and the writers have yet to make any comment AT ALL on my blog(s).

My most personal blog is My Quality Day. Now, I already know that what brings quality to my day is not what interests a lot of people. I learned that in kindergarten, eh? But, surely I offer enough diversity that there would be something of marginal interest to drop me a note once in a while if I'm commenting every day on your blog.

I'm a little guilty of this myself in a couple of cases. I can't think of a think to say to respond to celebrity or clothing or beauty blogs. OK... maybe I should work harder at this and take my own medicine. But I can rant a little bit too, can't I?

So to get comments, you need to be a commenter. But if you get those comments, and find them encouraging at all, please comment back.

Losing Money and Wasting Time at Neobux- The Fine Print

2010-07-07T13:03:00.000-04:00

Well, I just learned a really nasty lesson about Neobux, the pay to click site that everyone says is so good. I had actually racked up $5.60 in my account. Then I went hiking.

With the priority of getting the NCT miles finished (see My Quality Day) I did not log in to Neobux for more than 30 days. My account was temporarily suspended per terms of service 8.4: "After 30 days of inactivity, your account will be temporarily suspended and permanently suspended after 60 days of inactivity. An inactive user for 72 hours after registration will have the account permanently suspended."

So I asked to have my account reinstated. When they did so, I saw that my account had dropped to zero! I inquired about this and was referred to point 8.2:"All suspended accounts will have all their balances reset, all referrals taken away and no refunds will be given."

So much for Neobux, as far as I'm concerned. Thirty days is much too short a time period to set for reducing a user back to beginner status. A move, illness, family issue, or other important activity can easily keep a person off the internet for 30 days.

Caveat emptor!

Blogger/ Blogspot Having Issues with Comments

2010-07-06T13:49:00.000-04:00

Blogspot is having a known issue with comments not showing up properly on a blog even if the email notification is coming through. Although it's not clear just what is being done, if you are having this trouble go to Blogger Forum and report your information.

Kickstart Unsent Letters and Get Perks

2010-07-04T20:14:00.000-04:00

Even a $1 or $2 donation can help this book become a reality. The popular blog, Unsent Letters, gives a sample of what will be included in the book. Real people share their feelings, good or bad, writing out all those thoughts that they would really like to say to someone, but know they never will.

For the smallest donations you will receive a free bookmark, but at the $10 level you will receive a copy of the book. Higher levels will buy you an advertisement in the book itself.

As with all Kickstart projects, your credit card will not be charged unless the project reaches its funding goal.

Kickstart Unsent Letters

Adgitize Guarantees No-Cost Advertising Through July

2010-05-26T07:00:00.000-04:00

Hey! Do you want some free advertising across 10,000 web sites? For a very minimal amount of work, Adgitize will guarantee that through July 31, 2010, in a summer special offer!

Yes, you will have to buy their $14 a month ad, but you can be guaranteed to earn that entire amount back by simply making more than 300 points a day.

How can you make 300 points a day? It's easy! You get 100 for writing a blog post. If you are an advertiser that gives you a 100 point a day bonus, and as an advertiser, you can get another 100 by clicking only 51 ads instead of the 100 required for non-advertisers.

Owner, Ken Brown, says, "we would rather give that money back to you" than spend it somewhere else. So he will guarantee you $.47 for a 300-point day. If you are consistent, this adds up to $14.57 for the month, resulting in free advertising for you.

What's the catch? What does Adgitize get? Their hope is to attract enough steady advertisers to keep the number above 200 on a regular basis. Why not give it a try this summer?

Adgitize

Yahoo Acquires Associated Content

2010-05-19T08:07:00.002-04:00

Yahoo has acquired the popular writing platform, Associated Content. With 16 million viewers a month, AC garners more hits than the New York Times. Recently AC has been encouraging regional and local news items, but one can write about almost anything, and get paid at least a minimal amount based on page views.

I suppose it was bound to happen-- an acquisition. But big changes are already announced. The biggest is that they plan to take down the web site in about nine months. What? How do they plan to serve the "news?" The article states, "Yahoo plans to sprinkle Associated Content's contributions throughout its news, sports, finance and entertainment sections."

Um... what about the other million or so entries? Will they just all disappear? Will writers continue to be paid for producing content? Will Yahoo only use news items that fit with their agenda?

For the thousands of people who have found a forum by using Associated Content, this will be a terrible blow. No one is getting rich there, but articles can be posted for performance pay only, which means that you are paid only when someone actually reads an article. The rate is very small, ranging from $1.50 to $2.00 for 1000 views, depending on your "clout." Yet, a lot of people have grown their body of work to create a small core of income each month. Does Yahoo plan to dump all that? If so, it will hardly be Associated Content any more. How does Yahoo plan to attract people to continue to write?

I have to say that I am not happy. I only get a small puddle of income from AC each month, but I had gotten nicely used to it. Holding my breath to see what the future will bring.

see Yahoo news article
I Love Hate Associated Content
My Associated Content page

Chitika Reduces Options for Small Bloggers

2010-05-18T20:29:00.001-04:00

Chitika has been a good source of advertising income, averaging 5-10 cents a day. But that has all come to a crashing end.

They are reviewing all sites that are signed up with them, and unless your blog/ web site gets a high amount of traffic you can no longer display what they call premium ads. I haven't made a penny for the entire month of May.

I am sure feeling as if the options for small to medium size bloggers are becoming very limited.

Chitika

Now the Fun Begins- Getting Paid from Adsense?

2010-05-16T08:37:00.001-04:00

We've all heard the horror stories about people being denied payment from Google after finally reaching the $100 threshold. Well, here's where mine begins. They haven't actually denied payment as yet, but they have disabled their ads to this blog.

It seems that after all of my attempts to be careful and follow their rules that I missed one. You can't put their ads on a blog that even has content about pay-to-click sites.

They have not reduced my total earnings, or said that payment is being denied. So... I will wait and see what happens.

Almost enough on Google Adsense

ADPTC is Annoying and I Lost my Dollar

2010-04-30T08:13:00.002-04:00

Here's just one more Pay to Click (PTC) site to avoid. I signed up quite a while ago, and was unhappy fairly early, but decided to stick it out until I reached the $1 payout.

In the first place, the clicks are only worth $0.001 or $0.002 each. Yes, that's one or two tenths of a cent. There are usually 5-10 clicks available each day, so your income per day is less than two cents.

Next, there is an annoying timing feature. After you click on a link, and it loads, there is a number to match to click and be credited with your tiny reward. If it is more than 5 minutes between when you click the ad and the number it returns an error and you have to click it again. Sometimes a page doesn't even load in 5 minutes. Sometimes I'm off multitasking and that 5 minute limit error is there waiting for me when I come back to click.

The site often has processing problems. Way too often I get a message "Sorry, this action could not be processed." Sometimes you can reload and get back what you were doing. Sometimes, it's just gone and you didn't get credit for your click.

When ads break out of their frames you are not credited for the click.

This all ads up to the situation that it takes way too much time to get your measly two-tenths of a cent. But here's the frosting on the cake. I only sign up for sites that pay via PayPal. I understand that they may not always be so friendly with overseas accounts, but I'm a verified, premium member, and they've been very good to me. However, two days before I tried to cash out my dollar, PayPal suspended the ADPTC account. So the only way to be paid is by AlertPay. I don't have an account there, and am not going to open one for a buck.

Bye, bye dollar. Bye, bye all the time I wasted earning it. Hello, information I can pass on to you. I don't recommend ADPTC.

Breaking a Blog Post in Blogspot

2010-04-20T21:26:00.000-04:00

Did you know that it is incredibly simple to break any post in a blogspot blog, any place that you want to?

Did you ever wonder how bloggers set up a post so that some of the text shows, but they you have to click "Read more" to continue? Any place you want, simply put in the line 

The break and the link will show up when the blog is viewed.

EntreCard Introduces Mysterious EntreCredits

2010-04-17T09:04:00.002-04:00

Entrecard has sent an email to members inviting them to sign up at a site with almost no information as to what that might mean.

They said, "In a few weeks we will be launching entrecredits.com as a new site and we can't wait! But we need help. There's a lot to test, a userbase to build, and a UI to polish. As an Entrecarder you already have a strong understanding of how a credit-based economy works, so we're offering EC users an opportunity to get in early on this new site and help us create something to expand and complement Entrecard."

Doesn't say much does it?

At the site we read, "At last! a quick, simple micropayments solution that makes it easy to spend and earn on the web. We're opening for beta soon. To reserve your place in line and receive free credits to get you started, give us your email address below."

I have to admit that I'm skeptical. I make it a practice to NOT sign up for things that don't tell me what they are about. But, I have given them my email, since this appears to be from the support team at Entrecard.

Let's hope I didn't just sign up for some scam.

Entrecard

Launching Yet Another Blog

2010-04-11T23:54:00.000-04:00

With no apparent regard for the amount of time in any given day, I have launched yet another blog. It has yet to have a banner, but I plan to review a short story at the rate of about one a week.

Short stories are fascinating. They must have the elements of a longer story, and yet pull that all off with lots fewer words. So far, I've reviewed one classic, and one newly published story. Check it out!

Shark's Short Story Reviews

Almost Enough at Google AdSense

2010-04-09T11:36:00.000-04:00

I thought I'd never get there, but it looks as if I will be reaching the $100.00 cashout point at Google AdSense this month!

My average income per day varies wildly, from $0.11 per day some months to $0.24 some months. I have noticed that when I can get traffic up it makes a big difference. I've been really careful to squelch click fraud, so I'm hopeful that I won't get one of those nasty denials of payment that I've read about from others.

It has taken me since December of 2007 to reach this level, so essentially 28 months. I'm working at monetizing some underviewed pages of mine. We'll see if that makes the next payout come any sooner.

Great Deals on Scrapbook Items

2010-03-29T22:34:00.000-04:00

If you like scrapbooking items and helping people, check out Save on Scraps. The owner of the site is a friend of a friend, whose husband has left her. She's trying hard to raise some funds to support herself and her kids.

She also has a number of horse magazines for sale on Ebay at lisbeth952.

New Articles at Shared Reviews

2010-03-28T00:30:00.001-04:00

Just a few more reviews for the end of the month. Take a look. You can vote if you sign up!

Track Your Finances in a Spreadsheet- It's Easy!
Adams Receipt Book Works for Rent or General Use
Ritter-Sport Chocolate- Old Brand with Great Taste
Why I Hate Cell Phones (humorous)

Tips for New Shared Reviews Members
Promoting Shared Reviews

Trailer for Elements of the Soul

2010-03-26T22:45:00.000-04:00

You might have noticed that there are some icons in the sidebar that indicates that some stories I wrote have won prizes. Those stories will appear in the volume, Elements of Love, which should come out late 2010. But the first two books in the series are Elements of the Soul, and Elements of Time. All are anthologies of prize-winning short stories. The trailer above is for Elements of the Soul. I have a copy coming to me, and will review it sometime in the coming month.

You can order the book from Twin Trinity Media, for only $12.95.

National Park Service Uses Photo

2010-03-18T09:18:00.000-04:00

What fun! I just discovered that the National Park Service has used one of my photos (I gave permission long ago for them to do so with all my hiking pictures). You can see it at the National Trail System introductory page.

The shot was taken in North Dakota, at the headwaters of the Sheyenne River, which is the wetland in the background. Three friends and I were hiking the North Country National Scenic Trail. They are in the picture: Marie Altenau, David Castro, and Mathilda Nance. I've always thought that this picture just said, "North Dakota."

It was taken on a 131-mile backpacking trip in 1995, to do the western end of the North Country National Scenic Trail. This was one of the first long hikes I took on the NCT. My book, North Country Cache, covers the first 2300 miles I hiked on the NCT, and is the first book by a hiker of that trail. Follow the link below to read one chapter for free. Of course, you can order the entire book if you wish!

You can see more of my pictures at Sharkbytes Photos
See North Country Cache at Books Leaving Footprints.

Promoting Shared Reviews

2010-03-15T12:02:00.002-04:00

Once again, let me say that I do fairly well at Shared Reviews, placing in the top five most months. Last month, for the first time ever, I was #1! I won't make that this month, but if you even click on any of these reviews it will help me, and something might even interest you!

Sign up under me to vote, if you are not already a member. There is a link following this list of tips for new members to be able to make some money.

Adopting Older Children- Consider Carefully
Twister Grips- Make Opening Jars Easier
National Scenic Trails- What Are They?
Decorative Red Metal Lizard- Indoors or Patio Fun
How to Lace Athletic Shoes
Don't Throw Away that Carcass!
Boys Crew Socks- 84% Cotton
Velocity Trail Runners- Lightweight
Corelle Dinnerware- Dinnerware for the Rest of Your Life
Caron Simply Soft Yarn is Too Soft
Model Railroading- Popular Hobby Gauges
Bubba Goes National- a Winner Out of the Gate
Stretchy Animals- Cheap Fun
Game of 26! is Complicated and Slow
Plackers Floss Picks- Expensive but Handy
Petflex Self Adhesive Bandages are Great
How To Easily Clean Copper
Adventure Library- My One Book Club Splurge
Growing Succulent Houseplants

Tips for New Shared Reviews Members

New Tab Placement in FireFox 3.6

2010-03-14T09:06:00.003-04:00

If you have downloaded FireFox 3.6 you have already discovered that one of the big changes is in where new tabs open. It used to be that if you did right-click, open in a new tab (or Cntrl click), the tab would open on the far right of your already open tabs. Now it opens right next to the page that you clicked on.

They say they made this change to help organize and group tabs together that are similar. I'm finding this hard to get used to. Sometimes it helps me organize, and sometimes it doesn't at all. I haven't decided if I will change it or not.

How do you change it, if you want to? It's not as simple as it should be, but it's not too hard. There is no way to change it under Tools/ Tabs. That is annoying.

Open a new tab
In the location bar (where you usually type a URL), type about:config, then press enter.
You will see a warning about changing settings and voiding your warranty. Just press "I will be careful."
Then you will see a screen of a lot of commands with some columns of figures or text after them. Scroll down quite a way until you find browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent
You will note that its value is true. Double click that line and the value should change to false.
Close that tab

Your new tabs should now open to the far right again. If you ever want to change it back, just follow these same steps and change the value back to true.

Tabbed Browsing in FireFox

Getting Paid by Microworkers

2010-03-12T17:30:00.001-05:00

I actually got paid $10.69 from Microworkers today. It took forever, but I actually got the money.

I had previously decided that I would cash out at $10 and not continue to use the service. My reasons are detailed in other posts (see links). So I requested a payout. A notice came up that I would receive a PIN that I should enter to validate the claim. So I waited.

I waited some more, and went back in to look at what might be wrong. Well, the PIN comes by surface mail. So I finally emailed them to ask when I might receive it. The egg was on my face. I hadn't entered a street address. I guess you can sign up without doing that. So I entered my address and waited.

A few days ago I got the PIN in the mail, with no return address either on the envelope or the letter. But the stamp was issued by Slovenia. This does not inspire great confidence. But I entered it and waited.

Today, I actually got my money. Horray! But it took since January 19. That is 53 days to process.

Update on Microworkers

Adgitize Offers Targeted Advertising

2010-03-10T09:29:00.001-05:00

Adgitize has launched a new service which will help bloggers connect with advertisers even more effectively.

A few days ago, Adgitize owner, Ken Brown announced that publishers of ads should add new settings for their blog or pages. The geographic region where the writer is located can be selected. Also, there are 33 subject areas into which a blog may fall. Writers may choose up to five of these topics.

Beginning today, advertisers may choose to place their ads in targeted categories, which should result in higher conversion rates for them. There are 10,000 publisher blogs, and the ability to select good matches for advertisers should be a big plus.

Targeting will cost slightly more. To select a target geographic area or subject will add $3 per month to the base price of $14, thus costing $17 a month. To add both will increase the rate to $19 per month.

Personally, I am thrilled that Brown has chosen to include Nature/ Outdoors in his list of subjects. Very few sites include this as a category, and those of us who blog in those topics (see My Quality Day and Favorite Nature Blogs) find it difficult when signing up on social sites, because there is no place for our work. We are not really talking about sports, or gardening, or photography, but these are often our only choices.

Adgitize continues to deliver traffic at reasonable rates. Sign up today!

Adgitize

Is Textbroker Worth It?

2010-03-08T21:54:00.001-05:00

I have been a writer on Textbroker for 15 months, and have cashed out over $1700 from the site. This definitely sounds like it's worth it! But there are a couple of reservations.

First, the good parts:

It is the one place where I can get paid for work in just two weeks, as long as the balance is over $10. There are two cash-out dates each month.
There is usually a list of assignments to choose from
You can set your own price for Direct Orders

Now, the not so good parts:

The rates they pay for all but level 5 assignments are pretty low. Level 2 pays 0.7 cents a word, Level 3 is 1 cent, and Level 4 is 1.4 cents a word. You will often need to do quite a lot of research for an article, making these rates pretty awful. Level 5 is considered professional, and it pays a more reasonable 5 cents a word. Very few people make it to level 5.
Occasionally the assignments will taper off to almost nothing.
Some assignments are terrible. Clients don't always make it clear what they desire, or they may make unreasonable demands. Of course, you don't have to take those ones, but it doesn't inspire confidence in the venue.

My personal beef:
Until last week, I was a Level 5. Actually, there are very few assignments that are even available at that level, but when there was one that I could do, it was great! However, in February, they started sending me warnings about the use of commas. They sent me a reference to study the use of commas. Sigh. This is somewhat a stylistic thing, not a RULE. The editor for my book, North Country Cache, lectured me long and hard about using too many commas and made me change my style. I think TB wants all those commas back in.

But, it really doesn't matter now. The comma police have busted me back to a level 4. I don't know if I'll ever get my 5 rating back.

It is really hard to make a lot of money there. You will put in a lot of time. But you don't have to wait for weeks or months to sell the articles you write. You accept an article, write and revise it till the client is satisfied, and you get paid within a couple of weeks.

They occasionally stop accepting new authors for periods of time, but I see that they are allowing sign-ups now. Unless your English is really poor you can expect to begin at a Level 3.

Textbroker

Signed Up with PalmBux

2010-02-17T09:42:00.000-05:00

You might think that I have discarded all the pay to click schemes. Maybe I should. But the truth is that I can do some meaningless clicking in the morning while I'm drinking my coffee and waking up.

So, I signed up with Palmbux. Here's how it works. With a standard membership you are given 5 or 6 ads to click on per day. The ads load more quickly than the ones offered by Neobux, which is nice. When the page has been displayed for the required time you are given a letter (A, B, C, or D) to match and click to validate the view.

The validation in the header will then be replaced with the value of the ad which is credited to your account. It's a little confusing since the value levels are also coded A-D, but these letters have nothing to do with the validation check. An A ad is worth $0.008 (yes less than a penny, but more than some sites pay), and a D ad is worth $0.001.

I've been a member for three days and have earned $0.07. It costs 30 cents a month to rent referrals. I don't think I'm going to even try this out on Palmbux. If I can't make money on Neobux where the costs per referral is 25 cents a month and the clicks are worth a full cent, I sure don't know how you could get ahead at Palmbux, even if there is not a daily maintenance fee.

But if this kind of site appeals then so far, my experience has been acceptable. I'll report again if I reach the $2 minimum payout and succeed in having the money transferred to me.

Palmbux

Entrecard Slow to Approve Web Sites

2010-02-16T10:41:00.000-05:00

Just under a month ago, Entrecard announced that it would begin accepting web sites in addition to blogs. I immediately put one of my sites into the queue, since I am trying to increase advertising there. At the time, there were about 5 websites which had already been approved in the system. There are now 61, but mine is still waiting.

So what's up? Maybe this is evidence that EC is paying more attention to the kinds of sites they approve. Here's my categorization of the some of the sites in the system as of right now:

Romance/Dating/ Girls- 3
Real Estate- 1
Tech/ Computer- 1
Crafters- 2
Cars- 2
Make Money Online- 2
Financial- 1
TV/ Celebrity- 2
Mixed Bag- 1
Health- 1
Sports- 2
Fashion/ Beauty- 2
Humor- 1
Expat- 1
Not in English!- 1

OK, so I didn't look at them all. I hate the way the EC display page jumps around instantly when ads are purchased. So I looked at about half of them. One already had a popup you have to click when it opens. One is not in English. But, overall, there are some decent pages, and some that are not so great. Two of them are just really close to my line as to what is decent, but EC already has a few sites that I think are borderline, so clearly my standards are different from the owners.

But, with 61 sites approved this means they have approved about two a day. Are they so busy they can't look at more applicants than that?

Entrecard

Neobux Again- Going the Right Direction?

2010-02-11T19:24:00.002-05:00

I said that I was going to give Neobux one more try, and after 8 days I am wondering if it is going much better than before.

For one thing, I figured out a much easier way to keep track of the daily profit. It's quite simple, duh. More on that in a minute. Let me first say that I have put no money into the system at all. So, at this point, this whole experiment has only cost me the time to click 4-7 links a day, and whatever time I've spent figuring this out and blogging about it.

As previously reported, I had rented first three and then three more referrals. With only three I was losing money (it takes money to maintain referrals). With six, it was a toss-up. I was making about the same amount as I could make by just clicking the links I was given even without referrals.

This time, when I had enough money in my account, I rented 10 referrals all at once. This is for 30 days, and each one costs $.25, so there is an initial investment of $2.50 (plus those maintenance fees).

I have made an average of just over 11 cents a day, profit, figured in the following manner: In my account summary, each day I have recorded the main balance (money that you can add to or cash out), and the rental balance. The main balance goes up each day and the difference from one day to the next is the gross profit (GP). The rental balance goes down each day and the difference from one day to the next is the maintenance cost per day (MC). GP-MC= net profit per day(a). I give it the modifier (a) because that is "apparent" profit. To get the real net profit per day (r), I need to subtract that initial cost per day of the rental. For any number of referrals the cost is always a quarter for 30 days. So for my 10 referrals, $2.50 for 30 days is 2.50/30 = $.08333/ day. So now, I must subtract this cost from profit(a) to get profit (r). 0.11-.08333 = $.0267 real profit a day. Once again, this is less that the average of $0.053 a day I was making with no referrals.

One has to wonder where the break-even point is where you actually make a profit with referrals. Once again, I have to conclude that unless you can get people to sign up underneath you, you can't get ahead with just renting. Of course, this will depend somewhat on the number of clicks each referral does a day. But all of the ones I have are within the range of daily averages (1-3), that Neobux says is standard.

This was enlightening, because it appeared to me that I was making a profit, with my account growing by 11 cents a day.

I wonder if I am ornery enough to keep trying this at higher levels?

Neobux

Adgitize Tops 220 Advertisers

2010-02-09T10:41:00.002-05:00

Despite the recent down time Adgitize shows 222 Advertisers today!

With about 5000 active publishers (those who display Adgitize Ads), those who choose to advertise have a wide visibility. The number of times your ad would be displayed is going to vary on any one day. Not only are the number of publishers and advertisers a factor, but some blogs may choose to show only one ad, while others may show the maximum allowed, which is 10. But according to the counter, which is refreshed daily, over 41 million ads have been shown in the past month!

I suspect that the surge in advertisers might actually be related to the problems Adgitize experienced last week. Owner Ken Brown treated all his advertisers so well... awarding maximum pay during the downtime, and extending all ads for 7 extra days (more time than the site was down), is surely well out of the ordinary. Bloggers have become rather used to being treated with little or no respect. Adgitize's actions are just the opposite.

If you are looking for a great venue to advertise your blog, look no farther. Despite the requirement to pay $14 a month, with just 50 clicks a day you can earn every penny back, and probably show a small profit. What's stopping you?

Adgitize