Places to look for work

Would it surprise you that there are many places online that list jobs that some people are unaware of. Of course most people are aware of monster.com and craigslist to look for jobs but what are some of the other major job search sites? If you are looking for engineering jobs and happen to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, check out the online classifieds for the San Jose Mercury news. The same thing for any local newspaper, go to their website where they often list their classified ads.

Here is a brief list of other job websites that you can search for work:

• career.com
• indeed.com
• yahoo jobs
• Your local state employment website, some are extensive and others non-existent.

What are you doing without?

The economy is still stagnant for millions of people. Going without is no longer a matter of figuring out to shut off the cable TV or cut back on the Starbucks coffee. Now it is a matter of doing without health insurance, letting the payments lapse on the term life insurance and deciding on if giving up meat in the diet would save money. People are cutting back on everything.

Just a few days ago I started to notice that our local Goodwill and St Vinnies were getting a lot more up scale donations. I asked why and found out that since many people have lost their homes and they could not afford to put their items into storage, those items ended up being donated. Those people are doing without not only their homes but most of their worldly possessions.

Watching our local news today, they have painted a dismal picture for the up coming Christmas shopping season. I am not sure of that since many local businesses have "help wanted" signs in their windows. They are gearing up for when the college kids go back to school and leave their jobs.

I am going to tell you what I have been doing without and then it is your turn. I have been cutting back on snack foods, my weakness is cookies, ice cream and donuts. I have not had a donut in at least 6 months, a cookie in 4 months but that ice cream habit is a little harder to break. At least it is the cheap brand bought at the Grocery Outlet.

Now it is your turn, what have you been doing without?

Tips to increase your earnings with Adsense

Are you frustrated with your meager daily earnings with Adsense? You are not alone by any means. Do your websites or blogs have huge numbers of visitors but very few clicks on your Adsense ads? Then you are obviously doing something wrong. Below I have some tips and some insight what you might be doing wrong.



Let's first take a look at what people do when surfing the internet. They are either looking up information, shopping or just passing the time. If you have any one of those types of blogs or websites then you have half the battle done for you. Just personal ramblings just don't attract people to click on Adsense ads in those sites, they are just there to read and move on. So here is a list of tips to increase you earnings with Adsense:

• Write crap - yes, you read it right, crap. How many times have you visited blogs and not find what you were looking for and clicked on an ad just because the ad sounded better than what you were reading. Google wants original content but their bots are not intelligent enough to know the difference between good original content and original crap.
• Write about the item you want the ad to display. If you want an ad to appear about coach gifts then you have to mention that item at least 3 times in your post or article. 
• Write about something that pays higher per click. If you are getting over 100 clicks a day but each of them are only worth .03 a click then you need to aim for higher paying words. You article does not have to be about lawyers, loans or medical devices but you need to mention the same phrase or word at least 3 times to trigger those ads.
• Write a short (under 300 words) post with a title that claims to give an answer to a question.  Then do the unthinkable.........don't answer the question. That will leave the reader hanging and they will either leave via an Adsense ad that gives them their answer or they will click on something else.

What you have to keep in mind is the fact that most of those methods will have the effect of your blog or website only having one time visitors. People will not want to return. On the other hand there are billions of people on the internet so if they only visit your blog or website once, who cares, you'll would have made some money from each of them.

Why would you work for free?

First watch the video above then read my little rambling pissed off story.

This has got to be my biggest gripe as a blogger and freelance writer.....people who give away their work. There are plenty of online companies and websites that are just clamoring for unskilled and fresh out of college writers to work for them for ............FREE (or almost free, it is called peanuts).

Who are these content producing sweat shops? They are the new wave of the future my friends. They are big companies like Yahoo and AOL to the smaller ones that have a league of paid bloggers like IZEA. They either want you to produce a written work of art that will pull in readers and yet only cost them pocket change or they want you to post an article on your own blog touting the miracles of the "X" brand of toothpaste all for under a $1.

A few years ago, online writers could earn a decent part-time salary. I was earning about $200 a week just on paid blog posts. Not bad until the paid blogging companies got really cheap with their offerings. Then came the influx of non-English speaking writers who have admitted to eagerly snapping up writing assignments for $1 for 300 words because that is nearly a day's wage where they live. All I can say is.....where in the F*** can you go online, pay the electric bill and still profit at $1 a day? Of course they did not mention that they also grab 4 or 5 other $1 assignments at the same time bringing it to a whooping $5 a day.

That brings me to the fact that many people join content producing websites like hubpages and demand studios just to churn out as many articles as they can so they can get a few extra dollars here and there. There is nothing wrong with that.....BUT DON'T CUT YOURSELF SHORT. Just like he said in the video above, quality costs money. If you write quality articles, expect to be paid with quality numbers. Most well written short articles of under 800 words are paid at the rate of over $75..........NOT $5!! Find and locate those companies that will pay those higher numbers and quit giving your work away.

Find out who I am

If you take a look at the top of this post, you will notice that I just added a new page to the blog, titled "Who I am." There you will find out almost everything about me. Why I write, my adventures in blogging and why I confess that this blog is my one a day prenatal vitamins, since I consider this blog my "baby." I get an energy boost just writing in this blog, even if very few people will ever see it. When I started to write the page I wondered where I would begin and just let my creative juices flow, and flow they did. So if you plan on taking a look at it, be warned, it is long, very long.......but I hope interesting.

Millionare resorts to selling her stuff on eBay

This has got to be the sign of the times. Self proclaimed, self-made multimillionaire, Ali Brown (her website is at alibrown.com) is now selling her stuff on eBay. Her eBay "store" is at http://stores.ebay.com/alibrowncloset and as of today only sold one item as seen in her feedback score. All of the proceeds are going to "Step Up" a non-profit, but if she is as rich as she pretends to be then why not just write the organization a check?

Why in the world would a multimillionaire being selling stuff on eBay? It just does not make sense. Her Twitter account may be the clue to it all (twitter account is http://twitter.com/alibrownla ) in that almost every tweet is a tweet to sell something. She has little or no interaction with her followers at all. So I did a bit more digging.......oh how I love to dig up stuff on people.

First up I could not find anything about this woman other then on her own websites. I did find lots of people that could not get their money back after joining one of her "programs."Of course there is lots of praise about her coaching (no doubt written by people who paid lots of money for it and hate to admit they were taken). But I could still not find out the following:

1. Is she really a multimillionaire?
2. Is she even mentioned on the BIG name websites like CNN or Forbes? Sorry Inc 500 does not count since I have never heard of that organization before today.
3. Other than her "coaching" what is her real business? I mean where does she make her money? Surely not off the backs off all of those people that pay to hear her speak? All talk and no evidence!
4. I did find a video of her on ABC promoting her book, yet another one on coaching.

The bottom line is that people can claim to be anything online and if they claim to be rich enough, then people want some of that action and then that person gets richer. Talk about a pyramid scheme based on ego! Ali's book, website and everything about her is just her reeking of positive outlook on life and that is it, nothing else just online therapy for those that want to dish out the money to read what she has to say.......even though she herself has only herself to sell.

I now wonder if people are finding out that she in reality has no track record of being successful herself and is just good at marketing her own self. If that is the case then her income would dry up as people wise up. Maybe she really can't afford to write that check after all.