General spending habits

With the economy having a slight down turn, I call it slight because this is in no way likened to the great depression, I have noticed that only a few spending habits have changed. People are spending less on gas but more on frivolous things like metal detectors for finding buried "treasures" and cosmetics like Proactiv acne cream. I fail to understand the spending habits of the American public. I can only imagine that people want to find rare coins when they can't even find a job or look good to maybe get employed.

Now let's look at this logically - if you can't afford to buy something with cash in hand, don't buy it! How many items do you have stuff in that "junk" drawer? I wonder if you took everything out and priced it to see how much you spent on it what would you think? My guess is that you have at least $100 worth of items (the price you originally spent buying them) in that drawer.

Next time you go shopping think before you buy. Stop being an impulse buyer.

Is cheap gas good or bad?

I think we have all wondered if that gas from the grocery store or Costco is as good as the brand name stuff sold at the gas stations. I have found a video that might enlighten you. View it below.

The dangers of Anitvirus2009

I spent the better half of Sunday not relaxing but ridding my daughter's laptop of a hideous malware program called Antivirus 2009. What this little nasty program does is place warning messages on your computer that state "you have 38 (or some other high number) of viruses detected on your computer - run scan now". The scan is of course fake and the malware then tries to convince you that the software you have installed in not the paid version and you must go to their website and purchase a full copy of the software.

My daughter had mistaken thought that this program was our Norton virus program since it had a fake shield that looked like the Norton one. She only let me know that she was having problems with the computer when it refused to let her visit main websites like MSN or Yahoo, saying they could be fake or phishing websites.

After doing some searches online for cure with my computer (since hers was now at risk for becoming a slave computer) I found several ways to get rid of the nasty little trojan. One was a step by step instructions on how to remove each file and registry problem. I failed to find one and as soon as I went on line with her computer it started to try and download it's self again. This time I went on line with my computer again and found a malware remover program for free. I made a copy of it and transfered it to my daughter's computer and ran the malware remover program. it found that other file that I couldn't find and removed it. It also found 15 other files and removed them as well. Now all is well.

Making money with your blog, step 3

Have you been following me so far? If not here is part 1 and part 2 of my step by step series on how to develop a blog to make money.

In this step (part 3), I have added 2 dog training videos to the blog The Playful Pup. Here is the first one and here is the second one. The videos not only add some very helpful info for the visitor but I earn money every time someone watches one. The website that supplies the videos is called The Newsroom and you can do the same thing by joining their site for free. They have a huge selection of videos to display and earn money from. I caution you against using too many videos on you front page of your blog because it will take longer to load the page. The longer it takes for your page to load the more likely your visitors will leave the blog before it loads completely. The Newsroom actually recommends a maximum of 3 videos per page.

So far it is pretty easy. Next time we will get in to promoting your blog.

Making money with your blog, part 2

This is the next step in my multiple post guide to creating a money making blog. If you missed part 1 here is the post.

Now that the blog The Playful Pup is now up and running with it's new banner title and the very first blog post it is time to add a visitor and stat counter. I added one from Statcounter. Of course they are free and I find them very useful. Also the one that is on the right side of this blog farther down is very handy too. That one is from HiStats. I like the one on this blog because it will show how many people are on the blog at the same time. That can be a big boost to your readership once you have more than 50 or so readers a day. They are both the type of counters you will need to find out where your visitors are coming from and what they are clicking on too. In the very beginning you can be misled by a rather large amount of "visitors" to your blog, only to find out that those visitors are search engine bots just hitting on your blog. Once your blog has been on the internet for about 6 months or more, expect at least 30% of your daily traffic to come from search engine bots and not real visitors at all. So you now know when someone tells you that they have "X" amount of visitors a day you can be pretty sure they are including the bots as well. I have had the bots hit one of my blogs every 15 minutes for a few days a week. It sure does drive the traffic counter up!

I chose a visible counter for now but you can also pick an invisible one that only you know the stats of.

Stay tuned for part 3 of how to make money with a blog.

Horse feed coupon

I am always looking out for some decent money savings coupons. Here is a link to a horse feed coupon from Purina Horse Feeds for $8.00 off.

Purina coupon

Manteca, California, foreclosure news

My brother-in-law and his wife live in Manteca, California and recently told me about how their neighborhood is fairing in the foreclosure crisis. They live in one of the newer developments in Manteca, built just about 8 years ago. They live in one of the many cul-du-sacs in the area. Of the 15 homes on their cul-du-sac, 3 are in foreclosure. They told me that the value of their home has gone from 500K to just over 200K in one year. They estimate that the house is just barely worth about what they paid for it new 8 years ago. The problem is the fact that they used the equity in their house a few years back to pay off all their credit cards. They now owe more than the house is valued at. They have confidence that the prices will start to go back up soon.

I remember in the early 1990's the real estate market did the same thing in California. We had bought our first home in 1988 and wanted to sell it to move else where in the state. The bottom had fallen out of the real estate market at that time. When we put our house on the market in 1993 we had offers of 20K less than we bought it for in 1988. It did take a few years but the real estate market bounced back.

If you own a home and you want to move or sell it, wait a few years for the real estate market comes back up. If your mortgage is higher than the houses' value then just think of it a rent until the value goes back up. You have to live somewhere and you might as well take the tax advantages while you live in your own home.

How to make money with a blog, step by step, part 1

Since making money with a blog is a fairly easy method of money making I thought I would take you step by step right through the process. I am starting up a brand new blog and I will show you step by step what I am doing and how I am doing it. The income will come mainly from paid advertisements and affiliate links.

The blog I have decided on is called "The Playful Pup". I bought the domain name through Blogger when I signed up for the blog. Right now it is in transition and should be on the domain name http://www.theplayfulpup.com/ soon. It takes about 3 days from the time you purchase the domain name for it to go live. I can still play around on the http://theplayfulpup.blogspot.com/ blog until then.

The main reason I bought a domain name for it was that some advertisers and affiliates don't like sub domains and will not approve your blog if you don't show some sort of monetary commitment to it.

I chose the pup or should I say dog theme because I have knowledge about dog training, breeding and showing dogs. Also dogs are in 1 household in 3 in the USA so that makes the subject of dogs very interesting to people. You should choose a subject that you have experience or knowledge about. Pick a subject that has a lot of other people who share that interest, hobby or fascination.

My first order of business was to make a nice title banner for the blog. I used Microsoft Paint, the free program that comes with almost every computer. I also experimented with color schemes for the blog itself, all found in the control panel of blogger.

Stay tuned for part 2