Companies that prey on the unemployed

Have you been looking for a job on the major job seeking websites like Monster.com or careerbuilder.com? If you have then you have been seeing an increase in small business opportunities and work at home schemes. Our local government employment development department actually issued a warning over several of our local TV stations to warn people about those shady companies. They have been seeing an increase of ads that pretend to be employment ads but are only come on's for franchises or pyramid schemes.

Those companies are leaches that are preying on those people that are coming to the ends of their ropes - financially. I sure do hope that the powers that are soon to be in office enact some type of enforceable law that would protect people from those types of leaches. Let's face it, how long have those types of ads been around? I remember seeing those old stuff envelopes for a living ads way back in the 1970's and nothing has been done to protect people since then.

Companies that want too much but pay too little

I normally don't bitch about companies but a friend of mine showed me the following ad for an Administrative Assistant at Wah Chang in Oregon. You will note the salary and then the qualifications. The very last item was for a 4 year degree! I know the economy is bad but when are these companies going to realize that once they get the 4 year degree graduate and the economy picks up just a little then they will take their degree and look for some decent pay. I also have to add the remark, "what in creation does a glorified personal secretary need with a 4 year degree?" Heck I can answer the phone, make appointments, take notes and run rings around them when it comes to software operation and troubleshooting but I don't have a 4 year degree.

Company: ATI Primary Metals and Exotic Alloys Group
530 SW 34th Ave
Albany, OR 97321

Salary Notes:
Salary Grade E: $ 31,191 - 38,988
Job Description:
This position is responsible for performing a wide variety of high-level administrative duties for the Group President of ATI Primary Metals and Exotic Alloys Group. This position works with employees at all levels of the organization and deals with issues that are highly sensitive in nature.

Position Responsibilities
Employees in this position are responsible for performing a wide variety of detail-oriented clerical and administrative duties including coordinating schedules and calendars, making travel arrangements, preparing spreadsheets, reports and presentation material, composing correspondence, performing word processing of varying complexity, and often of a confidential nature.

Any single position of a classification will not usually involve all of the duties listed and many positions will involve duties that are not listed.

Minimum Qualifications:
Five years of progressively responsible administrative support experience which includes providing administrative support at the executive level. Proficiency with Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point, and Visio is required. Successful candidate will be highly organized, detail-oriented, and have the ability to positively and proactively handle multiple assignments within a fast-paced environment, while at the same time, greeting visitors and employees in a friendly and courteous manner. The candidate selected must be a dependable team player with an exceptional attitude and work ethic, and a demonstrated ability to maintain confidentiality at all times. Candidate with a four year degree is preferred.

More money coming my way

Boy did I get a nice surprise tonight. I had not filled out an online survey in the past week from my paid survey company, so I went to their website and logged in. To my surprise I had over $45 coming to me! I had not done any surveys that I could remember that gave me that amount in the past few weeks so I looked at where the money was coming from. It looked like it was the people that I had referred to them were doing the surveys and I was getting a kick back of a dollar per survey from their efforts.

That is what I like about that survey company, you can earn money by referring others to them as well as filling out surveys yourself. I do realize that I can't possibly qualify for every survey they have but having referred someone that does qualify earns me money too.

I remember when I first joined them just about 2 years ago, my first survey came the next day and it was for $20! I thought "this is great" and turned my sister on to it. My survey invitations came about once or twice a week and they paid about $10 each time. My sister on the other hand qualified for more than I did and was invited almost every day. Even though I didn't do near as many surveys as she did but I was still earning a dollar per every survey she did. She in turn started to have her friends sign up and she was paying off credit cards with her earnings!

Now I have to request a check from them - lucky me.

Did you get what you wanted for Christmas this year?

If you are like many people at the end of this year, Christmas gifts were on the lean side. You either gave what you could afford or you told people to get you only the necessities. For our family that meant new eyeglasses for 2 members of the family. Thanks goodness that our health insurance covered the majority of the expenses and our co-payments were less than $20 and it included the eye exams.

If you are not as fortunate to have health insurance that covers eye care, and not many of them do nowadays, you can shop for your eyeglasses online. More and more people are resorting to that alternative now. I do know that we were restricted on what eyeglass frames would be covered under our health plans and what ones would cost an arm and a leg. Knowing what was within our budget made it easy to choose frames, everyone was given a dollar limit and we shopped around till we found a place that offered a nice selection in our price range.

Under no circumstances should you buy your eyeglasses at the same place you had your eye exam unless you know you are getting the best deal on the eyeglasses. Get a copy of your eye exam and shop around.
I just had to add a picture of these wild colored frames just for kicks. It would be something that my ex sister-in-law would wear.

Making money online without a blog, website or selling on eBay

Yes there are other ways to make a really nice income online without blogging, owning a website or selling anything. The one way that I make extra money without having to blog or sell anything is writing articles for the internet. Now before you say, yes I tried it but it doesn't work, read this blog post first before you click on one of the ads or surf on.

First let me say that there are hundreds if not thousands of websites that claim to pay you for your written articles but either never do or they pay something outrageous like .01 an article. Stay away from those scam companies. One of my personal favorite non-scams is Associated Content where I earn an average of $6.00 an article with the highest paid one to date at $20.50, that is not including my monthly performance payments of $10.00 or more.

Now you do the math. If you can write a nice 400+ word article about anything you wanted to with no spelling or grammar errors, you could earn at least $4.00 for it. Now if you wrote 5 of them a day then you would earn at least $20.00 a day. Ok that's not much but consider you can now earn money every time someone reads your article as well. Let's use my own articles as an example:

Most of my articles get at least 100 views a month with some of them getting over 2000 or more views in one month. At the minimum payment I would get $1.50 per 1000 views. That equals to 8000 or more views a month, so I would get an additional $12.00 a month. That's not much considering I only have 80 articles on there right now. If I increase my article writing to 2 articles a day that would mean I could earn around $400 a month which would include getting paid upfront for my articles and my performance views.

I also like the fact that once they have accepted my article they pay me within 2 business days via PayPal. The performance views are paid once a month.

There is at least several writers on AC that get paid in the $1K+ range each month just on performance views alone. Hows that for getting paid for just having your written article on AC? If you like to write and blogging is not for you than try AC.

Withdrawing from your life insurance

Did you know that there are many types of life insurance policies? Sure, all of them pay out after you have died but some of them also pay you when you have reached retirement age or you can also borrow on the account. Making a withdrawal from your life insurance is as simple as calling up your insurance company and asking to make a withdrawal. Yes you do have to pay the money back and there is usually an interest rate, but think of it as replacing your own money back into your own bank account. If the life insurance policy you currently have does not do what I just laid out then you should do some research into the matter. Go online and get a life insurance quote from different companies and compare them.

My family made the right decision 20 years ago and got a life insurance policy that we could make withdrawals from and it became a life saver when times got hard.

Boosting your income using old blog posts

If you have a blog that is over a year old you can use the oldest blog posts to boost your income. The older blog posts are now indexed by the search engines and some of them even have some page rank. You can utilize those posts by putting affiliate ads right in the post itself either by banners or text. Those posts have a greater chance of being found by people using the search engines than your newer posts do. Keep the post the same and link only those words that will fit in nicely with an affiliate ad. The idea is not to change the text of the post but to use the text as a link. You could use as many of the words as you want to and link them to different products in your affiliate arsenal.

I am going to hold a contest

I have several brand new pairs of Sterling Silver earrings, charms and rings that I acquired when I was actively selling jewelry last year. The items are all still new and never been out of their bags. I was wondering what to do with them since I don't hold jewelry parties anymore or sell at art and craft fairs like I did a few years back. It came to me last night what to do with them - give them away to my loyal readers!

Here is what you need to do to win a piece of Sterling Silver jewelry - subscribe to this blog via email. All email subscribers that have subscribed for at least 30 days will be in the drawing for the very first give-away to be held on Feb. 1, 2009. You now have until January 1, 2009 to subscribe to this blog. Here is what you will win if I pick your email address:

A pair of silver cat post earrings. Subscribe today, there are only 4 subscribers at the time I write this so your chances are pretty good of winning. The winner will be contacted by the email address they used to subscribe with.

Merry Christmas and here is something free for you

If you have a blog or are considering starting one then you should know the advantages of having your own domain and hosting for it. The main advantage is the fact that you and you alone can control if and when any advertising appears on the blog and what you blog about. If your blog is one of those free ones at Wordpress, Myspace, Blogger or on of the many other hundreds of free blogging platforms then you know your blog is at their mercy if someone complains that you are offensive. With you maintaining the blog on your paid host you have more freedom.

Because of that you are also free to choose the blogging platform that you use. Many people use the software supplied by Wordpress. org (NOT Wordpress.com) as their blogging platform. The software that comes from Wordpress.org comes with a bare bones theme but you can change it. Here is a place where you can get some great free wordpress themes. Merry Christmas and enjoy your new Wordpress theme.

The grim truth about earning money online

Here is something you don't want to hear, the truth about making money from your blog or website. Sure you can make lots of money but the question is how long do you have to wait to see any of it?

Unlike ecommerce where you sell something straight from your website or blog and get paid right away, getting paid from Google ads, paid blog posts or affiliate ads takes sometimes months.

If you are planning on making money from doing paid blog posts you will typically have to wait anywhere from 1 week to one month to get paid for your post. Some of those paid blogging companies pay you when they want to and or take their dear sweet time about approving your post to get paid in the first place. I have dealt with almost every one of the paid to blog companies at one time or another in the last 3 years and some are good and some are really bad about paying you on time. The bad ones you will not see an advertisement for on this blog.

Are affiliate partnerships much better when it comes to paying you? No and in fact they usually have payment thresholds you have to meet otherwise you will never get paid. Most of them require that you have a minimum dollar amount that you have earned before they will pay you. Some require a minimum of $100 before they pay you and others will actually take money from you just to "process" your payment! I have only been paid by clickbank thus far and they required 5 purchases to issue my first check of $85. Since then - nothing, nada. All of my other affiliate advertising is still under the $$ amount threshold. Some of them it is $150.

So you think you are going to get rich with Google Ads? You might just do that but you will have to wait 60 days after you reach the $100 mark (their minimum payout). Their payment schedule is you have to reach $100. At the end of the month that you have reached the $100 or more mark you wait another 30 days and then a check is issued 14 days later. So if you reached $100 today you would not get your check until February 14th or somewhere around then.

So if you plan on paying a bill and need the cash in the next week or so just try and sell something on eBay or from your own website. If your blog is popular enough then just offer straight advertising for money. At least you will get paid right away.

Beware of fake websites

You have heard of fake websites, right? They are websites that look like the real thing but are fake. If you do paid blog posts you are aware of the website Smorty. Well it seems that Smorty has been faked. The real Smorty website is here at Smorty DOT com. The fake Smorty website is here at Smorty DOT tk.

What the fake Smorty website is trying to do is harvest your address, Social Security number and PayPal information.

Here is the link to the official Smorty blog that tells it's members that the DOT tk website is a fake one and is not Smorty at all.

The DOT tk is a free domain. I did some digging around and found out that the Smorty DOT tk site is affiliated with several other scam sites. They seem to be operating out of the Netherlands. Here is the web page that shows the info on the Smorty DOT tk domain.

You can really find out some interesting stuff about scams when you look up WHOIS and IP's.

The cheapskate Christmas gifter

I think we had all received a gift at one time that we thought was absolutely the cheapest most horrible Christmas gift we have ever gotten. A cheap gift is not so much what the gift actually costs as to who was giving it. Take for example my cheap a$$ sister who is loaded with money. She hoards money like some people hoard books or collectibles. She is a miser with a capital M. One year she gave my husband a pencil sharpener. Not an electric one mind you but one that you manually put the pencil in and turn it.
It was wrapped up as well, just like a normal gift. It wasn't a joke since she also handed my daughter copies of computer software that her young son had. Copies mind you that she had made on her PC. Never mind that my daughter was 6 years older than her son and that the software was for toddlers and not teens. Both of them asked me why my sister did that to them. I had no answer but we all agreed that it would be better not to receive a gift from her at all than to be insulted by her in that manner.

I think that my family would have fared much better if they were the victims of re-gifting than being insulted. Re-gifting, if you had not heard of the term by now is the method of receiving a gift you did not like and re wrapping it and giving it to someone else. There are some do's and do nots when it comes to re-gifting and here is a complete list of them:

Re-gifting do's and do nots

Another freebie, this time for your cell phone

It's freebie time again and this time it is for all you cell phone owners. I found a website that offers totally free ring tones and wallpapers for you cell phones. Better yet you don't have to provide an email or sign up for anything. I also downloaded a few items just to make sure they did not contain any viruses or malware. I hate finding websites that are just fronts for hackers to entice you to download free software only to find out that the site is full of trojans.

Anyway, back to the freebie. The website is Mobizaar - Free Ringtones and Wallpapers

Here is one of the many thousands of wallpapers you can get on there:


You can search the wallpaper section by phone model and make. You download the music and wallpapers from the website to your computer then upload them to your phone. If your phone does not have the capability to upload from your computer then you should get a special line cord to connect your phone to your computer. You can find them on eBay or at the many cell phone stores online. Most cell phone providers don't want you to know that your cell phone is capable of connecting to your computer because they want you to use the phone to dial for ring tones and wallpaper, thus using your precious minutes up.

Clinching that job interview

Great news you finally get a job interview. If you are a woman you find your best outfit and dress up for the interview as if you were to be the representative of the company at an awards dinner. After the interview you wait....and wait....and wait, but no call. You finally call and find they picked someone else for the job. This keeps going on until you change your outfit, hair, shoes or some other physical attribute. You then find that after the first interview you are called back for the second or third interview.

You have discovered the meaning or judging a book by its cover. Company interviewers are judging you the way you look. We all know that it is a form of discrimination but how to prove that the company didn't like they way you looked would be hard. Before you start losing weight with the use of fat burners or consider plastic surgery do a mock interview with a neighbor or friend. Ask them to pick apart what you said or the way you presented yourself. If you are interviewing with men then ask a man for his input and vise a versa for women.


A word of caution, don't get upset when you hear the criticism. Use what they tell you to enable you to succeed at that next interview.

Desperate times and desperate people

If you are one of the many unemployed this holiday season you will be going through some mentally desperate times. As a person that has been unemployed outside of the home for the last 3 Christmas's I can vouch for what you will go though. I will list the most common mental acts you will go though while trying to seek out work, here they are:

• You will first diligently fill out job applications, either online or in person
• You will wonder why people aren't calling you for interviews
• You start to find blame for your situation
• You blame the economy, your boss, your family, then yourself
• You turn to what ever deity you think will hear you then ask "what did I do to deserve this?", then you start to pray.
• Your online searches for employment turn into just surfing for answers
• You start reading your horoscope daily even though you never looked at it in the past
• You start to believe in "good" luck and "bad" luck
• You find websites that claim extraordinary incomes and try to find out more
• You join all sorts of social networking sites in order to find ways to make money or get a job
• You pray some more
• You buy "good luck" bamboo and put it in your home - it dies
• You apply for jobs at fast food places and even they turn you down - you are over qualified!
• You borrow money from relatives and friends
  
• You are willing to relocate for a job
• You start going to church to pray
• You take babysitting and gopher jobs to make ends meet
• Family arguments are a daily occurrence
  
• You become depressed
• You think you will never find a job again - but you do
  

The cycle finally ends when you either find a job or find a way to start a business. What you must keep in mind is that you WILL survive being unemployed. Treat it as just a part of life and that even the most famous multi-billionaire has been unemployed and gone through many of the steps I outlined above at one point in his/her life.

Double your Tracfone minutes

I just used the following promo code to add 60 minutes to a 60 minute card for Tracfone. The promo code is 14938. I entered the promo code when I purchased 60 minutes online at tracfone.com I don't know how long it is good for but it gave me an extra 60 minutes for a total of 120 minutes for $19.99.

I make $60K a year just by writing blog posts

I guess that title got your attention, didn't it? Well for right now it is not true for me at least. One blogger over at this blog claims to have made over $25K in the last year from blogging. So I checked out the blog. After reading his post about the breakdown of his earnings he mentioned that he did it with 50 blogs! That is just a bit too much for me to handle.

What he managed to do is earn a living by increasing his volume of blog posts online. The more blogs the more chances of the search engines finding you. Now if you think you could handle 50 blogs then go for it. He did mention that he owns over 400 domain names and none of his blogs are subdomains like blogspot.

My own earnings from blogging are this year to date are far under his total amount. Mine is just a dismissible $6K. It works out to $500 a month which in my mind is not bad for a part time income. I will add that the income comes from only 4 blogs even though I have 11 active blogs that I write in at least once a week. Of course I will add that I often make more money selling items on eBay in a month than I will from blogging but with blogging I don't have to make a trip to the post office.

The importance of Alexa ratings and your blog

In the last few days I have been receiving a wave of advertising offers on one of my blogs that only gets 50 visitors a day. It has a Page Rank of 2 so I was stumped as to what have triggered the interest in the blog. I then checked my Alexa rating and the blog had gone from 1,200,456 to 345,892 in a matter of a few weeks. I then checked the inbound links and found I had over 1445 pointing in to the blog. The blog had gotten popular in the eyes of the internet if not in the eyes of the viewing public. Do I care that the advertisers don't know that the blog only gets 50 visitors a day, heck no, as long as they pay me to put an ad on the blog I don't care.

It boils down to the fact that your Alexa rating is just as important as your Page Rank when it comes to getting paid advertisements on your blog.

Digging up jewelry to auction off

If you are like many people that are strapped for cash this season then you have probably looked into pawning off your items like tools and unwanted musical instruments. Ebay has seen an increase in listings but of course they are mostly collectibles that no one wants to collect anymore. What about jewelry? We have all seen those gold commercials on TV about sending your gold jewelry off to be melted down. I am not that trusting of a company that may or may not give you the correct weight for your gold. They only mention gold and not selling diamond jewelry.

So where do you go to sell precious diamonds? There is an online auction site that just caters to selling estate jewelry. The website is called "I do, now I don't" . The site adds a jewelry appraiser to the equation when the jewelry goes through their auctions. Here is a quote from their website "Every diamond and gemstone sold through I Do Now I Don’t is analyzed by a GIA-trained gemologist." They make full use of putting the buyers money in escrow before the seller is allowed to be paid, that is to insure that the diamond in question is actually real and worth the price it sold for. Just take a look at the auctions. You can get a rough idea of what people are selling and what the asking prices are.

That is just another option for finding extra money in tight times.

Online prices are now lower than Walmart

If you just read my prior blog post about affiliate selling you will understand just a little bit about how I make money from Amazon. I thought you might need to see a sample of what I am talking about. Here is what you might write if you were an affiliate.

"I was just in Walmart today and the person I was with has been drooling over a digital camera. I was taken back by the price a bit - it was over $400. Of course it is one of those newer SLR digital cameras. They look just like the old 35mm cameras with the interchangeable lenses except they are all digital now. At the price Walmart was selling them for I'll have to pass on that type of camera for quite some time.

True to my nature, when I got online after getting back home from Walmart I checked prices on that camera. I found one at Amazon for a much lower price.



I emailed my friend and she will be now shopping online for some of her more expensive purchases. "

You can see that successful affiliate marketing is much more than just putting ads on your blog or website, you need to write a review, short personal story or a suggestion about a product.

Making money selling other companies items - not dropshipping

I made $31 today from Amazon!! I didn't sell anything on there I just referred people to the site. You see I am an Amazon affiliate. I have several blogs and websites that cater to a hobby or lifestyle. On those sites I pick out a book, DVD or music that pertains to the hobby or lifestyle that I am blogging or writing articles about and write a review or suggest it would be a good buy. When someone clicks through on the ad (Amazon supplies the code) and goes to shop at Amazon I get paid if the person buys anything within that hour.

I don't have to ship anything, I don't have to pay anyone, I am not a drop shipper but I am making money. Now before you head on over to Amazon to become an affiliate here is what you need to know up front. Amazon will take 60 days to pay you your commissions. You can't just start earning and expect to get paid right away. For example I earned $31 today but I won't see that money till February 2009. They will also hold on to your commissions until the total is over $10. It is against their TOS (terms of service) for you to purchase any items from clicking through from your own ads, so don't do that.

Being an affiliate is one of the best ways to earn money on the internet without actually selling anything. It sure does beat hawking diet pills, health products, Avon and other small sales driven companies.

Saving money by buying store gift cards

Have you noticed that some stores are now offering bonuses when you purchase their gift cards? One local chain of hardware stores close to me is offering a 20%+ bonus when you buy one of their gift cards. For example you can purchase a $30 gift card for only $20. Their $160 gift card only costs $120. The only catch is that you have to buy the gift card before Christmas and it can only be used after December 26th. Forget about buying them as gifts, buy them for your own use.

If you have any stores in your area that have offers like that, it would be a great way to save on your own future purchases from that store. You have got to learn to take advantage of any bonuses and discounts that a store you normally shop at offers you.

The hardware store that I mentioned above not only sells hardware but also pet food, wood stoves, gifts, clothing and auto parts. I am usually in there at least once a week buying pet food so I would use the gift card to save on something that I would normally buy there.

Saving money for something special

After declaring bankruptcy over 8 years ago, our family learned the hard way to not use credit cards. Contrary to popular belief we were not offered lines of credit after leaving the bankruptcy court, in fact we were denied credit for several years. Getting low auto insurance and health insurance rates were not around since they based their rates partially on credit ratings.

Our bankruptcy was not due to the over use of credit cards but an illness in the family that caused huge medical bills.

We learned that if we wanted something, like modern furniture or a car, we had to save up for it and pay in cash. Right now our living room needs new carpet so our next savings goal is $6K for new flooring (we might go with hardwood floors) or carpet for 3 rooms.

Learn to save and you'll get ahead in this world economy. Learn to use credit and you'll fail.

Blogs and websites that bring in huge amounts of traffic

If you want to really bring in huge amounts of visitors overnight then your blog or website must either be:

• Controversial
  
• Unusual
  
• Have a fan base

It doesn't have to be all 3 of the items I have listed above, just one will do. I was chatting with another blogger a few months ago that had started a blog based on bad contractors. She had become a victim of a fly by night contractor that took her money and run. After going through the legal channels and getting frustrated with the system she decided to let everyone know about the company and it's owner - in detail on her blog. Then other people started to leave comments for the first few days until they too started to list in detail, with names and places the contractors they had dealt with. The hits did not come large until 2 of the contractors mentioned in the blog decided to leave comments and the readers just lapped up the on going comments between the contractors and her loyal readers. The contractors threatened to sue for spreading bad news about them. It just went on and on. The good news for the blog owner was that she was getting over 18,000 visitors a day and was earning Google Adsense clicks at the rate of $10 or more a day.

How long did that blog take to go from the first post to 18,000 visitors a day? 6 days! It only took that long because she mentioned her blog on one of the message boards she had been a member of for 5 years.

Going solo as a business owner

If you love being around people and doing lots of socializing you might want to rethink your business plan if you are the sole proprietor of a business. Running and starting up a business can be a lonely profession for the first part of it. Sure you will have contacts you will need to talk to for sales and marketing but they are different than just hanging out in the break room or around the water cooler at a regular job.

Think of the things that you will miss. Although I work at home for the great part of my time now I do miss the freebies that the company I worked for offered. One of my daily routines was to get free hot popcorn that the management would make from one of the theater sized popcorn machines, along with my free soda. It not only offered me a chance to get out of my office but to walk and talk with some of my co-workers along the way.

I find myself more involved with my daughter's school and fund raising activities than ever before. It is filling the void of socializing that I now don't have at home while working in my home office.

Ebay selling

It has been awhile since I sold anything on eBay. I am cleaning out a back bedroom and found a few items that might get some interest from collectors so I am searching eBay for items that are similar that have sold on there recently. Ebay has a search you can do for items that have ended and if they sold or not. I recommend you use that type of search if you plan on putting any item on eBay to sell. It will save you a lot of heartache before hand if you find out that the item you plan on selling for $20 only gets bids of $2.

The cost of a Christmas tree

I live in one of the states that is a major supplier of Christmas trees. One would assume that the prices are lower for Christmas tree than they are in the states that the Christmas trees are shipped to. That is not always the case but this year I am noticing that the price of a 5-6 foot tree in the local Christmas tree lots is almost half of what it was last year.

Last year we waited until the week before Christmas before we went shopping for our Christmas tree. The prices were all $25 and up. One place was in the process of shutting up shop and they had a few trees left. I thought I could go and bargain with them and I managed to get a 7 foot tree for $10. This year the average price of trees is in the $10-$15 range and dropping.

The lower prices of gasoline and Christmas trees - a sign of the times.

I get the strangest job offers

If you are a regular reader then you know that I have several other blogs that I write. One of them is an animal blog that is more or less just a fun blog for me to do. I don't expect to make any money from it but it is fairly popular. The other day I get this advertiser wanting to place an ad on the blog. I thought no problem until I found out the ad was for off road ATV's and hunting equipment. Why in the world would a company advertising hunting equipment want to advertise on an animal lovers blog? Are they out of their minds? I turned the money down, yep me turning down $50 to place an ad for tires, coilovers and hunting racks for ATV's on my animal blog. I was wondering if they thought that I write about deer and rabbits they meant for hunting. I wish people would at least read my blogs before sending offers.

I do try to keep the ads that display on the blogs in tune with what the blogs are about. I have come across many blogs that have ads for everything under the sun which is often conflicting and confusing to the visitor - me.

Don't get taken by paid to blog companies

You have seen the ads for Pay Per Post, Smorty (I have an ad on this blog for them), Sponsored Reviews and those other "get paid to blog" companies. Do they really pay you? Well some do and some don't. If you want to know which ones to stay away from you should check out Outlaw Blogger's post about paid to blog companies that has ripped him (not sure if it is a he or she) off.

I have had my run in with a few of them that refused to pay or worse yet disappeared. A year ago I even signed up with one that finally got my blog approved. The only problem with that was the fact that I had deleted the blog months ago because of lack of traffic. It makes you wonder who they have working for them.

The blog has a new look

The blog underwent a makeover today. After looking at the old boring and too wordy look I thought I would up date it a bit. I hope to add more photos and how-to videos to the blog over the next few weeks and see how it turns out. I would like to read a few of your comments if you have any on the new look.

I wish to thank my loyal readers

Today I received my first check from Google. It was the royal sum of $102. The great majority of that money was generated from this blog. Most of the clicks were in the range of $.75 to $3.50 with the odd one at $4. It was not an overnight affair to get that amount, it did take several months. Not bad for a blog that is just over a year old. This blog now generates about 3 clicks a day and the monthly totals average about $25 a month in Google Adsense revenue. This is a BIG THANK YOU to my readers.

Now if I can do that so can you.

Black Friday was a success

The reports are in and retailers are reporting that the sales for Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) were better than last year. Now what does that tell us, economy wise? Number one is that people do have money to spend and they are spending it. I personally think that the economy is not as bad as the media is painting it. Sure the big 3 automakers are looking for a hand out but that is basically due to them making too many gas guzzlers. I also think that the price of oil and gasoline is dropping simply because people are not wanting to pay those high prices anymore and are rebelling. The consumer is running the market after all.