Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Custom Pins PinMart

We are five and a half weeks away from Christmas already. It seems like Christmas was just here. I hate shopping. It's an expensive time of year due to Christmas and several birthdays. Sometimes I have a hard time coming up with ideas for what someone might like.
One new idea is custom pins. There is a website called PinMart that offers stock lapel pins and custom pins. Some of them are really cool, especially the 3D cast pins. They are made of pewter or zinc and offer a very high level of detail. Animals work great for 3D pins. A rubber mold is used to create 3D pins while 2D die struck pins are made by stamping metal with a die. 3D custom pins have more dimension and detail than 2D pins.
Other custom pin options include Cloissonne hard enamel with a smooth glassy finish, etched soft enamel pins, made in the USA pins, and printed pins. If you have a photo you would like to turn into a pin, printed pins are a great option. It takes about 15 days to create a custom printed pin.
PinMart also sells custom lanyards. Lanyard options include printed polyester, printed tube, quick ship, woven logo, full color and stock lanyards. Full color lanyards allow for an image or design to be repeatedly printed over the lanyard in full color.
Custom rubber bracelets are also available. They are a great idea if you have a cause you would like to show support for or use as a fundraiser. Production time is 10 - 12 days and options include glow in the dark silicone, screen printed, debossed, enbossed or color filled logo, and multi color silicone.
Custom embroidered patches are also offered by PinMart. They are a great idea if you have a new patch idea for Boy Scouts. Several different patch backing options are available. They include iron on, velcro, temporary peel and stick, or no backing. A virtual sample is created from your artwork. When you are satisfied with the sample, the design is digitized, so that sewing heads have a pattern to follow. Color for the backing is selected and backing attached to the sewing heads. The design is then stitched on. When the design is completed, the patch is trimmed and the backing of your choice is attached.
Free quotes are available for all custom items. Shipping is also free.

Monday, November 07, 2011

Internet marketing in the Middle East

Internet marketing in the Middle East is on the rise. Between 2009 and 2010, Twitter users in the Middle East were estimated to be from 15,000 to 40,000. However, that number was way off. The number of Twitter users in the Middle East is actually around 5.5 million.
The number of Facebook users in the Middle East is around 15 million.
It's amazing how internet use has just exploded in countries which aren't even fully developed. The internet provides a great way for people to connect with each other, no matter where they are physically located. The internet is also a great way to attract customers to a business. I have a magazine back issues website and several blogs. I use social media to advertise them. Selling old magazines without the internet would be pretty difficult. I could advertise in local papers, on the radio and television, but it's a small niche and probably not very profitable locally. Thanks to technology and the internet, I created a website, promoted it, and now have customers all over the world purchasing magazines from me. I will ship outside the United States, so every one in the world is a potential customer.
Internet marketing takes a lot of skill, time to learn and time to keep updated on the latest techniques. It's a field which is always changing. Those skilled at internet marketing in the Middle East need to learn search engine optimization in order to be found in search engine results. Learning about keywords and finding the proper analysis tools is important. Website design and development knowledge is needed in order to have a visually attractive website. Email marketing, social media, smartphone app creation and adword campaigns are also crucial to the success of a website.
Internet marketing in the Middle East provides a great opportunity for financial success. A successful website has the potential to turn into a full-time work at home job. Areas of the Middle East are poor, so the idea of success and earning a lot of money is a draw to those hoping to do better than those before them. Over the years, I've earned money from the internet. I don't have hours and hours a day to devote to it though, so I've only made a supplemental income. The internet provides these bright, young kids in the Middle East who own a computer and have lots of spare time, an opportunity for success normally only dreamed about. It will be interesting to see what happens in the Middle East as new generations raised on technology grow up. Hopefully they will use the internet and technology for good purposes.

Friday, October 28, 2011

Butterfinger pie is my favorite post-Halloween dessert!

Guest post written by Annie Krisp

I love how just about anything can be baked into a pie and it's delicious. I don't think that it's hard to believe that, so of course Halloween candy is another great option to put into pies to make them even better. As soon as they start putting it out in stores, I like to make sure that I grab a few bags of candy here or there so that I'll have enough candy to include in all of my baking and not just to give out to trick or treaters.

I mean, I guess that you could just buy a whole lot of bags of candy at a time to make sure that you have enough, but I'm not really in the habit of doing that. I'm continually finding new recipes for desserts with candy online with my wireless internet providers Corvallis that I discover I don't have the proper candy to prepare. So I guess that's my excuse in regards to that.

But my favorite dessert may be my butterfinger pie because it's my favorite candy bar.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Test

The dissimilar leisure sabotages another antique underneath the trapped crossroad.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Reputation Management Consorte Marketing

In this poor economy, many people are getting laid off and looking to themselves to find ways to generate an income. One way of doing this is to think about the things you know and enjoy, and find a way to make money doing it. Basically, turn a hobby into a business.
That's what I did with my magazine back issues website. I enjoy reading and subscribe to a few different magazines. I always hated throwing them away when I was done reading them. Magazine subscriptions are expensive. Reading a magazine once and throwing it away when I was done seemed like such a waste. Sometimes I saved them, but after a while you get a pretty big pile of old magazines. I never looked at them either. What I did was build a website and sell them. Luckily I work as a programmer, so I had the know how to do it. I just had to learn a little HTML, CSS and search engine optimization (SEO). Now I have a whole world of people that buy my magazines when I'm done reading them. Nice green way to recycle magazines and make a little extra money doing it. Not much, but it helps. The generated income from turning my hobby into a business should increase as my inventory increases too. I still have to store quite a few magazines, but now they have a purpose.
Starting your own little business is tough though. For a business to survive, it needs customers. You need to advertise your business, so that people will find you. You also need to strive to make sure you and your business have a good reputation. Nobody is going to buy a product from a company with bad reviews. In this day and age of the internet, Twitter and Facebook it's not hard to find reviews on a company or information on the person/people running a company. If you have bad reviews or negative information floating around about you in cyberspace, you could lose customers.
There is a reputation management company that might be able to help. Consorte Marketing will research you and your business's online reputation. They will give you a report of all the information out there about you and where it is located. They will also give you a strategy for repairing your reputation. Some of the information out there is permanent, but some can be removed. They might be able to help persuade an unsatisfied customer to change a bad review to positive, or come up with a way to push a negative article from page 1 on Google to lower level pages.
If you run a business and are worried about negative information surfacing, Consorte Marketing would be worth a look. Consorte Marketing's reputation management tweets can be followed on Twitter.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Blogsvertise 10 Paid Blogging Tips Make Money

I've mentioned Blogsvertise before, but feel the need to mention it again. I've been getting quite a few tasks the past 6 months, about 4 - 5 per month. If you've never tried paid blogging, that doesn't sound like a lot though. Paid blogging is easy, but it's hard to get tasks. Signing up at a paid blogging site doesn't mean you are suddenly going to make tons of money blogging. You have to have a good, established blog with regular, recent posts. I have 6 blogs, 1 which I have totally neglected and will get to someday. The 5 I do keep up with, I try to post on each one at least once per week. Sometimes it's more like once every couple months, but they are blogs I've had for a while. This blog was started 5 years ago. The most recent blog, my healthy living naturally blog, was started over a year ago. Life and work make it hard to fit in blogging, but if you start a blog and make an effort to keep it active, over time, it will pay off.
My soap opera blog is my best performer. That one and my recipes blog are the ones I have the easiest time figuring out what to write. I also really enjoy soap operas for some unknown reason.
My tech-tips blog also does well. I have one post that get almost 1000 hits per month. It was a useful tip that helped me out and has been helping out lots of others.

A few tips if you want to blog and/or make money blogging:

1. Post regularly - content is key
2. Write about something you enjoy, even if you think no one would be interested. Someone out there somewhere probably also enjoys it.
3. "How to posts" are a good bet.
4. Get post ideas from magazines, what's trending on Twitter or Google searches, your daily life, etc.
5. Sign up with Blogsvertise and whatever paid blogging service you can find. Although, I've joined all of the paid blogging sites I have found and Blogsvertise is the only one still giving me tasks. Smorty gave me quite a few when I first joined, but that was years ago. They don't really seem to be active anymore.
6. Add Google Adsense to your blog.
7. Sign up with Amazon.com's affiliate program
, LinkShare and CommissionJunction. I haven't had much luck with LinkShare.com or CommissionJunction, but I haven't put much effort into it either. I have had a few small payments from Amazon. There is also ClickBank, but I haven't done anything with them in a few years after they had a change of terms.
8. List your blog with with all of the major search engines, minor ones if you want to.
9. After you write a post, advertise it. Link to the post from your Twitter/Facebook/Google+ account. Use pingomatic, digg, delicious, etc.
10. Use the Google Keywords Tool to find keywords with low competition, but a lot of monthly searches.
BONUS. Be patient.

Making money from a blog takes a lot of time. I wish I had been more diligent about posting more frequently, but I am glad I have been able to post as much as I have over the years. The more I post, the more I see my effort paying off, so maybe by the time I am ready to retire I will be generating a full time income. That's my plan anyways. Although the way things are going this past year, I think I'm going to have to step that plan up.


More Make Money Blogging


Friday, September 02, 2011

Toaster oven, a college studen't best friend

Guest post written by Pam Long

I've decided that I don't want to ever get a meal plan again. I just hate the dining hall food. I got so sick of it last year, especially after I started eating off campus before and had some normal food again. So this year, I'm not getting a meal plan for college. Instead, I invested in a toaster oven because you can basically make almost anything that's a simple dish that you would make in an oven. Well, at least that's my theory so I'm trying to prove it with all kinds of really great recipes.

I like to look through a whole bunch of recipe blogs to come up with all kinds of dishes to try out in my toaster oven. While I was online looking up some of these recipes, I ran across a site about satellite internet packages. After I looked through I sent it to my mom and told her to Click Here to switch over her home internet service to it.

I've made all kinds of really great sandwiches, but I'm even more excited about making all kinds of dishes.

Friday, July 29, 2011

Laptops

Back in the spring of 2004, when I was pregnant with my youngest son, I bought my first laptop. It was a good thing I did because a few months later I ended up on bedrest. The laptop came in very handy. It was a Dell Inspiron E1405. A nice little portable laptop with a 14.5" screen. It came pre-installed with Windows Vista, not the greatest operating system. Applications tend to crash and it runs out of memory frequently, so a regular reboot is necessary. I didn't plan on buying another laptop for a long time, but about 6 months ago, I didn't have much choice. The screen on my laptop started not staying up. It was a gradual process. At first, it would stay up if it was in a certain position and then over time it wouldn't stay up at all. I had to prop the screen up to use it. That was ok, but I got tired of not being able to sit on the couch with it, so I sucked it up and bought a new laptop.
Laptops have really come a long way in the few short years since I last bought one. They have tons of hard drive space, lots of memory and fast processors. They are really on par with desktops. I'm pretty sure I'll never buy another desktop. I have my old laptop sitting on my desk with the screen propped up serving as a secondary desktop. It's working out pretty well.
There's a lot of different laptop brands out there. It's hard to choose from all the options. Various brands include dell, gateway, sony, hp, samsung, acer, and asus laptops. I ended up going with an HP for my new laptop. I've had it about 4 months. It's really nice, very slick. The operating system is Windows 7, which is a major improvement over Windows Vista. Needing to reboot is a rare occasion and makes me very happy as I tend to have a lot of stuff open at once and find it a pain to reboot and reload everything.
Mechanically, the screen hinging seems put together much better than my old dell. The only part that took a little getting used to was the mousepad. It is all touch, no buttons. The keyboard is really nice. The keys are kind of set down into the computer more than on my dell.
I really hope my new HP holds up better than my old Dell did.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

A Trip to Aruba

Guest post written by Linda Creighton

My husband and I spend the evening looking for places to help us remodel the house when it gets a little warmer. We've been looking for painters and looked at service from www.HomeProImprovement.com. We have been talking about all the changes we want to go through with on this old house. I think it is waaaaay overdue. After talking about the house for a while, I suggested to my husband that we finally take a vacation. We both have all this vacation time and money saved up, and it's about time that we do something for fun instead of juts worrying about necessities!

Ever since I mentioned that idea to my husband, he's really been on board..maybe even moreso than I am. We've been looking at a whole bunch of places and I think we want to visit Aruba most of all. We've been to many places, but Aruba hasn't been one of them. I think would be a great getaway, right?

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Regis and Kelly

Guest post by Jewel Cole

Regis and Kelly Live is my favorite talk show. They are great together and always have awesome guests. Recently they had Josh Groban on. He is such a amazing singer.

Regis is so funny. He somehow tends to keep set on edge throughout the whole show. My mom loves him too. We even went to see him when he was in Pigeon Forge, TN, for the grand opening of the Titanic Museum. He was just as funny in person. His jokes were fresh and relevant to the town we were in.

Kelly's stories of her children are always so funny. She seems to have a great life. It is like she understands how complicated being a mom can be. She is a beautiful woman who inspires me to do better for myself.

Even on days when she is hosting the show without Regis, she can hold ! it together. I like the way she interacts with the audience and callers on the phone.

I can't wait to watch Regis and Kelly everyday on my satellite tv from CableTelevision.net. It is the highlight of my day. It is my Me Time. I will be looking for it tomorrow as soon as I get up.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Topamax lawsuit O’Hanlon McCollom Demerath Lawyers

Giving kids any kind of medication these days is scary. Medication is full of toxic chemicals and may cause all sorts of side effects.
One such drug called Topamax is used to treat epileptic seizures in kids and adults. It is an anti-convulsant. It is also used to treat migraines. One side effect is cleft lip or cleft palate. This is a condition where the lip or palate fail to completely fuse together. It is a birth defect. The defect can range from minor, where there is a small, notched lip to major, where there is an open groove that extends from the roof of the mouth to the nose.
Luckily there are lawyers out there who can help you get compensation for damages caused by taking bad medications, like that in a Topamax lawsuit. One group of lawyers who could help are:

O’Hanlon, McCollom & Demerath – Personal Injury Lawyers – 808 West Avenue, Austin, TX. 78701 – 512-494-9949

They understand the dangerous effects of Topamax and that the defect is not your fault. Their combined experience, expertise and training make them well qualified to handle complex liability claims, so that you can get the compensation you deserve.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

MyLikes.com Payment Paid to Tweet

Received my first payment from MyLikes.com. Pretty cool. Wasn't much, but with time it will add up. Payouts are made on Fridays to your PayPal account. Payments are made when you have an account balance of $2.00.
The idea of MyLikes.com is you are given a list of items to "like" on Twitter and/or Facebook. When someone clicks on the link in your "liked" item status update, you get paid. The most I've made for 1 "like" is only 22 cents, but this figure will increase as you gain more followers. It's a pretty easy way to get paid using Twitter.
See my earlier post for more details on MyLikes.com.
BTW, you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ice_princess_81.


More Ways to Make Money


Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Bloggers: Help Save MyBlogLog From Closure

Back when I first started this blog, I looked into finding various ways to get traffic. One way is to join forums and become part of a group. One of the popular sites at the time was MyBlogLog. I joined and found it to be pretty cool and useful.
The part I liked the best about it was you could view your site stats. It told you what link readers came from, what pages they viewed and what links they clicked on. The free version only gave you the top 10 for each list. You had to upgrade to see the full list. The free version told me more about site visitors than any other stat site I found though.
BTW, if you can recommend a good stat site, which gives you all of that information in a clear, simple list, please let me know.
Lots of people I met when I used to autosurf were also on MyBlogLog. There were lots of active users on there. Found some pretty useful blogs at MyBlogLog.
Not really sure why I stopped using MyBlogLog. Probably lack of time, but I stopped around the time Yahoo took over just because it was a pain logging in. I couldn't just stay logged in and always go to my homepage when I typed in http://www.mybloglog.com. I would always get logged out automatically and then get redirected to sign in with my Yahoo account. Just an extra step that was annoying.
Unfortunately, Yahoo didn't do much with MyBlogLog once it became owner, and they have now decided to completely shut it down on May 24, 2011. Pretty sad because all of the bloggers and their info are still there. You can still get the great stat info on your sites. It's all still the same as when I first joined. It's a great site for bloggers to connect.
Luckily, BlogCatalog also feels that MyBlogLog is a great site with lots of untapped potential because they want to buy it and resurrect MyBlogLog. Unfortunately, Yahoo isn't really interested in selling. They just want to shut it down. As an email from BlogCatalog points out, Yahoo should just sell it to BlogCatalog and donate the money to those in need. Great idea! Japan would be a great place to start.
BlogCatalog and BloggersUnite.org have joined forces to save MyBlogLog and are asking bloggers to write a post explaining to Yahoo that selling MyBlogLog is a much better idea than just shutting it down.
Here's the link if you are interested in helping save MyBlogLog.

BloggersUnite + MyBlogLog + BlogCatalog is "The Right Thing."


More Blogging Info


Thursday, December 09, 2010

How To Turn Blog Posts Into Facebook Status Updates

Now that I've got a fan page set up for each of my blogs, I did some more research on how I could use Facebook. I came across a pretty cool technique to import posts from my blog into Facebook as status updates.
Here's how you turn your blog posts into Facebook status updates:

1. Underneath your page's profile picture, click Edit Page.
2. Select Applications from the left hand column.
3. Click Go to Application under Notes.
4. Select Edit import settings from the left hand column.
5. Enter the url of your site's RSS feed. Ex: For this blog the RSS feed url is: http://ice-princess-extra-cash.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss. Select the check box and click Start Importing.
6. Click confirm and you're all set.

It's as simple as that!


More Facebook Marketing


Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Drive Traffic Using Facebook

I am simply amazed at how Facebook has caught on. I joined early on, but never did anything with it. Facebook was very restricting. You could only friend people who were in your school network; and you couldn't see other members if they weren't in your school network. About 3 years ago, I received a friend request from a cousin in Georgia. I was like what? lol. No more restrictions. Now you could friend whoever you wanted. Cool. After that I recieved a friend request from a longtime penpal, then former classmates and more relatives. Once I started going on daily, I started using it to keep up with the news by liking different pages.
Today it seems like everyone is on there and websites, stores are also setting up fan pages. I've mentioned before about my magazine back issues website. I just set up a Facebook fan page for it to help gain more traffic. I set up a link to the Facebook page on the front page of my magazine back issues website. No likes yet, but I've had a few visitors.
I'm also going to create pages for all of my blogs. You can automatically display new blog posts on the Facebook page which is nice.
Facebook fan pages are very easy to set up.
First you need to create a Facebook account, if you don't already have one. I already had one, but mine is for people I actually know in real life.
After your account is created, you should have a link on your profile page to create a page. If you don't see one, click here to create a Facebook page. Follow the steps: On the right, I selected Brand, product, or organization and chose Website in the dropdown box. Next, enter a name for your Facebook page. I used the name of my website/blog. Setup your page with info, a photo/logo and status updates; and your page will be ready for visitors.
Don't forget to set up a like box on your webpage, so people can find your Facebook fan page.
You can also set up an ad within Facebook, so that even more people will find you. I haven't done that yet, but at some point I may.
Facebook is great. The whole world in one location. Lots of opportunities to make money!

Here is the link to the Facebook page I just created for this blog: Ice Princess's Extra Cash Facebook fan page.


More Driving Traffic Using Facebook


Friday, November 05, 2010

Get Paid To Tweet Using Twitter

I've been doing some research on get paid to blog websites. Basically, I'm just looking for new get paid to blog sites to sign up with.
During the process, I stumbled across get paid to tweet websites. How cool! I'm on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/ice_princess_81. I use it mainly to drive traffic to my blogs when I post new updates. Get paid to tweet seems like another great way to use Twitter.
I've signed up with two sites so far. The first is run by Izea and is called SponsoredTweets. It's super easy. Sign up and you get a list of opportunities. Fill in your tweet, which will already contain the ad link, and then click a button. Once approved the tweet will go out. You are paid an x amount each time the link in the tweet is clicked. I hate getting paid based on having someone click a link, but so far I have gotten 3 clicks on one tweet. Pretty cool!
Magpie is another get paid to tweet site. It works pretty much the same as SponsoredTweets. I haven't had any tweet opportunities here yet. I did just join today though.
Get paid to tweet looks like a good, easy way to earn a little extra money online.

UPDATE: Another paid to tweet site: MyLikes.


How to Make Money on the Internet


Thursday, October 14, 2010

Using Twitter to Drive Traffic

Traffic. My big problem with making money blogging is getting traffic. At one time, this blog had a pretty decent following. Unfortunately, I didn't make blogging a priority, got bored and traffic levels dived. Now that I'm back into blogging I have to work on driving traffic levels up again. A slow, time consuming process.
Since I last attempted to make money blogging, Twitter has become very popular. I'm on it here. I drive traffic using Twitter by first, posting a new blog entry. Then, I use HootSuite to shorten the url to the new blog entry and post a new Twitter update with a blurb about the blog entry topic along with the shortened blog entry url. That's it. Pretty simple.
I use HootSuite because the status updater has a built in url shortener, and you can also add a comment when you retweet someone else's status.
Apparently, there are automated tools out there which will write your blog entry for you and then update your Twitter status. I haven't tried it and probably won't. I prefer to keep my blog posts real and write the entries myself.
You can also network yourself by following lists of users created by other users. You follow everyone on a given list, wait a few days and unfollow anyone who has not followed you back. Then find another list to follow and repeat the process. Be careful though. You don't want to be following a lot of people and not have many following you. That makes you look like you're not really worth following. I haven't tried that technique yet, but am going to give it a shot, so I'll keep you posted on how that Twitter traffic driving technique works out.


Make Money Blogging


Thursday, September 09, 2010

Make Money Online Paid Blogging

Back when I first started looking into ways to make money online, I came across paid blogging. I signed up for a few different sites like Smorty, Blogitive, PayPerPost, ReviewMe and Blogsvertise. When I was on bed rest with my youngest son, I had 2 - 3 tasks per week with Smorty. Made a little bit of pocket change and kept me occupied. It worked out pretty good until the tasks dried up. Same with Blogsvertise. That was 3 years ago and I haven't really done much paid blogging since then. Maybe because I took a blogging break. I don't know, but a few weeks ago I was assigned a task from Blogsvertise, so I jumped on it. Since then I've gotten almost a dozen tasks. A couple I've turned down because they didn't seem relevant to the assigned blog. The tasks I did accept paid $10 - $20 each. It takes me about a half hour to complete a task, so pretty easy way to earn a little extra diaper money. For the tasks I've been assigned, the advertiser provides information on what they expect from your blog post. You then go check out the advertisers website and get a few ideas about what to write. You can either write a review about the advertisers site or write a post related to whatever the advertisers site is about.
I've had my blogs up and running for about 3 years. I've only posted a few times in the past year, but haven't entirely neglected them, so that has probably helped me receive new tasks, especially now that they have been around a while. Back then I was also a little cautious because paid blogging was fairly new and it was hard to tell how long these paid blogging sites would still be around. Three years later though and they are still up and running.
If you are looking to make money online, paid blogging is a great way to get started.


Thursday, August 26, 2010

Make Money Blogging, iPage, Google AdSense blocks 110mb.com websites

My day job is on the fritz, again, so I'm getting back into blogging. Not that I ever really left, just was slacking off big time. I'm gonna put a little more time and effort into it and see what happens.
First step is I started a new blog: Ice Princess's Healthy Living Naturally. This one is all about living healthy the natural way. About a year ago, I discovered I was falling apart and had to make some major lifestyle changes meaning I have to make sure I eat healthy and exercise. I really don't want to be dependent on medication when I'm older. I would much rather eat healthy foods and exercise.
I also moved my magazine back issues website to its own domain at http://magazine-back-issues.biz. Just about every article I've ever read about how to make money online says you need to get your own domain. Well, my site was doing just fine with free hosting from 110mb.com. A few months back, I noticed my google adsense ads weren't showing up. I didn't look into it until a few weeks ago. Apparently, google has blocked all adsense from appearing on all websites with 110mb.com as part of the domain name. Google adsense is a big part of how I plan to make money online, so I immediately bought a domain name and found a new web hosting company. I signed up with iPage. So far so good. BTW, they are a green company who uses wind power. A plus now that I'm into all things green and natural. If you sign up using my link above, please enter http://magazine-back-issues.biz as the referring domain.
Hopefully I'm a little wiser now that I have a few years of blogging under my belt and make a little bit of money blogging. Stay tuned lol.
BTW, I am on Twitter now. You can follow me at: http://www.twitter.com/ice_princess_81.