I’ve tried many things online to make extra money, but viewing e-mails for two cents each hasn’t been one of them until last week. I thought why not try it when I saw the above ad on someones blog. Since they were giving me 10 dollars to sign up and get me started in the right direction to the 25 dollar pay out. Don’t laugh too hard because you’re smarter than me.

I’m laughing at myself now because at the rate they are giving me e-mails to read I’ll probably be 90 years old before I reach that 25 dollar payout. Of course if I had hundreds of people sign up under me and they read e-mails I would get a penny more while they still get their two cents, but it’s hard to get sign ups so I don’t see this program lasting very long for me or anyone else.

I have never been good at marketing although I have tried many things over the years I’ve been online. I’m not good at selling, but I was always a sucker for buying until I got burned too many times. It now takes a stick of dynamite to make me part with my money, but I will try a program if it’s free and I can possibly make a few bucks, but I’d like to see those few bucks before I die.

I have come to the conclusion that people shouldn’t sign up for reading e-mails it’s just not worth the time or effort, not that it really takes either, you just don’t get enough e-mails to read to make it worth while. I’m sure someone will tell me that they have made good money doing this, but I don’t think I’ll believe them. I hope everyone that celebrates Easter will have a great one.

This is my widget, if you saw it what in the world would you think my blog was about? I never really thought about it until I started clicking on other widgets and ended up on blogs that had nothing to do with what the widget implied. Lately when I have been dropping from my inbox I’ve really started watching closer because I try to reciprocate drops and the ones that really get me are the ones that have an attractive woman which lead to a marketing blog. I noticed this a lot more since the new changes at Entrecard and when I would check the blogs to approve or reject.

What in the world does having a picture of a young woman on a widget have to do with a marketing blog? I ran into a few widgets that one would assume belonged to a man trying to lure men to the blog, but the photos on those widgets belong not to a man and his blog, but to a woman that runs the blog. We are all use to men and advertising agencies being sexist and trying to get the attention of perverted men, but for a woman to stoop as low as men and use her own sex to lure simply boggles my mind.

Actually it doesn’t boggle my mind I just said that why shouldn’t that poor woman use the same tactics as her male marketing counterpart, most do have words that let you know it’s actually something to do with marketing, but why use a woman to get someone to click? Because she knows it works so why bother and be original and come up with something else that actually sells other than using a woman’s sexuality to stir a mans senses? Usually when I see an animal I think it’s a blog about animals or a baby leads me to believe it is a blog about babies.

I’ve been thinking about changing my widget, but by now it is recognized and people already associate it with a baby boomer that likes to ride a scooter and may or may not be senile depending on the post they might read on any particular day. I write about the things that concern me and lately that has been Entrecard because it seems to be on everyones mind right now. This will be my last post about Entrecard I may mention the program from time to time, but I wont devote another post to it. I’m sure people that don’t use the program have heard enough, sorry to those that don’t know what I’m typing about.

Everyone that gets involved in a program has their own way of looking at things and some are very volatile and vocal in the way they think that program should be used and even go so far as to tell others the right and wrong way that they should be using it. Unless you are violating TOS it’s really none of their business how you choose to use any program. Not everyone has the same objective as them so they really don’t have the right to tell anyone what to do unless they are asked for advice, just thought I’d get that off my chest.

My Entrecard 10 dollar experiment is over and the results are below even though the click through was at 514 for 3 days I received more than that probably because so many were checking to see if they wanted my ad to run on their blog and decided since they were there they might as well click on my widget which was fine with me and made my traffic spike. I have no clue who might have rejected my ad and it really doesn’t matter to me. I cant do those campaigns very often, but it was an interesting experiment.

impressions 43507
cpm $0.2298
clicks 514
cpc $0.0195
ctr 0.0118

I really don’t think regular people other than Entrecard people even bother to click ads unless they see something that interests them. I would hate to see a get rich quick scheme catch someones attention on my widget though because I was a sucker many years ago before I got seasoned with what was going on. I made many mistakes and spent a lot of money I didn’t have because it sounded so good, but we all know if it sounds to good to be true then it usually is.

Almost everyone knew this was coming with the ads, but most didn’t really read up on the whys and why-nots and just assumed they would benefit from the new changes and they will if they decide to sell their ec’s back, I understood this from the start. I am concerned though because no mention has been made about filling out tax forms because they will have to issue 1099 misc forms if people get paid over 400 dollars a year.Perhaps they really haven’t delved that far yet and will make a cut off limit before anyone cashes out after a certain amount.

Who knows what the plan is maybe they really don’t know themselves yet and will change it as they go, but I really think they need to get a CPA and lawyer on board that will advise them of all the legal ramifications if they don’t follow the law. I’d hate to see them shut down before they even get started. I use my credits to back some contests because it gives me backlinks, but no one says they have to keep them after the contest.

I don’t advertise a lot with ec’s, but I do drop for credits and I’m not a speed dropper or whatever they call them. I leave comments, but not on every blog, but I try to read the post of the people I drop on some are of interest to me and some I just skim over especially if it’s long. If it’s just an advertisement I drop and skip right on pass unless it’s a blogger that I like then I’ll type a few words. I had accrued a few credits before I knew that Entrecard was going to buy them back.

Google page rank is always a great anticipation like getting a report card telling us how well we did, I always hated report cards, they suck.

All of my websites at one point did quite well until I bought hosting at Bluehost and since they all share the same IP I have found that they lost pr over the years. I also really haven’t tried for backlinks because I’m lazy and don’t like rejection. I was going to drop 3 of my domains, but I forgot I had it on auto renew and GoDaddy snatched it out of PayPal before I could let them lapse this year. They all had 3 and 4 pr’s before I moved them, I’m talking about regular websites not blogs.

I lost the PR on this blog during the last weekend of February and I noticed many others that I drop on had also and was very surprised. I’m surprised more people haven’t said any thing on their blogs or maybe they really haven’t noticed. Actually PR isn’t as important as many people think and I am so surprised that we even give Google the right to judge us for anything considering how they want to corner the market on paid links plus all of the up and coming online businesses, don’t they own everything now?

Why do we give other people and companies the right to make us feel bad or like we are freaking criminals because we don’t conform to the norm and try to make money in ways they may not like?  What right do other people have to put us down? Actually I was reading the forum last week and found out someone took issue with the blogs in “The Women’s Interests” category. I read what was said, but had to laugh because everyone rants about something and didn’t really take offence for myself since I am in that category.

Why did we ever give anyone the right to tell us what we are allowed to do with our websites and blogs and to judge us? Why in the world did we make Google so important? Of course we love using all those great free tools and programs that help us, but damn it why do we give them the right to run everything? Are we like little kids waiting for approval from the parent or God that knows everything? Well, yes we are and we wait with  anticipation to see what our judgement is going to be and hoping it will be a pat on the head.

I think Today.com is taking over the blogosphere. I only noticed this recently because of the people I drop on from Entrecard. Before when I would open 10 or 15 sites they were mostly blogger blogs with a few regular blogs mixed in. Now when I open the same amount it’s a mixture of red t’s and orange/with white b’s I’m amazed at how fast Today.com is moving. I wonder if Google is worried that they’ll take all their bloggers? I really haven’t checked the site out, but I’m sure Google has and who knows they may even buy them out like everything else.

We all blog and comment for different reasons and everyone wants traffic for various reasons. Whether it’s to lower the Alexa rating or for advertising purposes or just to gain readers and friends and get comments. The best traffic I receive is through Entrecard, occasionally I get someone from Stumble and other sources, but my SEO isn’t the best so my traffic from search engines is minimal. If you do a search for mature I am on the 4th page, senile=2nd page, mature senile=1st page.

I am an Entrecard dropper and I have been since March last year 08, however at that time I had 3 blogs and was dropping for each one for various reasons. I was also posting on all 3 blogs and trying to come up with different subjects for each one. It kept me occupied till December when my Son passed away and since then I have basically only posted to this one because I refer to this one as my living blog. I don’t claim to be a writer, but this keeps me occupied.

I appreciate all the support that was given to me during the rough times and I tried to make sure that I gave everyone link love that supported me, but I really don’t expect people to comment on a post I make because of it. I do however appreciate any and all comments just because you feel like it and I also comment on your post when the subject reaches me, but that’s also not a guarantee. It’s nice to make mind connections and read about other peoples lives.

I like reading different kinds of blogs and finding different perspectives on how people feel about the things we all face in life and their solutions for dealing with them. There are many bloggers out there that question the things they write about and wonder why anyone would even bother to read what’s on their mind. I certainly don’t expect everyone that stops by here to be interested in my opinions or to even appreciate my weird sense of humor. We all blog and comment for different reasons.

There are certain things that crack me up when I am surfing blogs and websites and the first one on the list are those blogs that are telling us how to make money online and then they have a donate button. Then we have those marketing sites that have a provocative woman on their banner in hopes that we will be bedazzled by the allure and simply plunk our money down for whatever product or course they are pushing. Do men really think a provocative woman will sell anything, especially to another woman?

Also all of those SEO blogs that tell us how to improve our SEO and get a better Google page rank and they don’t even have a rank, now that really cracks me up. I love animal and baby blogs, but it really cracks me up when these blogs are written like the animal and babies are thinking all this stuff up although many are done very well and there are quite a few I really like to visit. The comments are also funny because they’re from other animals and babies and typed in how presumably that animal or baby would sound if it actually talked or typed.

I crack myself up because I’ve joined so many social groups that I never have time to be social in any of them. If I visited every site that I’ve joined I’d never be able to get anything done and what’s really funny is when I try to join one that I joined years ago and had forgot about it. Can’t figure out why I keep doing this. I really find it amusing when people buy the same articles from a source and don’t change them and they add their name as author, but they have a sign on their blog that Copyscape is protecting their articles, now tell me how dumb is that?

Another thing that cracks me up are the blogger blogs. I have typed numerous comments on some of these blogs and get down to the bottom to post it and find that they don’t give the option for your name and url, just the Google and open ID so I delete the comment and move on. It’s not like you are going to get a link back to your site because the majority are always nofollow, so what’s the deal? Then people get upset because no one is leaving them comments, go figure. Also the sites that are hosted where you have to register to post a comment, no thanks and I’m really sorry because some I’d like to comment on.

Well, I guess that’s enough online things to be cracked up about today. I’m quite sure I have a long list some where I’ll have to dig out.