Dropped the top level domain name for this blog

After a long debate with myself, I decided to drop the top level domain name for this blog. I just could not see paying $10 a year (or whatever Google wants to charge) for having a domain name that was not doing anything for the blog. Sure I will have people with broken links that are pointing to this blog but If they did a little searching they can find it again. In fact I am going to help the search engines right now -

Old domain http://scratching-out-a-living.com has changed to http://scratching-out-a-living.blogspot.com

There, that should do it.

Mostly I want the blog to be found for its content and not through links. Google can handle that quite well.

My blogging income just tripled in 3 days!!

I just boosted my blogging income. I could not believe how easy it was. You can do this, it is so simple.

First up you need to know how to use Twitter and have account that is just to promote you as a writer for your blog. You can promote yourself as the blog owner, editor or writer. Once you have that you need to get followers and having as little as 30 followers will get you about 50 visitors more a day to your blog. Here is what you need to do and not to do:

Do -

• Interact with your followers, retweet their interesting tweets, talk to them, be interested in THEM 
• Only send out 2-3 tweets a day, some people will unfollow people who tweet every 3 minutes
• Mention other twitter accounts in your tweets, they begin with an @. They usually end up following you
• Be selective of who you follow. Just because someone follows you does not mean you need to follow them back. Only follow them if you like their tweets

DO NOT -

• DO NOT Sign up for TrueTwit validation service, it sends out private messages that try to get your followers to validate their twitter accounts. Most people, me included, will unfollow someone faster than the roadrunner when we get one of those messages. DO NOT use that service.
• Do not auto tweet or schedule your tweets, be natural and there for your followers
• Do not send out a constant flow of self promotion. Yes you WILL get more followers but most of them will be bots. 

There you have it, some really simple tips on how to use Twitter to promote your own blog. Remember, your Twitter account represents your blog and you, don't treat it like trash or neglect it.

PayU2Blog customer service sucks

I have been using many companies for paid blogging posts through the years. Since I have over 20 active blogs many of them have gotten approved and writing a paid post was consistent if not down right profitable at times. During periods of unemployment paid blogging paid the bills and almost equaled my regular paycheck and once and awhile exceeded it. This brings me to one very profitable company that I use to blog for PayU2Blog. Yes I earned lots of money from them, one year over $5K. But that had all ended now.

Around the beginning of January of this year (2013) I tried to log in and couldn't. I kept getting an error message that said "this page is for approved bloggers" written in red letters. Strange, I never had that happen before. I thought it was a glitch and tried again the next day, same thing. This kept going on for a week and then I sent them an email. No response from the email so I sent a message through their Facebook page, still nothing. I then sent another email, still no response. I finally posted on their Facebook page and the only comments I got were from other users, who were also having problems with them (those posts seem to have been removed). PayU2Blog does not like people to use Facebook as a social tool???!!! WTF! Don't they know how to use Facebook at all?

So what did I finally do? Since I no longer seem to be a blogger for Pay U2 Blog, I gave it until May 2013 for any emails from them and when none came I started to remove ALL the paid blog posts from my blogs that I did for them over the years. Some I just removed the links while other the whole post was removed. I am still finding a few of them and it will take time to remove them all but it will be done.

I wonder why a company that use to be so good to me just shut the door in my face without an explanation? I guess I will never know.

Why you should not join blogging networks

If you are new to blogging or have been blogging for a few years, you would have probably heard of blogging networks. They are blogging communities that allow you to put a link to your blog, discuss your blog and even pay to advertise your blog......all to other bloggers. That is the problem, you are singing to the choir. Most avid blog readers are not bloggers themselves.

One well known blogging network that is now gone was EntreCard. I was a member for several years until Google started to down grade websites and blogs for high bounce rates. EntreCard was well known for encouraging high bounce rates among their users. In order to curb high bounce rates on my blogs I removed all the EntreCard code.

So what do you do to encourage new visitors or engage your readers? Simple, use social networking sites  like Twitter, Facebook or Google+.  Google the search engine really loves social networks and if it finds links to your blog on them it will boost your blog pages in searches. To Google the more people talking on social networks about your blog means your blog has value.

So forget the blogging gimmicks and engage your readers naturally and socially.


 

How to get more visitors sent to your blog from Google

There is no secret that Google likes good blogs with unique content, so why is yours being overlooked? It is often what Google finds and dislikes on your blog that will determine if you get more visitors or not. Google is about links and bounces not so much about what is actually written as long as it is different from another page.

Before I begin, let me say that the tips I have will only work on blogs that you host on your own domain with wordpress.org software. If you have that then let's begin.

All of the methods I will mention I have used and gotten great success from them.

1. Check those broken links and repair or remove them. Google does not like broken links. You can install a plugin to check broken links and they do work. When I installed one on my wordpress blogs I got over 115 broken links on one blog alone. Once I removed or fixed them, my visitor rate from Google search went up by 25% a day.
2. Find and fix your 404 errors. Yep those pesky "file not found" errors. If you removed a post or renamed a page then you are going to get those 404 errors. A visitor ends up on one of those generic 404 pages and quickly surfs away from your blog. Install a 404 redirect plugin. The good plugins for that will show you the pages that are resulting in 404 errors and you can redirect them to other pages in your blog. Instead of your visitor getting a 404 page they will be greeted with a page that they can do a search on or find the information they were looking for. I started doing that last month on 2 of my blogs and both of them have now doubled the amount of daily visitors. One went from 50 a day to 260, mostly from Google search.
3. Install Google analytics. Yep, let Google know your visitor and bounce rate. When Google sees the bounce rate going down, they will send more visitors to your blog. Works for me every time.

I only wish blogger would have some of those options then I could tweak my blogspot blogs.

Organizing your life to remove stress

Stress in a persons life can cause a multitude of problems. Some stress comes from outside sources that you have no control over but there is one that you control and controlling it can remove stress.

So what is the one I am talking about?


Your stuff or too much of it.


How many times during the day have you walked into a room in your home and instantly see a mess? It does not mean you are a clean freak, it means you have too much stuff. So much so that you have to organize it to make it look presentable even to you.

There are whole businesses based around having too much stuff. They sell racks and stands for it. They have closet organizers for those of us that have too much stuff in our closets. There are businesses that store the stuff that we can't even fit into our homes and charge you a monthly fee to store that stuff.

You will find that if you start to declutter your life you will experience less stress. Having less in a room means having less cleaning to do. Having less stuff in your closets means you have more money in the bank. More money in the bank will often give you more peace of mind and you worry less about the future.

The economy may hate me for saying this but we need to stop buying crap. Cheap things are not what we need. When we save money we can still spend it but it would be done with much more thought. We can save up for those larger ticket items we really need like new carpet for a living room that also needs painting for the first time in 15 years. Or going on that vacation that we always complained that we never could afford.

Don't forget, when I say declutter I don't mean give every thing you own away. Sell it. Have a yard sale, go to the flea market with it, list it on eBay or Craigslist. Put the money in the bank. The stuff you can't sell (give it 3-6 months) you can donate and take a tax write off.

Am I taking my own advice? You bet I am. I have been clearing out 2 back bedrooms for the last 2 months and listing the stuff on eBay. So far I have made nearly $1500 profit.

Planning to save money

One of the key pieces of information that many money gurus fail to mention is proper planning to get out of debt or saving for something. They give vague hints like "pay yourself first" or "put an XX amount in your savings every week." Where they fail is mentioning how to afford that money.

There is no secret or short cut to financial independence, it is simply the fact that you have to create a budget. How can you see where all your hard earned money is going unless you create a budget?

Many money management programs will allow you to classify your bills and everyday spending habits so you can run a report and see where most of your money goes. I thought at one time most of our money was going to food and gasoline but found out other expenses were right up there. One was the monthly medical expenses our family had.

At the same time you can also plan how to pay off credit cards or other installment plans. Remember that with proper planning first you can tackle that debt and save a nice healthy nest egg for what ever you really want.

Are you suspicious enough?

Let's face it, it is now become an age of being suspicious of strangers in person as well as online. You would be a fool not to do some sort of background check on any of the people who work on your home or garden. If you have kids you need to check out all of the non-school teachers you have for them like the piano lesson instructor or the horseback riding place. Schools normally do criminal checks on their personnel but occasionally school teachers show up in the news for abuse or another charge.

Keep in mind that only those who have been caught and convicted of a crime will show up in your search. Those who have not been caught will not show up. That is where your gut instinct needs to come into play.

New spin on how spammers use Craigslist

I put an ad on Craigslist a few weeks ago. Just a simple ad selling something. I got one response. The email asked a few questions that was relevant to the item so I just waited for a response after I answered the questions. A few days later I got back an email saying he was sorry but he sent the email out to the wrong ad. Ok, I was fine with that until the next day I got another email from him.

At this point his email read "since I had emailed you recently, I thought you might be interested in how my sister made $600 a day online lately" with a link of course to one of those spammy websites with a fake newspaper article. So he was trolling for email addresses. But it didn't end there, he kept sending those emails for 3 straight days in a row. Those damn things were more like yo yos, they kept coming back!

Thank goodness I had used a hotmail email account. So I went in and blocked that idiot's email addy after reporting it as a spammer to hotmail.

Yes the email spammers are getting creative - don't fall for them.

Is Coupon Suzy a great deal?

You have perhaps seen those ads on TV for couponsuzy.com a place to get store coupons. I checked it out and I am warning you to steer clear of that website and here is why.

A tried to print out at least 3 of the coupons on the website and came up to a page that said I needed to install their coupon printer -WTF!! I have printed many, many coupons off of websites and used them without problems so why do they need to have me install some software on my computer? That was a big red flag so I checked it out.

I typed in the words "coupon suzy scam" into Google and came up with the facts that the printer program that they want me to install is full of malware and computer worms. Here are 2 websites that computer security programmers are telling their experiences with it:
Is installing a coupon printer safe?
Coupon Suzy - NO THANKS

If any website asks you to install anything on your computer in order to use their website, either stay away from that website or do some research first, like I did. You will save by not having to pay someone to fix your computer once the "bad" software takes it over.

Making old things work

The TV at our house is one of the central pieces of furniture that everyone gathers around, much like most homes in the USA. When the speakers started to go out on it we debated the idea of getting a new LED TV but the cost right now is just a tad too much, at least for us. So we figured out another solution.

We had a Sony home theater system that we had not used in several years. It was stored in a back room and had 5 speakers. We would hook up the system to our Directv box and then just route the audio through the theater system. I had to go digging for the component video cables in a box but I found them. After a few tests and finding out what settings we needed we got it working. It only took us about 5 hours, but that included setting it up, wiring and dusting off everything and a few arguments about excessive wires all over the place. You see, hubby did not want to cut the 50' lengths of wire but have bundles of it showing. I convinced him to cut the wire to the 3' lengths that were needed. My excuse was that the cat would be attracted to the hanging bundles and play with them.

So now the TV is good for the time being until the picture goes out. 

Why can't I come up with a nonsense word?

Our language is changing so fast. A few years ago who would have thought that Google would be a name of one of the largest companies in the world? Yahoo is another word that does not mean the shout that a cowboy would make. How about Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin? All of them are made up names and words.

Now I wonder why I can't think of any nonsense words. Let's see now, redmax sounds too much like the real estate agent but how about maxred? Nah, that sounds like an energy drink.

How about just 3 letters? TMZ is taken but how about MOOM, wait, I looked it up and it is a hair removal cream.

Oh, well, back to the thinking chair. The one that looks out on the mountains and on a clear day you can even see them,

My long term goal to make $150 a day online with only 2 hours a week work

I want to turn my money earning blogging adventure into something different. I am currently working on making 100 affiliate stores and promoting them with my SEO techniques.With any luck and lots of work, I should be able to make at least $1 a day per store, that's $100 a day to start.

So what kinds of products am I promoting? Right now I am doing a few niche stores ro start off with. One deals with skin care products with a section on acne. I might add a Google ads banner for extra income since skin care products like accutane pay well for clicks.

Another store has technology products. The main thing about the stores I develop is that it must be a product or niche that I know something about. That way I can write a few articles about what to look for in purchasing that product. The articles will also help direct search engine traffic to the store.

I want to get them established enough that they (the stores) will get regular daily traffic without doing much more in the way of SEO. Then I can spend my time just updating the sites once a week if needed.

I am a member of about 10 affiliate companies, so there is no lack of items to promote. My most successful one so far is eBay. A few months back I made $40 in one day promoting eBay. I like Amazon.com but the only drawback is that they pay out only after 90 days while most other companies pay out at least once a month, if not more often.

Shrimp and guacamole bites for appetizers

We can save money with not eating out so much, so with that in mind here is a guest blogger.

Guest post written by Rose Miller

My husband is having a bunch of his co-workers over to our house for a dinner party as kind of a way to celebrate the New Year. Sure, it's a month late but it's better late than never!

Now my responsibility is figuring out what I'm going to cook for the dinner. I have the main course already made up but I wanted to come up with some really neat appetizers to serve to people as they arrive. I went online with our cleartvbundle to find some ideas for something really different. I think that's the area where I can really take my chance and fix something off-beat. The worse that could happen is that people don't eat the appetizers and just eat a little more of t! he main course and dessert.

After a little bit of searching, I decided on fixing some shrimp and guacamole bites. I've never had any before but they sound so crazy that I think they just might be delicious. If no one else likes them, I’ll just eat them all after everyone has left.

I hate power outages

Last weekend my family spent 36 hours in the dark. No power due to downed trees. The wind storm put several cities without power for 2 days or more. Of course I was unable to do anything that involved the use of electricity or water. Our water is supplied by a well that needs electricity to power the well pump.

That experience got me thinking, if I was looking for a source of alternate energy for just our well, where would I look? We are lucky that our well can be set up to be plugged into a portable generator but with the price of gas going skyward, what about solar?

I did find one website called "Clean Alternate Energy" that has power solutions that would work, On the same site I also found a neat section of solar powered chargers that would keep my laptop charged up during the power outage, all for under $20.

I should go back and look at more of what they have to offer since we almost lost our entire refrigerator full of food due to lack of electricity.

My earnings from eBay Partner Network are up

I am a member of the eBay Partner Network. It is an affiliate program that eBay set up so you can earn commissions on sales on eBay. I have been a member for about 3 years now. When I first started out, eBay had a different sales commission in place. You made a percentage of actual completed sales. Now they pay per click. There have been days when I earned $40 in commissions but since they switched over to the pay per click, my earnings dropped dramatically, until recently.

What I use to do was jump into on going message board conversations about eBay and link to the item or items they were talking about. I didn't do any persuading or "selling" on the message board, I simply added a link with something to the effect "did you mean this item?" or "here is a link to that item you mentioned." That is what got me those high paying daily commissions.

I still do that sometimes but now I have added a banner advertisement to 2 of my highest trafficked blogs. Now I am getting those precious clicks and my earnings are up. Just out of curiosity I checked what people were buying on eBay and they were not buying what I thought they would be. They are buying health and beauty products both of which my blogs are not about. People seem to be searching for alternate medications, herbs and diet pills. Maybe they are making their own home based medications, but I don't care as long as I am earning commissions from their purchases.

So far today, and it is early, I have made $7.51 in commissions on the eBay Partner Network. Not bad for simply a banner ad.

Day two of my cold and getting better

While I hate having to hang around the bathroom and laying in bed, I can be thankful for having a laptop and decent weather outside. I cannot fathom even trying to use a snow shovel or getting out one of our commercial pumps to pump out flooded areas like it seems that at least 50% of the USA is doing right now.When I lived in the central valley of CA we had what is commonly called a "holding pond." It was a dug out area that collected water during heavy rains. If your property did not have one or there was not one very close by, then you might have a flooded house. Many city folks would buy older homes out in the central valley and fill those holding ponds in. Later they would realize what they had done and once they clean out their house of a few inches of water they would hire someone with a backhoe to dig their holding pond, again. Even here in Oregon, I have have seen holding ponds in the Willamette Valley.

Oh well, enough of reminiscing and back to taking another nap. I have been up since 3am coughing out a lung.

I've got writers block or is it?

The dreaded bane of all professional writers has hit me, writers block. I don't think that it is real writers block as much as procrastination. I have about 7 more articles to write for Yahoo and although I have rough drafts written for them I have been putting off finishing them.

Procrastination will be the great undoing of many people. I know the feeling all too well. I do manage to complete all what I need to do before it is due and that includes paying bills, filing documents and buying ink for my printer before it runs out but damn, it bugs me that I tend to put things off until almost the last minute.

I have known 2 people that started businesses only to fail because they were terrible procrastinators. One guy tried to run a printing business and just could not keep up with the customers deadlines. Thankfully he did not invest in any large printers but leased them instead. Instead of going out of business entirely he sold the business to his son who made it a success.

Tip for the day:   If you are a procrastinator either don't have a business with deadlines or have someone help you keep on track with demands.

If you have a website or blog this is the best time of year

This is the best time of year to make money online. If you have a blog or website then people and companies are lining up to buy advertising or persuade you to join their affiliate program so you can make a commission on each sale made through your site. You can make money promoting practically anything. I personally make commissions from sales on eBay. They are not MY items but other people's items, I simply send customers to those items knowing that they will buy them. The items can be anything from jewelry to the weight loss pills but I get a commission on each click as long as that click translates into a purchase on eBay.

I have made as much as $50 in one day just sending people to items on eBay. Most do not buy the item I send them to, but they do end up buying something else, which translates into a commission for me.

Writing more articles for Associated Content

I am so thrilled to becoming a popular writer on Associated Content. I am now a featured contributor for 3, yes 3 sections. AC kept sending me emails asking that I join the sections (pets, technology and finance) that I finally gave in and joined.

I have been a member on there since 2006 but did not start writing for them until 2007. The advantages of becoming a featured contributor is that you write 3 articles about your chosen subject each month for $10 each. That means I will earn $90 minimum for maybe 4 hours work each month. Of course that does not include the other articles I write which I can get paid a minimum of $6 each and most of them are in the $10 to $15 range. I can easily earn $200 a week if I wrote 3 articles a day.

I have noticed that many new writers on there do not have a clue how to be successful on the site. They write articles that the subject matter can be found else where. For example, articles about "how to get rid of acne fast" will not get many views if that subject matter is covered in-depth at the Mayo Clinic website. The same for almost any subject. Your article has to not only be unique but on a subject, but also not covered in-depth all over the internet.

Another thing that the new article writers are doing is writing their articles in the style of a blog post. AC is stepping in and removing those articles - thankfully. "Open letters" and  "updates on what they have been doing" to their "fans" is not what Associated Content needs or wants on their website.

If you think that having an extra few hundred dollars a week is just what the doctor ordered, then join me at Associated Content (click on the badge in the side bar) and start writing and get paid for it.