Losing PageRank

When I got home from Germany I noticed my PageRank had been slashed in half. I had no idea what had happened, other than I hadn't blogged for two weeks. I didn't think that was reason enough to cut my page rank. I have felt discouraged because of this because there aren't as many opportunities available to lower page rank blogs. Well I just read that google was going through the system and slashing the page rank of those blogs that participate in payperpost and those sponsored programs. Payperpost has been really slow for me for a couple months, and if my page rank is going to be hurt from participating in their program I will discontinue my use of payperpost. My page rank is more important to me than $5 here and there from payperpost. A lot of people do really well on payperpost, but my blog doesn't. What will be interesting is that when you have a high page rank on payperpost you get really high paying opportunities, but if those people are being punished for using payperpost their page rank will be cut and then they won't be getting those great opportunities anymore. We'll see what happens to payperpost. Maybe they can come to a compromise. All I know is that I won't be participating in payperpost anymore in hopes of returning my page rank to 4 and continue my goals of increasing it. Any comments, suggestions or more information would be welcomed.

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Flashback Friday - Survey's

This is our first week doing flashback Friday and I'm very excited about it. Last year at this time our blog was only a few weeks old and our primary purpose was talking about money. I wrote this article about the different survey companies I participate in. Now reading this article a year later I can say I still participate in these three companies. Now is the time of year when I usually cash out to help pay for Christmas presents, but this year I decided not to. I'm going to leave the points in my account and save them up. We are hoping to go on a cruise in a year so I'm going to keep taking surveys and collecting the points and then when I need help paying for the cruise I will cash out. Our Christmas presents haven't been too expensive this year. That is why I changed my normal plan. Once again, if you have any other survey sites that aren't scams, I'd love to hear about them. Happy Flashback Friday!

Are the "make money by taking surveys online" scams?

I would say most of these paid survey sites are scams. A lot of these sites want you to pay them anywhere from $25 up and they will give you a list of survey websites that pay you for taking surveys. A couple years ago when I was in college I fell for this and I paid $35 to get this magical list filled with money making opportunities. After joining about 100 survey websites, I figured out that I had been scammed out of $35. I emailed the website I had paid and demanded a refund. They did refund my money, while all the while I was still enrolled in these survey sites. I participated in as many surveys I could in hopes of receiving check after check. The checks never came so I slowly opted out of a lot of the sites. 3 years later my survey list is down to 3 that I participate in regularly and I do receive money.
The first website is Lightspeed Consumer Panel. At this site you take surveys for points (on average about 75 pts per survey) when you get a certain number of points you can cash in for gifts, gift cards, electronics, and money via paypal. For example to get $10 on paypal (which you can transfer into your bank account) is costs 1150 points. I usually save up my points until Christmas time and then cash in to help pay for my presents. This year I choose not to cash in but if I would have cashed in last December I would have gotten $40 which is 4600 points. It isn't much and it took me 11 months, but it is money that I haven't had to work very hard for and its better than nothing.
The second website is MySurvey . This website also does points for surveys but the point to money ratio is a lot better. Here 1000 points is equal to $10. This website sends you a check. If I would have cashed in my points I would have gotten $50 for my 5000 points. Here you can also cash in for other things such as gifts, electronics, tools, a grill, you can also donate to a charity with your points, it is great!
The third website doesn't give you points, it only enters you into a raffle and they have like 25 winners a month or so. Oh I should mention the other two sites also do raffles on top of the point system for more chances to win things. The third website is NPD Online Research . I take these surveys because I don't mind doing it. They only take about 5-10 minutes and so it isn't a big deal to me that I'm only getting a "chance" to win. Last May I did win $100 which they sent in check form after having been a member and taking surveys for 2+ years, so it balanced out with about as much money as I'm making with the other sites.
None of these sites will get you rich quick, I haven't figured out how to do that yet, but they will get you about an extra $100 a year which is nice for some mad money. And all of you may have more qualifying factors in your life to provide you with more surveys. You fill out a little questionnaire about yourself so they know what surveys apply to you, so everyone's opportunities are different. I don't drink or smoke or have pets or have multiple cars or many kids and so there's only so much to ask me, others with those things probably get more surveys than I do. I hope this helps and will provide you with a little extra money. If you have some other good surveys sites I'd love to know about them!!

I'd like to invite you now to leave a comment and you can include a link to your favorite Flashback Friday article on your blog! I will be making a button this week for Flashback Friday and everyone who participates in welcome to take the button and put it on their site to advertise Flashback Friday!

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Keeping my Mind Open

I was just reading over at Kirby's site about ClixSense. On this site when you sign up you get paid to look at ads for 30 seconds. They don't pay you very much per ad, but if you are sitting at the computer anyway, you might as well just keep a window open with different ads showing. I've decided to keep an open mind about this and try it for a day or two and then decide weather or not it is worth it to me. When you refer people you get a portion of what they make. Since I read about this on Kirby's blog I decided to sign up under him. Why not help someone out right? So if you want to check out ClixSense the links in this post will take you there. Just for fair warning they are my refer link so you can help me out while earning money for yourself. You can then tell your readers about it and hope for some referrals! Thanks in advance for the help. Let me know what you think of ClixSense if you are new to the program or experienced.

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My Recommended Money Makers

I have written about different websites I use to generate income a couple times before. I would like to make a revised list in order of my favorite to my least favorite and let you know my opinion on how well they work.

Sponsored Reviews is my all time favorite money maker! On this website you get to browse all the offers and bid on them. The advertiser gives you a money range that they are willing to pay and you make a bid to how much you are willing to write the post for within their range. I love this site because there are hundred of advertisers waiting for you to bid on their offer. Most of the advertisers don't have any stipulations such as page rank, or Alexa ranking and so every blog can bid on almost every offer. When bidding you have to take into account that sponsored reviews keeps 35% of the money you make so you get 65% of the amount you bid. This isn't too bad when a lot of the offers I am doing are for $20 or more. They pay you every two weeks so that is nice and there is no minimum payout. I have been rejected from multiple offers because I must have bid too much and they didn't think my blog was worth the amount I bid. I have tried to stop being so greedy and bid realistically. I am also an advertiser on Sponsored Reviews and it has been fun to go through the blogs that place bids on my offers and pick the ones I like best to do the reviews.

Blogsvertise goes through waves of being really active. Lately they have provided me with a lot of opportunities which makes them my second favorite money maker at the moment. The offers are usually around $10 which is enough to make me happy and they give you all the full amount of the offer. Blogsvertise pays you once your post is approved and 30 days old. This is a great site you check often but like I said, they go through waves, and so they may not have many offer coming up soon.

Smorty is fairly new. When I first joined they had about 5 offers up for me to complete. I did them all. Now about once a week I get an email that there is a new offer up. Smorty's offers for me have ranged from $6-$9. I don't mind these smaller amounts because something is better than nothing. Their posts are easy to write because they only need to be 150 words in length and have one link to the advertiser. They pay weekly as soon as your post is approved.

PayPerPost used to be one of my favorites. Lately they have been lacking. They have started a new system of reserving the posts. Now whenever you want to do a post you have to first reserve it. This new system has left me without reservations! Whenever I find a post I would like to write all of the reservations for it are gone. Lately I haven't been able to find any posts that I can actually get. Plus I have a couple posts that are three weeks old that haven't been approved yet. They seem to be too busy to approve my posts. PayPerPost works really well for high traffic, highly ranked blogs. It seems to be a program to help the "rich get richer." They pay you once your posts reach 30 days. The highest payment amount I have been able to qualify for was $15. Apparently my page rank 4 isn't good enough for the high paying offers. I still check PayPerPost a couple times a week in hopes of finding a post I may reserve for myself, but lately is hasn't been happening too often.

There are other sites like LoudLaunch and Blogitive that I don't use too often. These two companies only have "weird" offers in my opinion and the only dollar amount I have ever seen is $5. Perhaps these site also work better with higher ranked sites, but I doubt it.

If you know of anymore sponsored post sites please share them with me. If you experience with any of these sites is different than mine please let me know about that also. I want to hear your feedback and comments about these programs.

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Auction Ads

AuctionAds: Increase the bid on your site's income!
You may notice that my Auction Ads are back! Why you ask? Auctions is trying to improve. They have now given publishers who haven't earned a payout and new publishers who sign up a free $25!! You can't beat that! They have also increased their payouts for affiliate payouts from 2% to 5%. That is a nice increase. In light of their changes I decided to give them another chance. They obviously noticed that they used to be useless and they are trying to improve. I want to help them improve and participate in getting the free $25 so I put the code back up. If you haven't signed up for auction ads yet you can still hurry on over there and sign up for a free $25. If you click on the link in the beginning of this post or the Auction Ads words on the actual ad that will take you to their home page where it will tell you all about the program and how to sign up! I think it is completely worth the free money. Take advantage while the offer still stands!

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I Want Success

In this post I will be spilling some of my guts so please be kind in your comments, thanks!

What is success? Everyone defines it differently. When I started this blog in November of 2006 I didn't know anything about blogging and so I didn't set any goals. It wasn't until about 4 months later that I started to learn how huge the blogosphere is and the potential it has to be a money maker. I then set a couple goals for myself.

1. To make between $200-$300 per month through google adsense and other ad networks. To some this is a lot of money (like me) to others this is peanuts. I figured once I got to that goal the numbers would continue to increase because I would continue to work on the blog.

- My progress on this was very slow in the beginning. I was writing a lot of articles, but they didn't mean anything. They were about stupid things that no one wanted to read, not even me. Lately I have been goal driven and have a desire to write good content that is full of sustenance. I make some money with sponsored posts so if I were to count those towards my goal I would be about there. Sponsored posts aren't part of my goal though, so it is nice to have a couple hundred dollars in extra money from those, but I want my ads to take off.

2. To have 20+ subscribers. I thought with writing posts the subscribers would just naturally come. Well if your content is good and interesting this is probably true, but with the content I used to produce it wasn't happening. Lately my subscribers have gone up a little. This is partly because of my current blog contest which is all about subscribing to this blog. I do think that my more knowledgeable and heart filled content does have something to do with it.

- I have recently added the feedburner subscriber count button on the blog because I care how many subscribers I have. If everyone sees the number perhaps they will become interested in subscribing, or it will remind them that they want to subscribe.

To have a successful blog or website I know it requires a lot of knowledge. You have to know a little bit about programming to make the website. Even though I am using a free blogger website, we still have had to program the template and add things to it. We didn't want a standard free blogger template. You might think it is a standard issue, but it is a custom template. Basic knowledge of computers and internet I'm pretty good at but beyond that it is hard for me and I really have to work at it. For exampleI know what SEO stands for and I have read tons of articles to trying to understand it, but I haven't been able to really grasp the concept and how to make my blog SEO friendly yet. I'm only now beginning to understand that a blog won't sell itself, you really have to work at it. With my bidvertiser ads which are going extremely well and having people write sponsored reviews about my blog my traffic and income has picked up.

In the beginning when we first decided to start a blog it was because of an article we read on Steve Pavlina's site. He is a motivational speaker and has a very successful self help website. He said that it took his website about 6 months to become "successful" and now he is making thousands of dollars a month from it. In my not-so-knowledgeable mind I thought we could pull that off. Well here we are almost a year old and not meeting our goals, but with my new plans being implemented we are in the right direction and starting to make very good progress.

If you have any tips, or lessons for me to learn please comment. I feel like a sponge right now and really want to learn from other people's successes.

Technorati tags: SEO, success, blogging, ads, money

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My Ad Networks

I have a lot of hope in ad networks. For a lot of people they bring in a fair amount of money. I have read a lot of blogs and articles saying that the potential is there because it works for them. Because of this, I have tried many ad networks to less than what I would call success.

Adsense

This seems to be the most popular because it really does have potential to bring in a lot of money. I like adsense. My numbers aren't what I would like them to be, but every month I see improvement, and as I try to improve my blog and my readership, I'm sure things will get better.

Auction Ads

These ads seemed like such a great idea. It is fresh and new. Auction ads are on the right hand side of the page. They have the pictures of products that are for sale and you can click on them and participate in the bidding of that product to win. I think the only way to receive money through auction ads is for someone who clicked on your ad to win the product. Needless to say, this is not a money maker and all my hopes were dashed. I am planning on taking it off after I try these last set of ads about money. People love money, so I'm taking this approach and if nothing comes of it, they are gone!

AdBrite

I have had AdBrite ads on Random Games for a while and didn't really see any progress in it. They then came out with a new way of advertising which is through select words on a page and the ad pops up when you hover over it. I have put those type of ads on this blog in hopes of seeing some success. Slowly (very slowly) but surely I'm starting to get a few cents here and there from AdBrite. I was about to pull them off the blog also, but I think I'll keep them around for a little while in hopes that they take off!

How are your ad networks doing? Which ones are the most successful??

I'm trying rally hard to provide a useful blog, full of information. I so think it is loaded full of information, but apparently not the kind of information people want to read. I'm trying really hard to have interesting and useful content that attracts people, but I need to keep trying harder. Any input would be very valuable to me! Thanks!!

Technorati tags: Adsense, AdBrite, AuctionAds, money, blogging, ads

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Money CDs

Interest is better suited when it is working for you instead of against you. When interest is paying you things are good. A good way to have interest working for you is by putting some of your money in CDs. CD stands for Certificate of Deposit. There is a great website that offers current CD Rates, different Bank CD Rates, and tips on receiving the Highest Interest Rates. This site is a fantastic resource to help your finances grow.

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Share your Pics for Money

I was told about this website where you upload your photos and get paid to share them. When people look at your pictures you get paid. It is about $.22 CPM so for every 1000 people that look at your pictures you get paid that much. This is actually a pretty good ratio, plus sharing pictures is fun. Almost everyone has uploaded pictures on the internet and like sharing them, now you can get paid to do so. If you want to look into this program you can click on the banner in this post and it will take you to the website so you can get started! I just started today, and I'm having a ton of fun. Also, you can put up adsense on your photo galleries and add to your adsense revenue that way!

UPDATE: So I've been a member of Shareapic for about a week now and it is amazing! I have had a great time uploading a lot of my pictures. I have uploaded mostly vacation pictures that other people would enjoy looking at also. Just from having uploaded pictures and having them on the site I have gotten a lot of picture views which results in me making money. It has been awesome so far. I would totally encourage you to click the banner ad and check it out. It is a lot of fun and you make money by having fun!

Technorati tags: money, pictures, shareapic, adsense

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Smorty

Once again I want to tell you about another get paid for blogging site. This one is called Smorty. This site connects advertisers with publishers (bloggers) to write opinions with links back to an advertisers site. If you are using your blog for money, this is another good site to join. The posts are only required to be from 150-400 words with a minimum payment of $6. I think it is well worth the 5-10 minutes it takes to write 150 words. Unlike some paid to blog sites you get all of the money, Smorty doesn't keep a percentage of it. You also get paid on a weekly basis which is another great feature! I am new, but already have multiple offers to write up. Things are running smoothly already and so I continue to participate for a while. Check out the website and start earning a little bit more money today!

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Blog Competition Worth $2500

Over at Ashwin’s blog, you will find one crazy blog owner!! You can win $2500!! To enter just copy this text and paste it in your blog!! But hurry, this competition will not last long! So get posting!

Well as you can see I am participating. I have a hard time believing it, but it is worth a shot right?

Technorati tags: blog competition, money, win

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PPP Love

I have written about it before and I'll probably keep writing about it. What is it you ask? Pay Per Post!! It is an awesome site to find reviews, write about them and get paid a lot of money. The opportunities they have on Pay Per Post are on average worth more than most reviews you'll find on competing sites. In the 4 short months I have been a member of PPP there have been countless offers that I qualify for, worth a lot more than a typical $5. So far I have made $71 after I get paid for everything. You get paid 30 days after your post appears on your site to make sure the maximum number of people get to see the review. In order to sign up your blog must be at least 90 days old in order to get more established blogs. When I first started my blog I anxiously awaited my 90 days and signed up as soon as I could. I'm glad I have because it has provided some good opportunities and I have learned about products and websites I wouldn't have found out about without PPP. It's a great things so sign up as soon as you can, and please use my word of mouth marketing as a referral when you sign up! Thanks!

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Blog About Your Blog Competition

Over at Blog About Your Blog there is a new competition going on. They are looking to get blogs to write up reviews, including likes, dislikes, advice, anything you want. Once there are 10 reviews about BAYB a panel of judges will read the reviews and vote for the best. There are cash prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. On top of cash prizes, BAYB gets a lot of traffic and with a review you will get a linkback, so this is sure to help your traffic numbers increase. So head on over and get your review on!

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How are your Hubs?

A while back I told you about Hubpages, a place to share some of your articles and other writings for people to read, but also to have associated with your your google adsense, ebay, and/or amazon. This has been a fun place for me to put some of my favorite articles. Most of the articles I put on hubpages are ones that have been published on this blog so it doesn't require a lot of extra work. I feel like it is a great way to spread more of my writing and have an extra way of generating some income. It is also an interesting site to surf and read other people's articles. Once of my favorite articles on hubpages is called "why is my newborn crying?" it talks about all the different cries a baby has and how to decipher them. I really enjoy hubpages and I thought I would remind some of you that it is available for your reading and earning enjoyment!

Technorati tags: money, Hubpages, articles, writing

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I've Been Published!

I found this site called Associated Content. On this site you can submit original articles or articles you have previously written for payment. You sell them the rights to your article. If your article has been previously used either in print or on the internet you can submit it for non-exclusive rights, or you can write an original article never used anywhere before and submit it for exclusive rights. They then review your article and give you an offer of payment which you can accept or reject. They also accept pictures, music and movies. I think it is an awesome website! If you want to check out my exclusive Associated Content visit this link:

Check out my recently published content on AC:
Winco - a Great Place to Shop for Groceries

Technorati tags: Winco, groceries, Associated Content

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Product Testing

Last November I wrote an article about online survey companies and whether or not they were scams. I told of my experiences with three companies that were legit. You can read that article by clicking here. The reason I bring up the survey companies are because I was recently sent some shampoo and conditioner to test. Along with taking surveys for these sites once in a while they send a product for me to test and then take surveys about. Sometimes I know what the brand of the product is, and sometimes I don't. In the past I was sent two huge containers of laundry detergent to test. A couple months ago I was sent a jumbo pack of Huggies Diapers. Now I have some shampoo and conditioner. With the most recent product I don't know the brand. I was a little nervous to test the shampoo and conditioner without knowing the brand. My husband offered to test it first to make sure my hair wouldn't fall out or turn green or something. I'm a week into the test and things are going well. Every time I wash my hair I try to think of how I'll answer the questions that are inevitably coming. Now to the point: not only am I getting points which convert into cash (or prizes if I so choose) I am also being sent products. I am making money and saving money by being a member or these survey companies. The laundry detergent came when we were still in college in 2005 and it was great! It saved up a lot of money at a time when we were particularly poor. Free diapers! Who wouldn't want free diapers? Diapers are very expensive so it was nice to take a break from buying them and have the company give up some for free. Now with shampoo and conditioner, I realize that isn't too expensive, but it still will save up $10 this month because we won't have to buy any. That is always nice. Once again I recommend looking into the companies in the article I referred to in the beginning of this post. There are many benefits to be had. Also, if you have any other survey companies or product testing companies that are legit and you enjoy being a part of, please let me know!

Technorati tags: product testing, surveys

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Saving Money is Making Money

People often speak of making money on the internet. What if you tried something different? Something like saving money by using the internet. Isn't saving money really making money? Ebates is an online shopping program designed to help you save money just by buying the things you normally would, online! This program is all about saving money and getting you cash back when you shop online..

Membership with Ebates is free! You just need an email address to access the hundred of stores to start your online shopping. Just remember to go to Ebates when you start your online shopping or you could download their reminder program called "Moe Money Maker" and it will remind you. Ebates also offers specials and coupons, including target coupons. Ebates received commission from their sales, but instead of keeping it, they turn around and send it to you in a check! Ebates gets you 25% off at over 800 stores, CNN calls it "A no-brainer." Check it out and never pay full price again!

This is a sponsored post.

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My Money Statistics

I have never done this before but I thought it would be fun to do my money statistics so far. I love to read these on other blogs, to see what programs work the best for them, so perhaps you'd like to know what is happening for me.

Paid Post Sites:
Blogitive (Since Nov. 12 2006) $35
CreamAid(Since Oct. 15 2006) $15
Blogsvertise Has yet to offer me anything


Ad Sites:
Adsense (Since Nov. 11 2006) $12.50
Sta-ads (Since Dec. 9 2006) $ .85
Money4Blogs (one time payment) $25- only on 1 blog, as my other blogs gain popularity I'll submit those also.


Other Sites:
myLot $10.11 (They pay in certain increments, at the pay date this is what I had in my account, but I have made more than this!)

That makes for a grand total of: $98.46!

I'll take what I can get. I have only been up and running for almost 3 months. Visitors are on the rise. I'm figuring more out about adsense everyday to help increase those earnings. By far blogitive is the biggest help to me. I do have some more money coming from them, but I didn't want to include "pretend" money that I haven't received yet. Also, as far as Creamaid goes, you get paid once they fill their post quota, on top of that if someone participates through your Creamaid widgets you get a referral bonus which also doesn't come until the conversation closes so I don't have more money on the way with them, but didn't want to include it. Things are good. It's $98 I didn't have before and I'm very grateful for it. I plan to increase my earning this year dramatically with the help of my other blogs Random Games and Random Super Heroes, with hopefully some new great blog ideas on the way! Plus I am a co-author over at Blog About Your Blog which helps to bring in traffic. This money is completely 100% profit since I use free blogs. I'm sure there are others who have made more money in 3 months but I'm happy with my stats and motivated to increase them!

Technorati tags: Money making, money

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Boston Condos

As we are going through our job hunt the possibilities of moving are looming around every corner. Since this is a very likely possibility we have been researching our living conditions when we do move. One site we have been checking out is called CondoCompany.com. They the #1 searched condo company on the internet. They have a CondoList program that allows buyers, sellers, real estate agents and such to connect. Right now they are featuring Boston Condos. When searching through the Boston Condo list there is direct contact info for the sellers so you can contact them directly and not work with a middleman. Generally this site is used for luxury high rise condos. So if you are looking for condos in Boston this is the website to check out! Since we don't know where we will ultimately end up, for now we are just looking for the fun of it!

This is a paid post through Blogitive.

Technorati tags: Boston, Condos, money making

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myLot Comes Through

First let's explain what myLot is. It is a type of discussion board where you get paid to participate. Registration is free. You go to the website and comment on other discussions or start your own and get paid to do so. The pay is meager but with some effort and some great referrals you can earn a good amount of money each month when they payout. I have previously spoken of mylot and that they actually did pay people. Well when I wrote that I hadn't been paid, but some other friends of mine had. Well now I have been paid! I had set my minimum payout for $25 but I realized since I don't contribute as often as I would like to mylot I should set my payout at the minimum ($10) and just get paid, so I did and I received my paypal payment! I was very excited to get it, especially since I had also just sold some ads space on Random Games so I felt pretty successful yesterday with the blogs. I am wanting to calculate some numbers and report on my earnings up to this point. I know this isn't that kind of blog, but I like to read about what other people are making so perhaps a few of you would be interested to know how I have done in my 3 months of blogging and 3 blogs later.

Technorati tags: mylot, money, paid, discussion board, online

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