Sending my daughter to an out-of-state school

Guest post written by Tom Thurman

There have been a lot of things that I've worried about for my daughter's sake over the years. It's simply worrying about her growing up and getting all that she hopes for and dreams about. Right now I'm worried about her starting her freshman year of college. She starts classes in just a few weeks and I'm dropping her off for freshman orientation right before her classes begin.

I've been working a lot on getting all of her stuff together before I take her to school. While we were looking up some last minute things like her class schedule and general college tips a few weeks ago, I ran across the website WIRELESSINTERNET.net. After I looked through it some, I decided to change over our home internet service to one of the packages that I found on there.

I think that we have her as prepared as possible for her life as a college freshman. I'm just not sure that I'm prepared for it. But I don't think that I can do anything to prepare myself for it. I'll just have to deal and look forward to parent weekend.

I don't blog just for money

I just realize that my last post sounds like all I care about is money. Nothing can be farther from the truth. I started blogging before I knew that I could get paid for it. Now I blog because it's fun. Making money is just a side benefit.

Like I said in my last post, I don't depend on the money but it's nice to have. If I couldn't make diddly-squat I would still blog. I like voicing my opinion and just talking about my day in general.

I need to make more money from my blogs

I won't be depending on the money but it's good to make more. My blogs don't get enough traffic to really make a ton of money but I'm trying to change that. I would be happy with a Adsense check or two. But my ads are weird on my other blogs so my hits don't count. That means I need more visitors to my other blogs.

I'll be posting like crazy within the next two weeks trying to get new readers.

My other blog is driving me insane

I can't do anything on it. I can't save anything and I can't post anything either. I had some old posts scheduled to post today. Those posts are ok. Now it won't let me save or do anything new. It's been like this all day.

I can't believe this. This is really super annoying.

Free blog advertising

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We all need visits to our blogs. Here's a great way for you to do so. Sign up your friends and earn more links today!

People who make a difference

Having a positive influence in your life can make all of the difference in the world. Most often that influence comes in the forms of parents and teachers. It can also come from a person like Norberto Diaz. Bert is a former Latin musician who is now a principal in New Jersey. He uses music to motivate and inspire students. When you meet someone who is enthusiastic about what they do, it's easy to be inspired by them.

Bert is now an administrator but he was a k-8 public school teacher. As a multi-lingual educator (he speaks Spanish, Portuguese and English) he was quickly able to gain the trust of both parents and students. Read his blog to find out more about him. Who knows, he may be one of your child's favorite people.

My page rank never moved

Well hrmp. I'm extremely jealous of everyone else that had an increase. I do know that pr will be moving until the end of the month so I'm not getting too excited. I just shouldn't even worry about it because there's nothing you can do about it anyway. I could do everything right and still not get ranked. There's really no rhyme or reason to it.

I'll just concentrate on blogging and not worry about everything else.

Page rank is on the move

Google is at it again. People have been reporting that their page rank is moving. I've looked at my stats twice today but mine hasn't moved. One of the predictor sites has all of my sites going to a pr1. Considering I'm a pr0 now, I'll take it and be glad to have it.

Updates only happen 3 or 4 times per year and this one won't be over until the 21st of May. Until then everyone will be on pins and needles waiting to see where they end up.

Rejecting advertising

I have a small blog with not a lot of readers, yet. I'm slowly trying to find ways to grow my readership base. In the meantime, I'm still soliciting advertisers. I'm using Project Wonderful for example. You can have the ads auto-approved or approve them manually. I had several on this blog for $0.00. That's right their ads were free. I don't mind because eventually it will start to go up.

Then I noticed that not only were they not paying, they had the space tied up for 4 days. Ummm no, I don't think so. Getting a free ad is one thing, but I'm not going to let 1 person take up 4 days worth of ads. I would rather let 2 people each get 2 free days. At first I felt bad about rejecting bids until I thought about it. The people with the free advertising could care less what I was feeling. They just saw free space. So I cancelled the bids and decided not to worry about it.

I don't expect to get rich off of these ads. But I'm not going to let people getting them for free hog them up either.

Advertise on my blog!

You can get advertising right here on my blog. I have an Entrecard widget where you can have your blog featured. I also have boxes that fluctuate between free and $.02 right now for advertising. I also have a Top Spots widget that's $1.00 for seven days.

I also have a larger (125x125) box that's fluctuating between free and $.02 and a $1.00 for seven days Tops Spots widget on my Insane Random Ramblings blog. So get yourself some cheap advertising before the prices go up!

What time of day do you update?

I don't have a set time that I update my blog everyday. Sometimes it's in the mornings and sometimes it's in the afternoon. Occassionally I will update at night but that's not too often anymore.

I like to update my blog in the morning because that's when I have the most time to surf the web. I like to get to surf early and get it over with. I like having blogs updated in the morning because that gives me something fresh to read.

What time do you update your blog? Do you have a preference for when other people update theirs?

Would you sell your website?

Obviously I couldn't sell this one even if I wanted too because technically I don't own it. I do own two of my own websites though. I can't imagine selling them however I could see why some people do. They have really popular sites or the name of their site is something that people really want. I'm not talking about just blogs either, I mean regular websites as well.

What would you do if someone offered you money for your website? Would you sell it, think about it then sell it or just outright turn down the offer?

A new form of blog advertising

I investigate all forms of advertising for my blog and I just found another one. It's Pay Per Play Online Audio Ads. The ads don't take up any of the valuable real estate on your blog. It works behind the scenes in your blogs template. You hear a 5 second audio ad where it's appropriate. It runs alongside your existing ads so you don't have to decide between ad programs.

The best part is that it pays you based on 100% of your visitors. Since they don't have to click on anything you get the higher effective cpm rate possible. Needless to say, this will be up and running on my blog very soon.

I found a new search engine

Well I didn't actually find it on my own. Someone sent me a link and told me to check it out. I thought I would pass it on. The site is Earthfrisk.org and I'm really excited about it. I don't like how one company can dominate the internet and skew results. By using this new search engine, we can help level the playing field. That way the giant companies can't dominate the search results.

I put my blog name in there and it showed several entries. I have 1 blog that doesn't show on one search engine at all. They all showed on earthfrisk. I like the site and plan on using it more often. Check it out.

Grrrr!

See this is why I hate having multiple blogs. I just posted something to my other blog. Lo and behold I have to move it. Never mind that it doesn't really fit this blog, it's already down. I know I should have looked at what I was doing more carefully but I was in a rush. No excuse I know.

I need to start paying better attention. I'm doing double work.

Making mistakes and new posts

Whenever I make a mistake in my post, or realize that I left a thought off, I write a new post. I know a lot of people go back and just edit their own posts. I only go back and correct spelling mistakes or glaring gramatical errors. Other than that, it's a totally new post.

Do you edit old posts or write new ones to explain your point more clearly?

Down with Google! Up with Yahoo!

Or even Ask.com. I hate hate hate Google right now. A lot of bloggers do. They've decided that they wanted to update page ranks and a lot of people got hit hard. I lost page rank on all of my blogs except 1. That blog didn't have a page rank to begin with!

So why am I so mad at Google? I'm a paid blogger and my assignments are generally based on page rank which Google supplies. Since people are losing page rank, we'll probably lose money as well.

This sucks because I use that money to help pay for school.

Reading other blogs

I like reading other blogs especially finance blogs. It gives you an idea of what other peoples investing styles. Sometimes I agree with their style but sometimes I don't. I just find it interesting to see what they think and what motivates them.

I don't really write about my money too much on this blog, I do that on my other blog. What about you, do you write about your money on your blog?

I upgraded my theme

It's the same theme colors and all. I just updated the blog to the newer version of blogger. I know I'm missing some of my widgets and links. I'll have to go into my old blog and dig out the ones that I really want. Some of them should have been deleted eons ago so I won't bother.

This newer theme is easier to navigate.

Business blogs

I love reading different blogs on the internet and I've found some good ones. The newest one is the XML Aficionado blog. The best thing about this blog is that it's run by the CEO of Altova, the company that made XMLSpy. Now how's that for getting into the mind of a genius. The actual CEO of a company writes his own blog.

I think I can learn a lot from this blog. Alexander discusses technology and trends and breaks down geek speak into something I can understand. You should check the blog out and see for yourself. Plus he just bought a pinball machine. So I think he's extra cool.