My Amazon.com aStore

I've been an Amazon.com Associate for just about as long as they've had the program going. I thought the whole concept was brilliant the first time I heard about it. Not because I thought I could make a big pile of money from it (a good thing I didn't, or my dreams would've been cruelly shattered), but because I liked the idea that I could get a small reward if I helped make a sale.

As it turned out, being an Associate wasn't easy. At least not if you wanted to be a successful Associate. And over the years, it seems like it got harder, not easier. I don't mean that it got harder making sales, I mean that the whole process of being an Associate got more complicated.

But it seems like Amazon has decided to try to make things easier by letting Associates build aStores. aStore lets Associates build an Amazon-powered storefront like the FreeCashSpace Bookstore as quickly as they can add products.

Dave Taylor has written some great step-by-step instructions for building your aStore, and it really is as easy as he describes. Within 10 to 15 minutes, you can have your aStore up and running, and you can add more products at any time. I've started with a few of my favourite books, and I'll be adding plenty more over the next few days.

Watching Web 2.0

After posting that last post I realised it might be helpful to talk about where to look for sites like Digg, Newsvine, del.icio.us, YouTube and other types websites that feature community-created content. Some are called "social news", "social bookmarking", or "social media" sites. One thing they tend to have in common is that word "social" and another thing is that they're often referred to as being part of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. What does Web 2.0 mean? Nobody's entirely sure, but it generally refers to a 'second version' of the Web. Think blogs, Adsense, Wikipedia and all the various "social" whatevers mentioned earlier. If you really want to try to understand it, maybe this article by Tim O'Reilly will help.

If you're happy to try to understand it by looking at a lot of examples, here are some sites that can help you find them:

All Things Web 2.0
Web 2.0 List
eConsultant's Web 2.0 Directory
Seth Godin's Web 2.0 Traffic Watch List
TechCrunch

All sorts of cool Web 2.0 sites to play with in there. Have fun!

Get Paid to Spread the News

If you haven't paid much attention to 'social news' sites like Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, etc. it might be time for you to make sure they're on your radar. In a nutshell, they're news aggregartor sites (like Google News), but instead of auto-scraping news stories from other news sites, they let their users do it for them. Users can then vote on which stories they think are the most important, using the 'wisdom of crowds' theory to push the best ones to the top.

The thing is, it only works if there are people submitting enough good stories that their fellow users are likely to be interested in. For the most popular of these social news sites, Digg, it turns out that a lot of the stories that make it to the top are submitted by a relatively small number of people. The numbers vary, but even Kevin Rose, one of the founders of Digg, admits that with nearly a half million registered Digg users, nearly one-third of the stories that are ranked high enough to make it to the homepage are selected by just 100 users.

But the 'Top Diggers' submit those stories for free. So what's this got to do with making money? Well, the head of Netscape.com, Jason Calacanis, recently offered to pay people to submit news stories to the Netscape.com site. In the first round of hiring, he nabbed 3 of the top 12 submitters are Digg, and the #1 submitters at both Reddit and Newsvine. They've just done a second round of another 10 'Navigators', and they're looking for more.

I think this sort of thing could really take off. Not just at social news sites, but at other sites where the bulk of content is created by the users themselves. Sites like YouTube, del.icio.us, and many, many more. Yes, it's cool that these sites are driven by the users, and maybe in some instances the 'power of community' and the 'wisdom of crowds' will be enough to make them work, with nobody getting paid -- except for the owners. According to Businessweek, Digg could ultimately be worth up to $200 million. If that sounds crazy, they say Yahoo! has already offered $40 million, but Rose and the gang didn't take it. But they did pick up del.icio.us for a cool $31 million, and News Corporation snapped up MySpace for $580 million last year.

As Calacanis points out, those sites are worth $0 without the community of users who contribute to them. In many instances, it makes sense to "share the wealth, dude."

So if you're interested in making money online, here's another possible opportunity. According to this article in the Washington Post, it's working for the few 'Navigators' at Netscape.com. And if Calacanis' little experiment takes off, there are lots of other sites that might give it a try as well. So why not check out a couple of these sorts of sites and give them a try? If it turns out to be something you enjoy, you might end up getting paid to do it!

Consumer Generated Advertising -- It's Good, But Is It New?

Dan Rua has written a great blog post about PayPerPost and what he describes as the "Consumer Generated Advertising Revolution". I'm glad to hear that he's "searched for paid posts across the blogosphere and find a more intelligent, mature, open adoption than the soulless-shilling originally feared." I have no doubt there's PayPerPost-related soulless-shilling to be found, but I agree that there's no sign of the blogging apocalypse predicted by many of the A-list bloggers.

Honestly, I'm not sure what all the furore about "consumer generated advertising" is all about. I mean, I realise that producing 30-second commercials with a handheld digicam and some editing software is a bit of a new thing, but talking about products you like is pretty old-school, isn't it? These days I make money blogging about things I'm interested in. Six years ago I was being paid eRoyalties for writing product reviews at ePinions. Over ten years ago I was learning HTML and writing reviews of books I liked -- and including my Amazon associate link. Twenty years ago I was making mixtapes and swapping them with my buddies. Aren't all of those things comsumer generated advertising of one kind or another?

Disclosure: Yep, another post 'sponsored' through PayPerPost. So now I've been paid directly to blog about PayPerPost, and this time I'm getting paid to blog about somebody else blogging about PayPerPost. Does this mean I'm part of the PayPerPost hype machine? Do I get a T-shirt or something?

BlockSite -- For Those Who Can't Help Themselves

I've noticed what seems to be a growing trend in the forums of people who decide, for one reason or another, that they don't want to participate in discussions at a particular forum any longer. A quick post along the lines of

All you !@#$*! can't &#@#*&! my $!#%&*$! I'm done with this forum you bunch of #$@!*&$$! I hope you all $!@#**&@!#@&^! and ^*%#!@!$!

and they're gone.

Until the come back. And start posting again. Until they get pissed off again, and then the whole thing happens again.

Often in between the dramatic exits, they explain how reading and posting in the forums is causing problems for them. Stressing them out. Making them unproductive. Impacting on their relationships with others, online and offline. Affecting their businesses, online and offline. And yet they keep going back. Over and over again. They just can't control themselves.

Luckily there's a Firefox extension that can help. It's called BlockSite and not only will it stop you from visiting sites you feel you shouldn't, but it even removes links to those sites found on other sites.

Of course since you can add and remove URLs to the list of sites that are blocked, some self-discipline is still required. I guess for those with more serious problems there are parental control applications like NetNanny, CyberSitter, etc. I guess they could always block all the domains they want to avoid, then either have somebody (spouse, friend, neighbor, etc.) change the password, or use a randomly-generated password that they'll never remember if they don't write it down. Alternatively, I suppose they could wipe their hard drive, give their computer to a worthy charity, and get some serious counselling.

Another GOOD Incentivized Search Engine

OK, Huckabuck isn't really a search engine, it's a metasearch engine. That means when you type in your search terms, it actually shows you results from other search engines. In this case, those other search engines include Google, Yahoo Search, and MSN Search, as well as Technorai, Digg, and del.icio.us. The cool bit is -- they let you decide which search engines are most important to you.

The controls look like a stereo equalizer. If you think Google will give the best results, you move the Google slider control up. If you don't think results from Digg are going to be that helpful, you move the Digg slider control down. I've tried it out with all sorts of combinations and search terms, and in some cases, the way you configure the slider controls can make a HUGE difference in the results.

It's wicked!

So what's the story with the 'incentivized' bit mentioned in the title of this post? Well, it's not the kind of incentive where you get paid or win a prize or get a discount on a purchses. It's the kind of incentive where you get to feel good for helping out some people who really need it.

Huckabuck is making money off some of the searches it's users are doing, and they're donating 10% of their profits to charities who are helping the people of New Orleans rebuild their city after the devastation of Hurrican Katrina.

And I think that's pretty wicked, too.

If you want to find out more about Huckabuck and what they're all about, Emily Chang did an eHub Interview with Blake Killian, one of the founding members of Huckabuck. And Brian Oberkirch interviewed Blake and Chris Shultz, the other founder, which you can listen to in a podcast.

Talkety -- Cheap Phone Calls

I just read about a new VoIP service called Talkety. You type in your phone number. You type in the number you want to call. You hit the 'Connect' button. Your phone rings. You answer it. Talkety automatically calls the other number and it's just like any other phone call. Except a lot cheaper.

I can call all my friends and family in the US for 3 cents per minute. My long distance carrier charges 21 cents per minute. I never use my long distance carrier to make international phone calls. My ISP offers a 'virtual phone card' that lets me make the cheapest calls I've found available anywhere. 2 cents per minute to the US. That's even better than Talkety, but it's nice to have a back-up.

I don't know how this works out for regular long-distance calls. With so many different deals from so many long distance companies, free minutes with your mobile phone network, etc. it might not be worth it. But if you make international calls (or might start if you could do it cheaply), it might be worth looking into.

Writely Goes Public

Writely is now once again available to the general public. It's been closed since Google bought it, although it was still available to people who'd already signed up. Now it's back for everybody. Except for any Googlephobes who are worried that all their base are belong to The Goog.

If you're interested in trying out a browser-based word processor, give Writely a try. I've been using it for nearly a year now, and I love it.

PayPerPost.com Update

Just a quick note here that my last post for PayPerPost, the one about CouponChief.com, has been rejected, meaning I won't get paid for it.

As they explained in the rejection email, I didn't meet the requirements, which included:

Link to your favorite online merchant's page on our site. Just use anchor text like [merchant name] [coupons/deals/coupon codes, etc] (ie. dell coupons, amazon coupons codes, travelocity deals, etc.) The more variation we get the better. It would be great if your post was talking about those online coupons you like to use. We'll leave it up to you to decide the merchant you think has good deals.

As I was writing the post, I realised I didn't have any of those kinds of links in it. I thought about trying to add some, but it really didn't fit in with my style. So I decided to let the post stand on its own. The CouponChief people apparently decided it wasn't what they wanted. Fair enough. I have no doubt that if I changed the post so that it met their requirements and re-submitted it, they'd be happy to pay. But that's not really the way I feel comfortable working with PayPerPost, so it's cool.

I'm picky when it comes to PayPerPost 'opportunities.' Different advertisers have different requirements. Some will only pay if you say 'positive' things about their product. Some go as far as pretty much telling you what they want you to say, and if you deviate from that, they don't pay. Some want specific you to use specific words and phrases, images, link text, etc. I generally stay away from those.

I don't post about things I'm not interested in, or don't fit in with the general theme of this blog. And when I do choose to post, while I'll try to provide the advertiser with what they're after, I'm only going to do it if it 'feels right.' As long as I can do that, I don't feel bad when I get paid for a post, and I don't get bent out of shape if I don't get paid because my post wasn't what the advertiser wanted.

So yeah, I didn't get paid the $3. But I found and wrote about a cool site. And I still think PayPerPost.com is cool, too.

Top 10 Dumbest Online Business Ideas

Ever had one of those ideas for a business or website that seemed absolutely brilliant when it suddenly came to you in a burst of inspiration at 4 am, but when you woke up the next day at noon you realised just how stupid it was?

Well, maybe it was dumb...but that doesn't mean you couldn't make a fortune from it if you gave it a go.

WeirdTechNewsHub has a list of the Top 10 Dumbest Online Business Ideas That Made It Big Time.

Hat-tip to Marshall Brain at WebKEW for pointing to this excellent Top 10 List.

Be a Believer at SellaBand

I read about this at MetaFilter and thought I'd share. There's a new site called SellaBand where you can 'invest' in bands and musicians to help them 'make it big'. You find an artist you 'Believe' in, and you pledge $10 in return for 1 "Part". When they've got 5,000 "Believers" (and $50,000 in pledges), they get the money and they use it to record a CD. You get a copy of the CD, and with any luck they become superstars.

Obviously it's going to take a while to get going, and while I was eager to buy a little piece of musical history, after listening to the first half of about 20 songs, I decided that there was nobody there that I could "Believe" in. Yet.

I'm not entirely sure why, but I love things like this. I know most of them don't work out -- most of them never get enough people involved to create that critical mass necessary to get things happening.

Blogger Update in Beta

The Blogger update is now in beta. I had a bit of a play with it tonight, and while there are some definite improvements, I don't see anything so Earth-shattering that I'd be tempted to build a new blog with Blogger instead of other options, particularly WordPress.

The new template customization is nice. I'd prefer to change the code directly, but maybe people will want to use this feature instead. It seems kind of fiddly to me. There are supposed to be a bunch of new templates, but I didn't find them.

You can create comment feeds, and comment feeds for each post. And you can easily add your Adsense for Feeds code. Handy.

One of the best changes is that when you update your blog in any way (post, change settings, etc.), the changes go live immediately. You don't have to republish anything. Which is good news since every time I try to republish my entire blog, it times out.

Finally, you can categorize your posts with labels.

In each case, I'd say it's about time. But with so many blogging options available these days, I don't see Blogger doing anything to pull ahead of the pack.

$15 MP3 Player at USBGeek.com

Looking for an MP3 player for under $20? Me neither. But if you were, you could buy one from USBGeek.com. The USB SD/MMC MP3 Player + Card Reader plays MP3 files (no other music file formats), or you can use it as a USB drive to store other kinds of files on it. The thing is, you have to add your own MMC or SD card. If you don't happen to have one laying around (or in an old PDA, digital camera, etc.), you can pick up a 256Mg SD card for less than $15, shipping included.

So I guess technically it's not an MP3 player for under $20 if you have to buy an SD card. But then again, if you buy a PQI 2Gb SD card for $37.95 (with free shipping!), you've got yourself an MP3 player that can hold around 500 songs for just a bit over $50. And I reckon that's pretty damned sweet.

My $100 Million Dollar Secret

Dave Weinberger (Joho the Blog, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, The Cluetrain Manifesto, etc.) has just published a new novel for 'young adults' (previously known as kids) called My $100 Million Dollar Secret. It's about a kid young adult named Jake who wins the lottery, but has to keep it a secret! Sounds cool, but this isn't a book review. I just wanted to share a little bit about the way he's gone about publishing the book, because I think it's pretty sweet.

First of all, he self-published the book through Lulu.com (which I blogged briefly about here). So people can either buy a real dead-tree version of the book there for $13.90 + s/h, or they can buy and download a PDF version for $4.

That's a pretty nice bargain since when it hits bookstores (including Amazon and BN.com) the retail price will be nearly $20. But here's where it gets really interesting. He's also letting people read it for free on the website. And he's offering his own free PDF version that you can download from there as well.

Does this whole 'sell it and give away thing' really work? Seems to have worked for Weinberger pretty well in the past. Oh, and that Seth Godin guy too. And Wil Wheaton had a lot of success with his self-published book Dancing Barefoot. Call me crazy, but I think these might be an excellent alternatives to traditional publishing game.

Of course it's not just self-publishing the books and offering electronic versions for free. There's the blogging and the mailing lists and the Google Groups and all the rest of the buzz-building efforts that get people interested. Not everybody who does that is going to end up with a best-seller. But they might have a lot more success than if they went the traditional publishing route. And they might have a lot more fun doing it.

Freespire 1.0 -- Free Desktop Operating System

Freespire 1.0 has launched early, and I'm downloading it via BitTorrent to give it a whirl. What's Freespire? It's a free Linux-based Operating System. I've played around with a few different flavours of Linux, but never really got into it. I think having a serious alternative to Windows for regular computer users is a great idea, and maybe Freespire is it. That's what they're hoping for anyway.

My plans for Freespire do NOT involve replacing Windows on this, our main computer. But I'm happy to dust off one of the computers out in my garage and give it a run. I've found that other versions of Linux have worked much better than Windows on older PCs, so I'll be happy to see if the same is true for Freespire.

I'll let you know how it works out.

Maximize Your Rewards Savings at DealMine.com

Thanks to Sarah at The Frugal Underground for pointing out a great new site for maximizing savings through reward programs. It's called DealMine.com and it's a comparison shopping site that also takes into account rewards from loyalty and rewards programs, credit cards, and even unions and other associations like AARP, etc.

Definitely another site to bookmark and add to my bargain-hunting arsenal.

New GPT-Related Information Resource

I've been checking out a new 'Get Paid' related site for a while, and now that it looks like it's taking off, I thought I'd share. It's called GPTInfo, and its owner claims it's the largest database of 'Get Paid' sites on the Internet. From what I can tell, that claim is 100% accurate.

On the surface, the site appears to more of a 'popularity contest' for people to vote for their favourite 'Get Paid' programs and owners. But as more features are added, the database becomes a much more useful source of information. For example, while owners and programs are rated independently, they are linked together, so it's easy to find out all programs with the same owner. There is also information provided about the Memeber ID's they use at various GPT-related forums, which can be quite helpful.

Another feature that's being developed is the inclusion of 'program issues.' These are things like violating their privacy policy, not paying members on time, selling ads at unsustainable prices, etc. For now, members can rank which issues they consider the most important, and if a program has any of the issues, it's included in that program's information profile. If I understand it correctly, these issues will eventually be 'searchable', so it'll be possible to quickly generate a list of all programs that are behind on payments, or violating Paypal's AUP, etc. I think that could be an extremely useful tool for helping members decide which programs to join, and which programs (and owners) to avoid.

There's also a forum for more in-depth discussion of "Get Paid" related issues, and the owner seems determined to ensure it doesn't become another forum full of nothing but bickering, name-calling and nasty personal attacks. There have been a few hiccups, but so far it seems to be working.

Saving With Online Coupon Codes

Anybody who reads this blog even semi-regularly is most likely aware of the fact that I like a good bargain. Some uncouth individuals might be crass enough to throw around words like tightwad or cheapskate, but I prefer to think of myself as sensibly thrifty. But one thing I tend not to skimp on is gifts. Not that I'm one of those great gift-givers. Far from it. It's not that I'm not thoughtful, it's just that I'm not really a great shopper. Plus I tend to put it off until the last minute, so a certain amount of thoughtfulness has to be sacrificed for speed. But the thing is, when I do buy a gift, I try not to let my strong aversion to paying full retail prices interfere with finding the right gift.

If I can get a great gift and save a few bucks, well then I guess that's about as good as it gets. Which is probably why, even though I don't particularly like shopping out in the 'real world', I'm pretty keen on shopping online. So many online stores to choose from, and bargains to be found, if you know where to look.

And some of the places I often look are the various reward programs, the comparison shopping search engines, and also some of the better online coupon sites. With the reward programs, I may or may not get a straight bargain, but I come out ahead because of the rewards. With the comparison search engines, I can look for the lowest price across a large range of online stores. And with the coupon sites, I can quickly and easily find 'coupon codes' and save a bundle while proceeding through the electronic checkout.

Today I was looking for a gift for a friend of mine. He's not the easiest guy to buy a gift for, so I was actually smart enough to get started well ahead of time. I was hoping that if I searched online a couple of times a week, I'd find something suitable some time this month. I did. I'm done. I found a great gift, and even better, I scored a bargain by using a coupon code.

I bought him a book at Gaiam.com, which is an absolutely awesome online shop for hippie/greenie/alternative lifestyle/concious-living types. So not only do I get him a great book all about sustainable living and solar energy and all sorts of other things he's interested in, but I even paid an extra $2 to um, 'erase the environmental impact of shipping my order.' How freaking sustainable is that? Oh, and not that it really matters or anything, but by including a special coupon code I got a 50% discount. Yep, 50% off! Woot! I mean sure, I would've happily paid the full retail price, plus the extra $2 to plant a tree to 'erase the environmental impact' and what-not, but 50% off? HELL YEAH!

And where did I get the coupon code? At CouponChief.com. If you've never visited an online coupon site, you really should. They're awesome. With most of them, you can simply type in a search, although some of their search engines work better than others. Or you can browse, either by product category, or by store. Just browsing through the different categories can help you find great online stores you've never heard of, and while a lot of the coupon sites have many of the same merchants and the same codes, there's enough 'exclusives' that sometimes it's worth it to check more than one.

In the case of this 50% off deal for the book at Gaiam.com, I didn't find that coupon code at any of the other coupon sites I checked. So in this instance, CouponChief really came through for me. Some of the other coupon sites I use are WowCoupons, DealCatcher, FlamingoWorld, and ActiveShopper.

Using online coupon codes is a great way to save a few bucks (and sometimes a lot more) when you're shopping online. Like the comparison shopping sites, I strongly recommend you check a few of them out and bookmark the ones you like. And use them any time you're shopping online. Because even when shopping for the perfect gift, there's nothing wrong with being thoughtful and being a cheapskate sensibly thrifty.



Disclosure: In addition to saving a nice chunk of money by using the coupon code, I'm also making money through PayPerPost.com by posting about it. How sweet is that?

PayPerPost.com Pays Again

Just a quick update on the situation with PayPerPost that I blogged about here. As I said in the original post, I totally understood why I hadn't been paid the $5, because when they checked to make sure the post was there, it wasn't. Still, I didn't want anybody thinking I was trying to pull some kind of scam, so I emailed PayPerPost and let them know what happened. In that email, I stressed the fact that I understood why I wasn't paid for that post, and that I was totally cool with the payment rejection.

As it turns out, they were totally cool about it, too. They said they appreciated the fact that I was honest with them, and that I'd made the effort to fix the problem, and to let them know what was going on. And they also said that if I'd fixed the link, I could re-submit it for payment, and they'd be happy to pay me for the post. And they did.

And I think that's pretty damned cool.

Play Anarchy Online for Free Until January 2007

I don't really do the MMORPG thing (tried Everquest Escape to Norrath (also free) briefly, and I have recently downloaded Second Life but I've only spent about 2 1/2 minutes 'in world'), but for those who are interested in giving one a try, Anarchy Online is letting people try it out for free.

Unlike many other online role-playing games, Anarchy Online is sci-fi themed, as opposed to the more typical medieval fantasy sorts of themes. Like many other online games, it involves creating a character and spending a lot of time running around killing things in order to get better weapons, armor and other gear so you can spend a lot of time killing bigger, badder, uglier things. Maybe that's a bit like describing The Lord of the Rings as a story about a bunch of guys running around killing things so they can discard an unwanted trinket, but if that kind of thinking stops me from downloading the game and spending 100 hours a week as an Atrox Enforcer running all over the planet Rubi-Ka killing things, then there's no harm done, right?

According to their FAQ, the recommended hardware requirements are:

• Pentium II 450
• 256 Mb RAM
• 3D graphics card with 32MB RAM
• DirectX 8X
• CD-ROM drive
• 1GB free hard drive space
• Internet connection, 56K Modem

If you decide to give it a try, good luck in your um, struggle for freedom from the Omni-Tek Security Forces, and all that sort of stuff.

First Nigerian 419 Scammers, Now Cameroonian Typosquatters

Type in the URL for any .com domain. Any one, it doesn't matter. Then go back and remove the 'o' from the 'com' and hit the enter key. It would appear that no matter what website you're looking for, there's a parked domain with the same name, but with a .cm (the top-level domain for the African nation of Cameroon) instead of a .com. That's because somebody, most likely company that runs domain registration for the .cm TLD, has created a few wild-card redirects to drive any typo traffic to a PPC 'search' page. And I use the term 'search' very loosely, since there's no actual text box for you to type in what you want to search for. Just a bunch of links for 'popular searches.'

You can read more about it here and here, but here's my take on the whole thing. Clearly, I'm all for people finding ways to make money online, but damn can't people just try to make an honest dollar or three instead of resorting to all this crap?

OK, I'm done now. Gonna go make myself a nice cup of tea or something.

Speed up Start-up Time Too

Taking forever to shutdown is bad enough, but loooooong start-up times are a pain in the ass, too. One possible reason for a long start-up, as well as sluggish performance, is that there's too much crap loading itself at start-up and running in the background.

You can find out what's loading itself at start-up by clicking on Start, then Run..., typing in msconfig, and clicking OK. You'll see a list of all the things set to load up when you start the computer. Many of them are essential for running your computer, some are optional, and some are crap. But which is which? That's where Sysinfo.org comes in. It's got a huge, searchable list, of all the programs you're likely to see in that start-up window, what they do, and whether you should keep them loading every time you start your computer.

It can get a bit confusing, since a lot of trojans and other nasties try to trick you by installing malicious applications with the same names of the important files, but they are put in a different directory (not in system32 in WinXP where they belong). Just type in the name of an app, see what Sysinfo advices, and then leave it alone, or get rid of it, whichever you prefer. Just be careful! Chances are you won't screw up your computer, but it's always possible if you're not careful or if you're totally clueless.

Good luck.

Windows Profile Hive Cleanup Service

I don't shutdown my computer often, but when I do, it can take a LONG time to shut down. And from time to time, I need to do a restart, and it's the same. Tell it to restart, go get a coffee, mow the lawn, watch The Return of the King (extended version), and then go see if Windows has managed to shut down and reboot.

So I was happy to hear about the Microsoft Profile Hive Cleanup Service. Download it, install it, and let it run in the background. Supposedly it keeps an eye on any applications you run, and makes sure they clean up properly when you close them. This means when it's time to shutdown, Windows doesn't waste a lot of time trying to clean up the mess left behind by your unruly applications.

Download it here or here and give it a shot.

Didn't Get Paid! Doh! Got Paid! Woohoo!

I checked my PayPerPost account a couple of days because I thought it was nearly time to get paid for my posts last month. I was VERY unhappy to see a message saying that I had NOT been paid for one of my posts because when they checked the link (you have to keep the post up for at least 30 days), the post was gone. GONE??? Where the hell did it go? I clicked the link, and all I saw was a bit of code. No webpage. No blog post. No money.

Turns out something was screwed up with Blogger, and most of the links to individual posts were broken. I tried to republish the entire blog, but it kept timing out. Apparently this is a known problem with Blogger. They're working on it. But I was pretty sure they were working on it enough to have it fixed before the 30-day period expired, and they checked the link for my other paid post, and then declined that payment too. So in the end, I went through the files one by one and fixed the code by hand.

The story has a happy ending. When they checked the link for my second paid post, it worked. And I got paid. Just like they said they would. So I missed out on $5, but I got the $10 payment. I also emailed them and told them what had happened. I'm not worried about the $5. They were right not to pay me. But I just wanted to let them know that I wasn't trying to scam anybody.

Anyway, the short version is, I'm now officially a PayPerPost whoreblogger. I've been paid to post. I don't feel dirty. I don't think it's destroyed my credibility. And it hasn't destroyed the blogosphere-as-we-know-it. Yet.

I'm going to check and see if there are any other blogging opportunities available and maybe make a few more bucks.

Payments for July 2006

DonkeyMails $1.41
eJury $5.00
PecoMail $0.25
BgPayMail $3.60
eBay $94.99

Total $105.25
Yearly total $724.72

PTR-related earnings were minimal this month. I'm tired of reading ads for things I'm never going to be interested in. I delete far more than I read, and they don't pay you to put them in the trash. Fair enough.

I forgot the payment from BGPayMail, so I've added it in and adjusted the figures. After the owner lost his Paypal account, I switched my payment method to E-Gold, but when I went to check my E-Gold balance the site wasn't functioning properly. Now it is, and now the info has been updated.

On the other hand, the $5.00 from eJury was great. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of participating, and I was nicely rewarded for doing so. What's not to like?

eBay was OK, although a lot of sellers are raising hell about the new fees. I can understand why eBay is doing it, but in the end, it might push us out of our eBay store and onto our own website. We'll still run auctions at eBay to try to attract buyers to our site, but we won't keep the eBay store.

We ended up clearing $94.99 on sales of $442.10. So sales were up, but profit was down. One reason for that is because we ran more auctions, where we're willing to sell at any price above cost as a way of attracting customers. So far, the strategy is working. We're getting a lot of repeat customers.

Another reason for the lower profit is because we had one item that was apparently lost in the post. Talk about a hassle! That's the first time that's happened to us, but I'm hoping we get some good eBay juju for putting the customer first.

It'll be interesting to see how our sales go this month. A lot of the sellers we talk to say their sales are down. Rising interest rates, higher petrol prices, and no doubt the price of bananas has a lot to do with it.

Rod Baker Royally Screws ShareAdSpace Members

The drama associated with the sudden demise of ShareAdSpace continues to grow. First he made his initial announcement that the database was gone, all member info was lost, that he was really sorry but there was nothing he could do about it, but he was prepared to 'take his lumps' in the forums. Then it seems by 'taking his lumps' he really meant getting lots of warm fuzzies from everybody saying how it was all going to be OK. The minute people started criticizing him in any way, he started all his usual foot-stomping, everybody's-out-to-get-me, delete-me-from-the-forum, tantrum-type behaviours. I'm sure anybody with kids over the age of two knows what I'm talking about.

So after it was clear that a lot of folks were pretty pissed off about him not paying them because he didn't handle the backups properly, he miraculously discovered a partial backup from a nearly a month ago. So he couldn't pay people all the money they'd earned, but at least he could pay them some. At this point, I think everybody was supposed to bow before him and praise his generosity and thank him for any pittance he might be gracious enough to throw at them. Of course, quite a few did, and those who didn't are copping a world of hurt if they aren't smart enough to keep quiet about it.

Time for a disclaimer here. I am one of the members who's getting royally screwed. I had $20 in earnings in the SAS 'bank.' That data wasn't in the partial backup he's using, so instead of getting my $20, he's offering me the 5 cents I had in my regular SAS account. Yes, that's right. Rod 'My Word is My Bond' Baker is offering to pay me 1/4 cent on the dollar. Fuck. That.

And here's the kicker. Members who do want their payments, even if it's only 5 cents or whatever, have to go to the new ShareAdSpace site, login and request payment. Sure, you might think he could just send them the money, but no, he's going to make them request it. And in order to do that, they've got to survive the Attack of the Killer Pop-Up Ads From HELL! Yep, go check it out at http://www.shareadspace.com -- he's got a couple ads on each page, Firefox tells me its blocking a couple of popups, and there are a couple more that are getting through both my popup blockers, and are working their asses off trying to crash my browser and possibly my computer as well.

Apart from the hassles it causes for members (but good for Rod if he can use his ads to crash their browsers so that they can't request payment) you've really got to wonder what the purpose of those ads are. Does he think members who visit his site to request the money he owes them are really interested in buying a Dell or joining a dating site? Is he hoping that instead of requesting payment, they'll suddenly click on an ad and forget all about their money? Does he really think he's legitimately earning the money Dell, HP and all the other companies are paying to have their ads displayed all over the net? Or is he just being a greedy bastard?

I'll be posting more about what I think about Rod and ShareAdSpace later, but I think I'd better stop for now.