My Room Is Complete

It took me about 5 straight hours of physical work total – and I've just recently slept the first mandatory 4 to make it official, but I finally have a room. This isolation is exactly what I've been needing.

It might not seem like much of a thing to most but I have not been able to close a door on the whole world in months. I haven't had a little space to regularly write for months. Life as been a bit of a struggle and I have missed this like I cannot describe in mere

...read the rest here.

My Next Great Long-Term Bubblews Experiment; Buying a Car

Here's an idea I know of already, but needed to be reminded of, by my Aunt &mysgeek . My Bubbles and/or other blog posts should benefit of it, my readers will benefit of it , ergo my bank balance should benefit of it too, to such an extent, Bubblews buys me a car.

It's do-able. We're only talking a grand or so, here. I'm a cheap date.

So beneficial is it, I'm aiming to buy said car with my Bubblews earnings, within just 3 months (13 weeks)! I think I'm even going to just have &Arvind “Buy Me This, in regards to a car. I'll want the evidence and who can't forget being mentioned someday, right?

Then, it would be “official.” Bubblews will have bought me a car. OOOooOOOOO I'm picturing a rich green car. Something gas-miserly. I will also have proof for my experiment too.

How's this experiment going to work, you say? What will I do to make my future posts so much more valuable, you ask? I'll tell you.

I posit, a brain will increase their earnings-per-post averages if they're...read the rest here.

Discover the three-word secret to more money!

Millions of people every day turn to the Interwebz thingies looking for an additional source of income. The action usually follows along this line: Jane needs an extra $300 a month to “make ends meet,” to make sure she runs out of month before she runs out of money. So, in addition to her regular job, she does an online search for income opportunities.

She finds literally hundreds and hundreds of offers with a simple search of terms like “make extra money” or “work from home.” They promise her the moon and the stars, all with just an investment of $49. After looking at a few, and knowing she truly needs a financial break, she commits herself to doing without a few simpler pleasures one month in order to invest her funds and takes the plunge.

Often, the purchase she made is into some sort of network marketing or multi-level-marketing type of opportunity, where the “plan” seems to be to sell some over-priced product of average quality, at a ridiculously low profit margin and to find hundreds of others to do the same. Maybe she even goes so far as to even commit to some impossible-to-cancel monthly auto-ship program in order to keep herself at an optimal percentage bracket.

At this point, the reality sets in for Jane. She hits up her friends and family to get some orders (and out of love for her, a few do place an order). Perhaps she even has the guts to talk to a few strangers. If she's rare, she might even go so far as to have some business cards printed up and hands them out to a few dozen strangers, in an effort to drum up some business.

What often happens for so many of these Janes is, at the very best, perhaps they make a $100 check for their investment of $350 altogether (counting all expenses like their own purchases of products, business cards, gas going to and fro, “business lunches,” etc.,). It seems like all she needs to do is keep trying. Most don't even end up doing this good.

But, after a few months, she finally realizes the plan she was offered on the company's website isn't what she's experiencing. She starts noticing the very same product she's trying to market for $50 is available at the local Wal-Mart for $20. Sometimes it's at the local dollar store.If she's fortunate to have good, caring friends, they point it out to her, hoping she'll drop the company like a hot potato and quit wasting her time. The smarter Janes of the world, do. Jane is crushed. Jane realizes her product is over-priced and she can't compete.

Jane also realizes the profit margin on her product is ridiculously low. Wal-Mart usually runs a minimum of 30 percent profit margin. So, if they're making 30 percent minimum on a $20 item, why is she only earning 5 to 25 percent of a $50 item? Then it hits her: The company she's working with is full of crap. They designed their marketing plan, not as a way for her to profit, but for them. While they assured her in conference call after conference call of their “commitment to her success,” all they're really interested in is their success.

She also then comes to learn how many thousands of others just like her have been promised those same moon and stars as she was. It's then that Jane sees that the real plan for the company is to get as many suckers to order their product - at a huge mark-up - as possible. Jane is crushed emotionally. And she's not the first.

All that passion, all that energy, all that work, all that money invested and here she is now, worse off than before. It seems the “Great American Dream” is dead. But it's not. Jane just fell victim to a bullshit line. She's no different than the rest of us who've been burned. She's not a “failure” at all. She just learned a valuable lesson. If Jane's a fighter, she'll come to realize a wonderful secret to making the kind of money she needs and having the kind of life she wants.

It's three little words and it's my hope that some Jane out there has kept reading this far. Here's the secret, free of charge to you, my dear readers, after having spent so much of myself to learn it for my own life: Find your passion!

All that work, energy, blood, sweat and tears selling someone else's dream enriches them. If you're going to put so much hard work, late hours and money into anyone's dream, let it be your own. This way, you're in control of prices, special deals, the rules and how you go about building the business, whatever type of business it is.

I once worked with a company (I won't say their name but their initials are A-M-W-A-Y) who had a crappy little rule that said you weren't allowed to market your product off of store shelves. So, there went any chance to build up volume bonuses intelligently. You also weren't allowed to order products in large quantity containers, such as 55-gallon drums, so there went another opportunity for me to market one particular product of theirs to friends who worked in the various oilfield industries.

Other companies I've tried working with had similar rules in place which kept their profit margins ridiculously high, while stifling every creative approach I tried for, myself. It was almost as if they didn't want me to find any real success! I've since learned this wasn't just my perception. If they limit any one individual's success, they keep more chumps on the line.

Working for yourself, on your own, personal, passionate plan also keeps anyone else from screwing you over on commissions. The closer you are to the hard, nitty-gritty details of your business operations, the more control you enjoy overall, and the less chance there is another person can find some bogus reason to not pay you what you've earned.

It doesn't matter what your passion is. Figure out how to turn what you have an interest in and go for making it profitable. As you grow your business, you'll learn all the finer details. Just start living your own life now - and not that of someone else. Otherwise, you may very well just be better off sticking with a regular 9-to-5. The world needs factory workers too. So there's no shame in it.

If you want to succeed on a long-term, real-world basis, find your own passion! Sell YOUR DREAM, not someone else's. Find what YOU love doing and do it. It's really that simple. It might actually be more work, harder stress (in some situations) and even longer hours. But, being your own baby, it's more of an act of love than a struggle. Why put all of that effort into continuously enriching someone “over you?” It's not foolish to benefit those who deal with you (In fact, I highly recommend you always strive for the mutual-win scenario in all arrangements) But to spend your days achieving someone else's dream, is. Find your passion. Sell your own dream.

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Goodbye AdBrite

I've just made a decision about my blog. I've just removed a long-time sponsor from it and for good cause. Maybe you might do better with AdBrite - but me – I'm a little tired of being kicked in the teeth.

I've had a small relationship with AdBrite for years now. And there have been a few times I've made a few dollars, so not all of the memories are bad. But after the month of November 2011, wherein I've had more blog visitors than ever before, I see a whopping total of 19 cents in earnings.



In fact, over the past two years, I've seen such little earnings with them, it's not even worth sweating ever collecting a cent from them. 19 cents for my best blog month. Admittedly, my blog sucks for visitors compared to most others. And that brings me to my next point.

These last couple of years, the advertisers using AdBrite have gone from good to bad to spam-a-licious. When I've addressed this with admin they tell me, when I increase my visitor totals and the quality of those visitors (whatever the hell that means anyway), I'll see better advertisers.

What? In order to get anything much more than “Congratulations! You're today's lucky visitor!” I have to get the kinds of page views that are usually turned off by “Congratulations! You're today's lucky visitor?” Talk about Catch-22. Besides, my visitor totals have been increasing, in spite of this, "Congratulations! you're today's lucky visitor," is all I see. (By the way, who could ever get tired of seeing that ingenious, well thought-out marketing approach? It just gets better every time I see it. Not lame at all, right?)

Awhile back, I was seeing those scummy, lowlife ads where some advertiser using AdBrite is basically trying to trick folks into downloading something, allegedly because their video player wasn't updated. Although I repeatedly rejected those ads, they kept showing up.

Contacting admin, I was told I needed to set my adzone to “family friendly,” and that it would significantly lower my income. So, if I am to ever have a shot at making money with AdBrite, I have to deal with these types. Well, I'm not settling for that. I sell my soul enough as it is.

Dealing with AdBrite has been a lot like being told that, in order to make a living, I have to deal with scumbags. I'm tired of the negative impact their ads have had on my blog. The folks at WoT have told me what shows up on my page from these advertisers AdBrite deals with. They're just not finicky enough to deserve to be on my blog.

Then there are questions too, regarding the way they work anyway. Even though lately, my visitor counts have gone up, the earnings just are not going up accordingly. I contacted admin about that as well and was told – in short and what appears to me as – they just don't have the advertisers. This, in spite of everything I was told previously.

No more. I will not let others dictate what I carry on my blog, for the sake of maybe earning a few dollars a month – unless some other problem arises. I will not be told to jump through hoops to just be denied my prize anyway. Perhaps others might give AdBrite a try and they may just love them but not me. Not anymore. I'm done with kissing the ass of those who would treat me badly. I have been patient enough, to such a point, I have wasted my time. No more.

Goodbye Adbrite. You're off my blog. I'll have better luck relying on the occasional donor. I'll have better luck finding my own advertisers (Hint-hint to anyone willing to sponsor my blog). Regardless, I'm done playing stupid games..

Come visit me on DonPennington.info.