Thursday 8 November 2007

Squidoo Payday! My September Earnings are here!

Slowly building up my earnings from squidoo!
This month I had 2 lenses in the top tier and these paid out at $4.67 each, these had spent some time in September in the top 500. The next tier paid 79cents and I think this was paid out to all mine that had spent most of the month in the top 10,000, I had quite a few in this so they added up! the third tier was where a lot of my partially finished lenses were and they earned 6cents each, The 4th tier is new to squidoo this month and I had very few in the 4th tier which was probably for all those that had never ranked very high, though have no idea where the cut off was on these and they each earned a cent.

I earned an extra couple of dollars here and there using the provided affiliate links through squidoo, but I'm switching over to mainly providing my own links so I don't have to give squidoo a cut of my referrals and this is bringing more money in than I'm actually earning from Squidoo!

It's like a win-win situation, squidoo provide an easy to use page template with lots of modules to choose from, a good google crawl rate and a cut of the adsense revenue! Add this to the affiliate sales this gains and if you get the right topic or subject, one good lens will pay you regularly!

Currently 2 of my lenses are Google PR4,
Perry Mason page
UK Cash Back Shopping

a number are PR3
Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds
Monty Python's Castle Anthrax


and I'm working on getting a PR5 by the next google ranking, squidoo is certainly helping me get traffic and turning it into money!

If you haven't signed up, here's my referral link -HERE - I earn $5 when you earn your first $15 and you also will get a $5 bonus too!

Wednesday 31 October 2007

BBC Blunder hands out 800+ subscribers personal email details

I have been a subscriber to the World Services - World Have Your Say (WHYS) programme newsletter for a number of months now. On weekdays they send out an email asking for responses on a number of topics they will be discussing in the days show. I like to keep up with world events and found this was a good way of doing so, occasionally contributing to their blog when the mood and topic suited.

There have been a few minor blunders with the daily email in the past asdifferentmember of the team send the emails out, it's fairly regular to get 2 emails both differing somewhat, whichisn't too much of a problem usually. I often don'thave the time or inclination to even read them as was the case with todays email (30th). Then I got a further email entitled 'Apology' .....

The earlier email 'mistakenly' contained the full list of subscribers email addresses - a list totaling 847 personal email addresses! A spammers dream! Although the apology was quite weak I was more incensed by it not going into detail of the risks posed to others from spam by not deleting it, all it would take for the full list to become the property of spam networks is one person to have their email compromised by a virus and everyone will then be getting spam, quite frankly I get enough without help from the BBC!

Monday 15 October 2007

Squidoo payout! #2

Well, this is my second month of receiving a squidoo payout and I thought it would be good to do a little update. The earnings were not as strong as in my first month when I had a lens in the top pay out tier for the adsense share-out. Also, as I hadn't fully realised what a goldmine squidoo has the potential of being I didn't really do much work on it in August which is what this weeks payout was for. I did get quite a few click-thru's to my amazon account and a few purchases there though. All in all the payout's I did receive were mainly for mid-ranking lenses (pages) , and a very small amount of commission from ebay/amazon/cafepress modules on those lenses.

I have put a lot more work into squidoo lately, creating at least 2-3 lenses a week since the payout at the start of September. Also, I have utilised more of my own affiliate links within lenses rather than use the ones they provide, except where it is easier to do so. If these lenses start to see good traffic, I will then often include my own affiliate links, this has been quite a winner in a big jump in my affiliate earnings through affiliate sales. My strategy is now to create a lens on a subject I am interested in,or think others will be, filling out a few basic modules, including some unique content then see how it is doing a week or 2 later. If it seems to be popular I will develop it further and include relevant affiliate links, if it's being a bit of a lame duck I will pop back and try make it more likely to succeed by doing some editing, though this does not always seem to work.

I'll list here a small selection of my successful and not so successful lenses to give some examples of what works -

Perry Mason - A very extensive list of the Perry Mason novels, this gets a good amount of regular traffic and click-thru's to amazon. Though the majority of visitors are looking for free downloads or ebooks.

Discworld Store - a moderately successful page with a large variety of unofficial discworld merchandise and links to official merchandise on ebay.

Shimshi - A lens reviewing this magicians tutorial DVD. Mainly to promote the surplus of these I have for sale. Get's lots of visits and click-thru's to youtube magic tutorials, as well as sales of magic tutorial dvd's on amazon.

UK Cash Back Sites - A lens highlighting the sites in the UK that you can join to receive cashback from purchasing online. Provides a voting system and invites visitors to review and share their experience. All links on this page are affiliate links and all though traffic could be better, I'm pleased with the click-thru rate and the percentage that convert to commission earned.

Jon Richardson - A fan page created using squidwho, which autofilled a lot of the lens for me, and I just added some bits and pieces. Jon is comedian who co-hosts a show on 6music. Quite popular with people to find his youtube videos, also as he does not have his own website it gets a reasonable amount of traffic for a relatively unknown celeb.

The Spacemen 3 - A lens about 80's Drone Rock band, supposedly with quite a cult following but traffic has been quite scarce despite having a lot of info on the band and it's spin-offs.

Psychometric Testing - A lens explaining what psychometric testing is and detailing books on how to prepare and to improve your score. Did well in it's first month or so, but now barely getting any traffic - possibly in need of a revamp!

So, hopefully having checked some of these out you'll be inspired to start writing articles about stuff on squidoo to earn some money! If so you may wish to use my referral link here as you will get a $5 bonus when you have earned your first $15, and I'll also get $5 then for introducing you. You will have to create a lens when you sign up for your registration to be successful, so pick a topic, or save the first one you create in draft. Also, fill out your profile and provide either a link to your blog or webpage, and consider making yourself available to be contacted through squidoo, as I may offer you assistance and advice if you sign up via my link!

Review of a new Coupon Site

NcNatural Coupon site is very easy to navigate and provides coupon info giving discounts at hundreds of online merchants, giving thousands of up-to-date coupon codes to give you discounts and free offers. Merchants included in this coupon site include amazon.com, Disney & The Vitamin Shoppe. So you can see just from this small sample that they cover a wide variety of online merchants.
So, what's the site like? Fast, simple & vast in choice, the main site link, takes you to an alphabetical list of merchants that loads quickly. When you click on a merchant name the page that then loads is populated with all current coupons with info on what discount is achieved with each and the expiry date of that offer. When clicked on you will get a small pop-up with the coupon code you will need to enter during the checkout process, you will need to write this down, as clicking OK will then take you to the relevant page on the merchants site to select items applicable to that offer.
The Verdict - A great coupon site giving up-to-date codes in a well laid out and easy to follow site.
Coupon Savings at their best!

Wednesday 3 October 2007

UK Paid Survey Sites

There are literally dozens of UK paid survey sites, some good, some bad. The newest I have come across is a site which will pay you regularly for doing nothing! Well apart from downloading a small piece of software to you smartphone which will anonymously study and report your browsing habits. They pay £15 to install the software, then £5 a month after, as well as entering you into a competition to win a 40" LCD TV.

This is what they say on their website -

The Smart M:Panel is a targeted research panel comprised of Windows, Palm, and Symbian smartphone users who voluntarily install a software client on their mobile device that measures their real-world data usage. The software client, or M:Meter, captures activity around messaging, browsing, application usage and media consumption. Once installed the M:Meter operates with no user interaction. M:Metrics is focused on accurately capturing data usage and consumption while protecting our panellists privacy and ensuring our software does not adversely effect device performance.

For more UK Paid Survey Sites

Friday 28 September 2007

£10 off at Amazon on Personal Care Products

Spend £50 at Amazon on personal care products and get £10 Off!£10 off orders of over

Get those Christmas presents in early and save some money! This offer is running until the 7th October so Hurry! This Link will take you to the Amazon page where you getthe code for adding at checkout to get the money off your order. So get upto 20% off that electric shaver, straightening irons, manicure set etc.

Just have a look at some of the available items -

Wednesday 26 September 2007

Buying Cars!

Buying a car should be straight forward, well you'd think it was. Unfortunately my partner isn't very tall and her legs are pretty short, though they do reach the ground!

The problem was that very few cars have enough seat adjustment to enable her comfortably to reach the pedals. Having previously put her back out for 8months whilst driving a metro, which taught her that the driving position had to be perfect, not just almost comfortable. Previously she'd been driving a Fiat Cincequento (sp?), though wanted something a bit bigger and a bit more substantial.

Well we went around about a dozen garages locally on Saturday, we check the South Bristol Directory, to find the local ones, most didn't actually have websites but luckily the directory still listed them and gave a routemap to them. The first garage we went to was just down he road and they had a couple of cars in the price range that looked hopeful. After trying the Fiesta, 206, Seat and clio it was found only the 206 was actually comfortable. It was also a pretty tidy car for the money although being a 1.9deisel it was going to be a bit of a jump insurance wise. After driving round a few more garages trying similair cars, none others 'fitted' as well as the 206, not even a 106. Perhaps car makers should do a bit more to make their seats more adjustable! One car we were shown didn't even have a lever to slide the seat back, so we left that one quickly. Another had to have someone in the back to do the seat adjustment, so another sharp exit!

After umming and ahhhing we went back to the first garage and I took the 206 for a spin. I was pretty impressed with it driving wise, power steering, pretty nice acceleration for a diesel and good handling. We managed to negotiate the price down a bit and we're not sure wether we got a trade in for the Fiat or he was just being kind taking it off us!

Thursday 20 September 2007

Disclosure of interests

This policy is valid from 20 September 2007


This blog is a sponsored blog created or supported by a company, organization or group of organizations. This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.

The compensation received will never influence the content, topics or posts made in this blog. All advertising is in the form of advertisements generated by a third party ad network. Those advertisements will be identified as paid advertisements.

The owner(s) of this blog may be compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

This blog may contain content which might present a conflict of interest. This content will always be identified by having a tag marked PPP.


To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org

Monday 17 September 2007

Amazon Widgets

Well Amazon do it again! With a whole host of widgets released today they sure keep us associates on a learning curve!
How's this for a Cloud Widget?

Social Reveiw Site

Anyone looking for independent reviews of places to eat, drink or visit might well want to check out Trustedplaces.com where they can read many independent reviews of places in London, or anywhere in the world. Also, if you have really enjoyed somewhere and want to tell the world about it you can submit your own review.

So whether you're looking for hot tips on London bars or just London in general, trustedplaces.com may well be a great place to start!

Drop me a line and let me know how you get on!

My New Blog!

After spending a few months getting used to blogging and aimlessly blogging about anything that came along and inspired me, I've decided to create a specialist blog reviewing various gadgets and blogging about gadgets in general! I'm going to try and blog on it at least once a week, if not twice a week ideally! Feel free to check it out Here!

Friday 14 September 2007

I Love Pay Per Post!

I only joined pay per post the other month and already have earned money from writing only a couple of blogs here! I've probably missed more opportunities than I have taken as I keep forgetting to log in and see what are available. It seems that those people who blog based in the USA get a few more opportunities to blog than us UK bloggers, though we do get some opportunities that are unique to to Europe and the UK in compensation. Also blogger who have their blog hosted on a website get more opportunities as some specifically want blog posts that aren't on blogspot and similair blogging platforms. I'm considering moving or creating a blog on one of my websites in the near future. I may even consider purchasing a specific URL to host my blog as I'm confident that PPP will more than cover the costs of hosting in the long run!

Pay Per Post works as advertisers seek new forms of marketing to aid their traffic generation and web site presence. It works for bloggers as we get paid to do stuff we enjoy! I'm hoping to put my earnings from Pay-Per-Post into paying for a new laptop, and if it goes extremely well I'll even consider buying a much dreamed of Apple iBook!

Saturday 8 September 2007

My Squidoo Earnings Payout!

I blogged about Squidoo a couple of months ago when I joined up. It's a pretty unique social networking site where you get to create pages on any subject that you want. Unlike myspace, facebook, etc it's unique in that it's main purpose is to earn you money! I received my first payout yesterday for $17.48 or a little over £8, first I knew of this was an email from paypal telling me the money had arrived!

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

I didn't think too much at first until I read more and did a few searches but not only can you earn cash from creating pages you can drive traffic to your website, make pages about gadgets and gizmos that you can place your affiliate links on, or even take the easy option if you don't want to have to manage an affiliate account as squidoo has over 1000 affiliates already and a very easy interface for you to advertise their products.

I only joined up at the very end of June so July was my first month on squidoo and I didn't spend to much time on it. The lens that I did spend a lot of time and effort on was my Perry Mason Lens, though I don't think I got it completed to my satisfaction until August and I'm still tweeking it occasionally.

Imagine my Surprise when this lens earned me over $15!!! $4 of this was for being a high ranked lens, though it never made the top 100 on squidoo, it did spend a few days inside the top 200 on occassion and does get about 40 hits a week. So this $4 was a payout for being in the top tier on squidoo as a share of the sites adsense revenue, but where did the rest come from? Well, squidoo don't do much to break down the sources of revenue as yet, though this could have been from referalls to ebay or cafepress as they were the only money making modules on the page apart from Amazon, and they do log your amazon referalls, though I only had one purchase via amazon, and that's a pre-order which won't ship until next week, so earnings from that won't come through for another couple of months. Visitors may have gone to ebay to look at Perry Mason items I was showing there, or they may have bought items off Cafepress I was highlighting. Other lenses earnings varied from 4cents each for the work in progress and minimal lenses that haven't had much traffic and I keep meaning to go back and finish these, and 73cents for other lenses that were getting reasonable traffic. Though I must mention that these other lenses have sent traffic to my site, and also earned me commission from people following links on them to products I was recommending so am very pleased with my first couple of months on squidoo!


Next month should be even better as squidoo traffic was considerably down in July due to getting a slap from google due to allowing the creation of 'spam' pages, this was something squidoo jumped on very quickly but it did have a huge impact on visitors to the site and rankings on search engines for google which didn't really recover until August

I know that at least one visitor did go to cafepress to buy an item, as it was an item I created in a Cafepress store I was inspired to open by squidoo's interface with them, so not only did I earn commission for sending a customer there, I earned money as they bought an item I had created. For more info on Cafepress and how to earn money selling stuff from coasters to coffee mugs, stickers to wall clocks and aprons to thongs all with your own designs on, just click on this banner - and sign-up, it's real easy!

Design and Sell Merchandise Online for Free

So what are you waiting for? Sign up to squidoo now, if you use this link you will also get an extra $5 when you earn your first $15 and so will I!

Saturday 1 September 2007

My Online Earnings for August

Well August was an OK month for me considering people were mainly on holiday and in search of the sun! My internet income is increasing steadily, not quite my best month on Amazon, though as I'm working on other affiliate schemes and increasing my adsense earnings in the time I'd usually be spending on amazon I'm pretty happy with the results so far.


One of the other new projects has been joining Pay Per Post, where I'm getting a chance to be paid to do a little blogging now and then. See this post for details.

I joined ClixGalore earlier this month, though have yet to implement many of their ads so have no income yet. Commission Junction is showing some nice earnings from referrals to some paid opinion sites where people get rewards for completing surveys like this one -

Make your opinion count!



And I am also picking up some earnings from Affiliate Future too!



Though the main purpose of this post is to show a few of the wacky items people have either bought from amazon through my links or looked at! I'm also showing off my newly installed java script so I can show you the full details of these on my site! So here we go -




The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance




Hotel California: Singer-songwriters and Cocaine Cowboys in the L.A. Canyons 1967-1976



The White Island: The Extraordinary History of the Mediterranean's Capital of Hedonism




Aspire AS3694, Intel Celeron 440, 15.4" TFT with Acer CrystalBrite screen, 512MB memory, 80GB Hard Disk Drive, DVD Super-Multi, Shared graphics, WiFi, 5 in 1 Card Reader, Windows Vista Basic
I would have been a very happy bunny if I'd sold one of these, though lots did look at it!


Bose Sounddock Digital Music System
And one of these days I'd really like to buy one of these myself!


Chubb B-3G114E-PB-67 5 Lever Mortice Deadlock (British Standard) - Polished Brass Finish
Security seems to have been popular too!


MTD001 Adjustable wall mount bracket for large Plasma and LCD screens.
These wall mounts for plasma and LCD screens are in high demand!


JTS JS-1 Large Diaphragm Condensor Studio Mic + Shock Mount & Case
Amazon are even moving into the market traditionaly coveted by Studio Spares for Pro-Audio gear!

And Finally, at the end of the day -

NEW VITAMIN C SHOWER 5 FUNCTION SHOWER WATER FILTER FOR PERFECT CHLORINE REMOVAL, MULTI FUNCTION, SHOWER, MASSAGE, SPRAY, SOFT SHOWER, STOP.ACTS AS IONISER WHILST SHOWERING GREAT FOR SKIN & HAIR, HELPS WITH SENSITIVE SKIN & SKIN ALLERGIES, IDEAL FOR INFANTS & CHILDREN - SUPPLIED WITH 2 FILTERS
For those living in areas where the tap waters not too clever, makes a huge difference in hair condition.

Before climbing into -

Deluxe Raised Airbed
Well it would normally be a proper bed, but these things inflate in minutes and pack away almost as fast. The other advantage being they do elevate you off the floor so ideal for guests and temporary visitors.

Thursday 23 August 2007

News! New Social Marketing Site Launches


This new social marketing site is due to be unleashed late September / early October, members can play and earn money by winning games against other players, either one-on-one or in tournaments (where each player pays a small fee and the winner takes all), or, pay a membership fee and get paid a commission for each member they introduce and an instant bonus when they sign up another business builder

uVme is a flexible combination of social networking and direct marketing, often reffered to as Social Marketing. This is a growing phenomenon on the net and uVme are geared to take a leading position in this. After all why blog for nothing when you can earn from schemes such as this.

A universal-messenger interface that lists your contacts from MSN, AIM, Yahoo and GoogleTalk so you can challenge your friend to a game who would then be invited to join as a member, you would also earn comission from their earnigs as well as being able tostay in touch with people you and they sign up

The parent company has been involved with MLM for 5 years and has invested a 7 figure sum of money into promoting uVme.

A uvme pre-launch highlights movie has had over 23,000 views on YouTube in just 3 weeks.



uVme is set to be huge globally with the site already configured with various language options already available.

And until the launch, registration on is free, so you can start building your network now!

uVme is the creation of Andy Bailey, a veteran of, blogging and Social Marketing, read more on Andy Baileys blog



Want to be part of my network? Then sign up by using the banner below to enter the site or leave a comment and I'll send an invite!

Saturday 18 August 2007

Unusual Books!

I don't often post about other blogs, but having come across this blog about some very unusual book bindings and book sculpture by Blogger Avi Abrams I feel compelled to promote such a fantastic collection of photographs of many different books. If you think I'm being a bit of a bibliophile or book geek, you may well change your mind when you see the vast range of creative binding and art crearted from books.

Friday 17 August 2007

I signed up for Pay Per Post

Pay Per Post is an opportunity to earn money writing blogs. It took a couple of weeks from applying to get approved though during the approval I had access to what sort of opportunities that would be available and what sort of subjects and products were wanting plugging on my blog for payment. It may be a long way from being a professional blogger, but it will certainly provide an incentive to post more regularly as well as an easy form of income that will help me pay for various web-hosting and other associated online fees. For those of a more charitable mind you have the choice of donating the income to a charity.


I'm hoping this opportunity will also help drive traffic to my my blog as well as earn me a nice cash bonus!



Thursday 16 August 2007

What to do with those old books, CD's, DVD's, Games?

Just thought I'd let you know about a special deal Hitflip are running at the moment -

List your DVDs, books, games, audiobooks or CDs to swap on Hitflip
by September 1st 2007 (00:00GMT) making them immediately available to swap, they will credit accounts with a bonus:



10 items = £1 credit

25 items = £3 credit

100 items = £15 credit



Europe's No.1 Swapping Site


This is a great way of clear stuff from your shelves where they are collecting dust, and replacing them with stuff you want! The only cost to yourself is 79p admin charge and the postage of sending an item to receive credits to get more items. With them giving away free credit at the moment, there's never been a better time to register with them!

Sunday 22 July 2007

Amazon Auctions Vs. Ebay

Why Don't Amzon promote their Auctions? Amazon auctions don't cost anything to list, they have a secure payment system in place, they have a trusted name, yet amazon don't promote this service at all.
Well amazon don't promote Marketplace (third party sales) either, but there is little need to do this as the product searches show the prices from 3rd party sellers quite adequately. Yet Amazon don't take this opportunity and they are about the only internet company that are in a position to compete with Ebay and give the consumer some real choice.

The only draw back with amazon auctions are only one image is permitted and their is a limit to html available to use and only 3,700 characters allowed. Not that much of a drawback really!

Well, I'm going to be putting my money where my mouth is and list a few things on amazon auctions and see what happens as a result.

The only down side I can see is that I will not be able to see how many people actually view my auction. I suppose I could look for an image hoster that will provide impression counting if I wanted to get scientific, and perhaps I will as this experiment continues.

The 2 items I have listed on amazon tonight are shown below, with breif details and with links to the amazon auction. I'm going to attempt to add tracking id's to these links, so let me know if that causes them not to work.

proargi9Pro-Argi9

ProArgi-9 Mixed Berry Flavor uses an all-natural sweetening system to deliver its delicious fruity taste. Like regular ProArgi-9, it contains 5,000 mg (5 grams) of elemental pharmaceutical grade l-arginine. IT IS A LOW GLYCEMIC PRODUCT. It does not contain sucralose and only contains natural sweetening from the mixed berry fruits.

One of the previous problems with L-argine has been its taste - this product overcomes that problem with the natural berry flavour.

ProArgi-9 Mixed Berry Ingredients:L-arginine, L-leucine, L-isoleucine, L-valine, Gamma Oryzanol, Transferulic acid Trutina dulcem (fruit sugar, natural flavors, kiwi fruit), fruit acids, natural berry flavors, beet powder (for color), silicon dioxide (flow agent).

L-arginine has been in the forefront of medical interest for many years and is considered one of the most important nutraceuticals ever developed.

The L-arginine phenomenon is changing standard methodologies in circulatory health, immune function, adiposity-generated concerns, blood pressure, sexual function, and human aging.

L-arginine provides one of the building blocks necessary for the body to maintain its own growth hormone levels, which may help promote muscle mass, support muscle growth, and stimulate muscle development.


The exclusive patented ProArgi-9 formula was developed by leadingl-arginine researcher Dr. Ann de Wees Allen. It has been safely used in humans since 1983. Dr. Allen received the first glycemic patent ever awarded for her development of the low glycemic delivery system in ProArgi-9. The methodology developed exclusively for ProArgi-9 is proprietary, and involves a complex 32-step process to extract the non-competing properties from organic fruits.

ProArgi-9 is used and promoted by famous world-class athletes who use it to bolster their nutritional intake and enhance their athletic performance.

ultimate raw mealThe Ultimate Raw Meal

Made from raw, wildcraft, mostly organic, properly sprouted and fresh-freeze dried ingredients, The Ultimate Meal replaces up to 20 products.

It is a complete food, has a great taste, has optimum fibre, satisfies hunger, has Kosher ingredients, is potent in anti-oxidants and essential fatty acids, and replenishes glycogen.

It is ABSOLUTELY FREE FROM: GMO, soy, whey, nuts, yeast, salt, matadextrin, dairy, egg, cholesterol, wheat, gluten, sugar, and fructose.


As the names suggest, THE ULTIMATE MEAL is the finest, most potent and complete sources of nourishment available anywhere at any price.
WHY ?
We believe that the optimum source of nourishment for the human body does NOT come in the form of synthetic vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants, tablets, powders, pills, or for that matter, cooked or processed foods or any animal products. It DOES, however, come in the form of raw, properly sprouted, freeze-dried, cold-milled and preferably organic plant foods that have their enzymes and nutrients intact as nature intended, as well as natural, potent anti-oxidants in optimum, not trace amounts.
THE ULTIMATE MEAL® is the only products to fill this need. No gimmicks, just the ingredients which are the ultimate FOOD sources of each and every nutrient essential for optimum health, vitality and energy. In most cases this eliminates the need to take any supplements (vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants, etc.) which normally pays for itself.
THE ULTIMATE MEAL® is totally free of yeast-based vitamins and minerals, soy protein, MSG, salt, wheat, corn, yeast, eggs, dairy products, sugar, honey, fructose, caffeine, ginseng, etc. as well as artificial preservatives, flavors, coloring, fillers and animal products.

WHEN?
At least TWO servings daily. THE ULTIMATE MEAL® is the most efficient and nutritious meal you can have. Ideal for BREAKFAST, LUNCH and/or DINNER. It also does wonders AFTER EXERCISING, as it revitalizes the whole body. And yes, most people tell us that it keeps their hunger satisfied and their body energized far longer than conventional meals (about 3-6 hrs).

DIRECTIONS
Prepared in a blender, usually with a whole fruit smoothie.

Monday 16 July 2007

MrLinky

A new way of creating linkbacks and recipiricol links I'm experimenting with - just a test to begin with!
This is the blog fodder one!


This is a meme I think called tackle it Tuesday!

Sunday 15 July 2007

Ashton Court Festival Rained Off!

The 2nd day of the festival which would of been headlined by Damon Alburn's Good The Bad & The Queen, has been cancelled by organisers after Heavy Rain Began to fall on Saturday night and is forecast to remain Heavy for most of the Saturday.

Organiser Steve Hunt, has stated that Tickets will be refunded, which is a small compensation for the thousands that were planning to attend today, though their are no details on the official website as yet.

Financial implications for the organisers could mean that the future of the festival is in doubt. Last year the Festival Sponsor Orange, pulled out, meaning this years budget was to be covered buy donations and revenue from tickets. So it will be interesting to see any announcements over the festival future.

Over 80 bands were set to play today including Enter Shikari, The Nova Saints, Bad:Science & Blackout toname but a few of the artists that were set to rock the festival goers.

So another casualty of the wash-out of a summer that seems to be drowning the UK. Global Warming? More like Global Drowning from the UK's point of View this summer!

Amazon aStore Earnings Update

I did originally intend to only update once a month on my amazon earnings from their affiliate scheme but traffic to my website has been up considerably this month and many more purchases have been from Amazon using the aStore as a result. The reason for this appears to be due to our stall at Glastonbury Festival and the website we set up to post reviews and pictures of the festival on.

In this post I'm going to be utilising a tool for amazon associates provided by www.freeaffiliatetools.com which is a very easy method of allowing me to show images of the products as well!
This is just a sample of some of the things ordered in no particular order.



Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows
Not sold as many of these as I'd like, though amazon are claiming pre-orders in the region of 1.6million!
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No Image available

Speak Right for a Call Centre Job: A Complete Training Guide for International Telephonic Interface
Wonder who it was that wanted a book on working in a call centre?
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The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles -
The book takes the reader on an exciting journey of discovery and revelation, challenging long-held beliefs on certain aspects of Biology and Physics, to arrive at a radically new and different explanations for how our DNA - and ultimately our very being - happen to be.

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The Ultimate Psychometric Test Book, this sale inspired me to write a squidoo lens on the subject of Psychometric testing as I didn't know a lot about it! You can view the Lens Here

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This Business of Music Marketing & Promotion by Tad Lathrop - Bought by an upcoming star?

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The Piano - classic film, starring Holly Hunter & Harvey Keitel!

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Curtains - until this, I didn't realise you could buy these on Amazon, quite a few sizes and styles available too at reasonable prices!

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A raised Airbed - caused a bit of a scuffle on the amazon sellers discussion board did this!

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Belkin Universal UPS 1200VA with USB & Serial Interface Got one of these myself, and I'd highly recommend having one to protect your computer and data from power outages!

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Bose Sound dock, the ultimate portable speaker system for your iPod, you can't buy better than this!

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Nutrition Solution: A Personalized Metabolic Approach to Optimal Health

The Nutrition Solution: A Personalized Metabolic Approach to Optimal Health Essential reading for those interested in metabolic typing

So, as you can see, quite a varied selection of items in the first 2 weeks of the month.

Saturday 14 July 2007

Technorati is broken or just useless?

Well, technorati seems to not like my blog, it claims I haven't published any new content in 176days! That's dispite me pinging them when I made new posts for the first few weeks of blogging. After that I gave up and moved on to other pinging services that seem to actually work! My favorites being Blog flux and ping-goat, I do alternate between each of these, but they ping all the major search engines and give a report over each ping and whether it was successful. Funny thing is, both respond saying that the ping to technorati was successful, yet they don't seem to update!

Thursday 12 July 2007

Play.com problem with sellers account

Gibraltar is within the UK according to Play.com. So sellers who are taking part in play.com's 3rd party seller program will only receive the standard price set for UK customers if orders are placed by Customers in Gibraltar, or any other UK dependency, such as the Falkland Islands for example. This even applies to playtraders who specify they will only dispatch to the UK.

The Playtrade system of inviting 3rd party sellers to market their goods and products on play.com is still pretty much in it's infancy. Play invited me to sell on their platform in March 2007, when they opened up the playtrader system to all. Previous to this they had only been allowing a very selected number of retailers to use their program, these sellers were the heavyweights of internet selling of media and dispatch thousands of items a month.

This problem reared it's ugly head after receiving an order from Play for dispatch to Gibraltar even though I had not offered international delivery as available for the item in question. The advice I at first received was very poor and indicated I would have to ship and bear the additional cost myself. After objecting to this and demanding to speak to a supervisor it was then looked into and admitted that this definitely needs the policy and technical team to look at, as a seller who had made available a heavier item for UK delivery had an order from a country which Play class as in the UK but Royal Mail class as international, the seller could make quite a loss by doing so, even if they had stated they were not dispatching items outside of the UK.

I will update this when I hear more back from Play.com in relation to this, meanwhile I am being left to discuss the matter with the customer and hope that they accept that play are to blame here and not myself. If the customer decides to leave me negative feedback as a result play have stated that they will not be able to intervene. As play customers are not used to leaving feedback in regard to transactions the level of feedback on play is very low, about 1 in 20 have left feedback so far, so negative feedback could have a very bad effect on my selling there.


I have had a limited success selling on Play up until now, and their system is fairly simple, though it is not easy to see who you are competing against from your listings page, only if there are sellers that have cheaper prices. To compare your listings you have to actually go to the play.com site and search for the item to find out who the other sellers are, their feedback and conditions/comments. Not ideal really, but it is hoped that they will develop this system to be more user friendly in time.

Tuesday 3 July 2007

Selling Your Art Online using Amazon


Artists often have problems when it comes to marketing their work, but it appears that one artist has realised they could use Amazon as their shop window - gallery. It is a very cheap way of getting a massive amount of exposure, without the repeat fees of trying to do similar on ebay.

Have a look at this example of a sculptor, Julian P. Warren, selling their work on amazon with quite a sizeable, though realistic price tag! metalgnu
this peice has a nice price tag and would cost a few quid every 10day listing it was on sale on ebay. Yet this artist has several works for sale, priced upto £1500, and the only fee they would have paid is a one off monthly fee of £25 +VAT to be able to create as many listings as they can in that month, they then cancel the monthly subscription and await a sale. Ingenious or what?

Monday 2 July 2007

My Amazon aStore earnings for June 07

July Earnings from my Amazon Associates account has been pretty consistent for most of the month and I'll share here some of the weird and wacky items order that allowed me to earn some commission.
Most of these have been through either product links I have left in various forums and from people directly accessing the aStore through my web page and also through a review of Glastonbury 2007 which is actually still being constructed and I'll hopefully have a chance to finish once I have finished cleaning mud off all that I took!

Books order -
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) [Children's Edition]
I've had a few people pre-order the childrens edition, though have not yet had any orders for the adult edition yet. In fact word has got out that all physical bookshops have already pre-sold all their first consignment so the only way to ensure getting a copy on the day of publication is through pre-ordering and paying a premium for delivery on publication date via amazon. Even with the delivery premium the book will be cheaper than store prices due to amazon offering it at 50% of the RRP

The Ultimate Psychometric Test Book
A best selling well reviewed book on getting the most from psychometric tests.

The Cambridge Diet
There's usually one diet book sold a month, showing that Dieting is a big seller.

Human Motivation: Metaphors, Theories and Research
Quite a high-brow study book, showing that all sorts are buying through my website and links

The Cleaning Bible: Kim and Aggie's Complete Guide to Modern Household Management
I was a bit disturbed to see someone had bought this and just hope that no one was thinking of giving me it as a gift!

The Cookery Year
New cook books also tend to sell well, even though I do not provide any links or reviews of them
so am assuming a customer just used my website to search amazon for this one.

Monstrous Regiment (Discworld)
Strangely enough I sold this the day after finishing reading it! A great book tackling equality and the madness of war from the very prolific Terry Pratchett

Night Watch (Discworld)
2 Discworld novels, both sold the same day so fair to assume it was the same customer. Night watch is arguably one of the best Discworld novels introducing the City Watch and the great Characters of Sam Vime, Captain Carrot and all!

The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures
A travel book or an analysis of american subculture?

Round Ireland with a Fridge
Definetly a travel book, and a very humorous one at that!

There was also quite a few other books sold for varying prices that I don't know enough about to comment on.

Games
Guilty Gear Isuka (PC)
Guilty Gear X2 Reload (PC)
Don't know much about the games field and have never reviewed any, so nice to get a bit of income from their sales! Same date of sale, so assuming they went to the same customer, especially as they seem to be related titles.

DVD's
Midsomer Murders - Vixen's Run
My Neighbour Totoro
A couple of DVD's that I don't know much about, different sale dates so assuming different customers.

Pre-orders that shipped this month
The Traveling Wilburys: Deluxe Collector's Edition/+DVD
Very hot selling CD, in the amazon top ten currently

Def Con 4 [2007]
4 of these were pre-ordered and shipped

Items that were viewed but had no orders made
Sharp LC42XD1E - 42" Widescreen Full HD 1080P LCD TV - With Freeview
Nice TV, lots of clicks but no orders

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Penguin Modern Classics)
A book II would highly recommend people to read, though doesn't look like my reccomendations have been taken up this month!

Bose Sounddock Black
Bose Sounddock White
Bose Sounddock black Digital Music System
Probably the best sounddock for your ipod! Though I imagine people must be saving up for it as it costs about as much as an Ipod, though the sound they give is absolutely unrivalled!

Luxury Ludo
Nice to see old fashioned board games are getting hits, if not actual purchases!

MiEssence Organics Sunflower Body Wash
This is a product I have actually got listed on amazon at the moment, it seems to be getting traffic but so far no sales!

This is not a complete list, but just to give an idea of what is popular and/or selling through my Amazon Associate account.

Anyway, I hope you find this list of items useful and it gives you an idea of the earning potential of being an Amazon Associate.

I must also add that I have been increasing my placement of adsense ads on a few of my webpages and the income from this is now starting to make me think about adding an adsense ad to each page I create!

Saturday 30 June 2007

Squidoo - Earn money online by writing reviews and content

Squidoo - Is a pretty unique community site allowing you to earn a share of the advertising revenue generated by people visiting the page you created. Whether it's a review of a book, restaraunt, night out or a rant, if it attracts visitors you'll get income! You can even use it to signpost your website and increase SEO (search engine optimisation).

For an example you can visit the page I made about Absinthe

If you sign up via my referral link you will also earn an extra $5 when you have earnt $15 revenue through visitors either just viewing your page and more if they click through from links on your lens (squidoo call each entry a lens)

There is no limit to the number or subjects you can create pages on and payouts are monthly via paypal. The minimum payout is actually a ridiculously low $1

I'll report back in a few weeks to let you know how I get on with it and what sort of earnings I have made. I don't expect to make bucket loads of cash, but I'll see if I can make some interesting content and what sort of things I have found worked!

Friday 29 June 2007

Absinthe (Absinth) - The Green Fairy

Absinth(e) (in the UK is spelt with an e) has one of the most mythical histories of any alcoholic drink. It was actually banned on a number of occasions due to the results of peoples reactions to it. The hallucinogenic properties of it are fabled and well documented as well as it being used by many artists and writers for inspiration.


Here I intend to review a number of books available on it's history and usage.

Absinthe: History in a Bottle by Barnaby Conrad








Maybe not the most definitive book on the history of absinthe but accessible, enjoyable and plenty of graphic images to delight the reader. The images range from wild portraits by Van Gogh, to anti-Absinthe propaganda published by the French Government. This book is well researched and provides a good backdrop on the 'absinthe-culture'. The research is quite extensive and the images plentiful, there are also mini-biographies and literary quotes from and about Verlaine, Rimbaud, Wilde and Baudelaire showing how Absinthe was said to influence the creative and artistic. This book is very readable and insightful and probably the current most popular tome on absinthe.


Absinthe: Sip of Seduction - A Contemporary Guide by Betina Wittels & Robert Hermesch








Edited by T.A. Breaux with a foreword by Marie-Claude Delahaye. This comprehensive guide has been lovingly compiled by two avid collectors of all things Absinthe. Included is a cultural and scientific history, a gallery of famous drinkers both past and present and a detailed analysis of what Absinthe is and its effects. In addition, there are extensive guides to where to find Absinthe around the world - where it's legal and where it's not - as well as techniques for drinking it and making absinthe cocktails. Illustrated throughout.


Absinthe - The Cocaine of the Nineteenth Century: A History of the Hallucinogenic Drug and Its Effect on Artists and Writers in Europe and the United States - by Doris Lanier









This work provides a history of "the green fairy", a study of its use and abuse, an exploration of the tremendous social problems (not unlike the cocaine problems of this century) it caused, and an examination of the extent to which the lives of talented young writers and artists of the period became caught up in the absinthe craze.

Absinthe produced a sense of euphoria and a heightening of the senses, similar to the effect of cocaine and opium, but was addictive and caused a rapid loss of mental and physical faculties. Despite that, Picasso, Manet, Rimbaud, Van Gogh, Degas and Wilde were among those devoted to its consumption and produced writings and art influenced by the drink.

There are still many debates as to whether Absinthe was a Hallucinogen and this book does tend to take it as fact that the 19th century process of making it ensured that it actually was an hallucigen. This book is more aimed at the reader of social history than the more casual reader


The Dedalus Book of Absinthe by Phil Baker









This well-researched history of Absinthe is an absolute joy to read. It chronicles the devotion, effect, and, in some cases, destruction experienced through this drink by not only the masses but influential writers and artists such as Oscar Wilde, Aleister Crowley, Baudelaire, Ernest Dowson, Verlaine & Rimbaud, Toulouse Lautrec, Van Gogh, et al. Also contains handy reviews of currently obtainable brands of the drink. Highly recommended!


Hideous Absinthe: A History of the "Devil in a Bottle" by Jad Adams








Hideous Absinthe boldly combines the art, literature, science, and social history of the nineteenth century to produce the story of a drink that came to symbolize both the high points of art and the depths of degeneration.
Jad Adams looks at the myths of absinthe and examines its influence on the artistic movements of the nineteenth century. He considers the work of Degas, Manet, and Picasso, who painted what are now considered masterpieces depicting absinthe drinkers. He examines the mystery of van Gogh’s absinthe addiction and asks whether absinthe truly did contribute to the poetic vision of Verlaine, Rimbaud, and other writers.
Adams looks back at absinthe’s contribution to the hedonistic culture of the French Second Empire and to Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris of the 1890s and details the outraged English reaction to absinthe in the context of resistance to French art. Absinthe was seen as a foreign poison undermining the national resolve just as the decadence of Oscar Wilde and his circle was seen to undermine national culture.
The story continues through thrill-seeking American and English absinthe drinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Friday 15 June 2007

Banksy Creates Crap Art At Glastonbury Festival



Our Banksy has done it again, the cheeky creative genius has created a henge at glastonbury from the famous portaloos!

I wonder how many festival punters are going to get so mashed up or desperate that they'll try and use them!

Original story appeared in the Guardian - 14-06-07

Thanks to towleroad for blogging about it first!

Thursday 14 June 2007

Glastonbury Tickets on eBay for £8,000+


Michael Eavis is reported as being disappointed with the quality of the tickets printed for this years Glastonbury Festival (BBC Story). Tickets are now appearing on eBay, though it does look like there is some Auction Wrecking going on as this example shows -

Anyone wanting to risk the getting turned away on the gates as the photo part of the ID must be backed up by other forms of ID, so there's no real way around this added security level.

As for anyone fool enough to think the car park tickets will enable them to get close enough to try and sneak in better think again as there will be a check that car occupants have tickets before they actually leave the main road to drive the mile or 2 to the actual car-parks! Even if a 'fence-jumper' gets close enough to the fence they will be quite disappointed when faced by the impregnable 'Ring-of-Steel'. In the 2 previous years that this fence has been used there has been no reports of anyone successfully getting over it, and very few actual attempts at it either. The fence is 10ft of solid metal with a 3foot angled overhang, even the SAS would consider this impossible to scale without equipment. The other popular idea has always been tunneling under it, well as the same material that is used for the fence is also laid on the ground next to the fence and bolted to the uprights this is also making tunneling impossible to all but the most hardened miners. The enclosed road either side of the fence to allow security to drive quickly to any point of the fence with floodlights and a secondary 8 foot mesh 'Heras' fence, either side of this road means the tower lookouts will get plenty of time to get a patrol to you before you even touched the 'Ring-of-Steel'.

Basically, if you haven't got a ticket, forget about trying to get in and stock up at home to catch the web-cam, webcasts, TV coverage and Radio broadcasts courtesy of the BBC. You may also want to be thankful of clean porcelain and cold, reasonably priced beer without having to queue!

You can catch up with our adventures of the festival here on our glastonbury page which we hope to be updating the slideshow daily during the festival!

Wednesday 13 June 2007

The Book Garden @ Glastonbury Festival 2007


The Book Garden will be appearing at this years Glastonbury Festival alongside such acts as The Arctic Monkeys, The Killers, Iggy Pop, The Who, Bjork, Chemical Brothers and many more! Well, we won't actually be on stage as such, and selling books isn't exactly performance art, but we'll be there with a stock of approx 4,000 books. The majority will be general fiction, though we will be have a large selection of Travel Guides, Art Books, and Theatre Texts & Plays as well as sections on Health and Spirituality.

You will be able to find us on C market and this little map will hopefully be a guide to where we'll be. So pop in and see us, books will be available from 30p and very few will be priced more than a fiver. We also intend to offer a post home service for those who'd rather not carry a book around or want to send a gift to a friend/relative from the festival.

If we can get online we will be posting updates here and on this web page

Saturday 9 June 2007

Sold Dispatch Now: How to Make £6000 - £15000 pa. from Amazon, Sharon Fussell - Reviewed

Unbelievable! That was my first reaction when I came across this book! The old saying - "If something looks to good to be true, it's probably because it is too good to be true". (this is the only instance in the English language where a double positive becomes a negative!)

Sharon Fussell makes some quite astounding promises in this book which is for sale at £37, quite a hefty sum for a book that only has 85pages. The claim that you can easily make that sort of money from only a couple of hours work a day and with only the need for a a couple of shelves of books, is far fetched. I know very few sellers who are able to source the kind of niche stock that would enable that performance.

These quotes from her website, canonbury publishing , are quite astounding!

How you can make 86p extra pure profit on each and every book by almost doing nothing! - It's called signing up and paying a monthly Pro-Merchant Fee!

If you have a spare room, you could be making £36,000 a year as an international bookseller! - You'd need a pretty big room! Say about 500-1000sq feet!

you can look forward to becoming an international book seller and earning at least £6,000-£15,000+ per year working about 1 hour a day from home - From the few people I know that got into selling on Amazon from buying this book, none have achieved what is claimed. And they have stated that the amazon seller boards provide much more valuable advice and assistance than this book did.

Sold Dispatch Now: How to Make 6, 000 -15, 000 Pounds or More in the Next Year from Amazon This is a link to the book on amazon where you can see some reviews, and note how many people have found the reviews useful! You may also wish to join in the discusion on the book listing page about this book!

The only people I know who can even approach the claims made on the amount of profit from such low amounts of stock and work are those who have expert knowledge of niche markets. For example, if you were an expert on, let's say, books about wheelbarrows, and could source stock from the wheelbarrow college weekly carboot sale very cheaply and resell quickly for a very good price, you may be able to make that sort of money easily. Though for most specialists there knowledge of book genres and where to source them is the result of years of experience and they do not pass this sort of experience on!

Tuesday 5 June 2007

Yahoo Fantasy Football

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