Karlonia.com

This week I will continue with some leftover queries from last week, plus a few additional keywords that were not covered in previous posts. Other queries that you would like me to address can be posted in the comment section below. If I know the answers, I will either respond in the comments or add them to the queue for next week’s list.

1. what does atm stand for bank - ATM, when referring to banks or cash, stands for Automated Teller Machine or Automatic Teller Machine, depending on which version you prefer. Note that the phrase “ATM machine” is actually redundant but has become so commonly used that I wound up targeting it as a keyword.
2. who retains rights to freelance article - The answer to this one varies according the terms under which a freelance writer’s article is sold or used. When an article is first written, it is assumed to be subject to standard copyright protection and the author retains all rights. If the article is sold to another party, however, the author may relinquish some or all of his or her rights depending upon the terms of the agreement.

   For example, for articles sold through Constant Content, there are three categories of licenses under which an article may be purchased. “Full rights” means that the author gives up all rights to the buyer once it is sold; the buyer can do whatever he/she wants with the article, including even taking credit for it.

   On the other hand, articles sold under a “Usage” license may be used by the buyer on a website or for personal projects, but the author retains all other rights. Under these terms, the author must be given credit in the form of a byline or other attribution when the article is used by the other party.

   Finally, “Unique rights” purchases work similarly to usage terms (the author must be given credit), but in this case the article is removed from the Constant-Content website so that others cannot come along later and purchase the same article. This helps webmasters avoid duplicate content issues on any articles that are purchased from the site and used for SEO purposes.

3. what are NoNofollow/Dofollow Plugins - These are extensions to the WordPress blogging platform that will automatically remove the rel=’nofollow’ attribute from links placed through the URL field of the comment section. Removing the nofollow tag allows Google to count the commentators’ links for ranking purposes in the search results. Blogs that choose to remove the default nofollow tags are known as DoFollow or NoNoFollow blogs. Karlonia.com is an example of a DoFollow blog, although I tend to remove URLs that link to obvious spammers or dubious sites.
4. how gasoline is made - Gasoline is made from crude oil, usually at a location called a refinery. For details of the actual refining process, see the linked article.
5. how do you get rid of ants in your house - It is possible to get rid of ants through a variety of methods, including some environmentally friendly ones that you may not have thought of or used yet. For more information, see my relatively popular article on How to Get Rid of Ants in Your House.
6. how to write a job rejection letter - This one seems to have become a surprisingly popular topic this past week. You can find a few clues on writing rejection letters from my other article, although many people have been requesting actual sample letters or templates. I’m planning on eventually putting something together for this and adding it as an update to the previous article as soon as I have some extra time.
7. example “deceptive advertising” ingredient - A good example of this can be found at my article on Theraflu ingredient product labeling, in which we actually examined two different varieties of Theraflu that appeared to have different labels and were different products, but which were proven to have exactly the same ingredients. Some people have considered this a case of deceptive advertising, while others have shrugged it off as “just marketing”.
8. does bleach get rid of ants - Yes, it is possible for bleach to get rid of ants depending on how you use it. Most people seem to use it as a repellent by wiping their counter tops or floors with a diluted solution of bleach and water. Meanwhile, I have read a few passages where people have put bleach into a spray bottle (again, usually diluted with water) and used it directly on the ants to eliminate them. It should be noted that bleach can remove desirable colors from clothes and carpets if it is spilled in the wrong places, however, so one should be careful about handling this particular substance.

This post is the first installment of my English usage guide, an ongoing weekly series of articles that are designed to educate readers in the proper use of the English language and raise awareness of the need for thorough proofreading. The first few lessons will deal with groups of homonyms, words that sound alike when pronounced but are spelled differently and have different meanings when they are used in written text. Homonyms can be tricky for students and webmasters who do not manually proofread their work before submission. Unless obvious typographical errors are made, incorrect usage among these words will not be detected by standard spell checking programs.

Some of the most common errors that I see being made on published web pages involve incorrect usage of the words their, there and they’re. For the remainder of this post, I will demonstrate examples of correct and incorrect usage of these three words so that you can hopefully learn how to use them correctly and avoid mistakes in your writing.

The word their is the possessive form of the pronoun they, and is used as an adjective to modify the noun that follows it. For example:

1. Humans were forced to develop their intelligence so as not to be destroyed by their stupidity. - Matthijs van Boxsel
2. Those who believe that they have nothing to learn from barbarians have resigned themselves to their ignorance. - Karl Erfurt

There, on the other hand, is an adverb that is used to indicate a place or location, as in the commonly used phrase “over there”:

1. Tell Bush to go over there and fight for oil. - Thomas Wilson
2. Unfortunately I live in Australia, so it’s very difficult to get over there. - Chantau Daffy

The word there can also be used in a general sense to indicate the existence or nonexistence of something, as in the following humorous quotes:

1. There is no dog! - Anonymous Atheist Dyslexic
2. I stayed awake for several hours last night wondering if there was really a dog. - Dyslexic Agnostic Insomniac

Meanwhile, they’re is simply a contraction of the two words “they are”.

1. They’re not really that stupid, or misinformed, or delusional. - user HP from Scienceblogs.com
2. Do people with normal intelligence know they’re ignorant? - question asked on Yahoo Answers

The most common usage errors seem to occur when people mix up their and there. They’re is misused also, but this seems to be less common. It is relatively easy to tell whether or not you are using it correctly by simply substituting the words “they are” in the sentence. Here are some examples of incorrect usage, followed by the corrected versions.

Incorrect: Those people are genuinely happy in there ignorance. - user “franznietzsche” from Physics.com forums

Correct: Those people are genuinely happy in their ignorance.

Incorrect: I wonder if there’s a legal doctrine of “misuse of a trademark” just as their is for “misuse of a copyright”. - user Thomas from Cisco.com blog

Correct: I wonder if there’s a legal doctrine of “misuse of a trademark” just as there is for “misuse of a copyright”.




Incorrect: Does this mean msnspace will hammer out an agreement with Ubuntu over they’re logo? - Macewan, Msdn.com blog

Correct: Does this mean MSN Spaces will hammer out an agreement with Ubuntu over their logo?




Incorrect: She is actually abusing you they’re is not doubt it my mind if all this is true! - Anna, Yahoo answers user

Correct: She is actually abusing you - there is no doubt in my mind if all of this is true!




Next week, unless enough of you want me to cover a different English usage topic, I am planning on dealing with the your vs. you’re vs. yore issue, followed by its vs. it’s, and then probably sight vs. site vs. cite. We have also had one request for coverage of “could of” vs. “could have” (and similar variants), so I will fit this one in as soon as I can after dealing with the most common errors involving homonyms.

After pulling out the old scanner and fiddling around with IrfanView, I finally got some suitable pictures of the last two paid survey checks saved, along with some other images for use with later posts. The first check was from Opinion Outpost, which lately has rivaled GlobalTestMarket for being the highest paying survey company currently in my repertoire. This time I saved up $50 worth of points before cashing out.

Additionally, I have received $10 PayPal payments recently from Lightspeed and Creations Rewards, along with two more $5 payments from Pinecone Research.

Meanwhile, check payments are beginning to arrive from my relatively recent discovery of Livewire. This company works somewhat differently from most of the others that I have had experience with so far. They do not have any kind of system for members to log into accounts or accumulate points. Instead surveys are sent by email on a first-come-first-serve basis, and if you manage to complete a survey, the incentive amount is sent to you as a separate check. After initially receiving a $4 check from them that I have since deposited, this $10 payment arrived a few days ago and gave me a chance to scan the image.

Livewire accepts a broad range of demographic profiles but is geographically limited to United States residents. Unfortunately, they do not seem to have any kind of referral or affiliate program. However, their “projects” as they call them are easy to complete, and I have not had any problems with them regarding crediting or payments. Yes, for curious searchers out there, this means that they are not a scam. Meanwhile, if you happen to live in the USA and want to sign up, you can do so here.

Today I received a newsletter from Dush Ramachandran, Vice President of Business Development at Clickbank, a well-known affiliate network for selling information products. The company is getting ready to launch Spanish language versions of their sales forms and order processing pages, making it possible for affiliates and product vendors (publishers) to target their marketing campaigns toward Spanish-speaking regions of the world. They are also introducing the ability for customers to purchase Clickbank products in other currencies besides the U.S. dollar. French and German language capabilities are set to be implemented shortly after the Spanish language platforms are in place.

This is good news for me and other Clickbank affiliates because it opens up the possibility of geo-targeting advertising campaigns outside of the usual “first tier” countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia) without having to worry as much about language difficulties. For things to become fully globalized, the product publishers will still need to create versions of their products and sales pages in other languages, but I expect this to happen fairly soon for most of the popular and well-converting products. Meanwhile, you can read about the details of Clickbank’s latest announcement in the newsletter below.

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Rod Baker of Share Ad Space and Million Hits Lotto fame is getting ready to take out the virtual trash, according to a new program update released yesterday. Earnings rates and advertising revenues in the traffic exchange and PTR industries have been declining over the past two years, at least in part because of too many junk paid-to-promote (PTP) types of sites infiltrating the traffic exchanges and diluting the value of credits and purchases for serious advertisers. Such sites are typically littered with banner ads, popups, and sometimes downloader Trojans or other nasties that irritate and annoy surfers to the point of boycotting the programs altogether.

The SAS owner, along with webmasters of related programs, are hoping to clean up their respective niche industries by implementing stricter requirements on what types of sites are allowed to be displayed to the viewers. Hopefully this will result in a smoother surfing experience and better conversion rates for advertisers, which will in turn increase earnings possibilities for the members.

I have had generally favorable experiences with SAS during the three years that I have been a member there. Although not always active with the surfing, I have purchased advertising credits for low rates in the past and have been gradually distributing these among various affiliate pages. The results are nothing spectacular, but I have made enough in commissions through sales of Clickbank products to offset the cost of advertising purchases and still have a small profit left over. After the proposed changes go into effect on April 1, I might start building up more credits at SAS and the newer Million Hits Lotto site so that I can increase the possibilities of making future sales. Meanwhile, here is the full text of the latest update:

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Throughout the first quarter of 2008, there has been a noticeable increase in traffic here at Karlonia.com. After the initial launch of this blog back in March 2007, traffic had been increasing very slowly until I finally reached the 100 visitor mark last December. More recently, however, the pace has really picked up. This morning I woke up to discover that I had managed to bring the traffic levels to over 500 24-hour unique visitors for the first time in the site’s history:

Although higher traffic numbers are usually encouraging, the best news about the recent totals is that none of this is low-quality “garbage traffic” such as autosurfs or bots. In fact, after manually counting up the visitors from search queries that Firestats was able to detect and display, I arrived at a total of 242. Additionally, there were another 21 visitors from the Live Search bar that Firestats did not display the full queries for, and there were also several visits in the referrer list from other search engines such as Dogpile, Excite, Alta Vista, the CNN search bar, Technorati, a German search engine called Ottosuch, and several other lesser search engines, bringing the actual organic search traffic total closer to 300. I’m also bringing in more visitors from Entrecard, blog comment links, and “clicks of curiosity” from other webmasters who discover my URL in their referrer stats.

As a benefit to my readers, I will use the rest of this post to summarize and describe what I have been doing to bring in the traffic and provide some tips for newer bloggers to accelerate the traffic building process:

1. Smart SEO: After the first few months, I realized that it would be difficult to rank for any highly competitive keywords unless I could get backlinks from some major authority sites. But for a site like mine, this is very difficult because I just don’t have the popularity or insider connections to pull off such a feat. However, I discovered that I could often rank well for lots of other keywords that were less competitive but still received significant search traffic.

   I put together a strategy whereby I would do SEO research and optimize my pages for targeted keywords before publishing them, with the goal of bringing in at least 5-10 visitors per day for each page. By doing this, I reckoned, the multiplying effect of having many content-rich pages would add up over time. By the numbers, 5 visitors per day times 200 pages yields 1000 daily visitors, which will hopefully be enough to pass critical mass and allow unsolicited natural linking to occur, thus allowing my SEO operation to run somewhat on autopilot.

   This strategy worked to some extent at first, although I still had problems with pages dropping into Google’s supplemental and omitted results, while others seemed to pop in and out of the SERPs intermittently even when I received good rankings. The big breakthrough came about two months ago when I began aiming inbound links at specific pages that I expected to rank well instead of simply getting more links to the site’s home page like most people do.

   Most of these inbound links have come from blog commenting. After publishing a new keyword-targeted page, I would seek out other blogs (preference was given to DoFollow, but I did not use these exclusively) that had pages with content and keywords similar to my own. Then I read through the other blog’s article, left a non-spammy comment, and repeated the process with a few other blogs until I had at least 5-10 good links pointed at the page. In most cases, I did not attempt to put keywords into the name field of the other blogs; the only exceptions were instances where it was clear that the site owner was openly allowing this practice.

   Within a few days of gaining the backlinks, search traffic to the target pages increased, but better yet, this traffic has remained and become more reliable because the pages have attained a certain “stickiness” and are not dropping in and out of the results anymore. Another beneficial side effect of this strategy has been an increase in crawling frequency to non-targeted pages, which has caused older pages that I had completely forgotten about to gain a foothold in the SERPs and bring in traffic for all sorts of interesting “long tail” queries.

   The main disadvantage to this method is that it requires a fair amount of time to find relevant sites, write comments with substantial content, and set the links for each page, especially since I have over 300 pages and am publishing a new one every day. However, I am hoping that once the traffic to the site reaches a certain critical mass, other sites will begin linking to my pages naturally without me having to expend so much effort to acquire the needed links.

2. Entrecard: Participation in the Entrecard system has provided a nice boon to Alexa rankings and has complemented the search traffic nicely by drawing in visitors from the webmaster community along with members of the general public who are arriving at this site through the search engines. In order to increase Entrecard traffic, I have used multiple tactics including reliably reciprocating drops, purchasing low-cost (in terms of credits) advertising at lots of different sites, and dropping on popular or active sites. I will also occasionally drop on “newbie” blogs in order to get some fresh faces in front of my site and increase the chances of gaining more repeat visitors in the future.

   I try to use up my maximum allocation of 300 card drops per day whenever possible, which allows me to rack up more credits and purchase more advertising on other people’s widgets or through the shop feature. Amazingly, as of this writing, I have managed to climb into 5th place out of 197 blogs (based on advertising price) in the Internet marketing category. There are still a few more things I can do here, such as actively participating in Entrecard’s forum or getting an article published on their blog, but I am only one person and there are only 24 hours in a day.

3. Scratchback widget advertising: I am beginning to pick up a significant amount of traffic coming from the various sites where I have purchased text link ads through the Scratchback widgets, and these ads may be having a small favorable effect on SEO as well. Scratchback is a system where you can make a small donation (tip) to another site owner by clicking on an open link in the appropriate widget. These donations are small cash amounts, usually in the $1-5 range, although they can be as high as $25 depending on the preferences of the site owner.

   In exchange for the tip, you are allowed to place a text link ad for your site and even choose the anchor text. The main limitations are that you only get 20 characters of text and the links are nofollow (in order to avoid being penalized by Google for paid links). However, not all search engines recognize nofollow and it still provides a good avenue for traffic, especially if you can find a relevant site for your text link placement.

4. Social directory and community sites: The BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog widgets on many sites have provided an opportunity for me to gain much exposure by simply visiting other sites that are members of these particular networks. When the other site owners see my little avatar appear on their widgets, many of them will click through to my profile page and eventually my blog, resulting in a steady influx of new visitors.

   Meanwhile, I have had many people add me to their friends lists at BlogCatalog and leave messages on my profile pages, giving me the opportunity to visit other sites and leave appropriate comments. Although I haven’t been nearly as active with these types of sites as I have with Entrecard, the traffic is ongoing, and my brand name (Karlonia) is steadily being distributed onto an increasing number of other people’s profiles and lists.

5. Blog commenting: Although I have tended to regard blog commenting as a relatively convenient SEO tool, the original purpose of this medium was to allow the commenter to give feedback to the blog owner and join in a community style discussion similar to a forum or bulletin board service. Even though I have now established my own site and become semi-addicted to SEO, I have not completely forgotten about the original spirit of commenting. I have occasionally left rather lengthy and informative comments on other people’s blogs whenever I found a post that really interested me or saw an opportunity for me to contribute some of my ever-growing store of knowledge to the readers.

   Because there is the ability to place links back to my site in the URL field, a well-placed and useful comment can be a decent source of traffic from curious visitors to the other site. Over time, if one can leave enough quality comments on lots of other sites, the accumulated hits can add up to a significant and diverse traffic flow.

6. StumbleUpon: I am relatively new user of this particular venue, but I have received some nice bursts of traffic from it occasionally. A few of the other Entrecard members have Stumbled this site and a small sampling of its pages; however, I have yet to explore the full potential of this system. From my experience, it works very much like a manual traffic exchange with no timer on it. By clicking the “Stumble” button on the toolbar, you can keep surfing through a nearly infinite number of web pages and can even control which ones you see to some extent by choosing preferred category tags. Actually doing the stumbling can eat up a lot of time that could be used for other tasks, but it is still a good way to gain exposure to new websites that would otherwise remain undiscovered.
   
   
   
   

   Well, that about wraps it up for the major traffic sources that I have tapped into thus far. Of course, there are still more promotional avenues out there that I have not gotten to yet, such as PPC (pay per click), email lists, various offline advertising methods, and the relatively new Project Wonderful. Meanwhile, if you have any other useful traffic building tips to share, feel free to use the comment section to describe your discoveries.

Earlier today I received an email from my mother alerting me to an article posted by Dennis O’Reilly at CNET News.com. The article describes a handy little freeware program called Auslogics Disk Defrag that is supposed to be able to defragment your hard drive faster than the standard Windows utility can. After downloading the software and trying it out myself, I can confirm that it does work very efficiently and managed to finish the defrag process on my main drive in about four minutes.

Although the exact value of disk defragmentation is debatable, most experienced computer users recommend it as a routine maintenance operation to keep your computer running smoothly and prevent severe slowdowns. The process organizes your files more neatly on the disk and maximizes use of your free space to store additional files. It also reduces the wear and tear on the mechanical parts of the drive because they do not have to spend as much time accessing program files if they are in one location on the disk as opposed to being scattered all over the place.

Before you actually begin the defrag process, it is a good idea to go to Control Panel >> Add/Remove Programs (or Programs and Features if using Vista) and remove any applications that you are no longer using. You can also do a disk cleanup to remove any temporary Internet files and empty the Recycle Bin. This will free up more space on your drive and prevent fragmentation later after these files are eventually removed. For example, I had a few old PC games left on my drive that I was not playing anymore, so I was able to free up a few gigabytes of space before I even started defragmenting.

When this is done, you can install the Auslogics utility and open up the initial screen. It has a nice little pie chart that shows you the actual size of your disk, how much of it is occupied by various files, and how much free space you have left:


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After discovering an relatively large number of search query questions last week, it’s time to pick up where I left off and deal with the remaining long tail keywords that were descriptive enough to warrant a response. If you have any additional queries that you would like me to address, please mention these in the comment section below.

1. What Is Meant by National Supremacy? - Generally speaking, this refers to the idea that the interests of a specific nation or its government are held to be more important than those of international or local entities. More specifically, it usually refers to a clause in the United States Constitution that gave the federal government power to “trump” (that is, supercede) any laws that were made at the state or local levels should there be any conflicts among the different levels of government. For a more in-depth explanation of this, see my previous article, National Supremacy: What Does It Mean.
2. Literacy Rate Soldier (Civil War) - Assuming that we are dealing with the American Civil War (1861-1865), the literacy rates were surprisingly high. According to James McPherson’s What They Fought For, the literacy rates were estimated at 90% for the Union soldiers and 80% for the Confederate side. I’m not sure about literacy rates for participants in civil wars of other nations; you will need to specify the nation in your query so that I can research this.
3. which atms do not charge non customers - While I know from personal experience that USAA rebates customers for using non-affiliated ATMs, there are a few other banks that do not charge customers for ATM services or at least reimburse the fees. Some of these are included in my previous article on How To Avoid ATM Surcharge Fees.
4. Why did sailors bring citrus fruits on voyages - After a certain time period (approximately 1600, but this varied significantly according to country and region), sailors began to resupply their ships with citrus fruits whenever they could because they figured out that eating these could prevent or cure scurvy. We now know that the reason for this “miracle scurvy cure” has to do with the fact that citrus fruits contain copious amounts of vitamin C, the lack of which eventually leads to scurvy.

   Another reason that citrus fruits were brought along was simply to add variety to the diet. Because of the lack of refrigeration during the Age of Sail period, food choices on long voyages were usually pretty limited, consisting mostly of salted meat, dried bread, dry grains, and any root vegetables (potatoes, carrots, turnips, etc.) that could be stored for long periods of time. Whenever sailors had the opportunity to resupply their ships with fresh fruits and vegetables they readily did so, for these foods were welcome treats for them considering their situation.

5. how to cool down a beverage - Besides for the obvious choices of simply putting it in a refrigerator or freezer, an even cooler (pun somewhat intended) way to cool down a beverage is to place it in a bowl of ice with salt water.
6. how to make vinegar at home - This can be done by using some unpasteurized vinegar as a starter culture, adding fruit juice to it, and allowing it to ferment. More details of this process can be found at the article on How To Make Vinegar.
7. how to write a letter to an editor of a newspaper - See my previous article that explains how to learn the oft-neglected skill of writing letters to the editor. In general, you will want to keep it short and simple, back up assertions with facts whenever possible, and avoid rude or inappropriate language.
8. should you change your wordpress permalink format - If you are still using the “ugly” default permalinks with the question marks in them, then yes, you should change these to the date and name based format like I have or use a “prettier” custom format. For a nice little tutorial on this (pictures included), see my article on How To Change Your WordPress Permalink URL.

After several months of consideration and debate, I have finally decided to start an “English Usage” category here at Karlonia for the benefit of my beloved readers. I am planning on making this a weekly feature similar to the search query answer posts that I have scheduled to run on Sundays. Because there are so many common mistakes that I see people making on their published blogs and web pages, I should have an ample source of material for this series, especially if I address each issue in separate posts as opposed to making casual mention of several issues and then lumping them together in one post. This means that there will be plenty of time to cover the most common English usage issues in detail before we get around to more esoteric topics such as whether or not it is grammatically correct to end a sentence with a preposition.

Before I begin the series of lessons that will explore each issue, I will use the remainder of this post to explain why it is important to learn how to use the English language properly, particularly in its written form. Before you actually publish a written work, proofreading it and correcting any errors is important for the following reasons:

1. Having clean copy helps you maintain a professional image and makes it more likely that your written documents will be taken seriously and provide favorable results.
2. You will be able to communicate more effectively and greatly reduce the possibility of any misunderstandings. By contrast, if your writing is sufficiently riddled with errors or includes non-standard forms of English such as IM (instant messaging) shorthand or “leet speak”, a substantial portion of your audience may not even understand what you are saying.
3. Depending on the situation, some types of errors that are not corrected in time can wind up causing you much embarrassment later and can even make you look stupid. For example, if you look closely at the image in the upper left of this page, you can see that the words across the front of the basketball players’ T-shirts read “West Virgina” instead of the correct name West Virginia. While I’m not exactly sure what a “virgina” is, I can think of two very similarly spelled words that provide some interesting mental associations. The original photo can be found at Ad Goodness.
4. Doing the proper proofreading and getting it right the first time will prevent the possibility of having to spend money on reprinting paper documents or spending extra time editing web pages or blog posts after publication because they contain embarrassing errors.
5. Perhaps the most important but least recognized reason for proofreading is that there are many errors that cannot be caught by spell checker software but will still make a writer look very ignorant if they manage to slip through and become part of a published work.

To illustrate this last point, consider the example of this “spell checker poem” written by Janet Minor:

I have a spelling checker
It came with my PC;
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I cannot sea.
I’ve run this poem threw it,
I’m sure your pleased too no,
Its letter perfect in it’s weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.

Although a standard run thorough a spell checker would not detect any problems, there are actually twelve English usage errors in the above quote, most of them involving homonyms. In case you didn’t notice them all on the first reading:

• four = for
• revue = review
• sea = see
• threw = through
• your = you’re (”you are” is also correct, but would mess up the rhyme scheme)
• too = to
• no = know
• its = it’s (or “it is”, but this would also alter the rhyme scheme)
• it’s = its
• weigh = way
• tolled = told
• sew = so

Finally, this humorous video titled “The Impotence of Proofreading” by Taylor Mali provides a good example of what an unpolished piece of writing can sound like when critical mistakes are not corrected before publication. For a printed copy of Mali’s 3-minute speech, see his website at TaylorMali.com.


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Earlier today I ran across a video that deals with an aspect of blogging that I have been thinking about a lot lately: monetization. Although I seem to be doing well on the content creation and SEO side of things by bringing in an increasing amount of organic search engine traffic through on-page optimization, backlinks to internal pages, and bum marketing methods, actually monetizing this blog is an area where I have lagged behind. I have managed to pick up a few affiliate sales of Clickbank products and a few signups to the free-to-join programs, but there are still many areas of monetization that I have not explored, including the ever-popular AdSense.

After watching the video from SEOmoz.org, it turns out that I may be on the right track somewhat by using affiliate links instead of starting off with AdSense. However, Jeremy Schoemaker (the interviewee in this particular segment) also mentions the use of direct ad sales through 125X125 pixel squares similar to those have become popular for advertising through Entrecard and Project Wonderful. With regard to pricing, Schoemaker suggests that we allow the advertising market to determine this based on the level of pricing that can be sustained while keeping the available ad slots full. I may try this later if I can overcome the technical hurdles involved with the ad placement and payment processing.

The video itself is about 11 minutes long and consists of an interview between Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org and Jeremy Schoemaker, a professional blogger known as “Shoemoney”. I have placed it after the jump for your viewing pleasure:

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Although I had always suspected that the bottled water craze was mostly marketing hype, John Stossel’s study of bottled water vs. tap back in 2005 revealed that many Americans are even more clueless on this issue than I had previously thought. Meanwhile, this article by Jan Harper approaches the issue from a different angle. In this piece, the author raises concerns that the bottled water companies, in their attempts to satisfy the rampant consumerism of the clueless masses, may be contributing to water shortages or other environmental problems in underdeveloped countries. Admittedly, I haven’t fully researched this particular aspect of the bottled water issue, so if any of you have additional information that is relevant to this particular topic, please add this to the comment section below.

Sales of bottled water are steadily rising and have been for the past five years, according to Washington based NGO (Non-Governmental Organizations). This is good news for business, but not so helpful for third world countries where safe drinking water is less than plentiful and drought is a constant threat.

Just one third of the money spent on bottled water in Western countries with adequate drinking water supplies would double the availability of clean, safe, drinking water in these countries.

The problem is further compounded by all the energy needed to bottle, extract and transport this water to the end user. Water bottled in some developing countries is being extracted at such a rate that it is affecting the water supply locally. There has recently been discussion on this in the Southern Indian state of Kerala where the water in the underlying rock is being extracted faster than it can replenish itself.

The problem with the aquifer in Kerala has been exacerbated by the Coca-Cola company which takes large amounts of water for the manufacture of Coke and bottled water. Local farmers reported a problem with brackish spring water which was affecting their crops. It is thought that cracks in the bedrock have allowed fertilizers to seep through and contaminate the water. A compromise has been reached on this but similar problems exist in other areas of the world.

Worries have been voiced over the depletion of underground water reserves in the Great Lakes region of the United States and the growing bottled water industry has been blamed for this.

Nestle, the world’s largest seller of bottled water, announced last year that it had designs on the underground water supply around Orwell, Oswego County. The region’s deep springs are a very lucrative and valuable resource so Nestle is not without competition. Environmentalists are battling against the project, but even their warning that bottled water uses up fossil fuels and adds to global warming seems to make no difference.

Bottled water is a luxury in parts of the world where there is a readily available supply of safe drinking water, but it is not a solution in areas with inadequate supplies. The only effective solution in the latter case is to provide renewable sources of supply and cut down on the environmental pollution factors that accentuate global warming and affect climate in these areas.

In addition to the more obvious benefits like not having to commute to classes, with good professors and management online college courses can help prospective students in other ways that may not be readily apparent. In this article titled “Dream A Little Dream”, Heather Long recounts her experiences with a particularly helpful instructor who not only assisted with the coursework, but motivated the author to rediscover her passion for writing and eventually turn it into a rewarding career.

I returned to college at the age of 28. I was ready to get my degree finally, eight years after having to leave school to care for my ailing grandmother. I attended part time at a local community college and following the birth of my daughter, discovered this brilliant feature the college offered: I could take classes online.

The situation was ideal, especially with an infant daughter to care for and no readily handy babysitters to cover for me should I need to attend physical, on-site classes. I’ve always been willing to try something, even when I was filled with trepidation, so I signed up for my first class which was a Humanities study on the History of the Trojan War and its metamorphosis through literature and film.

To my absolute delight I found an instructor who not only understood the needs of students learning in an online atmosphere, but promoted communication as her number one method of teaching. She responded to emails promptly with explanations for any questions I had and in depth analysis of work submitted.

Her name is Diane Thompson and she was more than willing to work with me when I got behind because my daughter got sick and was always ready with a kind word and encouragement. I completed the Troy class, having thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience. I was still working towards my degree and I was delighted to find out that Diane taught another class that I would need to take.

I signed up for the course immediately. The same generosity of spirit and encouragement existed in this course as it did in the last. Not only did she critique the work I submitted, but pointed me towards sources that could help me improve it. One of the first assignments I was required to write for the class was an essay about overcoming a personal problem. Her guidelines required that the student feel comfortable sharing this information because the essay would be posted for other students to read as well.

I thought about the assignment long and hard, finally deciding to write about an addiction I developed to online games. I discussed the history of the problem, when I became aware of the problem and how I worked to relieve myself of the problem. It was a difficult essay to write because it exposed a flaw I felt very badly about within myself.

Diane’s comments were a profound relief after I turned in the essay. She found it thought provoking and completely understandable from the viewpoints I presented. She felt that I addressed the issue as best I could without overtly feeling sorry for myself or trying to paint a false picture. We’d exchanged a couple of emails over the content and where it might be improved stylistically when Diane dropped a bombshell on me.

She suggested that I try to sell the essay to a magazine or online publication. She felt it spoke a great deal to the common person and put a growing problem in a light where it might be better understood. I was flabbergasted. I freely admit to staring at her email and while deeply pleased by her faith in me, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.

All my life, I have been a writer. I love to write. I’ve written reams of information on countless subjects and dozens of short stories. I’d always put the idea of being a professional “Writer” off in the category of someday, a someday when I might have more time to “devote” to my art. I wrote as much back to Diane and she wrote back and encouraged me to try anyway. It might not sell, but then again it might. No one said I needed to make fifty thousand dollars on a first sale.

What could it hurt?

I can honestly say that because of this wonderful encouragement this teacher took the time to devote to me, I’ve begun to firmly establish myself as a freelance writer. I’m more than halfway through a novel. I’ve taken writing courses and found online writing groups. I’ve found support and friends who are experiencing similar problems while they tackle a challenging new career and I’ve never been happier about a choice than I am about the one to take the risk and try to submit that piece.

The piece itself, to this date, has never sold, but it has led me into a bright and beautiful new world. For helping me to realize that my dream, I have to thank Diane Thompson. Diane is a brilliant instructor who shares her encouragement, understanding and intelligence with her students at the Northern Virginia Community Colleges.

If you’re looking to buy a house or other type of property and need a mortgage loan, there is usually a fair amount of paperwork involved and information that needs to be collected. This article by Susan Keenan describes some of the things that you will need to have at the ready to make the initial qualifying process a relatively smooth one.

So, you have finally taken the move and decided to purchase a home. Now, you need to get a mortgage so you can pay for it. It’s important to understand what you need to bring with you so that you can avoid any snags that might delay the process.

Once you have selected your lender, whether online or in person, it’s time to pre-qualify. In order to do this, you need to gather a few things that might not be readily accessible.

Make sure that you bring the following items for each person who will be named on the mortgage: pay stubs for the last four weeks, W-2 forms for the last two years with employment history including your employer’s name, address, and phone number, proof of any additional monthly income, including commissions or bonuses, and your list of monthly expenses, including other loans, credit card debt, or child support and alimony payments.

Sometimes other pieces of information are important as well. Therefore, if you have any of the following items, bring them with you to substantiate your claim: copies of any retirement income, pension checks, and alimony or child support payments that you have received. Plus, bring any of these if you have them: a divorce decree, social security award letter, or disability letter.

Even if you are applying online, you might still need these documents for dates and amounts. In some cases, you won’t have the document because it simply does not pertain to you. In other cases, the lender might not even ask you about it. Get it just to be on the safe side.

Special circumstances exist for those of you who are self-employed. You will need to have the following documents handy: federal tax returns for the previous two years, balance sheets for the previous month, loss statement for the previous month, and profit statement for the previous month.

Remember that anyone co-signing the loan will need to provide his or her information and to supply copies of his or her documents as well. Having all of this stuff ready and available can speed up the process to become qualified for the mortgage.

Plus, you need to find out the methods of payment that are available to you should you incur any expenses during the application process. Can you pay with a credit card? Is an electronic withdrawal okay? Do you need a certified bank check or will a personal check suffice?

Once you make it through the pre-qualification process, it should be smooth sailing. It may take a day or even a few days for your application to become processed and approved. Be patient and wait it out. Once you have your approval, then you can really relax.

Photo credit: The image in the upper left corner is a photo of an original handwritten mortgage document dating from December 5, 1894. After squinting at the handwriting for a while and looking at the larger sized versions, I determined that the mortgage was for “four messuages” in Stafford county “to secure £800 and interest”. Kudos to Dan Catt for this very interesting find!

If you are accustomed to eating only store bought bread, baking your own from scratch can be a very satisfying alternative in terms of both freshness and taste. Another advantage to this method is that through experimentation you can come up with a practically infinite number of flavors and varieties, such as this relatively healthy version of apple cinnamon bread created by David Hamilton. It is designed to reduce unnecessary calories and fat while retaining a sufficient amount of sweetness and taste.

This is a delicious and healthy version of traditional apple cinnamon bread. We completely eliminate the oil, and use whole wheat flour to replace most of the white flour. We also cut back on the eggs to reduce the cholesterol. For the carb conscious, the recipe works well with sugar substitutes.

This versatile recipe can be made into loaves for healthy but decadent tasting dessert slices, or formed into muffins for a sweet breakfast treat. Either way, the resulting bread is rich and satisfying with just the right amount of sweetness.

Ingredients:

1. 2 cups all purpose flour
2. 1 cup whole wheat flour
3. 1 ½ tsp cinnamon
4. 1 tsp baking soda
5. 1 tsp salt
6. 1 egg
7. 1 cup applesauce
8. ½ cup egg substitute
9. 3/4 cup sugar (or equivalent sugar substitute)
10. ½ cup brown sugar
11. 2 cups apples (diced without skins)
12. ½ cup walnuts (chopped)

Preparation:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare two loaf pans (or a muffin pan)
• Combine the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, salt and mix completely.
• In a separate bowl, mix together the applesauce, egg, egg substitute and sugars (or the brown sugar and sugar substitute).
• Combine the wet and dry ingredients and mix in the walnuts.
• Separate into two loaf pans and bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes. If using a sugar substitute, be sure to check after 25 to 30 minutes as this will tend to decrease cooking time.

If making muffins, the yield is approximately 16 standard size muffins. Muffins should be checked after 15 minutes.

As a follow-up to last week’s post on my designated search query awards, I have looked through my statistics for the past week and selected the queries where searchers were asking specific questions. In the remainder of the post below, I will answer these questions and include links to my previous posts in cases where I have an article with relevant information.

After receiving a positive response on last week’s post from another blogger through the Entrecard system, I am considering the idea of making this a “Sunday newspaper column” type of feature where I will compile the search queries from the previous week, answer the most interesting questions from the list, and comment on any significantly humorous or unique queries. By studying my own traffic patterns and reading comments from other webmasters, I have determined that there is a general tendency to have relatively low traffic on the weekends. Perhaps for this reason, many bloggers do not post on weekends or will at least take Sundays off.

In my case, I do not really want to stop posting on weekends because it would break the one post per day pattern that I have established since the beginning. However, doing a Sunday recap of the searches might be a good compromise. These types of posts would be relatively easy for me to do because there would be no extra research required other than looking at my stats, and writing the content would be easier and more enjoyable than it is for the typical information-packed, educational keyword-researched article. Therefore, without further rambling, here is this week’s search query and answer session:

1. what is the difference between federal and state minimum wage - Assuming that you are talking about the USA, some states have mandatory minimum wages that are higher than the federal levels. In all cases, employees must be paid at the higher wage rate regardless of whether that is state or federal. For a more detailed explanation of minimum wage law complications, see my previously published minimum wage essay; near the bottom of the article I have included an additional update that addressed these types of issues.
2. globaltestmarket scam? - No, Global Test Market is not a scam. They are actually one of the better paid survey companies out there, and I have confirmed payment from them. I even managed to post a screenshot of the check in my GlobalTestMarket payment report back in November.
3. What is the difference between ignorance and stupidity? - I wrote an essay on the ignorance vs. stupidity issue a few years ago and published it here at Karlonia back in April. In a nutshell, ignorance denotes a simple lack of knowledge about something, while stupidity occurs when a person has sufficient knowledge but persists in illogical behaviors that are contrary to that person’s own interests. Alternatively, others view stupidity as the incapacity to learn or retain knowledge, possibly due to brain damage or genetic factors. Both definitions could be considered valid according to most dictionary definitions.
4. how to cut julienne style - See my article on how to make julienned zucchini pasta.
5. how does usaa rebate atm fees? - I happen to know this one because I am a USAA customer. ATM fees are rebated at the end of each month and will show up on your bank statements as a deposit. There is a limit on such rebates of 10 withdrawals per month or $15 per month in total surcharges.
6. globaltestmarket, get more surveys - To get more surveys through GlobalTestMarket (and most other companies), be sure to fully complete your profile information and take any introductory surveys that allow you to list your interests and shopping preferences. If you have other household members besides yourself, it helps to include their information also whenever you’re prompted for it (the other household members do not actually have to take the surveys). This will increase the chances that your profile and interests will match up with what the market research companies are looking for, thus resulting in you receiving more surveys and making more money.
7. how much money can be made with bum marketing - Actually, there is no limit to how much money can be made through bum marketing, which is why it is such a good skill to learn! The exact amount that you will make depends on how many articles you write or publish, how many links you have going to your websites or affiliate programs, your overall SEO skills (determines how much traffic you will get for each article), the quality of sales copy and conversions for your chosen products, and several other factors that are difficult to precisely predict. In general, the more articles that you can keyword target and publish (with appropriate affiliate links or landing pages included), the more money you will make, but there is no exact formula.
8. how to bum market - See my article on how to do bum marketing (caution - it’s rather long, so get your favorite beverages ready). I have included a step-by-step explanation of the process, complete with helpful and motivational emails from the “gurus”.
9. how to dry out a cell phone in rice - In my article on how to fix a wet cell phone, I have included a short video that addresses this exact topic. Basically you just need to wrap up the phone, put it in a bowl of dry rice, and let it stay there long enough to absorb all of the moisture before attempting to reconnect the phone to a power source.
10. how to prevent ants naturally - This has been a surprisingly popular topic, probably because of the trend toward environmentally friendly “green” solutions. In my article on how to get rid of ants in your house, I have included below the original author’s article several natural, “organic” methods for preventing, repelling, or eliminating ants that do not involve the use of standard pesticides.
11. does theraflu prevent the flu - Unfortunately no, TheraFlu and other such pharmaceutical mixtures only help in suppressing the symptoms of colds and flu, not the actual flu virus itself. This is one of those great medical quandaries that has frustrated me greatly, presumably along with rest of humanity - how is it that we have such advanced medical technology that can work wonders in saving human lives in certain instances, yet in all of these thousands of years, we still cannot reliably prevent or cure the common cold or flu? All I can say for sure is that whoever does manage to come up with a cure for these annoying illnesses (or even a reliably effective preventive measure) will stand to make more money than I will ever need in my lifetime. Unless, perhaps, I can substantially increase my life span, but that is a whole other issue.

    Okay, I actually have a few more queries in the queue, but this post is already over 1000 words (supposedly the optimum posting length is 500-900 words because people get tired of reading if it’s much longer than that), so I suppose I’ll wrap it up for now and carry the others over to next week. Meanwhile, if you have any favorite keyword questions that you would like to have answered, you can always mention these in the comment section below. If the topic is anything within my area of knowledge or research, I’ll answer it or maybe even write up an article on it if you have a sufficiently juicy keyword.