Karlonia.com

Earlier this week, one of the Entrecard members sent me a message asking about the correct usage of bear and bare. Specifically the query involved the common phrase “bear with me”, and the person was asking about which form of the word was the proper spelling. Since I have not posted an English usage topic for the past few weeks, I figured that I might as well pass on the information to the rest of my readers in case anyone else is still confused about this issue. Afterward, I will list some other uses of both bear and bare that fall outside the scope of the above query but that you may want to know for future reference. Here is a redacted version (irrelevant portions of the text have been removed) of my response to the Entrecard member:

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Today I ran across an interesting little article that has been showing up in forwarded emails and occasional blog posts recently. Labeled as “Bar Stool Economics”, it is a simplified version of why “progressive” income taxes (that is, taxes that are weighted heavily against people who are relatively wealthy) do not work very well even when we try to lower the overall tax burden. As I have mentioned in a few previous posts, as long as taxes cannot be practically avoided, I would much prefer a consumption-based tax to any type of income tax because people at all levels of income would have an element of choice in how much tax they pay based on their actual spending. Of course, there are also several other advantages, but I will leave those as material for another article.

Our Tax System Explained: Bar Stool Economics

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

1. The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
2. The fifth would pay $1.
3. The sixth would pay $3.
4. The seventh would pay $7.
5. The eighth would pay $12.
6. The ninth would pay $18.
7. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.

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Earlier tonight I received a pleasant surprise in my email when I received a message from Greg Wieder, Director of Publisher Relations at the Panthera Network, notifying me that I had been approved for the program and that I would be receiving an approval mail within a few minutes. He also apologized for the delay (it had been nearly a month since I originally sent in my application) and explained that he had been away at Ad Tech in New York and was also having to deal with a large backlog of fraudulent applications. A few minutes later I did receive the official approval mail:

Hello Karl,

Congratulations. We have reviewed your application and you have been approved as a Panthera Network publisher. You may now log in to our private partner area to obtain creatives to promote all of our products and offerings. To log in, please go to www.pantheranetwork.com and log in with the following:

Username: xxxxxxxx
Password: xxxxxxxx

Your unique affiliate ID will be automatically populated in the creatives.

Please feel free to send us your comments and suggestions at any time. Our goal is to be your favorite affiliate network and your first choice when it comes to running campaigns. As a welcome bonus you will earn $150 when you generate your first $1,500 in commissions. To qualify, the $1,500 must be generated within sixty (60) days of your signup date.

Thanks,
The Panthera Network Team

PS: Don’t forget our referral program. The Panthera Network offers a 5% referral fee for any publishers you send our way. That’s 5% for an entire year! So sign up friends in the industry and earn when they earn.

This is very good news because it significantly expands the opportunities and options I will have for monetizing this site and giving it the “critical mass” it needs to finally become a truly successful operation. I am already familiar with many of the offers available under the Panthera Network as I have encountered them through various get-paid-to (GPT) types of sites whose owners promoted the offers to members and kept a percentage of the revenue.

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The November issue of the SendEarnings Newsletter has been released, this time with some interesting facts about “Black Friday” included. When I first started reading, I thought this was a reference to the “triple witching hour” phenomenon that occurs around the last Friday in October when various options contracts expire simultaneously, which often has the effect of introducing greater than normal volatility in the stock market. However, the newsletter was actually referring to the Friday after Thanksgiving, which many people regard as the beginning of the holiday shopping season (others consider this period to begin on the first day after Halloween). Apparently, the Black Friday thing started back in the 1800s as some type of “gold rush” phenomenon where prospectors were able to have a dramatic effect on the financial markets of the time.

Meanwhile, I am beginning to make significant progress with the SendEarnings program. Just before I received this newsletter email, I had received another message informing me that one of my previous offer completions had been credited, putting me over the $30 minimum payout threshold on my account. Now all I need to do is redeem the earnings and I should receive another check. An image of one of my previous checks from the program can be found here.

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Homemade applesauce is a delicious, healthy, and versatile food that can be eaten alone or used to boost the flavor and health content of other foods and recipes. This article by Kristie Leong provides some suggestions for using applesauce in ways that you may not have thought about but that can help to supplement a healthy and tasty diet.

Apples are a rich source of flavonoids which are thought to reduce the risk of certain types of cancer, promote heart health, and even protect against vision-related problems such as cataracts. They are also high in pectin which helps to lower cholesterol and promote weight loss by giving a feeling of satiety.

With so many wonderful health benefits, it’s obvious that apples and homemade applesauce should be a part of your diet. Although you can buy canned applesauce at your grocery store, it’s worth the extra effort to make your own apple sauce as the taste difference between homemade and store bought versions is remarkable. Plus, you don’t have to worry about added sugar and preservatives when you make it yourself. You can find a variety of recipes for homemade applesauce on the Internet.

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Earlier tonight I found out something that I didn’t know before — apparently coupon discounts are not exempt from sales tax. In other words, if you buy something and use a coupon to lower the price, you still have to pay tax on the original price of the item, not the discounted price that you actually pay. As this article by Shannon Christman explains, the rationale behind this is that the tax is applied to the price that the original product vendor actually receives, which includes both the amount that goes to the merchant and the amount of the coupon, which is usually paid by the manufacturer.

Interestingly, although the law in most states requires that sales taxes be paid on all coupon discounts, the last part of the article suggests that individual stores do not always enforce this. Out of curiosity, I might start paying attention to coupons more often so that I can run an experiment on which of our local stores are actually collecting tax on the coupon amounts.

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After several weeks of consistent increases, overall traffic actually dropped off slightly last week. Halloween (October 31) was a particularly slow day, with a noticeable decline in search traffic volume across the board. Google seems to have reshuffled the rankings of my pages again, as it has been prone to do every few months. Rankings for some pages have increased, most notably on quote-related pages and my Fair Tax page, which is now at #1 for its main keyword.

At the same time, however, Google has dropped rankings on several other pages, causing a slight recession in my overall statistics. I can probably counteract this by gaining more backlinks to the low traffic pages and getting them re-crawled by the various search engine spiders. However, blog commenting, my most reliable method of getting backlinks, is very time consuming and the motivation for it is increasingly difficult to obtain with so many other things I need to be doing to supplement the revenue from this site until it reaches full-time income status.

Nevertheless, it is still possible to have some occasional fun after doing the keyword research and then watching the search queries and comments come in with so many stories about how people are dropping their cell phones in various liquids and freaking out over frogs. The other long tail queries can be interesting to look at too, such as those in this week’s sample below.

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This article by Julianne Kelsch provides a brief explanation of fixed rate and adjustable rate mortgage loans. Overall, fixed rate mortgages are best when prevailing interest rates are low (like they are right now, for instance) because you can lock in these rates and do not need to worry about your payments suddenly increasing whenever the Fed decides to raise the rates in the future. Adjustable rate mortgages may be worth considering during periods when interest rates are higher and you are planning on selling or flipping the house within the next few years. Meanwhile, if you have already decided on the basic loan type and are simply wondering about how to deal with the paperwork, you can look at my previous article on What to Bring When Applying for a Mortgage.

You’ve finally done it — found the home you are going to buy. Now it’s time to procure financing. The loan institution is going to give you a few different loan/mortgage options. The two most popular are the fixed rate mortgage (FRM) and the adjustable rate mortgage (ARM). As a homeowner you will need to have at least a basic understanding of both loans to make an informed, educated decision.

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