Karlonia.com

Earlier this morning, I made another serendipitous find of an apparently legitimate work-at-home program called KeyForCash when I discovered this article by Shanna Coon. Normally I am rather skeptical of programs in the data entry category because this is one of those areas where there has been a significant amount of deceptive advertising. Many such programs are sold as ebooks or home study courses but are not what most of us would think of as data entry jobs. In reality, most of them are actually instructions for how to advertise on AdWords and make money as an affiliate or publisher; the “data entry” part comes in when you type the relatively small amount of text that goes into creating the ads.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with trying to make money with AdWords, being successful with it generally requires a substantial amount of knowledge and experience with marketing, not to mention the fact that there are initial costs involved in paying for the clicks. Real data entry jobs are not supposed to work like that — there are no up-front costs to get started, and you are actually paid for the typing, not for advertising products.

Supposedly this Key For Cash program is more like actual data entry, but since I have only recently discovered the site, I have not had the chance to put it through a full vetting process yet. If any of you have previous experience with this program, please share any relevant information with our readers. If the operation is indeed legitimate, it could be a good way to make some extra money without having to actually write articles, maintain a website, or do any advertising, which at this point would be a welcome relief for this particular webmaster.

Earning money at home is a big craze these days, especially with gas prices hovering above $3 per gallon. Low wages, decreased by the cost of fuel and day care, steer many to search for opportunities allowing them to stay home while earning a living. One of the harder markets to gain reputable work in is data entry. The pickings are slim; however, legitimate work-at-home positions do exist. KeyForCash is one of the honest, paying sites offering data entry work for good typists.

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This article by Ashley Ludwig is a review of the website LibraryThing.com, an open source book sharing platform that allows readers and collectors of books to share their personal favorites with other literary enthusiasts.

The Thing is no longer just the infamous billboards that grace I-10 between the Arizona and New Mexico borders, but a craze that is sweeping the nation’s bibliophiles.

Created by Tim Spalding, who keeps an interesting and informative blog on the site, LibraryThing.com is a phenomenon in its own right. LibraryThing.com is a unique open access website that allows its members to catalog, review, share, and discuss their personal library shelves with the world at large. The novice user can upload 200 titles for free, unlimited titles for $10 a year, or for a $25 investment, users can register an unlimited number of texts in their online library for life. The question remains, how does this website benefit the average book lover?

Through the magic of a highly functional online application, users simply copy the ISBN (International Book Serial Number), or Title/Author combination of the books within the collection, and LibraryThing.com searches out the matching bibliographic data that is available from libraries worldwide. A savvy user can determine which libraries or websites to draw from, limiting your choices to your top three selections. Your online library and profile is created and then the fun really starts.

According to the site, users can enter books they’re reading or their whole library in an easy, library quality catalog to connect users with people who read the same things. With the novel use of tagging and word-clouds, site users and visitors can find out which topics, titles and authors are all the rage across the globe. Titles are matched to cover images, and if no image is provided, users are encouraged to scan in and post their own cover images to share with the general LibraryThing population.

LibraryThing.com encourages users to generate their own reviews and even acknowledges well-written or starred reviews for other users to read. The user friendly platform allows users to easily tag their titles with keywords. The tags then allow you to search comparative titles within their growing database of books and can be viewed in the general Zeitgeist section of the site, which needs to be viewed for its wealth of information. Users can also rate the books in their collection and arrange bibliographic information in predetermined formats or in a unique manner. In the spirit of the open source movement, users can also share titles with other members, and ultimately join forums of discussion on an array of topics.

Whether for personal or professional use, LibraryThing.com is a tool that is changing the way that people interact with books and fellow book lovers online. It’s definitely worth the trip.

TNX.net is relatively new text link advertising service that can be useful as part of an overall website promotion strategy. Unlike many other text link advertisers, they do not buy or sell links directly but act as a broker between webmasters and advertisers for text link placement. This distinction is important because search engines like Google often frown upon direct paid links and will attempt to filter out their importance when calculating rankings.

The TNX model allows advertisers to purchase credit in the form of points which can then be used to order text link placements. When ordering links, advertisers have several options and ample flexibility. For example, not only it is possible to choose the exact anchor text, but a substantial amount of non-linked text can be placed on both sides of the actual link to make it appear more natural and less like part of a “link farm” page. Users can also choose the general category of sites that they want to advertise on, geo-target according to language, and include ranges of approximate traffic gauges such as Google PageRank and the number of Yahoo backlinks.

When determining the cost of links, PageRank appears to play the largest role. For example, when I tested the system as an advertiser several months ago, I purchased $10 worth of points and was able to order 600-800 PR 0 links, but when I tried to include the PR 1 category, this number was reduced to 20. Beyond PR 1, the cost continued to increase exponentially. The other factors also had some substantial effects. Certain categories were worth slightly more than others, and choosing only the higher ranges for Yahoo backlink numbers increased the cost somewhat.

When the time arrived for me to place the actual order, I wound up sticking with the PR 0 links and spread them out among several of my internal pages and aimed only a small portion of these at the home page. After the order was finalized, I noticed that not all of the 600+ links were placed at once. The process continued for several weeks, and I was able to log in during this period, look at the individual sites, and cancel orders on any sites that were not actively running the links or were returning 404 not found errors. TNX automatically refunded the points for any canceled sites and put them back into my general account pool.

The results were a mixed bag at first because it took some time for the links to be found by search engines and counted as backlinks. In terms of actual traffic, the links did not bring in enough to be really substantial. I noticed that many webmasters were placing the links in some pretty strange locations, many of them were barely visible, and the page content was often irrelevant compared to the anchor text. However, they did eventually have an overall positive effect because they directed the search engine spiders toward some of my internal pages that they had previously passed over, which raised rankings and traffic for these pages across the board. Additionally, many of the obscure pages that carried my links later picked up more traffic and “link juice” themselves, thus passing these benefits on to my site indirectly.

Of course, it is also possible for webmasters to make money by carrying the TNX links on their sites. The requirements for this are fairly straightforward: the site has to have been indexed by Google, must not be using a free hosting service, and must be able to run PHP or Perl scripts so that the TNX widget will display properly. A few days after placing the appropriate code on your site, the advertisers’ links will begin appearing on designated pages and will allow you to earn TNX points. These points may be cashed out for PayPal funds or used for your own advertising.

Finally, TNX also has a reasonably attractive referral program. Members can receive 13.3% of TNX points earned by referred webmasters and 5% of the funds paid into the system by referred advertisers. As with normally purchased points, these can be sold to TNX for cash, used to advertise sites, or even traded to other TNX members.

Currently some of the TNX staff members are running a special promotion through the Digital Point forums where you can receive 2,000 points free by posting your TNX user ID number in this thread. If you have already signed up for the program and have not collected this bonus yet (which includes me - I just recently found out about this), you might as well drop a post in there and collect the free points.

Today I have the opportunity to review one of the most popular IT sites on the Internet, BT.com. BT stands for British Telecommunications, a UK-based company entirely owned by BT Group, a PLC (Public Limited Company) that is traded on both the London and New York stock exchanges. The company’s activities primarily encompass the fields of IT (Information Technology) networks, broadband Internet access, and worldwide telecommunications services that include operations in some 170 countries.

After looking deeper into their site, however, I discovered that in addition to servicing large corporations and small business, BT.com also offers various pc help solutions for individual home users as well. According to their Home IT Support page, they offer technical support over the telephone for issues related to computers and some peripheral devices such as printers, webcams, or iPods. This service can be purchased on a subscription basis for a 3-month period for less than £10 per month (approximately 20 USD at current exchange rates), or you can save a little by subscribing for 12 months at a rate of £8.99 per month. For those who do not want to be locked into recurring payments, there is also an option to pay a one-time fee of £25 if you just need to get help for one particular problem.

In addition to phone support, BT now offers home visits for the technically challenged. In this scenario, one of their IT engineers can come to your residence and perform various computer repair and setup services such as installing new operating systems or software, setting up wireless Internet access, or performing a “health check” on your PC to detect and remove viruses, spyware, adware, and other assorted nasties. Prices for these services normally range from £90-120, but from now until March 31, 2008 they are offering a discount of £30 for all categories. Interested customers can make an appointment with one of the BT technicians through their simple online ordering process.

Overall, BT.com has a well-designed site that is devoid of unnecessary clutter, loads very quickly, and is streamlined for e-commerce and rapid communication. It also has an impressive PageRank of 8 and two-letter domain name, features that are surely the envy of every webmaster out there who hopes to turn their website into a lucrative business. I haven’t even bothered to check the number of backlinks yet, as it would only remind me of how far this site has to go in order to catch up with the big guys. But if you happen to live in the UK, or live elsewhere but desperately need help with an IT-related issue, you can always tap into BT.com’s ample resources to alleviate your technically induced headaches.

This article by Carole-Anne Franco is a review of a website and online game called Flash Flash Revolution. While proofreading the text, I noticed that the basic mechanics of the game (using the numpad to time key presses with the game’s musical rhythm) reminded me of the little dancing sequences in Sid Meyer’s recent remake of Pirates! Gold. Although these dance scenes seemed too girlish for some players, they provided a nice distraction from what eventually became a rather boring (and sadly unmoddable) pirate game.

With a sudden rise in rhythm based games out there (Rock Band, Guitar hero, Dance Dance Revolution, Bust-a-move, etc…), when you can find a good free online rhythm game it’s a joy. Flash Flash Revolution is a website that offers two games: Flash Flash Revolution and Spin it up!. The games are completely free and always will be - so they claim.

Flash Flash Revolution is a reincarnation of Dance Dance Revolution, except you don’t play it with your feet. You play it with your fingers. The concept is to match the arrow keys on your keypad or numpad with the arrow keys in the game. You have to press them at the right time though. If you hit them exactly at the right time, you get a “perfect”; If you’re slightly off, you get “good”; if you’re a little more off and you get “average’; if you completely missed it you get “missed”; if you missed it by a lot you get “boo”. When you hit the arrow keys in a timely manner, you get life points added to you life bar. If you miss, you get life points deducted from your life bar. To win a level all one has to do is have a bit of life left in the life bar. Once you lose it all, you lose the game.

Beginners of the game don’t have to worry; there are skill levels for all. Usually songs are listed on order of difficulty. When you win a level, you earn credits. Those can be used to purchase more songs at the FFR shop. Once you beat certain songs you also become eligible for the Skill section. These are songs based on the skill levels you were able to beat. Sometimes you earn tokens or secret songs. Those are much harder to get but not impossible.

Other than these categories, you can also choose songs from certain genres. There are 2 sections for dance (it’s just too popular). There’s are also sections for rock, hip hop, classical, arcade and funk music.

The game also features multiplayer. While you can’t tag team with other players (unless you share a keypad), you can face off other players. You can either find enemies in the multiplayer room or challenge specific players in the Challenge room. Be careful of challenging though - you could lose money.

Unfortunately, since the game is online, having a bad connection could cause problems. Thankfully there is a low resolution version of the game if you don’t mind having to squint your eyes a bit.

Then there are two in-progress versions of Flash Flash Revolution, R2 and Resonance. Resonance isn’t an official game technically because these are songs whose arrows were designed by users. You can upload your own song and arrows for it by making a Sim file or you can play other people’s Sim files. Unlike the regular game where each song has only one skill level, these songs will have 4 skill levels each. You choose your level prior to picking a song.

Meanwhile, R2 is meant to resemble more its ancestor Dance Dance Revolution. Once again, you choose your skill level prior to choosing a song. However, the way this is setup it doesn’t really matter as you can easily choose a song beyond your abilities. Of course that is because this game is still being worked on.

For those who play R2 now, it can be noticed that the game seems harder to play. If you come in late or early on a key, you’re supposed to get a “good” or “average” rating. However, often the game won’t recognize slightly off entries and just categorize them as misses. Since the game is more like Dance Dance Revolution, it features its harsher grading system. You earn far less for each right entry and lose far more for each wrong one. Add that with unrecognized keys and you have one of the hardest rhythm games of all time. If you can’t hit at the exact time, you might as well not even bother.

Now it’s time for Spin it Up!. This is a completely different game. Spin it Up! is a game where you have a circle. You are given an arc as a playing field. (For those who don’t remember geometry, an arc is a section of the edge of a circle). In this game your arc is a quarter of the full circle length. You try to match up your arc with incoming arcs at the right time. In other words, you see a wave coming out of the center and you have to swing your mouse (but not the keypad) around in order to catch it before it leaves the circle.

As you go up in levels, you will need to move a lot faster and have odd movements. This will require some thinking because sometimes it will look as though it releases two or more waves at the same time, but they’ll actually have a small time difference. You have to figure out which one hits the circle first in order to get to them all in order. The game has a rather high learning curve and is pretty difficult. The easy levels are more adapted but also are far more boring. Once again, multiplayer is available.

If you look at the end of the navigation bar on the website, you’ll also see a link to another game called MeTrivia. This game is actually not held on the FlashFlashRevolution website and has nothing to do with rhythm based games. It’s a trivia game. Since it’s not on the same site, you’ll have to make an account on metrivia.com to play it; you can’t use your FFR account.

However, you are not required to make accounts to play on either website. Accounts are good if you want a profile and for the website to keep a ranking. Otherwise you can just play without an account as a guest user. Whether you’re in for a numpad game or a mouse game, this site offers some interesting choices.

One way for a fledgling website to gain traffic and encourage repeat visitors is for its administrator to add interactive features such as polls or surveys. A new service called Easy-Poll.com is offering webmasters a way to install such features on their sites free of both monetary costs and on-site advertising.

Website owners can register for a free account at Easy-Poll with a minimum of information - only a first name and email address is required for signup and confirmation. After registering and logging in, members can use the simple interface to choose between multiple choice and yes/no polls, and then choose among a few different styles that affect the background and button colors for each poll.

For multiple choice polls, it is possible to include up to 10 different options for answers. After the member provides the necessary data such as the URL of the website, the poll question, and the desired answer choices, the new poll can be displayed on the member’s website for visitors to begin recording their opinions. The polling data is tracked and stored on Easy-Poll’s servers, making it convenient for webmasters because no extra databases or software needs to be installed in order to run the polling widget.

Easy-Poll also works with many popular online services, making it possible to create myspace surveys, xanga surveys, or blog polls with platforms such as Blogger or Typepad. Each member can create up to 99 yes/no questionnaires or multiple choice surveys, enabling you to collect data on a wide variety of topics. This can be useful for bloggers with significant numbers of regular readers because they can use the polling data to assess the particular preferences of their audiences and monetize accordingly.

Meanwhile, the Easy-Poll.com site itself definitely appears to be in the beta stages. The content is rather sparse in places; for example, the “Terms of Use” page is currently empty save for the title, and the Help/FAQ section contains only two questions. It is also unclear exactly how the site is generating revenue. There is no charge to webmasters for running the polls, nor is there any type of advertising or revenue sharing agreement. My best guess is that the site is offering the free polling service as a way to build a large user base and traffic stream, after which additional paid services or on-site advertising can be added later.

At any rate, as long as the service is free and there are no unacceptable terms, it is still useful for certain applications. After I build up a larger readership for this site, I might try it out myself as a way of assessing how many people are actually reading the content.

If you are the kind of person who likes to shop around for the best deal before committing yourself to a potentially expensive purchase, websites such as Savebuckets.co.uk can help you save lots of money during your online shopping adventures. Savebuckets does not actually sell any items directly; rather, they function as a convenient price comparison guide that lets you compare prices of products across a wide range of online retail outlets.

After discovering the site earlier today, I decided to try it out by testing the main search engine for “PC games”, a category from which I actually buy products occasionally. The search returned 167 results. Interestingly, the top result was not an actual PC game but was instead a Logitech joystick, while the fourth result was a full PC system designed for gaming enthusiasts. Most of the other top results displayed some type of PC game software, however, and upon clicking on one of the product images, I noticed a convenient menu on the left side of the screen that listed most of the major categories and genres of games.

This led me to what I was actually looking for - after clicking “Strategy”, I was able to browse through an ample selection of interesting titles, some of which were being offered for surprisingly low prices from UK shops. Unfortunately, many of the lower-priced titles were out of stock, but I still found some good ones that were available through Amazon or other major retailers.

Overall, Savebuckets has a simple but quick-loading and functional design that allows for speedy browsing of products without the hassle of heavy on-site graphics or annoying advertisements. The site is designed primarily for shoppers located in the UK, and all prices are denoted in British pounds. This is perhaps the site’s most significant drawback; if you happen to live outside of the UK, you may need to convert currencies or search for shops that are closer to your local area. Otherwise, Savebuckets is a good, all-around price comparison site that can help you find a good deal on most popular items, and may also allow you to discover lesser-known retailers offering products that you could not find elsewhere.

One of the side effects of relatively high life expectancies found in most developed countries is that there are a greater number of people who may require some form of home care assistance as they reach the end of their natural life spans. If you or an elderly relative should find yourself in such a situation, Bettercaring.com can provide information on various assisted living options ranging from home care services at your current residence to locating suitable nursing homes should the need arise. The site also provides factsheets and links to advice on relevant funding options and financial assistance issues.

From a functional standpoint, the site is fairly simple and easy to navigate. There are three convenient text buttons (labeled with a T) in the upper right corner of the home page that allow you to increase the font size of the text for better readability. The top navigation bar is color-coded and links to the main areas of the site, including care information, the search function, and a discussion section. There is also a sitewide footer bar that leads to the more business-oriented pages of the site such as the contact page, privacy policy, and a link for Bedvacs customers that resolves to bettercaring.co.uk.

Directly under the top navigation bar, there is a quick search area on the home page that will allow you to locate available care homes within a certain radius of any UK town or postcode. For a more detailed search, you can use the “care search” section to define specific criteria such as the type of care provided, weekly fee limits, and the presence of a variety of features such as gardens, lifts, or easy access to public transportation. Meanwhile, the discussion section includes a community forum, news briefs, editorial comments, and personal stories from readers.

Overall, Bettercaring.com is a good resource of information on elderly care issues. The site is poised to become more interesting and informative over time as the community forum and blog sections continue to grow and accumulate more content. The only real disadvantage that I see with the site is that the search function and much of the discussion assumes that you are interested in care home options only within the UK (this includes England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland). If you are looking for elderly care options outside of the UK, the site can still serve as a decent resource hub, but you will probably need to look elsewhere for information on specific locations of elderly care homes in your area.

Today I discovered a new site called VisionBedding.com that offers an interesting type of personalized gift service. The company specializes in making various kinds of bedding materials and then customizing them with your favorite photo images dyed into the fabric. This allows you to order specially designed bedding products such as photo blankets, photo pillows, photo duvets, and even photo dog beds. It is also possible to create your own digital images with programs such as PhotoShop and use these to make your own original bedding design.

Most of the bedding products are made from a combination of very soft micro-suede fabric and polar fleece. They can be cleaned with a regular washing machine and dryer; Vision Bedding recommends using a gentle cycle for washing and a low heat setting for drying. The colors of the dyes should not fade with washing any more than they would with normal clothing.

In addition to the customized photo options, you can also choose from several different pre-existing designs such as these from their Sports Bedding section:

Overall, there are over 500 different styles and themes to choose from. Vision Bedding can also create custom styles for you upon request.

The concept of customized bedding is an interesting one because I have never seen this kind of product offered in regular stores before. This gives VisionBedding.com an advantage over most other retail bedding outlets because they can offer a specialized service and create a unique product for each individual customer. Therefore, if you are in the market for bedding materials and would like to buy something special that no one else is likely to own, VisionBedding.com may be a good place to start.

The website SendEarnings.com, sometimes written as “Send Earnings” or “SendEarnings”, is a multi-faceted GPT (Get Paid To) program that allows members to make money through activities such as receiving paid emails, completing surveys and offers, playing online games, and referring other people to the site.

How to Earn Money

1. Paid to Read Emails - Once you are registered, the program will typically send from two to five emails per day to your designated email address. The amount that you receive for clicking on these varies from one to ten cents, with an observed average of about three cents per mail. Getting credited for these is a quick, two-step process: first click on the image that you see after opening the email, and when the next page loads, click on the confirmation link with black text that reads “Click Here to confirm reading this Email” or something similar.

2. Cash Surveys - SendEarnings allows you to complete one survey per day for a $1 reward. Most of these surveys are routed through Greenfield Online. If you “screen out” on the first try, you can keep taking more surveys until you eventually get one that you can qualify for and complete.

Occasionally, additional rewards are possible with these kinds of opportunities. For example, on the first $1 survey that I took through SendEarnings, I got lucky and was invited to a T-shirt product sample study. Eventually, I received another $15 for following through with the product test and also got to keep the three T-shirts for free after the study ended.

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Yes, here we go again. Yet another AdBux clone has surfaced, and as of this writing appears to have attracted over 5000 members already. Normally I wouldn’t bother posting about this because there are already dozens, perhaps hundreds of similar sites all using the same basic script. But this particular program that I discovered has two notable “features” that set it apart from most of the other AdBux clones. The first is that it appears to have originated in France and even has a French promotional banner.

Things get even more interesting when we begin to look at the various pages of the site and actually read the content. The home page title tag reads “Tobux really cash money”, while their explanation of the program to potential affiliates contains statements such as “advertisers trust us through our words and our offers to them offered a price mediocre”. The News page is especially remarkable; the content is approximately half English and half French, with the English portions of the text displaying such gems as “Your payout réalised in 24 hours opening worked” and “Begin dice now has to earn money”.

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