Finally I have reached the 100 RSS subscriber mark! I was close a few times getting up to 99, but never have a reach 100 until today. It is quite an accomplishment for me because this is my personal blog. It shows that people are actually interested in my posts and what I have to say.
If you are close to 100 RSS subscribers and you haven’t done the Facebook note trick you might want to try that to reach the 100 subscriber mark.
I want to thank everyone who subscribes to the blog via RSS. Knowing my luck tomorrow it will go back down to under 80 tomorrow!
Since coming back from vacation it has been hard to get used to working again. So I have setup a daily routine to help me get back to work. It has really proved to be very effective and I’m now getting more work done then before I went away. My daily routine starts when I wake up. I first check my e-mail, then post news on ThinkComputers, then post news on ThinkGaming, and finally post a blog post. That is the first half of my work. I eat something then either work on writing a review or preparing a review to be posted on ThinkComputers. With this system I fell less stressed and I am getting more work done.
Not a to-do list
A daily routine is not a to-do list. Before I went away I made daily to-do lists and they worked well, but having a routine is so much better because I do everything in a specific order and make sure everything gets done. With a to-do list I was randomly doing the tasks.
Not a Schedule
A daily routine is not a schedule either. The main reason I say that is that I don’t have a specific time that these things need to get done. Just like today I woke up about 2 hours later then the previous days, but unlike a schedule this did not affect my routine, because my routine does not have time constraints. So anytime that I wake up works for me.
Different Parts
I split the routine up into a few different parts. First in the “morning” part, which is everything I do before I eat, which includes posting news on both my sites, checking e-mail, and writing a blog post. Then part 2 is lunch. Part 3 is either writing a review or preparing a review to post. This can take a while so I usually take a dinner break in between those which is part 4. Part 5 is finished the review or posting it. Then I have free time.
It is so nice have the free time. Even Ashley said it seems like I am getting more done each day and don’t seem as stressed. If you are having trouble with time management try a route. It has worked the best for me out of a set schedule and a to-do list.
Sometimes it is hard to get motivated to do work or start a new project. One good way to become motivated is to watch a movie that will motivate you. A lot of movies can motivate you, they don’t even have to be about what you are doing. I always have a few movies lying around that are the motivators. Some are about making money, others are about doing something important. The biggest thing is that they motivate me so I can get back to work. Although I don’t want to waste 2 hours of my day on a movie, I usually only watch movies when I am really unmotivated. Here are a few movies that you might want to check out if you feel unmotivated. NOTE: There is explicit language in these clips!!
Boiler Room
Everyone has to have this in their collection. The movie is about selling stocks and how these young guys are becoming filthy rich and having everything they want. One of the best scenes of the movie is where Jim (Ben Affleck) does the group interview. One of the best quotes, “They say money can’t buy you happiness, look at the f*cking smile on my face!” Here is that clip…
Anti-Trust
The story of a young programmer who gets a job at a Portland-based software company. Sort of a spin-off of Microsoft. One of my favorite quotes in this movie is, “This business is binary, you are a 1 or a 0, alive or dead”. Here are the opening credits of the movie.
Startup.com
If you haven’t seen this it is a great documentary about the rise and fall of govWorks.com. This is a true story about the startup of govWorks.com during the dot com boom. It is very interesting to watch and reminds me of how crazy that time was. They received if I remember correctly around 20 million in venture capital and signed over 40 major cities up for the service. To bad it never worked out for them. If you have a chance check this one out.
These are 3 that I wanted to point out for everyone to check out. Other motivational movies I like include Rudy, any of the Rocky movies, 300, Glen Gary Ross, Wall Street, and Get Rick or Die Tryin’. There are probably more I am forgetting, but check some of these out if you feel unmotivated.
While in Florida we went to a restaurant called Crabby Bill’s. Of course it was a seafood restaurant. One thing that was great about it is that it was right one the beach. You could look out the window and see the ocean, they also had an outside deck. Once we were seated I looked around and the place really had a “crab shack” sort of feel to it. All of the tables were picnic tables and on every table was a huge bucket of crackers.
For starters Ashley got the crab and cheese spinach dip and I got an order of the hush puppies. Both appetizers were great. For our main course I had the 1LB of snow crab legs, which came with 2 sides of which I had a baked potato and fries. Ashley had the fried combo platter which had fried fish, shrimp, scallops, and stuffed crab. She also had 2 sides, which were coleslaw and a baked potato. Ashley’s mom and sister shared the Steamer bucket, which is snow crab, steamed shrimp, mussels, and clams. Everything comes in 1 big bucket, which was cool. All of the food was great and on each table you had cocktail sauce, hot sauce, tatar sauce, and ketchup so you didn’t have to ask for any sauces.
I would have gone there again, but we went on the last day we were in Florida. I wish we would have gone their sooner, because we probably would have ended up going there every day! Ashley’s and my meal was around $50 with tip, which is not bad at all considering all of the food we got. If you have a chance to check out Crabby Bill’s go for it, it’s great good at a great price!
Many people think there only one type on online advertising. That is not true at all. There are all different types, banner ads, text ads, contextual ads, etc. To maximize your online income you should use a mix of all different types of ads / advertising companies. You can’t rely on just one because you will only make so much. I have experienced this on ThinkComputers with Google so over the past 3 months I have been seeking out new and different advertising companies to maximize my income. So I will be telling you a little about those as well the ones I have been using for quite some time.
Google Adsense
Google Adsense is probably the most used and most popular type of advertising out there. Google is easy to sign up for and implement. Google will display text and banners ads relevant to what is on your page. These relevant ads will more likely be clicked than ads about something completely opposite of what your website is about. Click here to signup for Google Adsense
Vibrant Media
Vibrant Media specializes in in-text advertising. In-text advertising is where words on your website are highlighted with a double underline. If you hover over them with your mouse a small add will popup. What’s great about this is you don’t need a specific advertising spot for it, it goes right in your text. Add you have to do is add the code and Vibrant does the rest. Vibrant is quite hard to get into, but if you contact me with your site stats I will can contact my rep and send him your info, which should give you a better chance of getting in.
ValueClick Media
ValueClick Media is another well-known advertising company. They offer a lot of different types of ads from banner ads to in-video advertising. One thing I really like about them is you can enable and disable certain ads that are displaying. So if you see an ad that is not relevant to your site you can go in and disable it. You can signup for ValueClick Media here.
Text Link Ads
Do you ever see a row a links on the side of a page? It’s a good chance those ads are from Text Link Ads. Text Link Ads sells text ads on your site. Why not do it yourself? Well it is very hard to find advertisers and Text Link Ads has a great marketplace for advertisers to look through. So you have a better chance of selling ads through them then selling them yourself. You can signup for Text Link Ads here.
TTZ Media
TTZ Media is a Shopping.com network that provides great product banner advertisements. This is great for review sites and other product related sites. If a product is listed on Shopping.com I can make an ad out of it. It is the best advertising your can get because it is 100% relevant with what you are reviewing. The TTZ Media network is currently closed to new affiliates, but if you have a review site and are interested please contact me.
Auction Ads
Auction Ads is quite a new company, but is becoming very popular. It is a BIG eBay affiliate. What they do is enable you the user to make more money with them instead of with eBay’s affiliate program. Auction ads will display eBay auctions on your site by keyword. I have just added this to ThinkComputers and it has worked well so far. You can signup for Auction Ads here.
ReviewMe
ReviewMe really is not an advertising company. It is an online service where you get paid to review something. You list your site and set your review price and people who want exposure for their site / product will pay for you to review their product on your site / blog. Review me is a great way to make easy money. The hardest thing is getting that first review. You can signup for ReviewMe here.
These are just some of the different advertising companies out there. There is a ton! The biggest thing to remember is that you need to no reply on just 1 income source. I’ve been able to make a lot more by using different advertising companies. Hopefully you can too!
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