Rising from the Ashes of Something We'll Call "Flu"

I got sick (not flu) and somehow lost my blogging (and homeschooling) momentum. I wonder when I'll start feeling a hundred percent, so I can get my groove (the nerdy, bloggy kind) back. Btw, I have not renewed my Adgitize ad. As most adgitizers know, the going monthly rate was upped $10. Can't escape inflation, I guess. So, yeah, basically, I've been doing 100 clicks lately for that hundred points. Between trying to get the hundred clicks out of the way and feeling blah, my online time has not exactly been constructive. I'm vacillating about Adgitize though. I think I just need a little nudge before purchasing another ad. I miss the effortless traffic, lol. I also learned from one of the bloggers I met last Saturday that there's actually conflict between Adgitize and Nuffnang, but only at Glitterati(sp?) level. No strategic move from me just yet though. I still have to understand how Nuffnang really works, lol. I've recently joined so I'm still trying to get a feel for it. Maybe one of these days I'll sit down and look into it, eh? It took me months before I did that with Adgitize, lol.

Finally Doing Twitter!

It seems all I ever do online is click on Adgitize ads and drop EntreCards, lol. The endeavor pays anyway (not necessarily in money terms all the time, but the effort is worth it - traffic-wise and otherwise). Btw, I'm also doing Twitter now. Hopefully, I can do paid tweets soon. Follow me and I'll follow you back (http://twitter.com/wahmivy). Need to build up my network first, of course.

My Recent Attempt at Finding a Regular WAH Job

I recently interviewed for an online, work-from-home tutoring job. The interview happened via Skype at 10pm. Naturally, Marguerite had to take a long nap, guaranteeing that she would be awake for the interview. Thankfully, my MIL was here so she was able to take care of Marguerite while I had my interview. Not that that stopped the little angel from trying to sabotage me, lol. She threw all kinds of tantrums, waking up the dead with her shrieking wails (she was in the bedroom and wanted to come out here and take my headphones), which the interviewer naturally heard. Anyway, the job doesn't sound like something I could take on. I would have to make myself available after school hours and that's just not possible. First and foremost, Marguerite would be awake then. Second, I'm usually getting dinner ready around that time. Oh to find a regular gig that's uber flexi-time.

Understanding Adgitize

After months and months of using it, I think I finally get how Adgitize works. From earning .02 a day, I went up to .60. I don't know if advertizing is worth it especially since they doubled the monthly rate, but it definitely increased the traffic at Spinning Lovely Days (I finally tried it out a month before the rate increase took place - I think I'll go the half-full cup route and say, good thing I was able to try it out at a cheaper rate, and not, I should have started advertizing sooner). Anyway, other stuff I found out (should have known all along if I had taken the time to understand the program earlier) is I should have placed one set of ads above the fold, so as soon as somebody visits, an ad view is counted. Oh, and that's another thing. I started displaying a second set of ads to make a total of 10 ads. I also moved my Entrecard widget to below the second set of ads, so my Entrecard droppers will be sure to view the second set as well. This bears no conflict with Entrecard since the publisher no longer gets EC credits for cards dropped on the blog. More importantly, I finally learned (most Adgitize users know this right away - guess I'm just thick, lol) that you earn click points by blog hopping and not just clicking ads on your blogs. Anyway, I'm still learning to get better at it, like get techniques on how to increase page and ad views for more points. Maybe that'll take me another few months, lol. Anyway, I found this article helpful on how to maximize belonging to Adgitize. Check it out.

The Word on Work-Online.org

Some time ago, I joined work-online.org upon a fellow blogger's referral. It sounded like an okay site. They pay you to write "stories" (essentially keyword articles - 400 words minimum, btw) and they pay you 25 pence for each one while you haven't completed 100 stories. Go over the 100 count and they pay you 50 pence per story. Go over 300 and they pay you 75 pence per story. Once you have 500 stories under your belt, they pay you a whopping pound (a quid! gah! about 77 php for 400 words!) for each one. That's really not a lot, but to justify going for this rate (since I usually get paid by local publications 1k+ php for a 500-word article)- um, my understanding is that you can write about anything so long as you include the necessary keywords. Research isn't necessary (or bugging an expert to quote in your article). You get opps in bulk. You can eke out 400 words in 3 mins without the usual writing standards you adhere to. I was just waiting for the right time to start trying this site out when I came across this discussion in MyLot. This person has earned about 65 pounds and has yet to be paid. She said she'd contacted the admin a few times and she always just got assured that she would be paid, except that there has been no follow through just yet. She said she'd update us if and when she gets paid, but no word from her yet. I think I'll wait before writing anything. I'm definitely not referring anybody yet. If the word on the (cyber) street remains bad, I'll ditch it with no regrets.

Why I'm Ditching Socint

So I've really cranked up the effort on the online paying gigs. About a month ago, I learned about Socint.com from one of the discussions on MyLot. Whoever did the posting referred to the site as a PT socialize site, pretty much like MyLot. I joined up and later found out that it's not as cut and dried as MyLot, which allows you to earn actual money to reply to threads, send messages, etc. What happens with Socint is that you earn points for activities you do. These points will then allow you to join their raffles. It's like paying to buy a raffle ticket. The prizes include $10 to your Paypal or AlertPay account, iPod shuffles, additional Socint points (which will enable you to join more raffles), etc. Naturally, I was interested in the cash prize, the raffle ticket of which costs about 250 points (depending on how active you are - I wasn't -, amassing this many points can take anything from a day to a year, lol. It took me a month.). I think that particular raffle had a limit of 100 tickets, which meant that I had a 1 in 100 chance of winning. Naturally, I didn't win since I've always sucked at raffles, which then leads me to my point: I'm not a gambler, very rarely a risk taker and Socint is just not for me. The discussions are also not worth my while as I have yet to find a truly intelligent thread there. I can just wisely transfer my efforts there to the clearly more profitable MyLot. That's my take on it. Let me know if you differ in opinion. My mind is open to being convinced otherwise.

La Freakin WAH Vie

Aargh. I spent about two hours this morning, churning out 3 articles consisting of 6 short paragraphs. I thought they were pretty easy tasks to do, but apparently there's more to them than meets the eye. All three articles were rejected on grounds that they didn't meet required criteria. I reread the instructions and I'd be very surprised to find out which criterion I had not met. This is my first time to receive rejection when it comes to MyLot tasks and it's very off-putting. I really don't understand it. The quality is the same as previous works I had submitted. I felt confident about them as they were interesting to me. I had responded to the rejection requesting a specification of the unmet requirement. I'm still waiting to hear. The really bad part about this is that my daughter woke up early and was having a meltdown because I was not paying attention to her. I kept on telling her, just two more minutes, but since I'm OCD about checking and rechecking, I took longer. Priorities, WAHM! Naturally, I feel very guilty.
And then with Microworkers, I've performed 3 tasks thus far that went kaput or something while I was completing the task. That's so unfair. I submit requirements and then I get a message that the task ceased running and will be up and about in a little while. Hmph. I keep on forgetting to report this.
C'est la freakin WAH vie!

Making Cents

Hi. I'm trying out a few paying sites. I've been burned and bored by PTC and survey ones and have mainly been doing paid blogging and MyLot, but recently I decided to try my hand at Pickjack (pay to do trivia), Socint (pay to be social), and Microworkers (pay to do tasks). Of course, I'm still doing ads and have accounts under Adgitize, BidVertiser, and CMF. Hopefully, the cents from these different ventures will add up to a reasonable amount. If you have recommendations, let me know.

Read My Pics

Have you heard of Visual Talking? It's a novel way of communicating by sending pictures instead of actual words (although you can add text at the bottom of each pic to avoid confusion). It's fun if you've got plenty of time and if you want to be creative. The silly can definitely capitalize on this program. :)

Feel the Crunch

WAHM business has been slow for me lately. It's partly due to laziness, of course, but there are just too few opps I'll be willing to take on. The tasks over at MyLot (the ones I've been counting on to really beef up my Paypal account) are feeling the pull of the economy probably. The writing tasks' worth have been slashed down to half. I'm not yet desperate to give in to that rate. The key word is "yet", lol. Anyway, I still have tasks I completed weeks ago that have not been approved yet. I don't know what the deal is with that. The task provider usually takes only a few days (if not right away) to approve or reject submitted tasks.

A dNeero Facelift

They're doing some upgrades over at dNeero. Seems very slick! It's all great, but more convos are even better. :)