A little rant

It seems a lot of younger bloggers are agreeing amongst themselves to click on each others AdSense ads. This is considered as fraud and your account will be closed. Reread the rules. You did read them the first time round when you signed up, didn’t you? One of the reasons why I feel strongly about this is as I run Adwords ads myself I’m the one who’s footing the bill for this practise, I have to pay every time that one of my ads is clicked on. Though Google do adjust costs now and then to compensate. The idea of AdSense is to provide ads which are relevant to the blog posts appearing at the time so that advertisers are confident that their ads are being seen by a public who are interested in their products.

If you do get banned from AdSense you can appeal. Be careful to keep your appeal within the limits of the word allowance or your unfinished appeal will automatically launch itself. You lose any money owed to you as well – as explained in the rules when you sign up (see above).

Tempted by gold?

For centuries gold has been recognised as a safe way of preserving wealth. Today, more than ever before, it is important to invest carefully so that savings retain their value. Gold really comes into it’s own for this purpose, as well as being beautiful to look at. Gold can be bought on the forms of ingots or coins. American eagle gold coins are one of the most popular coins for buying gold as an investment. These coins are in fact, legal tender and have a face value of $50. Gold bars can be bought 10-ounce, 32.15 troy ounce and the 10-ounce gold bullion ingot, all are hallmarked which is a way of certifying the weight and purity of each bar.

Where to buy your gold? It is best to buy though an experienced company like Monex with a specially trained staff in the field who are there to help guide you through your choices, organise delivery and safe storage. Their representatives are always available to discuss the addition of gold to your investments.

How to get things done (Short and sweet version)

I'm very good at not getting things done.

I suddenly realised where I’m blocked . At the beginning of a task I see a long chain of events which need carrying out. This always seems overwhelming to me. I must remind myself; once a task is started it’s not long before you’re half way through - and once you’re halfway through you’re almost finished!

Now I must sit down and try to work out why I got blocked in the first place….

BlogExplosion - It worked!

Thank you to everyone who took the time to write to the owners. I don’t think we’ll ever know how many letters there were. It’s good to know that people can pull together and obtain results.

We now have a new administrator who has been given powers to clean up the forums. The spam has gone so if you have a question it is more likely to be seen and answered by someone. Why not pop by and say hello.

The administrator has many tasks to catch up on. Hopefully soon we’ll be able to allow more volunteers help with approvals, both of blogs and banners. There is a huge a pile of unanswered tickets to deal with and information to be updated. All of this will take time. For more details see the forums.

Blogexplosion: The time has come

A letter has been composed for everyone to send out to the company that owns Blogexplosion on 20th February, you can copy the letter from here.

Or you might prefer to go here for more instructions and access to a rich text format of the letter. I think anyone outside the US would probably like to send their letters a little earlier. The addresses are supplied. Just pick who you would like to address your letter to.

There is no reason why you shouldn’t compose your own letter if you want to. Please be polite. A lot of effort has gone into this project by people who care about the blogging community. If you belong to BlogExplosion, please help.

And yes, you will be seeing this post on all of my blogs

Thanks to thewatchlist, MJTaylor Spicybugz, bokonon, kelson, SelinaKimsey, sightlydrunk, bluegrassBloggo, McSpazz, lando411 and others I have surely missed for keeping the forums looking like forums. A special thanks to thewatchlist and MJTaylor who have put in all of the work for the letter.

What happened next

Continuing the eBay story. As you may know from previous posts I declared myself as a professional eBayer and started up a business of my own in April 2007. We were encouraged to do this by eBay and Paypal and I was at the end of unemployment benefit. This year eBay announced that they didn’t expect sellers to become professionals until they were earning 2000€ a month! If you are earning that kind of money that is considered as a reasonable salary here. Do we assume that people are earning that in their spare time? As well as a salary from another job? I know that we have to work hard to earn our money, which is nowhere near 2000€ a month. My advice to anyone thinking of taking up eBay as a way of life is sell expensive items. It’s very hard to make a living on low price articles. Fortunately Rob and I are passionate about the postcards we sell

Update on the shop

In May we opened our eBay shop as there had been some changes to the eBay system of charges. The charging system changed back and we kept the shop on. In August we had reached our 1000th postcard in the shop. We are selling postcards in the shop at a steady trickle and covering our costs. We’re still waiting for feedback on the May experiment with the charges. It certainly saved us some money. I’ll be writing in a later post about what happened next…

Sex and the City Contest

If you’re a fan of the show Sex and the City and you live in the UK, you could be the lucky winner of a DVD box set and two tickets to see the film. All you need to do is click on the link here and enter your email address. Good luck!

Rare and beautiful

Collectors of rare coins might be interested in one of the Monex companies; Monaco Rare Coin. Not only will you find an exceptional collection of rare coins but you will also benefit from the usual expertise of Monex’s highly trained experienced staff. For those who have never thought of collecting rare coins it is an excellent way of investing and with the help of a company like Monaco Rare Coin you can build a portfolio with confidence.

Beautiful rare gold coins are amongst the most popular items which you will find on the website. Coins struck many years ago with a short history of how they came into being. Fascinating as well as beautiful. You can also apply for a free trial subscription to “The Rare Coin Insider” which gives invaluable advice on the market.

A year ago already?

Looking through my archives for inspiration I discovered that it is just a year ago that the computer blew up. Fortunately we didn’t lose anything that was in the memory but it was a close call. We’ve also learnt to make sure that the ventilation system is kept clear of dust etc. I now own a USB key and have learnt how to use it. Every cloud has a silver lining