I Survived The First Week

I mentioned at my other blog that I got me a forty-hour-a-week job. Well, after a week in it, I have to tell you how it’s like to have a semblance of a normal job after more than a year of freelancing. It’s not that bad, actually. It’s just that I am having a hard time with Svet right now because she’s so hyperactive. But hubby’s coming home next week so I can focus more on the job. And maybe get myself an immediate raise. Tee hee. In all honesty, what I am getting for that job right now is very little. What I hope is for that pay to increase before a month is up (since there was a mention of a possible increase even after a week if the boss likes my job, which I feel he does. At least that’s what he tells me).

Anyway, if you’re really curious as to what the work entails, it’s website content writing, mostly. I was asked to do videos to promote sites but that’s just experimental. If I am good at it, then I’ll do some more videos, but if I’m not, I’ll stick with what I do best, and that is writing. I have a feeling I will suck at video-making, so I guess you won’t be seeing videos made by me anytime soon. I am working today, just in case you’re wondering. But no, we normally work only Monday through Friday. It’s just that I was five hours shy of the required 40 hours per week so I need to work on that. But I’ll do it in the evening. Mind doesn’t want to work right now, and my mind is my real boss, so no sense trying to force it to work.

I wanted to paint our walls white. It used to be pink, that’s the color the house had when we first got here. I don’t know. I guess I want a cleaner look. God knows our house has been cluttered lately. Maybe I will de-clutter tomorrow. Throw away some of the stuff anymore. Right now I am just going to look into templates. Remember when I told you about me being determined to make my own site template? I still want to, but right now it is just impossible to do. But you can wait, right? I mean, you have no choice. Hehe. I’ll sort this out once I am fully adjusted to my 8-hour-a-day job. Right now my brain is still in a big muddle from watching all those training materials.

Where To Promote Your Website For Free

I am a relatively new blogger. Started blogging with Friendster a couple of years back but slacked off due to lack of time (okay, readers). Been blogging steadily for only half a year now, and was at first overwhelmed by the wealth of information that I need to take in so that my first site would at the very least have a decent number of visitors, enough to keep me blogging. It was frustrating, at first, because I am totally clueless as to how I would go about promoting my blog. I cannot remember how I came upon LinkReferral (LR). But I am glad I did, because this is, by far, the best site that enabled me to increase my page views in the three months that I have been yapping about my life at my site.

First off, what is the LR concept? I have to say the magic word. I know you are waiting for it. So yes. IT IS FREE. You can have your site listed at LR free of charge and expect to get AT LEAST 20 visitors to your website coming from LR members. Your site can also be reviewed by other members, which is valuable if you are looking for reader feedback about your site. There is one thing that they ask from you though. To spend at least 20 minutes a day visiting the sites of other LR members in order to get you in the upper half of their listings. This is not a bad thing, mind you. For those of you who love to blog hop, then this is your chance to do it. For those who don’t, you never know. I, myself, found some great friends and pretty interesting sites through LR. This is the beauty of the directory under scrutiny, the more you visit other LR members’ sites, the higher you are placed in the listings, and the more people will visit your site/blog.

For those who are looking to earn from LR, there is also a way to do it. You can earn from referrals IF you upgrade to a premium membership, which costs $50 (one-time fee). Upgrading means that you would be paid for the purchases (advertising, upgrading and other services) of your referrals (direct and 2nd level referrals). I have yet to decide to upgrade yet, as I am still weighing the ROI (return of investment), whether I’d be able to get it back through referring other people to the site. Much as I’d like to be the guinea pig for y’all by signing up, there really isn’t enough cash on the bank right now for that. There are other upgrade benefits listed on the site and other advertising offers, although if I delved into it more, someone might accuse me of being their official site promoter (which I am not, mind you). I just want to share the beauty of the site and the benefits that it has brought to my blog. Ultimately, it’s for you to decide whether or not to sign up.

My Favorite Firefox Extensions

I have been a Firefox user for as long as I can remember. My reasons? It’s customizability and the nifty little extensions that the browser, in partnership with external developers, offers to their users. Now we have all been through the debate of who’s a better browser, IE or Firefox. Obviously, I favor the latter for surfing. Aside from the two already mentioned reasons for using it, the browser is also very user friendly. And for a dumb computer user like me, that counts for a lot. Anyways, to get to the main point of the discussion, what are the most useful Firefox extensions that are available today? Useful here, of course, would be relative term, as we use the Internet for different purposes, so functionality would vary hugely from person to person.

With this in mind, Firefox has made it easier for users to select extensions to suit their needs and preferences. They introduced the Fashion your Firefox feature (found here) which makes it a breeze to add a personal touch to the browser. Firefox recognized the differences in how we utilize the Internet, so with this, they came up with categories that groups people according to their usage of the Internet. The categories, specifically, are as follows: Finder and Seeker, Social Butterfly, Shutterbug, Digital Pack Rat, Rock Star, Decorator, Shopaholic, News Junkie and Executive Assistant. Of course, what’s included in the list are mere suggestions and do not constitute the full list of available extensions, so for a full list, you go here.

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he full list of add-ons is divided into eleven categories, namely: Alerts and Updates, Appearance, Bookmarks, Dictionaries & Language Packs, Download Management, Feeds, News and Blogging, Language Support, Photos, Music & Videos, Plugins, Privacy and Security, Search Tools, Social & Communication, Tabs, Themes, Toolbars, Web Development and Other. Now, what are the most useful Firefox extensions in the categories? Useful, as used in this context, is a relative term, because we vary in how we use the Internet (as above-mentioned). So what may be useful for me may not be as useful or may even be completely useless to another. In that light, the following list would be My personal list of the most useful Firefox add-ons that I have used and/or am using to date.

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e’ll start with themes, or that lovely add-on that lets you choose how your browser looks. My personal choices would be Office 2007 Black and the NASA Night Launch. Both are dark themes, as I have a penchant for dark colors these days. The Office 2007 theme is a sleek black theme that complements my MS Office 2007 color, while the NASA Night Launch theme is a super cool black theme that lets you further customize your browser with NASA images of your choice.

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ext important add-on, and I think this should be number one on the list, is Foxmarks Bookmarks Synchronizer. Since I discovered this add-on, transferring my bookmarks from one computer to another has become a breeze. A recent improvement, which made me love it even more, is the Secure Password Sync feature of this add-on, which gives a Foxmarks user the option of keeping passwords in sync in all your computers, so there’s no need to type it again once you transfer from one of your computers to another.

Another extension that I recommend is the QuickNote add-on. It’s a neat note-taking extension that eliminates the need to open a whole new notepad/wordpad or word document when you need to copy paste bits of important information off a web page. Yet another convenient add-on for me is the Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures. Unlike Yahoo Mail, Gmail to date does not have an option for users to insert their signatures every time a new email is composed, and this handy extension does the job. Why not just use YMail for sending emails? Well, I attach a lot of stuff with emails that I send on a daily basis, and waiting for an attachment to finish with YMail would require a tremendous amount of patience and a huge period of time, both of which I do not have. Gmail, on the other hand, attaches files in mere seconds (a couple of minutes for larger files), plus the size limit of attachments is 20MB, compared to 10MB in YMail.

Lastly, WebMail Notifier is my personal choice for mail checker. What’s great about this add-on is that it can check for your emails in multiple webmail accounts at chosen intervals. The ability to change the notification sound is an added bonus, too. I personally go here for the WAV sounds I use with this add-on, and especially like the “You have mail, mistress” sound that I hear every time I receive a new mail in my Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail account. Tee hee. I have several other extensions that I use, but I am afraid they are quite boring to discuss, so.

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here. I hope this article helped. Firefox may have flaws as a browser, but who doesn’t? I am not about to boast that Firefox is THE BEST browser ever, but it works superbly for me, and the extensions that come with it make my surfing sessions a lot easier and more fun.

myLot: A Discussion Community That Pays

A little background here on what the frack I am talking about. myLot is an online community that pays you for starting discussions, posting responses or comments to current discussions, or referring friends. These discussions can range from the utterly spaced-out “Do you eat in front of the computer?” to the somewhat interesting “Should marriage contracts have expiry dates?” Okay, so both questions were started by me and I am self-promoting, so what? This is, after all, my site. Bleh. So what I am implying here is that you can talk about anything under the sun. Unless of course it’s against the discussion guidelines, which can be found here.

As to the referral earnings, you will receive 25% of your referral’s (referrals’, if you have a lot of them) discussion and image earnings. Image earnings?! Yes. You earn something for each relevant image that you post with a discussion, provided that the image is not copyrighted. Now as for the earnings algorithm, myLot says that they “are calculated based on a proprietary model that rewards quality responses, relevant discussions and images”. They say that they do not publicly reveal how they compute them to avoid people trying to game the system. In fact, they have a discussion guideline that specifically prohibits community users from inaccurately explaining the myLot earnings algorithm. That’s fine by me.

They pay you after your earnings reach $10, but you can choose to increase your minimum payout to $25, $50 or even $100. But seriously, who will do that? I set mine at $10, so I get payout every month. They pay through Paypal, so it’s very convenient. I think they used to have another payment option, but it’s gone now, and anyway, I can’t remember what the other option was. Figures. I can’t remember much of anything else either. Anyways, I started there I think the first week of September last year, and participated steadily for three months, and then stopped completely because I had so much going on I didn’t really have extra time to go to myLot anymore.

I have earned $50.88 in the three months that I have been there (too lazy to post a screenshot. I’d post it if you request for it, though) and I am planning to go back. In fact, I think I will start myLotting later when Svet is sleeping, because this alert from several days ago from the site (some sort of a “welcome back” message to me. as if I’m special. huh.) convinced me to go back. They call this the “Stimulus Package” (makes me feel like it’s some sort of viagra or something):

Hey myLot members – feeling down about the present economic situation? Looking for a new way to bring in some extra dough? myLot is ready to help! Coming soon to myLot is a whole new way for you to increase your earnings AND have fun doing it. We’re just adding the finishing touches so keep your eyes peeled and get your typing fingers ready – new features are just around the corner.

Maybe myLot was feeling that people were becoming less interested in the site because of what’s happening in the global economy. After all, you really have to spend an ample amount of time in the site to earn (at an average) $15 a month. That’s not a lot when you think of the prices of commodities shooting up like fireworks on the eve of New Year’s Day. Admittedly, that’s what made me inactive in the site for very long. But this news is an upper. I guess I will give it a go once again, see how I fare this time.

New Look. Sorta.

Made a header tonight and I think it looks good on my site. Lately, I’ve been liking the brown and pink combination, only God knows why. Now all I have to do is create a webset which matches the colors and I am good to go. Although right now is not the best time to do it since a serious backlog of work has descended upon me and I am up to my nose in it. Haven’t started on anything else for WAHMaholic. Augh. Poor baby. Mommy’s not doing her duties well. But, at least here’s a progress. I hope to improve in the days to come. And DO tell me what you think of my header