I'm helping the economy

Not that I really want to spend all the money I've been spending. Here is the list:

• New driveway
• New pool liner
• used mini van

Those are the items we have done already. The driveway was graded toward the house and we usually had water in the basement after a hard rain. The new driveway has corrected the problem. The pool liner was continually springing leaks so out with the old in with the new liner. We also purchased an additional mini van. The purpose for the mini van is two fold, one purpose being we can use the existing van for the kids to drive, and two we want to have a newer van for our return trip to Myrtle Beach next year. Okay, the van is a luxury.

Here is the list of items we might be doing:

• Possibly a new drain field for the septic system
• fix the water softener's plumbing
  
• new flooring and cabinet for the bathroom in the basement
• new wallpaper for the kitchen

The drain field would be a big one with no option but to bite the bullet and do it. I hope we don't have to replace the old drain field The other three should be smaller expenditures that we can do out of our savings.

To pay for the big items [but not the van] we refinanced the house and took a some money out of the equity. The good news with the refi is we now have a lower interest rate and if we keep paying the amount we had been paying it will be paid off pretty close to the same time that the original loan had been estimated to pay off. The van we financed through the credit union. More on the van purchase at some later date.

To delete or not to delete - comments

My last post received a comment. I don't get a lot of comments but from time to time some makes the effort to type a comment. I'm excited to see a comment and quickly click to read the entry. This particular entry is a long advertisement of a money making scheme that I personally would not try. It requires a $20.00 purchase of marketing materials which is a red flag for me. I would be interested to hear from the blogosphere how many bloggers would remove the comment.

My first winning wager on CentSports

The parlay bet I made a couple of days ago on CentSports was a loser. I got the Giants as winners but the Tampa Bay Rays were clobbered by the Oakland A's. So once again my kind friends at CentSports gave my $0.10 with which to wager.

I decided to go back and pick the Pistons again. I know Boston was undefeated on their own floor in the post season at the time. Probably not a good time to pick the Pistons but I did...and they won. With my $0.10 bet I won $0.1739 for an account balance of $0.2739. My current win percentage is 33% and I'm feeling pretty good. My bets for today are the Spurs plus the points for $0.17 to win $0.1996 and another baseball parlay with the Angels and the Red Sox winning. My $0.10 wager would win me $0.2941. My account, if both wagers are won, will be $.7676.

Something kinda weird with CentSports. I invited my son to be my crony and he signed up and made a wager and now CentSports doesn't recognize his email address and he can't log in to the web site. I can see him in my friends list [he lost his wager by the way]. I may send him another invite and see how that works.

EntreCard contest winner

Earlier this week I wrote a post about EntreCard's new features. Part of the fanfare for these new features were a couple of contests. Well guess what, I actually won one of them!!! Yesterday I received an email letting me know that 2,000 EC's were transfered into my account with the description of contest.

Now I get to decide how to use them. Recently I have been doing a little bit of carpet bombing with my EntreCard advertising. I've be selecting a low minimum and advertising until my EC's ran out. It is kinda fun. Although I tend to have a bunch of EC's tied up waiting for other bloggers to approve my ads.

It is to bad that I didn't win the big prize but I am happy for the one that I did win.

Sports betting with CentSport

First I found Moola now I've discovered CentSports... online gambling has never been so free! Just like Moola, CentSports gives you money to gamble. Moola starts you out with $.01 and CentSports starts you out with $0.10 and in both cases if you lose all your money they give you more. As a matter of fact neither site allows you to add money to your account. You can, however, recruit your friends, family, random strangers and your blog's readers to become your "cronies" and if your CentSports "cronies" make a winning bet you benefit as well. To the tune of 5%. The site is supported with advertising which is just like Moola.

You can bet on NBA, NHL, MLB, UFC, AFL and a variety of soccer matches. There are spread, over & under and moneyline wagers. And you can select multiple games for a parlay bet.

My first wager was last night and I selected the Pistons to cover the spread. Bad pick. Not only did they not cover the spread they lost the game. So now I have a new dime to work with. I placed a parlay bet on two baseball games tonight. I'm betting $0.10 to win $0.4302...go Tampa Bay and San Francisco!

Cool new features at EntreCard

I logged into EnterCard this morning before checking my email and noticed a new tab for Linked Blogs on the dashboard. Well I went ahead and click the tab to check it out. I discovered that EntreCard now has a feature where you can link two or more of your blogs together. With this feature you can easily switch between blogs without going through the logout and log back in process. You can also transfer ECs back and forth between blogs without limits.

This new functionality made me think that it was time to add a third blog to my EntreCard portfolio. I had just added this blog on May 5th and have seen dramatic traffic increases just as I did with America's Beach Bum. So this morning I've added PSX Gamer and linked ABB and Income Alternatives. It should help streamline my EC dropping.

Also new is EntreCard's E-Book, which I'm looking forward to reading. It looks like it will walk the reader from phases noobie through expert. My quick peak indicated screenshots and how-to's.

EntreCard also has a couple of contests going on. Check out the details.

Challenge update - May 2008

Project Wonderful has been doing well compared to the other two competitors. As we have hit the half way mark for may the totals are as follows.

Project Wonderful: $0.75
Adsense: $0.22
Metal Detector: $0.00

I hope to hit the sand this weekend and breakout the metal detector. Hopefully I'll have better luck with it than last time.

I also plan to ad more Project Wonderful ad boxes to my vast web empire. This should give the Project Wonderful revenue a little bit of a boost. I may drop a Adsense ad here and there as well.

In other news I'm trying to get www.michiganbeachbum.net up and running on my brother's server. He doesn't have a static IP and he is running other applications on it so it can be a challenge. The Beach_Guy has made several posts to it and I'm going to add to revenue sources to the WordPress installation and it should be good to go.

I Signed up for SocialSpark

Well I was given the go ahead from SocialSpark to accept opportunities. Pretty exciting. SocialSpark allows blogger to make money by either posting for pay or accepting sponsorships. These are called opportunities for which your blog must be qualified to be accepted.

Once accepted for a pay for post opportunity you have a deadline to meet. As long as you meet the deadline, fulfill the opportunities requirements and adhere to SocialSpark's Code of Ethics you will be paid. The Code of Ethics are:

• 100% Audit-able In-Post Disclosure
• 100% Transparency
• 100% Real Opinions
  
• 100% Search Engine Friendly
  

As this post is my first accepted opportunity I am trying to figure out how to comply with the Code of Ethics. Okay retract that last statement. I just clicked on the opportunity reserved link and the next paged answered my questions. The next page gave me the requirements again as well as the html code to put at the end of my post. There is also some fields that must be completed once I've finished posting. They include which blog, the individual page and the post title.

As you can see from the image I hope to make $5.50 from this post with an outside chance to earn a $100.00 bonus if the powers that be at SocialSpark deem this post to be exceptional. I won't hold my breath but I can hope they will grant at least a portion of the bonus.

I've reached the required word count. I copied my post into MS Word and did a Word Count through Tools since I'm not aware of Blogger having word count capabilities.

I fully expect SocialSpark to be my most lucrative revenue source this month. Sorry to say that my other revenue sources are not that great.

My EntreCard dropping process

While dropping EntreCards a couple of weeks ago I came across a poll on someones blog asking EntreCarders what is their method of dropping EntreCards. So that gave me the idea to share my method.

I have two EntreCard accounts. I log in to one and click the left most EntreCard on my dashboard screen. I click through to that web site and make my drop. I then follow the EntreCard on the widget to surf to the next next blog and make a drop on that site. I continue to surf through and drop until I hit a dead end like a blog that I have already dropped on. While I'm surfing the EntreCard widgets I open new tabs in Firefox with each new blog and close the tabs that I've already made drops. I leave the original tab open so I can return to my dashboard and click the next EntreCard moving left to right. Sometimes I have eight or so tabs loading new pages or waiting for me to drop and close.

I like FireFox for this because it opens the new tab to the right of the existing tabs. Internet Explorer opens the new tab to the right of the tab that I'm opening the new tab from. It isn't as efficient as Firefox

After running through all the EntreCards on the top of my dashboard I then start visiting the EntreCards in my widgets queue. That's my way of saying thanks for advertising with me. At that point I'll log out of one account and log into the other and start the process all over again.

Giving SocialSpark a try

Well after the Smorty denial I thought that I would give SocialSpark a try. I created an account and inserted their code into this blog and now I wait for them to approve me.

Why am I trying to get a SocialSpark account? Well I clicked on a link for SocialCardsters under a EntreCard drop zone while doing my daily drops. This led me to a page where I learned about SocialSpark, which is kinda like Smorty, but more on what SocialSpark is and does later [if I get accepted!!!]

I setup the account last week and have neither be accepted nor rejected so far. I'm wondering if I missed a step along the way. So I've opened a support ticket with them to find out what's up.

May Adsense vs Project Wonderful vs metal detector Challenge update:
Project Wonderful: $0.32
Adsense: $0.00
metal detector: $0.00

Not a good month so far. But I came up with an interesting idea for June's challenge. Stay tuned for more information.

April 2008 Traffic Report

I set records for web traffic on this blog, America's Beach Bum [ABB], and PSX Gamer. In addition to the records ABB broke the 1000 visitor mark in April. Go Surfin' Sid!!!

New Records:
America's Beach Bum 1073
Income Alternatives 118
PSX Gamer 48

Total traffic across all web sites: 1265
Last month's traffic across all web sites: 962
That translates to a 303 visitor increase month to month.

In an effort to increase traffic to this web site I have setup a second EntreCard account. Notice the Blog of the Day topping the sidebar. I have also added an ad to Project Wonderful for this blog. I occasionally capture a visit through Project Wonderful. I can usually find an ad box where I can advertise for free if I look hard enough.

April Challenge Wrapup

April's challenge was Adsense vs ADSDAQ vs metal Detector. Poor metal detector. I only used it once and found a dime. I think that I will keep the metal detector in the mix for May's Income Challenge. I won't have time this weekend to use it because of our driveway replacement project but hopefully soon. Maybe it will break the ten cent record that it set in April.

Adsense was the easy winner over ADSDAQ and the metal detector.

Final results:
Adsense: $2.83
ADSDAQ: $.64
Metal detector: $.10

The challenge for May will be Adsense vs Project Wonderful vs metal detector. I think that Project Wonderful has a good chance of winning but I'm rooting for the metal detector. The main reason I'm rooting for the metal detector is that I actually spent money on it.