Productivity Tips

Thursday is productivity day and today’s tip is one you are going to find extraspecialy useful. When you get very busy and overloaded with work you need to make it difficult for others to pile more work onto you. I find that requiring my coworkers to do such things as speak to me only using the Klingon language is very useful. I assume that if my coworker has taken the time to learn to speak klingon in order to better communicate with me he or she must have a pretty important task for me.
Other things I often do to alleviate my workload are lowering my level of personal hygiene. I often times find it helpful to smile big and laugh out loud for a period of 3 minutes or longer with no apparent reason for the happiness. If someone asks why I am laughing or smiling too much I generally respond with a comment such as “Oh you’ll see!!” while rubbing my hands together. Always follow the laughing with a period of looking off into nothingness and lightly chuckling.
OK, to recap, when you find you already have too much work and you do not want to have additional work added to your plate you must take the following steps.
Speak only Klingon at work and require all new projects to be submitted to you in the written Klingon language.
Lower your level of personal hygiene, ie quit showering and using deodorant. Remember to increase your level of physical activity during this period, because extra sweat should equate to extra stink and less work!
Smile and laugh allot
If none of the above is working, set your garbage can on fire and roast marshmallows over the flames.

Gas Costs More Than Milk

After completing some very complicated calculations I have reached the conclusion that gas now costs more than milk. At least in the United States. I guess I will consider milk my fuel while I peddle my bicycle.

The New Smiley Phone

This week a new 3G iPhone is being released and as a modern Sasquatch I like to look at and try out new technology. The new i-Phone looks neat, but it is a little small for my large hands and I don’t like to type on it. The phone is cool for the modern and stylish Apple groupies. The modern Sasquatch needs more than just an i-phone, so I give to you the Smiley Phone.
The Smiley Phone features a 15 inch touch screen and a full size keyboard glued to the bottom of it. Battery life is great because the phone utilizes a full size truck battery. It weighs only 87 pounds but with the included backpack it feels like nothing.

What a Little Birdie Told Me

I was walking along minding my own business when all of a sudden this funny looking bird landed in front of me and started talking about the weather. I realized the bird was trying to start up a conversation with me. I was a little shocked to see a talking bird and I said to him “Um, you’re a bird. When did you learn to talk?”
He responded, ”What? All birds talk. Haven’t you ever seen a parrot? Anyway you’re a giant walking pile of fur and nobody really believes you exist. What business do you have being surprised to see a talking bird?”
Now, I am not much for small talk so I just came out and said, “Well you’ve never talked to me before and generally when somebody I have never spoken with comes up and starts talking to me they are trying to sell me something I don’t need or want. So what are you selling?”
“Oh, my friend that’s where you got me all wrong. I am not selling anything. I am granting a limited number of people the opportunity of a lifetime….” And that’s when I granted him the opportunity to fly further than any bird has ever flown before.

Make Money Blogging

Do you want to make money blogging? If you do - you’re not alone. More and more bloggers are finding that blogging is a profitable medium. Whether it be to earn a few extra dollars a week to feed their coffee habit, or making enough money to stop them having to get a part time job to get through college, or whether they’ve got it to a point where they are able to make a full time living from their blogging - there are tens of thousands of bloggers making money from blogging. In this page I want to share some information for beginners on making money from their blogs. I will start by sharing my own top Money Making Methods (updated regularly) but below that point you to some great resources and teaching on how to increase your income from blogging

What follows is a quick summary of my main income streams from blogging. Before you read it though - keep in mind that every blog is unique in how it can make money. Some of the following income streams will work on some blogs a lot better than others - the key is to experiment with as many as possible and see what works best for you.
The following income streams (from a number of blogs) have helped me to earn a six figure income each year for the last three years from blogging. I’ve ranked them from highest to lowest.
I hope you find it useful to see the mix and variety of ways that I earn a living from blogging.

1. AdSense
Despite not using it here at ProBlogger any more (here’s why) I continue to use AdSense with amazing effect on my other blogs. I have them all set to show image and text based ads and find that 250×300 pixel ads work best (usually with a blended design). I don’t have much luck with their ‘referrals’ program but their normal ads work a treat and continue to be the biggest earner for me.

2. Chitika
Chitka continues to be a great performer for me on my blogs. They work best on product related blogs although their recent announcement of their Premium ad unit is exciting as they now offer ads with a non product focus that I’m hearing great conversions on (I have one reader who is getting $28 CPM on this ad unit).Chitika offers a range of ad units that I experiment with. I find their eMiniMalls work best and that Related Product Units are also good. Their Shoplincs product isn’t performing as well as it once did for me - mainly because I’ve been promoting it less and have driven less traffic to it. Over the time I’ve been using Chitika they’ve now earned me over a quarter of a million dollars - I can’t recommend them enough!

3. Private Ad Sales/Sponsorships

Private ad sales directly to advertisers have continued to grow over the last few months and as a result they’re now my third highest income stream. I expect them to overtake both Chitika and AdSense in the coming months. This includes ad sales of the 125 x 125 ads here at ProBlogger as well as a campaign or two at Digital Photography School.

4. Amazon Associates

Amazon’s affiliate program has been one of my big movers in the last 12 months. I used to make a few odd dollars from it - however in recent times it has become a significant earner for me (as I’ve shared previously). This quarter it grew even more than previously as a result of continued growth of DPS where I recommend books, software and cameras.

5. Shopzilla As I wrote recently - Shopzilla has really impressed me with how it’s performed over the last few weeks. It’s actually doing well enough to debut in this list at #6. The ads are similar to Chitika but the click values have been higher for me to this point. They don’t offer quite as many options as Chitika does in terms of types of ads but for a new ad network there’s definitely promising signs. I’m looking forward to seeing how they continue to develop!

6.ProBlogger Job Boards he job boards here at ProBlogger continue to grow each month in the number of advertisements that are being bought. This enabled me to invest most of the money that they’d earned a while back into getting a new back end for the boards and to redesign them. It hit me today that the boards are now bringing in around $1000 a month in revenue which is pretty nice considering that they are so low maintenance to run. They also offer a service to readers and add value to the overall blog.
The only problem that I face with the job boards is that there are so many bloggers looking for work that the demand for jobs far exceeds the supply. On the good side of things is that advertisers are reporting getting amazing quality of applications.

7.WidgetBucks Another newcomer to this list is WidgetBucks - another ad network that ProBlogger readers will be familiar with.
WidgetBucks is similar to Chitika and Shopzilla in many respects and works well on product related sites. It does best on sites with US traffic (the reason I’ve not used it as much as I get a lot of international traffic) so if you have a product related site with a US audience it’d be a no brainer to try out WidgetBucks. I’m hoping they’ll continue to expand their offerings in terms of ad types and visitor location.

8. Miscellaneous Advertising Programs

I also play with a number of other ad networks. Some I run as tests to see if I should review them here - and some are just advertising that run in the background on some of my smaller blogs. These include ShoppingAds, Feedburner RSS ads, Vizu (a poll advertising system), Kontera and Bidvertiser. Together these don’t add up to major earnings for me - not because they are not good, but because I don’t use them heavily (a blog can only run so many ads on it).
I think that that covers most of it although it’s worth mentioning that last time I did this list I also included TextLinkAds which used to be every bloggers favorite way to make money blogging by selling text links. I’ve stopped using them due to Google cracking down on them (read more about this here) but it’s worth noting that many bloggers still use them successfully - I advise to proceed with caution. Disclaimer - TLA are an advertiser on ProBlogger
Useful Resources for Bloggers Wanting to Make Money Blogging
A lot has been written on the topic of making money online from blogs. There is a lot of wonderful information out there - but also a lot of hype and sometimes dangerous information.
Below are a number of articles that I’ve written exploring some of the different ways that bloggers make money.
Subscribe to My RSS Feed - everything that I know about making money from blogging is here on ProBlogger in my archives. I don’t hold back information and write about what I’m learning as I learn it. To get future updates subscribe to my RSS feed or add your email address below to get daily updates via email.

What an idiot !!!!!!

Everything Costs More Except for You!

It seems very ironic that when the price of everything I buy is increasing the EPA has decreased the statisical value of my life. What’s a fiddle of gold worth now a days?

Philosophical Question

If a chicken goes into the woods and finds a stick with a piece of cheese on the end do I still have to do the chicken dance at weddings?