WassupBlog

One of my most popular posts, Why I Don’t Comment On Blogger Blogs, talks about a couple of reasons why people persist with Blogger blogs and the main reason has to be that it’s free. Although there may be a few bloggers using this platform who are doing quite well with it, I put to you that they could be doing so much better if they hosted their own blog with their very own domain.

To all those people out there who are sitting on the fence wondering if they should take the leap to hosting their own blog but are being held back because of the cost factor I would like to list my top ten ways of saving money. If you were to follow these tips you could easily invest the money saved into starting your very own self hosted blog.

So, how much do you have to save? Well, for a measly $6.95 per month you could use BlueHost, which is the host I use for this blog. I’ve used several hosts and I’ve found them to be the best and their CPU Throttling feature is an added bonus, not to mention that you also get a free domain for life as part of your membership and your own domain is a great way to build your brand.

OK, enough of that, here’s the top 10 ways for saving money.

1. Give up smoking: Honestly, health risks aside giving up smoking could save you a fortune. If you smoked a pack of cigarettes a day at a cost of $11.50 a pack you would have spent $4,197.50 in a year. When you consider your hosting package for the same year would have cost you $83.40 you would have $4114.10 up your sleeve.
2. Electricity Costs: Changing your normal light bulbs for the newer fluorescent lamps could save you up to $10-$50 per year.
3. Heating / Cooling costs: Setting your thermostat a few degrees lower in winter and a few degree higher in summer can also save you a fair bit of money. Having your home insulated,closing curtains and plugging up leaks will also add to your savings.
4. Water Costs: Having shorter showers, installing water saving shower heads and reducing the thermostat on your water heater will also save you a nice wad of money.
5. Eating Out: Cutting back on the amount of times you eat out can save you heaps. If you’re in the habit of buying your lunch consider taking a home made lunch and watch your savings grow. Not only that but you will probably eat a lot healthier.
6. Consolidate Your Loans: If you have more than one loan then I suggest you consolidate them all into one loan with the cheapest rate you can find. This includes your credit card debts which normally have a very high interest rate. If you find it difficult to control your credit card expenditure then I suggest cutting them up and relying only on cash.
7. Minimize Car Usage: Try walking to the local shops instead of using your car, not only will you save money but your health and fitness will improve. When you do use your car drive economically to minimize the amount of fuel you would use.
8. Buy only what you can consume: I know some people go crazy when they see certain items on special and so they buy up not realizing that they’ve bought more than they can consume meaning they have to throw the excess away. This is a dreadful waste so make sure you check expiry dates and don’t buy more than you need. You don’t need to worry about things like toilet paper and stuff so you can buy up on these items.
9. Shop around: I save heaps of money by just shopping around for the best deal and this is so much easier now that we have the Internet.
10. Always use a shopping list: This can be used in conjunction with #9 and is important because you will save heaps by not buying impulse lines and things you don’t need if you stick to a shopping list.
11. Take coffee from home: Coffee is a huge industry and rightfully so as there is a huge markup on a cup of coffee and every time you buy a cup you’re lining someone’s pocket. Taking coffee from home can be a huge money saver, and if you’re a big coffee drinker bring a thermos full to work.

Yeah, I know I said I would only give 10 ways to save money but seeing as how not everyone smokes I thought I would stick in an extra one. As you can see, buy following these simple steps you can easily afford to use BlueHost to host your own blog, and if you consistently provide good content and use services such as adsense you will soon find that your blog will earn enough to pay it’s own way and usually enough for a little extra and so you can use all the extra money that you’ve saved to help paying off your loans thereby saving even more money.

OK, that was enough stressful reading for one day. You may want to read something a little more lighthearted like my post on Taking Off Your Clothes For The Greater Good where I show you how going naked can solve all the world’s problems. There were a few comments about being too cold and I wonder if there are any thermal paints that could be used which could give body art a whole new meaning. Just to put you in the mood here is a photo of a pretty gal wearing nothing but body paint, yep she is totally naked and the remarkable artist is Mark Reid.

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The FlexSqueeze Theme gives my blog that professional look. I loved it so much that I bought the developers license. It's the easiest most customizable theme I've come across. See how easy it is to change your theme's appearance! Compare it to Thesis to see how much better it is! Check out some of the latest Latest Updates

I highly recommend you to get your FlexSqueeze copy today!

Hands up all those of you who haven’t been affected by blogging in one way or another? I’m willing to bet that there are quite a lot of you out there who, like myself, originally took up blogging as a way of making money, or of promoting one site or another, but have now fallen in love with it. I have to admit that no matter what I’m doing blogging is lurking somewhere in the thought processes of my mind.

Honestly there are even times when while making love to my wife a blog post suddenly pops into my head and it’s all I can do to stop myself from climbing off of her and rushing to the computer so I can write up a new post. Shit, I know that if I do that she’s going to put my balls through the wringer, honestly kids if you don’t know what a wringer is you should ask your mom, but then if I don’t the climax is going to blow it right out of my head. It’s really a no win situation, except for the mind blowing sex part that is.

Anyway, it was about 4 a.m. while at work, I’m wearing shorts and it was about 2.5C when I had this sudden light bulb moment and this post just popped into my head. I’ve seen a lot of memes out there and it’s quite possible that someone else has already done it, but I thought it would be a great idea if we could share with each other something unique about the place where we live. It could be your home town or it could even be homeland.

Let me explain. I’ve already done a few posts about things that are unique to Australia. There was the one about an actual living tree house where a husband and wife brought up their family. Then there was the one about The Whispering Wall which is a dam with unique acoustics that allows people from each end to whisper to each other. Lastly I did a post on The Morning Glory Cloud, once again something that is unique to Australia.

OK, now I know that I get people from all over the world who pop in to read my posts and I know a whole lot of them are bloggers, who may occasionally be stuck for something to write about. Well not only will this give you something interesting to write about, it should also lead to some incoming links.  All you have to do is write a post about something unique or interesting about where you live, linking to this post and asking your readers to do the same. Drop me an email once you’ve done that including a link to your post and I will post that link on this post just under this heading.

Naturally it would be embarrassing for me me if no-one took this on so I would appreciate it if you didn’t let me down.  Naturally you should also Tweet or stumble this post to get the word out.

Interesting And Unique Places Around The World

Meditation Center: Ramana who lives in Pune India has just written a post, complete with picture, of something that unique to where he lives.

San Bernardino California: Josiah’s post tells you about McDonald’s  birthplace and how the hot rods storm past Route 66 on a yearly basis. Thanks Josiah, that was really an interesting post.

Introduction To Cave Exploration: Check it out as James guides us through the Makahambus Cave which is roughly 30 minutes from the City of Golden Friendship.

(Your Link here)

Oh, yeah, something else we have that’s unique is the biggest rocking horse in the world.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010

The FlexSqueeze Theme gives my blog that professional look. I loved it so much that I bought the developers license. It's the easiest most customizable theme I've come across. See how easy it is to change your theme's appearance! Compare it to Thesis to see how much better it is! Check out some of the latest Latest Updates

I highly recommend you to get your FlexSqueeze copy today!

Have you ever wondered how some of those old sayings ever came about, you know, things like throwing the ‘baby out with the bathwater‘, or perhaps even being ‘piss poor‘ or ‘it’s raining cats and dogs‘? Well, I got this email today, and while I can’t vouch for it’s validity I thought you guys would perhaps find it of some interest.

There is an old Hotel/Pub in Marble Arch, London which used to have gallows adjacent. Prisoners were taken to the gallows (after a fair trial of course) to be hung. The horse drawn dray, carting the prisoner was accompanied by an armed guard, who would stop the dray outside the pub and ask the prisoner if he would like ”ONE LAST DRINK”.

If he said YES it was referred to as “ONE FOR THE ROAD”

If he declined, that prisoner was “ON THE WAGON”

So there you go. More bleeding history.

They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery. If you had to do this to survive you were “Piss Poor”. But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot they “Didn’t have a pot to Piss in” & were the lowest of the low.

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water!”

Houses had thatched roofs, thick straw piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying “It’s raining cats and dogs.”

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, “Dirt Poor.” The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold. (Getting quite an education, aren’t you?)

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: ”Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old”.

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, “Bring home the Bacon.” They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around talking and ”Chew the fat”.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning & death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or ”The Upper Crust”.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of ”Holding a Wake”.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, ”Saved by the Bell ” or was considered a ”Dead Ringer”
And that’s the truth…Now, whoever said History was boring ! ! !

So, what do you reckon, how much of it has some truth to it and how much was complete and unadulterated crap?

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The FlexSqueeze Theme gives my blog that professional look. I loved it so much that I bought the developers license. It's the easiest most customizable theme I've come across. See how easy it is to change your theme's appearance! Compare it to Thesis to see how much better it is! Check out some of the latest Latest Updates

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While I’ve done a couple of posts on MyLikes as a publisher I thought I would put them through their paces as an advertiser. Out of all the blogs I own the one that has proven to be the most difficult as far as promoting it goes has always been my Top Sexual Aids blog.  The main reason for this is obviously the content of the site and while there is nothing wrong with sex as a whole people get a little funny about it when it comes to talking about ways of making it better through sexual aids.

I did think about giving Google Adsense a go but when they emailed me saying they would no longer present ads on that site I thought better about giving them money to promote it. I mean how does that work, they’re too high and mighty to run ads on there but it’s quite OK to take my money as an advertiser? Not bloody likely.

Then I remembered MyLikes and so I decided to give them a go. Setting it all up was a real snap, as you can see from the following image all that is required is a little information about your campaign.

You can even set a sample tweet to give your publishers an example of what you are looking for. I left this blank as I wanted them to use their imagination. You also want to set your cost per click and your campaign budget. At first I tried  5 cents per click bu this created very little interest so I raised the stakes to 15 cent per click, which worked a whole lot better.

Another thing you may want to take note of is the section where it says ‘In what geographical locations do you want clicks from?’ I chose that I would only accept click from the US because I figured this was the best way to get more click per buck. This means that although I’m getting traffic from the rest of the world I’m only paying for those who live in the States. At least that’s how I think it works.

So, how did it all go. Let’s look at Google Analytic for the answer.

You can see where the campaign cut in, the apex peaked at 84 visits which is great because I was only getting a couple of visits a day if lucky. Once the campaign ended I was still getting about 10-20 visits a day. What was really surprising is that spike near the end where it got to almost 500 visits for the day. I can only assume that one of those Tweets got the attention of a Twitterer with a huge following who passed it on causing it to go viral.

Overall I am very pleased with the way MyLikes performed and I would highlight the fact that the possibility of your post going viral, and the ease of use makes it, in my opinion, vastly superior to Adsense. At the moment traffic is still pretty high, so much so that at the writing of this post it’s ranked #7 on Cool Blog Links, and that itself is pretty cool, not to mention the click through rate on the products/affiliates I have on that blog.

If you’re already a MyLikes member all you have to do is click on the Advertise link at the top of your page. If you’re not a member it would be a good idea to join because it’s a double edged sword that works in your favor. The first razor sharp edge slices open the purse strings leaving it wide open for your Twitter earnings to fall in and the second opens your site up exposing it to the greater market that is waiting for you.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010

The FlexSqueeze Theme gives my blog that professional look. I loved it so much that I bought the developers license. It's the easiest most customizable theme I've come across. See how easy it is to change your theme's appearance! Compare it to Thesis to see how much better it is! Check out some of the latest Latest Updates

I highly recommend you to get your FlexSqueeze copy today!

We only found out recently that my daughter was lactose intolerant, which basically means that she is allergic to anything that has milk as part of it’s ingredients. Naturally that means she can’t have things such as milk, chocolate, ice cream, bread and stuff. The problem is we’ve also found out that milk is used in a lot of other products one wouldn’t expect to find milk in such as potato crisps. This means reading the labels very carefully. Consuming anything with milk in it causes her to get ill and that seriousness of the illness is related to the amount of milk in the product as well as the amount she’s consumed.

Seeing as how I’ve already got an interest in the lactose intolerance and alternative milk products I was intrigued when one of my affiliates contacted me as to a survey they are doing on this matter.

Before going any further I must stress that this is a US-only campaign. They are looking for 10,000 US residents age 18 and over who buy either alternative milk products (e.g., organic, soy, rice, lactose-free, etc.) or creamers at least 4 times per year. If this applies to you and you are interested in taking the survey simply Click Here

Even though this may not apply to you perhaps a family friend or member would be interested and you could let them know that it exists. A tweet would definitely let a lot of others know that this survey exists and I’m sure there would be many willing participants.

I’m not sure if the survey has anything to do with lactose intolerance or if they are just trying to gauge the extent that American drink alternative milk products, so if you do decide to take the survey I, and I’m sure many of the readers, would be more than interested in what it was all about.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010

The FlexSqueeze Theme gives my blog that professional look. I loved it so much that I bought the developers license. It's the easiest most customizable theme I've come across. See how easy it is to change your theme's appearance! Compare it to Thesis to see how much better it is! Check out some of the latest Latest Updates

I highly recommend you to get your FlexSqueeze copy today!