Hard Drive Loss

You just don't appreciate something until it's gone. My hard drive crash a few weeks ago affected more than I realized. Aside from the replacing of the drive itself and loading all the programs again, login info for a number of sites was lost as well as many things I hadn't backed up. So I'm sorry for the long delay in posts.

I'm not doing so good on the consistancy thing, am I? But I promise I'll get better.

Budget Halloween Garlands

This Halloween, don't rely on store bought decorations. Make your own Halloween garlands quickly and easily with simple and cheap craft items. You only need the following materials:

• Plastic spiders, bugs, pumpkins, or skulls


• Glue (or glue sticks and a glue gun)


• Black Yarn (or string or ribbon)

Glue or tie the plastic spiders, bugs, pumpkins, or skulls along the black yarn and then choose a place to hang your garland. It's that easy. You can make the garlands out of one item such as spiders or use them all in a pattern along the yarn. If you want to use the garland outside, you can tie glow sticks from a dollar store into it as well.

Update - Global Test Market

I thought I'd pass along something I discovered today on the Global Test Market website. I'd received a notification of another survey, but when I logged in the survey showed that it was closed. I also noticed that all the profiles I'd filled out, which are supposed to allow for more opportunities for surveys, all had a status of Not Started. Additionally, I appear to have lost points I had earned for previous surveys.

I don't know if it was a glitch on the site, but it's rather frustrating to have to go through the whole process again. I'm going to continue monitoring this site to see if my information is lost again.

Auto Insurance Quotes Online

You know that in order to save money you need to shop around. And with so many demands on time as well as money, it's great when a website can do the comparisons for you. Advantage Auto Quotes gives you a quote online and sells all types of car insurance including commercial and student policies. Even drivers with a bad record can be insured.

Advantage Auto Quotes also offers GAP coverage for new car purchases, which covers the difference in cost between a new car and a recently-depreciated vehicle of the same make and model, and classic car policies. Their website even includes information on what exactly affects your insurance rate.

Find low rates for all automobile insurance policies and all drivers easily and have them sent to you at Advantage Auto Quotes.



Brought to you by your friends at Advantage Auto Quotes

Get Paid While You Blog - Blogsvertise

If you're going to be blogging anyway, you might as well make some money at it, right? A growing number of sites are taking advantage of the popularity of blogs, and one in particular, Blogsvertise, caught my eye due to the fact that your blog only has to be 60 days old. Other pay to blog sites require the blog to be live at least 90 days.

The website is easy to navigate, the Rules and FAQs are straightforward and informative, and the response time is fast. Blogsvertise pays for your entry after 30 days from approval via Paypal. Newer sites are placed on a probationary status, meaning they will earn less money until they are approved as full-fledged members.

One important note, though, is that Blogsvertise does not accept Wordpress blogs. As Wordpress does not allow blogs with paid content on them, take the time to set up a blog on another site before submitting.

You've Got to Spend Money to Make Money

It's an old saying, and one that's not necessarily true anymore. If you're trying to make money online; whether through photography, blogging, writing, or other means; you have to promote what you're doing. "If you build it, they will come" is really just wishful thinking. But when you're broke, paying for advertising isn't an option. So what promotion can be done for free?

Link trading is a good way to get started. Finding other sites in your niche and requesting to trade links with them offers more exposure for everyone and chances to compare your site to others, as well as receiving important feedback.

Forums are another free option, but remember not to spam. Signing up for several forums and just posting links to your site can get you ignored at best and mess up your credibility. Take the time to actually join some forums and become a part of the community. Like link trading, it's an opportunity to network.

Social networks like Digg and StumbleUpon are gaining popularity. However, like forums, you need to be careful not to spam. Make sure what you're trying to promote actually fits into a category or all you'll be doing is wasting time.

Free promotion can take a little more time to build traffic than paid advertising, but patience and dedication can make it work.

Focus! The Most Important Tip for Work at Home Success

It's vital, and it can be overlooked. To be successful in making money at home, you have to be disciplined enough to stay focused. At a regular job, you have supervisors, managers, and co-workers to help keep your mind on your work. Even if you are generally unsupervised, the environment alone is usually enough. In your own home you are responsible for staying motivated.

You can see the evidence here on this blog. I had a family issue come up, and haven't posted since 7/11/07. I couldn't focus. But that excuse wouldn't be acceptable at a regular job, and it shouldn't be acceptable when working at home either. You have to work, even when you don't feel like it. And no one's going to be looking over your shoulder to remind you of that.

So before you leave the rat race behind for the joys of being your own boss, keep in mind that making money from home usually involves more time and work than a regular job. Ask yourself if you have the discipline to keep going, or if you want to create a supplemental income.

Get Paid to Take Surveys! Real Sites

Earn hundreds of dollars just by taking simple surveys at home!
Your one-time fee of (whatever $ amount here) gives you access to lots of sites that will pay you for your opinion!

Hey, I actually wrote those "ads" better than some of the sites I've seen them on.

Actually, there are two websites that I've been satisfied with as legitimate. I haven't made "hundreds of dollars weekly" from them, but every little bit helps.

Note that these are the links to the main sites, not referral links of mine.

Global Test Market allows you to build up points for cash. Filling out their different profiles makes you eligible for more surveys that they will email to you. They are fairly steady in their survey offers, so points can build up at a steady pace. You need a minimum of 1000 points for a payment, and they pay via mailed check.

Greenfield Online offers sweepstakes to all members in addition to earning cash, and they send out several surveys. As with Global Test Market, filling out the profiles can make you eligible for more surveys.

If you don't mind spending a little time giving your opinion, you can earn money at these survey sites. Not a full-time income, but a small steady stream for a few minutes here and there.

Money Saving Tip - Quit Smoking

No, this isn't a lecture on the evils of smoking. It's a logical conclusion I've come to in an effort to cut my budget. I smoke a little under a pack a day, depending on how late I stay up (usually pretty late). So at about $4.50 a pack I'd save roughly $135 per month. If I can get my husband to quit with me that's about $275 saved monthly.

An added benefit to quitting, aside from all the healthy stuff, is that it can also cut the monthly health insurance payment by about $50 by my calculations. So that would be around $325 saved a month just by both of us giving up smoking, or about $160 if it's just me. Not bad.

Since I can't afford kits, patches, gums, etc, to help me quit, I've found a couple of free online resources that seem to be pretty helpful.

Quit4Good is a website dedicated to helping people quit smoking. Categories include ways to quit, weight gain, and common triggers.

Quit Smoking Journals offers free journals to keep while you're quitting with a large group of supportive people in different stages of quitting smoking themselves.

So I'll quit smoking and save money, and maybe when my budget allows I'll start again. But hopefully not.

DIY Budget Web Design

I mention being a former web designer in my profile. That's not entirely true. I've been a freelancer off and on for years, I'm just not actively seeking web design jobs right now. But designing websites is one of those types of businesses that can be started from home fairly inexpensively and easily, and can produce a decent income for creative types.

The main program you'll need is a good HTML editor, although you should also have a graphics program, and a flash authoring program too. The following is the software I've been satisfied with for features, ease of use, and price.

I've used TopStyle for creating web pages for years. You can edit XHTML and CSS, update old HTML, and validate your code with W3C. The preview pane lets you see how things look while you're coding, and the harmonious color picker helps choose workable palettes quickly. For creating standards-compliant, cross-browser compatible sites this program is great, and pretty cheap at about $80.

Another choice is CoffeeCup HTML Editor. It includes several wizards which can be helpful for new users or when you're in a hurry, and also has a built-in FTP. It's also cheaper than TopStyle, at about $50.

CoffeeCup offers a whole range of products for web design in addition to the HTML Editor; including various Flash programs, Stylesheet Maker, and add-ins. All them have a free trial version so you can see if you like them before committing to buy.

For graphics I use Paint Shop Pro. Aside from costing less than Adobe Photoshop, I prefer the interface. And as far as features go, they really are comparable. They're even compatible, to an extent, as you can open Photoshop (.psd) files in PSP and save images in .psd format. You can find versions 9 and X on eBay and Amazon for as low as about $30.

On a side note, I've also written a number of tutorials for Paint Shop Pro - a link list can be found here.

Though not essential, if you really want to get people interested in hiring you to build a website for them, knowing some Flash is very useful. I found Swish Max to be easy to use for full sites and animations, and reasonably priced too at $99.

As for the other aspects of a home business, PowerHomeBiz.com has links to several resources, including state-by-state information for starting a business and business calculators.

Doing web design is a good business to start in your spare time. With a little artistic flair and some patience, it can end up generating a nice income from home.