To Be Completely Debt Free

So, today I wanted to touch a bit on blog carnivals and their uses. A few users over at Infobarrel decided to get together and start a blog carnival to help promote some of our articles. It is small right now, but as soon as we get more users to join in it should be a very nice backlink to our articles. In the future you will probably see me host a few blog carnivals on behalf of the group, but for now we are going to host it at one spot until the use of it picks up.

So what is a blog carnival? It's sort of a community of like minded people. There are so many interesting topics out there, but sometimes it can be hard finding a group of good blog posts or articles on one particular topic. What a blog carnival does is, collect the links to a particular subject, put them together in a nice article then publishes it on a blog. Say for instance Budget Travel is the topic you would like to read about. On a blog carnival that is about travel, you will read an article that gives links to other articles or blog posts about the same subject. So with one click you get several great posts or articles to read about all directed towards the subject you are interested in.

How does this help you if you are an author of one of these posts or articles? Well, it gives you a backlink and a chance at some traffic to your site or article. Lets face it, that's what you want, you want traffic to your site, and this gives you a chance to get targeted traffic. People who are actually interested in the subject you write about. Now it's a little different when you have a blog carnival about a writing site. The blog carnival that the Infobarrel people have put together is a grouping of their articles, they may not have the same topic in common, but they are from the same site. There is good that comes from this too. Say someone comes across the blog carnival because there was an article about travel, but then they also get to see your article about movies. They might be interested to see what you have to say, and there you go, you get traffic.

Blog Carnival is a great site to find a blog carnival on a particular subject. Also, if you would like to try using a blog carnival, you can find one that hosts on your topic and you can submit your link. Be sure to read the guidelines to the certain blog carnival you want to submit too. It is important to follow the rules to make the blog carnival the best it can be. Do not spam them and make sure your content is what the blog carnival is looking for.

If you get a chance, check out the Infobarrel Blog Carnival. You will get an idea of what a blog carnival is about and you might find an article that you like.

Hey all, or one or two, finally got the new template up and going. I like it much better then what Blogger had to offer. What do you think? Got the FeedBurner and everything going. Only took half of my night! I have Wordpress blogs, but I just wanted something a bit easier, for this blog so I went with Blogger. I was happy to see that there are now a lot of templates out there for blogger, just makes it look more professional and appealing in my opinion. I suggest any of you out there who are using Blogger to get a better template then what they offer. It really isn't that hard to do.

On another note, was approved for Chitika. In case you are wondering what the heck that is, it's just ads that you can make a bit of money off of. Just like adsense. I like the set up and you only see the ad if you come to the blog by search engine. So the few of you who check in by not using the search engine will not see the ads. I like it that way. I really don't want to hit my readers with a crap load of ads. That's another reason why I liked this template, it blends the ads in so they are not screaming at you. Don't get me wrong, would love to make a few bucks, who wouldn't, however, my main goal is not to force them on anyone.

Last but not least, Twitter. As you can tell from my sidebar, I'm on Twitter now. We shall see how this goes. I have a private twitter account and I get bombarded with people trying to sell me things, hope this one will not be as bad. My main reason as to getting the account is so if you are interested in this blog, I can update you on things I'm doing to make my goal of $600 a month. I totally think it is do-able, just takes some work.

Some people at Infobarrel have gotten together to run a Blog Carnival. One of my links will be on it, so as soon as it is up and running I will post more about what a Blog Carnival is and how to use them.

Hey all, or the two people who actually read this blog:) (I hope there is more), in my quest to make money online, I recently signed up for a new site called, She Told Me. It is a social bookmarking site like Digg, but the difference is that they pay you 100% of the adsense revenue that appears on your submissions. For each link you submit to SheToldMe.com a page is created with the title of the link, the link, a description, a screenshot of the website hosting the link, and a link to your main site if you add one. Up to 3 AdSense blocks are displayed on this page and of course, if anyone clicks, you get the money. I just started last week with this, mostly as a way to promote my articles on Infobarrel and Xomba but I will let you know how it goes.

Speaking of Infobarrel, I have put up a few more artilces,Scoopable Litter- Which On Is The Best?, and article about, finding better scoopable litter then the scoopable clay litter that may harm your cat. Also, The Exxon Valdez And The Emergence Of Environmental Crime, a piece on how the Exxon Valdez oil spill was the catalyst for the emergence of fines and jail sentences for crimes against the environment. I also wrote an over view onHow To become A Pharmacist , and The Four Most Underrated Walt Disney Movies , and last but not least Club Drugs-What You should Know About Them and an overview of Criminal Insanity. Check them out if you get a chance and let me know what you think.

I have also signed up for Chitika, will update that more when my application gets accepted. I'm still working on getting a twitter account. I've been busy but I will do it this weekend, oh and I will be trying out new templates. I don't really like this one, but hey it works for now.

Okay, so much to my surprise one of my articles that I have recently written for Infobarrel, has made the front page! If you check out the site you will see several articles listed under the different topic areas. My article about California Shipwrecks, can be found listed under the topic of History. I've only been with this site for about two weeks now, so I was more then honored to see one of my articles make the first page! I have to say I have really been enjoying writing for them. The staff seems very hands on and the site looks great. They just added a new forum so things are moving along over there.

I've noticed a lot of people have been jumping ship from Ehow and heading over to both Infobarrel and Xomba. That's interesting to see, I don't know much about Ehow. I was going to sign up for Ehow, and decided to take a look at their forum first. I'm thankful that I did, seems their forum is just filled up with people complaining about they way they are being treated over there. While looking through the forum I found a few mentions of both Infobarrel and Xomba, so I'm grateful for going there and finding out about other places to try my luck, and I'm grateful for doing my homework first before blindly signing up with Ehow.

Also, I'm going to give in and try my had at twitter. So in the next day or two I will post my twitter name. I have no idea if it will be a good thing or not. I don't know much about twitter, and I'm not sure I have much of a following here...LOL...to justify a twitter account, but hey, why not try it?

So over the last few days I've been trying to come up with ways to find good topics for my articles. One suggestion to me was to check out the questions asked at Yahoo Answers. I have to say, I did get one or two ideas from it, but wow, have you ever checked those questions out? I know there is suppose to be no such thing as a stupid questions, but folks, I've come across some questions that can not be otherwise described as stupid.

So, I've moved on to checking out what is popular on the article sites. I'm guessing if the subject is popular at sites like Ezines, and Go Articles then I'm sure they will be popular at the sites I write at. Now, to just get a good list and see what works.

So far I have not been able to figure out if Infobarrel or Xomba is the better site. I'm sure it will take a few months before it is figured out. Both sites seem to get good juice from google, and I'm doing well with page hits from both of them. I'm actually doing better with these two sites then with Squidoo and Hubpages. That alone makes me want to churn out more articles for those two sites.

Although I started very late in the month, I figured in the spirit of the blog I would do my very first earnings update. This will include my BANS stores also:

BANS: $211.20
Cashcrate: $3.35
Xomba: $0.41
Infobarrel: $0.96

Okay so I know it's not a lot for cashcrate, xomba and infobarrel, however, I have only been on all three sites for a total of a week and a half. I have two articles on infobarrel, and two xombytes (articles) and seven xomblurbs on xomba. I have also hit on two topics that I think might bring in some adsense money due to how many hits they have been getting so, I'm excited. Besides, I can only go up from here!.....Right? Gosh I hope so!

Woo-Hoo, that's right I made money today! Okay so it was only about .30 cents but hey, that's .30 cents more then I had yesterday. I made it off of one of my Xomba articles, which motivates me to write some more for them. As of right now I have two Xombytes and six Xomblurbs.

Now that I have motivation, what do I write about? That's always the issue isn't it? I want to write but can not focus on what I should write about. Everyone says, write what you know, write what interests you. Do you ever sit there and wonder if anyone is interested in what you are interested in? Or how about, are they interested in what you have to say? Well you never know until you try. I also know that it is easier said then done, and you can drive yourself nuts wondering what other people are interested in. You could go to google trends, but in the end if you choose a topic from there it is a trend, and trends slow down. So for now I'm going to pretend that everyone is interested in what I am interested in and I'm going to throw it on the wall and see what sticks.

I guess that leads me to the most important thing which is getting a little SEO skills going. So I'm off to search for SEO info. If you have any advice on where to look or what blogs to check out, it is always welcomed.

So a few days ago I signed up for Info Barrel. It's a bit like Xomba, where it is a site that you can write articles, and you get to share in the google adsense profits made off of ads that appear next to your articles.

The biggest difference is that Info Barrel wants your content to be original. If you have it published anywhere else on the web, then they will not accept it. I personally like this approach because it helps there site to be as professional as possible and it helps the writers make a bit more money due to that rule. The other main difference is that Info Barrel gives you %75 of the adsense earnings, not bad I say. Another difference is with Info Barrel they do review your articles before letting it post. At Xomba you write, review hit submit and there it is. Info Barrel takes a few hours to a day, to review your article and make sure it is not posted somewhere else.

One of the things I like about Info Barrel is they let you use two self-serving URL's in your article, as long as the article does not sound like an advertisement ad and it benefits the community. So far I have one article up and one in review. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this site helps bring some money in. Here is my first article: Stages In The Criminal Justice Process.

Okay so in the last few days I have signed up at a site called Xomba. What is Xomba? Well it is a site where members can earn money from posting Xombytes and Xomblurbs. What are Xombytes and Xomblurbs? Well, a Xombyte is an article that is submitted to Xomba. When writing the article you need to remember that it has to be at least 150 words long. A Xomblurb is a social bookmarking blurb that allows users to share links to websites, articles, blogs, images and videos. You should remember that a Xomblurb needs to be 50 words long.

So how do you make money by contributing to this community? Xomba uses google adsense on every page of the site, (this means Xomblurbs too) and any posts made by the user will display targeted adds. Xomba the splits the money revenue on a 50/50 biases with you.
In case you are wondering, the user retains all rights to any article they post on Xomba and you can add a Creative Commons license if you wish.

As I've said before, I've just started with this sight. I have about 4 Xomblurbs up:
Squad Car, Cheap Las Vegas Vacation, Whale Trips, and The Criminal Justice Process. I have a good feeling about this site based on user reviews and some of the testimonials. There are some great articles on the sight about other people's experiences with using Xomba. There are even people making over $1000 a month on it. I'm not saying that I'm going to be that person, but hey, I'm going to try to do my best. As always, content is king with a site like this. So I hope to up my production of Xombytes and Xomblurbs and see what comes. I will of course keep you updated on my progress. Until then, check out Xomba, it just might be for you.

Okay, so one of the places I have signed up for is
CashCrate. This sight helps compaines find consumers. Companies need consumers to try out products and check out their websites and most of them pay a little money to do so. What
CashCrate, give you a list of these offers that pay money. Instead of searching around the internet for these offers, they have a handy dandy list that tells you what the offer intails and how much it pays. So far, I've made about $5.75 in the last day on the sight. Doesn't seem like much but it does add up.

Hi all and welcome. So as I'm sure you can tell, the goal of this blog is to track my progress to be completely debt free. Thanks to the awesome economy and some screw ups of my own, I owe money. The bi-weekly pay check is not enough so I have been thinking about ways to make a little extra cash. I'm not the one to go out and get a part-time job, because:
1) There are other people out there who don't have any job and need it more than I do.

2) I don't want to work retail or flip burgers.

3) I would rather do a freelance type thing where I am my own boss.

Soooooo.....I'm going to try to do this by making some extra money online. I know it can be done because I've been making a little extra a month with Ebay Partner Network. I started out with the Build A Niche Program and was making around $300 extra dollars a month. Not bad, but now that Ebay has changed the way it pays affiliates, I have now dropped down to about $150 a month. That is not acceptable. So my goals? To make between $600 and $1000 extra month and to eliminate $25,000 in debt over the next two years (I hope sooner.)

Like I said above, I will use this blog to track my progress. I will let you know what places I'm using to make that extra money and I will update my earnings every month. Thanks for checking out my blog, and I hope you check back often!