Work From Home

Family Tree And New Blog

2006-12-03T14:15:00.000Z

Nearly two months since I last blogged here.

No I didn't get rich and retire and I didn't give up and go away either. Still here, still crazy after all these years.

I have been blogging but I have started a new blog to record when I submit articles or make changes to my website. I did this to help me keep track of my publishing rate and also because I am working through all my articles, making a few updates and putting them into my new template. This job is going to take weeks, or maybe even months if I get busy with other things but it has to be done. Trouble is it is quite boring but I won't stop until all the pages of the website match. I'm also working on two niche websites and planning numbers three and four.

At least I'm in a happier frame of mind compared to my last post. Never really got to the bottom of what was happening with my MSN PPC ads but things improved and that's all that matters. In the meantime, had a bit of a disaster with Yahoo but (fingers crossed) that campaign is back on the right road.

Biggest time consumer has been that I started trying to trace my family to build a family tree. As I have very few documents, little information and no older relatives to question, I expected it to be a challenge. Didn't realise how totally addictive it can be.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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That's Why They Call It Crapcenter

2006-10-09T16:57:00.000Z

After being locked out of MSN all weekend, I managed to log in today. It was very disappointing to see that none of my ads have been running for the last three days.

I'm having exactly the same problem as before. The campaign started out well but just withered away and died. Rang help desk and they can't help. They will escalate the problem on the UK targetted ads but they don't have the right equipment to view the USA targetted ads. Give me strength! The poor guy there sent me the link so I can contact the help desk in the USA. Now waiting for a reply.

I would really like to know how the ads can be fine when they start but then wear out in a matter of days.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Autumn Is Here and MSN Adcenter Is Down Again

2006-10-07T16:04:00.000Z

Within a matter of a few days we have gone from summer into autumn. It's quite a relief to feel cool after all that mind-numbing heat.

My autoresponder problems got sorted out. Get Response say they found no irregularities with my account, so that's a good thing. It is a pity they don't have a mechanism in place to warn their customers when this sort of thing happens. If I had known, I could have got it sorted out in time to publish my September newsletter before the month ended.

My PPC campaign at MSN seems to be taking off after I made all the changes. The Adcenter is closed again today. Seems like Saturdays are their big day for maintenance. Can't tweak my ads there but there are plenty of other things to be done. Averaging over 400 visitors a day so far. Fingers crossed for the rest of the month.

Published a new article today. It's called Using Self Motivation Techniques To Keep Your Goals In Focus. Not exactly a snappy title but the best I could come up with - at least it tells you what the article is about.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Into October, MSN Sucks And Dollar Monster Returns

2006-10-01T18:32:00.000Z

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October is here.

September was a funny month. It started out on a high note. Pity it didn't continue on that level. It was a series of disasters for me.

MSN PPC advertising was working great and I was looking forward to masses of new visitors. It suddenly stopped. Yesterday they managed to send me a measly 2 visitors. To add insult to injury, I am no longer getting visitors via their organic searches. There is obviously something wrong with their system but they are not admitting it. I am sick of being given the run around.

I produced my September newsletter, held it back so I could include a programme that was about to go into prelaunch and then found out Get Response had disabled my main autoresponder so my newsletter could not go anywhere. So I missed that opportunity of building a downline during a prelaunch period. The thing that really got to me was the fact that Get Response did not bother to tell me they had disabled my autoresponder and removed all my contacts. That was my main contact list and it had taken me over two years to build. I'm not happy.

Keep seeing a new site called eDalty on the traffic exchanges. Apparently it's a payment processor and auction site. It might be perfectly legit but something about it just looks fishy. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood.

Also saw Dollar Monster being advertised. That is a total scam and I never expected to see them again after they took the money and ran. Do they really think people won't remember as far back as 2004?

After almost being reduced to hysterics, I calmed down, regained focus and control and managed to get quite a lot of work done. Wrote a couple of articles, published one new article and caught up on my email. Only thing I didn't manage was building a bit more of my new websites. Why am I building two at once? It just seemed like a good idea when I started and the one I started first was not supposed to take this long. My new mini site is due to be reviewed by the team at
MPAM tomorrow. I feel strangely nervous. Silly, because they won't throw me out and I can always change things.

October is starting on a pretty low note for me. I hope that means it will get better from here on.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Jennifer Lopez And Multiple Streams Of Income

2006-08-28T09:42:00.000Z

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What bad timing! I wish I'd watched Monster-In-Law before I published my article about multiple streams of income.

I never liked Jennifer Lopez until I saw her in a film a couple of weeks ago. What was it called? Dear oh dear, are the grey cells wearing out? I think it might have been called Shall We Dance, anyway, JLo starred in it with Richard Gere and it was about a middle aged man learning to dance. Doesn't sound like much but I thoroughly enjoyed it and I thought JLo was good - and I would not have watched the film if I'd known she was going to be in it!

Having warmed slightly to Jennifer Lopez, I decided to watch Monster-In-Law. Now I wish I'd watched it a few weeks earlier. Jennifer Lopez's character was a dog walker and a yoga instructor - multiple streams of income! I could have used this in my article as an example people would relate to so easily.

Any other big movies out there that relate to Internet marketing?

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Long Sales Letters And More Success

2006-08-27T09:32:00.000Z

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Busy, busy month so far.

Today I finished two new articles and posted them on my website. The first one, How Unique And Believable Is Your Website Copy, has been submitted for publication and I'm hoping to add a couple more to the queue after : Does Your Sales Letter Make Sense. As usual, these began life as one article, branched of into two different directions and still ended up in the 1000 word region which is pushing the limit. If only I could learn to use fewer words! I did consider cutting each one into two again but there was no natural break and there was only one subject.

These articles are about the new-fashioned long sales letters so many website owners are using. I am all for them but too many people are using identical stories with only very minor changes. I can' imagine many people will be falling for these ads in a few months because the Internet will be overrun with clones (probably down to the typos as well).

Profits and traffic have been strangely up and down after an absolutely brilliant start to the month but, as long as I stay in profit mode I'll be happy. Most of my time has been spent setting up campaigns with search engines. The ppc with Overture has been the worst mainly because I can't use Firefox there and it loads terribly slowly in IE or Crazy Browser. It was almost like hard work for a while because it is so boring. Now I am in the middle of setting up a campaign with MSN but took a day off to rebuild my index page in stacked tables. Today I must go back to the boring job of loading in keywords and making up ads.

One day I'll look back at this and smile but, for now I'm sick of messing around with keywords and can't wait to get back to finish my new set up and then I can get on with designing my new website. Oh well, boring stuff first, I need the traffic.

A young chap on our forum started advertising his website for the first time yesterday and had $70 in sales. He was wildly excited - I would have been too if my first day had gone like that. I think he started straight into ppc but I started out with ads on other sites so my start was slower. It's nice to see people succeed, not just because it's further evidence that our programme works, but for the sake of sharing the happiness of others.

Oh well, sales need traffic; traffic requires advertising, so I'm off to visit MSN with another bunch of keywords.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Multiple Streams Of Income And The Internet Fairy

2006-08-14T10:39:00.000Z

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Back on track. Published another article today called Multiple Streams Of Income And The Internet Fairy.

August has been a good month so far. It's been so good, I am beginning to relax and accept it as a trend instead of fearing it's just a fluke. Sunday was my best day for profit in all time. It's too early for the back to school phase to be starting, so I'm as sure as I can be that all the activity is due to the increased advertising. Definitely going to keep that up.

Must also get a new monthly newsletter out. It's been on hold for about three months since I went on holiday and had all the health problems.

Must keep on track and make sure I publish an article every 3-4 days until I use up my credits and then I can go back to one per week. Only slight problem is that I want to build two new websites and if I get started, I won't stop and write.

I have been good though - this month I wrote a new series of email newsletters. I hope they will help some newbies find their way into working at home.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Baby Sign Language And Christmas Is Coming

2006-08-10T08:24:00.000Z

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Only up to day 10 but August has been a record month so far. I've made more profit in those 10 days than I made in the whole of July (which was a completely crap month). Everything seems to have speeded up and I have never had so many visitors to my website. I was determined to make a success of this venture and the hard work seems to be paying off.

I'm so happy, I don't even feel like having a rant about the fact that Harrods, the UK's biggest and most prestigious department store, has already launched its Christmas range! Oh please, can't someone get Christmas put back in December where it belongs. How can we seriously be motivated to spend a fortune by snow scenes and cheery robins when we are in the middle of a heat wave!

Anyway, I just published a new article, called A Rewarding Home Business - Teaching Baby Sign Language. It was inspired by my beautiful granddaughter. She never cries unless she is seriously upset for some reason and is great at communicating via gestures and noises even though she can only speak a handful of real words. On one particular day, I just couldn't find out what was wrong with her; she ended up howling and I felt like crying as well. I realised after that how valuable baby sign-language can be and what a great home business it can be for mothers who want to work part time from home. Still way behind on the article publishing but there are a couple of others in the pipeline. Trouble is, I can't write to order, I need to be inspired and interested in a subject before even thinking of sharing it with anyone else.

Today I am going to avoid the inevitable distractions and focus on my next big project: a new work at home tips newsletter. I think two years experience is long enough to give me credibility and I've made enough mistakes that are worth sharing with "do not go there" labels attached. Glad it's a bit cooler today, makes thinking easier.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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A Quiet Month And Toothache

2006-08-05T09:07:00.000Z

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What happened to July? From a business point of view it was almost a complete waste of time. Profits dropped through the floor and I started to wonder if I had accidentally checked a "no publicity" box somewhere along the line. The only positive thing to come out of July's doldrums was that it allowed me extra time to tweak advertising and work on adding things to my websites - there's never enough time to do those things.

July was a rotten month for several reasons but I've tried to squeeze something positive out of each experience. The first thing was, as I said, the absence of profits and, apparently, interest in online business. July is always known to be a bad month but this year it truly was the pits! Time to work at my writing and on stuff for the websites is very valuable and they are my favourite parts of my work at home business.

The other thing was that I had to have a tooth extracted. That's not a favourite pastime for anyone that I've ever heard of . The idea of going to the dentist just fills me with horror. Anyone who grew up in the UK in the 1960's and had to attend the "school dentist" will understand why: "butchers" is the most often used description for them. I have a theory that these monsters were all psychopaths who had discovered a legal way of getting paid to hurt people. Parents would warn their children not to show fear because, if they did, the dentist would be even harder on them. After a few painful experiences, I could not hide the fear, so maybe that's why I suffered so much. Perhaps I was just unlucky - last time I had a tooth out (only about five years ago), the anaesthetic didn't work (the dentist said that was because there was an infection present) and it was a horrible agonising experience. You can guess how much was I looking forward to a repeat (yup, once again there was an infection) but my new dentist was amazing: as soon as I felt pain, she stopped pulling and gave me some more injections. The second lot of injections worked and it was all over in seconds with no further pain.

How on earth did I wander so far off topic? I'll leave all this in, even if it is not much to do with working at home - one day I'll look back at this and smile (maybe).

Anyway, the positive thing about that little episode was that the earache stopped and I can hear again so I can stop worrying that I had some terrible disease.

The rest of July was spent trying to keep cool. It was impossible! Any blog from me in July would have been one long moan about the weather.

The schools round here broke up for the long summer break towards the end of July During the same week I went to the supermarket and discovered a big new promotion: "back to school". The same week the vacation started? If things keep on at this rate everyone will be advertising "back to school" stuff before the summer break starts. When will they start advertising Christmas? I shudder to think!

It's only the 5th but, so far August has brought me my best two consecutive days of profit since April. I'm feeling optimistic again!

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Exciting Times

2006-06-16T09:00:00.000Z

Wow - I just checked the date of my last entry. Seems I missed the whole month of May after ending April on a pessimistic note.

Most things went on hold for May and part of June because I went away on a long vacation. I went to South Africa and spent a lot of time travelling about to see as many places as possible. It was pretty much impossible to keep up with Internet work and all I managed was dealing with urgent emails every few days. South Africa is a beautiful country and the people are very friendly and welcoming. I had the amazing experience of waking up in the morning to a view of mountains looking close enough to touch. I also had a whole (miles long) beach all to myself as far as the eye could see. These are great treats for someone like me who has always lived in a big city.

Back to work. Despite not doing anything much for a whole month, the commissions from my regular programmes are still coming in. Hey, getting paid for doing nothing while on vacation, I like that! Now to get back to the advertising and invite some more visitors to the website.

When I left, it was a quiet time online and there was a kind of "routine" feeling to things. In a way that was nice, times like that give you time to rearrange your website, write articles or, as I did, get some serious gardening done and then leave town.

On returning, it has all been excitement. This is largely due to Better Universe. I was glad to join the programme as it has tremendous potential, I really don't see how it could not be popular - you can get so much as a free member and as an upgraded member it just gets better and better. The membership is growing in great leaps and the programme is constantly being improved. The CEO is a "hands on" programme owner and it shows in the way he listens to members and makes constant improvements for their benefit. The Receipts Rebates part of the programme has been expanded and is now available to free members. Now even free members can get paid before they even think about recruiting a downline. Receipts Rebates must be the easiest way to earn money. Literally all you have to do is send in your everyday receipts (groceries, gas, utility bills, internet bills, restaurant receipts, etc) with a simple form and they will pay you for providing the information. They do not use any of your personal details, all they need is the data from the receipts. Amazing! I just read that the cap on Receipts Rebates earnings has been lifted, so that's very good news for big spenders!

Also received an email about an "alternative to Google Adsense". Still considering that offer.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Counting Down To The End Of April

2006-04-28T15:14:00.000Z

TS Elliot was right: April is the cruellest month, at least it has been the cruellest so far this year. In fact, April was absolutely vicious towards me in some ways. I am looking forward to May and hope it will bring a fresh start and some changes for the better.

Two days to go until it ends but what should have been my most profitable month so far is likely to turn out to be the least profitable. I won't say I don't mind, that wouldn't be true but I don't mind as much as I might because I know what the problems were and what I did wrong. The main problem was Easter and everyone says Easter and the spring public holidays cause a major slowdown online so I know I was not the only one suffering but that only helped a little. If I had thought ahead, indeed if I had realised how badly the holidays would affect traffic, I would not have spent so much on advertising on high traffic websites, I would have concentrated on PPC but hindsight is always a wonderful thing. The month started off so well - steadily increasing until I hit my biggest single day's profits so far. Pity it all went downhill from then on, but things have been moving again for the last week and I had another record profit day. Now I'm trying to find out why profits fluctuate and how to keep up to the high levels.

Then, to round off a bad month, I really messed up my PPC experiment and ended up paying for a lot of useless clicks. Should have reduced the daily budget cap when I was testing the new keywords. Silly, silly. Still, a lesson was learned and I won't be doing that again. Thank goodness for SFI and Empowerism, at least they are still being good to me.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Bird Flu Has Arrived In Britain

2006-04-27T08:07:00.000Z

After the scare when a dead swan was found in Scotland, bird flu has now been confirmed as being present on a farm in Norfolk. As Norfolk is a centre for the commercial breeding of turkeys and chickens for human consumption, this could very well be the start of a major disaster.

The current news is that it is not the mega-bad strain of bird flu but even so, all the chickens on the farm have to be destroyed. That is so awful. It has been a little while since the TV new broadcasts showed scenes of bird slaughter in other countries but it seems as if those days will be back with a vengeance if the bird flu spreads.

Spring in England is as beautiful as ever: the daffodils are just about over but tulips of every possible colour and size are in full flower, everywhere looks fresh and green but it is as if there is a black cloud just over the horizon that just got a bit closer.

About tulips: why do our local councils insist on planting displays of red and yellow tulips when there are so many other beautiful colour schemes available? I wonder if there are special heavy duty disease resistant varieties that only come in red and yellow. I bet they aren't squirrel-proof though. If only someone could invent a strain of tulip and one of crocus that were not attractive to squirrels.

Oh well, enough rambling, time to start a new work at home related article.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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St George's Day and Shakespeare's Birthday

2006-04-23T07:25:00.000Z

St George's Day and Shakespeare's birthday.

A disappointingly wet Sunday morning when I had planned to take a couple of hours off to work in the garden. Tried to do some work on tidying up my honeysuckle yesterday but it was amazingly hot, so hot in fact that I had to give up gardening and come inside. Did intend to do some more tidying up when the day cooled down but by then I was involved in writing some stuff for my new website that's been in the planning stage for far too long. See what happens when you put things off - the weather changes and you are stuck.

Good new this morning is that profits were up yesterday. Maybe we have now come to the end of the Easter/spring holiday that's slowed things down so badly. That alone is sufficient inspiration to work faster on getting the new site up and running. After weeks of thinking, I now have an idea of my niche, ideas for several articles, ideas for several web pages but no idea of the design. I intended to plan this out carefully before uploading anything and take it one step at a time. Looks as if this is going to turn out like all my projects: weeks of thinking and then just do it all in one go!

I wrote to Google the other day to ask if there was any way of me having a new Adsense account even though my previous one was disabled last year. I can't make out if it is an individual who gets banned or just their domain. The answer was that I would have to appeal and an appeal would only be considered if I provided full information includng my publisher number and the exact date my account was disable. I can't remember either of those things. The account was closed down in about August 2005. Do they really expect me to remember the exact date and recall the publisher number which was about a dozen digits long? I give up, I'm waiting for Yahoo!

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Mad Mystery Shopping Woman Has Gone Quiet

2006-04-21T17:38:00.000Z

She had the weekend, then another week but the crazy woman who accused me of stealing her copyrighted material has not given me a substantive reply to my email asking her exactly what I was supposed to have copied.

What a nerve, that was obviously just a try-on to see if I would give her a free link to her boring website. Guess her retained attorney was just a figment of her imagination. Maybe I'll email her and demand an apology. Maybe I'll just forget it and move on: more important things to do.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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I Won A Prize!

2006-04-17T17:30:00.000Z

Wow! Just heard from Search Warp that I won their writing competition with my little article, Easter In England - Tradition And Superstition. I was quite amazed. I never thought for a minute that I'd win, I just decided to write for the competition as a change from writing about working at home. It was lovely to write about a different topic and I thoroughly enjoyed writing about our Easter. This earns me a month's free text ad on Search Warp's home page. I'll try to keep on writing for the month's category as an exercise - not likely to win the same competition more than once!

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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My Advertising Banner Was Stolen

2006-04-13T17:08:00.000Z

Some people are lower than a snake's belly.

On 20th March I paid to have an advertising banner made (a 125x125 button to be exact). I designed it but as I was in a hurry, I got someone else to construct it (I really must learn how to do that, it will be very useful). I paid to place my button on various WAH sites and within a couple of weeks noticed that the link from by button on one particular site went to a completely different url, a one page affiliate site and nothing to do with me.

I contacted the owners of the site to tell them they had screwed up by using my banner with someone else's url. They were adamant that they had not made a mistake, so I emailed the woman whose link it was to tell her about the mistake and ask for her help in getting it put right. No reply.

I emailed her again to repeat my request. I also pointed out that I was ok because I was using a different button ad but her ad looked silly as it was so obviously not related to the button. No reply. I began to suspect that this woman had stolen my button. I could hardly believe it: one because it is such a low trick, two because you can use a button making service for under $10 and three because she would have to be stupid if she thought she could advertise alongside me and I wouldn't know it was her. HELLO!

I sent another email saying that her failure to reply to me etc made me suspect that she had deliberately copied my button. That got a reaction! The low down lying bitch said it was her button and I must stop harassing her and she was only using the button ad until the end of the month and I couldn't tell her what to do. She acted just like a little kid who had been caught out doing something bad, all bluster (combined with rudeness). Pathetic lying cow. My new button has my website url on it, wonder if she'll try stealing that one.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Who Put The Mystery In Mystery Shopping?

2006-04-12T16:54:00.000Z

I received an email from some crazy woman accusing me of stealing copyright protected material from her website. She alleged that one of my articles Mystery Shopping An Excellent Way To Make Extra Money was "havily" borrowed from her site. Well, if I was going to steal material, I wouldn't steal from someone who can't even spell "heavily". The email went on:
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So here's the deal. I am sure this was done inadvertently, and I do usually happily partner with other mystery shopping sites who use my work WITH MY permission and proper crediting of my material attributing it to me, posting my copyright notice and a link to my web site.
If you will make these corrections, you may use my content. If not, you must remove all such content from your site immediately as I do have an intellectual property attorney on retainer who will contact your ISP to shut
you down and we do sue to protect my intellectual property rights. I trust we can come to an amicable resolution of the matter.

Please advise your intentions immediately.
========================

I had a look at her website and was as certain as I could be that I had never laid eyes on it before. It was not even the sort of website I would have any reason to visit. I got someone else to look at this website and at my article and his opinion was that there was no similarity and my article, in fact, contained more information. So I emailed this woman and said I couldn't find a single paragraph or sentence we had in common and asked her to point out to me exactly what she was alleging had been copied. She emailed me back to say that she didn't know and needed the weekend to think about it.

If I had found someone had copied my original work, I'd know word for word what had been copied particularly if I was going to send threatening emails.

It seems she was just hoping to scare me into giving her a link to her pathetic website. Huh! Some chance. Let's see how she backs up her allegations.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Easter In England - A Family Affair

2006-04-09T08:04:00.000Z

At last, I seem to be on a bit of a roll. Decided not to mess around with my Easter article. Instead I worked on the second one and submitted it. It was accepted into the Home/Family category so it is now on its way around the Internet. Hard to believe it is nearly Easter, Good Friday is in just a few days' time.

I must, must, must do some work on my garden and get some more veggies planted. My cactus plant collection needs an overhaul and a prolonged re-potting session has to be scheduled. The lovely spring sunshine also reveals the full horror of the interior of my car which has been a stranger to the vacuum cleaner for far too long.

Now to prioritise: what really needs to be done before I spend a few days on horticultural pursuits (car can wait a bit!). Work on next article, find articles for next monthly newsletter, work on Google Adwords, find some more high traffic targetted sites to place ads, build niche website, add some new offers to the "beginners" page on my main site, spend some time working on link exchanges, delete hundreds of things from my hard drive, read my current book, add to my novel. Well those are the essential jobs, I don't think I can face listing the minor things. Good job I'm organised but there are still too few hours in the day.

My new Easter themed article is: Easter In England - A Family Affair

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Easter In England - Tradition And Superstition

2006-04-07T15:26:00.000Z

Wrote an article about Easter today. Actually, it turned into two articles but I only sent one to Search Warp for publishing. This article is nothing to do with working from home, I decided to try to write an article each month for Search Warp's monthly competition. I don't expect to win but it is good to write something unconnected with work.

I had intended to submit it for publishing generally but then realised it doesn't really fit into any particular category. I think I just got a bit more unique content for my website! - Good job I enjoyed the writing.

The article is Easter In England - Tradition And Superstition I think I'll have a try at revising it to fit a category.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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A Milestone Reached And A Disaster

2006-04-04T18:53:00.000Z

Yesterday was a bit of a red letter day - My Clickbank profits for that one day were double my whole gross revenue from my first month working with Erich Winnecke's 3 Phase Profit Plan. It was not a fortune but it is respectable and it proves the system works.

Probably due to the excitement but I could not sleep - managed about 4 hours and felt like a zombie most of the day. I had intended to take advantage of the bright dry weather to take by baby granddaughter for a stroll but I was too tired. A bit of dry fresh air and some gentle exercies are definitely a good idea - maybe I'll have the strength tomorrow.

Not a good day to be working - I managed to delete an index page and had to rebuild it. What a nightmare. Just one wrong click and away it went. Oh well, can't be helped, I've managed to put a temporary page together and I'll work on it tomorrow. The only comfort was that I had intended to replace it - I just wanted to do it in an orderly manner. Must get some sleep. One day I'll look back on this and laugh!

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Your Internet Home Based Business - Be Transparent, Not Invisible

2006-03-31T10:07:00.000Z

Busy, busy and busier still. No time to blog but managed to get a few things done and I love seeing things crossed off my list.

After pronouncing it "finally" finished, I went back and re-did my Work At Home Directory index page so it is much smaller and faster to load. I kept trying to cram everything in so people did not have to hunt for information but as the page was so slow loading people would be giving up and not seeing it anyway. This little pruning job involved building several new pages to showcase the various types of work at home. I already had a mom-friendly page and now I have added one for newbies, one purely Internet based and one for typists. I intend to work on the text part of each page but they are up and running.

Funny thing was, the day before I made all those changes, I had my biggest profit day so far - hope I didn't just roast my best laying hen!

Published two articles this week. Basically they are about dealing with people honestly when you have an Internet home based business. You can read them here:

Your Internet Home Based Business - Be Transparent, Not Invisible Part 1 - Be Transparent.

Your Internet Home Based Business - Be Transparent, Not Invisible Part 2 - Don't Be Invisible.

For my next trick I have to get my monthly newsletter sent out. It is supposed to be for March but as this is the last day of the month...

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Mothers Day and Thoughts Of Flowers and Accidents

2006-03-26T19:21:00.000Z

Mothers Day today. The weather is at last getting a little warmer, the daffodils and crocuses are adding splashes of colour to the grey outlook. Spring will be here soon.

Drove out of town today to my daughter's house as I was invited to lunch. I went by my usual route which takes me past the scene of a fatal traffic accident that happened at the beginning of February. I really dislike the current craze for leaving flowers and gifts at accident scenes. There were bouquets of flowers tied to a lamp post at the accident scene but, as several weeks have passed by, the flowers have died, the paper wrappers are deteriorating in the wind and rain and bits of plastic wrapping flap miserably in the breeze. It just turns a sad scene into a grim untidy spectacle. There is another accident site on my way to the supermarket. A young man was killed a couple of months ago. There were masses of flowers tied to the railings at this site but again the flowers have died and the wrappers are a mess. I don't know why people think it appropriate to leave helium-filled balloons and soft toys at places like this but they do. We are left with torn wrapping paper, deflated balloons and grubby soggy stuffed animals, the whole thing looks like a macabre tableau which is totally lacking in dignity. I wish this fashion had not caught on.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Spring Cleaning

2006-03-23T19:15:00.000Z

Managed to write an article today and get it submitted for publishing. It is about Spring Cleaning, not much to do with working at home except that it is this month's writing exercise for Search Warp. I never got round to writing for any of the other categories so it made a change to write something unrelated to work at home, Internet and everything else I usually do. You can see the article here:
Spring Cleaning - The Gender Factor.

I suppose this has been quite a good day. I am just about caught up with my email backlog and I also placed three new advertising buttons today. Considering I have a pounding headache and feel as if my throat has been sandpapered, I think I've done pretty well.

Had a strange visitor to my website. Well, I am just assuming the visitor is strange from the search term. The really strange part was that a person arrived at my work at home directory by searching for "free pictures of nudity in the workplace". Wierd!

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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New Banners and "Work At Home Mothers" page

2006-03-21T11:05:00.000Z

Another busy day. Have finally obtained a couple of banners. One is a standard size freebie from Ad Designer. I wanted to avoid using a free one which carries advertising but was unable to find one I really liked amongst all the thousands available to pay for. The other one is a 125x125 button. It only cost $9.95 which is peanuts really.

Apart from messing around designing banners (how can it take so long!) I added a completely new webpage to my website. It's specially for Work At Home Mothers. Although just about everything on the site will help mothers who want to work at home, I decided to make a page with a selection of work at home ideas and tips just for mothers as they don't have much time to search around for things.

Still haven't written a new article. This is getting silly. Must do it this week.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Stormpay Robbing Me Again

2006-03-20T11:16:00.000Z

Discovered that Stormpay had made a chargeback to MPAM so my fees from last month were unpaid. Only found this out when MPAM threatened to terminate me! Tried to log in to my Stormpay account to check what was going on and found that it had been suspended. Now they are doing chargebacks without notifying customers. From what I have seen posted on forums, the next step is likely to be taking funds from my credit card even though I have removed the credit card details from the Stormpay account.

I couldn't remember which credit card I had used for Stormpay so had to cancel everything. Now have to wait several days for new ones to arrive. Most inconvenient but at least I should be safe from Stormpay.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Added Another Page To My Website

2006-03-18T19:10:00.000Z

Quite a productive day. Wrote a new web page for my "Tips and Tricks" section. This one is about adding banners to web pages. I am trying to build up a collection of tips and instructions for people just starting out. It is not too long ago that the construction of a banner was a complete mystery to me. It is not, in fact, a very complicated thing and, like most things about HTML, it is logical. One thing I do particularly remember is that, when I was struggling to learn things, I had a hard time finding information because I didn't know where to look and didn't know what things were called. If I keep adding to it, maybe one day I'll have a virtual home for confused newbies.

Bitterly cold today, the March winds are in evidence. This week's local newspaper brought the new that we are to have a hosepipe ban starting in the immediate future. It seems crazy: all the weather seems to do in this country through every season is rain. In my mind I know that the climate has been getting progressively drier and the water table levels are low, the reservoirs are way below capacity etc but it still feels nuts. In one issue of the local paper they warn us of the dry climate and the hosepipe ban and in the previous one (or it might have been the one before) they were issuing dire warnings about the danger of flooding. At least I'll have an excuse for not washing my car!

Found a nice website today full of straightforward instructions on HTML. Very nicely laid out, easy to navigate and the forum seems well populated. I'm going to add it to my free resources page tomorrow and I'm going back for another look. I usually like the htmlgoodies site but I think the new one I've just discovered is more easily accessible for newbies.

Good that I made a new webpage. Bad, bad, bad that I didn't write an article last week. Must get one underway and published asap.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Articles Taking On A Life Of Their Own

2006-03-17T11:13:00.000Z

The day didn't start off too well. Woke up at 4.45am and remained awake. Probably a lot to do with the fact that my control panels for several of my websites were inaccessible yesterday - for the whole day! All I got was a message indicating the panels were not licenced. A support ticket and email to the hosting company produced no response so I was left to stew in impotent fury. Two banners I fell in love with and orderd on Wednesday had still not been delivered by the time I logged of yesterday evening and that is disappointing - I had intended to buy advertising on the website where I ordered the banners. Also I have to do the grocery shopping today (ugh).

Started work as it was getting to be properly daylight. Control panels still not letting me in so I sent another email to the company. Emailed the lady who took my money but didn't send me any banners. I won't be paying her for any advertising. Shame because I liked the website.

Hey! - Things have suddenly taken a turn for the better. Got a Google alert that my silly article about Stormpay stealing all the money has been posted on a forum (one I have never heard of before) and is going to be featured in a newsletter. Another nice email from the guy who was interested in autosurfing. An email from my crazy American co-author-in-waiting.

Finished my review of SFI and put it on the website. Doesn't really do the company justice, there is just so much to say but I think this gives a flavour of what goes on. Here's the link: http://www.huntingvenus.com/sfireview.shtml
Must make mental note to add this link to the index linkbar and sitemap.

Maybe it won't be such a bad day after all. Maybe the supermarket won't be full of mutants this week!

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Sunny Monday - MPAM Review

2006-03-13T11:31:00.000Z

Woke up at 4.00am and gave up all hope of sleep. Nice to see it gets light before 6.30am now.

The extra hours gave me a chance to have a further look at MPAM/Prosperity With Integrity.

I can hardly wait to get started on my niche website but I am determined to do this in an orderly fashion, so I need to tidy a few things up first. I did write a review of the MPAM programme, to check it out:
click here

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Page 1 of Google

2006-03-12T11:00:00.000Z

Wow, just checking my website stats and discovered I had made page one of Google for two search terms, one was "home business home typist" and I got so excited I forgot the other one. Doesn't matter, the important thing is that I have achieved a small ambition - ie to get to page 1 of Google for something sensible. The last time I made page 1 was for "My Magic Doubler" and I'm still trying to live that down. Well, we all make mistakes in our early days and anything connected to that programme was definitely a big mistake. It was only a matter of dumb luck that I didn't lose any cash there. So happy to have a credible search term or two working for me.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Big Red Bus, Big Brother and the Chinaman

2006-03-08T14:54:00.000Z

I just had the slightly odd experience of coming across one of my articles on a blog belonging to a Chinese man living in Hertfordshire (which is not very far away from where I live). The really odd part was that the article was the one about Stormpay stealing money from its members and it was posted just after a blog item saying how great it was to be NetIBA certified to get a reduction in Stormpay fees. Yeah, I remember feeling like that just before they emptied out my account.

Yesterday I was driving out of town following a double decker London bus. When you are stuck in traffic behind one of those big red beasties, there is not much to do apart from reading the advertising on its rear. Had a momentary fantasy of advertising my website there but I'm sure I couldn't afford an ad on one bus let alone a whole fleet, but that's half the point of a fantasy anyway, isn't it.

The ad was a huge yellow poster on behalf of the London Borough of Haringey (the next borough to Enfield, where I live) advertising the fact that they now have CCTV and "are watching". I wasn't particularly struck to learn about the installation of CCTV in Wood Green, I briefly tried to remember how long it had been since I went shopping in Wood Green Shopping City.

If traffic had been moving normally, I probably would have forgotten all about the advertising on the bus but, as I was forced to follow the bus at tortoise speed, the ad remained so much in my face that I couldn't avoid paying attention to it. I realised how thoroughly I had taken for granted the fact that CCTV had been installed in my local shopping centre for a couple of years and that I didn't bat an eye to think it was spreading throughout London and, in fact throughout all major towns in England. I believe that all in all this type of security measure is a good thing if it reduces crime. What scares me is the way we now take this legalised spying for granted. It is not so many years ago that the notion of being able to track people via CCTV in the high street was the stuff of futuristic fiction. It is now fact, Big Brother is watching us.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Sunshine, Surfing and Working With A Tabbed Browser

2006-03-05T14:37:00.000Z

The sunshine and blue sky look like the promise of spring. Sitting here in my centrally heated office, I can almost convince myself that spring is just around the corner. Alas, the "almost" is a big word in this context. The big fir tree outside my window is being cruelly thrashed by the wind and I know it is bitterly cold.

Apart from sunshine, there's not much to cheer me up at the moment. All the autosurf for cash programmes are showing distinct signs of nervousness. E-profit has shut down for the weekend to make some changes, Dad N Dave's is shut temporarily while David considers legal matters, Safari Cash is in the throes of big changes, Surf Down Under is dropping hints about changes in the near future, Alien Trust is in limbo and 12 Daily has completely disappeared. Finally, the owner of Gotta Lotta Hits went from hero to zero for refusing to be bullied by Stormpay and then suddenly pulling out of the paid to surf business. Everyone is supposed to be getting a refund from Gotta Lotta, I haven't got mine yet and I don't know if I will get back all I put in (via PayPal this time) but I am past caring. The income from these programmes was providing a nice cushion for my advertising expenses, I'll have to cut back for a while.

In the meantime, I managed to write an article, a serious one for a change. I decided to try to write a few articles to help newbies. This one is about setting up groups in tabbed browsers. I took it for granted that everyone with Internet access would be familiar with the joys of tabbed browsing but when someone asked me "what's a tabbed browser?" I realised I was taking too much for granted.

You can read the article if you click here
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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Fed Up, Sick Of Stormpay.

2006-03-02T17:52:00.000Z

Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory

I have rarely felt so totally pissed off. Stormpay's antics are still causing me grief on top of all the other things that are making me feel too fed up to work. Today I found out that Gotta Lotta Hits is the most recent casualty and that was one site that stood up to Stormpay and managed to hang onto the funds. The SEC investigation has got everyone, including the owner of GHL, in a panic. If Stormpay hadn't stirred up the 12 Daily Riot, the SEC would never have got interested in autosurfs. Now it looks as if a lot of the programmes are being changed to fit the SEC profile for non-investment opportunities. The outcome is that there will be a lot of messing about, things will be put on hold while sites are tweaked, terminology will be changed but everything will carry on pretty much as usual. It is too pathetic for words.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Work At Home Mothers - Are You Going Through A Difficult Phase

2006-02-27T11:42:00.000Z

Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory
Are you enjoying the experience of being a work at home mother, or are you going through a difficult phase? When you have children, you will nurture them through various phases, some testing and some irresistibly cute, but there is one phase that I reckon is the biggest reason for mothers to give up the idea of being a work at home mother and go back to the wage slave routine.

If you didn't start a work at home project before the birth, the next best time to do it is when your baby is between 1-3 months old. For the first month you will be too tired, too busy and too involved in getting accustomed to your new role as a mother. It gets easier from then on. During the first three months your baby will settle into a routine and you will be able to plan your day around that.

At 3-6 months your baby should still spend a good deal of the day sleeping and this will leave you quite a bit of time to streamline your work at home timetable.

At the 6-9 months stage, your baby will be awake more and more but will be able to amuse itself for short periods in between feeding and sleeping. This is a good time to introduce your baby to your home workplace so he or she will feel part of your working day. Don't exclude your child from your work area, otherwise he or she will grow up resenting the time you spend there and will compete for your attention.

By about the age of 18-24 months your baby becomes a small person who will be perfectly happy playing quiet games or looking at picture books while you carry on working, just having you nearby is enough during this stage of growing independence.

Did you notice I missed something out? I decided to save the 9-18 month stage for last. Remember, I said it gets easier after the first few weeks? Well, that's true - apart from this stage! It's just a phase, it doesn't last forever but it will feel like forever while you battle through it. I wouldn't want to put anyone off parenthood or working at home; they are both great but each of those situations becomes difficult verging on impossible during the 9-18 month stage. Parents who said "We won't let having a baby change our lives." start to look a bit embarrassed and pretend they never made that ridiculous statement in the first place.

If you think of your work at home mother career as a journey, this is not the end of the road, it is a very steep hill you need to conquer before you can cruise down into the peaceful valley ahead. By the time this phase hits you, you need to have your home job organised and running to a schedule. This is the phase that will test the flexibility of that schedule to the extreme. Be prepared, this phase does not creep up gradually, it slams in unannounced overnight.

Remember that cute helpless little gurgling bundle with the rosebud mouth? It now stays awake most of the day and you suddenly find you have your very own weapon of domestic destruction. As soon as that little bundle masters the art of rolling over, it is time to move any fragile objects to higher ground, rearrange cupboards according to child safety rather than logic or convenience, install safety gates, special locks, socket covers and take a million other precautions. (Tip: a lock on the toilet lid is only unnecessary if you don't mind finding your toothbrush or shoes in the toilet.)

Yes folks, mobility has arrived and baby's reach is extending daily. Progress from rolling over to rolling across a room, to crawling happens like a film shown in fast forward mode. Your most precious fragile possession becomes a standing, climbing, falling over, head bumping, dangerous object seeking, inquisitive, noisy adventurer who has an aversion to the playpen. This is a period of exploration and learning that involves your child spending its waking hours in between you and whatever you had hoped to be doing. If you can't do something with a baby in one arm, on your lap or firmly clinging to your legs and shouting, forget it until nap time. A surprising number of things can be done one handed, so most days you will get to eat a snack or drink a glass of juice even if you aren't able to get showered and dressed until noon, but it's pointless to try to give your attention to grownup concerns outside of nap time.

Don't try to fight nature, this is a battle you won't win, so you might as well save your energy and make a compromise. Give your tiny tornado all the attention it needs throughout this phase and fit in your work at home project around it until the blessed time arrives that proper walking is achieved, the vicelike grip on your legs is released and you are no longer the focus of attention. If you can weather this phase without giving up the idea of working at home, you should succeed with the ordinary challenges of running a home business.

This phase is demanding work but it is the time of first wobbly steps, first coherent words and all the other "first" milestones of your child growing up; all the things you couldn't bear to miss, your reason for wanting to work at home in the first place.

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By Elaine Currie, BA (Hons)

You may republish this article only in its

entirety and with this resource box intact

Elaine Currie provides ideas, help and resources

for anyone wanting to work at home

visit: http://www.Huntingvenus.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Get Paid Convention

2006-02-26T19:13:00.000Z

Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory
If Stormpay hadn't stolen all the money, the GPT Convention would have been coming to an end today. Instead, it didn't happen. I suppose none of the people who paid for tickets got a refund from Scampay!

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Stormpay, 12 Daily Pro and the Internet Farmers

2006-02-20T19:59:00.000Z

Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory

It has taken me a ridiculous amount of time but I have finally finished the revamping of my website. Apart from that I have been trying to find a way to fund my e-gold account and a couple of other new processors (well, new to me anyway). How can it be so difficult - all I want to do is put some cash in the account, I wish they would accept my credit card, don't see why they will only deal with USA cards.

Don't know how I managed it, but I have found a few minutes here and there to write some articles. Now have a few coming along that just need finishing touches.

Published one today - this is it:

Stormpay, 12 Daily Pro and the Internet Farmers

Working on the Internet can be dangerous: if you are not careful you can pick up a virus or a Trojan; opening an email might unleash a dangerous worm; you can get diverted, hijacked and spied upon. As long as you are aware of the dangers, you can take sensible precautions and enjoy the Internet in safety. Sometimes, however, the danger comes from an entirely unexpected direction. The following is a true story but some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Once, not so long ago, Internet chicken farming was a popular occupation. After all, most people use eggs in one form or another. The biggest profits were earned by the farmers who could afford to invest the most in their businesses. However, with a little work and careful reinvestment, the poorer farmers were able to build up their stock and improve their situation. Although not everyone was able to see the benefits of chicken farming it was, overall, a good life and even people with no previous experience and little capital to invest were able start their own business.

Sour Grapes said: "You're safer working for a boss".

John Farmer said: "I must try, I'll never get rich working for a boss".

Experience said: "Diversify".

As more and more chicken farmers became successful, word spread and increasing numbers of people took an interest in the business. Many people took up chicken farming in a small way to supplement their wages from everyday jobs. People liked chicken farming, it did not take up too much of their spare time and they appreciated the extra income it brought them.

Sour Grapes said: "It isn't a proper job".

John Farmer said: "If this works out as planned, I can quit my job".

Experience said: "Diversify".

One day a new breed of bird was introduced to the chicken farming community. A few intrepid farmers added the new bird to their stock and found that it was just as easy to rear as everyday hens. The big difference was the new bird laid golden eggs regularly every 12 days. The new bird was called 12 Daily Egg Provider, I'll call it 12 Daily Pro for short.

Sour Grapes said: "No such thing as golden eggs".

John Farmer said: "I heard it's true. I intend to try it out."

Experience said: "Diversify".

Word quickly spread throughout the community that 12 Daily Pro did, indeed, lay golden eggs. Each egg produced by 12 Daily Pro was worth many times the value of an ordinary hen's egg. More and more farmers started to rear some12 Daily Pro alongside the common hen. People who had never even considered chicken farming previously set themselves up as 12 Daily Pro farmers.

Sour Grapes said: "It won't last a month".

John Farmer said: "Even just a few golden eggs, will give me more money than I ever dreamed of".

Experience said: "Diversify".

Everybody turned on Experience and asked: "Can't you say anything else apart from "diversify"?"

Experience explained: "Even egg farmers need multiple streams of income, not just one or two. Grow some crops, develop a sideline as a mechanic, paint pictures, anything, just don't rely on one or two sources of income. You never know what the future holds"

Everyone was astonished at the length of this statement from the normally taciturn Experience, but they soon forgot and few people took the advice. New farmers kept 12 Daily Pro as their only stock because they couldn't see the point in rearing birds that could only produce ordinary eggs. Even some of the more experienced farmers started to reduce their numbers of common hens and relied more and more upon 12 Daily Pro.

Sour Grapes said: "It'll all be finished by Thanksgiving".

John Farmer said: "I've never before made so much money so quickly".

Experience went back to: "Diversify" but when everyone turned and stared at him he added: "you would miss hens' eggs if there weren't any".

Thanksgiving came and went and, in under a year, many 12 Daily Pro farmers became quite rich and there was a growing trend in the community to give up breeding hens in favour of 12 Daily Pro farming.

Sour Grapes said: "It'll be over by Christmas".

John Farmer said: "I don't care much for eggs anyway".

Experience said: "Without eggs there would be no cakes: pancakes, meringues, omelettes…"

Christmas passed uneventfully for the farmers but January brought them a shock. They discovered that all the chicken feed in the whole world had been taken over by a disreputable ex-farmer, ex-lawyer named Mr Stormpay. Stormpay informed the farmers that they had a choice: to buy feed from him at inflated prices or to go without and let their birds starve. This type of choice is called "Hobson's choice", on the Internet it's called "scampay".

Sour Grapes said: "See, I was right".

John Farmer said: "There's no alternative".

Experience said: "…mayonnaise, batter, custard…"

The farmers paid Stormpay for the feed but he didn't deliver it. He kept the farmers' money and poured all the feed they had paid for into the swill at his pig farm. The farmers tried to reason with Stormpay about the unfairness of the situation but he used lawyers to prevaricate. As Stormpay had all their money, the farmers could not afford to hire lawyers to help them. Without the feed, 12 Daily Pro golden egg production ceased immediately. The strongest of the common hens were able to continue laying their ordinary eggs because they could survive on the grubs and greens they could peck at around the farms but, as the farmers had concentrated so much on 12 Daily Pro, there were not very many hens left, eggs became scarce and the farming community experienced terrible suffering.

Sour Grapes said: "Shouldn't have put all your eggs in one basket".

John Farmer said: "It was a mistake to give in to Stormpay's blackmail".

Experience said: "Shakespeare was right about lawyers".
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By Elaine Currie, BA (Hons)

You may republish this article only in its

entirety and with this resource box intact

Elaine Currie provides ideas, help and resources

for anyone wanting to work at home

visit: http://www.Huntingvenus.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Stormpay Stole My Money

2006-02-16T08:20:00.000Z

Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory

Time to attempt to blog again!

Something went wrong when I made my last post and it was impossible to publish the blog.

The news then was that Stormpay had insisted that all the big autosurf programmes must dump all their other payment processors immediately and keep Stormpay as the only option. Failing agreement to this, they would lose the ability to use Stormpay. This ultimatum was issued in such a way that it was not really a matter of choice. The site owners had to act immediately, The truth is that the option was that they had to capitulate or have their Stormpay funds frozen. They were not given the option keep their other payment processors, get rid of Stormpay and have their funds returned by Stormpay.

Many of the companies had no choice but to give into Stormpay's demands because most of their membership used Stormpay. Having achieved a monopoly, Stormpay then froze all the accounts and denied the site owners any access to their accounts. They are, at the time of writing unable to even view their accounts let alone move money. It has been said that the amount taken from 12 Daily Pro by Stormpay is 20 million dollars and that they have taken 9 million from Alien Trust.

The worst hit was, of course, the biggest and most popular programme: 12 Daily Pro. There has been plenty of publicity, most of it biased against 12 Daily Pro and written by people who have no idea what is happening and seem not to know what autosurfing is anyway.

The companies that capitulated and got rid of their other payment processors, are either unable to function or have simply disappeared. The companies that refused to give in to Stormpay's demands are still operating.

Then Stormpay customers started to report that Stormpay had taken money from their accounts without their authority. Some people had unauthorised credit card withdrawals made by Stormpay. Some people reported that Stormpay had removed money from their accounts even though the cash was in no way related to 12 Daily Pro or any other autosurfing programme.

Stormpay stole money from me. During the time 12 Daily Pro's account was frozen and they had no access, Stormpay applied 2 "charge backs" to my account. According to Stormpay these debits were made by 12 Daily Pro. This is obviously a lie because 12 Daily Pro's account is frozen (Stormpay do not deny this fact). These two spurious "charge backs" did not relate to any money I had earned or been paid by 12 Daily Pro. They did, however, add up to exactly the amount of a cheque I had requested from Stormpay some 4 or 5 days earlier plus the total balance of my Stormpay account down to the last odd 90 cents. Stormpay cancelled the cheque and "disappeared" the funds. The money I had in my account was not 12 Daily Pro's money in any event. It included commissions for affiliate sales and payments for advertising.

So far Stormpay has issued a few statements which make little sense and they have contradicted themselves. Initially they said they and 12 Daily Pro's account were the subject of an investigation by an outside authority, later they admitted there was no such investigation.

Stormpay's story is that, after over two years of being payment processor for autosurf companies and earning huge fees from doing so, they discovered that these companies are ponzi schemes or in some other way illegal. Instead of issuing notice to the companies that they must move their accounts to another processor, Stormpay bullied them into accepting Stormpay as the only processor, took all their money and started systematically robbing their members. Apparently this has all been done because Stormpay believe the autosurf companies are operating illegally.

The other version of what is going on is that Stormpay have overspent on their much publicised sponsorship of a race track and do not have the funds to honour their obligations to the autosurf companies. This is the reason for pushing the companies into the situation where they had no other source of funds and then appropriating those funds. The longer Stormpay can drag this out, the harder it will be to sort out the mess in the end.

Who suffers? Stormpay customers suffer. Stormpay has made a fortune in fees on these accounts and, not content with robbing the autosurf companies, they are now stealing money from "ordinary" members like me.

I now detest Stormpay. Apart from the financial loss, they have cost me untold hours of time which is far more precious than cash. I have decided that today I will concentrate on work and not try to find news or clarification of the situation on forums. I won't forget Stormpay but I won't let it dominate my life. Constant checking does not good, when there is some real news, it will spread like the wildest of fire.

Nearly two weeks now since Black Friday. Things are showing signs of getting back to normal. The strong autosurf sites have survived the "storm" and are running. Apart from the commissions stolen by Stoirmpay, my other business interests are fine. Time to move on.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Black Friday For The Autosurf For Cash Community

2006-02-03T19:22:00.000Z

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Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory

Today started badly when I woke up with a raging sore throat. Little did I know that things were about to get a whole lot worse.

Stormpay seems to have been having another attack of its God complex. First of all it issued a threat to the autosurf sites forcing them to use Stormpay as their only payment processor or, alternatively, losing their Stormpay account. Many of the site owners had no choice but to comply with Stormpay's demands. The one that has caused most of the stir with autosurfers is 12 Daily Pro. They were forced to capitulate but it did them no good. Stormpay immediately froze their account. They have also frozen the accounts of Alien Trust, Autosurf Biz and e Profit. Who is being punished here?

When the Stormpay site had disappeared for hours, the rumours flew thick and fast. It did make sense that the problems with the autosurf sites had been created as a smoke screen while the owners of Stormpay were moving money to offshore locations and making good their escape. I was mentally saying an emotional farewell to large amounts of money and thanking Stormpay for the experience. One thing that did not coincide with the rumours was all the new stuff that had been added to Stormpay - the auctions etc - why do all that if you are about to run? That was about the only bright thought I had. I'm glad to report that the Stormpay site can back up and I requested a cheque for the money I had in the account. Looks like I'll have to get used to EMO after all.

The state of play at the moment is that many autosurf sites have stopped accepting new members, Alien Trust have said they are going to close altogether for several days to sort out their server issues and the Stormpay problem, nobody feels at all confident that they will get paid in a timely manner.

I also tried to surf my Studio Traffic account. The big notice telling me my account is blocked has gone but when I try to surf I just get a message telling me to contact live support. When I try to send a message to live support, the window closes. I give up - I sacrificed two months earnings, what more do they want?

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Black Friday For The Autosurf For Cash Community

2006-02-03T18:51:00.000Z

Today started badly when I woke up with a raging sore throat. Little did I know that things were about to get a whole lot worse.

Stormpay seems to have been having another attack of its God complex. First of all it issued a threat to the autosurf sites forcing them to use Stormpay as their only payment processor or, alternatively, losing their Stormpay account. Many of the site owners had no choice but to comply with Stormpay's demands. The one that has caused most of the stir with autosurfers is 12 Daily Pro. They were forced to capitulate but it did them no good. Stormpay immediately froze their account. They have also frozen the accounts of Alien Trust, Autosurf Biz and e Profit. Who is being punished here?

When the Stormpay site had disappeared for hours, the rumours flew thick and fast. It did make sense that the problems with the autosurf sites had been created as a smoke screen while the owners of Stormpay were moving money to offshore locations and making good their escape. I was mentally saying an emotional farewell to large amounts of money and thanking Stormpay for the experience. One thing that did not coincide with the rumours was all the new stuff that had been added to Stormpay - the auctions etc - why do all that if you are about to run? That was about the only bright thought I had. I'm glad to report that the Stormpay site can back up and I requested a cheque for the money I had in the account. Looks like I'll have to get used to EMO after all.

The state of play at the moment is that many autosurf sites have stopped accepting new members, Alien Trust have said they are going to close altogether for several days to sort out their server issues and the Stormpay problem, nobody feels at all confident that they will get paid in a timely manner.

I also tried to surf my Studio Traffic account. The big notice telling me my account is blocked has gone but when I try to surf I just get a message telling me to contact live support. When I try to send a message to live support, the window closes. I give up - I sacrificed two months earnings, what more do they want?

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Work at Home Online - The First Year

2006-01-15T16:41:00.000Z

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The begining of a new year seemed like a good view point for looking back over the last year. Made me think about a year in the life of a home based internet business. This is the resulting article:

Work at Home Online - The First Year

Running an Internet home based business is full of changes and challenges. These challenges alter as your business evolves and your success depends upon your willingness to face up to challenges and your ability to adapt yourself to meet the changing demands of a work at home career. The end of the first year is a good time to look back and measure your success. The beginning of the first year is a good time to look forward and plan to succeed.

Once the decision is made and you have signed up to the online work at home opportunity of your choice, you will need something in the region of three months to learn the ton of new things associated with running your home based business and to put all these things into practice. Three months sounds like a long time but the first three months will fly by: I can promise that from personal experience. The learning phase does not end after three months, it's just that the curve becomes noticeably less steep and you start to feel that you are running your home based business instead of running after it.

The next three months are slightly less intense but you will still be learning new techniques and refining your newfound skills. The three to six months span is often the time you start to see rewards for your work in the form of revenue. It is like a tide turning: after months of watching your cash ebbing away into the distance, tiny waves of profit begin lapping at the shore and, with any luck, the waves will continue to rise and breakers will regularly deposit funds upon the virtual shore of your bank account. Around six months is a generally recognised average time to reach the situation of being in profit but nobody can guarantee the time it will take you to make a profit. Your results will depend upon many things including the amount of time and effort you invest and, to an extent, luck

Reaching the six months milestone is a fair indicator that you have selected the right work at home opportunity for you. If you made the wrong choice in the first place and found no enjoyment in the work at home experience, you would most likely have abandoned your work at home endeavours within the first three months.

This is definitely not the time to relax: this is the time to make a concerted effort to build on what you have learnt. The fact that the cash flow is no longer a one way stream does not mean that you have succeeded, it simply means that you are doing at least some things right. You now need to take a close look at your business, decide what things are working and what aspects need improvement. If something is not working after a decent trial period, stop doing it; if it has not started to work for you yet, chances are it never will. Take the things that are working and do more of them, eg if a particular form of advertising is bringing a good return, increase your budget for that item. If one product is outperforming all others, give it wider exposure and look around for similar or associated products to compliment it.

Whilst continuing to build and learn, now is the time to look at automation and improvements for your home based business. Automation will make processes faster and more efficient. The experience of being in profit will be new and still exciting but, for the profits to multiply, you need at this stage to plough as much as you can afford of them back into the business. Part of the time you gain through automation can be spent on tasks that are not capable of automation that need a personal touch (for example writing press releases or contacting prospective clients by phone). One of the reasons for wanting to be your own boss is to have a better quality of life in place of the 9-5 drudgery working for an unappreciative boss. Freedom and flexibility are available to you when you work at home. Automating parts of your working day can add to the extent of your freedom by reducing the hours you need to spend running your home business and allowing you the flexibility of working the hours you choose.

By the time you get to three quarters of the way through the year, you should have established a routine which, while being flexible, will give structure to your working days so that your home business is run as efficiently as possible. By this stage, you will know exactly what is involved in a work at home career and you will have your favourite tasks and also jobs you would rather leave until another time. If you have a good routine, nothing will get postponed or overlooked and your progress will be smooth. You can start to congratulate yourself and look forward to the big milestone: your first anniversary of being your own boss.

You are unlikely to be rich by the end of the first year of being your own boss but, if you have made it through this twelve month roller coaster ride and can see some cash profits and improvements to your lifestyle, you are on the way to where you want to be. Remember (to echo the sentiment of J P Getty) you wouldn't have even a hope of being rich if you were still working for somebody else. Where would you rather be - working at home online as your own boss with a small profit margin, prospects of bigger profits and freedom or at the same place as last year, taking orders from the boss and earning less than you are worth?

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Work At Home - You Have To Look Beyond The Glamour

2006-01-02T19:38:00.000Z

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Finally finished my article. Actually, one article kept changing direction and I have ended up with three articles none of which bear any resemblance to the article I set out to write. This is the one I published today.

The choice of work at home opportunities is vast and varied. There will be obvious pros and cons attached to all of them but there is a third aspect that only you will be able to perceive: there will be an indefinable quality that makes one of the thousands of work at home opportunities exactly right for you. The choice of work at home opportunity needs to be made on an emotional level as well as being based on a logical process. You need to spend time investigating the different home business opportunities to be able to pick the one that will suit you perfectly in all respects. It is vital that any such project will make you feel comfortable as well as having good earning potential.

If you approach the task of choosing a work at home opportunity on the basis that you can always dump it and switch to something else, you will be starting your work at home career with a negative attitude that invites failure. I am not talking here about signing up for a free trial of a work at home opportunity. Many work at home programmes offer a free trial to enable you to get an idea of what work at home involves and to get the "feel" of the programme. This sort of courtship is fine, it is part of the investigative procedure. The sort of thing to be avoided is jumping into a work at home programme without making proper investigations or getting to know the programme and without having the belief on an emotional level that you and the work at home programme are compatible.

Choosing your ideal work at home opportunity is similar to choosing your spouse (or partner in life if you insist on political correctness). If you rush into a relationship without first getting to know the other person, you will be likely to find yourself suffering from a bad case of repenting at leisure. The good looking, glamorous character with the flashy car who promises fun and excitement might seem like a good choice at first but you need substance to back up the superficial attributes. When you get up close and personal, you might find that the good looker is unintelligent, frivolous and is being pursued by a credit company for payments on the flashy car.

The promise of fun and excitement might be attractive but it is always best to get to know each other before becoming seriously involved. For a relationship to succeed there needs to be a deep emotional response, not just a passing fancy. A work at home career will make demands on your time and energy, it will not always be a pleasure. In order to achieve success you will require patience, persistence and commitment. Giving up at the first obstacle and flitting from one work at home programme to another will result in serial disappointments and inevitable failure. Instead of having a successful home business with a growing profit margin, you will find yourself back working for someone else with nothing to look forward to except the same sort of measly pay cheque that made you want your own business in the first place.

Don't automatically reject the boy/girl next door type. The producers do not make all those movies on the subject for no reason. People really do travel far and wide searching for a soul mate only to return home and notice their goofy childhood buddy has shed the braces, become gorgeous and wants to be more than best friends. If looks were the deciding factor in a relationship, no ugly person would ever get married. Millions of kind and loving people would be doomed to a solitary, unrewarding life and that is just too sad to contemplate. Don't bypass the work at home opportunity that has been around for ages and looks too safe and sensible to be interesting. There will be reasons why it has been around for so long and you will very likely discover that it has hidden depths. Honesty and stability are more important qualities than good looks or promises of excitement and will last longer.

The desire to be your own boss with your own home based business is a strong force. Don't permit it to influence you into making a rash choice. Of course, you want to make the best income available to you, but that is not the only consideration: you need to have a passion for your home business if you are to succeed. If you have any doubts about a work at home opportunity when you start out, in a short time you will feel like one of the ugly sisters trying to fit into the glass slipper. You will fare much better if you remain patient for a little longer until you find your Prince of work at home opportunities. You do want a happy ending, don't you?

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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New Years Eve

2005-12-31T19:14:00.000Z

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Hard to believe but another year is just about to end. In a few hours it will be 2006. It hardly seems a blink in time since we were talking about the new millennium and arguing over whether it really begins in 200 or 2001. Doesn't matter now!

Spent all day tidying up my website. I have a lot left to do but it can wait until next year - ha, ha! Well I thought I should try to make a joke, I don't know how many times I have heard that one and it still grates.

Must try to get another article published tomorrow. Getting way behind instead of catching up. Dear, dear this will never do.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Is A Free Home Based Business Opportunity Really Free?

2005-12-22T12:09:00.000Z

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Too busy to blog recently. Now the Christmas cards have all been posted, the parcels are wrapped, the tree is dressed. All that's left to do is a food shopping trip today, house cleaning tomorrow and I'll be ready for the big day. This is, of course, apart from tweaking websites and the million other things I have planned. After Christmas, I am going to start building a new website. Exciting stuff but time consuming.

Here's the article I had published last week but didn't get round to putting on the blog.

Is A Free Home Based Business Opportunity Really Free?
By Elaine Currie

Is it really a free home based business opportunity? Can I make money without paying anything at all? - Those are about the most often repeated queries put forward by people who are hoping to find a way to make money at home online. People who see an advertisement for a free home based business opportunity want to be reassured that "free" means it will never cost them a penny to run their home based business and that they can easily make money at home online without investing anything. I'm amazed they could even start to believe such a thing could be possible.

When people ask me the "is it really free?" type of question, I give them an honest answer. The answer to both question is usually "yes, but…" and they tend to be disappointed and feel that they've been tricked and that the advertisers lied when they offered a free home based business opportunity. It is true that fortunes can be made from a free home based business on the Internet and it can be easy to make money at home online but that is not the whole answer.

I am completely anti-hype but I don't think all Internet advertising is as misleading as people often claim. If you consider the average Internet advertisement, its wording is no worse than the standard "up to 50% off" claims we take for granted in offline advertising. We know that only a selected few items will actually be reduced by 50% and we don't feel at all cheated if we find a bargain with just 20% off its usual price. The thing is, people see things differently when they are searching the Internet for ways to make money at home online, their expectations are far higher, they are more willing to believe improbable claims and their disappointment is, therefore, quick and keenly felt..

If you tried to tell the same people that they could make money at home with an offline business without incurring any costs, they would laugh you out of the auditorium. However, the Internet is a strange environment and people need to get acclimatised before they can recognise a legitimate way to make money at home online and to understand what is "free" in the context of a free home based business opportunity. After just a small amount of experience, people will realise that the free home based business opportunity is going to cost them money one way or another if they want to see profits accumulating at any significant rate. The ones who persevere also eventually realise that the cost of running a free home based business online is far less than the cost of running an offline business.

Let's think seriously about starting a business. First, how about an offline business. Suppose you decide you want to open a shop and sell dresses. Before you see any profit at all, you will have to pay out for premises (rent and taxes), services (fuel, water, phone), stock, insurance and advertising. If you are going to continue with your current employment while you build up the new business, you will also need to find staff and add wages to your list of expenses.

Now let's think about our free home based business opportunity on the Internet. You need to budget for a product (the equivalent of the stock of dresses), a website (the equivalent of the shop premises) and advertising. The list is shorter and now the Internet home based business opportunity is looking like a much better deal by comparison. The products can be obtained either free of charge or for a small price, the cost of a website is small change compared to the cost of premises, this will be a home based business, so you won't incur any additional service charges or insurance. An Internet home based business can be set up to run 24/7 with just a couple of hours work a day, so you can continue to earn money at your currently employment without having to spend anything on staff wages. That just leaves advertising costs.

Advertising your free home based business is the thing that's going to take up the biggest part of your budget. If you were opening your first shop on a limited budget, you would not be able to afford large premises in the prime part of the busiest shopping district where you would benefit from passing trade. You would have to be content with a small side street based shop and, to make customers aware of your business, you would have to advertise. In order to get a steady stream of visitors to your shop, you would need to advertise consistently and continuously. You would need to place your advertisements where they can reach your target market and you would need to make sure your advertisements appeal to your prospective customers so that they would be prepared to make the detour from the main street to check out your products.

The Internet works in the same way. Nobody will know about your new free home based business unless you tell them. You can have the best website in the whole word but, if you don't advertise it, it would be like keeping your shop door locked, the blinds closed and the lights off. No visitors means no potential sales and that inevitably means no profit. You have no advertise, simple as that. There are many free advertising resources available online for your home based business but you need to be selective as, although there are some very good free advertising resources, the results to be obtained from the free companies are not always as good as paid advertising. Another factor to consider is that using the free advertising resources can take up a lot of time and you need to place a value on your time and decide how it can be spent to best effect.

A free home based business opportunity does sound like the ideal thing for the numerous people who are looking for ways to make money at home online but are unwilling or unable to spend any money to do it. Many people leap into the first free home based business opportunity they see advertised and just as quickly give up when they find out they need to invest time and money in order to make money at home online with an Internet based home business. If these people would think things through, they would realise that starting an online home based business is far less costly than starting an offline business and the stage of getting into profit can come very early. Even if a free home based business it is not entirely free to run, being your own boss rather than being someone else's employee is priceless.

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By Elaine Currie, BA (Hons)

You may republish this article only in its

entirety and with this resource box intact

Elaine Currie provides ideas, help and resources

for anyone wanting to work at home

visit: http://www.Huntingvenus.com

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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New Viral Advertising Source

2005-12-10T19:44:00.000Z

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Just stumbled into AdsVert. It's a free viral text advertising resource. Very easy to set up and totally FREE. Great stuff. Got it set up and running in no time flat. Bad thing I did today was mess about changing a few pages on my website, lurking on forums and generally not being focussed. So much for publishing another article! Must get down to it tomorrow without fail.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Our Power Forced Matrix and Top Surfer

2005-12-08T19:36:00.000Z

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Strange days indeed! What song is that line from? I almost have it - it continues "most peculiar momma". No, can't recall. That line just popped into my head as I started typing and now it will stay there until I recall the song.

I have had a couple of strange days.

Yesterday I went out practically at the crack of dawn. I expect that is a gross exaggeration but is was sure early. The sun was struggling its way above the horizon and its reflection in my rear view mirror intermittently blinded me as I was driving. Although it looked orange in colour, the sun gave no impression of warmth of any kind: it looked as flat and cold as a copper coin set in lead. Oh, but the light was incredible, "golden" is truly the only accurate description: orange or yellow do not come close. We've not had any snow yet but the frost has been so hard, the fields were completely white. Where the sun hit the trees at the edge of the fields, they glowed like pure gold against the grey sky. It was exactly like being in a cheesy Christmas card - lovely!

That was the start of a relaxed but tiring day. Today was far from relaxed.

For once I overslept and didn't start working until nearly 9.30am. If I'd know what was going to turn up in my mailbox, I would have started much earlier. Today was completely mad. It all stemmed from one email but I ended up joining programmes, upgrading existing ones, sending emails, starting advertising campaigns and so on and on.

The new hot programme is Our Power Forced Matrix I won't go into the details, you can check out the website. All I will say is that it is rocking! I then stumbled upon Free Advertising Blog Free advertising that really is FREE. Normally any free ad has a hidden price tag - like you will get inundated with emails from other advertisers but not this one! Great stuff. Then I upgraded my membership in a couple of my favourite traffic exchanges. One thing that took me by surprise was that I had forgotten what great features can be found at Top Surfer It is much more that a traffic exchange and I enjoyed getting reacquainted with it.

In the middle of all my excitement, I had to abandon my projects to go grocery shopping. Yuk! Hate it when chores get in the way but we have to eat.

Today's resolution: write a new article tomorrow before checking email. Will it happen I ask myself.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Work At Home Online - It's A Great Opportunity For Women Apart From One Trap

2005-12-04T20:27:00.000Z

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Sunday, another week gone by in a flash. Did a bit of a revamp on the main website today. That took up most of the day but I did manage to publish another article today. Here it is:

Work at home online programmes offer a great opportunity for women, especially stay at home mothers but there is a trap; recognising the trap and avoiding it is far easier than getting out of the trap after you have been caught.

When you decide to work at home (online or offline), you need to watch out for household chores and ration the time you will spend even thinking about them Otherwise they will form a gang, creep up on you and rob you of precious time. You will end up trying to work at home online in the odd minutes left over from doing housework. You will then be tired (and probably bored) from dealing with the chores and in no state to concentrate on your work at home online project. So, you'll maybe check your mail and decide that you are too exhausted to do anything else. What you decide you will do is shower, get a good night's sleep and hit the floor running tomorrow. Yes, devote the whole day to your work at home online project and catch up on what you missed today.

Even if you have never before tried to work at home online, you will undoubtedly recognise this scene and already know what will happen when tomorrow dawns. If you have ever knocked yourself out preparing for an event, doing all the chores in advance to have a day free, you will know that having a whole day to yourself completely free from housework does not happen. The encroachment of chores onto your time will start early, it will begin with the irresistible urge to tidy up after breakfast.

Those nasty chores you despatched yesterday have lots of relatives and they will have gathered over night while you were sleeping. Mr Laundry has called in his brother, Mr Ironing and as soon as you wake up he will be there sitting smugly in his basket and demanding your attention. Mr Soap-Scum is nowhere to be seen and the bathroom is spotless - apart, that is, from Mr Soap-Scum's cousin Mr Lime-Scale who has sneaked in and dulled your taps. It seems that Mr Dust has brought along his whole family, you can see them in the sunlight, hovering, waiting to leap onto your furniture the moment your back is turned.

If you are the perfect housekeeper, you will deal with today's chores before you even think of doing anything for yourself. Whether your aim is to concentrate on your work at home online project, spend the day shopping for a special outfit, have your hair restyled, get a professional manicure (or anything else that is just for you), you can't ignore the chores. You would not be able to concentrate on shopping or enjoy pampering yourself if, at the back of your mind, lurked the knowledge that your ironing basket is full, the bathroom taps are not shiny and the furniture needs polishing. Before you know it, the day has disappeared. Household cleanliness has been raised several notches but your work at home online project remains in a state of neglect and is in danger of decline.

It is easy to slip into this pattern and allow it to become your day to day life. It won't be long before you are overwhelmed by chores, abandon the idea of being able to successfully work at home online and turn into one of those martyred women proudly proclaiming "I never have a moment for myself". You have to break this cycle before you turn into a housework zombie. The fact that you are at home all day does not mean you should be a slave to housework. It is an established law of physics that housework expands to fill the time available.

When you worked at a job outside the home and commuting, you would not have been available to do household chores between the hours of, say, 8.30am and 6.00pm, Monday to Friday. Like the millions of women who are in the same situation, you managed to fit in household chores and spending quality time with your family and friends outside those hours. Why have things changed? - Because you let them and the only person who can turn the situation around is you.

If you are having a problem with subduing the housework gremlins, set yourself a strict working day in which to pursue your work at home online project and fit the chores into the remaining time. Make sure you keep to this schedule, no matter how hard the chores try to tempt you away, for a couple of weeks Then review what you have achieved and decide where your schedule needs tweaking. Carry on for a week at a time doing any necessary tweaking at the end of each week. Within a month or six weeks you will find yourself able to happily work at home online without having household chores perpetually nagging at the back of your mind.

One of the great things when you work at home online is that you have flexibility as to your daily schedule. Provided you don't let household chores elbow their way in and take over, this is a tremendous advantage. You can organise your work at home online project to fit in with your husband's working day and your children's routine. No more begging the boss for time off to attend a function with your husband or to watch your child acting in a school play: you're the boss, it's entirely up to you when you work at home online.

If your work at home online project develops into a fully fledged Internet home based business, the flexibility of your working day will be complete. You won't have to fit in with your customers' hours because you won't need to visit them or phone them, most things done online can be automated and can be done at any hour of the day or night. You will have more time to do household chores. No! No! That was just a joke: use this marvellous flexibility to enjoy life, it's too short to be wasted in drudgery.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Studio Traffic Blocked My Account

2005-12-02T19:33:00.000Z

Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory
Logged in at Studio Traffic as usual yesterday to do my daily surfing and was hit with this message: "Your account is currently unable to surf, withdraw or upgrade. Please contact Live Help for assistance so that we can schedule a meeting for you. If you have followed our TOS and provide us with any requested information we can get your account services restored quickly." No warning, no explanation, just blocked!

This experience made me wonder whether the complaints about blocked accounts that have been appearing are true after all. Until now, I put those complaints down to malice but it is clear that Studio Traffic has blocked accounts for whole countries at a time. Now the USA, UK, Australia and Malaysia have been blocked and, it appears, will be forced to jump through hoops to get their accounts restored.

Suddenly, from loving Studio Traffic, everyone seems to have become afraid of it. The heavy handed methods of the management are largely to blame. The forum is strictly censored and recently they changed the TOS so that members are not allowed to advertise any traffic exchanges. As many of their members have nothing else to advertise, this is pretty hard. Now they are blocking accounts and not telling members why they are blocked or how they can get unblocked. To find out, we apparently have to download some special software that is full of pop up advertising (and who knows what else), contact Studio Traffic's Live Help and make an appointment for a "meeting". I have one problem in that I have never heard of the software we have to use and have no idea how it works.

The general problem is that people can't get help from Live Help: members are reporting waiting for 2 hours and more in an effort to get through. Someone has posted on a forum (not Studio Traffic's) what purports to be a transcript of a "meeting". The gist of it is that only members who are not in profit will have their accounts unblocked. Members who are in profit will remain blocked until February 2006 unless they agree to work for Studio Traffic as sales persons or on the help desk. This information pretty much accords with a complaint I have seen posted on surf exchanges from a Studio Traffic member who has lost a large sum of money through having his account blocked and closed down.

Whilst I agree that the management of Studio Traffic have every right to do what they think is necessary to keep the programme going, why do we have to have this ridiculous rigmarole of downloading software and booking "meetings"? It would have been more efficient to deal with this issue via email. I wasted such a lot of time today trying to find out what is going on and the answer appears to be that Studio Traffic have suffered through bad publicity, want to save some money and to get members to bring in more new members. The way they hope to achieve this is by holding members' earnings hostage and preventing them from earning any more until they satisfactorily perform a recruitment project. Those that fail will, presumably, have their accounts terminated and their earnings confiscated as indicated by the ex-member who has been making the very public complaints.

I wish I knew how the "meeting" software worked and what I could possibly do in the way of serving Studio Traffic. Guess I have no option here, I'll just have to wait and see what happens. I am sore about wasting time on this that I could have spent on making money!

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Work At Home Directory Websites

2005-11-28T18:03:00.000Z

Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory
Finally got another article submitted for publishing. Had promised myself I'd send one in every six days to catch up a bit but just managed to scrape in after seven days. Still need to do some extra work to bring my average up to one per week but I'll keep trying.

Also finished the November edition of the monthly newsletter at last.

Here's the new article:

Work At Home Directory Websites - Are They Worthwhile?

Why use a Work At Home Directory? Well, it's simple really: A Work At Home Directory is the best Internet resource for finding a legitimate work at home opportunity. If you wanted to find a phone number you would consult the telephone directory so, if you are looking for a chance to work at home, a Work At Home Directory is the logical place to start.

The Internet is bursting with work at home opportunities of all kinds and it would be very time consuming to attempt to investigate these work at home opportunities by making separate searches for "Work At Home", "Home Job", "Home Based Business", "Internet Work At Home" etc. If you are looking for a work at home opportunity, you can make one search for "Work At Home Directory" and from that search you will have access to a whole list of Work at Home Directory websites each of which will offer you a choice of numerous different work at home opportunities.

By the way, if you are a newcomer, you might not realise it, but placing your search term inside quotation marks as shown here means that the search results will be more relevant. For instance if you search for Work At Home Directory without quotation marks you will get lots of other things you don't want such as links to directories for things that have nothing to do with work at home.

Make sure any Work At Home Directory you use is free. There are a few websites that claim to be Work At Home Directory sites that ask for payment in order to provide work at home information, avoid these, there is no reason to pay for information about work at home opportunities when you can get the same information free of charge.

If you don't really know what type of work at home opportunity would suit your circumstances, help is normally available at a good Work At Home Directory in the form of advice, articles and reviews relating to individual work at home programmes as well as topics about work at home generally. When you visit a Work At Home Directory, you will often have the chance to subscribe to one or more free newsletters. These newsletters might be on the subject of work at home in general or specific types of work at home programmes or related topics such as computer anti-virus precautions, free resources or blogging to name just a few examples. The free research you can carry out via the Work At Home Directory's articles or newsletters will be of considerable help to you in locating a suitable work at home opportunity. A good Work At Home Directory will welcome you to visit its article archives or subscribe to its newsletter and, by doing so, you will not be placed under any obligation to buy anything or join any work at home programme.

When you consult a Work At Home Directory, you will not be put under pressure to sign up for any programme on your first visit. When you land directly on a work at home opportunity's website, you will be strongly encouraged to join the programme there and then. The encouragement to make an instant decision might take the form of an annoying pop-up or the offer of a bonus or reduced membership fee in return for immediate sign up. This is, of course, perfectly understandable: the work at home opportunity websites are in competition with each other. The Work At Home Directory, however, will permit you to examine the features of all its listed opportunities without any pressure to sign up. A legitimate Work At Home Directory will suggest you make return visits whilst deciding which work at home opportunity might be most suitable for you. The owners of good Work At Home Directory websites invest a great deal of time and energy in locating up to date information and new programmes, so a Work At Home Directory will often be updated daily and return visits will be reveal new opportunities.

In summary consulting a Work At Home Directory provides the following advantages:

1. A reduction in the number of tedious searches you have to undertake.
2. A selection of varied work at home opportunities grouped in one place.
3. Access to impartial advice and reviews of work at home programmes.
4. Access to work at home related resources all in one place.
5. No arm twisting to sign up for a work at home programme without having time to think it over and make an informed decision in your own time.

These are five very good reasons why using a Work At Home Directory is worthwhile but number 5 is my favourite. This is partly because I don't like hard sell tactics but mainly because the decision to work at home can be either the best decision you ever make or a huge disappointment. You have to "plan to succeed" when you work at home and the planning and consideration stage should be allowed to take up as much time as you need so that you find the work at home opportunity that is exactly right for you.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Bad Autosurf Week and Google Adwords Is The Pits

2005-11-26T18:23:00.000Z

Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory
This has not been a very good time for autosurfs. Titan Surf, which looked shaky from the beginning disappeared and then CGI Surf that had been heavily promoted announced it was closing and (to paraphrase) members need not expect to get paid.

This is in contrast to HOPS which was a great site where members always got paid on time. HOPS had to be closed down because Peter, the owner, became seriously ill. He had the courtesy to send an explanatory email to all members and the decency to arrange for all memberships to be transferred to Dad N Daves. Happily one of my favourite autosurfs so that was a relatively happy ending for me. It was also quite heart warming to see that Trish, the owner of Surf Down Under helped Peter sort out the closing down of HOPS. Further proof that there are some good guys working on the Internet.

I have wasted a lot of time recently trying to get to grips with Adwords. I've lost count of how many attempts I've made to get Google to work for me. I was so fed up today, I felt like walking out. Then I remembered I live here! Noticed on the Warrior Forum that I'm not the only person in the world to have problems getting an Adwords campaign to work. That made me feel better. Think I'll stick to things I'm good at instead of trying to master everything.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Building A Successful Home Based Business

2005-11-20T18:26:00.000Z

Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory
Busy week but I finally submitted a new article for publishing today. This is it:

Building A Successful Home Based Business Seemed Like A Good Title For An Article But …

Writing articles is easy but deciding what to call them is another story and it is getting more difficult as the Internet is getting flooded by duplicate articles.

Building A Successful Home Based Business struck me as a pretty good title for an article concerned with home based business. Successful Home Based Business is a decent keyword phrase for the search engine robots and "successful" is on most lists of good words to use in advertising, so that should help attract human readers. Building A Successful Home Based Business is also accurately descriptive of the content.

I was especially pleased with this title because it occurred to me very quickly when usually it takes me longer to think up a title than to write a whole article. When it comes to choosing names, my brain just shuts down. It's always been the same, I can still remember the anxiety caused by having to choose a name for a childhood pet gerbil or goldfish . "Goldie" wasn't terribly original but it was the best I could manage for the fish and I think my mother eventually had to name the gerbil on my behalf. When it came to naming my children, the responsibility was almost unbearable: not only did I have to face the trauma of thinking up names, I had to try to guess if the child would grow up despising me for making an inappropriate choice. A name that suits a cute baby can sound ridiculous when applied to a clumsy school kid or, worse still, a moody teenager. It would be a lot easier if we could just call them "child 1","child 2" etc and let them choose their own names when they reach the age of twelve or so.

Anyway, back to Building A Successful Home Based Business. I had the article ready, I had the great title and then I received an email from the owner of Ezine Articles.com (one of the places I regularly submit articles). The email started like this:

"Hi Elaine,
Did you hear that we stopped accepting articles with duplicate titles?

This was a defensive move on our part to reduce the number of incoming non-exclusive rights article submissions. Now that all 86k of the articles listed have unique titles, that means that your future article titles may be rejected if it's already in use by another author... "

My first reaction was: "Oh, good", my second reaction was: "Oh, no". The second reaction was caused by the realisation that things are going to get more difficult for people who take care over their work. Thousands of articles on every subject imaginable are being added to the vast Internet library each day. The quality of some of these articles is dubious. Many Internet entrepreneurs are putting their metaphorical pens to their virtual paper and churning out poorly spelt, ungrammatical, pointless articles just for use as vehicles for their resource box. Some Internet entrepreneurs cheat by having articles ghost written and then publishing the articles as their own. Worse still, there are unscrupulous Internet entrepreneurs who use software to churn out articles that they then pretend to have written. Worst of all are the Internet outright cheats who stoop to copying someone else's article, claiming authorship and slapping on their own copyright notice.

The non-duplicate title rule imposed by Ezine Articles is an excellent thing and should cause the cheats some problems. My point here, however, is not to lecture on the evils of cheating. There is a saying: "All's fair in love and a successful home based business" (or something like that) and I'm not about to start my own anti-plagiarist cyber police force. My really big concern about this deluge of articles is purely selfish: I fear that the cheats have used up all the best titles and I'll never be able to think up a new one. I haven't yet submitted "Building A Successful Home Based Business " but I fear it might get bounced straight back at me for re-naming..

The email from Ezine Articles included some suggestions for inventing good unique titles. One suggestion was to increase the length of future article titles. I can see how this would work but, if the cheats keep on publishing at their current rate, we are going to end up with 95 word titles and people will lose interest in the article before they get to paragraph one. Any minute now, some enterprising Internet entrepreneur will announce that he has invented a "brand new, hot, original, one of its kind" tool for creating unique article titles "at the push of a button" which he will let you have at a "discounted price". In no time at all the Internet will be overrun with wannabe entrepreneurs making the same claims. As there is software that can do a similar thing with whole articles, titles should be very easy to manipulate. Maybe they will find a way of copyrighting titles that they can then hold to ransom. Imagine the stress of having to bid on ebay for the title you need for your new article.

Another suggestion was to change the order of the words if your preferred title had already been used by someone else. Obviously this can work well but there are going to be some ugly titles created by this anagrammaticall manipulation. If we take my short title as an example: "Building A Successful Home Based Business", we could rearrange that to make "Building A Home Based Successful Business" or, at a stretch "Building A Successful Business - Home Based" , maybe we could even push it to "A Successful Home Based Business - Building" or "A Home Based Business: Successful Building" but that's about the limit if we want our title to make sense. After this we will have to look at perhaps changing "A" to "Your" or adding "Easily" or "Quickly" in front of or after "Building A Successful Home Based Business". The length of the title is already starting to grow!

To search engine robots, the word order changing won't matter but to human readers it makes a big difference. "At Home Work" already crops up all over the place as an alternative to "Work At Home". The two phrases don't actually mean the same thing and the former phrase is so clumsy. People tend not to say: "I want to at home work". As a Google search term it's fine, it's also very popular and that's why it gets used, but it's not exactly good conversational English. Just yesterday I saw a website offering to help people to locate "an online home based job you can work at home as a successful home based business". What? Well, I suppose it does get the message over (just about) but it's not exactly easy reading. It's just a collection of keywords strung together in an order that barely makes sense and that is not the best way to communicate with other human beings. The addition of "part-time or full-time", "free", "from home","no risk" and "guaranteed" would make this just about the perfect title material. Then we could extend it with other popular words like "101 Ways" and "Top Ranked" and "Top Ten". It's easy to see how this small selection of words alone could be the start of a whole series of keyword rich article titles, it could run into hundreds. I'd better get on and write some articles to fit those keywords. Now, if only I had a piece of software that would rearrange the keywords into unique patterns…

You may republish this article only in its entirety and with the following resource information attached.

Elaine Currie has a Work From Home Directory
at her Plug-In Profit Site to help everyone who
wants to work at home:
http://www.huntingvenus.com

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

My Plan For An Elite Article Directory

2005-11-14T09:10:00.000Z

Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory

Funny how little things can change your whole outlook.

After spending the best part of my weekend building a site map for my main website, I woke up today feeling completely disinclined to make my "30 second commute" upstairs with my morning tea and start again. The site map turned out fine, it just took about ten times as long as I anticipated. Now I plan to make a couple of smaller site maps for separate sections. The article directory definitely needs a map of its own and the new sections I have planned will also need their own maps. Suddenly, my life seems to be all about site maps and I have trouble putting the project to one side and doing other things.

Before ploughing back into site maps, I had a quick look at my mailbox. There I found of the usual number new sign ups for Empowerism, SFI and Magnificent Money. I only started with Mag Money a month or so ago and it is turning out to be a lucrative programme and they pay on time!

Anyway, all this is as it should be and any commission is welcome. The thing that really cheered me up was to see that I had earned a commission with Article Fetcher. This is also good! The point is that I have not done anything to promote Article Fetcher, it is tucked away on the innermost pages of my website and the fact that someone has picked it up means at least one person has got beyond my home page and it all seems worthwhile.

This also made me think perhaps I should do more to promote Article Fetcher as I use it all the time. I decided not to go ahead with getting Article Directory software. With Article Fetcher I can hand pick articles within seconds and build a quality directory instead of having a directory which is open to abuse.

Suddenly I feel an advertising campaign coming on. I'd better get these site maps finished quickly.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Work From Home - Fun With Telemarketers

2005-11-05T17:50:00.000Z

Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory

A productive day! I've almost finished the outline for the new section I'm adding to my website and I submitted an article for publication. This is it:

Work From Home - Fun With Telemarketers

During the time I have spent working at home, I have encountered many telemarketers. That's how I found out about their radar: when I went out to work telemarketers always rang in the evening while I was trying to cook or eat dinner, now they ring during the day when I am trying to work at home.

A joke that arrived in my email made me realise that I am not alone in being less than fond of telemarketers. (In fact, they are on my list right up with lawyers and estate agents.) I'll be sharing a few tips from this joke with you throughout this article but, if you want to read all 20 of them, you can see them at my website on the same page as this article.

I can usually identify telemarketers immediately because they will almost inevitably open with "Good morning, madam. How are you today?" Nobody but a telemarketer would dream of ringing a person and addressing her as "madam". Presumably that is a marketing technique which is supposed to give the illusion that you are the customer and the telemarketer is there to serve you but it just gives me the idea that I should have let the answering machine pick up this call. The tip for circumventing the whole thing is:- As soon as you realize it is a Telemarketer, scream "Oh my God!" and then hang up.

It took me quite a while to get to grips with the constant annoyance of telemarketing calls. I was brought up to be polite but I eventually discovered it is impossible to get rid of telemarketers without resorting to rudeness. I don't ask these people to ring me up and try to sell me things I don't want: everything from jigsaw puzzles and books, through lingerie and cinema tickets to health insurance and mobility aids. As I (thankfully) am and always have been fully mobile, I don't understand the reason for the last one.

Actually, the telemarketer who was offering mobility aids was a great example of a bad telemarketer. His opening gambit was "Good morning, madam. I'm from XYZ Company, I expect you've heard of us?" When I replied "No." his response was a grumpy-sounding "I can't think why not". So, did he ring just to point out that I'm ignorant? When he hurried on with his script and asked me if I have any difficulty getting in or out of the house, I was tempted to reply "Only when I'm drunk" but I managed to bite my lip on that one: "no" is definitely the only safe word to use when dealing with telemarketers.

A better way of dealing with this type of call is the following tip:- If they say they're John Doe from XYZ Company, ask them to spell their name. Then ask them to spell the company name. Then ask them where it is located, how long it has been in business, how many people work there, how they got into this line of work if they are married, how many kids they have, etc. Continue asking them personal questions or questions about their company for as long as necessary.

Alternatively try this tip:- Tell them you are hard of hearing and that they need to speak up . . . louder . . . louder . . .

The telemarketers for mobile phone companies are the thickest skinned and most persistent variety of the species I have encountered so far. They also tend to have the strongest accents and I feel mean giving them a hard time when they are at a disadvantage to begin with. I always used to answer their questions in the hope that they would realise that I was not a good prospect for mobile phone upgrades. When I asked the last mobile phone telemarketer why he thought I might want to give up my virtually free phone deal and pay for line rental, he just started over with his script listing the number of free minutes of air time they would "give" me. The fact that I would not use the air time seemed to make no difference, there was nothing about that in his script and I had to resort to abrupt termination of the call.

Next time I'll try this tip:- Tell the Telemarketer you are busy at the moment and ask him/her if he/she will give you his/her home phone number so you can call him/her back. When the Telemarketer explains that telemarketers cannot give out their home numbers say, "I guess you don't want anyone bothering you at home, right?" The Telemarketer will agree and you say, "Me either!" Hang up.

The telemarketer who wanted me to switch to a new power supplier taught me a lot about the telemarketing profession. The power supply marketers who turn up on my doorstep, accost me in the supermarket or telephone me, usually baffle me with figures, blind me with science and leave me feeling I should sign up with them immediately. The last one to phone me happened to ring while I was in my office at home and I had my power bills to hand. The telemarketer asked me how much I paid each month to my power supplier and then assured me that he could save me 30% on my bills. I was impressed and asked how he calculated that figure. He informed me that he had a "chart". In an effort to finally understand the mysteries of calculating these savings, I asked the telemarketer to give me an exact breakdown of the amount his company would charge for my most recent electricity bill. He said he couldn't because he was not good at maths. As he had given me the price per unit, I found it pretty easy to calculate for myself but I couldn't understand why the cost came out higher when he had said his company charged 30% less. I'd barely managed to ask for an explanation when he hung up. This particular telemarketer taught me that telemarketers will tell you anything their script requires even if they don't understand it or know it is a complete lie.

This tip might help:- Tell them to talk very slowly, because you want to write every word down. Alternatively this might work:- Insist that the caller is really your buddy Leon, playing a joke. "Come on, Leon, cut it out! Seriously, Leon, how's your momma?"

Telemarketers should be treated like children at bedtime: use a firm tone when saying "no" and do not be drawn into conversation. I have tried ignoring the "How are you today" but that just means they launch straight into the script. Next time I am going to try "I'm so glad you asked, because no one these days seems to care, and I have all these problems. My arthritis is acting up, my eyelashes are sore, my dog just died . . . "

I've tried asking pointedly: "What do you actually want?" but the reply was "I want to try to save you money" (how kind considering we are perfect strangers). If only I'd received the telemarketer joke before this I would have said "I just filed for bankruptcy and I could sure use some money".

I've also tried "Are you selling something?" but they never fall into the trap of answering that one. For days when I'm not busy and fancy a little fun, I'm keeping a crossword puzzle on my desk. I'll ask every telemarketer who calls to help me solve some clues. I've made out a score card for me -v- telemarketers and I give myself double points each time I can force a telemarketer to hang up.

By Elaine Currie, BA (Hons)

You may republish this article only in its

entirety and with the following resource box intact

Elaine Currie has a Work From Home Directory
at her Plug-In Profit Site to help everyone who
wants to work at home:
http://www.huntingvenus.com

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Sick Of Article Directories

2005-11-04T17:28:00.000Z

Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory
After installing the free Article Directory from Article Dashboard on two of my websites, using two entirely different control panels, it still would not work. The advice I received was to have it hosted by their preferred host. This means that, for a piece of free software, I would be paying $10 per month forever (well, for as long as I wanted to run the Article Directory). I have seen this software in use but, when I asked the owners about it, it seemed that everybody had problems to start with and ended up using the software company's preferred host.

I decided that I would be better off buying Article Directory software and using it with my own web host (as originally planned). Coincidentally, I had received an offer for just this sort of software when I was looking at Article Dashboard, so I paid for Article Beach. I duly paid and uploaded it to my website without any problem. Then Article Beach turned into Article Bitch. I was unable to log in - it refused to accept the password it had provided to me. The instructions were unfinished: unfinished as in they stopped mid sentence in some places and made no sense in others. Worst of all, there was absolutely no help available. What a disappointment! I asked for a refund under the guarantee and was very p***ed off when I heard nothing back from the seller. After two weeks, I complained to PayPal and that brought me a refund within hours.

After wasting a couple of weeks on this project and ending up with nothing but disappointment, I am wondering if it is really worthwhile having an Article Directory at all. Maybe I'll just keep on the way I am, writing my own articles and adding other people's articles when I come across ones I like.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Work From Home Top Picks

2005-10-17T11:40:00.000Z

Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory
The start of another week and it's a rather foggy Monday. Not quite the best weather from the "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" but we had a dry warm weekend, so that's enough moaning.

A lot of the weekend was taken up with trying to install the free article directory software. I was very excited about this project as I have wanted to have an article directory for months. It is now starting to seem that this is a case where you get what you pay for. It's taken up a lot of time and the best suggestion I have been given is to pay to have it hosted by their recommended web host for 10$ per month. As I can buy software for less than 100$ and have it hosted free forever, the free stuff is looking like much less of a bargain. Anyway, it's hardly user friendly judging by the threads of their forum. What a waste of time.

In between that struggle, I managed to build a website specially for women who ae looking for a work at home opportunity. I've only completed the index page so far, articles and tips will be added gradually but I like the way it looks (even though it is a bit girly!). You can check it out here.

Spent some time on my digging therapy by way of a change from sitting at a keyboard. The autumn dig is well underway and it is soothing to stand in the rather muddy veggie plot and just enjoy the fresh air and the rythm of digging and turning over the heavy clay soil. We have had the last of the beans, the squash are ripening and we are enjoying the autumn strawberries. The Brussel sprouts are starting to look like sprouts but they are so small, I can't believe they will be ready for eating by Christmas. It's time to decide where to plant the broad beans for next year's crop. I am digging the beds for next year's produce and covering them over with black weed-retardent sheeting. As some beds are still full of growing stuff, the plot is taking on a strangely patchwork look. Still, it was never intended to win a beauty prize, it is a working plot.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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My Article Directory and Auto Surf Article

2005-10-13T15:22:00.000Z

Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory for more information about auto surfing for cash.

Today did not start off too well.

Up at 6.30 in the pitch dark rainy morning. So anxious to find out if my webhost support had solved my article directory installation problem that I forgot to rejoice about the fact that I did not have to go out in the pouring rain. I got round to that warming thought later, much later, after my "30 second commute" to my office.

The email from support said they suspect a corruption in the script and made the sensible suggestion that I should ask on the developers' forum for help. Time to wave goodbye to my idea of getting the directory up and running today. The worst part is that I don't know what I am doing, I'm just blindly following instructions. What is a MySQL database anyway?

Gave up and submitted my most recent article for publication. This is it:

Get Paid To Autosurf - An Easy Way To Make Money At Home

I love to get paid to auto surf. It is a very easy way to make money at home and it is exciting, particularly when pay day approaches. In common with any industry, the get paid to auto surf programmes have their share of the good the bad and the downright unsightly. With a little experience you will learn to recognise the characters of the get paid to auto surf sites and, with luck, won't stray from the good ones. If you use some common sense and follow the advice of experienced get paid to auto surfers, you can make a regular income from auto surfing. It's not glamorous, requires no skill, will only occupy you for an hour or two each day, but it is a gloriously easy way to make money at home.

Considering that the great Studio Traffic had been running for nearly two years when I made my debut, I was a latecomer to the get paid to auto surf scene. When I first started to take notice of the get paid to auto surf sites, I looked at the possibilities, did a double-take, looked again and wondered where the catch might be. Surely, I thought, there must be a catch, or can it really be that simple? I'll spare you the suspense and tell your right from the start that the answer was yes, it really is as simple as it appears. Before you go rushing off to spend money with auto surf for cash programmes, let me just stress that it is simple but that is not the same as saying that every get paid to auto surf site is safe. Crossing the road is pretty simple but, if you fail to look out for approaching traffic, it certainly isn't safe. Jumping out of a plane is simple but, if you don't get a parachute and a course of instructions, it's far from safe. So don't try auto surfing for cash at home until you have read the rest of this.

Of course, at the start, I didn't know the answer and I toddled off into the realms of get paid to auto surf, taking baby step investments and breathing sighs of relief every day when the get paid to auto surf sites appeared and I knew my tiny investments were still safe. Considering the idiotic abandon with which I embraced the dreadful money doubler phenomenon, it might seem strange that I was so wary when it came to the auto surf for cash experience. Maybe I learned my lesson from the amount of money I wasted on the money doublers. (By the way, if you happen to know my husband, there is absolutely no need for you to mention to him anything about me and money doubler programmes. Really, no need at all.)

Don't get the wrong impression through me mentioning money doublers and get paid to auto surf programmes in the same article. The auto surf for cash sites are in no way related to the money doublers or run by the same people. The one thing the two types of programme have in common is that they are very easy to do but, whereas money doublers were pure scams, get paid to auto surf sites are real online businesses where you can make money at home. The webmasters and webmistresses who own get paid to auto surf sites are, in the main, honest hard-working people, who want to have a thriving business which will bring them an ongoing income for the future. I'm not saying all auto surf for cash sites are run by saints, the owners are just ordinary people who want to make a living on the Internet, and the industry (like any other) has its share of rogues and thieves who will take your money and run, plus a few inept webmasters who just have no idea how to run a business and lose everyone's money.

So, you might ask, how do I take sensible precautions against getting stung? The answer, like most things, is simple! Investigation is the answer. If you like the look of a get paid to auto surf site, join as a free member and check out the forum (if there is one). Surf to test the quality of surfing and don't invest if the surfbar is unpredictable. Email the owner to ask about the site. If you get no reply, drop the site there and then: any website owner who takes a pride in his business will respond to a member's enquiry. If you get a terse reply, pointing out that the answer to your dumb question is in the site faq's, this is still good: an abrupt reply probably means the owner is busy or has got sick of answering the same stupid questions. The point is that he is human and bothered to respond. Don't even think of giving your money to someone who ignores you from day one.

Do an Internet search for forums concerned with making money online, make money at home, auto surfing, get paid to programmes etc. Read what the members are saying about the sites you are thinking of joining as this is usually a good indicator of whether the site is growing or declining. Don't, however, totally rely on the opinion of forum members because the posts often tend to be a bit hysterical and they are, of course, the voicing of personal opinions and not a handing down of the wisdom of gurus.

Check out get paid to auto surf review sites. I don't mean the one page free websites that have been built simply to advertise one person's choice of programmes and build a downline. Look for serious reviews which are regularly updated, these are more likely to be written by dedicated surfers. There are some very good ones around now: I came across one just this week, where you can sign up for a course of get paid to auto surf lessons and a weekly newsletter. This sort of service takes real energy and commitment. If you read a few of these get paid to auto surf review sites, you will get a feeling for which of them belong to dedicated surfers and which are the work of sloppy amateurs who half the time don't even notice when their recommended programmes have closed down.

Another thing you can do to make life as an auto surfer for cash safer is to tread the path which has already been smoothed out, tiptoe in the footsteps of the people who are already making money from auto surfing. If it is working for them, copy what they do and listen to their advice. The foremost piece of advice any decent auto surfer for cash will give you is "don't ever use cash you could not afford to lose", the second most valuable piece of advice is probably "spread your investments". If you are prepared to be patient, you can build up a decent income from small investments spread over several get paid to auto surf programmes. This way you can enjoy the get paid to auto surf experience and make some money without living in fear of your life savings being carried out to sea on the virtual surf.

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By Elaine Currie, BA (Hons)
You may republish this article only in its
entirety and with this resource box intact
Elaine Currie provides ideas, help and resources
for anyone wanting to start a home business
visit: http://www.Huntingvenus.com

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Managing Your Time In Your New Home Based Business

2005-10-05T08:09:00.000Z

Visit Hunting Venus.com Work At Home Directory

Just wasted a lot of time trying to install an article directory on my website. Got to the stage where I wanted to throw my pc through the window before I contacted the webhost support. Thankfully, they replied very quickly and I found out the trouble was all through privacy settings, ad blockers etc. Seems like I've now got so much security going on, I can't get out.

Help, I'm trapped behind a firewall.

During my browsing, I came across this article. It's not new but I hadn't seen it before and I think it's worth a read. It's by Sandi Moses. I immediately remembered her name from the Internet Warrior Forum; she has a plug-in profit site too.

If you are just transitioning from working outside the home to working from home, your thoughts are probably spinning with all the things that you will get done now that you don’t have to waste all that time commuting, getting ready for work, etc. And then a few weeks into your new lifestyle, things just don’t seem to going along as smoothly as you had imagined! What the heck happened, anyway? Well, I certainly hope you didn’t toss that daily planner you used to fill out so religiously! You just might need to pull it out, dust it off, and put it back to work.

In the first place, you are “still working.” You are just working “here” and not “there.” You still need to keep a schedule, and maybe even a daily flow chart. It will just have different items on it. Instead of dealing with meetings, phone calls, reports, face-to-face chats with clients or customers or employees or “the boss,” deadlines, “managing by walking around,” countless interruptions, and all that, you will need to schedule time for focusing on the work you are doing from home, maintaining your home itself, your family, and maybe even YOU!

Take your planner out and come up with something that works for you. You might start with what worked before. In other words, if you had to be ready to leave the house by 7:00 AM, before, then be that way now. You don’t have to be “all dressed up with nowhere to go,” but you can be showered and dressed, etc. Assign times to focus on various activities, keeping in mind that none of this is etched in stone. Build your own individual situation into this, and remember that it is only a guideline. Your boss is not going to call you on the carpet if the schedule doesn’t work unless you stand in front of the mirror and have at it! Remember that you have flexibility that you didn’t have when you were working outside the home. You are the boss and you can arrange you day as you choose, to fit the needs of your family, health, interests, schooling, or whatever reason you chose to work at home. Keep adjusting until you find what works. It may need “re-tweaking” when school starts up or lets out, as days get longer or shorter, as the seasons change, etc. That’s OK!

If you are thinking, “but I quit work so I didn’t have to be scheduled!” remember that this is YOUR schedule, not someone else’s. You can take as many breaks as you need, and you can take them whenever you need them, not when you are told to go. You are working into the schedule YOUR needs and your family‘s needs, not the needs of the company for whom you used to work. Because you have control over what is happening instead of being at the mercy of someone else, you can handle it!

And one last thing: you will never, ever have to come home so exhausted that you stand at the kitchen sink in you coat and high heels doing dishes because you know that if you stop to take them off, you will never get up to get the dishes done. And yes, I actually heard of some poor soul who did that.

About The Author
Sandi Moses has been involved in internet marketing since November, 2003. Visit her sites at http://www.123iwork4me.com http://www.123-home-based-business-works-4-me.com

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Working At Home Just Got Busy

2005-09-28T17:30:00.000Z

It's been so long since I last added to this blog and I hardly know where the time went. Mostly on trying to get my head round Google adwords is probably the answer. There is just something about Adwords that escapes me. I keep getting to the point where I've "almost got it" and then it all seems to slip away. I keep forcing myself to go back to it and each time it makes a bit more sense. I keep thinking I'll never get the hang of it but I simply have to so I can't give up. One day it will all just fall into place.

The rest of the time has been spent building a new website and planning yet another one plus working on two blogs which I am running as an experiment to test the extavagant claims people keep making about the value of the humble blog.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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A Busy Blogging Week For The Work From Home Directory

2005-09-12T10:02:00.000Z

I seem to have spent most of the last week setting up blogs in support of a couple of my affiliate programmes. Although this meant I did neglect some regular jobs, I have learned a lot about blogs and it is amazing what you can do with the standard blog set up once you start experimenting.
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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Updated Website

2005-09-04T11:07:00.000Z

After a very pleasant trip to the beautiful city of Ghent, I knuckled down to the task of revamping my website. I have added masses of new things and still have a way to go. I am already sure this project is going to be worth the effort.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my Work From Home Directory at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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The Joy Of Working From Home

2005-08-23T06:42:00.000Z

Working from home makes me feel privileged at the best of times and even at the worst of times it is still pretty good. In my capacity of Boss, I awarded myself a few days vacation (starting today). In an effort to leave everything tidy and up to date, I needed to work on Sunday morning and to put in some extra hours yesterday. Despite this extra push, there are still things I would like to have finished before I leave but I think it will always be like that: the day I think everything is completely finished will be the day I have lost interest in my business. I can't imagine that day every arriving, I haven't gone anywhere yet but I am already looking forward to getting back home to work on my new website design. This is why I was happy to get up and do some work hours before my husband is likely to wake up. I'll just about have time to pack after breakfast.

I am in the middle of rebuilding my website as part of an educational exercise: an experienced (and very successful) marketer has offered to show selected people exactly what he did to become successful and how he maintains his success. The cynics will be saying "Heard that one before" and "How much is it costing?" but it is a genuine offer of free help and the possibilities are very exciting. On second thoughts, it's a good job I'm going away for a few days, otherwise I'd probably burn out by the end of this week.

This was supposed to be a very short blog entry to mention that the August issue of Networkers' Calendar is online. My ramblings were prompted by things I heard this morning.

You know how there are sounds your house makes and noises from outside that you hear so often you don't notice them anymore? This morning, I became aware of the morning routines of some of my neighbours and I realised that I have been hearing the same things day in and day out for goodness knows how long (it could be years). I tend to wake up early and I enjoy the feeling of not having to get up immediately and start rushing around. During this time, I hear a door nearby being opened and quickly banged shut. This is followed by the sound of a woman walking briskly (at least I assume it is a woman because of the high heels), in winter it is still dark when she leaves home. My guess is that she is hurrying to catch a train into the city, because she goes in the direction of the railway station and away from the local bus route. At 7.15am (promptly) my next door neighbour leaves the house and I know he has to catch a train into London. I don't know how he manages to be always on time as he has a young baby to keep him awake at night. At 7.30am the man who lives two houses away slams his front door, noisily starts his car and drives off. I don't know him and I wonder whether he goes out early because he has a long commute or because he has to start work early. Another car starts up about ten minutes later, it always makes a funny squealing noise before the engine fires up. Other neighbours can be heard leaving and eventually the commuters are joined by the school kids.

There is no school today as it is the middle of the summer break, so it becomes very quiet after the commuters have dashed off. I enjoy the sound of the birds chirping in the tree outside my office window until a magpie comes onto the scene and loudly announces its presence. What an absolute joy it is to be sitting here in my bathrobe, drinking tea, listening to the birds singing -- oh yes, and working, don't forget this is work.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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My Birthday and New Article Published

2005-08-16T19:46:00.000Z

It's my birthday today, so as a special treat I spent most of the day messing about on my pc. That will undoubtedly seem sad to some people, but it was a rare treat for me. I often spend a day making changes to my website etc. but today I could do it without feeling guilty!

One of my presents was a set of framed photographs of the best baby in all the world and I think I'll have to show some on my website as a mascot.

I also published an article about Internet Forums: here.
I hope the page is ok, as I rushed it a bit, trying to do too many things at one as usual.

I also joined three new paying autosurfs to try them out. My little portfolio was sadly depleted after the demise of Top Gun Traffic. I had vowed to stay with the tried and tested but I decided to try out some highly recomemnded ones, just testing them at this stage but I feel an investment coming up!

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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The End Of Top Gun Traffic Autosurf

2005-08-09T19:32:00.000Z

Another autosurf bites the dust!

What a disappointment, Top Gun seemed to have all the right ingredients to make a successful long running autosurf. Part of the problem seems to be the number of new autosurf for money sites that are springing up in competition. I'm sticking with my favourites for now and just hope they are strong enough to stand up to the newbie sites.

I still like autosurfs as a means of making small amounts of cash quickly while I build up my long term programmes. The profits from the autosurfs mean that my membership in eveything else is more than covered and that leaves the profits to be reinvested in advertising.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Networkers Calendar - July Issue

2005-08-01T09:41:00.000Z

Finally managed to finish editing July's issue of the monthly newsletter. I prefer to have it ready by the beginning of the third week of the month but failed miserably this month, just too many things to do.

I've been spending quit a bit of time trying to find a way to resurrect my daughter's computer after a total crash. The only thing left now is finding a way to copy Outlook and I am hoping to find a recovery tool for this. No luck so far. The pc support line is hopeless as well as expensive, most of thevaluable help has come from free forums. That reminds me, I must work on my article onthe subject of forums.

July's edition of Networkers' Calander is online here

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Ezine Article Writing In Ten Easy Steps

2005-07-24T19:09:00.000Z

Busy week but I finished a couple of new articles and today published this one:
Ezine Article Writing In Ten Easy Steps.

Also found an interesting article here which showed me someone has been cheating by adding a new copywright to an existing article written by someone else. Well that must be a time-saver!

If I just used articles written by other people, I probably would have sent out my monthly newsletter by now. Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Articles and Online Marketing Businesses

2005-07-17T16:36:00.000Z

Another hot and humid day in London but I have managed to forge ahead with some writing. As it's Sunday, I'm not going to overdo things, I think I've achieved enough for one day. I have quite a few articles ready or almost ready for publication but I shall resist the temptation to start sending them off; I'll stick to my rule of leaving a day between writing and editing. I'll do some proofreading and editing tomorrow and Tuesday and then add the new articles to my website.

Today I added one new article. The hard part was finding a title (that was left until last as usual) and I will probably end up changing that, I always think my titles are so boring, I just can't seem to get an idea for anything catchy. Oh well, practice makes perfect.

The new article is here.

Now I'm off to do some reading for a change.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Bad News For Autosurfers

2005-07-16T18:51:00.000Z

Not a good day on the Internet.

This morning brought the expected news that 2 Daily autosurf is just about finished. Apart from the fact that they have no payment processor in operation and the webmaster seems to be doing nothing apart from sending email rants to members, everything is just peachy.

This morning also brought the unexpected new that 4 Daily autosurf has serious problems and the rumours are that it is about to fold. This latter piece of new made me sad as I like 4 Daily, the webmaster seemed to be honest and I was expecting the programme to last much longer. This reinforces the advice that any sites offering to pay more than 2% cannot be sustained. Although I have not lost money there, I had a large sum of earning built up so it feels as if I have lost a great deal.

Let this be a warning to anyone who might be tempted to play with money they can't afford to lose.

These are two more reasons to stick to affiliate marketing and avoid the risks.

I got on with writing some more articles and have almost finished a new page for my website. Can't rely on easy money from surfing at all!

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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What's Wrong With An Easy Way To Make Money?

2005-07-14T17:50:00.000Z

What a horrible humid, sticky day it has been in London today. As it was really too hot to move about much, I worked on my computer for most of the day: that gave me an excuse to sit still beside the open window and catch what little breeze was around.

I submitted one article to the article directories using my trusty Ezine Announcer and finished another article. I still have about half a dozen articles in a state of being almost finished and ideas keep popping into my head for new ones; it is always feast or famine, I can never just go along steadily with this, so I have to write when the ideas are fresh even if I get nothing else done.

The article I published today was another one on the subject of making easy money on the Internet. A version of it is on my website here. This is the version I submitted to the article directories:

Why Not Take The Easy Way?
By Elaine Currie, BA (Hons)

My article entitled "The Easy Money Picture" has been criticised by some people who do not believe working online is an easy way to make money and by others who do not believe people should be told an Internet business is an easy way to make money. Although I do agree that people should not be subjected to hype which tells them they can easily become rich overnight if they sign up for an Internet business opportunity, I stand by every word of my article because I do believe that working on the Internet is an easy way to make money.

The detractors say that work is involved when you have an Internet business. Sure, it requires work but how hard is it to sit in front of a computer? I'm not saying no work is required but, on a scale compared with mining coal or fighting fires, I think working on the internet is a very easy way to make money; we're not exactly risking life and limb here.

Consider these two options and tell me which one you think is the easy way to make money. Option one requires you to leave home each day at a time dictated by your boss (you know: the guy who wouldn't let you have time off when your mother was sick), commute to a place your boss has decided upon, wear clothing approved by the boss, do what the boss orders you to do for eight hours or so and commute back home when you finish. You get vacations but they have to be taken when it suits your boss and he shows no consideration for your partner's schedule or your kids' schooling.

Option two allows you to work from home for the hours you want, doing work you choose. There is no commuting on crowded trains or roads, you can wear what you like and take vacations when it suits you. I sincerely think the latter option represents the easy way to make money.

Some Internet marketers believe you should not mention the fact that working online is an easy way to make money. They say you should stress that work is involved if you want to be successful and long hours are sometimes necessary. True again, but fatigue from spending too long at your home computer can hardly be compared to the exhaustion of spending hours rescuing injured people from a collapsed building (now that is definitely not an easy way to make money).

Internet marketers will remind you that you have to face a steep learning curve when you start to work online. Indeed you do, but it's hardly rocket science, and I never heard of anyone who died from thinking too much. Try another two options and tell me which one you think is hard work and which one is the easy way to make money. Option one: training to be a brain surgeon. Option two, learning about website promotion. I maintain that the latter option is the easy way to make money.

In case you're not convinced, a final test to decide which option is the easy way to make money. Option one being a nurse. Option two being an affiliate marketer. No contest!

If I had to choose one single thing that makes an online business a great easy way to make money I would say being your own boss. The second thing would be having the freedom to do what you enjoy. If you enjoy what you are working at, it can't fail to be an easy way to make money and I don't see the point of doing things the hard way when there's a choice.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Earn Easy Money

2005-07-11T18:28:00.000Z

After a strenuous morning working on my vegetable patch in very high temperatures, I managed to finish writing another article and send it off to the article directories. I have some more article directories to add to my Ezine Announcer database but there are just not enough hours in the day for all the things I want to do, watering the garden takes long enough at this time of year. Still, I must not complain about that, the summer will not last long and we'll be back to moaning about the cold and damp.

I have two versions of today's article as I think it was useful to have some links in it but that would not have been appropriate for the article directories. This is the link to the article on my website: The Easy Money Picture and this is the published version:

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The Easy Money Picture
by Elaine Currie, BA (Hons)

Most people would like to be able to earn easy money. Even if we have never consciously considered it, I doubt if anyone would turn down a genuine opportunity to earn some easy money.

What do you think of when someone says "easy money"? I get this image I call my "easy money picture" of a man sitting on a porch, chair tilted back, feet up on the rail, tie loosened, tall glass of something cool within reach, enjoying the afternoon sun. This man has made his easy money for the day and has the afternoon to himself. Want to know his secret, so you can earn easy money and take afternoons off? It's no big secret actually: the best way to earn easy money is by working on the Internet.

Would you like to be in that easy money picture? It certainly appeals to me so I'll turn it into a woman relaxing in the sunshine after earning her easy money for the day, maybe she'll be holding a baby or reading a magazine. There's no reason why a woman can't earn easy money online; the Internet is an equal opportunity environment and most women would be able to earn easy money online successfully because they have a natural eye for detail (ok, I admit this is personal bias).

Although few people would turn down a chance to earn easy money honestly, most are suspicious of the idea of earning easy money. Quite rightly, anytime we hear "earn easy money" we start to look for the catch. Take my man on the porch, maybe his way to earn easy money is illegal: perhaps his easy money comes from being a conman who tricks people out of their hard earned money. That sort of scam artist is as common on the Internet as offline so you need to be careful of the offers to earn easy money which leap out of so many online advertisements.

You need to find a way to put yourself in your own earn easy money picture without needing to worry about getting ripped off. You can protect yourself by taking the following precautions:

Choose an opportunity to earn easy money which has been proven. Look for testimonials and find out whether the person who sponsors you into the programme will give you help and advice.

Avoid offers to earn easy money which are "time limited". If a programme will not give you time to think about joining it, it probably has something to hide.

Choose a system which offers free instructions on how to earn easy money. Check to see if there is ongoing support from a mentor or by way of a members' forum.

Don't pay for "secrets" about how to earn easy money. Truly, there are no secrets which are worth paying for, all the information you need to succeed is available free on the Internet, all you need to spend to find it is a little time.

Choose an opportunity where you can earn easy money at a realistic level. Don't fall for a "get rich quick" offer. Earning money from an Internet business is no different from earning money in the bricks and mortar world in that you need to invest time and effort to build a business.

Avoid any opportunity to earn easy money which looks too good to be true. If an opportunity looks to good to be true, it probably is (You will hear this said so many times!).

If you remember these tips and use commonsense when you are looking for a money making opportunity, you will soon find yourself happily in your very own easy money picture. Where will you will be? Maybe on a yacht, or a private beach, or in the grounds of your mansion, or please feel free to join me on my porch for some freshly squeezed lemonade; I'm there most sunny afternoons.

Elaine Currie earns easy money legitimately with a
Plug-in Profit Site. You can too, just go to:
http://www.huntingvenus.com/pips.html
For more details go to:
http://www.huntingvenus.com/earn_easy_money.htm

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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New Page Added To Website

2005-07-08T19:37:00.000Z

Busy day in bricks and mortar land but I managed to make time to add a new page to my website, hope Googlebot likes it.

This is it

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

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Reciprocal Links (Failed)

2005-07-06T18:53:00.000Z

What a day!

Spent the morning updating my Autosurf Review which took longer than I expected (especially considering I spent some time on it yesterday) but I think it is worth the effort. There is no point to it if it is not up to date.

Decided to bring my reciprocal linking campaign up to date. I had been putting that off because it is not urgent and I have spent all my spare time either working on my home-grown vegetable project or writing. When I logged in to Link Market I found a page in my account which had never been there before (actually it was two pages). It was about 50 links which had broken and which I needed to remove from my website. What a tedious, soul-destroying job. I put a lot of effort into my linking campaign and was so happy when it got above 500. I was looking forward to reach the magic 1000 links and this happened. Now I am going backwards. This is at a time when the gurus are saying that reciprocal linking is dead because of Google's latest changes. Am I wasting my time here? I don't know. I was tempted to just delete the whole thing but a lot of work has already gone into it so I restrained myself. I hate wasting time. I hope Google bot realises what he is putting me through.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Updated Another Page at www.huntingvenus.com

2005-07-02T17:13:00.000Z

As part of my continuing quest for perfection, I have spent the major part of today's working hours tweaking another two web pages. I worked on my work from home recommendations page and also on my get paid to read emails page. I think I'll change the pop up ad but that can wait for a day or so as I intend to finish updating the other pages to get them all uniform.

Live 8 day today. Can it really be 20 years since Live Aid?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

No More Daily Journal

2005-06-30T16:43:00.000Z

Stone Evans has now closed the Internet Warrior Forum thread where he was posting his daily journal. I was so disappointed when I logged in at the forum and discovered it was all over, I rather expected it to go on for longer (certainly hoped so). There was a real buzz going on for the days the journal was being posted. Knowing Stone Evans, he will come up with another idea to stir things up in the near future. His final word was that he is putting a lot into PPC for his promotion.

In the meantime, as a result of Stone's journal, I gained the courage to splurge a little on some advertising and I found the Instant Attention ads which are giving me great fun as I experiment with them. Something is working because I am getting more enquiries and actual sign ups than usual. Hooray!

Spent today working on keywords. That is something that could easily drive a person nuts. Added a few bits and pieces to my Free Resources page.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Marketing Tips Newsletter

2005-06-28T10:44:00.000Z

I'm back! Took a few days off to blitz my garden as the recent sun and rain has made everything grow out of control. I now have cucumber plants with serious attitude problems but I should be able to get them back on track with some netting and twine.

Next thing will be to sort out my mailbox, the amount of mail which has built up just over a few days is incrfedible. Who are all these people who have written to me?

One important thing I did get in my mail was the first Martketing Tips newsletter written by Derek Ghel. His editorial gives a wonderful insight into the character of the late Corey Rudl. This is it:

"How to Eat, Sleep, and Breathe like an Internet Marketing Genius:
What I Learned from My Good Friend and Colleague, Corey Rudl --
Genius Internet Marketer, Inspirational Leader, and Mentor to Thousands." ================================================
Since the announcement of Corey's tragic car-racing accident a couple of weeks ago, our office has received over 16,000 e-mails of support and condolence... and easily over 1,000 phone calls. The entire IMC Team has been working overtime, responding to every e-mail and phone message, one at a time, so we don't miss any of your questions or comments. In fact, I've had to throw some of the gang out of the office late at night and send them home... We've all found it hard to stop reading your e-mails. "Thanks" doesn't seem an adequate response to the overwhelming support and caring you've shown us. (It's been rather humbling, really...) So I hope you don't mind, but I've decided to write this very special edition of our "Marketing Tips" Newsletter -- and dedicate it to my good friend and mentor... You see, over the last couple of weeks, a question that keeps appearing in e-mails from everyone is, "How can I be like Corey?"... "How can I think like Corey?" It seems many of you are interested in learning MORE than his secrets to Internet marketing -- you want to learn how to be "like" him. So I'm going to give you a bit of insight into Corey's philosophies for business, success, and life. These are a collection of the five most profound lessons I learned from Corey over the last eight years, some of which he loudly expressed to me (Corey talked loud and fast when he got excited)... and some he quietly but effectively shared through living example.
------------------------------------------------------------
Lesson #1: Failure doesn't "happen"; it's a choice.
------------------------------------------------------------
In Corey's mind, there were only two ways you could "fail." You could give up and quit. Or you could decide not to learn from your mistakes. Corey believed failure was a choice. So Corey never failed. He tested new ideas. He learned from what worked, and what didn't. Then he applied those lessons to his next test or idea, and he kept doing this until he got results he was satisfied with. Sure Corey made mistakes... Yeesh, I still cringe when I think of a $90,000 mistake we made two years ago. And sure, Corey would get really ticked off when stuff went wrong. But Corey was also always the first person to seek out the positive in every bad situation and say, "Well, what did we learn from this?" ... And, more important, "Will we do it again?" Corey firmly believed every costly lesson was going to result in exponentially greater success in the long term. And he was right.
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Lesson #2: Assume nothing, test everything
------------------------------------------------------------
Corey had zero respect for people who were content to assume To him, it was a mark of laziness. So something everyone quickly learned when working with him was to deal in nothing but the facts. If Corey asked a question, and you didn't know the answer, it was one thousand times better to say, "I'll look into it and get back to you," than "I think this might be the answer," or "I assume this is right." Theories, assumptions, and guesses were the enemies of success as far as Corey was concerned. He believed you should either go straight to the source for the answers (even if that means paying thousands of dollars in consulting fees) or test it yourself. And as Corey taught me, sometimes you even need to test the "facts." For example... ... A marketing strategy that you tested and proved to work as little as a month ago may be a complete dud today. (Retesting is ALWAYS worth the effort.) ... The customer demographics you collected through a survey last year may have drastically changed. (Are they buying your products for DIFFERENT reasons now?) ... And some of the most interesting statistics may be based on flawed data. (Always read the "fine print," and if there isn't any, ask for it!) Before you make decisions, ask questions. Assume nothing. Test everything. And don't be afraid of offending someone -- even an "expert" -- by questioning their logic. The true experts will applaud you for this. And your questions will expose the imposters for who they really are -- wannabes.
------------------------------------------------------------
Lesson #3: Make opportunities to learn, and take notes.
------------------------------------------------------------
It would be difficult to calculate exactly how much Corey spent on educational materials each year... but I've done the math and know it was roughly in the tens of thousands of dollars. Corey was constantly reading... On airplanes, on holidays, in between meetings -- he was absolutely relentless. He would read every business book, article, course, and marketing campaign he could get his hands on. And Corey didn't just read material related to Internet marketing; he made a point of studying OTHER industries, too -- both online AND offline. He was always looking for new strategies and marketing ideas that he could pluck from other industries and apply to his businesses. It was all this reading that would frequently spark his "genius" ideas... But I think the key to this secret is that Corey made TONS of notes about everything he read and kept all his thoughts in a couple of "master project documents" that he'd refer back to every month, looking for new ideas (they were literally hundreds of pages long). That way, even if an idea didn't work today, he had record of it so he could refer back to it sometime in the future. Corey knew that "genius" doesn't just happen -- you need to look for opportunities to learn, and keep track of your thoughts. Your best ideas will frequently be sparked by new information, or new approaches to old information.
------------------------------------------------------------
Lesson #4: Seek out great teachers, and be a great listener.
------------------------------------------------------------
Corey firmly believed that if you want to fast-track your success, it's critical to learn from those who have gone before you... even if you just have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. So Corey made a point of seeking out teachers and mentors, and asking for their advice whenever he had the opportunity -- even if that meant paying hefty consulting fees for their guidance. As far as Corey was concerned, you should always learn from the best. Find people who are getting the results YOU want to achieve, and ask them to mentor you. And Corey was never afraid to ask "great people" for advice... He was never concerned about looking dumb. And he never needed to be the smartest guy in the room. Corey was always focused on learning. So he was a student of everything... and almost everyone. Corey was always asking people around him for feedback... What mistakes was he making? How could he improve as a leader? As a marketer? How could he be a better public speaker? It takes guts to ask the people around you for feedback. But it takes wisdom to openly listen and learn from it.
------------------------------------------------------------
Lesson #5: Define your own success and live with passion.
------------------------------------------------------------
Corey's biggest frustration was that so many of his clients and subscribers just let life "happen" to them. I can't tell you how many times I heard him rant over the years, "They have dreams... but they don't set GOALS! Why don't they set goals and take action???" One of the most inspirational things about being around Corey was his belief that absolutely anyone can be successful. You just had to meet Corey once to know he wasn't just spouting the "anybody can start a profitable Internet business" line because it sounded good. His enthusiasm... his actions... every word he spoke demonstrated his core belief that absolutely anyone can be successful. You can learn anything... be anything... do anything. If you decide that your age, background, and education limit your potential, they will. But if you decide that you can do anything, you will... Corey really believed that you just need to set goals that you're excited about, and then take persistent action. It's absolutely shocking what ONE step a day... just 10 minutes a day... one hour a day... can accomplish over one month... three months... six months. Just imagine where YOU would be in six months if you dedicated even 20 minutes a day to working on your business... learning new strategies... or building a "swipe file" of marketing ideas! Success isn't determined by genetics. It's about persistent, consistent action. And Corey really got that.
------------------------------------------------------------
Final Thoughts:
------------------------------------------------------------
Honestly, I could write a book about what it was like teaming up with Corey for the last eight years... and perhaps one day I will. It was one helluva ride... Today, though, I wanted to give you at least SOME insight into Corey's personal philosophies for business success because I'm hoping they will inspire you to... * Choose success * Test something new today * Make opportunities to learn * Seek out great teachers * Define your goals, and take action to reach them These are the philosophies that Corey inspired the entire IMC Team to run his company with... and these are the philosophies that we are continuing to move forward with. Corey's legacy wasn't just cutting-edge marketing strategies or industry leading software -- it was the inspiration he shared with thousands of "real people." And that's the legacy I personally plan to continue. With that said, keep an eye on your inbox next week; we're going to be doing something really special in memory of Corey. And be sure to watch your e-mail in July, too, because we're going to be releasing a mind-blowing interview recorded in late May between genius offline direct marketer Dan Kennedy and Corey... Until the next issue of "Marketing Tips," I wish you success.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

News From IMC

2005-06-23T18:34:00.000Z

Received an email today from Derek Gehl. The staff at IMC are trying to get back to business in order to continue the great work started by Corey Rudl. I still feel sad every time I see a picture of Corey Rudl on traffic exchange ads so goodness knows how his staff must feel.

This is the email.

Hi Elaine,

I hope this e-mail answers your questions about how the Internet Marketing Center's Affiliate Program will be moving forward in light of Corey's passing...

As I expected, since last week's announcement about Corey, I've received a number of messages from our Internet Marketing Center affiliates, wondering what's going to happen with the program. It's only natural for you to have such questions about the future of IMC. After all, it was Corey's personal relationship with affiliates like you that made him unique in this industry, and the loss of this kind of relationship can create uncertainty.

However, as a close friend of Corey's -- and his right-hand man for the past eight years -- I'd like to assure you that since his sudden passing, I have been honored to take on the role of continuing his legacy, helping to keep growing the Internet Marketing Center.

So over the past few weeks, while we've spent a lot of time looking backward over the years to honor Corey's memory, we've also been looking to the future, planning how we're going to take Corey's hopes and dreams for this company and make them reality.

I know that's what he would have wanted.

And that's why over the next few months, we'll be rolling out an exciting lineup of new and updated information products and software, as well as maintaining our traditional "core" products and programs -- including our top-rated affiliate program.

With over 90,000 members, our affiliate program is truly unique. It was groundbreaking when Corey first started it back in the mid-90s (even before sites like Amazon.com had them), and it continues today to be one of the most popular -- and profitable -- affiliate programs available on the Internet.

We plan to continue that tradition...

We are dedicated to offering the same great special promotions each month that we always have -- plus providing you with the same cutting-edge promotional tools, advice, and support that you've come to rely on as an IMC affiliate.

So as we slowly return to "business as usual," we're busy putting together the next special affiliate promotion for you. We'll be announcing all the details of that in your next regular affiliate newsletter, so watch for that coming up next week.

Meanwhile, if you have any questions or concerns about the future of our affiliate program, please don't hesitate to write to our affiliate support team at affiliates@marketingtips.com, or give us a call at 604-730-2833. We'll be happy to answer all of your questions.

Best wishes for your continued success,

Derek Gehl, CEO
The Internet Marketing Center

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Stone Evans Masterclass - Instant Attention

2005-06-22T20:01:00.000Z

Today's new discovery was Instant Attention which is rather clever type of pop-up ad. I have seen them before but when Stone recommended them today, I decided to investigate and I signed up for a year's membership. I know everyone says po-ups, pop-unders, fly-ins etc work but I happen to dislike them so I refuse to use them. I just don't think it would be honest to use an advertising vehicle which I find personally annoying and intrusive. Instant Attention ads are different, sure they pop-up but they just sit in a corner and do no harm. They don't open a new window or follow the visitor down the page getting in the way. I'll have to see what results I get.

I am having to spend a lot of time working on my overgrown vegetable plot when what I really want to be doing is working on my home business. If only I could find a way to be in two places at once. I want to be self sufficient in vegetables this year but I have so many things I want to add to my website and so much surfing to do and so many things to learn. Oh dear, there are just not enough hours in the day.

Can't wait to see what Stone has in store for us tomorrow.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com You'll find all the help you need.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The Stone Evans Masterclass Continues

2005-06-20T19:12:00.000Z

Stone took the weekend off but has now posted a new message to the thread on the Warrior Forum. He has set himself a target of enrolling 50 new Empowerism members by midnght on Sunday. Nobody has bet against this happening!

Stone's first big push involves buying advertising. I don't know whether to try to follow him on this. I have been trying to do everything either free or as cheaply as possible. I'll have to think about this one. I can afford it but I have to be careful with the budget. I'll sleep on it.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring, Stone will be forging ahead while I sleep. I never expected to keep up anyway.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Identity Theft Part 1

2005-06-18T17:32:00.000Z

After yesterday's exciting events I felt inspired and energised. Worked hard despite the punishing heat and humidity.

Today I went through my newsletter series tweaking here and there but I was generally satisfied that it is what I want.

I also got round to posting my series of articles on Identity Theft on my website. I am also going to use these articles as a short course to accompany my newsletter. It is not strictly about working from home but it does relate to being on the Internet.

My next step is to submit these four articles to the article directories.

This is Part 1.

What is Identity?

The term "identity" as it will be used here means those things which, when combined, prove who we are. A UK government report defines identity as comprising of three basic elements: biometric identity, attributed identity and biographical identity.

Biometric identity is an individual's unique attributes, ie fingerprints, DNA profile, voice, retina etc.

Attributed identity is the components of an individual's identity that are given at birth, including full name, date and place of birth, parents' names and addresses.

Biographical identity is comprised of documented events which build up over time, ie educational qualifications, marriage, employment history, mortgage accounts, bank accounts, utilities accounts etc.

Biometric identifiers are the subject of ongoing research to find foolproof ways of using things such as fingerprints or retina scans to prevent identity fraud but it is likely to be some time before we pay our supermarket bill by way of credit card supported by a retina scan, PIN numbers are going to be around for a while longer!

Most incidents of identity theft involve the use of biographical identity to support a claim to attributed identity. When our parents register our birth, we obtain our first document proving our identity: our birth certificate. In later life, this document alone will not be sufficient to prove our identity, it is a document of public record and copies of it can be obtained by anyone who cares to pay a small fee.

When the day comes that we want to open a bank account or obtain goods on credit, we will be required to produce further documentation to prove we are who we claim to be and live at the address where we claim to live. In most cases the financial institution involved will require proof of our identity by way of production of an official document which proves our name and at least one further document which proves our current address. In the UK the official documents include birth certificate, current signed passport, current driving licence, pension or benefit book. Documents accepted as proof of address must usually be under six months old and include utility bill, bank or credit card statement, mortgage statement, home insurance policy or TV licence renewal notification.

Although this requirement to produce valid documentation will be strictly enforced when it involves obtaining credit, the UK banks have an exception process which will allow people to open bank accounts without providing the usual proof of identity. This is because the UK government will not allow banks to deny any UK citizen access to a basic bank account. This ruling protects, for example, young adults who have never had a utility account because they have always resided with their parents and have no passport because they have never travelled out of the country. If it were not for the exception process, someone in this situation would have a problem when attempting to open a bank account to receive salary payments when they start their first job.

Case Study

This case illustrates how it is possible to commit identity fraud without committing identity theft. Fraud was committed but the identities used were invented rather than stolen from real people.

David England spent several years travelling around the UK taking driving tests under assumed names and registering those names on the electoral roll at rented drop addresses in various parts of the country. He was able to use these identities to open up over 100 bank accounts through which he was able to commit £1 million worth of fraud. He was just about to leave the UK in 1998 when he was apprehended and sentenced to a five year jail term.

Part two of this series examines the different types of identity fraud.

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If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Stone Evans Plug In Profit Site Masterclass

2005-06-17T16:29:00.000Z

When I checked my email yesterday I found an unexpected message that started me on a path to unanticipated places.

It was going to be an ordinary day but that email turned everything upside down and made me even more determined to make a success of my home business. The email itself intrigued me but when I clicked the link and read the first post in the thread I suddenly realised what mind-boggling felt like. Stone Evans is going to post a journal of what he does day by day to build his business.

This is an excerpt from his introductory post:

In this forum thread, I am going to be doing something I've never done before. I will chronicle my own marketing activities for you to learn from and apply to your own PIPS business.

I decided to start from scratch and become an affiliate for my own product all over again.

In this thread, I aim to share with you the steps I take to become my own top affiliate. And by doing so, I hope that many of you will accept the challenge to use what I share with you to beat me at my own game and become the best and most highly paid PIPS affiliates you can become.

Because of my reputation and resources in the marketplace, I may be able to accomplish some things faster than you would. However, opportunities are infinite and I know that I have not even tapped 1% of my own potential in this business yet. Take what you learn here and apply it in your own way to your PIPS business and I am confident you can succeed, even beyond what you expect is possible right now.

That was just the beginning. He was off like a shot going here, doing that, doing it like this and so on and on. The man's energy is incredible. The thread extended to two enthralling pages in no time flat.

This is very exciting stuff. I can hardly believe I am getting this chance to learn up to date tricks of the trade from a marketing genius. It is like being rained on from MLM heaven. I hope my brain bucket won't overflow, there's so much to take in and at a fast pace too. Wow. Just Wow

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

IMC Will Continue

2005-06-16T07:35:00.000Z

I was pleased to learn that the Internet Marketing Center will continue despite the tragic loss of Cory Rudl. It would have increased the tragedy if the fruit of Corey Rudl's genious had been allowed to wither away.

Here is the email I received from Tracy Rudl:

Dear Elaine,

It is with great sadness I must inform you that my husband, Corey Rudl, passed away in a tragic car-racing accident on Thursday, June 2, 2005.

I know that because of all the media attention Corey's passing has received, many of you have already heard this terrible news. But I know this will still come as a great shock to many people -- and for that I am deeply sorry. There are no words for moments as unexpectedly tragic or heartbreakingly sad as this...

On behalf of Corey's entire family, as well as Corey's team at The Internet Marketing Center, I'd like to extend my warmest thanks to those of you who have already sent e-mails and letters or left phone messages expressing your support and condolence.

We've all drawn strength from your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time, and we'll always remember your kindness.

Corey's passion was helping people.

He loved knowing that he was helping "real people" start and grow Internet businesses. And he was extremely proud of the thousands of success stories he'd helped to create over the years. Nothing made Corey happier than getting letters from clients who had finally "quit their day jobs" to run their Internet businesses full time...

And that's why, on behalf of my entire family, I would like to personally take this opportunity to assure all Corey's customers and subscribers that his legacy will continue.

Going forward, the company will be headed up by Derek Gehl, an Internet entrepreneur and marketing expert in his own right who worked side by side with Corey for more than eight years to develop the marketing strategies and software you've seen released by The Internet Marketing Center...

Corey had the highest regard for Derek and considered him to be his "right-hand man"... and for the last couple of years, as Corey began to spend more time on the road, away from the office, he'd left Derek to manage his team. So the family backs Derek during this transition 100% -- we all have the highest confidence in Derek's ability to continue Corey's legacy.

I know this is what Corey wanted.

Derek will provide more information to you about how the company will move forward. (He will be sending an e-mail later this afternoon.) But I just wanted to personally let you know what's happened.

Corey was an adoring husband... a loving son... a doting brother... a caring friend... and an inspirational leader and mentor.

It's so hard to say good-bye...

Tracy Rudl
On behalf of The Internet Marketing Center

~*~*~*~*~*~*

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

Another Month Flown By

2005-06-14T18:29:00.000Z

I can hardly believe it but it is almost time to put this month's issue of Networkers' Calendar online. Where does the time go? I don't have any idea for subject matter so I hope inspiration will arrive suddenly.

I signed up for Join My Free Matrix and received two members in my downline as a result of overspill from my upline within hours. Hope it continues like that.

Today I decided it was time to upgrade my membership with Dad N Dave's Autosurf because I have been hearing so many good things about the owner. Hope it lasts as I think it will!

~*~*~*~*~*~*

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

Should we be afraid of Google?

2005-06-08T18:50:00.000Z

Submitted an article about search engines for publication today. Have a few more almost ready to go including a series of four articles which I have yet to get on my website.

Wasted a lot of time trying to autosurf today. The top favourites are performing well, several of the newcomers are very fast to surf but there is a middle block which are a pain. I am going to update my autosurf page on my website and add more information while I continue to evaluate the sites. Don't think I will add any more at this stage.

Here is today's home business article:

Do Search Engines Scare You?

by Elaine Currie, BA(Hons).

What do the words “Search Engine” make you think of? I get immediate mind-pictures which vary but all have similar themes. Sometimes I see one of those tiny submarines which are used to explore the deepest parts of the ocean bed. I have this picture in my mind of the tiny submarine underwater in complete darkness apart from the beam of its searchlight which is probing the gloom. Other times I see a horse-drawn carriage driving through dense fog with only its weak lamp relieving the darkness. This scene is from a movie where the police are racing through London in search of Jack The Ripper. The final picture is of a line of policemen in old-fashioned uniforms advancing across a moor in darkness through rising mist with only their flashlight-beams to light their way.

It can get a bit scary inside my mind at times. If these were dreams rather than passing thoughts, they would probably be analysed as meaning an obsession with darkness and getting lost. Maybe the lights penetrating the darkness symbolise a fear of ignorance (or maybe a fear of getting found out). The obvious link is that these pictures all relate to a search of one kind or another. The first one might represent a search for knowledge, the second one is obviously the search for a criminal and the final one a search for clues at the scene of a crime.

Why would the words “search engine” conjure up these dark visions? If you look at the words we associate with search engines, I think the connection will be clear. We talk about “submitting” our websites to search engines. We don’t “send” our websites or “apply” to search engines or “register” our websites with search engines. We are submissive and the search engines dominate us.

We adopt this submissive posture and the search engines send their robots to “crawl” over our websites. Doesn‘t sound very pleasant does it? The future of your website is entirely in the power of these monsters. You have spent time and perhaps some cash getting your website ready for the visit. Your website, the shop window to your home business, has been tweaked and “search engine optimised”, now you can do nothing except hope that your efforts will be rewarded with approval by these invisible inspectors.

Web site owners act as if the search engines are neighbourhood dignitaries: “We must tidy up, the search engines are coming to visit”. An anxious time follows while your website, brushed, polished and optimised to the best of your ability, waits to greet these visitors. The most respected visitor is Googlebot. He causes most anxiety and is renowned for being unpredictable. Webmasters try to analyse the "Googledance" in the hope of making Googlebot's visit enjoyable. If we can get the mighty Googlebot to dance instead of merely crawling, he might give us a good report, but Googlebot can't seem to decide what algorithm he prefers. How are you supposed to get his feet tapping? Unfortunately, the search engines are not the most communicative visitors and you only realise they have carried out their examination when something (either good or bad) happens to your protégé's page rank.

The search engines are not like your school teacher who gives you a class test, they are more like the university Board Of Examiners: when you have passed or failed their test, you will never get to know which questions you got right or where your weakness lies. Further improvement will have to be a matter of guesswork but suppose your guess is wrong? You might destroy the very things which met with the search engines’ approval. Then you hear that the search engines don’t agree amongst themselves, so what pleases some of them might lose you points with others. Which ones should you try hardest to impress? Should you turn your website into some sort of private Googledancer and risk offending the rest of the robots? Would it be better to try to please one or two of the largest search engines or a big bunch of the lesser ones? Finally you hear a rumour that the search engines are changing their secret rules anyway but nobody knows what the changes will entail. You despair of ever satisfying the masters of your fate, you feel as if you are stumbling around in the dark. Panic takes you over.

Should you be afraid of search engines?

Anybody in his right mind should be afraid, very afraid.

************

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

Working from home is not usually hard work

2005-06-07T12:44:00.000Z

It is strange how outside events can tilt one's whole world.

Since I hear the news that Corey Rudl had tragically died, I have found it hard to make the effort to work. Usually it is easy and, I would say, a joy. The last few days have been a struggle, just being at the computer makes me feel sad. I am avoiding traffic exchanges because there are so many reminders: the Internet Marketing Centre is so widely advertised. A depressing time.

At least I had some good news to perk me up: my mysterious internet pen-pal had suddenly disappeared. It was only a couple of weeks without news but that seemed like a long time for such a compulsive writer. I was getting very concerned but an email arrived today and all is well.

****************************

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

Corey Rudl is dead

2005-06-03T19:02:00.000Z

Just heard the sad and shocking news that Corey Rudl was killed in an accident yesterday morning. All that genius and energy gone.

After seeing his face and hearing his voice so often online, I feel as if I knew him. I am an affiliate for IMC and there is an unread email from Corey Rudl in my mailbox at the moment. It is terribly sad. He was only 34 years old and got married just last year. My heart goes out to his family.

He became a millionaire at the age of 31 and, for this, he will become a figure of legend. He should have had a whole exciting life ahead of him but all that promising future has been shattered. What a terrible tragic waste of a young life.

This sort of tragedy should make all of us count our blessings and remember to live each day as if it is the last one we will ever experience, because it might be. Sieze the day and make it worthwhile --every minute, every day.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

Wrote Four Articles Today

2005-05-30T17:16:00.000Z

I can hardly believe it myself but today I wrote from start to finish a series of four articles. I'm leaving them until tomorrow and then I'll polish them and see about submitting them for publication. I think I'll also offer these articles as a short course to accompany my weekly newsletter.

Received an email today from a lady who had been scammed by James Patterson (aka Jimbo). She asked that I don't publish her email and obviously I will respect that and not mention her name or any details. Suffice to say that she lost a lot more that I did. What scum Jimbo turned out to be. I don't know how people like him can sleep nights but what goes around comes around.

The lady who emailed me is looking to work on the Internet to make some extra money but she is understandably nervous about trusting anyone. Who could blame her? I'll help her as much as I can. I still love the Internet despite the likes of Jimbo who I believe are in a minority. Most people I have come across online have been decent.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

Creative Copywriting?

2005-05-30T02:07:00.000Z

Finished an article today and published it. I've got a few more almost ready to go and lots more ideas. This is the one I submitted for publication today:

Creative Copywriting?

There is a difference between creative writing and copywriting. It took me a while to come to terms with this but it's true, there is a difference. When I first started my home based business on the Internet I read a lot of advice about publishing articles and doing copywriting to advertise your website. There was always a distinction drawn between copywriting and creative writing. I did not understand this: surely copywriting is creative? Eventually the logic dawned on me: all copywriting is creative writing but not all creative writers can write decent ad copy. If you have never studied that particular branch of philosophy, it's like all roses are flowers but not all flowers are roses.

When I came to understand this difference, it explained for me the reason why I can write at length on any subject (stopping is the hard part) but tell me I need to write an advertisement and I go all bashful and tongue-tied. Give me a subject or, indeed, no subject at all -- just a blank page is sufficient to set me going and I'll hammer away at the keyboard until... Until when? Actually, I never really stop, just pause from time to time. Advertising copy is a different matter. I can sit for ages resisting the lure of the blank page if I know that what I need to do is copywriting to use for advertising.

This inability to write ad copy caused me problems because I wanted to advertise my home based business and various individual affiliate programmes. Plenty of pre-written ads come with most decent affiliate programmes and it is an easy matter to copy and paste these but I wanted to use fresh material instead of advertisements that everyone had seen a hundred times before. I blame my inability to write advertising copy on my upbringing: modesty and understatement were encouraged and boastfulness was the eleventh deadly sin. It seemed to me that writing advertisements for myself was akin to bragging.

Eventually, I overcame my distaste for self-proclamation and tried my hand at some copywriting. When I compared my efforts with the pre-written ads, it was obvious that something was absent. My advertisements were dull and flat, uninspired and uninspiring. Then I discovered the secret: copywriting is a craft not an art. It is has rules which need to be learnt and practised. A course of online copywriting lessons was not hard to come by. In fact, I ended up reading several such courses on the good old Information Highway.

Rules are fine, I have a good memory. Examples are not hard to come by and it was easy to make a collection of snippets from the copywriting courses. I learnt about the importance of writing an attention grabbing headline. I can manage that, there are plenty of examples to borrow. I got to grips with selecting buzz words such as amazing, customised, effortless, excellent and, the best one of all -- free. So far so good. Use sentence fragments -- not so keen on that idea but, when you think about it, that's how conversation goes in real life, so I'll do it. Sell the sizzle not the steak --yeah, I get it. Offer benefits, not features --yeah, yeah, I can do that.

Things started to look better and better as I became familiar with the rules and I began to daydream about becoming a copywriter (like in the film "The Guys" with that nice Anthony La Paglia). My daydream ended abruptly when I found there was one rule of English grammar I could not bring myself to break. The very thought made me shudder and give up any idea of a copywriting career. I can cope with all the fragments, buzzes and sizzles. But I could never begin a sentence with "and".

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

Get Paid To Autosurf - My Review

2005-05-26T17:04:00.000Z

I am very happy that I discovered the get paid to autosurf programmes. I have already been paid by Studio Traffic, 4 Daily and 5 Daily. Now that I have tested these programmes, I am prepared to promote them and I have added a get paid to surf review to my website. I am still evaluating a few other programmes but won't add them just yet until I know they are reliable.

Aussie Earners are having a very bad time since they moved to a new server. They have been absolutely plagued with problems and the latest is that surfing is a complete nightmare in the early hours of the morning. If you surf during the afternoon and evening (server time) it is fine. It is a shame they have these problems because they have had a good reputation for some time and I hope these problems don't cripple them. I don't think this will happen because they have a loyal member base. I'm looking forward to going back to surfing in the mornings when it is all fixed.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

Networkers' Calendar - May Edition Published

2005-05-23T16:36:00.000Z

Even the best laid plans are liable to fall apart if they have anything to do with computers. My plan to publish my monthly newsletter in an orderly manner and send the notification out on Friday (supposed to be the best day for emailing) were utterly thwarted by my pc. I still don't know what was wrong, it just decided to be extremely slow but all the virus checks etc showed no dangerous infestations. I would have felt more secure if I had found a nasty bug and had it eradicated, I keep waiting for it to fall over again. I'm typing this with fingers crossed.

The May edition of Networkers' Calendar is now online Networkers' Calendar is now online. Some of my readers have recently emailed me some good articles and I am now including two in each issue. I have already lined one up for next month. I am a bit worried that it might me too technical but I understood it so I'll publish it as it is a top quality article.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

May Edition Of Networkers Calendar Almost Ready

2005-05-19T19:11:00.000Z

I have this month's edition of Networkers Calendar ready to go. I'll wait for a couple of days before I have another look at it and maybe tweak a few things but I think it's ready. Everyone says Friday is a good day to send emails so maybe I should put it online tomorrow and email my subscribers.

M showed me a neat programme for posting pictures to a blog. I'll have to get round to doing it for this one. For no better reason than that I like pictures but that's good enough for me.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

No BS Zone looks more like total **it

2005-05-08T18:41:00.000Z

I received an email today asking what I think of No BS Zone now.

It was gratifying to note that at least one person reads my Blog (one person apart from me that is!).

I did promote No BS Zone for a while. This was against my better judgement after the Banners Go MLM fiasco but NBSZ was recommended by someone I trust and admire. I felt that it would be fair to give the owners of NBSZ another chance; it is not right to condemn somebody for a past crime. Unfortunately, things rapidly went pear shaped.

I stopped promoting NBSZ weeks ago when the first doubts about the programme were voiced. I emailed my mailing list and warned everyone and I published the warning in my monthly newsletter in March. Looks like the only place I missed was here!

This is what I published in March:

This month in London
My view of the Internet from here.
There have been some complaints about No BS Zone which included unauthorised credit card transactions and lack of response from the management. This coincided with me reading a review which said that the programme was basically a fake and was just invented to promote stuff on behalf of friends of the owner. Just about the opposite of what it claimed to be, in fact.

I had my doubts about No BS Zone from the start because of what happened with the owner's last venture (Banners Go MLM) but I signed up as NBS was recommended to me by someone whose judgement I trusted. I am glad I held back from upgrading. Needless to say, I won't be upgrading right now (if ever) and I have stopped promoting NBS and removed their link from my website. I have a bad feeling about the programme, especially the lack of response from the owner so I emailed all my contacts and warned them to be on the lookout especially in regard to the credit card part.

The worst part about something like this is that it reflects badly upon the rest of us who are trying to run a business on an ethical basis.

Second chance ok but I don't give anyone a third chance.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

I Built A Website With CSS and Added To My Autosurfs

2005-05-06T18:59:00.000Z

I built a new website! I feel quite proud of my achievement as I've never dabbled with CSS until now. I can see what a neat arrangement it is. I had some problems because the control panel on the new website is quite a bit different from the only one I've used before. I messed about for ages but managed in the end to get all the bits I needed in the right directory where the index could find the syle sheet and the graphics.

My collaborator, M, as he is known gave me the website template as a gift and I paid for the registration and web hosting. He found an amazing source of cheap templates (I didn't realise until now just how much these things cost) so I don't feel bad about accepting this gift.

I'm doing my best to get some serious writing done. That is to say a serious amount of writing not writing about terribly serious subjects.

I also enlarged my collection of autosurf sites so that I don't have too many of my eggs precariously balanced in one container. I signed up with the best ones I could find and made a comparison chart to advertise them. This probably won't do me any good as I get the impression not many people actually look at autosurf ads but I thought I might as well try this. I think I have signed up with the best of them. Surf Monkee is supposed to be good but my security arrangements won't let me participate there. I gave up with Surf Junky as it has such a bad name. Everywhere has posts about it being a scam, so I won't try to build up enough to cash out, I'll just write off that time spent.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

A new mystery website begins to unfold

2005-05-04T18:50:00.000Z

My American pen-pal, collaborator, (and I would even say friend) sent me a beautiful website template. I loved the picture, it was a perfect match for an idea I have but never mentioned. To have someone choose something so perfectly fitting without being given so much as a hint (well, not a deliberate hint) or any discussion was a bit unnerving: I felt as if my mind had been read. I'd like to display that picture on this blog but as the project is still secret I can't. I just have to content myself with looking at it now and again.

It comes with a CSS style sheet set up which I've never used before. I need to do some reading up about it. I'm going to start a new blog for our project and build a website as well. I have a spare website ready, just need to register a name and I know what that will be now.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

April and huntingvenus.com

2005-04-30T18:34:00.000Z

April is over (but the showers aren't).

Published another edition of my monthly newsletter. I am happy to note that readers are starting to send me their articles for publication in the newsletter. It is good to include a range of opinions and I'm not sure I could turn out a decent meaningful article every month. I'm sure I could manage an article but whether it would be useful and informative for the reader is another matter.

I've been working on the Internet for over a year now. I have learnt so much and am still learning as the months tick by.

Made the firm decision to go ahead with a project with my American gentleman pen-pal and I'm looking forward to starting it. What do I have to lose? I might turn out to be rubbish at the project (whatever that might turn out to be) but, so what? Probably nobody will notice anyway. The one thing I do know is that I am going to enjoy it.

I have discovered get paid to autosurf and am actually getting paid by Studio Traffic and 4 Daily. Real cash in my Stormpay account, very useful. I'm looking around for a couple more of this type of site, won't get rich from this (well, not unless I take a big risk with investing) but it's nice to know that all my membership fees are covered and I am making a profit on top.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

Prince Charles marries his Camilla at last

2005-04-15T18:25:00.000Z

Within the last seven days there have been two historically important events, one sad and the other happy. I am, of course, referring to the funeral of Pope John Paul and the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles. When the date of the Pope's funeral was fixed and the announcement made that the royal wedding was to be postponed, I had a superstitious moment of wondering whether the marriage was doomed never to take place. It did take place and I for one was happy to see it.

I don't understand why so many people are so strongly against the marriage and anti Camilla personally. The usual excuse seems to be that they don't want her to become Queen. There are plenty of people who don't want Charles to become King but they have equally little right to intervene.

A couple of days before the wedding, I caught part of a comedy show where a comedian/actor was poking "fun" at Camilla. "Fun" is not really the right word, the jibes were spiteful. There is one particular unflattering photo of Camilla in riding gear seated on horseback. I am bored with the cheap jokers who ask us to guess which one is the horse. The comedian I saw the other evening made the same remark and cracked a "joke" that this will be one marriage where the husband will be happy if the sex dries up. How rude, how cruel, how unnecessary. How safe to snipe at someone who will not return fire.

It was only when he made this unkind remark that I looked closely at the actor. I had seen him many times before as he appeared for some years in one of my favourite sit-coms. This time I really looked at him and took in the fact that he has hit his forties and the years are not sitting well on him. He has gained a little weight, his hair is thinning and receding: he would no longer be convincing in his usual role of cheeky young lad. He is unmarried and his last (very public) liaison with an actress ended after just a few days when his paramour returned to her husband. I wondered what made him think he was in a position to criticise Camilla's appearance (or morals) and I decided it must be plain old jealousy dressed up as humour.

I can't see why people make such derogatory remarks about Camilla. She has a kind face, refined bearing and she appears ladylike. She is not a model or an actress and has probably never even thought of surgery to smooth out the evidence of her age. Why should she? This lady might not win a beauty contest against professional contestants but, if you put her in a line-up of her contemporaries she would look better than many of them. When you look at some of the people who are doing the criticising, you have to suspect that they are motivated by envy.

Whatever your feelings (or lack of the same) about Charles and Camilla, anyone with a heart must appreciate how amazing it is that these are two people who have remained in love for thirty-five years despite having been apart due to circumstances throughout most of those years. It is unfortunate that star-crossed lovers cease to be romantic figures once they reach maturity and become the undeserving butt of cruel jokes.

The royal wedding was followed with quite indecent haste by a programme where a body language expert endeavoured to prove with a few film clips that the marriage is unpopular with the royal family and, it was implied, Charles did not make his vows with sincerity. Film clips and psychologists are like statistics: they can prove anything you want them to prove. In the face of all the criticism by self-styled experts, it was clear that we were looking at two very happy people who are comfortable with each other. Why do so many people want to spoil it? Perhaps love is now unfashionable.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

Surfing Saturday

2005-04-02T18:09:00.000Z

Don't know what possessed me but I spent most of the day surfing. I'd really intended to surf for a little while and then get on with some serious writing. The day just did not go according to plan but the credits from surfing will come in handy.

Took time off and went to the gym this afternoon. Gave the brain a rest - all I needed to think about was keeping my heart rate in the cardio training zone and making sure it did not leap into the cardio failure zone. Felt very much better. Jus proved again for myself what everybody knows: it is good to take the occasional break. I really must get back into the routine of working out several times a week.

Tomorrow I am going to work on my writing so that I can submit an article this week.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

Bank Holiday Monday

2005-03-28T18:02:00.000Z

Funny to think how much a bank holiday meant to me when I was trapped in the 9-5 rat race. My whole life was squeezed into weekends, evenings and a few luxurious bank holidays. That was definitely not living, that was existing.

I am so glad I can work from home. My whole life is mine now, every single minute of it. That is not to say I don't work hard, I certainly do but I enjoy it and that makes a big difference.

It was a lovely sunny day today, proper spring weather. I gave my cactus plants their first watering since they started their dormant phase last October. Despite my efforts of a couple of weeks ago, they are still suffering badly from mealy bug (horrid little creatures!)and I had to squash some of the bigger ones. I'll have to get the meths out again and have another purge.

I have agreed to enter a writing project with an American "pen pal". I don't know what form it will take yet, what it will be about or how we will achieve it. We have never met, never spoken and don't know each other apart from our strange correspondence. All we have between us is words (and possibly slight insanity). It is looking as if we might do a joint blog of some sort. I have been looking at other people's blogs. Some of them are so serious, others are just pure advertising, I like having a blog to use as a diary/confessional. (A blog is good because it does not have the pre-printed dates to reproach one when days have ben left with no entries.) The diary of a mad webmistress! Well, why not? There is too much seriousness in the world.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

HIT

2005-03-24T19:49:00.000Z

Tomorrow is Good Friday.

It is now over a year since I started my home based business so I am now experiencing things for the second time (as in this is my second Easter as my Own Boss). It doesn't feel that long but when I think of all the things I have learned, I don't know how I crammed them all into a year and a bit.

I started this week well but went off the rails a bit for the past couple of days. I signed up for Home Income Team (HIT) and spent ages joining all the programmes. It includes several paid to surf autosurf programmes. This pleased me because I have been so impressed with Studio Traffic

The sign up was not too bad but then I made some changes to my website to accommodate the new traffic exchanges. In the end I didn't get a whole lot done apart from some surfing. Oh well, every little helps.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

Affiliate Marketing - Ten Excellent Reasons Why You Should Do It

2005-03-21T11:59:00.000Z

A busy but productive weekend. Hooray! I hate it when I think about what I have been doing and it amounts to very little but failed attempts and wasted time. This weekend I have impressed myself!

Achieved loads this weekend including emailing my list to notify them the monthly newsletter is ready, going to the gym (twice in one weekend, must keep it up now I've started again), loads of surfing, posting (and learning from forums), polishing up a couple of articles and some writing.

Made an early start today. Not even lunchtime yet and I have already submitted my most recent article to all the directories using my incredible, amazing, wonderful Ezine Announcer. Each submission only takes a matter of seconds, it must save me hours of drudgery each time I submit to all those directories -- must be over 50, I'll have to count up on the next occasion and time myself.

Here's today's article.

Affiliate Marketing - Ten Excellent Reasons Why You Should Do It

There are many opportunities to make money working on the Internet. Becoming an affiliate marketer is a great way of having your own online business. Here are ten excellent reasons why you should choose affiliate marketing for your home based Internet business.

1. Be Your Own Boss - What a magical ring that phrase has to it! This is my absolute favourite reason for being an affiliate marketer. Actually, it is my top reason for having any home based business.

2. Low cost set-up - Most affiliate programmes are free to join, so all you need to start your business is an Internet-connected computer and word-processing software. You can work from absolutely anywhere in the world and it makes no difference whether you have a cosy office or work from a corner of your kitchen table.

3. No shipping costs - You don't need to worry about paying for postage or buying packing stuff such as boxes, wrapping paper, parcel tape, labels and so on. You never have to struggle with carrying heavy packages to the post office. The cost and bother of packing and shipping products to customers belongs to the merchant, not the affiliate.

4. Choice of thousands of products and services - All you have to do is decide what you want to sell (and, of course, what you think people will want to buy), just about everything is available online. With affiliate directories like Clickbank it's easy to find products to sell.

5. No merchant account or invoicing software required - You can forget the problems associated with invoicing, collecting payments and processing credit cards. The merchant handles all payment processing; as an affiliate, you never have to worry about chargebacks, fraud or losing your merchant account.

6. On sale everywhere - Your sales area has no geographic limits but you don't have to leave home. You can promote your web site worldwide, every Internet user in the whole world is potentially your customer (and you call this a small business!).

7. High income potential -With your own affiliate business your income level is limited only by your desire and effort - not by corporate salary scale structure or the whim of your boss.

8. No inventory to carry - You can sell any item, large or small without having to worry about storage space. You could sell trucks from a one-bedroom apartment! You don't have to the worry or expense of insuring stock or having extra security to protect it.

9. Low running costs - Apart from a modest budget for advertising and a small amount to pay for your internet connection, you have nothing much in the way of overheads. You work from home, so the big expense of renting premises is avoided and it is possible to get income tax reductions to cover some things such as part of your electricity and phone bills.

10.Always open for business - As an affiliate, your business keeps running and pulling in profits for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even on Bank Holidays. You are open for business even while you are asleep. You don't have to worry about business hours or delivery deadlines, all that proceeds on autopilot. You don't have to worry about scheduling staff holidays: you don't even need any staff!

Networkers' Calendar - March Edition

2005-03-18T19:06:00.000Z

Finished the monthly edition of the Networkers' Calendar for March and will check it over tomorrow before circulating it.

Decided to include an article about blogging written by Christopher Knight. Think I'll look for some more stuff on blogging and maybe include it next month. I'd better also get on with writing some more articles of my own.

Got my very first commission cheque in the post today. It was from IMC (The Internet Marketing Center) It was strange seeing that familiar blue on white logo actually on paper instead of onscren and I was wildly excited. My husband just gave me a pitying look and asked if I knew how much the bank would charge me to convert the US dollar cheque into Sterling. The answer is "don't know, don't care, it's my first cheque" but he couldn't understand that. You have to live it to understand. I've had money put direct into my Pay Pal account but there is something special about a cheque. I'm sure it's just the first of many!

Here's the feature article from this month's newsletter.

Article Marketing For Bloggers - 4 Tips To Build Traffic For Your Blog
By Christopher Knight

Bloggers blog. That’s what they do. A blog is short for ‘weblog’ and it’s really an online journal that can be updated easily and frequently without any knowledge of HTML code.

Traditionally, article marketing has been used by authors who are promoting their books or information products. Lately, I’ve noticed a growing trend of bloggers using article marketing to grow the traffic to their blog and you should too.

Three reasons why it makes sense for bloggers to engage in article marketing:

1) You’ve already got a lot of content produced in each of your blog posts. 200 words should be your floor for each article that you produce. In some cases, you already have enough words per post to create 10-50 articles instantly. If you don’t, then stitch posts together of a similar theme until you have 200+ word articles to put into article marketing distribution.

2) A blogger has the same traffic building problems that any typical website has, and therefore article marketing can help your blog in the same ways it can help a non-blog website. Benefits include qualified traffic coming to your site year round, quality backlinks being built without any messy recip-linking campaigns, and you’re expanding your reach to other experts that might not otherwise have found your blog.

3) Bloggers by nature are more Internet savvy than your typical author. With this said, most bloggers already understand how to create revenue with pay per click (PPC) advertising programs. As such, you already know how to produce keyword intelligent titles for their articles. This guarantees maximum traffic impact for each of your articles.

If you are already a blogger and are new to article marketing, here’s how you get started:

1) Produce a cache of 10-25+ articles from your existing blog content.

2) Submit them to the major article directories and any that are niche-relevant to your field of expertise. You may also wish to submit them to ezine publishers directly from your niche.

3) Rinse and repeat until you have 250-1,000+ articles in distribution this year. Hire a college student or editor if you don’t have time to get this strategy into practice as it’ll be well worth it.

4) Watch your traffic counter slowly rise, day by day as your articles work hard for you delivering qualified traffic to your website year round.

Article Marketing as a strategy will not break your traffic counter on your first month of investing in this strategy…but, I guarantee if you engage in this strategy, your blog will grow in traffic and popularity beyond the traffic you were already creating by simply blogging. You knows, you might even increase your sales, land a new job, or improve your rank in the search engines as a side-benefit from your article marketing strategy.

About The Author:
Christopher M. Knight invites you to submit your best articles for massive exposure to the high-traffic http://EzineArticles.com/ directory. When you submit your articles to EzineArticles.com, your articles will be picked up by ezine publishers who will reprint your articles with your content and links in tact giving you traffic surges to help you increase your sales. To submit your article, setup a membership account today: http://EzineArticles.com/submit/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Big Guilt Trip (AKA Money Doubler Blues)

2005-03-17T13:29:00.000Z

Well, We Paid 4 You seems to have stalled. The admin is making valiant efforts to resuscitate the programme but I think my money might have followed the cash I wasted on Double Bot, Matrix Twisted, Cycle It Fast and Profit Sharing Hits. You would think I might have learned my lesson the first time and I have no excuse.

Fortunately, after stopping cycling (before it ever started, actually), Double 50 have refunded my investment. Even I have more sense than to invest again in a cycling programme which never managed to cycle. To be fair to the admin (that goes for We Paid 4 You as well) they do seem to have been stitched up by Stormpay but I am going to invest the money I recovered into good old Empowerism.

So far, I am very happy with Studio Traffic but I think I'll leave it until next month before upgrading further. Can't stretch my budget too far! I'll take the refund from Double 50 as a reprieve and I'll try to do better in future.

Back to my writing now, must get the monthly newsletter finished and sent out.

Back To Blogging

2005-03-15T09:14:00.000Z

Can't believe how long it has been since I last visited my blog.

Been very busy. Have now written several week's worth of items for my new newsletter (not the monthly Networkers' Calendar, a completely new weekly one). Surprising how long it takes. Also worked on several new writing projects.

The worst thing I did was get sucked into joining two new money doublers. One is trundling along slowly and the other has stopped for the time being for reasons I can't exactly fathom. There was another one, The Private Society, which I saw reviewed and fell for partly because of the black and silver website. That went into "hiatus" mode while I was still trying to get my money out of IntGold after they changed all their rules. That was a complete pain: they let me put my money in but I couldn't get it out without faxing copies of my passport, utility bills etc. When I found out the Private Society had collapsed, I thought it must be fate looking after me. Why, oh why did I then throw my money away on the other two?

One good thing was that I had a tip to join Studio Traffic and I am very glad that I did because it's a neat way of earning money for doing very little.

I still have the problem of getting side tracked. Seems like the minute I take my eye off the ball, someone has run off with it and replaced it with a dozen other balls which I have to run after. Had definite plans for today. Started out out ok but that only lasted a couple of hours. then I saw a forum post about how to publish my blog at my website. Needless to say, it all went horribly wrong and I have wasted hours and got into a bad mood.

Oh well, its only 9.30 am, plenty of the day left for me to screw up. No! Must be positive. I am going to achieve loads of great things today. First of all, this blog is going to get published.

A Reprieve - and - I Wonder Why Dictionaries Went Out Of Fashion

2005-02-22T18:50:00.000Z

Received the good new today that I am not going to have my autoresponder account terminated following the spam allegation. What a relief! Also received a very interesting tutorial on the definition of spam and how to avoid transgressing.

I will not try importing any more addresses into that system, I will only use the expensive double opt-in ones. I will have to find another way of dealing with my Empowerism leads once they have finished the original cycle. I am working on a new email series and it will be interesting to see what response it brings - if I ever get it finished.

Go my commission payments from Empowerism today - early again!

As well as starting to write emails for my new series I submitted an article to the directories for publication. My trusty Ezine Announcer made short work of that. I will have to polish up the other two articles I wrote yesterday and try to get them submitted this week if possible. The trouble is that, once I start writing, I have so many ideas I want to write them all at once and that does not leave a lot of time for proof reading and editing. Good job I prefer to keep busy.

This is today's article:

I Wonder Why Dictionaries Went Out Of Fashion
By Elaine Currie, B A (Hons)

More Tips For New Writers (Part IV)

When you begin writing for your home based business, never lose sight of the following facts:
1. People notice things (sometimes even the most minute detail)2. People remember things (sometimes even the most minute detail)3. People love to point out mistakes (sometimes even the most minute detail)4. People will magnify minute details.

Some people enjoy finding errors and pointing them out, even to the extent of writing books on the subject. Other people (and I admit to being one) can’t help noticing errors and find them so horrific that they (inadvertently and quite without malice) magnify them out of all proportion.
When you write for the public, you are poking your head above the edge of the literary trench and inviting them to pierce your brain with critical bullets. It is only sensible to take proper precautions. The tin helmet is not a great fashion accessory but, in these circumstances, much preferable to a baseball cap.

I used to work for a lawyer who had a selection of favourite words and phrases which he would drop into correspondence or conversation in order to impress people. These beauties included the phrase "most busiest" (makes me grind my teeth), "at the end of the day" (yawn), "in essence" (used relentlessly to introduce any minor point) and "very unique" (why does a unique word have to be devalued in that way?).

The day arrived when he discovered "vociferously" and latched onto it as his new favourite word. After several trial outings, he obviously became comfortable with "vociferously" and introduced "vociferous". Eventually he was managing to use one of them in every letter and conversation. He wrote to other lawyers informing them that he wanted to work vociferously to an early conclusion of the matter in hand. He told insurance companies that his clients’ losses would have been smaller if those companies had worked vociferously. He wrote to clients assuring them of his most vociferous attention at all times.

I didn’t understand why he thought it was a good idea for everybody to be shouting. When the awful truth dawned on me, I cringed: I realised that he didn‘t actually know the meaning of the word. I never did find out exactly what he thought it meant. I could hardly ask him. That would have led to a conversation I did not want to join in. How much good do you think it would do your career to impart to your boss the information that he appeared not know the meaning of a word he used on a daily basis? Trust me on this: promotion would not come into it.

You may call me old fashioned but I believe that professional people ought to have a reasonable level of education. At the very least they should know how to look words up in the dictionary before trotting them out for the delight of the general public.

Something, perhaps a combination of ignorance and arrogance, prevented this allegedly educated man from bothering to check on the meaning of this new word. It was, therefore, paraded about for all to admire. The use of the new favourite word escalated until no document was considered complete without it.

I was horrified and embarrassed. I squirmed, anticipating the day when another (better educated) lawyer or a client would broach the subject of this inappropriate word. Fortunately, I moved on before the day arrived and hope that my association with this word abuser has been forgotten.

A very public example of this kind of thing occurred to Georgie Fame who was a song writer and singer (and still is) in the 1960’s. Georgie Fame and his band, The Blue Flames, were very popular and, when they released a record, it was played all the time everywhere. This song was about the bank-robbing duo, Bonnie and Clyde, and included a verse about them stuffing their loot into a canvas bag. Unfortunately, when Georgie Fame wrote the words to the song, he got a word wrong. Instead of referring to a "burlap" bag, he used the word "dewlap". (In case you don’t know, dewlap is the loose hanging bit of skin under the throat of oxen, dogs, turkeys, etc ( you know the bit I mean.) I couldn’t listen to that song without picturing the villains stuffing bank notes into a cow’s mouth and that definitely ruined the dramatic impact for me.

This error did not go unnoticed by the rest of the world. Georgie Fame admitted in an interview that somebody had told him, before the song was recorded, that "dewlap" was not the right word but he brushed them off and didn’t bother to check. Once the song had been recorded and released, it was too late to do anything about it. This failure to check (even after a warning) became about as public as a mistake can be. If nothing else, it proved that people do notice these things.

I don’t know exactly why dictionaries went out of fashion but I’d bet money that it was due to pressure by the "don’t be shackled by correctness, creativity is all that counts" brigade. I never understood why you can’t be correct and creative at the same time but I’ll stay at the bottom of the trench until that argument is over. My suggestion is that you become a closet dictionary user. It’s still legal and completely harmless. If you fear discovery, you can cover your dictionary in brown paper or pretend you just keep it to prop the door open, or say it was a present from Granny. Whatever you do, use the dictionary if in doubt. If the idea of owning an actual paper dictionary makes you too nervous, you can find one online at http://www.thefreedictionary.com/. Never take a chance and assume you know the meaning of a word just from the context in which you heard it used.