I've spent almost a year with a website that had paid hosting. It was a great learning experience but an expense I can no longer rationalize. I've already got a start on my next website project but am waiting to share it until after I have some content on it. How bad an idea is starting a website to encourage changing the USA?

  I can't believe it's been 6 months since my last post....... and this site still gets people dropping in to check!! I created this site as a learning tool before I bought a domain name to take the lessons further. I've used google adsense (that's where the ads on here come from) for just over a year. My earnings so far is $2.74  ... only 97.26 to go before I can get a check!!  Good thing I ain't depending on that income for food! I'm not putting any ads on my main site Morethanpoor.com because I find them annoying to some extent. As I mentioned earlier, the ads are on here mainly so I could see how they work. I've learned how to put video up on YouTube and link it to my websites. I'm working on audio and video editing now. I've spent countless hours learning about monetizing blogs and websites because I have hopes of someday supplementing my income.
   The best ways I've found to make these sites pay are affiliate marketing & writing info products for sale. The main drawback to affiliate marketing is you need to purchase something FIRST before you know whether or not you can ethically recommend it. The big drawback to writing info products is establishing credibility, only because that requires a LOT of time.
   I appreciate the patience those of you reading this have shown and hope to repay it with some solid information this summer. Making a living and gathering knowledge have slowed me down much more than anticipated, but I should have more time to develop content starting in June. Thanks for stopping by and let me know if there's anything I can do for you!

  Okay, my ass is dragging & my back is sore. That's a really crappy title but it will work unless I figure out a better one. My child came to visit me earlier in the week so I got to spend three days before Thanksgiving with her. That was one of the most pleasant surprises I've had a very long time!!
   I went to work today for less than four hours but it was extremely hard work! Today starts the beginning of my experiment to see how much gut I can lose between now and Christmas eve. The cigarettes are pretty much taken care of and the flirting is going better. That just means I feel like I'm doing a lot better when I tackle one goal at a time! I went to the exercise room today and did 30 minutes on a bicycle machine, that was the equivalent of 6 1/2 miles. I also did a few minutes on the treadmill is kind of a slow down and cool off deal.
   I still have a few ideas on the changes I would like to make to my websites. I think it would be smart of me to enlist the aid of someone I met online who knows a ton more about this shit than I do. If she goes for it, I will have to make sure she gets credit on my site!! She has already offered to help me for free, but I wouldn't feel right unless I was able to at least send her something for her time. I sent her some nice stuff but she's really too busy to do more than take a quick look & make recommendations.
    Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave comments, ask questions or just call if you need someone to speak with because I am a good person to bounce things off of, including ideas.

  By now you can tell I am jumping back and forth like a frog on hot asphalt. I'm down to one Chantix a day, instead of two. The desire for cigarettes is much less irritating but still a small factor. I have started going to the chat room on singlesnet.com and I guess that means I have started working on my social life. I still have a lot to do in order to dump the rest of the inventory so I can get rid of my storage unit.
    Today was a good day. Got a couple of hours working this morning. Did a favor for the neighborhood who is out of town, saving her $40. I noticed a young lady needed a microwave on freecycle for her college dorm room, so I made arrangements to meet her, and her mother, to give her one. Her mom then bought a coffee pot that I had for sell on Amazon.com, saving me commission and the hassle of shipping it! then I met up with my sister and hooked her up with a lot of stuff for a charity auction. That concludes my deposits for today in my karma account.

  I intend to make this my main website. This is my first website, the easiest used by far and for some crazy reason I still get traffic here. For just a few dollars a month I could hire a virtual assistant or a VA service for $60 a month. I can not afford that. After doing the math, I can tell that this year is going to be a bad one, financially, for me! If everything goes well I will make about $4000 less this year than last year and end it around $5000 deeper in debt. Chit happens!!
   I'm going to get with a friend, or two, and transfer any post from morethanpoor.com we feel are worth salvaging. So as of January 1, 2010 this will be my main website. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with it, but this is where social media will point you to, providing I remember to change the links of a few things I have going. I have almost totally quit smoking but I still smoke about five cigarettes a week. I'm still undecided whether or not I want to totally give it up. I can afford a pack a month. I just could not afford two packs a day.
    Now I really need to work on developing a social life and dropping about 40 pounds! I had already lost 20 pounds this year but I have put that back on over the last five weeks. Changing the 30-year-old habits is not as easy as I had hoped! Anyway, I'm hoping that I'll eventually get a few comments here so that I'll know what I can do to make your life better. There's still some things I want to experiment with, but I have a lot to learn about those. I have learned a lot over the last nine months, mainly to just relax and be myself. Other people seem to like me better when I do and I know there is no one else who could do it!!  hee hee
   It has to be time for me to start dating again. After all, I'm not getting any younger and to be honest, sex really is a lot more fun with a partner!! Please feel free to leave comments, criticisms, or the names, addresses, and phone numbers of double-jointed women even! Seriously, I'm more than willing to listen and would be thrilled for the chance to help others cope with the bull shit that life can throw at us.
    Here's hoping that your life gets better every day, in every way, and you remember that giving and receiving smiles always eases the way.

  It's crazy when I look at what's gone on with all my websites. The one that I thought would really matter ( and link to the most!) does get the most traffic. But it amazes me how many people stumble across this site. There were 30 page views on this site the other day and I have not linked it to anything in a very long time! It's been over a month since I posted!! I really don't expect any long fan letters, I love you's or anything along those lines, but even a "Hey, go fuck yourself" in my comments now and then would be nice. I really am bouncing around a lot I've been doing a little bit with Amazon.com & actually did 600 dollars this month. Of course, that was sales & shipping combined. I can't tell you how much profit that actually was because I'm so far behind it's unreal. That's okay too, it's not all about the money. Sometimes it's all about doing something is better than doing nothing! I've also been working my regular job the last three weeks. I have to use the word regular because my room-mate/landlady cringes when I use the word "normal" and has forbid it!! Actually, it's really just a running joke around the house and we refer to the word normal as "the N word". When you are from the South, people automatically assume "the N word" means something else. Not for me, I never could get into the racism, homophobia and some of the other irrational prejudices that many people have adopted. Believe it or not, I don't even think my God is better than your God! I still have a lot more questions than answers. That does not mean that I cannot offer good advice or lack empathy. It would be nice if there was some way I can help someone else via these websites. How do a lot of little things, that I do each day, make a difference? I'm not sure, but I will be happy if it's just the spread of smiles and a slightly better attitude.
   I am up to $54 on ideaoffer.com submitting ideas to help others. 20% of my entries seem to be chosen as the best idea. Not a bad ratio as far as I'm concerned!  I also made $55 and a pocket cam for doing a survey since the last time I posted here. I'm still just as far in debt, but I have amassed a small emergency fund. Well I did pay off one $600 bill, but that's just a drop in the bucket. Have a great life and be the the good news! I'll try to do this more often in the future.

   This is my second attempt. The first one was going along really well, but I wasn't paying enough attention to my cursor. Before I published this, I accidentally opened up another page in the browser. I'm having a lot of fun learning to use this. Even if I have to do this three different times, it will probably be faster than if I had typed it by hand .

  The good news is that I can actually dictate this directly into a blog. Technology is a wonderful thing. I can still see the need to go back and edit by hand, but in the long run I think this will still be much faster.

  For those of you not familiar with voice recognition software, it's programming that allow you to dictate what you would normally type. Up until recently, this software has been expensive. This particular program was previously priced at $100. Not only was it on sale for $50, they were offering a $20 rebate. Even including the $10 I paid for shipping, in the course of a year I figure this will cost me about a nickel a minute to use.

   I do intend to share the name of this program later, but I would like to wait until I can recommend it 100%. For those of you have very little patience and a lot of faith, you can purchase  this at TigerDirect.com.

   Anyway I've got to leave now to go take a look at the house, and hopefully I can put a bid on it. When I get back, I will try to use this on my other site, where I own the domain name. The time to edit this for punctuation, capitalization and correct word usage was an additional 5 minutes. My guess is I saved about 30 minutes on this one post. Have a great day!
P.S. The program is called Dragon naturallyspeaking10. I think it's worthwhile and will do an update in the future.