IF I DON'T MAKE SOME MONEY SOON I WANT TO KNOW WHY

Yes, folks, as you can see I broke down and got Google AdSense or whatever Blogger is calling their version of it. Forgive me. I have been too poor to buy peanut butter and jelly as well as bread to put it on. I just got desperate and I sold out despite my big talk in earlier issues of this blog. I am a disgrace. But I am a disgrace who bought some kind of expensive apricot jelly today made with real apricots. I am expecting my Pay Pal account to soon reap enough to cover the jam. And I have been submitting a few more places too like eZine, Constant Content... I don't even know if I remember all the places. I signed up for Elance'. What a procedure that is. I don't remember any big procedure when I signed up with Guru. I had to take a test on all their boring rigamarole guidelines, formats, terms, conditions. I finally got sick of reading it all and just took the test. Luckily I passed. I submitted two proposals today with samples. They want money from you at every turn. They want money to qualify your skills. Last night I decided I would do fine in qualifying my skill with computers. How was I to know the entire test would be based on Windows? I have been only a Mac user for several years now. I forget more about Windows than I ever would have thought possible after years of fighting with the old Windows XP. Yep, I flunked. Today I filled out more of my profile for potential clients. I learned that they want $15 to qualify each job you list. They don't make this sound optional either. I wonder if their take on jobs I get is higher than on Guru? They seem like big business the way they get you coming and going. I also took the time to hook up this blog with RSS and listed it with a bunch of search engines and blog directories like Technorati. I am going to get some traffic for my new Ad words if I have to start writing about sex and drugs. Just kidding. In one of its earlier incarnations, I Don't Sleep At Night, I took up a cause when I read that out West somewhere they were using nearly naked women as targets for paintball. I was outraged. I went on and on about it until I noticed that it was my highest traffic and Google search hits ever. Did I feel dumb and used. I am not doing it again. Yeah, I even signed up to give free delivery of ten articles to eZine, but I think I may have to rethink that. If I do it I "win" a premium membership which means I get to give them as many free articles as I want. Such a deal! Starvation makes for bad bargains for sure. I even applied for one lousy little publisher that insisted they didn't really care if you could write at all as long as you could use grammar and spell. I sent them a very short sample and never heard anything. Now that's just too discouraging. But I've got to do a better job of keeping my head and scruples up now that I know my daughter reads this blog. The poor thing is trying to talk herself into starting a new job serving at a sports bar. Let's just say she is not the best at taking shit from any man so I don't know how long she'll last taking some from drunken young college students. But she is telling herself she needs the job because she does. I listened to an hour-long radio interview with Deborah Ng yesterday. It was pretty interesting. She really is still a mom who blogs which I find amazing. I keep losing track of how many projects she has in the fire. I could hear her little (age five or six) kids making noise in the background and her sort of being embarrassed about it. Embarrassed? She does all that writing and still she finds time to be a full-time Mom? I tip my hat off to her. Anyhow she doesn't think blogging for networks is going to be very lucrative much longer. She is living proof that you can do well on your own. Do you know she makes $1,000 a month just on Google AdSense? That's when I decided to sign up. I read her blog with freelance openings everyday. It's the best if you ask me. About.com has a decent section on freelance writing and getting paid for blogging Now there's a job I would have liked--editing one of About.com's departments. Specifically, I had flea markets in mind, but I chickened out because they want you to know some HTML and mine is very minimal. Until next time.