Friday, 3 April 2009

It's alive! ALIVE!!!

Hey there! I know I haven't posted any non-mug content lately and I'm way behind in writing about my Yoga Training (part 2!) so I just wanted to expain why:

I'm lazy

That and this time of year in Japan a lot of language schools enter "sales period" where they try to enroll students for the new school year. This is when I actually miss NOVA who had a set schedule for the entire year. My current job though forces us to work several 6 day work weeks around this time which saps any will to live right out of it's employees.

On top of this my laptop of 6 years that my generous Dad got me before I came to Japan decided to die on me two weeks ago! The Hard Drive (one word? two?) died and took all my photos to the other side.

Thank God for Facebook and Youtube where I uploaded heaps of videos and photos. Still quite a few missing though but it is refreshing to have a clean slate.

[For reference I went to "Andy's Computer Repair" in Hamamatsucho to try and recover my HD. 5000 Yen just for diagnostic and I was reminded very quickly how rude some people can be in a non-Japanese business: "We know what we're doing man!" I don't recommend them.]

You may have noticed that I've started using my Twitter account again which I've embedded on the right hand side menu of this blog. Will try to Twitter daily so you'll have something to read between more substantial posts.

Hope you're all well!

Oo Roo!

Labels: Computer, internet, japan

Sunday, 27 April 2008

Make Money with ShoppingAds

A rather new website (though by the people behind the famous TextLinkAds) that I've been trying for the last few months is ShoppingAds.

Being a new idea I honestly wasn't expecting much from it but I decided to give it a go and have been very impressed with the money I've made so far (within 3 months I got US$50 paid into my PayPal account).

Basically you place an ad on your webpage that advertises related auctions on eBay. If someone clicks on the ad you get money. If someone clicks on the ad and bids in the auction you get much more money.

The look of the code is completely customisable as is the type of auctions presented (you can enter as many keywords as you like).

You can see an example of a ShoppingAds ad on the right menu.

ShoppingAds is well worth a look. I've found it to be almost on par with Google AdSense and the fact that they pay you into your PayPal account (something AdSense doesn't do) is a huge bonus.

What have you got to lose?

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Labels: internet, make money

Friday, 29 February 2008

Make Money With SponsoredReviews.com

One of the ways that I've been making some extra money online is through SponsoredReviews.com as site that basically pays you to write a blog post about a certain product or other site of your choosing.

Pay ranges from US$5 to US$100 per post and this will mostly depend on how valuable your blog is (calculated by Google Ranking and other factors) and how much you choose to charge for posts on your blog.

This blog isn't high traffic by any means with the average number of unique visitors daily being around the 15-30 mark yet I've still made over US$160 in the short time I've been a member.

If you have a blog I highly recommend signing up for SponsoredReviews. Great service, fast payments (through PayPal too!) and very flexible.

Give it a go!

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Labels: blog, internet, make money

Sunday, 14 October 2007

How to Rip a Music mp3 from a YouTube Video

Recently I've found some great songs on YouTube that I haven't been able to find anywhere to buy on cd or even buy online like on the iTunes store so I did a search on how to convert the audio from a YouTube video into a music mp3 file.

I found Vixy!

Check it out! It's completely free and you don't need to download anything! You just enter the URL web address of the YouTube video you want to convert (like this one), select "MP3 (Audio Only)" and click "Start". Within minutes it'll give you the mp3 file to save to your computer!

How good is that!

Hope you find this useful! I know I did!

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Labels: internet, Music

Friday, 10 August 2007

Blogging for Money is EASY!

Just read THIS POST over at Kumiko's and can't agree more. So many bloggers bitch and bitch about how hard blogging is when basically all it is is writing about whatever you want while your site brings in the money.

Recently I've been lucky enough to be getting quite a few offers from companies to write about their sites and services on my blogs and it's been great! I'm nowhere near quitting my day job but it's a start. My Adsense on several of my sites has really taken off as well and I think I'll meet my New Years Resolution by the end of the year quite easily at the rate I'm going.

Sure it takes time and effort, but it's something I enjoy and a hell of a lot easier than a "real" job. I think that's why everyone is trying to make money online in the first place, it's easy.

Anyway, speaking of my New Years Resolution, let's see how I'm going 8 months in:

Get to a conversational level in Japanese. Umm... am getting there! A lot better than this time last year. Really need to dig my heels in.

Work out at the gym six days a week. Well I don't have a gym membership at all now as I've been happy with daily Yoga in the comfort of my own home. However am thinking of picking up capoeria.

Make Yoga Today a part of my daily regime. Done!!! Sure I've missed a day or two but I've been pretty good with this and my body really feels the difference!

Work to live. Don't live to work. Working less now which is good. Am getting there.

Get my sites to a point where I can make at least US$300 a month (currently in the US$45 range) via GoogleAdsense, Revver, EmailCash.com.au and other programs. US$1000 a month would be dandy but I think US$300 is a bit more realistic. Well I'm now at about US$60 a month and it's rising monthly! Am feeling pretty good about this one!

Relax more. A lot better than I was in January. Am getting there. Work in progress.

Not bad at all!

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Labels: blog, internet, new year, Yoga Today

Tuesday, 31 July 2007

Getting in Shape

Friends will know that I've become a Yoga freak since last December and became such an advocate of it that I decided to quit my hyper expensive gym membership as it was actually keeping my muscles toned and even helping me develop more defined muscles in places I hadn't even thought about (get your mind out of the gutter!).

Recently though I've been trying to add even more weight loss to my routine and came across this cool calorie counter which was pretty easy to use and very effective way to count your calories.

What I loved on that site though is the cool page they have that lets you calculate how much calories burned through different exercises. It took me 5 seconds to see how much I burn each morning with my 60 minutes of Yoga (something I'd never really thought to look up before) and really got me thinking about what I eat for breakfast.

Pretty cool!

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Labels: fitness, internet

Thursday, 7 June 2007

Just 2%?!?

Oh, man! Just signed up for a TrevBuddy world map to see what percent of the world I've been too and.... 2%?!? I need to travel more, asap!

Future plans include heading back to Australia after Christmas for my sister's New Years wedding and then to Melbourne for Chris' (never been to Melbourne before funnily enough!) and then on my way back to Japan very likely help Koky out building and orphanage/school for children in Cambodia. It'll be a great experience and it's something I've been wanting to do for a while.

Before then possibly Fiji to finally use my Tribewanted island tickets and a proper trip to Hong Kong and/or Singapore.

Am itching to go to New Zealand but might wait to do that until I get back to Australia [for good] (have been thinking a lot this week about when that may be) and South America has always been a place I want to go to.

So many options so little money and too much work with no time off.

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Labels: internet

Monday, 4 June 2007

It's alive! ALIVE!!!

Someone told me to copy and past the following into my browser's address bar because it would make all of the images on any webapge start flying around the screen..... THEY WERE RIGHT!!!

Give it a go!

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5; DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++ }setInterval('A()',5); void(0);

Anyone else thinking it's a great way to freak out your parents? ;)

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Labels: internet

Saturday, 17 February 2007

Tagged... for SPAM!

I received an invite to a social networking site from someone I hadn't heard of before claiming to be my friend. I figured I know hundreds of people online due to my websites so thought I'd at least check the site out. The site is www.tagged.com and it looked rather nice. The design is cleaner and easier to understand than other sites in the genre (can I use "genre" to talk about websites?) and seemed very secure. They even have a whole page about internet safety!

So I signed up. This is where I became a bit suspicious. After signing up, instead of being taken to my profile page I was forwarded to a page to enter my hotmail email address AND password with no way to exit the page or option to not invite every single person in my address book. The fact that there was no way out of this step seemed a bit strange so I simply typed in "tagged.com" in the address bar to get back to the site's main page.

Doing this took me to my profile page with my "friend" already in my friend's list. I then decided to look around the site some more and it occurred to me how incredibly good looking and posed all the "members" are on the main page are. It's like someone had bought a collection of royalty free photos, about 20 of them and put them on random display. Click refresh a few times and you'll see all the random "members" you'll ever see.

After checking my email (my real one) I was surprised to see that tagged.com had signed me up for Post Markers Direct or something! They were asking me for confirmation to recieve all these "amazing offers", blah, blah, blah. Of course I deleted the email, came back to tagged.com and cancelled my account. Luckily, cancelling your account is easy to do and they give you a feedback box to explain why you're doing so.

I let them know why in about 100 words.

This whole site just smells like a scam. I'm sure there are some real people on there (who are probably getting a lot more spam now that they've joined) but for the most part it seems set up to trick users into making tagged.com money.

Avoid like the plague.

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Labels: internet

Wednesday, 24 January 2007

Kramer Loses It

I remember this being mentioned in the news a few weeks ago but I never actually saw the clip. Was surfing around tonight and came across it and was completely shocked and offended but what I saw.

If you get easily offended by the "N Word", prepare yourself. What you'll see is Michael Richards (Kramer from Seinfeld) doing a stand-up comedy act and losing it at some hecklers. You can see his apology here.

And now something to cheer you up. A clip of Santa losing it and yelling racial slurs at some hecklers. :D

Labels: internet, Racism, tv

Tuesday, 23 January 2007

Goodbye Gym, Hello Yoga

Well after finding out that I'm really behind in taxes (I'll write a longer post about how fucked up the Japanese tax system is when I have the time) and also finding and using the amazing daily Yoga programs at YogaToday.com and seeing better results than I got from going to the gym, I've decided to not renew my gym membership next month and instead use free Yoga lessons in the comfort of my own home.

I know this sounds like advertising but I'm not getting paid a cent to plug these guys. YogaToday.com is a professionally made hour tv show with a twist... it's made exclusively for the net! Download is free and convenient if you have iTunes (subscribe) and the lessons are informative, fun and give you a Hell of a workout.

It's wierd but I've actually lost weight and gained muscle mass from doing this daily and my headaches and neckpains (that I've had for a few years now) have finally gone!

I was getting a bit sick of being told "GREAT JOB!", "GOOD AFTERNOON!", "THANK YOU!" in Japanese in a high pitched fish market voice every thirty seconds anyway.

Labels: fitness, internet, japan

Make money with Google Adsense and Video Clips

Google as posted this update concerning their Adsense program and the briefly trialled video ads.

They're doing another round of tests which leads my to wonder how long it will be until us regular publishers get a chance to use them.

I'm rather curious myself though I will have to redesign several sites to include that size option for the ad. I'm also wondering if they would make more money than the regular Google Adsense text ads.

I'll keep you posted.

Labels: Google Adsense, internet, make money

Thursday, 18 January 2007

Google Adsense Has a New Policy or a Revised One Anyway

Google Adsense has posted an Updated Program Policy page well worth checking out. It's a lot better organised, more succinct and I may be wrong but now we can place two referral items for the same item. I'm pretty sure before it was just one? Correct me if I'm wrong though.

Labels: Firefox, Google Adsense, internet, make money

Wednesday, 17 January 2007

Making Money with Google and Mozilla Firefox

Google recently posted this interesting article about new and improved referrals resources for those trying to make money by refering visitors to Firefox (a browser I personally love and reccomend to all my visitors) but it really seems like a kind of bait and catch.

While I personally love Google and have nothing but good comments to say about Adsense I'm just so paranoid about having my whole account closed down for letting myself type in "Click on this Link" above a referral button despite the fact they say we now can. I want to... but their general rules are so strict I'm not sure I will.

I'm curious as to what everyone else thinks about this new policy. Anyone else as paranoid as me?

Labels: design, Firefox, Google Adsense, internet, make money

Tuesday, 2 January 2007

Resolutions

Well it's that time of year again and I think my resolutions are pretty much the same as last year's but with a few new ones thrown in.

Get to a conversational level in Japanese.

Work out at the gym six days a week.

Make Yoga Today a part of my daily regime.

Work to live. Don't live to work.

Relax more.

Labels: fitness, internet, Japanese, new year, work

Thursday, 21 December 2006

It's ALIVE!

My door's been flying today.

First I got a birthday (maybe Christmas) pressie from Dad which was pretty cool. Am looking forward to trying that coffee.

Secondly I got the net connected! (which you probably figured out by the fact there's actually a post on this site.) As usual with things in Japan, it wasn't as easy as just getting the net connected and then having instant access. I had to read through several pages of Kanji and then ring the number the guy told me to ring for English support but was shocked when it was an automated fax service (fax machines are huge in Japan. Them being eco friendly and all) which tried to send me a fax to my mobile (which incidently has zero reception in my new apartment).

I then called another random number among the Kanji and was told by the operator to ring another number....

... Long story short, and hour and a half later I got connected and I didn't even have to use that retarded Japanese software CD they gave me and told me I had to use.

Ah, and thirdly.... I got my TV delivered!!! It's sitting in it's box as I type this.

After having ordered a lounge the other day (getting delivered on Christmas morning no less!) and getting the TV today my apartment is really starting to feel homey. I can't wait for my Christmas lunch I'm having here on Christmas day with several friends. Have been Christmas shopping like crazy the last few weeks.

This will be my first Christmas away from my family let alone in Japan and I'm loving it! (no offense family) It's also my first winter Christmas (If anyone says how strange it is to have a hot Christmas I... will... lose it. 50% of the world isn't like American Christmas specials. Get over it already.) so am really getting into the spirit of things.

Was kind of screwed at first because I had no idea what to eat for a cold Christmas Day lunch but am on top of things now.

Labels: apartment, birthday, christmas, internet, japan, lounge, tv