Archives for 2008

Have you tried using Chitika to increase your blog or websites earnings

April 29, 2008 by Tricia

I don’t know if you noticed, but over the last couple of months I’ve been trying out different forms of advertising in the sidebars.

Today I added a link to Chitika to my left sidebar and I’m trying out some of their products – eminimalls – under my posts on a few of my blogs. I’ve actually been with Chitika for about two and a half years, but I stopped using their services on most of my sites about a year ago because it wasn’t working out for me.

Now they’ve come out with some new products and ads that pay by impressions or by clicks so there are more ways to generate earnings with Chitika than when I first started with them. They’ve upped their game and I’m willing to give them another try. In the past few months I’ve seen a few bloggers discussing the company and stating that they were doing well with Chitika. Now it’s my turn to see if it’s true.

Lets see, what else have I tried in the last while? AuctionAds – now ShoppingAds, Widgetbucks, Shopping.com and a few others. To be honest I haven’t done all that well with ShoppingAds and Widgetbucks. I’m still testing Shopping.com. So far it’s the best of the three.

I’m just trying out different things in order to increase my passive income. Now that’s a misnomer as you do have to work at optimizing your ads to really see what works for your various sites.

I’ll write an update post in the near future to let you know how Chitika is working out for me. In the meantime I’d love to know if any of you are using it and how you’ve found the program.

Meanwhile, I’m still tinkering with my Adsense displays as I slowly read through the Adsense Secrets 4.0 e-book. Considering that I’ve only adjusted the Adsense code on two of my sites I’d say that Adsense Secrets is helping as my earnings have increased slightly. I can’t wait to see how much my earnings increase once I’ve optimized all my sites.

My puppy is sooooo smart

April 29, 2008 by Tricia

I wonder sometimes if I’m being more than a little naive when I start to think how smart my puppy seems to be. I mean, I really do think she’s smart, but I wonder if I’m giving her more credit than she deserves.

A couple of months ago we bought a medium sized bell. The kind that they sell in pet stores for large birds to play with in their cages. We brought the bell out and taught our puppy to touch it with her nose in order to make it ring. Once she got that down pat we attached the bell to the door handle and every time she had to go outside to relieve herself we got her to ring the bell.

Fast forward a couple of months to this week. Obviously the bell trick took a little bit of time, but she knows to ring it when she’s got to go outside to relieve herself. This week though, if I ask her if she’s got to go out to go pee or to go poop (one question at a time) she’ll go to the door and ring for whichever function she’s got to do.

Just to see if she was really answering my questions I told my husband what I’d been doing and got him to ask her one question at a time – ie “Do you have to pee? Show me?” or “Do you have to poo? Show me?” and she went to the door twice for the pee question and when she was taken outside that’s what she did.

I’ll test out my theory over the rest of the week, but I really do think she understands the questions. This of course is the puppy who used to try to fake a pee just to get a treat! That’s one reason why we ask her what she has to do before she goes out as we want to make sure she really has to do something and doesn’t just want to go outside.

So what do you think? Do I have a smart dog or what?

She’s getting bigger! Last week we had to take her to the vet and while we were there she was weighed and she’s over 50 lb now. Maybe she will get to be a decent size for a Lab instead of the runt that I thought she’d likely be due to her poor health when we got her.

We took her to the vet because we had suspected she was in heat for about two weeks, however she never did start to discharge any blood so I wondered if she had an infection instead. She was passing a bit of yellowish gunk. Unfortunately I was right. She has puppy vaginitis. The doctor put her on a sulfa combo antibiotic for a week, but now that she’s done her drug treatment I don’t think the infection is gone. We might have to wait for her to go into her first heat before it resolves.

Other than that her health is better than ever! We spent so many months medicating her that I almost thought I’d never be able to say that, but other than the yeast infection she currently has she seems to be in good health.

Have you had a pet that was sick that you had to worry over and give special care to in order to nurse it back to health? I used to do a lot of rescue work with reptiles and unfortunately I think I’ve done that with all the pets I’ve adopted and cared for. Hey, I’m a nurse … I guess it comes naturally.

I just love this neighborhood!

April 27, 2008 by Tricia

In case you don’t it’s Greek Orthodox Easter this weekend. I’m not Greek and my Easter took place in March this year, but at least half of my neighbors are Greek and Macedonian and they have been celebrating all weekend.

One of my neighbors has a huge barbecue each Easter and all of his relatives come over to enjoy a feast of barbecued lamb (it’s spinning on the rotisserie in his backyard right now), barbecued chicken, sausages, grilled steaks, Greek pastries and a ton of other yummy treats.

Our neighbor, Nick’s, guests haven’t all arrived yet, but as I said he’s been busy cooking and preparing food for the feast. One of the reasons why I love this neighborhood is that people are very free about sharing things. We lent him our barbecue in case he needs it and on other years when it’s rained or even snowed during his easter celebration we’ve lent him our huge tarps so that they could build a roof over their barbecuing stations and perhaps even stay warm and dry while they cooked their food.

One of the benefits of all this sharing and neighborly love is that our neighbors often give us food on special occasions. In fact, Nick just popped over to give us some delicious grilled octopus, barbecued sausages and some sliced bread. One of our other neighbors, Helen, came over earlier to give us a loaf of her easter bread and two boiled eggs (a Greek Tradition).

With neighbors like ours who needs to book Outer Banks rentals for a vacation. It’s like a holiday around here all the time!

I’m not a huge fan of Octopus – more so than my husband is – but I must say that this is the tastiest Octopus that I’ve ever had. Even someone that really doesn’t like Octopus would probably say this was ok.

He must have squeezed lemon over it as he grilled it as it has a pleasant lemon taste and dare I say it, the meat tastes and sort of has the texture of chicken rather than the rubbery texture that Octopus normally has. Yummy.

A close up of the Octopus and sausages:

Oh and the sausages … again I don’t eat this type of food often as it really doesn’t go well with my bad tummy thanks to the Crohn’s disease, but it too is tasty. He gets his sausage at a Greek Butcher – Andy’s cash and carry Meat terminal in Scarborough (Warden and Eglinton) I believe. Great name for a butcher eh? We get our chicken and pork shisk kebabs and gigantic chicken breasts (for a fantastic price) there several times each year.

The sausage has orange rind in it so it has a slight orangey taste. It’s also lightly spiced. I can’t eat a lot of it, but the way our neighbor Nick cooks it, well, lets just say it’s delicious!

More than likely we won’t have to cook dinner this evening as, if it’s like other years, I’m sure Nick will probably give us some of his fantastic grilled chicken, steak and lamb. Heck he sometimes throws in dessert too.

I love this neighborhood!

Too bad his outdoor party often coincides with our, must tidy or spring clean the garden before it becomes overgrown and out of hand weekend. I’m not a fan of being outside gardening when there’s 50 people milling around in a neighbors yard, but we need to get some work done!

Spring in bloom – Tulips, Hellebores and more!

April 27, 2008 by Tricia

JoinI’m so happy with my garden this Spring. We certainly didn’t enjoy the long cold and extremely snowy winter that we experienced, but as I predicted my plants did.

I still have to clean up some areas of the garden and the roses that are already leafing out well need some of their dead branch tips trimmed off, but I expect when I’m finished fully surveying the garden that I’ll find that I didn’t lose any plants this year. That might be a first!

Lets see … other than only a portion of my tulips in bloom right now (I have early blooming, mid spring blooming and late spring blooming bulbs planted in all my garden beds for an extended Tulip showcase), I also noticed the other day that one of my Hellebores has leafed out and that it’s also flowering:

The Hellebore flowers blend in with the plant. In the photo above you can see at least two rosey pink hellebore flower buds and one flower in bloom to the top right of the photo.

When I purchased this Hellebore a few years ago I’d also bought another species, but I think that one died after a year or two. It might not have been as hardy as this one appears to be. I’m going to have to figure out how to propagate this plant as I’d love to have hellebore’s growing in at least two other areas of my garden. They’re such a pretty spring flower. Poisonous though – so I’ve got to be sure my dog doesn’t go near them.

How did your garden fair after the winter many of us had in Northern provinces, states and countries? Did you find that your garden is more lovely than usual?

BTW if you enjoy looking at spring flowers and plants don’t forget to see what’s growing over at my gardening blog and also check out some pretty flowers over at my You are In My World Now blog.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

Double or triple your Adsense Earnings with Adsense Secrets 4.0

April 25, 2008 by Tricia

Normally I don’t write posts quite like this, but I’m excited about this product and I hope that you will be too! Read on to see why I’m so excited.

About a week ago Adsense Guru, Joel Comm, came out with the fourth edition of his best selling e-book Adsense Secrets.

The last edition of this best seller was in 2006 and if you’ve been following and or using Adsense on your sites you know that they’ve introduced a lot of changes since that time. Adsense Secrets 4.0 has been updated with all the changes up to early 2008.

Normally Joel sells this e-book for $97 – most feel it’s worth much more than that of course as many have said that once they started implementing some of the suggestions from his book their Adsense earnings doubled, tripled and more.

Joel has been increasing successful with his own sites since 2004 and has been happy to share what he’s learned. He’s been thanked many times over in the last four years for the knowledge he’s passed on and he wants to do something special to say thank you to his followers and those new to his products.

For a limited time, Joel is offering AdSense Secrets v4.0 to you for just $9.95!

This book is the definitive guide to making money with AdSense and it is the only book you ever need to master AdSense. Joel regularly earns $500/day or more in passive Adsense income and there’s no reason why you can’t as well.

I’m not sure how long Joel will generously be offering this Adsense Secrets e-book for the low price of $9.95 – so don’t hesitate for too long!

I went to his site and instantly downloaded my copy a few days ago. I do ok with Adsense – I certainly use it on all of my sites, but I know I could do better.

I haven’t had a lot of spare time to go over the whole book, but I already made one or two changes to my sites Adsense wise and I’ve seen a slight improvement in earnings. Over the weekend I’ll be implementing more of Joel’s suggestions and I hope to at least see my Adsense earnings double. Certainly the changes that I’ve already made will pay for the e-book!

One thing I must tell you is that when Joel introduced is updated Adsense Secrets 4.0 last week there was a bit of a glitch in how things were set up. You see, his sales page is long and along with selling visitors his Adsense Secrets for $9.95 purchases were also asked to opt into a monthly newsletter called The Top 1% Report. The monthly cost of this newsletter is $29.95 and when you opt in you’ll get your first issue along with a Free Bonus CD filled with more secrets absolutely free.

Most people didn’t notice the opt in earlier in the week and if they might be surprised when they get a bill of $29.95 a month from now on their credit card.

Don’t worry … he’s changed things around. He makes it clear now. When you get to the end of his sales pitch page you have two options.

The first option is for the Adsense Secrets 4.0 e-book for $9.95 and the first month of his newsletter free (plus free bonus CD). It says:

“I understand that I will have an opportunity to read and enjoy my free issue before you bill me $29.95 for the next issue, and that I can easily reach you to cancel at any time! “

As it says in the offer you can get your free stuff and then decide to opt out without ever paying more than just the $9.95 for the e-book.

The second option is for Adsense Secrets 4.0 and nothing more.

You can select whichever one you prefer and then proceed to the checkout.

When I purchased my copy of the e-book I knew about this controversy. He hadn’t changed the links yet to make the options obvious but there was still a way to opt out at the checkout.

I decided to get the free Top 1% Newsletter and free bonus CD and then decide once I receive them whether to opt out and not be billed a monthly fee for further newsletters.

In future updates as to how my implementation of Adsense Secrets I’ll let you know how good the newsletter is and whether I decided to continue to receive it or not.

My puppy is sooooo smart

I just love this neighborhood!

Spring in bloom – Tulips, Hellebores and more!

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