Forget the All Blacks.. Don't dabble with casinos

It's quite often google ads that catch my eyes these days, perhaps since I have my own I'm taking more notice of them. This time it was the embarrasing claim "Want to Make £799 Today?" - which leads to the website reviewtrust.co.uk, which then goes on to inform you how you can be an advantage player at roulette which is to say that you will have better odds than other players because you are betting 1:1 - that is sticking your money on one colour or odds/evens.

Casino has been around for years though and if this really worked, none of them would be in business. This is best played on a European table because there is only one 0, but it's best played none at all, yes the odds look reasonably favourable but there's one catch and it's a big catch. The roulette tables have limits and even if you find one with a high one - your bank account most likely does. Is it really worth risking all your money for a measly £1? Whilst the risk may be low, there's something fishy going on at your average casino and you will get exceedingly long runs of the colour you don't wish for. You will need a lot of money for this experiment and you are likely to lose out before long. Ignore this dodgy google ad - if it's that succesful, why have they stooped to advertising something so well known to all?

Making money is also about saving money, gambling is not worth the stress, risk or addiction and it's no way of getting rich unless you happen to be an awesomely talented poker player.

Social Bookmarking Increases Site Traffic

There's no disputing that Social Bookmarking increases site traffic, the more exposure you can get for your site or blog the better. Social Bookmarking sites like Digg or Twitter usually have fairly good places in the google ranking and the more links which are visible related to your site, the more chance of people bumping in to your site have. In some cases, you can have people "digg" your website in return for favourable ratings of their site. I'm not sure whether that's against site rules or not but it seems quite common.

Considering Social bookmarking doesn't cost anything other than a few minutes registering with the site, it's time well invested.

A well over-due update

You'll have probably noticed that there was a barren spell of blogging here, that's because I decided that there were so many money making opportunities out there online that I had to prioritise. In my hunt to make money online, I ended up bombarding myself with ideas and seemed to have little focus. I decided to get rid of the lower earners, one of which was actually this blog.

Later this month, I decided to check my adsense account and noticed that it was flying high - without doing anything this blog and my music blog http://www.jungleofjohns.blogspot.com had earnt me $90, perhaps I'd given up too soon. If I'd been putting care and attention into my blog during that time, I could easily be earning a nice daily sum at the moment.

You'll also have noticed that I have removed the links to the paid 2 click websites, bux.to simply wasn't earning enough for me and that was the best paid website, they claimed to have paid me out $19.00 - I applied for the money in February and they paid me out in June, however it mysteriously never arrived in my alertpay account and they've never replied to e-mails. Having not done anything with it for a few months, I decided to check the account - there was about $79 in it, not bad for my initial outlay of $16 - I've contacted them once again about the missing money and also withdrawn my $79 out of the bux.to account - we'll see how long it takes to turn up, if it does at all, this time round.

Over the last couple of months, I have earned about £650 on dooyoo and think I have hopefully mastered the best way of earning money on there. People tend to take themselves rather seriously on there, it becomes some people's lives and they're not too keen on people who post too regularly, however as long as you do a medium sized review full of your own content, try to keep it concise and effective and rate plenty of other users, then you can make quite a bit each day.

I've earnt about £300 on the travel website igougo.com - many of the reviews were simply used on dooyoo as well. They pay in Amazon vouchers which can be used to buy things on Amazon or sold on e-bay.

Ciao.com and ciao.co.uk are barely worth the effort, the beta site is a bit awkward and the pay is low but I basically just copy and paste my other reviews over from dooyoo now and again and this brings in a tidy sum of around £10-£20 a month. Slicethepie has brought me in around £300 but the current pay is a bit lower than it previously was.

Along with the paid to click websites, Shareapic is another website that I gave up on, there's a lot of money to be made online and it's better to focus your time on the profitable ones.

Oh and as for the experimental diets - it's fair to say I gave up!

Save Money with Good Flight Deals

There are a plethora of search engines out there which can be used to find cheap deals, they often go straight for the direct choices though or in some cases leave out valuable budget airlines. A lot of money can be saved by spending a couple of hours, or in some cases a full day in the airport.

I've set up a blog: wwww.bargainconnections.com which picks out a handful of the best deals on offer and the best ways of getting to a chosen destination with cheap airlines or cheap offers. Be sure to pop along for a visit, if you subscribe to the feed - you'll come across some great offers.

Scam of the day! Superprofits.biz

Checking my e-mails, I came across a google ad for "Paid To Type Ads
Receive $2000-$8000 weekly. Do simple part time online jobs." by Superprofits.biz. Applying the "if it looks too good to be true, it probably is" method, I decided to click on it, see what it was offering and google the site with the word scam next to it.

Basically they claim to be paying $5.00 for you to send out an e-mail to a certain address, why anyone would do that when they could hire someone to do it as a job on a monthly wage is beyond me. The fact is, no one in their right mind would do that and there's a few unhappy bunnies over the net complaining about it, what's more is you have to pay $50 to sign up. A definite scam, stay away!

If only everyday was a weekend

I've seen a dramatic difference in visits during the weekend than on weekdays, I'm not sure if it's the hangovers of a Sunday which sends people on a hunt through random sites or the fact that they look at their bank account on a Sunday and witness the damage of Saturday's fun and seek a way to get it back but what's for sure is that Sunday has been my most profitable day through google ads since I began blogging.

I'm going to try a few things to see if I can re-create the weekend magic on weekdays and let you know what I come up with!

Adsense Channel Update

Well after less than a day the channel option on Adsense has really made a difference, whilst one day's results can hardly show a trend it has definitely given me food for thought. It turns out that the blogs I thought were making money, weren't and vice versa.

Adsense: How can you find out which blog or page is making money?

So you have a couple of blogs or websites all linked to the same adsense account? You want to find out where the revenue is coming from, perhaps to improve or dispose of a certain blog/page?

This is easy but it is something which has to be activated. Log in to your adsense account - go to channels and click on the "guide to using channels", when you are done with that then begin adding the URL's you want to monitor. You can add up to 200.

Netbet Update

Ok, so Jermaine Defoe didn't get his goal against Manchester United although he came close towards the end but that's not to worry, like I said it's a stop at a winner system and we can't expect to win every time, in fact a less immediate win is actually more profitable for us. I'll post next weekend's tip on Saturday morning.

Cabbage Soup Diet - Report Day 4

Day 3 went by without any cheating whatsoever, they say that the first 3 days are the toughest and also the most effective, so I feel rather proud of myself. It wasn't with complete ease, the soup is incredibly uninteresting now and I was a bit grumpy last night, the food cravings are still there but today is bananas and milk, so that should be interesting. Didn't get round to cycling yesterday, the weather had changed anyway. Back to monkey business!

1st weekend of English Football Season - Betting

I've been developing a system I like to call "net bet", it's a stop at a winner bet that relates to players scoring at any time. When working out what to stake, start low - work out what you can afford to spend, then stake an amount which you can afford to multiply by 2 ten times. That's to say, if you can afford 60 pounds, you want to be starting off with around a mere 3 pence. It may sound pointless but believe me, it soon builds up and over the season you can make a good profit. Plus, it is playing it incredibly cautiously.

Today's tip is Jermaine Defoe to score at anytime in the Community Shield between Manchester United and Portsmouth. He's been in cracking form pre-season and I can see him getting one. At 3/1 with William Hill - place your bet!

3rd day of Cabbage Soup Diet

The beginning of the 3rd day, the 2nd day went strictly well despite being tempted by a friend who cooked delicious chicken breast and potatoes in my view! Today is fruit & vegetables except potatoes and bananas and it shouldn't be too difficult. Bought some fruit this morning and feeling pretty powerful, planning on going for a cycle soon!

An update on the diet!

The first day passed with out any errors, stuck to the diet religiously but my brain didn't! Couldn't stop thinking about pizzas and burgers but resisted the temptation of having 4 McDonalds, 3 Kfcs, 1 Burger King and numerous pizza places near by! Legs felt a bit weak at night and I woke up a few times feeling weird but that may have been something to do with going to bed earlier than usual. Woke up feeling powerful, went to buy the necessary vegetables as today is vegetables day! Started off with a salad, 2nd meal was a bowl of the notorious soup and now figuring out whether to have the potato earlier or in the evening!

Cabbage Soup Diet

So here's the diet, I'm currently testing. It claims to be a "low-fat, high-fiber diet that will help you get into shape fast before you embark on a more moderate long-term eating plan" and suggests that you could lose up to 5kg in 7 days.

Courtesy of cabbage-soup-diet.com, here it is:

Day One:
Fruit: Eat all of the fruit you want (except bananas). Eat only your soup and the fruit for the first day. For drinks- unsweetened teas, cranberry juice and water.

Day Two:
Vegetables: Eat until you are stuffed will all fresh, raw or cooked vegetables of your choice. Try to eat leafy green vegetables and stay away from dry beans, peas and corn. Eat all the vegetables you want along with your soup. At dinner, reward yourself with a big baked potato with butter. Do not eat fruit today.

Day Three:
Mix Days One and Two: Eat all the soup, fruits and vegetables you want. No Baked Potato.

Day Four:
Bananas and Skim Milk: Eat as many as eight bananas and drink as many glasses of skim milk as you would like on this day, along with your soup. This day is supposed to lessen your desire for sweets.

Day Five:
Beef And Tomatos: Ten to twenty ounces of beef and up to six fresh tomtoes. Drink at least 6 to 8 glasses of water this day to wash the uric acid from your body. Eat your soup at least once this day. You may eat broiled or baked chicken instead of beef (but absolutely no skin-on chicken). If you prefer, you can substitute broiled fish for the beef one one of the beef days (but not both).

Day Six:
Beef and Vegetables: Eat to your heart's content of beef and vegetables this day. You can even have 2 or 3 steaks if you like, with leafy green vegetables. No Baked Potato. Eat your soup at least once.

Day Seven:
Brown rice, unsweetened fruit juices and vegetables: Again stuff, stuff, stuff yourself. Be sure to eat your soup at least once this day.

and the ingredients to the soup? Well here in Poland where it gained notoriety after their former president went on the diet, I can buy the mix frozen without having to do any of the hardwork. But not all of us have that luxury, so here's the recipe to that initially ok soup that soon starts to taste bland (that's only after the 2nd bowl!)

6 large green onions
2 green peppers
1 or 2 cans of tomatoes (diced or whole)
3 Carrots
1 Container (10 oz. or so) Mushrooms
1 bunch of celery
half a head of cabbage
1 package Lipton soup mix
1 or 2 cubes of bouillon (optional)
1 48oz can V8 juice (optional)
Season to taste with salt, pepper, parsley, curry, garlic powder, etc

Losing weight for a wedding

Determined to look a bit slimmer by the time it comes round to my wedding day (September 13th), I've been setting out to lose some extra baggage. By just eating healthily and smaller portions, I have lost a couple of kilograms over about 6 weeks. Whilst their have been a few pitfalls, namely last weekend when I went hiking with a friend I hadn't seen for 6 months and drank and ate like a pig, I've generally stayed on course. I've decided to speed it up a little bit though as the date comes closer by trying a Cabbage Soup Diet for 7 days, followed by 1 week of healthy eating and topped off with 2 weeks of the Maple Syrup Diet, then 3 days of acclimatising my body to eating solid food again! That should get me ready just in time for the wedding from when I hope to resume a healthy eating regime once again.

I've checked out different sources and comments on both diets and with both very pro and anti opinions, I've decided just to go ahead and check it out for myself. So here's the nitty gritty:

Initial Weight before dieting at all: 90kg
Waist: 108cms, Midrif: 91cms, Chest:102cms
Estimated Body Fat: 30%

After the aformentioned few weeks of dieting and prior to commencing the Cabbage Soup Diet, the details are as follows:

Weight: 87kg
Waist: 104cms, midrif: 88cms Chest: 99cms

I will update you with how it's going at the end of the week!

Igougo.com

Having been recommended to me by one of the guides on dooyoo, I signed up to Igougo.com. Igougo.com is an online community created by the guide book "The Rough Guide", they pay you in miles for reviews, these miles can be cashed in to Amazon Miles or Air Miles (Lufthansa, American Air), whilst you can't buy vouchers and sell them on e-bay, you can buy something and re-sell it (Lonely Planet books are a good bet, the new ones often sell for more on e-bay than they are bought for on Amazon)

Cashout is at $25 and they pay you incredibly quickly, I have put up a significant number of pub/restaurant and place reviews and also added my travel photos on there. The amount you earn depends on the quality of the review but for a decent 350 or so word review of a pub, you often get around $1.25.

It is open to any nationality, as far as I'm aware and for those with good writing skills and old material that they haven't added to the site, it's definitely worth visiting. Combined with dooyoo, mysearchfunds and shareapic, you'll soon be earning a nice little additional income and one that could even support you if you are frugal and have little costs.

A change in style of the site

When I initially set this blog up, I wasn't aware of the amount of sites that were doing the same thing, many of them just to exchange links on mylot or gain referrals through it. In all honesty, I soon got bored of the clicking world.. it's lowly paid, mind-numbingly boring and takes ages to see the results, bux.to the one website that I have built up a sizeable account have still not paid me, their service is piss poor.

On the other hand, if it wasn't for such communities, I would never have come across the likes of dooyoo which in turn led me to other fruitful sites like Igougo.com, using the two of them to review each day, I can easily support and meet day-to-day travelling costs whilst on a trip in a cheap country and probably save some as well.

In the next post, you can read more about Igougo.coom and I now intend to add a whole realm of things including self-improvement experiments and challenges undertaken.

Dooyoo

Dooyoo is another reviewing site, one that initially pays better. Whilst the exact amount that Ciao pays you and the breakdown remains incredibly secret, dooyoo are quite upfront about what they pay. 50p for the initial review (which has to be over 150 words) and then 1.5p each time somebody reads the said review. To get more people to read your reviews, it is important to take part in the community as a whole by rating other people's reviews. It also helps if you write a good review as the members on their tend to rather be against people who write short reviews.

Overall, I've made over 100 pounds on Dooyoo within a month and haven't been particularly pushing it. It's definitely worth signing up!

Dooyoo pay you in Dooyoo Miles - 100 dooyoo miles is 10p. You can get paid by cheque if you have 50000 miles, buy amazon vouchers if you have 20000 and you can donate to charity if you have 7000. It's not hard to get to 50000 miles though and they pay very quickly, you will receive your cheque from Germany within 10 days of cashing out.

Ciao

When I first mentioned Ciao on here and added the link, I had just fallen for the website.

Ciao is perhaps most commonly known as a survey site where you can get paid to fill in online surveys but like so many sites that work in this way they select only a few and you must go through a questionaire to see if you fit the bill. I never have done but instead have just wasted my time filling in that unbelievably annoying form!

I really liked the site at the beginning but I soon grew frustrated at some of the rather aggressive ratings and comments by old hands. I immediately moved on to a similar site which initially pays more upfront, it's called dooyoo and I will review it nest. I'm now back on to Ciao but keep to music reviews. Basically, if you write small reviews with very little information, you won't earn a great deal and it will attract criticism from other members, on the other hand if you go into great detail, you receive praise and much better earnings. I recently received $4 for just the one review on a CD. The website itself has a wider choice than any other product review site with over 400,000 products to review and more each day.

Keep your reviews full of information, don't copy it from elsewhere and you will earn reasonably on Ciao.. I'd recommend joining.

Mysearchfunds

Earlier in the year, I mentioned - Mysearchfunds, I can confirm that I was paid out on May 23rd by paypal and received $40 in GBP for the money I earned in March. I'm also due an additional $46. The last weeks were the golden age of the Mysearchfunds search as they had been tied to google, yahoo and ask but gave regular google results. Getting paid to google, amazing! As I often write online reviews, I check information regularly and do quite a fair bit of searching. This is paying off!

Mysearchfunds now have a new fraud detecting system but I've not had any issues with that so I assume that as long as you are doing standard searches and not trying to cheat the system, you will be fine!

They've now also changed their name to homepages friends and the domain has changed to www.myhpf.co.uk but the old address will forward you there eventually. It would seem that the search engine is powered by Yahoo during June, which is a bit lousy in comparison to google and the results aren't that great plus I don't know how to find images on there. Well, getting paid to search is still a blessing!