I’m Beautiful Like Me.

I’m not going to get too crazy here, but I am now using some banner ads on my site.

Since joining Entrecard, I’ve come across several blogs where people are talking about and are pleased with Freebies4webmasters. The payout is pretty decent, too. As you all well know, we could really benefit from some additional income, so I signed up. You put a code on three URLs of your site and get £10 for the first month, paid out through Paypal and £5 each additional month your site/blog keeps the banners up. And yes, Paypal will convert the currency for you for a small fee. That converts to about $16 for the first month, about $8 each additional month. Plus, for every site you refer, you get an additional £10.

Sweet!

I see an opportunity.

Husband and I have this phenomenally great chemistry with regard to all-things-money: sincerely, I have never been on the same wavelength with another human being about finances and expenses the way I am with Husband. That’s not to say we are reflecting that well these days! Rather, it’s here that the opportunity showed itself to me.

I have started a new blog.

The purpose of this blog is to first and foremost, be a source of passive income for us with ads and hopefully affiliations. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it’s going to be a place where I organize my thoughts and ideas about money-making and money-saving to share with my readers. I subscribe to and have come across (via Entrecard) a large number of blogs that cover these types of topics, but I always feel like something is missing. Hopefully I can fill that gap.

(That is not to say that these blogs aren’t worthwhile reads - they most certainly are! It’s only to say that a lot of them strike me as too narrow or too broad of focus.)

Without further ado, please meet my new blog: Homemade Bread. Get it?!

I have spent most of yesterday evening and today installing and tweaking it, so there isn’t much there past a welcome greeting.

Yet.

Stay tuned.

Last month, we were Blogging the Recession. I subscribed to every blog that commented on the original post, as well as to every blog that was posted on my Plurk Blogroll. This meant my subscription list in Google Reader had nearly 200 blogs! And I kept my pledge as best as I could, clicking through to every post in an effort to help out with pennies or page views/comments.

Now that it’s September and I’ve become busy with off-line matters like knitting and football season and whatnot, I’m overwhelmed by the content in my Google Reader.

To deal with it, I’ve unsubscribed to a lot of feeds.

First off my subscription list are those that do not provide full content feeds. Teaser feeds don’t entice me - they irritate the snot out of me. I suppose I understand the motive for teaser feeds and perhaps it works to get more people onto their site and/or leaving comments, but it doesn’t work for me. I offer full-content feeds here and hope that, if so moved, my readers will click through.

Further, while I realize there is no better time than now to post about it, I’ve been put off by more than one blog author posting about the election and/or the candidates from both sides of the aisle. Perhaps I’m becoming more… erm, what’s the right word here? Uptight? Refined? Snooty? Diplomatic? Point is, I just don’t care to discuss or read about political opinions. I’m not persuaded by it and I don’t hope to persuade others to my line of thinking, either.

All that said, I still have 166 subscriptions! A score of them haven’t been updated in months. I spent some time this morning virtually cleaning up and dividing them into categories:

• 8 Artsy (think Post Secret)
• 70 Blogs (didn’t fit into any of the other categories)
• 6 Crafty
• 10 Green
• 14 Feeds (Newsfeeds, forum feeds, etc.)
• 51 Knitters (!)
• 7 Plurk

Sheese!

Update: Having just went through my Google Reader for purposes of catching up, I have unsubscribed to 2 more blogs.

I also wanted to add a point about how lame I find commenting on blogs that use both Captcha and comment moderation. Seems these blogs are also the ones with next-to-no comments. I’m going to let you on a little secret: using both is totally unnecessary and only serves to drive away would-be commenters! I understand (really, I do!) that you don’t want to be spammed, but if you are moderating comments, you can simply reject spam and if you are using Captcha, that will catch the spam. I am boycotting leaving comments on your blog on principle, dammit, ’cause it’s just plain annoying.

So, I’m going to cheat just a little bit and post about blogs that are sorta new instead of totally new to me. as part of my BlogDay2008 post.

*If you have participated in BlogDay2008, I hope you share your posts with me in a comment, as I am always interested in great new blogs to read and subscribe to!*

1. Craftapalooza - England’s Aussie-living-in-Perth, WA’s crafty sweetheart blogs about all her crafty endeavors several times per week. She inspires me.
2. The Akamai Knitter - Hawaii feels like another country (after all, it is so far away!). Opal spins the most beautiful yarn and posts delicious pictures of her work.
3. Brian Green’s Blog - he’s practically my neighbor but he posts about quirky/funny/cool/interesting stuff he finds online.
4. BlogBloke - his blog is about blogging, improving your blog, getting traffic for your blog and all-things-blogging. I think he’s Canadian, despite his Aussie-sounding name.
5. light night rains - South Carolinian Cory Godbey’s blog wherein he shares his art. He really is quite amazing.

Don’t forget to check out my blogroll! Some really great reads there, too (obviously!).

• Added a star-rating feature so you can vote on each post. It also includes recommendations for other content that might interest the reader.
• Deleted the Recent Viewers widget.
• Deleted the Crochet & Knit widget.
• Moved the Wish List widget to its own page.
• Replaced the social bookmark icons bar with a single ShareThis button.
• Added a blogroll. There are 20-ish, but only the 10 most recently updated show.
• Updated the Buzzworthy Posts widget to reflect my new domain name and shortened the list to 5 instead of 12.
• Changed from 7 posts on the main page to 5 posts.

I hope you enjoy the changes. I’d love to hear any feedback on it or improving the layout in general. And, as always, if you enjoy this blog, I’d be very grateful if you share it! Thanks!

• I carry around a List of Things to Do Before I Die. I’ve crossed two things off: getting a college degree and seeing childbirth firsthand.
• I used to enter beauty pageants. I even won several.
• I went to modeling school.
• I actually like algebra.
• I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder when I was 14. I am certifiably crazy.

• Babyhellfire
• mhgood
• choppersgirl
• KLM
• Meredith

The premise is simple. If you read blogs, then for the month of August, make the “pledge” to click through from your feed reader. No obligation to leave a hilarious comment or send a long stalkerish email (although both, within reason, are always lovely). Just click through to the blog (not on ads unless you are so led) and if you’re feeling generous, click around to their older posts.Just those extra page views can make a big difference for bloggers who could really use the help, or in my case, where page views don’t matter so much, a big fat ego boost. (Might as well inflate the ego since everything else about me is inflated these days)(Oh, and I do link up some cool shit in my sidebar so that’s worth checking, especially today)If you feel like hopping on the bandwagon (c’mon, it’s fun and I’m a really great driver), then all you need to do is grab a button — see below, slap it on your blog, and [beg, plead] ask your readers to click through on their feed readers or blogrolls and do the same within a post.