Occasionally, I go through spurts where I buy lots of stuff from eBay. That site is usually not my first choice as far as shopping outlets go, but every once in a while I start looking at different auctions and get hooked on the rush of finding great bargains over there.

Anyway, the last time I went on an eBay spree, I noticed that there was a definite improvement in the shipping materials used by sellers. For instance, gone were the bulky, oversized boxes filled with tons of packing peanuts or bubble wrap that cost an arm and a leg to ship. Instead, many sellers were using what appeared to be custom boxes that fit the product more snugly and that even had business logos and website addresses on them.

I’d been down on eBay for a while, so it was cool to see some of the changes over there. I know that the credit goes to the specific sellers that I used and certainly wasn’t a site-wide revolution, but still… I was happy with all my purchases. What a difference the shipping container can make!

If you run your own business, then it practically goes without saying that people won’t take you seriously unless you present yourself the right way. That means — at a bare minimum — you should have personalized business cards to hand out to prospective clients. If you want to make an even better impression, you ought to add other accessories to your arsenal, such as personalized stationery or custom checks. For better or worse, image is everything, so having these products with your business name and logo on them gives you instant credibility.

One of the best places to take care of all of your printing needs is at VistaPrint.com. That’s because VistaPrint offers a wide array of high-quality customizable products that are perfect for both home and office use. Moreover, they provide accurate service, quick turnaround times, and the lowest prices around. No wonder they’ve got more than 12 million customers all over the world!

And now you can save even more money by using vistaprint coupons with your orders. Vistaprint-Coupons.com is a brand new site devoted exclusively to providing customers with extra discounts, deals, and special offers related to VistaPrint. There are currently a number of different coupons available on the site, and all of them are good for at least 50% off products such as pens, address labels, calendars, business cards, and stamps. When you combine those discounts with VistaPrint’s already low prices, you’ll end up with some unbelievable deals!

So the next time you decide to place an order at VistaPrint, be sure to check out Vistaprint-Coupons.com first. After all, saving more money is always a good thing!

I asked for and received a key to SocialSpark, the new paid-to-blog platform offered by IZEA, Inc (the company behind PayPerPost). After several days of poking around the Alpha version and taking one opp from the marketplace, I’m ready to post my initial impressions of SocialSpark. Just so you know, Ted Murphy, CEO of the company, said it was ok for everyone to do so, so I’m not violating any NDAs here.

To be blunt, I don’t like what I’ve seen of SocialSpark thus far. I realize that the site is still in Alpha, that it’s a major release, and that there’s a long way to go, but in all honesty, I thought it would be much farther along considering the fact that it was supposed to be released in Nov. 2007 or Jan. 2008. Here we are in April, and I can’t imagine IZEA opening SS up for widespread signups anytime soon.

Here are some specific things that I don’t like or understand about SS. Please bear in mind that these are just my opinions; I’m sure you can find a bunch of people who love everything about SS. To each his (or her) own.

– I’m not crazy about the whole social networking aspect of the platform. It’s already turning into a mini MySpace with people falling all over each other to add tons of friends to their list. I have like 15 or 20 friends already (because I just accept everyone who asks), but don’t see the point. Of course, since number of friends is a filter option when browsing through users, I feel I have to keep adding people in order to keep up with other bloggers who have hundreds of friends. How ridiculous. Plus, this just clutters up an already busy profile page. Yuck.

– Taking an opp is not as straightforward as I’m used to from the old PPP. With SocialSpark, there are several different types of opps, such as sponsored posts, blog sponsorship, and sparks. “Sparks” are just buzz-type posts that you don’t get paid for, while blog sponsorships allow your blog to be taken over by a single advertiser with a god-awful splashscreen and sponsorship bar. No thanks.

Anyway, getting back to the point: it’s hard to determine whether or not I qualify for an opp (and on which blogs). Users can view every single opp whether they qualify or not, so I have to look for a tiny green bar that signifies my ability to take the opp. Then, after I do take it, instead of falling off the availability list, it just hangs around. Again, that clutters things up. I can’t take the opp again, so it should simply disappear (like the old system).

– I took an IZEA-sponsored opp and was given feedback on it in less than 12 hours. This feedback is posted in the form of a comment on my profile page, where everyone can see it. There’s no way to hide it, and worse, there’s no way for me to reply to it!! I was given a 2-tack rating for a “quality” post because of low pageviews and zero clicks. Well, excuse me, but how about giving readers a friggin’ chance to find the post first??? I’m not saying my stats would be a whole lot better after 24 or even 48 hours, but at least that would be a more realistic indication of how the post will perform. Thanks for ruining my reputation with a 2-tack rating before I’ve even had a chance to get used to the damn site.

– I don’t get how the fluctuating prices are supposed to work. From what I understand, a popular opp drops in price when more people take it, while an unpopular opp increases in price when no one (or very few people take it). Huh?? What’s the point of that? It makes no sense to me at all. I mean, I guess it would be an incentive for advertisers to create better opps, but what incentive is there for bloggers to take the good opps? I have no idea.

– It looks like ROI, clicks, and pageviews will heavily influence a blogger’s chance at success in SocialSpark. Again, good for advertisers, but not so good for bloggers who are just starting out, haven’t built much of a reader base, or don’t have as much time to market and promote themselves as others.

– Speaking of marketing and promotion, it seems that being “popular” will increase a blogger’s chances at scoring good opps. In order to be popular, though, you have to network, market, and promote your blogs. That means no more just popping in to grab an opp, write your post, and be on your merry way. No, instead, you have to do a bunch of extra things like Entrecard or whatever in order not to get lost in the tens of thousands of profiles that will be in SS once it’s launched.

Sure, many bloggers like to do these things already, and more power to them. But if you add an extra hour or two per day for marketing, then SS suddenly doesn’t become as lucrative as other PTB sites that don’t rely on these types of things. Personally, I’m the sort of person who just wants to write my post and be done with the computer. I don’t think I’m going to be able to hang out at SS all day handing out props, leaving comments for “friends”, and schmoozing with advertisers.

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There are other minor nitpicks as well (I absolutely HATE how everything defaults to all lowercase in SocialSpark even when not typed that way), but I don’t feel like going into all of that right now.

Again, the bottom line here is that I don’t see SocialSpark as being a “revolution” in paid blogging. It’s going to end up being the same old story: popular blogs with tons of page views and solid readership will rake in the cash, while average bloggers looking to make a few extra bucks per month will be left out in the cold. That’s hardly a new concept, is it?

I’m not writing SocialSpark off because I know it has a long way to go still. But I’m not going to hold my breath in the hopes that it will boost my income. I have a feeling opps will be even harder to come by in SS than they are now.

I haven’t had much to post about here recently, so it’s given me a chance to think about what I want to do with this particular site. It’s pretty much been a catch-all, general type of blog where I just post about anything and everything under the sun. But I’m thinking about narrowing the focus a bit and talking about just one or two topics from here on out (like sports or current events). Or maybe I just need to take a week off and come back with a fresh perspective….

I don’t know; I think I’m just feeling burned out on blogging in general, especially since I’ve made approximately 3,600 posts on all my sites combined in the last 14 months. Yikes!!

I have some problems with my skin, so I use a few products from acne.org to help keep everything under control. The stuff I use lasts me such a long time that I only have to visit the site like once a year to reorder, so I don’t visit the site that often.

I went there a bit earlier today to place my annual order, and started browsing around some other parts of the site (which I’d never done before). I found a message forum, which I looked at out of curiosity.

One of the threads, which was started way back in 2003 or something, was called “Meanest thing that someone has said about your acne”. I clicked on the thread — and then spent about an hour reading just a fraction of the posts.

I cannot believe some of the things these poor kids were writing about. There were some standard things, like “Why don’t you wash your face?” or “Haven’t you ever heard of Clearasil?”, but there were some pretty terrible ones too. For instance, one teenage guy with bad acne was working as a camp counselor and one of the 11-year-olds assigned to his group said, “Ewww, I don’t want to be with him!” right in front of other campers and counselors.

It got worse, with kids reporting that bullies at their school had said things like, “If I was that ugly, I’d hang myself” or “Why would you even leave your room?” And of course, there were countless posts about all the stares, disgusted looks, and grimaces from perfect strangers at the mall, restaurants, etc.

I also noticed that just as many of the mean comments came from “friends” or family members as from bullies.

As I was reading this, I felt so bad for the kids — especially the ones with usernames like IHateMe or AcneScarredandSad.

My God, I hope these kids know the acne will likely pass (or at least get far more manageable) and that it’s not the end of the world, though it certainly might seem like it.

By now, most bloggers know that a major Internet search company (which I won’t bother naming) went on a rampage a couple months ago, knocking the PageRank of many blogs down to 0. What kind of heinous crime did these bloggers commit to warrant such a penalty? They had the audacity to publish paid reviews and links to commercial websites. Apparently, this sort of thing is only acceptable if you use the search giant’s own advertising network.

A lot of people didn’t think PageRank was a true indication of a website’s worth anyway, and it’s not hard to see why. Link farms and scraper sites are routinely awarded with solid ranks, while blogs with genuine, fresh content get nothing. Obviously, there must be a better way to show how one site compares to another.

IZEA has come up with a solution that sounds promising. They recently launched a tool over at IZEARanks.com that calculates a site’s RealRank based on three different factors. The RealRank algorithm is public, so I can tell you that rankings come from daily unique visitors (which accounts for 70% of the rank), daily active inbound links (20% of the rank), and daily page views (10%).

In order to promote RealRank and get more sites to sign up, IZEARanks.com is giving away $1,000 per week during February to the blog with the #1 RealRank at 11:59 p.m. EST on February 7, 14, 21, and 28. That’s pretty cool, but I have no shot of winning

I think the IZEARanks.com site has some good tools available. I signed up and was able to see a bunch of different graphs and charts with data about my site’s visitors, page views, etc. Now I just have to figure out a way to make use of the data!

Anyway, if you’d like to see how your blog or website stacks up against others, go sign up at IZEARanks.com. It only takes a minute!

These days, it seems that whenever I turn on the news, I’m bound to hear about some celebrity or other who’s facing criminal charges for crimes ranging from DUI to murder. From the infamous Paris Hilton case to Lindsay Lohan’s ongoing legal battles and the big Phil Spector trial, there’s always plenty of action to follow in those California courtrooms.

I don’t know anything about the different legal strategies the high-powered attorneys in these cases employ to defend their clients, so it’s a good thing I’ve found this Los Angeles Criminal Defense Blog | California Criminal Attorneys Law Blog to help explain everything to me. That blog I just linked to is written by UCLA and Pepperdine Law School professor Dmitry Gorin, and explains in layman’s terms precisely what is unfolding in these celebrity cases (and why).

I’ve spent some time going through Mr. Gorin’s recent posts, which covered topics like the Phil Spector hung jury and subsequent mistrial, the Lane Garrison sentencing, and the Barry Bonds grand jury indictment. What I like about these posts is that they don’t simply rehash the details that all the news outlets have already published; instead, Mr. Gorin explains how the law comes into play with each case, why judges made certain rulings, and what is most likely to happen next.

If you like following the celebrity legal woes as much as I do, then you just have to check out the LA Criminal Law Blog for yourself. It’s almost as good as having a front-row seat right there in the courtroom!

I somehow managed to nuke my entire blog earlier this evening. I then went to restore it from the backup in my Dreamhost CP, and that at least got the blog to show again, but then there were other problems with it.

Since things were screwy anyway, I figured this would be as good a time as any to upgrade to the newest stable WP release, so I did that too. But now I can’t seem to go back in and edit any of my old posts. I’m getting some strange database error that I’ve never seen before.

This means I’m going to probably have to spend most of the night trying to figure out what I did wrong, uninstalling and re-installing WP, etc.

Ugh…. not what I needed right now!

I’ve been working from home for several years now, and even though I love it for the most part, I still think about what it would be like to have a real career again. I sometimes miss getting dressed for work, enjoying a bit of camaraderie at the office, and getting a nice paycheck every single week. That’s why I check out job listings every once in a while, just in case I come across something that I would like to apply for.

For example, this morning I saw that webloyalty has several open positions in their Norwalk, CT office. I know about webloyalty because of the various customer loyalty programs that they provide to Internet retailers, and because of their position as one of the leading online marketing firms in the country.

I used to work for a similar company, so this kind of job would be perfect for me. It’s too bad that we’re not going to be moving to Connecticut anytime soon, otherwise I’d send in my resume for sure!

My husband and I are coming up on our seventh anniversary in just a couple of months. We have a nice tradition where we look through our wedding album and watch the video again just so we can relive that beautiful day. I’m so glad our ceremony and reception went off without a hitch; that made all the meticulous planning worth it.

I was lucky to have the free services of a dear friend who is a wedding planner, but I know not everyone is in that position. For those who want to handle the Wedding Planning on their own, I recommend checking out the online resources at WeddingChannel.com. That website has been around since 1997, and has helped countless brides and grooms plan their perfect day. From free planning tools to expert advice, sample photos, and local vendor guides, WeddingChannel.com has everything you need to create the wedding of your dreams.

Take a look today, and see what kind of inspiration you can get from the site!

I never really paid attention to Google PageRank before I started blogging, but it seems that now that’s all I hear about these days. This is especially true after the most recent update, during which (according to popular opinion) Google penalized bloggers for posting paid links. The PR drops have affected bloggers and regular websites alike. If you accept paid link placements, then you were most likely hit. (Again, this is just according to stuff I’ve read. I have no idea what’s really going on with PR.)

The PR penalties have irked a lot of bloggers because it has a negative impact on the amount of money they can make from paid posting. I’ve seen people frantically asking what they can do to get their PageRank back, whether they should add the “nofollow” attribute to all outbound links, delete old paid posts, etc.

While I can certainly understand why people would panic and be in a frenzy to fix things, I don’t think there’s a “correct” approach to improving PR. I’ve heard people say that Google loves original content, or high traffic stats, or quality outbound and incoming links. But I’ve seen websites that meet those criteria and still not get a good PR to show for their efforts.

And conversely, I’ve seen websites that don’t do any of those things, but still get good PR. Want to see an example? Check out SlapCountdown.com, a website being used by the TV show How I Met Your Mother to countdown to a character’s impending on-air slap.

The site was registered on June 21 ‘07, has an Alexa ranking of 275k, and most importantly, has ZERO content!! All it is is a freaking countdown clock!! No links, no content, no updates, nothing. But — it has a PR of 4 after the recent update (which some people think is like the old PR6). WTF???

That’s why I think PR is a joke and I’m just not going to worry about it anymore.

Just yesterday I told you that I’m considering doing all of my holiday shopping online again this year so I don’t have to deal with the hassles that go along with fighting December crowds at the mall. I had some success with this plan last year, but there were a few things that I was better off buying in person, which is why I haven’t totally committed one way or the other yet.

A few days ago, I’d heard about the impending launch of a comparison shopping site called Quick Shop that is designed consumers find the best deals on any product they’re looking for. I’m not sure if the site has been released to the public yet, but I decided to check it out anyway. The search function is already working, so I was able to get a good feel for what Quick Shop can do for me.

I have to say that I liked how Quick Shop makes the whole online shopping process easier than ever. All I have to do is enter some information into the search box (e.g. digital camera, laptop computer, refrigerator), and I’ll get tons of leads on where to buy that particular product at the best price. For even more targeted results, I can specify other details, such as price range, color, size, or whatever else is relevant to what I’m looking for.

There are two versions of Quick Shop, with one specializing in UK merchants and the other in US merchants. Both versions will give shoppers more results than any other comparison shopping site currently available.

I ran a couple of test searches just to see what kind of results I would get, and I was definitely impressed with the prices Quick Shop offers. Once this site goes fully live, I will be back to take care of some of my Christmas shopping!

Check it out for yourself!

Just when I thought the Google PR update was finished, I started hearing things about people still noticing changes as late as this afternoon. I then checked out my sites and saw that yes indeed, I dropped again.

What a bummer.

This blog was at a PR2 and seemed to survive the first round of updates unscathed. But it finally got dinged today and now sits at a PR1.

I have another blog that was a PR4. It first went down to a PR3 for about two weeks, and then settled in at a PR2. It’s still PR2 today.

My newest blog was a PR0 because I started it well after the last update. It earned a rank of PR2 last week, but today was back down to PR1.

Argh!

My head hurts from trying to keep track of all this stuff. The drops in PR don’t bother me much anymore because I know that it’s pretty much happening across the board and is not a reflection of my sites or of me personally. But still… it’s just annoying to have to deal with this uncertainty when a few of my writing assignments are dependent on that stupid green bar!

I played my first hand of blackjack 15 years ago in a casino on a Native American reservation. Ever since then, I’ve been gambling pretty regularly both online and at local casinos. I hit the riverboats at least once a month, and play at least twice that much in online gaming rooms. As such, I know how important it is to choose the right casino — especially when going online.

That’s why I make use of the comprehensive online casino reviews found at Pro360.com. Pro360 has been reviewing online gaming sites since 1997, so I’m sure they know what they’re doing.

One of the best things about the Pro360.com website is the way the casinos are listed in a table right on the homepage. This allows for quick comparisons of the most important features (such as whether or not US players are allowed, max bonus, and editor and player ratings) so I don’t have to waste my time digging through a bunch of info to find what I need. Then, if I want a more detailed review, all I have to do is click another link. Simple!

Anyway, if you’re looking for a reliable source of information about online casinos, I highly recommend checking out Pro360.com. I’ve already found several new casinos that sound promising, and I can’t wait to try them!

I was reading through some of the top stories at Yahoo news, like I do every day, when I noticed that several of the articles set off my Firefox pop-up blocker. I didn’t actually view the pop-ups, so I don’t know if they were ads or just some type of alerts, but either way, I didn’t like what I was seeing.

I hate pop-ups more than any other type of online advertising because they are just so obnoxious and intrusive. Look, I understand that websites that provide free access need to cover their expenses by selling advertising; heck, I even do it myself. But not pop-ups on a news page, please! When I’m trying to read an article about the current condition of the real estate market, the last thing I want is a pop-up interrupting me.

Has anyone else noticed these pop-ups on Yahoo news? Did you look at them? Are they ads, or what?