Simon’s Notes

If you’re the kind of blogger that likes adding nifty little devices to your blog, then you might want to check out BlogSkinny’s new weather widget. If you’re a little confused right now and maybe you’re not sure what BlogSkinny is, have no fear. BlogSkinny is a great service to help generate some traffic to your blog. You register with them free of charge, then you submit your blog to their database and if you like you can submit your blog to all the directories on their database as well. I know it works because its working for me. And you can get your peers to vote for your blog, and the higher SkinnyScore you have the better your chances are of getting more traffic.

Anyway, their latest cool blog addition is their weather widget. This widget allows you to display the weather in real time. There’s only one snag as far as I can see, its only available in the USA, so that puts me out of luck since I’m based in South Africa. But if you’re living in the US I would suggest you have a look at it, there are two display options, the first one is pretty simple, only showing the temperature and location, whereas the second widget shows everything from the condition to the amount of rain.

Personally I’m not a big fan of crowding your blog with widgets, but if your blog is still quite empty, then the weather widget might be something interesting to look at.

Get your free weather widget and personalize your blog.

Simon

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Filed under: Blogging by Simon Rodrigues
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Simon’s Money Notes has finally earned me my first bit of paypal money. And now I’m not sure what to do with it. There is no doubt that the money will be put back into my online ventures so that they can grow and make me more money. But there is so much available that I don’t really know which would be the better option.

I’ve put together a simple list of different ideas, that require some capital investment, that I could use to help grow my online income. At the moment I’m in no hurry, because the amount of money that I’ve made is not anything that I can work with, so while I wait for my account to grow to 100 dollars at least, you guys can help me pick a plan.

• The obvious choice would be to purchase 1 or more reviews. While this might be the obvious option, I don’t believe its the best. With a budget of 100 dollars I have a choice to purchase 1 review from a highly ranked blog that gets a good amount of traffic, or buy a few reviews from some very lowly blogs. But unless I’m buying from John Chow himself, I don’t see this as a very good investment. I don’t need to pay 100 dollars for a bunch of mediocre links, and paying 100 dollars for 1 link seems like a waste to me, I could be wrong though. One evil way of doing things would be to contact the blogger directly to do the review for you and offer him half the price, this might not bother him as he would have to give half to ‘reviewme’ or ‘payperpost‘ anyway.
• I could buy some text links through text-link-ads. This might not be a bad idea, with 100 dollars I could buy a few links on some quality blogs, I’m thinking links on 3 blogs at 30 dollars per month each. On the other hand I think there are still much better ways.
• If I had a bit more money I could advertise with feedburner. I wouldn’t mind doing this, from what I understand they give you quite a lot of impressions for the amount you pay, but it varies. You have to have 300 dollars at least though for it to be really worth it.
• Buying some AdWords would definitely be an option except I don’t think they accept paypal.
• One of the things I am seriously considering is to buy some referrals for my adbux or bux.to accounts. I would probably opt for bux.to as they seem to be more on the ball than adbux, and for 95 dollars I can buy 100 referrals which could earn me a potential 5 dollars per day, which means that I would have made my 100 dollars back in the first month. Of course I don’t even know if these guys payout yet, since I haven’t reached the threshold, but a lot of people say that they do. The other problem is that there is no guarantee that my purchased referrals will be active.
• I could buy a review campaign. This would probably be better than buying individual reviews. I would get a bunch of one way links this way, but they wouldn’t really be quality links. From blogsvertise I could purchase reviews for as little as 4 dollars per review. So with 100 dollars at 5 dollars per review I could purchase 20 reviews. Not bad if you’re not picky.
• This one is my favorite. Once my account reaches 100 dollars, I’ll do a competition and give the 100 dollars away to the winner. I’m still not sure what the details of the competition will be, but it will generally be something like this. To qualify you have to do a review of my blog with one link to Simon’s Money Notes, and one link to the competition post, then when I have enough reviews (the exact number is still a little hazy, you guys help me decide), I’ll give the money away to whichever blogger I chose. But I’ll have to be fair to everyone, so for doing the review everyone will get a link on my blog for free.

If you have any other suggestions or ideas please let me know. Alternatively if you’d like to exchange links with this blog, or maybe exchange Technorati favorites, we can do that too.

Simon

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Filed under: Blogging, Make Money Online by Simon Rodrigues
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Getting on the phone for business is never an easy task. Actually for some people it is, but for most its not, especially if you’re a newbie to the world of business. There are a lot of very stressed out and nasty people out there, and there are other people that are just plain annoying. But if you can get used to and follow a few simple habits and guidelines you might find that your phone experiences will improve.

I’ve put together a few pointers that I use when I’m on the phone. This is in no way an exhaustive list, but if it helps you a little, then I’m happy.

• Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. Always be polite, you receive what you give, so don’t expect people to treat you with respect if you don’t treat others with respect. If you’re feeling frustrated, resist the urge to snap, it’ll only make things worse.
• Identify yourself immediately. I’ve sometimes answered the phone with a ‘hello, who’s this?’, this is the wrong way to go about it. The right way would be ‘Hello, this is Simon speaking, how can I help you?’
• Don’t drag out your phone calls. This is fine for personal calls, but in the business world we are all very busy, so be alert and only say what is necessary, leave all the details for an e-mail or fax.
• Always get people’s details such as name and number. I can’t tell you exactly why this is necessary but I can tell you that I have often regretted not doing it, so take that extra minute to get their name and number.
• Unless you have a very legitimate reason to apologize, don’t do it. I’ve seen some people on the phone that spend more time apologizing than doing business. They apologize for the call, the weather, the soccer score, and everything else short of being alive (although some apologize for this too). Apologizing is not cool, and it won’t make the other guy like you better.
• Try not to stutter and umm. If necessary, write out your call and practice it a little beforehand, eventually you will get better at making them.

If you don’t think you can start developing these habits, then please get a secretary, you might see your business results improve dramatically.

Simon

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Filed under: Money and Finances by Simon Rodrigues
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