good for business..

I hate to admit it but the sagging economy has been good for business. First let me reiterate that my business is computers. Web gaming, free website hosting promotion, online advertising, freebies and web page design to be exact. Several things have happened that have steered people my way. First, and most importantly, the price of a computer has dropped considerably. Almost anyone can afford a $400 computer. The same computer 5 years ago would have cost around $2000. So computers are in more hands than ever. Especially younger kids that will click on anything without a 2nd thought. Computers are almost a requirement for school children now.

The next thing, unfortunately, is unemployment. More people are home from work and spending more time on the computer. The promise of "working from home" and earning a living is closer to reality for a lot of people. Even a majority of job hunting is done on the computer. While not job hunting, I would guess people are coming to my websites and playing games and building websites. And with the invention of Paypal, you can send and receive money very easily.

There is also a recent trend that without getting too technical, for advertisers to want to advertise on regular peoples' websites like your's and mine. The have a lot of money to pay for advertising space and are aggressive in contacting smaller site owning webmasters. It has to partially to do with Google downgrading the value of all the huge sites linking to each other to move up the list on a search engine search. To simplify; the playing field is even for small or huge webmasters to get listed near the top on a search engine.

To prove this, do a Google search for the term "build a free website". My site http://buildfree.org/ has been near the top for nearly a year. On the site you will see occasionally text ads from Google. These are "Google Adsense ads". You build a website, apply to Google to join the adsense program, then put the ads on your website. Whenever someone clicks on a Google ad, you make a few pennies. The trick is to get a lot of web traffic, in my case, it comes from the Google search from above. So Google sends me a ton of visitors, and then pays me to send them to their advertisers. God Bless Google. Add this to a few other campaigns, and you would be on your way to riches..

What makes this sad is, everyone I have ever tried to coach (in person) to try to make money online, has treated me like I am pushing some type of pyramid scheme. I will admit I am not the best teacher, but I always thought that if someone saw proof in black and white of what the potential is, they would persue it. I wish I would have met someone like me about 5 years ago to show me the ropes, it would have save me many headaches and tons of time and money.

Sites to use for reference: http://buildfree.org/, http://netearnings.org/, http://free-sites.org/, http://websitefreebies.net/, http://buildfree.net/, and http://free-templates.org/.

When It Rains..

Ok, I was feeling all high and mighty as a homeowner saving lives and all. My wife decided to run a load of laundry to test out the new and improved filler hoses. (Now remember the hoses (and drain) are behind the refridgerator, and the fridge is back in it's spot against the wall.) I was on the computer ans she said she thought she heard water running from behind the fridge, I got up and shined a flashlight back there and didn't see any drips so I felt confident it was her overactive imagination. I said I would shine the light back there at the next drain cycle. Sure enough, the washer drain was overflowing a bit. Most of the water was going down the drin pipe, but it was rising out the top and running down between the wall studs.

Our house is on a slab and the washer drain is a 2 inch copper pipe that was probably big enough in FREAKING 1958. Well 50 years later, it sucks and there isn't much we can do about it except keep the pipe squeaky clean with a plumber's snake. We generally have it snaked once or twice a year, but we are obviously overdue.

So I had a brilliant idea, pull the fridge back out and get 2 buckets and the next time the washer drained, take turns filling the buckets and dumping them in the sink. Whoda thunk a washer could drain 2 gallons of water faster than I could dump it in the sink. It wasn't too bad at first, but it just kept draining and draining, and with each bucket, about a quart of soapy water sloshed out onto the carpet - about 10 times. Not to mention the rapidly nervous dumping sink water mess. Bring out the shop vac again and turn on the fans and call the plumber. Did I mention I smacked my head on the kitchen cabinet? No stitches, but I saw stars for about an hour..

Yes, it could have been much worse if it had slowly leaked over a longer period, but I have had enough already. So along with the checklist from my last post, check your washer drain while I go get drunk.

Averting Disaster...

Well all the websites are back up with new hosts and everything seems to be back to normal. So I thought I would take a break from the computer and get caught up on some homeowner chores. I decided to vacuum out the dryer vent with the shop vac. It may not sound too exciting, but if you have ever had a dryer fire, (or want to avoid one), it is a necessary maintenance item. Well the dryer vent went fine, but while wiping down the back of the washer, I noticed one of the water filler hoses for the washer had a bulge in it about the size of a golf ball. It looked like if I touched it, it would burst. And to those of you who are not clear on the mechanics of a washing machine, when the hose bursts, the water flows and flows and flows and flows.

This happened to us once about 5 years ago when my wife called me at work and said the washer was overflowing and there was no way to turn it off. And our house was built in 1958, so to put a full size washer and dryer in, the water supply had to originate from behind the refrigerator. So while the water was running my wife could not move the refrigerator to get to the shutoff valves. I was miles away and couldn't leave, so by the time, she was able to find someone to shut it off, we had 2-3 inches of water in the family room. It took hours of shopvac and days with a fan to dry it up.

So to end this amazingly boring post, I want everyone to check their dryer vent and washing machine hoses right now. A bit of preventative maintenance may save you hundreds of dollars, or even your life...

Holy Crap..

My apologies for not posting for a couple days, but sometimes the life of a webmaster bites me in the butt. 14 out of my 20 websites disappeared off the internet without a trace. Luckily they were not my highest paying sites, but there are some paid advertisers that would be complaining if I did not do something fast. The sites that went off line were all hosted from a web hosting company that was offered to me free from a friend about 2 years ago (for the oldest site). I have had very little problems with them but there is no tech support to speak of. No there is no way to tell the status of an outage.

I have spent the last 2 days scurrying to set up new hosting accounts and getting the sites all back going. It takes 24-72 hours to get the domain names to resolve and then I had to hurry up and publish the entire site content. As of this post, all the sites are back up but 3.

Not only that, my quarterly taxes needed to be finalized and paid. So bear with me and with any luck, things will be back to normal soon.

Who's Responsible?

Now that the crude oil price is half of what it was when gasoline was $4.25, why isn't gas $2.12? I have heard every excuse in the book when gas prices were on the way up. First it was the istability of the European Front. Oh no, there might be a war in some country that I didn't even know was a country. Then it was hurricanes. Just the rumor of any hurricane (since Katrina) that may blow over a lawn chair in the gulf of Mexico sent gas up 15 cents. Then it was because of the US dollar being worth less. Then more hurricanes.

Well it seems to me that big corporations take turn profiting at my expense. I have figured out why gas is still expensive. It is the turn of insurance companies to make some profit. They took a big hit in Florida several years ago with the 4 hurricanes, then Katrina. And also the Mississippi flooding. So when gas is high, people drive less, so fewer car crashes. Hence, savings for the insurance companies. When more people are home because they can't afford to go anywhere, there are fewer burglaries because there are fewer unoccupied homes. Also burglars can't afford to just joyride around looking for houses to burgle. Not to mention arsons are down just because of the price of gas. So blame it on the insurance compainies this time.