August results are in. It was a steady month again. Most exciting was my first ever Google payment. I received a cheque in the mail for around $110 Canadian. I scanned it and did a posting on it called My First Google Payment Arrived.

I won't be always receiving cheques as I have now registered a bank account with Google to direct deposit future payments. It was nice to feel it in my hand the first time though.

Thoughts From My Life Traffic Stats for August

August's numbers and July's numbers are in brackets.

Traffic was very similar, but I did have slight increases, which I am glad for. Especially since it is the summer months when more people are all on holidays and such. I had good steady traffic throughout the month.

Thoughts From My Life Revenue

Overall, my earnings for August were $108.81.

• PayU2Blog: $70.00
• PayPerPost: $0.00
• Adsense: $24.12
• Kontera: $14.35
• Chitika: $0.34

My Adsense has really climbed back up and I am quite thankful for that. All traffic through my older articles as well. Proves the point that quality, search engine driven content can provide a steady passive income down the road.

PayU2Blog is my active income where I get paid US$5 per posting that I do. IT is a good source of cash flow as I get paid every 2 weeks, but it does require constant work as the assignments come out.

Blog Revenue Summary

This blog has officially been live for 10 months now. My expenses are $7/month and I paid $2 to register the name for the year. I have earned $577 in profit now and $467 of this I have been paid out, with the cash in my bank account. I don't even want to know the hourly wage I am being paid for this, but the blog is going and earning revenue, so that is all that counts.

Going forward, I am going to focus more on passive income this month. I have an idea for another section for this site that will target a popular keyword search on the internet and I want to write a few more articles that will come up in the Google search results. I'll fill you in as I finish them.

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Credit cards are often cited as being one of the great evils to your personal finance. This is for a good reason. For most people, they encourage you to purchase something now when you do not have the money and pay it off with interest over time. The unfortunate thing with credit cards is that the interest rate is quite high and 99% of the purchases are for items that will depreciate.

To get any benefit out of a credit card, you need to NEVER CARRY A BALANCE. Interest payments will kill you and outweight any financial perk the card has.

If you have control over spending habits, credit cards can be a great tool and even provide you with a few extra benefits.

• You do not need to carry as much cash and you do not have to write cheques (which are accepted in fewer places and can cost you).
• It is an easy organizational tool when most of your purchases are on one or two statements. It makes it very easy to see where your money is going and how often.
• The card's reward programs. These can save you money occasionally and give you a kind of "rebate" that you can use towards other items.

Reward Programs

This are a big market nowadays. Visa offers rental car insurance just by charging the booking to your visa card. When Canada 3000, an airline in Canada, went bankrupt a few years ago, Visa stepped up and reimbursed those individuals who had booked their travel on their Visa.

If you want to see some other articles comparing cards, then check out some of the following:

• Aeroplan Versus Air Miles - Comparing Them
• Collecting Air Miles and Their Value
• Collecting Aeroplan Points and Their Value
• Scotia Bank No Fee Money Back Visa Card Review

Even bigger are the many different reward systems on a credit card. If you consistently pay off your credit or you do not have a credit card, but think you can control yourself to pay it off regularly, then a rewards program may be right for you.

Start out with the most basic card being offered. There are Aeroplan, Air Miles, RBC points, and a variety of other programs. Basically, they work by giving you "points" every time you charge a certain amount of money to their card. Their hope is that you will not pay it off and they can charge interest on this "loaned" money. It is a huge industry.

The points you earn can be used for travel, merchandise, gift certificates, entertainment options, rental cars, hotels, and almost anything you can think of.

Let's put it this way: This is a free rebate program. Almost like insurance, where most of the people (paying interest on their credit card) are supporting few people (those without debt on their cards).

I am not talking a large amount of money, but it can add up to 1% or so and it can make a nice gift or buy you another gadget that you otherwise might not buy for yourself. Plus it feels fun to get some money back.

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Apple released their new line of iPods yesterday. Pretty impressive and a bit of a delay since there last major release of iPods over a year ago (unless you want to count the iPhone).

The problem is, I want a new one now. I can remember when I purchased my 30GB iPod Video. It was sleek and black and they were close to CA$400. I bought a used one on eBay for CA$300 plus shipping and thought I had a real deal. Even polished the scratches out of the screen with Brasso and a cloth. I knew this day would come though. I do feel bad for the iPhone owners. The price on the iPhone was dropped by $200 and it only came out a couple months ago. I can see why, the iPod Touch does not have the phone features, but it can do everything else and more.

Here is the breakdown.

iPod Touch

This is the next level of iPod for sure. It features a screen like the iPhone. It is touch controlled and can play video in widescreen format. Now they have added wi-fi and the Apple Safari web browser is installed so you can browse the internet.

There are 8GB and 16GB versions that come with flash drives so low power consumption will be a plus.

Prices start at CA$329 for the 8GB and CA$449 for the 16GB version. Check out the iPod Touch.

iPod Classic

This is the remake of my video iPod. They come with 80GB and 160GB versions now. They are still using a hard drive, but with that kind of storage, who cares? Apparently the interface has been re-jigged a bit and you can even browse through albums by their cover.

It is of course a bit thinner too. Check out the iPod Classic. Prices start at CA$279 for the 80GB and $399 for the 160GB.

iPod Nano

I would be tempted to pick one of these now. They are more of a square shape and can play video. The screen has been given a much higher resolution and they are still ultra thin (less then 7mm thick).

Starting at CA$169 and you can get it in 4GB and for CA$219 you can get the 8GB version. Check out the iPod Nano.

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I don't know if you have checked out Sclipo. It is a cool site where people post videos on how to do stuff. Basically show off your skills and provide help to someone else.

Anyhow, some guy has posted videos on the different kinds of tie knots. I don't know about you, but I where a tie fairly often and sometimes I end up with short ties or long ties and a different style of knot can make it easier to get the right length, depending on the tie.I prefer a big fat knot as well.

Here is one of his videos. The Windsor.

Besides The Winsor, there is also the Four In Hand and the Half Winsor.

Check out tie knot videos here.

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I got to try out wake surfing for the first time this weekend out on Tie Lake in British Columbia, Canada. Basically, you are on a short surfboard and you "surf" the wake behind the boat. You need a big wake so lots of people and a slow speed help to give it the right shape.

You start in the water by holding the tow rope and the boat starts slowly. You get your feet pressed solidly against the board (there is a grippy surface on the top), and when the boat speeds up you come right out on top of the water. You use the rope to get yourself in the right spot along the wake. Once you find your balance you can stay there and try to do tricks.

Here is a picture of a friend at the lake and I found this cool video on YouTube as well.

Wake Surfing At Tie Lake, British Columbia, Canada

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I had a spike last week on Wednesday for some reason. My traffic jumped from the 50 uniques/day that I have been getting recently to over 100. I don't know why, it is the same type of traffic I was getting before. People searching for Aeroplan and Nintendo DS homebrew information.

Anyhow, on Wednesday, I also earned close to $7 in Adsense. I know, $7 is small potatoes really, but I average less than $1/day during the month and have never gone over $3 in one day before. It only took around 4 clicks to do it. Maybe there were some very "clickable" ads showing up that day. Whatever it is, I hope it keeps up. The little extra boost might push me to a new record for the month with Adsense.

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Well, I decided to get back to my stock picking exercises on a more regular basis to see how it goes. Lately, I have been playing with the StockScores method. You can read more about it in my StockScores and Analyzing Stock Picks article. I have yet to get it to work consistently by the way, but I haven't given it a fair chance yet either.

On August 24th, 2007, I picked Polar Resources on the Venture Exchange here in Canada. (VLR is the symbol). You can read about my reasons in the Polar Resources article. Basically, it fit criteria that I thought were a good fit for the StockScores method. This would be good StockScores, good chart pattern, and unusual volatility.

Anyhow, I am sad to say that, as of August 30th, it halted trading. The news release on the TSX website stated it was because of pending news, but that has not come out yet.

So this is definitely the worst paper trade I have had so far with this method. A full loss at this point as I cannot even sell the stock. The only thing worse is if they actually went off the market. I will wait and see where it goes. If there is positive news, then things might be all good.

Where Did I Go Wrong?

As far as using the technical indicators, I think it was still a good pick. Stockscores does not look at the fundamentals, but if I had, I would have noticed it has a negative earnings-per-share right now. But because of the positive technical indicators, it suggested perhaps a positive announcement was coming out.

I'll revisit this stock in a couple weeks or when it goes back trading once the 2 weeks now, pending news comes out.

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I started using Kontera in February of 2007. It was one of the better decisions I have made. They have an advertising revenue program called ContentLink that creates links under certain key words in your web pages. When someone hovers over them with their mouse a little pop up is displayed and they click to go to the advertiser's site.

I added it merely as another revenue stream for my site. Now I'm not putting up John Chow's numbers, but it has been a bit of added revenue. I am at US$80 now and earning around US$15 a month. This is $15 more than I was doing a month anyways and it is all related to traffic. The more traffic I drive in, the more this number will go up.

They do have the $100 limit before they cut a check. I should receive my first payment from them in the next couple months.

If you are looking for another revenue source then go sign up. It is an easy way to add some revenue to any website.

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The Canadian dollar reached a new 30 year high yesterday. At one point it was trading at 96.63 cents to the American dollar. That is a far cry from the 62 cents we were trading at in November of 2001.

The difference in the past 6 years has been astounding. I know it has been nice when I convert my money over, but I can't even imagine the impact it must have on trading goods and services. I was working for a company located in Canada that was owned by a major company in the U.S. in 2001 and that was a big plus for us being up here. We were cheaper employees, not because of our skill level, but because our salaries and expenditures were in Canadian dollars.

I don't know if it is positive or negative, but it is definitely interesting times. If we do hit $1 (which it looks like we are going to), it will be something never seen by an entire generation of Canadians (including myself). It was only part of stories that our parents told when we were younger about their younger years.

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I am still trying to make money online with this site and it has been a good opportunity to do a bit of writing and just keep track of whatever is going on too. I have 3 passivemoney sources or blog revenue streams for this site right now. Google's Adsense, Kontera's ContentLink, and Chitika's ad program. My active money sources (I have to write a specific article to get paid) are PayU2Blog and PayPerPost (signup).

Adsense and ContentLink have paid out reasonable for my traffic (or so I think). The key with those passive advertising is that they don't require specific articles to be written. Just good quality content from the past and present to keep search engine traffic coming and intelligent ad placement to encourage them to see the ad and click. I'm looking at John Chow's site and he has dropped Adsense for this month because it does not make enough money. Wow. That is a bit crazy.

Anyhow, someone (who works for LinkWorth) posted a comment on my latest Kontera article (Kontera ContentLink - An Update) about LinkWorth. I went and signed up the other day and I am a little bit excited about the possibilities. They offer a wide variety of revenue sources. Their site states the offer...

text link ads, paid blog reviews, in-text links, in-content pay per click ads, rotating text ads, hosted content pages, article submission, directory submission and many more.

Sign Up For LinkWorth

Having link ads on my site is the next step I wanted to go to, but I have had a hard time getting them. I have my advertising link on the menu here, but I have had no takers. I have also tried Text Link Ads, but they have never approved this site as fitting their criteria. I do have Page Rank 2 pages and I get a couple hundred page views a day, but I guess that still isn't enough.

Anyhow, LinkWorth has approved this blog and I am in the process of setting up advertising. I am reviewing their options, pricing, and how I will fit it into my site without annoying anyone (including myself). Hopefully it works out well.

I am quite impressed with their site as well. It is very clean and well organized. There seems to be a lot of depth to it. I haven't explored the whole thing yet, but there is a lot to configure.

Another big plus is the minimum payout can be adjusted to as low as $25. For a smaller site like me this will be nice to see a little more real money quicker.

If anyone has used LinkWorth and can share their experience, please post a comment or send me a message through the Contact page. If you have some other blogging revenue sources to help me make money online with this site, post that too.

Sign Up For LinkWorth

Sign Up For Chitika

Sign Up For PayPerPost

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