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I blog about bacon, beards, travel, finance, fitness, beer and the projects I make.
Alaska Airlines announced today that they will be offering service to Hawaii starting this fall. If I use my second week of my timeshare and couple it with the current $150 one way plus taxes rate that i heard about this morning on the radio we might have another inexpensive vacation soon!
A comparison of paid blogging services
There are services popping up to try and pair bloggers with advertisers through a sponsored post. I have joined three of them; ReviewMe, PayPerPost, and SponsoredReviews.
ReviewMe allows advertisers to peruse blogs to request paid reviews. The blogs are scored by their Alexa rank, Technorati rank, and an estimated number of RSS readers. Alexa rank is detrermined by the number of visitors to your page that are using the Alexa toolbar with Internet Explorer. Sites that cater toward more internet savvy users are bound to have a lower Alexa score because geeks use Firefox predominantly. Zieak.com gets one star for Alexa and four stars for Technorati (a measure of other blogs linking to Zieak.com). I get no stars for RSS – perhaps because i do not display my RSS readers with a badge on my site – or because i only have 20 or so subscribers. Zieak.com has an overall rank of one out of five stars. As a result an advertiser needs only pay $40 to have a review done at Zieak.com. I would only receive half of that in payment. Bloggers can receive between $20 and $200 in payments for reviews. In the months that i have belonged to ReviewMe i have not had one request for a paid review from them. I do not display their banner because it is huge and ugly (in my opinion).
PayPerPost lets bloggers browse advertisers and request projects. They also use Alexa rank to determine the “tack rating” a blog receives. Zieak.com has a Google pagerank of four that coupled with the Alexa rank gives zieak.com three out of five tacks. They currently have 115 different opportunities paying between $5 and $12. I have never found an opportunity to be paid to review any product or website where i felt the payout was worth the requirement.
In addition, PayPerPost has a referral program, a banner to allow others to be paid to review your posts (and you get paid when they do), and now a direct way to deal with advertisers that seems to remove PayPerPost from skimming any potential profit from your review. I have had 10 people click on one of my “get paid to review this post” and one of the 10 is pending. If they complete the referral requirements i will receive $7.50.
SponsoredReviews also lets bloggers go through the advertisers. Advertisers then accept or reject offers. I have done one review and was paid $26 via Paypal for it. The range of advertisers and what they are willing to pay is substantial.
Overall, SponsoredReviews and PayPerPost are better options for the small-time blogger looking to add some revenue to their site. ReviewMe is geared toward the heavy hitters of the blogosphere.
On punching trees and carpal tunnel
Yesterday i mowed the lawn for the first time this year. I had to empty the bag that collects the clippings a few times and then restart the mower to resume. One of the times i was a little too close to a tree and the extra long starter cord allowed me to backhand the tree.
Lately i have been having some numbness in my hand and wrist. I ran my drill, planer, and power saws over much of the weekend. I drove in over 250 nails by hand putting up the fence. I never had any pain or numbness during or after all that manual work. Last night i was on the computer for no more than 45 minutes and my right hand went numb. This morning while eating cereal my hand went numb also. I have an appointment at the clinic tomorrow.
On Labor Day of last year i put fence posts in the ground for a privacy fence behind the house. Memorial Day i finished most of the fence. I used galvanized pipe for the posts. They are all a few feet in the ground and some have a bit of concrete around them. I rented the compressor and post driver from the city to put them in. That cost me $122.96.
Aside from the fence posts you can see the concrete “patio.” I started to put them in at the first house i owned (that feels strange to write) . You also can see the cedar shake on the carport.
I gave the fence a curve to maximize the use of the lot and the level ground.
In the background of the photo above you can see industrial equipment that is stored behind the house.
This is kind of the “back yard”. Yes, that’s part of a TV being stored under the deck. It might be time to abandon that project some day soon. 
Salvaging the wood from the deck
I have been salvaging some of the wood that i removed from our railings on the deck. It turns out that the 2×2 pieces are red cedar but they have been painted red and show some weathering. I have been removing the screws and then using my hand power planer to give them new life…
I plan on using the pieces to make the benches in the sauna (that i plan on making some day). I also think they would be great for making deck furniture out of.
The paperwork is signed. I bought 297 Mitkof Highway. Yeah – i have been living there for 2 years. Yeah – Cena owned it. But it was part of a series of hoops that we had to jump through to get Lux Boutique started up and to have Cena’s ex-boyfriend removed from the title and loan. Now Cena and i are both on the title and the loan is solely in my name. This will help immensely with my taxes for next year and it is encouraging for me to keep putting time and money into home improvements.
Last Sunday the weather was nice. I have a long lizst of things that need to be done inside but the weather was just too perfect to be inside. I decided to tear off the railing in the front of the house.
I plan on putting a facade on the posts to beef them up in appearance and then add a hand rail out of wood and meet the code requirements by running cable through the posts at a 4 inch spacing.
Another week, another benchmark…
Cena, Devren, Frank and i were on a trivia team together last Thursday night. We narrowly won (by having a comprehensive knowledge of the bosoms of the Valkyries) and i picked a hat donated by Lee’s Clothing. It is a black Castro Military Hat by The North Face. I like it enough that i think i should buy a few to keep in storage for when this one dies. Cena looks great wearing it too.
Last week Tim played Pictionary with Cena, Mary Gudgel and i. We were the only four that played so we won the prizes for first, second, and third place teams. We each left with a t-shirt (AKA rag), martini glass, and a free drink token.