Puteri’s World

Last night I signed up with two more paid posts outfits. One, Blogvertise, does not specify whether I can submit more than one blog, so I submitted Puteri’s Musings. That blog was accepted in less than 24 hours. I submitted my first task for them this morning.

For the other outfit, Bloggerwave, I submitted three blogs, including this blog. I was very happy when I opened my email this morning and there were three notifications from them telling me all three blogs have been accepted.

What make these two outfits different from PayPerPost is that both will accept blogs that are less than three months old. I have three blogs that are less than a month old and all three blogs have been accepted. My blogs may be new but there are several posts in each of them so that could be a reason why they got accepted quite quickly.

If you are interested in doing paid posts, but think your blog does not qualify, check out these two outfits! If your blog has very few posts, then you better start writing and updating your blog more regularly so you can submit your blog too. It is fun to be able to make some money out of blogging! :*

How many times have you received chain e-mail in your mailbox? There’s one particular relative that loves to forward one of those chain letters to me. You know what kinds those are. The ones that warn you about bad luck befalling those who did not forward those chain letters, and those who did, how lucky they had been.

Whenever I get those, I just delete them from my mailbox. But there are other kinds that gets around on the internet. Things about health alert, about attacks on women in car parks, about tainted products an so on.

The most recent e-mail I received was about how Glade Plug-in Air Freshener posed a fire hazard. I was a bit doubtful with that story because if it was true, there would have been a massive recall of the product by S.C. Johnson, the manufacturer of the product.

When I get such email that looks suspiciously like an internet hoax or rumor, I would immediately check the authenticity of the of the email with sites like snopes.com or urbanlegends. about.com

What about pictures or photos purportedly showing an incident or scene like the frog in the salad bag? A Malaysian blogger wrote about it and invited her readers to write what they would do with the frog, with a back link to her blog. She even offered prizes to the person who wrote the most interesting post about what they would do with the frog. According to Urban Legends he has written to the salad packing company and is still awaiting their reply.

What about the one showing the ghost under a hospital bed? I received that one too! I deleted it immediately and I did not want to know if it was true or not. Actually the picture was taken from the DVD cover of a Thai horror film!

Next time you receive a letter or a picture in your mailbox, check either with snopes or urbanlegends for the veracity of the claims in the letter.

Take the UrbanLegends Image Quiz. I got 41 out of 55 correct - 75% score.

Fellins Gifts and Jewelry is giving away your choice of a man’s watch or a lady’s watch worth $195 to the blogger who wins their September Giveaway Contest.

Don’t forget to check out Fellins’ fine collection of college graduation gifts like a personalized glass photo frame or a personalized desk clock for the graduate in your life. These gifts will be treasured by the graduate in your life for years to come.

I have never dieted and, except for the gestational diabetes during my pregnancy, I have never had to watch what I eat.

I was therefore intrigued to find out about a 3-day diet. What is it? I guess I am as curious as those people who made “3-day diet” the top 10 Yahoo searches for today.

According to WebMd, the 3-day diet is a fad diet that had its beginnings in 1985. The diet promises quick weight loss, cleansing, lower cholesterol, and increased energy.

You can read in detail what is entailed in the 3-day diet here, and what a nutritionist has to say about it effectiveness. According to the nutritionist the 3 -day diet, “sets up a vicious cycle of being hungry during the restrictive three days and most likely overeating on the off days.”

If you want to go on a diet, choose a well-balanced diet plan that controls calories every day, includes exercise, and allows a wide variety of healthy foods. One of my neighbors went on the South Beach Diet, and it has worked really well for her. I can’t believe how slim is she now!

I came across 5 Minutes for Mom while blog hopping. 5 Minutes for Mom is holding a contest sponsored by Best Buy where you have the opportunity to win a 37″ Flat-Panel LCD HDTV. I sure won’t mind winning this large screen TV!

Last year I bought a buckwheat hull pillow from Amazon. Buckwheat hull pillows are popular among the Japanese. When I bought the pillow it was in hopes that I would get a better night’s sleep and not wake up with a stiff neck or a headache in the morning.

The buckwheat hull pillow took quite an adjusting to because it is a little hard and it rustles a lot. It worked for me for quite a while but lately I seem to wake up with a stiff upper back and shoulders.

Two days ago, my husband bought me a pillow by Sleep Innovations that has memory foam on one side and micro-fiber on the other side. It sort of feel comfortable but I think it is a little too thick for me. I still woke up with a headache this morning.

I also have a latex pillow, brought from Malaysia. I remember how comfortable those latex pillows were but the one I bought doesn’t seem to quite do the job. It just felt too stiff. Rubber is supposed to be springy, but it could be the particular pillow I have. I did not buy the most expensive one they had at the store.

One aspect to all this body aches, and headaches upon waking up that I haven’t really considered is that it could be physiological. Arthritis? Osteoporosis? Hope not!

I haven’t made much money from the Google AdSense ads placed on my blogs. Well, not yet anyway. One day as I checked the day’s earnings I was pleasantly surprised to have made a total of $1.98 from three clicks whereas the day before I only made $0.25 from three clicks. How did that happen?

Today I read what expensive and inexpensive keywords mean when it comes to advertising on the internet. Apparently some words have more value than others. This has got to do with the number of times these words, called keywords, are used during search engine searches. For example, the keyword “paint” is approximately worth 19 cents while the keyworkd “painting” is approximately worth 45 cents. Throw in “home re-modeling” and those words cost approximately $1.70.

I must have used a keyword that attracted an AdSense ad that had high keyword value. And that led to my $1.98 earnings for 3 clicks that day.

Now, what I need to do is figure out what the high value keywords are, and somehow fill my blog with such quality content so as to attract high value ads on my Google AdSense. That is not enough of course. There has to be enough people visiting my blog and hopefully many of them will click and follow the ad links on my blog. Yeah, if only it was that easy!

The location of the AdSense ad is also important. I have seen targeted ads placed within the content of a post. I tried doing that, to test the effectiveness of such placement, but so far the kinds of links that show up are those that had to do with earlier entries!

There is such a thing called channels in my AdSense account. I never figured what that was all about until I read this kid’s site. For more effective tracking of the ads on my blogs I should know which ads had the better CTR. Were they those placed on the left sidebar, or the right sidebar, or the top banner, those within the post, or the ones at the bottom of the post? The ones placed within a post can be quite tricky, because Google does not like their ads to be confused with the content. Moreover there is the possiblity of accidental clicking.

Anyway, there is still a lot that I need to learn about maximizing Google Adsense on my blogs. For now, I need to get this new blog established enough to where it can attract readers who will come back for more.

I have never been particularly fond of Italian cooking. In fact I can count with one hand the number of times I have eaten at an Italian restaurant this past year, and I still have fingers to spare! All that cheese and tomatoes! I am lactose intolerant, and that is one reason why I avoid food with cheeses, also I have and acid stomach. Imagine what eating food with lots of cheese and tomotoes will do to my stomach!

But still I have to add variety to my home cooking. To be honest, I am bored with the dishes that I have cooked up in recent months. I wished I was rich enough to hire a private chef to prepare my meals, or better yet been married to a husband who knows some gourmet cooking!

Anyway, last Wednesday, I cooked spaghetti for dinner. It has been a long while since I last cooked spaghetti. This time I tried Ragu pasta sauce with lots of chunky mushrooms in it. I also bought some grated parmesan cheese and some 4% fat ground beef. I was surprised how good everything tasted! That is why I made spaghetti again for dinner last Sunday. Doug had no complains because he loved spaghetti and brought some left-overs to work this morning. Best of all, my stomach was only slightly bothered by the meal!

Today has been a day of triumph of sorts for Duncan. He went, for the first time, to school without wearing his training pants.

Yesterday was the test day for him. He refused to wear his training pants and insisted on wearing his briefs. Ok, I said, just remember to go the bathroom whenever you feel you have to. I had to help him along by reminding him and taking him to the bathroom every few hours. He did great!

This morning as I dressed him for school, he himself told me that he was going to wear his briefs, not his training pants. When we got to school, I told his teacher that he was wearing his briefs and wanted her to remind him to go to the bathroom.

When I picked him up at the end of the day, I noticed that he was still wearing the pair of shorts he had at the beginning of the day. Woohoo, he managed to stay dry all day! I guess my baby has reached an important milestone in his life. I heaped praises on him as we drove all the way home. “Thank you, Mommy.” I was one proud mommy! I can still remember how concerned I was when he still wasn’t potty-trained at 3!

I took him to the bathroom as soon as we reached home, just to make sure that after the success of the day, he did not regress to his wetting the training pants days!

How would you like to own an eco-friendly laptop briefcase from Eco-Hanbags? You could stand a chance to win it if you enter a contest run by Blog About Your Blog. The laptop briefcase is eco-friendly because it is made out of recycled products. The recycled products used by Eco-Handbags are sweaters, movie billboards, carpet, soda pop tops, and even cigar boxes.  Of course they also use all kinds of other re-cycled products for their handbags.

It is amazing how good looking a handbag made out of re-cylced products can look!