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You should always get in the habit of trying to use methods that will gain traffic to your websites.  You Surf, They Surf, We all Surf, as this is what the internet is actually for, surfing for information.  While you are surfing though, wouldn’t it be nice to get some credit for doing that?  Instead of just doing it?  What a bonus, while you are browsing for various things, at the same time, you are accumulating credits that can be used to advertise your own websites!  This is actually a pretty clever idea.

There are many free traffic generation sources like this that are available for you to use.  You can utilize more than one, but some of them have it set up where they are in your web browser & it’s actually your start-up page when you first open your browser window (which is a great method).  You should be doing a little surfing each day to keep a constant flow of traffic going to your own sites.  With the traffic program in place, just set aside maybe 10 minutes (more if you’re able) every day and start surfing first thing when you log on.  No hassle, easy and quick, another simple method for free traffic going to your sites!  You Surf, They Surf, We all Surf!  But now WE benefit from it!

Here’s a fully automated traffic-generation system that can send 1000’s of targeted prospects to your website, every single day, for FREE!  It’s also my favorite one to use, and believe me, I’ve used a lot of the different plans available.  This one takes just 5 minutes to set it up, and it’s totally “viral.”  Check it out and create a free account today!  Get More Traffic.

Since we all tend to just not only spend our time developing, marketing & promoting our own web sites, but browse the internet for information on our other interests, why not self-serve yourself and gain a bit of a bonus via this free exposure method?  Surfing is part of why the web is out their, because people want info.  And if we are going to go looking around anyways, wouldn’t you rather get something for it, since you’re going to do it anyways?  I know I would!

You Surf, They Surf, We all Surf.  And now we can get thanked for doing so!  That’s just another tip for getting more exposure to your sites, and you know that every little bit helps.

My Siberian Husky is just loving it now that the snow has fell & the temps are well…. freezing!  I mean for us, at any rate.  These dogs love the cold.  He’ll come in the house for 10 minutes, I guess just to see what’s happening & to say hello, then he goes right back out again!

Of course, wiping him off everytime is kind of a pain, but it beats having the house soaking wet.  And us walking around the house in wet socks isn’t any fun either.  So he gets hand dried (actually toweled off) when he comes in.  It IS comical watching him do the shake dance after that!  Sometimes I wish I could figure out a way to get him to shake himself off - outside.  That’d be a good trick!

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Our rottweiler on the other hand, hates the cold.  She lays near the fireplace & soaks up the heat.  She does the exact opposite of the husky, she’ll go out for 10 minutes & stays inside most of the time during the winter.  Except of course when the UPS guy comes around, then she wants to go see him!  Or should I say, not really him, but his truck… she barks her head off at it!  Guess she doesn’t like diesel engines.

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The things we do for our pets….  it’s nuts here all day long on some days.  In/out, in/out, repeat.  But even with all the craziness that comes along with owning the Siberian Husky and the Rottweiler, I wouldn’t trade it for anything, they’re family now.  Since we didn’t want to have kids, they’ll do… of course, sometimes I think about the fact that kids eventually leave and do chores around the house, while with dogs, YOU have to do everything & then clean up after them!  Isn’t there a way to teach dogs how to do the dishes???  lol.  If so, please let me know!

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As you can probably tell, I like free stuff!  Free is always good, especially in todays economy.  Free Flower Seeds work great for beautifying the yard.  I don’t mind spending the time to plant flowers, bushes, plants or trees, when they don’t cost me anything.  Makes the yard look better, the wife likes them (well, most of them at any rate), and I suppose adds to the property value.  Not that that really matters, as I don’t see us moving anywhere else any time soon.

There are many places online where you can find free seeds.  One such place that I went to was the Birds and Blooms magazine website.  That’s a really great magazine with useful articles, gardening tips and more.  From their bulletin board website, I posted an ad looking for Free Flower Seeds.  Any kind I specified, I really wasn’t picky, just looking to get something new to put in the backyard.  Plus, we have one of those neighbors where we don’t really want anything to do with him, so I planted an entire row (about 100 feet long) along the bordering side, to serve as sort of a fence.  You see, out here in the country, it’s not like living in the city where the houses are close & you have actual metal or wood fences” dividing up the properties.  No, there’s no fences of any kind, just open land from one space to another.  Which is fine for the most part, as it lets the wildlife that can be found in the country available to roam around from place to place.

At any rate, I was surprised to find so many generous people at that website.  No strings attached.  I asked for free seeds, and was sent hundreds!  Thanks to all those nice people who sent me seeds, I have my 100 foot long border of flowers (ranging from 2 to 5 feet tall!) and various other spots where I placed the flowers.  Now you may be thinking, I didn’t specify what I wanted, so I got junky unwanted seeds, but no, what I got was an assortment of some really nice & cool looking plants!  Cosmos orange, cardinal vine, scarlet runner bean, moon flower & moon vine, ebony shoofly, morning glory, love in a mist, love lies bleeding, and lots more.  Some are annuals, but most were perennials.  I planted some of the annuals, but I figure if I’m going to spend the time working on planting something, I want more of a return than just one year!  So almost all of the perennials got planted.

The Free Flower Seeds may have been sent to me free, but this little venture of mine wasn’t entirely free.  You see, I got so many different types of flowers that I really never heard of before, so I went out and bought a few flower books so I knew what exactly they were, how tall they’d get, the planting environments, etc.  $40 later, I got educated on the subject matter.  Oh well, free isn’t always free, but at least it was a one time helpful expense, so the flowers got planted in the appropriate spots that they belonged so they can grow for a long time, hopefully.

I’m happy now, the wife likes the way things look, we mostly solved our bad neighbor problem (for now), and we’re even getting some exercise out of the deal, because every night after dinner, we walk around the yard looking at how they are growing!  Well, at least we did, now that it’s winter, we’re in hibernation as well….

Free Flower Seeds are very good if you’re into gardening, and free!  After this experience, I prefer flowers to vegetables, it’s much more gratifying and they grow a heck of a lot better in my dirt!

When you have your own websites, the one thing you must also have, is Free Traffic going to your websites.  Without it, no one will know that your websites are even there. 

There’s lots of ways to get Free Traffic, but one easy method that I have found is to sign up at one of those sites where they give you a small amount to initially get you into the door, hoping you will sign up, or purchase, their “bigger” offer.  Of course, you don’t have to actually buy the upsell, unless you feel it’s worth it.  But by joining the program they are offering, simply to get the initial Free Traffic, will get some exposure to your websites.  And if you continually sign up for these free programs, you get (even if minimally) the exposure to your websites that costs you nothing but a bit of your time.  Granted, this isn’t the only method that you should be employing to get traffic to your sites, and perhaps not the absolute best way either, but all of the things you do combined, is what makes the difference between people seeing what you have on the internet, or not.

Get 100 FREE Visitors to Your Website! is one such program that gives you a guaranteed 100 people seeing your website.  They also have a program set up (no cost to join, by the way), that if you advertise their service, they will give you 25 more free hits everytime you refer someone.  Not a bad arrangement for very little work.

For more programs such as the above, you can go to the search engines and find, I’m sure, thousands more.  Some cost to join, some don’t.  With so many different companies offering similar systems, I prefer to not have to pay for them.  Why should you?  Spend that same money you would have to pay to join, on something that will give you a better return on your investment!

Free Traffic really isn’t free, as you have to spend your time doing the work to get it, but at least it doesn’t actually cost you any money.  Plus, once you do the initial setting up of joining into the program, your work for that (one program) is done, and you could possibly continually get visitors to your websites for a long time after that.  At no additional cost, or time spent, to do so.   Now go sign up for more of these!  If you spend a day (or half a day) doing this, just once a week, week after week, you should have people coming to see what you have in no time!

When you live out in the country, you’ve got tons of things to do.  Work wise, that is.  Of course, to keep yourself from going nuts, you’ve also got to have some hobbies.  Mine is collecting die cast cars.  Not just any kind of cars like some people do, but just one vehicle in particular.  The best muscle car that the folks at GM created.  The Buick Division to be specific.  And that vehicle happens to be a Regal Grand National.

What awesome cars these were for being produced in the non-muscle car era of the 1980’s!  With just a 3.8 liter V6 engine, they were the fastest production cars that came out of the hair band decade!  Even quicker than a Corvette!  (hehe!)

Fast, black, sinister looking & in stealth mode.  No one would suspect that this granny looking car was capable of outperforming unsuspecting Mustangs, Camaros, and other so-noted “muscle cars.” Custom Buick

Comparably to other vehicles, not many Grand National die cast cars were made, but the ones that were made are incredible!  A company called GMP makes the best scale reproductions of this one.  Available in 1:18 and 1:24, they offer very realistic detail for something so small.  1:64 scale cars were made, but of course, with such a small size, you can’t expect that great of detail, but for us Buick collectors, they are a must have too!

One web site that I have found interesting collectables at is called simply Buick Grand National Collectables.  They offer diecast, buttons, stickers, and a bunch of other Turbo Regal items.  Speaking of Turbo Regals (which is what a Grand National is, a turbocharged Buick Regal), if you want to see pictures and get specific information about them, the Buick Turbo Regal website has A LOT of cool pics!  I didn’t know so many different colors were made and that website has photos of just about every single different one!  Can you tell I’m drooling here???

Collecting die cast cars of the Buick Grand National is a great investment for me, as I’ve found out that the prices of these items just keeps escalating in value!  And merchandise is getting harder & harder to find.  Most of the time, you can get it on ebay though!  ( Grand National items on Ebay )

Winter is here and it’s time to pull out the tractor so I can plow the driveway since there’s 3 inches of snow that fell last night.  Tractor plowing is actually not that bad, now that I have figured out “how” to plow with the tractor!

You see, I’ve never had, or used, a tractor before.  Heck, before we moved here, I’d never even ridden on a riding lawnmower!  (which we also have now).  The problem was, the plow is actually mounted backwards.  Meaning the curved part is facing away from the tractor, so, in effect, you are suppose to plow backwards!  At least that’s what I was told.  The first few times of plowing the driveway backwards wasn’t too bad… the drive got cleared… of course, so did all the pebbles that were lining the diveway!  (thats NOT good).  Eventually, I figured out its best to just plow forward, dragging the snow out of the way instead of plowing it out of the way. 

Now, everything is good.  Practice does make perfect!  Only takes me 20 minutes to tractor plow the drive, which is about the length of a football field.  Good thing I let my wife drive the 4×4 truck, so I don’t have to get up at 5 am!  Yeah, yeah, I know, the “farmers” get up early & do it, but I’m not a full fledged farmer…yet.  I prefer sleeping in!

Take The Internet Back is suppose to be an opportunity to own a piece of the next big internet company.

When you sign up, you get a $10.00 sign up bonus deposited into your account, free downloads of internet related items, and a contract assuring you of ownership.

To get paid out, you need a minimum of $20 in your account, and have to personally refer 2 people.  That’s not that hard to do, it’s just 2 people!

You earn money, well, actually they call it “points,” but points = money on their system, by reading emails.  You can specify how many emails you want to receive per day, 1 to 10.  The more emails you read, the more points you earn.

Eventually, in theory, you will get a percentage of what this company makes.  They have a “warchest” wherein they buy other companies, make certain investments, etc., and they share the revenue they get from these instruments with the members.

I’ve been a member with them for 6 months.  It’s going… I’m not getting rich off of this, yet…  but perhaps in the future, who knows?

This is just another program that you can join in on and perhaps strike it big sometime in the future… hopefully the near future!  It doesn’t require a lot of effort, and doesn’t cost anything to join.

The free downloads they offer, which is a lot, and they have a variety of subjects that have to do with internet marketing and the like, in my opinion, make joining worth it.

Check it out and make the decision based on what you think.  I thought the Take The Internet Back program was worthwhile to add to my arsenal of money making plans, although I haven’t really made that much from it yet.  Of course, it could be due to the fact that I don’t spend a lot of time with it either.

One of the things I’ve been testing for the past 6 months, is one of those get paid to read emails programs that you can join to make some extra money.  So did I make any money?  Well, yes, but, you have to read A LOT of emails to really make a decent amount.

If you have a lot of time on your hands, or are a parent working from home, this could generate some additional money for you.  Granted, it’s not a lot, usually averaging 3-5 cents per email, but if you stick with the program for a long time, it will pay off.  Just remember that you can’t fully rely on only a program like this, you should have other methods to make money as well.

My recommendations are if you join a Get Paid to read emails program, there is a section for you to state your interests.  I would check off ALL of the categories (your interests), so that you get the maximum amount of emails sent to you.  (the more emails you get, the more $ you make).

There are a variety of these types of programs out there, all you have to do is google “Get Paid to read emails” and you should have hundreds to choose from.  Good luck with this one & happy reading!

Well, I see it’s been like 6 months since I made my last post!  No time for blogging!  I guess other people have gone through this as well.  You get busy working on things with the other projects you have going on, and sometimes you forget to do some of the other things you were suppose to do (like make posts on a blog!).  Oops!

Oh well, I’m sure I’m not the only person with this dilemna.  But I have been busy with other internet related projects, and now that I am (mostly) finished with them, I can get back to this one.  Sure hope its not another 6 months before I make the next post!  No time for blogging isn’t really an excuse, but it is a valid explanation for a long lapse in posting new material.

I feel very fortunate to be able to work from home.  It’s a luxury at times, but at other times, you have to be able to keep yourself motivated, and not be distracted by the day to day occurences that can happen while you are at home working!

I’ve done the work for someone else thing (who hasn’t?), and then started a business with a partner, which is still going but now slow (economy in Michigan is bad!), but thankfully, I have found ways to generate income by working from home and implementing strategies to make money on the internet. 

Affiliate marketing, selling on Ebay, google adsense content sites, various other websites, and even some “get paid to read emails” and “take surveys for cash” programs are all worthwhile projects to use to make money from home.  Some work better than others, and some pay better than others, but by enabling ALL of these tactics and methods, it has enabled us to be able to keep a consistant income coming in.  And that, is the key to be able to work from home.  Some money from this source, a bit of income from that, etc.  Also known as multiple income streams.  The experts say that is what it takes to make it.

 Of course, you might think that it takes a bunch of time to be able to keep everything going.  That’s not necessarily true if you use your time wisely & schedule certain things to be done at a certain time.  Eventually down the line in future posts, I’ll give you some tips,  techniques & strategies that I have successfully implemented.  I’ll also let you in on the so called “secrets” that actually work, and the ones that don’t.  Hint for now:  don’t always believe what the “guru’s” are telling you!  They are salesman, too, and guess what they’re selling!??

You can work from home too, but you have to try, and if you don’t give up, you just might make it!   Til next time…..