Growing up, Earth day was just another day. Teachers usually lectured not to waste water and recycle cans. It was never really stressed and seemed very, well, unimportant. This year it’s been huge. It’s been Earth day all month long!

On The Earth Day Bandwagon

It seems tons of big companies have jumped on the Earth day (month) bandwagon and have tried to go green. Walmart, Vons/Safeway, and Kroger have all ran promotions and given out free reusable bags.

This year hasn’t focused on saving water or recycling, it’s been more of being eco-friendly all together. A huge focus has been to use less plastic bags. Plastic bags can take up to 1,000 years to degrade. I’ve just learned about this so there has to be many people who don’t know that. On my grocery shopping trip yesterday we got nearly 20 plastic bags. The sad thing was that they didn’t even fill up my reusable bag, I didn’t notice until I was at the car.

The other focus has been to reduce usage of plastic water bottles. I have tried to do my part and purchased a reusable bottle. I’m actually drinking out of it as I write this post! In this house we can usually go through a case of water in a week or two. That is way too much.

Earth day may just be another day, but it can make a difference. How have you gone green this month?

Every now and then I get negative comments on this blog or the social media articles that were submitted. Some users go a little too far. That’s why I put together Dealing with Negative Criticism of Your Blog. Now there is another way to deal with the criticism, to add to the list.

Cyber Creeps

This is an interesting idea where you can sort of “fight back” against Cyber Creeps. CyberCreeps is basically a social media voting site for those who have abused you on social media websites. When you find a “cyber creep” is include write about the incident and include their profile.

I can understand getting negative reviews or thumbs down, but some users go way too far.

CyberCreeps isn’t as active as I would like, but I decided to put up my “creeps” anyways.

My Submissions

I got two thumbs down for yesterdays article, Bloggers Guide to SEO. I wrote this for bloggers for all kinds and many have already found it useful.

Arleas wrote a comment stating, “Quit disguising blogs as marketing BS and then posting it under the heading of blogs. FU and your SEO BS.” Of course I cleaned up the language a bit.

Vote for him at CyberCreeps.

The other thumb down was by someone named Joe. His response to my SEO article was that it was a steaming pile of dog —-.

Vote for him at CyberCreeps.

Finally, the most disturbed of them all, ThungurKnifer. He left a crazy review of me and just about every other blogger on his profile. I can’t write here what was said about me, but you can see it at CyberCreeps.

Vote for him at CyberCreeps.

Who are your Cyber Creeps? 

I have been a NeverBlueAds affiliate for a few months now. I have earned just under $100 and have been generally happy with it. That was up until about a month ago.

My NeverBlueAds Experience

Neverblueads has a lot of freebie offers, which is perfect for my freebie blog. Getting conversions for certain offers has been nice. Most pay about $1.50.

I’ve promoted, referred, and encouraged people to join NeverblueAds. I’ve referred 14 members. We even had a huge contest with NeverBlueAds as the sponsor…

Where NeverBlueAds Went Wrong

The problems started when I referred someone to NeverblueAds, or so I thought. He started earning money (I was supposed to get 2%), but my referral earnings stayed the same. By the time we got it straightened out, he had made $400, which would of been $8 for me. They told me there was nothing they could do, no compensation.

Total lost $8

That was a little irritating, but it went on.

When I finally received my first check, what they were supposed to send was $2 off. After wasting an hour talking to my affiliate manager about it, they didn’t fix anything. She was supposed to email me why this happened, but never did. The extra $2 they didn’t pay me was from my affiliate earnings.

Total lost $10

Then maybe a week ago, my affiliate earnings were cut in half, resulting in me losing another $6. I emailed my affiliate manager with no luck. She wrote a long email basically saying nothing, never mentioning why my account was $6 less.

Total lost $16

Instead of NeverBlueAds handling it, my affiliate manager is no longer my affiliate manager. Usually when you log in, it says their name and picture. I currently have no one. How convenient, I wonder why? I’ve tried to be polite as I could, there isn’t a point in being rude. But really, enough is enough.

I’ve also referred people using my $2 referral link and never seen a dime from it. I was using two referral links together (one for $2 per referral, one for 2% of earnings). So if I referred 14 on the 2%, the other had to be close. That would of been about $20.

Total lost $36

Now $36 isn’t going to break my bank, but it’s significant enough. I was never offered any compensation to basically say, hey we are sorry let’s make it better. Any real effort at all would of made me happy. That they actually care.

Instead I have been ignored. I made sure to mention I haven’t even made $100 through them. I am by no means a big affiliate, but I should count regardless. I did refer someone who made them $100’s of dollars, shouldn’t that count for something? They got paid, he got paid, but being the referral, I got nothing.

I understand this is a long story and maybe some complaining, but I am very disappointed with how I was basically a lost voice. It may be that I don’t earn enough or that they don’t care. I took time to write this post so I was fair and not out of line. I didn’t want to write it still a little angry.

So, not only did this cost me approximately $36+ but also a lot of time disputing it. I don’t want to have to constantly watch my earnings, or make sure I am getting paid the correct amount. If you are going to alter my earnings, at least tell me, not ignore me.

I hope this is the last time I have to mention NeverBlueAds.

I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Valentines Day.

I know I don’t post many pictures of myself, but this is my girlfriend and I. She’s yelling at me for posting the picture of her, but I think she looks great, doesn’t she?

Anyway, it’s going to be a pretty laid back Valentines Day for us. We got to go out for dinner last night for a friends birthday party at PF Changs. Not the best place for a 21st birthday but we had fun nonetheless.

I didn’t have to run around today for a gift, I bought Emma a nice little purse she wanted. Lucky me, because it’s been nasty and raining all day here in San Diego.

We’ll probably stay in tonight, make some Salmon and Crab for dinner and enjoy our nice meal. I am the best cook in the house, so it’s always good!

What are your Valentines Day plans?

I have mentioned before my efforts to lose weight. Being a blogger isn’t the best job to have when you are bigger or getting big. There isn’t much physical activity involved. One week of working a “real” job that I was on my feet 9 hours a day, I lost weight easily.

I’ve mentioned trying the master cleanse diet which isn’t exactly the healthiest way to lose weight. It was hard to keep the pounds off as well. Due to the recent chaos and holidays my weight hasn’t exactly stayed down due to it all.

After I started messenging to Israel of Fat Man Unleashed he mentioned he was releasing an ebook for bloggers to lose weight. Just by mentioning that I was on board! His blog is basically about healthy weight loss so it made perfect sense to write the ebook.

Weightloss Ebook

Israel is the perfect one to write an ebook and share his experience. His blog is doing quite well with over 700 rss feed readers. So far he’s already lost 44 pounds!

The great thing about his ebook is that you can do whatever you want on it. There isn’t any specific time or order. The idea is just to set aside just a few minutes a day, whatever you can spare (15 minutes?).

The Workouts

What’s unique about these workouts are you are using the materials that surround you everyday. Your computer chair (or fart catcher as Israel says) is the focus of several routines, like chair squats. If you are like me you don’t have a full workout station at your disposal, so use what you have.

The technology game, puts values on how many phone calls and emails you receive. These values are given by pushups. So every time you get some work done, take a break and do some pushups! Even those who have a laptop there is a section just for you.

For more information about weightloss check out his blog. What he seems to enjoy most is being real with his readers. He doesn’t sugarcoat being “fat”. He tells it like it is and how he is going to change that and get to his ideal weight.

Take a look for yourself at Fat Man Unleashed and get his free ebook.

I originally posted my list at YoPress, but I thought it was kind of funny so I decided to share it here. Hope you enjoy, let me know if I missed anything.

10. Won’t be difficult to wake up with the kids in the morning

9. No unfriendly hangover to wake up to

8. Do you technically get any older if you sleep through it?

7. No need to wear those cheap hats and play the annoying whistles

6. Don’t have to worry about crowded places

5. You won’t freeze to death! It’s 30 degrees in San Diego!

4. You have a big day of drinking ahead of you!

3. No need for any new years resolutions

2. No annoying countdowns, like Tila Tequila on MTV

1. You don’t have to get stuck kissing the ugly girl at midnight again

Can you think of any other reasons to sleep through New Years and just skip it?

We all should know what time of year it is by now. The final days of decorations and Christmas lights. The final days of unnecessary holiday cheer and courtesy and kindness towards family members that we can only tolerate for a limited time. Excuse me if I come across as a Grinch but, whatever.

I personally can’t wait till its over. I can’t wait to get this huge obstructive Christmas Tree out of my living room. I can’t wait to take down these ultra bright shiny Christmas lights that keep me up every night because someone had the brilliant idea to put them right outside the bedroom window. I can’t wait to get on to the real festivities, NEW YEARS EVE!

New Years eve can all but make up for a crappy Christmas holiday and give a little redemptive quality to the overuse of the term, “Season’s Greetings!” New Years even can pick up and turn a bad year around 180 degrees or at the least erase from your memory those things about the preceding year you would rather forget. This year, however, I’m taking a different approach. I plan to make it through the New Year absolutely and positively sober. *Gasp

You may wonder what this is all about well allow me to tell you. I stumbled across a very informative blog post in my usual web travels and it changed my perspective on all things blog (especially all things intoxicating). No, it wasn’t a preachy expose talking about the ills of drinking and warm testimonials from “Those who have been there” but it was about the thing a lot of us do almost every day. I can clearly trace the masses of confused faces in my mind after that last statement so let me continue.

The single dot I stumbled upon in the net matrix is a quaint (simply meaning clean) little blog know as Copyblogger.com. At first I thought it was yet another one of those, “This is the way you blog” sites (Unlike the greatest of them all right here - Blog About Your Blog) but upon digging a little deeper beneath its digital surface I found an article that literally made me stand up out of my seat (Ok, it wasn’t that dramatic but you get my point.) The article talked about, not the ills of becoming physically intoxicated, but the ills and pitfalls of becoming INTOXICATED ON OUR OWN WORDS. Now this can either be taken at face value or you can look just a little deeper.

He talks about how writers have a special gift to make all who read their words become intoxicated and ready to buy whatever they want or even go as far as wearing a blue Santa hat on their head in June (Think the movie Perfume - If you haven’t seen get it at your local video store - lol - seriously). Writers who do this well will get their point across and retain the reader throughout the entire post. Writers who do this not so well will have their readers taking a detour after the first period. Its a delicate balance and the blog author Jonathan Morrow breaks it down exquisitely.

He gives tips on how to know if you’re drunk on your own words and how to redirect your time and energy if you realize that you are going to veer off that cliff. He breaks down all of the things that we bloggers do but points out some fine points that we may have never thought of. The blog post is called 7 Warning Signs That You’re Drunk on Your Own Words and tells exactly what the title suggests. I thought that it would be a perfect segue into the new year as all of us prepare for the night of festivities and reminiscing.

I’m gonna be sitting around sipping on a cool glass of ice and sprite laughing my head off at the others who did “a little bit too much”. In order for me to be this years designated driver I plan on bringing along printed out pages of my favorite BAYB posts and other blogs I frequent to fill in all of the dry spots. I plan on making it into the new year a calm and collected blogger (without exposing too much) and I plan on seeing you all here right after.

Be sure to give Mr. Morrow and his Copy Blogger Web site for more useful tips and articles (I promise that you won’t be disappointed). In closing, I hope everyone enjoys the rest of 2007 and transition gracefully into 2008 and remember…

BLOG RESPONSIBLY

Instead of trying to come up with a post, I’m going to take a personal approach today.

My computer has been terrible the past few weeks, so I took the plunge and wiped everything off of it. Of course, now, the internet won’t work. Wireless kicks my butt, I don’t know as much about it. I hope to be back up and running soon so I can get some more great posts for you all.

Now would be a great time to get some other authors blogging for us, if you are interested please contact me so I can get you set-up. Don’t forget our top 2 authors this month get 15$ each, so it’s worth a shot to get an article up.

Our Top 20 Contest Blogs list has been great, I want to thank everyone for posting about it already. The list is catching fire so please help us move it along. The post is on sphinn, but still hasn’t gone hot yet. We only need a few more votes.

The email subscribers contest is also doing well. We started off with only 14 subscribers one week ago, now that number is up to 66! I’d love to see that go to around 100, there is still about another week left. After this contest is over it looks like we have another sponsor for a 300$ contest! Just in time for Christmas.