Vancouver Canada

When you write  a post or a page you can add categories and tags to the story. I often thought, well what’s the difference.

Most sites will only have a few categories. These are the major sections of your site. If you think of your site as a supermarket, categories are the aisle labels. Categories are the major topics that you talk about on your site.

Tags are much more ephemeral. I might write a story about Michael Jackson on tour in Vancouver. The category would be music. The tag could be Michael Jackson.

Even though I must have cycled or walked by this cafe a 100 times over the last 5 years. This was my first visit to this cafe set in the lobby of the French Cultural Centre on 7th Avenue. I always thought it must be very expensive with aloof staff. My friend invited me for lunch and said they only accept cash, I took out $40 from the bank hoping it would be enough.

To my surprise the cafe is a cozy, engaging place with a varied intriguing menu, a friendly smiling waitress and reasonable prices. We ordered a large dish of mussels as an appetizer which was plenty for two people. It came with warm bread and a huge plate of crispy fries. The mussels were perfect with lots of creamy broth in the All for $12. That could have been filling enough for lunch.

After looking at the prices though, I decided to splurge on the scallops. They came with rice and a seasonal green salad. The scallops didn’t have much flavor compared to the wonderful mussels.

My portion of this excellent meal with tip came to $24.

I enjoyed the ambience and the food. I’ll definitely be back.

Salade de Fruits Cafe

1551 West 7th Avenue, Vancouver
Tel: 604-714-5987
Fax: 604-714-5938

As I cruise the internet looking at different websites, I often wonder how much money people are honestly making from their blogging with Google adsense. Now that I’ve been using adsense for about 6 months I can share my own results.

The first 2 months I made a total of about $10 from adsense with 4 sites. Hosting the sites at vpsville.com cost $15/month. So basically, I was in the hole about $20 after spending most my free time setting up the sites and writing posts. I was really disappointed. And just about ready to take the sites down and give up. But I thought I’d leave the sites up and see what happens. So basically I didn’t do anything on the sites for 4 months. I expected traffic to dry up and only make a few cents more revenue.

But it didn’t. Over the next 4 months, the sites continued to make adsense revenue. Or at least one site did. This site made $3 in July, 2008 and $5 in August 2008. Basically I earned $10 without any additional work. The seed work in the first 2 months continues to pay off each month. I imagine I’ll continue to earn $3 - $5 on this site based on the posts that I wrote in the first couple of months.

What’s the bottom line six months iinto my “pro blogging” experiment I’ve spent about 40 hours on developing the content, $90 on hostng and earned $20 in adsense revenue. So I’m in the hole about $70.

What tips can I give other aspiring bloggers?

1. Keep your costs down. The only expense with blogging is the hosting cost. Choose a cheap but reliable hosting company. The virtual private server that I’m paying for at VPSville is more than what I need. This month I’ll move the sites to Dreamhost. I’ve heard lots of good thins about them.

2. Concentrate on quality over quantity. 3 of the 4 sites I created are getting very little traffic because the material is not really that engaging or useful. A few well written posts will bring in more traffic and revenue than 10 copycat stories.

3.

Keepin

starting my experiment I’ve spent $90 on hosting and made $20.

Sometimes it’s hard not to get frustrated and want to throw the monitor out the dining room window - for example last night when all the sites went down and II couldn’t even log into the server. Somehow I feel more isolated from my wife and friends. While my wife’s talking, my mind drifts off to Ubuntu Linux land.

Getting away from the computer is like going through withdrawal.

Realistically, an hour of work should generate about $25 - $30. Can an amateur blogging for an hour a day earn that kind of money? I’d love to hear from others about what kind of return they are seeing from their blogs.

Time for me to take a break and cycle out to Jericho Sailing Club. Otherwaise I’ll end up using up this whole beautiful morning blogging instead of getting out and enjoying the day and people around me.

Here are two tips from a reader for making the most of selling on craigslist. Stephen writes:

A lot of people offer free stoves, stackable washer/dryers, and other large appliances simply because they don’t want to move them. If you watch, you’ll notice these from time-to-time in your neighborhood. These can be resold for around $100 to $150 on Craigslist the next day.

Also, if you have something you just want gone, post it in the free section but add “or highest bidder”. We’ve found that people will offer payment for an item we just wanted gone.  We had a very large shed in our backyard we just wanted to get rid of, and when a guy said “I’ll give you 100 for it” we bumped him 20 spaces and said come get it.  He did, that day.