Monday, December 15, 2008

Web Site Ad Space Selling


"Promote your web site with high pagerank one way text link advertisements. You can buy or sell text link advertisements at LinkAdage Auctions - an online auction site that is built to help you find the links or link buyers you need."

But I think that it's worth emphasizing that you can - today - start selling ad space on your site and even purchase low-cost links on other sites.
For the most part, LinkAdage is focused on people who are into pagerank,so if you have a site that has a PR0 and a fair bit of traffic, you'll have a harder time selling ad space than if you have a PR5 and almost zero traffic.

Pleasantly, LinkAdage also has an affiliate program that you can sign up for, through an affiliate management company called shareasale.com. But the easiest way to sign up is to go to LinkAdage then click on the "Affiliate Program" choice on the LinkAdage Info menu along the top.

I can't really share specific ad sales figures with you, but if you check out my Casino Books Web site, all of the adverts in the right-side box were sold through LinkAdage, and they are all sold for a three-month period with no guarantee of any clicks or traffic. Just pagerank.

So if you have a nice Web site, have good pagerank, and would like to explore the possibility of selling your own ad space without having to fuss with finding buyers, LinkAdage could be an excellent solution for you.

Making Use Of Hobbies To Earn Money


Many people have hobbies. Retirees and housewives often have hobbies to help keep them occupied during moments of relaxation or boredom. But not many people realize that you can make money from most hobbies. By taking your hobbies and turning them into cash at flea markets and swap meets, you can easily earn a modest income while having fun. Crocheting is one of the highest paying hobbies.

Crochet thread is often inexpensive while still being durable, washable, and delicate in appearance. Crocheted table cloths, curtains, and bedspreads can be completed within a month by most experts in the craft, and can be sold for hundreds of dollars depending on size and pattern. Other home decoration hobbies like wreath making, basket weaving, or wood working can also be turned into easy income.

Quilting is also a great hobby to make money from. Since fewer and fewer people know how to quilt, a hand made quilt is hard to come by, and therefore valuable. You can often make at least a fifty percent profit on your completed quilts. Baby quilts are also very popular. Sewing and knitting of any kind can be very profitable hobbies. Knit sweaters, baby hats, booties, mittens, and other items can be big sellers at flea markets and swap meets. Clothing items can also be sold at these locations very easily.

Well made home sewn clothing is often stronger than the cheap clothes that you can get at the local department store, but can be sold for the same price or less while still earning the seamstress quite a bit of money. Wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, and prom dresses can be huge income earners for the expert seamstress.

One of the best hobbies to make money from is gift baskets. Decorating jars and other containers using appliqué, ribbons, and paint can be combined with the creative mixture of perfumes, bath oils, and bubble baths to make very pretty, country style gift baskets. These bath baskets are great for gifts all season round, including mother’s day, birthdays, and Christmas, making them a very profitable hobby.

Gardening is also one of the more profitable hobbies. If you like to garden but don’t really need everything you plant, you can take the left over to a farmer’s market. You can also simply set up a stand on the side of the road in some communities. Fresh produce is a great commodity, and can earn you a hefty income in the spring.

Mechanical Engineering

Mechanical Engineering is an engineering discipline that involves the application of principles of physics for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. Mechanical engineering is one of the broadest engineering disciplines.

It requires a solid understanding of core concepts including mechanics, kinematics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and energy. Mechanical engineers use the core principles as well as other knowledge in the field to design and analyze motor vehicles, aircraft, heating and cooling systems, watercraft, manufacturing plants, industrial equipment and machinery, robotics, medical devices and more.


Degrees in mechanical engineering are offered at universities worldwide. In China, India, and North America, mechanical engineering programs typically take four to five years and result in a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc), Bachelor of Technology , Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng), or Bachelor of Applied Science (B.A.Sc) degree, in or with emphasis in mechanical engineering. In Spain, Portugal and most of South America, where neither BSc nor BTech programs have been adopted, the formal name for the degree is "Mechanical Engineer", and the course work is based on five or six years of training.

In the U.S., most undergraduate mechanical engineering programs are accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) to ensure similar course requirements and standards among universities. The ABET web site lists 276 accredited mechanical engineering programs as of June 19, 2006. Mechanical engineering programs in Canada are accredited by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB), and most other countries offering engineering degrees have similar accreditation societies.

Some mechanical engineers go on to pursue a postgraduate degree such as a Master of Engineering, Master of Science, Master of Engineering Management (MEng.Mgt or MEM), a Doctor of Philosophy in engineering (EngD, PhD) or an engineer's degree. The master's and engineer's degrees may or may not include research. The Doctor of Philosophy includes a significant research component and is often viewed as the entry point to academia.

The total number of engineers employed in the U.S. in 2004 was roughly 1.4 million. Of these, 226,000 were mechanical engineers (15.6%), second only to civil engineers in size at 237,000 (16.4%). The total number of mechanical engineering jobs in 2004 was projected to grow 9% to 17%, with average starting salaries being $50,236 with a bachelor's degree, $59,880 with a master's degree, and $68,299 with a doctorate degree.

This places mechanical engineering at 8th of 14 among engineering bachelors degrees, 4th of 11 among masters degrees, and 6th of 7 among doctorate degrees in average annual salary. The median annual income of mechanical engineers in the U.S. workforce is roughly $63,000. This number is highest when working for the government ($72,500), and lowest when doing general purpose machinery manufacturing in the private sector ($55,850).

Hospitality Service

The concept of Hospitality Services, also known as “accommodation sharing”, “hospitality exchange” and “home stay networks”, refers to centrally organized social networks of individuals who trade accommodation without monetary exchange. While this concept could also include house swapping or even time share plans, it has come to be associated mostly with travelers and tourists staying with one another free of charge. Since the 1990s, these services have increasingly moved away from using printed catalogs and the telephone, to connecting users via the internet.

In essence, these systems employ reciprocity – users gain access to other users’ information only by posting their own. Required fields normally include name and contact information, though newer services encourage users to include more detailed personal material, including likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams, and even photographs. Of course, more information included tends to improve the chances that someone will find them trustworthy enough to host or stay with while traveling. It is very much akin to social networking sites.

Staying in private homes means that travelers can save lots of money on accommodation that they would usually be spending on hotels or hostels. Used over a long period of time, this strategy can cut overall travel budgets in half, or even more combined with hitchhiking. These savings can then be passed on towards more generously patronizing local establishments or simply staying abroad for longer periods of time.

Travel Agency

A travel agency is a retail business, that sells travel related products and services, particularly package tours, to customers, on behalf of suppliers, such as airlines, car rentals, cruise lines, hotels, railways, sightseeing tours and tour operators. In addition to dealing with ordinary tourists, most travel agencies have a separate department devoted to making travel arrangements for business travelers and some travel agencies specialize in commercial and business travel only. There are also travel agencies that serve as general sales agents for foreign travel companies, allowing them to have offices in countries other than where their headquarters are located.

As the name implies, a travel agency's main function is to act as an agent, that is to say, selling travel products and services on behalf of a supplier. Consequently, unlike other retail businesses, they do not keep a stock in hand. A package holiday or a ticket is not purchased from a supplier unless a customer requests that purchase. The holiday or ticket is supplied to them at a discount. The profit is therefore the difference between the advertised price which the customer pays and the discounted price at which it is supplied to the agent. This is known as the commission. A British travel agent would consider a 10-12% commission as a good arrangement.

A travel agent is supposed to offer impartial travel advice to the customer. However, this function almost disappeared with the mass-market package holiday and some agency chains seemed to develop a 'holiday supermarket' concept, in which customers choose their holiday from brochures on racks and then book it from a counter. Again, a variety of social and economic changes have now contrived to bring this aspect to the fore once more, particularly with the advent of multiple no-frills airlines.

Independent Agencies usually cater to a special or niche market, such as the needs of residents in an upmarket commuter town or suburb or a particular group interested in a similar activity, such as sporting events, like football, golf or tennis.

There are two approaches of travel agencies. One is the traditional, multi-destination, out-bound travel agency, based in the originating location of the traveler and the other is the destination focused, in-bound travel agency, that is based in the destination and delivers an expertise on that location. At present, the former is usually a larger operator like Thomas Cook, while the latter is often a smaller, independent operator

Book Packaging Business

Book-packaging is a publishing activity in which a publishing company outsources the myriad tasks involved in putting together a book—writing, researching, editing, illustrating, and even printing—to an outside company called a book-packaging company. Once the book-packaging company has produced the book, they then sell it to the final publishing company.

In this arrangement, the book-packaging company acts as a liaison between a publishing company and the writers, researchers, editors, and printers that design and produce the book. Book packagers thus blend the roles of agent, editor, and publisher. Book-packaging is common in the genre fiction market, particularly for books aimed at pre-teens and teenagers, and in the illustrated non-fiction co-edition market.

Publishing companies use the services of book-packaging companies in cases where the publishing company does not have the in-house resources to handle a project. There are two main reasons that publishing houses hire a book-packaging company: labor-intensive books like books with many illustrations or photographs, books which require coordinating the input of several authors, or 'novelty' books, such as gardening books that contain seed packages and series books.

In many cases, the book is first conceived as a marketing concept, and a writer is then hired to write the book on a work for hire basis. In some cases, book packaging companies use a celebrity with a very marketable name as the credited author, while using a professional ghostwriter to do most of the writing, researching, and editing.

Book-packaging is a common strategy between smaller publishers in different territorial markets where the company that first buys the intellectual property rights, sells a package to other publishers and gains an immediate return on capital invested. Indeed, the first publisher will often print sufficient copies for all territories and thereby obtain the maximum quantity discounts on the print run for all.

Antiques Restoration

Antiques restoration refers to either the practice of "restoration"- restoring an antique or work of art to a like-new condition (or what might be perceived by a viewer or potential buyer as like-new), or "conservation"- the practice of preserving an antique or work of art against further deterioration.

Restoration can be as simple as light cleaning to remove disfiguring dirt or grime, such as on the surface of a painting, or it may include near complete rebuilding or replacement, as might be the case with old automobiles or furniture.

Often done in preparation for sale, or by an collector upon acquiring a new piece, the main goal of restoration is to "restore" the original appearance or functionality of a piece. There is a lot of difference between restoring and repairing.

You may achieve functionality with a repair, but restoring an item properly is an art-form. Finishes might/may be stripped and redone, but it is essential that the original patination is retained, if possible. Stripping is only done as a last resort, especially with antique furniture. Engines might be rebuilt with new parts as necessary, or holes in a silver pot might/may be patched.

While some of these practices are frowned on by many museums, scholars, and other experts, for many people there is little value in an antique that is unusable or not able to be displayed. Poor restoration is the bane of a trained restorer. Working on someone else's bad repair is the worst possible situation. Often with antique restoration, there are also other issues as well. For example, some collectors value "patina", or also want an item to still reflect an aesthetic that shows its age- in this respect, an "over restored" item can actually take away from its value than if nothing has been done to the item at all. Therefore, restoration should always be left to professionals who are sensitive to all of the issues- insuring that a piece retains or increases its value after

Restorers are often trained craftsperson's, such as furniture makers, mechanics, or metalsmiths. Some have years of experience in their fields, whereas others are self-taught volunteers. Many of the antique aircraft around the United States are restored by trained aircraft engineers assisted by volunteers, some of whom are men who flew those same aircraft years ago.

"French Polishing" was the industry standard in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries, pushed aside by the efficient advantage of modern methods in the Industrial Revolution. Lacquers and spray systems replaced the original French polish finish, which is impractical for mass furniture production due to the labor-intensive process of application. As the desire for antiques was not idle, neither was the need for them to be appropriately restored; thus, the trade has been kept alive by a thread.