Swag Bucks!

My girlfriend has been getting Swag Bucks for several months now, and I became curious about it. I am always skeptical about these "earn easy money online" things.

After trying it for the past 24 hours, I am beginning to understand the appeal. You can earn Swag Bucks by doing several silly things. Basically, it's their way of getting you to allow them to show you some ads and special offers at no cost to you. You get Swag Bucks for using their toolbar (which is optional), using their search engine, entering Swag Codes, watching a bunch of videos, and other things like that. You even get Swag Bucks when your friends sign up and earn through searching.

I am already at 182. Granted, I've been working at it, but if I did my math correctly, I'd still get roughly 10-15 Swag Bucks doing the very easiest tasks which take two or three minutes in all. A purchase of $5 for your PayPal account (which in turn can be used for anything you want) would take about 60 days to earn enough Swag Bucks to get (700 are needed). This, on top of my Google AdSense earnings, would account for at least $5 per month, but probably more.

My point is, I see Swag Bucks as a worthy program to sign up for. It's not a lot, but it will add up. I view it like having a bunch of money in your bank account and you earn a small amount of interest on that money. It isn't to be taken super seriously, but it isn't worthless either.

I recommend giving it a try. Click the banner below to sign up. That button will also use me as a referal, so I will get some Swag Bucks when you sign up. If you like it, tell your friends about it!

I'm Officially Licensed to Do Business!

I went down to the Commissioner of Revenue's office and got my business license for Damian's Computer Services. Because I only projected a small income between now and the end of December, my business license was free (although I still had to pay $10 to register my name with the county). I'm really excited about this. Combined with my job at the grocery store, I hope to start making a halfway decent income for a change. I will be doing quality computer repair work for very cheap, and I am hoping to be able to make a name for myself around town.

Now to get my business cards ready...

Best Customer Experience Ever!

I had a lady today use Easy Shop, the scan-as-you-shop experience our store offers to shoppers. Randomly, we are required to give audits. The attendant's Easy Shop gun will go off when it wants to audit someone.

I went to give this lady an audit, and she seemed fine at first. I found she didn't scan the eggs, and I told her about this politely by suggesting my gun wasn't seeing the eggs on her order. She insisted she scanned them. As I continued, she asked if I was scanning every item. I told her I only had to scan some of the items out of each bag. She thought that was obsurd.

She got more angry as I went on, and at one point she requested a manager. I didn't hear her clearly, so I politely asked her what she said. She replied "I said I want to speak to a MANAGER!", yelling really loud! I called the manager up, and he came on by. She was dumping all the groceries out of her bags by this point as she was yelling at the top of her lungs about how she was never shopping there again and how she's spent thousands of dollars there in the past.

We discovered that she had apparently done something wrong (mistakenly or intentionally, we don't know) at another store because her Easy Shop status was blue, which is one step from red (where the customer is banned from using Easy Shop). It was the very first time she had ever used it at our store. We don't know why it was blue, but the manager is looking into the matter at this time.

Anyway, that was the craziest customer experience I have ever had. I'd say it was pretty epic!

4.5 Years Later: My First Google AdSense Check

Last week, I received my very first check from Google Inc. I've been part of their Google AdSense program since February of 2006, and I finally made enough back in July to get paid. I can't say how much I got paid since that would be a violation of the Google AdSense Terms of Service, but it's not anything to brag about when you take into consideration how long it took to meet the threshold.

The YouTube Partner program has dealt a modest amount of help to the revenue I earn each month, but it's hard to come up with videos that will go viral. I have had plenty of hit-and-miss moments, and the videos that have proven to be revenue generators are of a minority. My latest video for example hasn't done anything, even though I've done most everything I can think of to get it to pop up in the YouTube search results:



The experience I have had with YouTube and the Google AdSense program in general has taught me one thing -- no matter how much you think you know about how to get people's attention, you don't yet know enough. At least, that's true in my case. I would love to sit back and watch the professionals do their stuff and see videos go from nowhere to everywhere like magic. There's a method to it, and I haven't yet mastered it.

So, will I have to wait another 4.5 years to get paid again, or will I get this video thing truly figured out before then? I think my biggest problem is I never know who I want to be or what I want to be about when I do videos, and that isn't helping my efforts any. Maybe someone can help guide me in the right direction.

I Have A Car

After my '99 Ford Contour was sold for scrap, I was officially out of a car. I had to drive my brother's old Chevy for two months, and that thing was ready to die itself.

Last week, I finally got myself another car. For $2500, I was able to get a '97 Ford Escort LX with 88,857 miles on it. For the short distances that I drive, this car should last me a number of years. My dad played a big role in me getting the car since I had not been able to find anything I could afford that was even halfway decent. The loan I had to get to help pay for the car should help my credit so I can borrow more and get a nicer vehicle down the road.

Needless to say, I'm a pretty happy person right now.