Sisterly Savings

Hi everyone. Last time we discussed online surveys and while they do bring in some extra income I’ve discovered an even bigger payday online: Free Sites

You know those banners that you see everywhere that promise you a free xbox360 just for filling out a few surveys or order products, they are legitimate people!! So far with the help of my online helpers, I’ve made $320 in 1 week! I spent a total of $36 OOP for offers and made the rest in profit. It also an ongoing process which is very tedious at first until you get the hang of it but once you do its rather quite easy,fun & profitable.

I have been researching this for 3 weeks now, hanging around the boards, actually CALLING people up who are mentors to explain how it works. One lady actually sent me her paypal payout grid ( i don’t know how but they post them) and she made $800 last month.

For me to explain all this would be complicated so I gathered some really great posts from the people I conversed with and from some of the boards and filed them on a new blog that I made specifically for this endeavor. You can access it here. It is still not fully complete as I will keep updating the info on a daily basis to help all of you ( and hopefully myself) earn a little extra cash!

Please take a look and tell me what you think, I’d love to hear your thoughts!! If this is something that no one is interested then I certainly can delete the blog before I put any more work into it. But if you guys would be interested in learning me, give me a holler!!

While this blog is primarily about saving money I also would like to make money as well. One of the easiest ways to start off is doing online surveys. There are a lot of different survey companies but I researched 2 in the past 2 months to see if it really does pay to do them. My results are below:

Cashcrate is the most popular and I must say, very good on paying! I made $87.00 in the past 2 mths just from doing surveys! How it works:

Cashcrate is a Get Paid To site and is free to sign up. Companies pay the owners of Cashcrate to find people to review their products, services, and websites. Cashcrate then in turn pays you to do it for them. The payout starts at $10 so it easy to get your money quickly!

There are completely Free Offers and a few trial offers to sign up for as well as 2 daily surveys. When completing some of the surveys, I timed them just to see how long they took to complete and most surveys took about 3 minutes at most.Also, the offers that pay less, say like $.25- $.50 take the least amount of time to complete and are quick & easy.

When doing offers, before starting, be sure to clear your cookies so that you can get your credits without any hassle.

You also can earn money by referrals as well. Cashcrate will pay you $3 for each person you refer as well as a percentage of what your referral each time they earn!! So you’ll keep on earning as long as your referral earns money, its like they are working for you!!

So far I really like the site and consider it a pretty good investment of time. I’m not expecting to make a lot of money through them but a little extra money per month is definately a Good thing!

Another site I really like is Free Cash Cafe. At the Free Cash Cafe, you get paid to take surveys, order free samples, signup for trial offers, participate in sweepstakes, join clubs, and register for online services. Its pretty much the same as Cashcrate with the same benefits and pays as well, to date I have earned $55.00. Payout starts when you earn $7.00 and they pay out monthly as well! As with Cashcrate you also earn 30% commission on your referrals earnings too.

Between these 2 sites you can earn a little extra cash monthly but I guess it depends on how much time you really put into as well. The money I made has only been for about 30 minutes a day and there. Not every day.

Do you have a survey site that pays well and that you like? What ways have you earned money online?

Email from reader:

I know this is a strange question, but I can’t figure out how to load it (button) to my site.

Not a strange question at all,lol!! It all depends on where you save the button to…
if you save it to your computer under Pictures then all you would have to do is upload it onto your blog from the sidebar as you would any other image/picture..

If you host the image at a site like Photobucket, they give you different codes that you would grab and add to the sidebar (you would choose the java code)

Hope this helps!!

This is our 2nd post to Blog DIY!

This week we will be creating a button for your sidebar. I am using a simple Copy/Paste Method instead of layering which is highly detailed and I figured it was better to start off small! And again,remember, I am NOT a web designer, just a new beginner so feel free to ask any questions if you don’t undertstand anything:)

To start off, you’ll need a Photo Editor Workshop such as PaintPro or PhotoShop. Both these programs are pretty expensive but I’ve found an alternative that is Free to download called GIMP and does just about the same as the pricier models, it works fine just for what I need it for and the reviews were pretty good just for doing simple work. I’ve been using it for about 3 weeks now but there is so much more to it that I’ve yet to learn!

Now that you have your Photo Editor, you’ll need an image that you’ll be working on.It can be an image straight from your computer or you can download free images from the web as well. Here are a few sites to help you get started:

Free Stock Photos

Photo Rack

ImageBase

For practice, I suggest using a small picture of 1 item!! Now that you armed with your image/photo in place, on to the making of your button.

The usual dimensions of a button are :
width: 125″
height: 125″

Step 1.
Open up Gimp:
You will notice that will be 2 windows that open up, one panel is your toolbar, this one you will be using a lot. The other panel is for layers, channels and such, we won’t be using that one right now. You can just close that panel.

Try hovering around the toolbar to know what tools are available and become familiar with them.

Step 2.
Go to the toolbar and under File you will go to New> Open
This will open up a pop up window where you will enter the dimensions of your button
Click Ok
You will now see a window open up with a blank button inside

Step 3.
Now to add the photo/image
Go back to your toolbox panel and click File>Open>Choose Picture
Choose your image and then click open
This will open your image in another window

At this point, you should have 2 windows open: 1 with the blank button and 1 with your image

Step 4.
Here is where we will copy the image to paste onto the button
Right click on your image, go to Edit>Copy

Step 5.
Here you will paste the image onto the button
Go to the window with the blank button and right click on it, go to Edit>Paste Your image should now be on the button

If you find that your image may be too large for the size of the button this is where the crop feature in the toolbar comes in handy as well as the eraser. Just crop the dimensions to fit.

Step 6.
If you want to add wording:
In the toolbar, click on the Letter A and then hover over new image, click on the image and a message box will pop up where you can type your message
In the toolbar area you can also set the measurement of the lettering to fit within the button as well as change the font.
You’ll need to play around with this to get used to it!!

Step 7.
Now after your button is all complete and you are satisfied, you will need to flatten it as it is in layers.
Go to image at top of window, then click on “Flatten Image”
This will compress it for saving

Step 8.
You will need to save your button.
Click File>Save as
You will see a pop up window appear and you will need to save the image as a image as an XCP (Gimp) file.

After you’ve saved as a GIMP file, go back again to File>Save as and save as a jpg file which will be stored on your computer. A pop up window will appear asking you to export it, click export now and your done!

Final Step:
Now go to where you saved it on your computer and load onto your site!!

Just a quick note: any mistakes can be undone quickly! Just right click on the image and go to Edit>Undo to correct it!!

I hope this tutorial was helpful and that you’ll be able to create your own button . It seems difficult at first, but it gets to be so quick & easy! I made this real quick just experimentiong with the paintbrush for colors!!

Next week, we’ll talk about how to add a border to your button and how to add a scrolling text box so that others can grab your button to display on their site!!

If you have any questions please feel to email me! Let me know if this is helpful to anyone, I want to make sure that I am on track with helping you get the hang of all this Bloggy Work!!

Welcome to our 1st segment of Do it yourself Blogging Designs & Tips. Hopefully you’ll be able to learn a new tip or trick to help you make your blog better for less!! Please note that I am not a Web Designer by any means and I am learning along as we go through this series!

When I 1st started blogging, I used a plain old blogger template, it was the 2 column rose colored one. I love pink and that was the only design that appealed to me but I wanted a 3 column layout, still in pink, so I did some homework and found out how to get my own 3 column template. I then moved on to a web designer who helped further customize the look of my blog and now I’ve been intrigued to do do my own work! And you shall reap the benefits of my learning as I go along!!

This week, we’re gonna work on templates. Are you tired of your boring,plain old template? Would you like a new background or maybe a few more columns added? Well, there are a lot of free sites that offer their template designs and are very simple to install without very much legwork!

You don’t need to know too much about html codes and the likes, most designs come with easy & complete instructions to install. BUT, before you do ANY tinkering with your template, BE SURE TO BACK UP YOUR ORIGINAL TEMPLATE!! Its very easy to do and it will save you a whole lot of hassle in the end, believe you me!

Another tip, make yourself another blog just for testing new ideas until you become familiar with an application. Blogger doesn’t charge anything for making a new blog and it only takes seconds to make a tester and can become a real help! Just go to your dashboard to create a new test blog!

On to the template designs!

My favorite so far is here – I’m not particularly fond of the title ( you’ll see why ) but she has a ton of gorgeous templates that you can customize and I love the fact that you can search by color scheme which can really make the difference in weeding out all the other templates that you are not interested in!

I took one of her designs to show you here on my test blog. Remember, Before editing your template, you may want to save a copy of it ! It took me all of 4 minutes to get the look! Here’s what I did step by step:

1. Choose a new Template
2. Save the template to your computer (I always scan mine for viruses 1st!!)
3. Unzip the file (really easy to do, just right click on mouse and you should see unzip folder)
4. Go to your blog and go to “Layout” then “Edit HTML“. This is where you will be changing the entire look of your blog.
5. Save your previous template (unless its a test blog, then no need to)
6. Go to “Upload a template from a file on your hard drive”
7. Click on “Browse“. Here you will find where you saved the template.Open it.
8. Then click “Upload” and Voila! You will have a new template within minutes!!

Ok, so now you have a background, but what about adding your title to it? Easy Peasy!

1. Go to “Layouts”
2. Go to “Page Elements”
3. There you will see the layout of your blog. Right under the navbar you will see the Title Header Box and Edit. Just click to edit and add your new title!

Pyzam is another of my favorites with a TON of great layouts which are nicely catergorized as well like “Girly Girl” Designs or “Hearts” Designs.

If you are looking for a 3 column template to install, Webtalks has a nice selection with some great instructions on how to install yourself. I love the flexiblity of the 3 columns, it affords so much space and helps to keep the blog looking clean while adding more information to the sidebars. The instructions are pretty much in the same way as I have outlined above.

Just a note, the designers do not want you to alter their designs in any way. You may add to them just as you would any other blog but changing the look without proper credit is not allowed. Usually somewhere in the blog template there will be the designers’ name/site so no need to worry about giving the credit.

I hope I was able to break it down for you with some ease, if you have any questions or need any help, please email me or leave a comment:) And be sure to check back next Thursday for more Blog DIY!!

Since I started blogging, it has become almost an obsession for me at times. And a hard one to keep up with too when you have a full time job and a family to take care of all at the same time.

You feel as though you have to “Keep up with the Jones’es”. Some days I feel so completely overwhelmed and wonder how do they do it all and sometimes I feel as though I should just let the blog go…. then I see all the readers and their emails and then I feel guilty as if I would be letting my readers down.

And yes, the deals are always there no matter where you turn- there are fabulous blogs out there that do an amazing job of keeping each other up to date for the frugal minded. Which is why when I read Marianne’s post about “Competition & Greed not apply“, it touched upon a very real sense of being for me and I thought each one of us should read it! She’s such an AMAZING writer and I always enjoy her posts which are thought provoking and this one definately was worthwhile.

I know firsthand myself about feeling overwhelmed with it all and trying to get it all done at the sake of sitting at the computer almost all day! There’s too many great deals and it seems as though there is a race to get the word out and compete to get the best deals and such and if you don’t succeed, you feel as though it isn’t worthwhile. But we all count for something I realized, no matter what stage we are in at this time.

A wise blogger once emailed me: The blog/deals will always be there, but the moments/family life won’t! And don’t sweat the small things in life!

As Marianne wrote:
“Can you overdo all this deal-making, couponing, and CVSing? Well, yes, I believe you can. If its consuming your time to the point that you’re missing out on life, then you may well be.”

So, yes… while there are days that I feel like giving up, I am like anyone else. I am no super mommy, just me and I’ll learn as I go and hopefully learn more in the process as I go along!

**Please note at the date of this post, Marianne, author of linked post has shut down her Blog,making the link unviewable:(