Euphemistically Speaking

A student told Freddy once:

"Sorry, I didn't finish my homework for today. I was busy last night helping my dad find his toupee."

Is that a Euphemism?

Euphemistically speaking...

Freddy was reading "Little Red Riding Hood" the other day and came across the following passage:

"The woodchopper carried Grandmother back to her bed. Then they all had a snack from Little Red Riding Hood's basket of goodies."

Is that a euphemism?

Euphemistically Speaking...

Today Freddy was in a colleagues office discussing a business matter. Another colleague entered and asked, "Can I look in your trash? I think I may have forgotten something."

Freddy said, "What's that supposed to mean, is that some sort of euphemism?" Which earned him a chuckle, followed by a dirty look, followed by a kick... and one last chuckle.

Freddy loves euphemisms!

Another Way to Effortlessly Make Money on the Internet

A way to effortlessly make money on the Internet? Freddy is using the term, "effortlessly" with a few qualifications here. Search all you like, you will probably never find a (legal) way to effortlessly make money on the Internet. Even the illegal ways to make money often require more effort, and are more risky than the legal ways. Still, if you take a certain point of view, some things you may already be doing anyhow could bring in some extra income without requiring you to do any extra work (or very little, at least).

Freddy is talking about Google Adsense. If you are already blogging, it is not that difficult to set up an Adsense account and add a few ads to your page. Just a few on the side, maybe at the bottom (like you see on Freddy's blog, here). Keep adding regular postings to your blogs and if you're lucky, you may start to see to pennies start trickling in. All it took you was a few minutes to set up an Adsense account and adding it to your page.

If you think you're going to start see checks in the mail the first month after setting up Adsense, and starting a blog, you may be disappointed, though. Unless you're blog is very popular, meaning you have a high amount of traffic, those ad clicks will probably be few and far between.
Freddy has been blogging for about a year and a half now. He set up Adsense around February of this year, that's about 10 months ago. Freddy's blogs get steady traffic of around 15 to 20 views a day. Still, only recently has Freddy begun to see an increase in clicks on Adsense ads. It has taken a lot of dedication and patience to get this far.

Freddy would share with you more details about his Adsense statistics, but Google is very strict about following their guidelines, and the slightest infringement can get you banned for life. So Freddy is not allowed to share with you any specifics. Sorry.

At first, Freddy tried to create a blog that would show ads of the type that people are more likely to click on, but he gave up long ago on that. Freddy is not passionate about that kind of thing and did not have the motivation to continue writing posts on issues he wasn't really interested in. That's why it's much better (in Freddy's opinion, at least) to use Adsense as a sort of afterthought to something you're already doing. Creating a website, or a blog just for the purpose of attracting Google Ad clickers is boring, and it might even be against the guidelines set out by Google.

Is Google Adsense effortless? Well, it need not take much effort. One can easily add it to their web page or blog, continue doing what they've been doing all along and there is a good chance you will see some success. On the other hand, you can also put in quite a bit of effort, experimenting with different color schemes, ad formats, ad placement and so on. At any rate, Google Adsense is another legitimate way of making a bit of extra cash on the Internet.

Making Money Online With What You Already Have

Have you ever heard of the "30 Day Challenge"? Freddy thinks he heard of it sometime in the last year. He doesn't know much more about it than what it says on their home page, which is that "The Thirty Day Challenge is about making your first $10 online." The other thing Freddy knows about it is that he didn't discover it until after he had made much more than his first $10 online. Freddy does not intend to endorse the "30 Day Challenge". He has not been past their home page and has no idea about the quality of their program and training (it is free, though, so if you're curious...) But he is in agreement with the idea that you no not need to spend or invest anything in order to start earning money on the Internet. This is assuming, of course, that you have your own computer, some basic software and access to the Internet. These days it is safe to assume that most people already have these things, and therefore, probably do not need to spend any extra money.

Today, Freddy is going to tell you how he completed the 30 Day Challenge, without even knowing it. Meaning, he was neither aware of the existence of the 30 Day Challenge, nor did he know that he was earning money until a check came in the mail. Freddy used to do a little bit of photography, and he occasionally sold greeting cards, prints and calendars to his friends and colleagues. Having some success at this, he decided to try to sell some of his work online, but having limited website designing experience, he could not design a site which could handle taking orders and processing credit cards and so on. Furthermore, he was not aware of all the work it takes to promote your site and get traffic. At any rate, the photography stuff never panned out much for Freddy. A couple years later, though, Freddy had an idea for a silly t-shirt. Several friends were interested in ordering it, but not enough to make it worthwhile to have a large amount screen printed. It was then that Freddy discovered the on-demand printing world of Cafepress! Upload your designs, create your own "store", mark up your designs if you want to earn money, and they take care of the rest. Freddy uploaded his design and after his friends had a chance to order it, he marked up the price a little bit (what the heck!), uploaded a couple more designs that he had thought of and then forgot about them. ... Until a few months later when he got a check for $22! He saw that the check was from Cafepress, and logged back into his account to find that people were actually buying his quirky designs. Oh the joy!

With the $22 Freddy had completed two 30 day challenges without even trying. All he needed was a little creativity, a simple image editing program (there are free ones available out there if you search for them) and a computer with an Internet connection. Voila, Freddy was in business and EntropicTees was born! Now Freddy gives himself a 30 Day Challenge every month.

If you'd like to see how EntropicTees has grown since then, please visit the shop at CafePress to see the full line up of funny and weird t-shirt designs.

Find out if Freddy really knows how to make money online!

Freddy spends a significant amount of time on the Internet these days. You see, Freddy is trying to take advantage of the various money making opportunities out there on the Internet. There are a lot of companies and sites that will promise you large amounts of money fairly quickly. Just do a google search for "make money online" and see what ads come up. There are ads promising you $300 a day, $3000 a week, $300 just for "Clicking your mouse" (whatever that means), and most of them claim to be "easy" or "idiot proof". In fact, Freddy has recently been seeing a junk email in his spam folder with the subject heading, "Dumb and Poor? We can help." Freddy wonders what kind of idiot would actually open that email... probably someone who is dumb and poor, he guesses. Too bad they'll probably stay that way.

Yes, if you're looking to make money online, there is a lot of junk out there. No, really, a lot, a whole bunch, like one out of every 10,000 "opportunities" is genuine. Freddy is serious, here. The Internet is not a place where you can get rich quick, unless you like gambling, because following up on most of these "incredible money making opportunities" is, more or less, like pulling the lever on a slot machine. And while occasionally someone hits the jackpot, most of the time, people walk away from those machines taking a loss.

A few weeks ago, Freddy found an article that claimed to have the "secret to success online!" It was from a legitimate source, so Freddy went ahead and read it. Do you know what the secret was? Don't give up! Work hard and don't give up! Probably not the type of "secret" that most people who are looking for online success hope to learn. Freddy thinks that when most people see the word, "secret" they are expecting an insider tip on how to make loads of money quickly. They most be disappointed to see that they might have to work. Well, hard work and never giving up is a strategy that Freddy has been aware of since he was wee, so this wasn't necessarily a secret to him either.

Freddy has been working hard and not giving up at online success for, what, nearly three years now. The progress is slow, but the progress is there and Freddy has gone from making $0 a month, to sometimes as much as $150 a month online. (and nearly all of this income comes from sites that are free for anyone to set up) It's not paying the rent, but it's $150 Freddy didn't have before. And if Freddy keeps working hard and never giving up, maybe someday it will pay the rent.

So, although Freddy started this blog with the hopes of selling more t-shirts, he is going to take a short break from that and share with any readers, who happen to stumble upon this page with Freddy's insights on getting started making money online.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com

Failblog is sooo much better than Engrish.com

Once again Freddy finds himself in a position where he needs to apologize for a long absence. Freddy is just trying to wear too many hats right now. One hat he is wearing is that of a squidoo lensmaker. Freddy just published his second squidoo lens, this time on flying on Japanese airlines. That brings Freddy's Squidoo lens total to two:

Everything you never wanted to know about Sumo Wrestling
and
Why you should pay more to fly on a Japanese airline

Freddy would just be ecstatic if you would stop by his lenses, give them a rating, participate in the surveys and leave him a comment. Please have a look.

In any case, he's back today with a new blog entry to help you pass a little time and put a smile on your face (especially if you're the type that enjoys Schadenfreude). Freddy also sometimes is looking for ways to "pass" the time at work and one of his favorite reading sites is slate.com. Yesterday, Freddy read this article from slate on FAIL.

Freddy was most recently exposed to the "FAIL" phenomenon when he came across this excellent Halloween costume:But it was only through the slate article that Freddy learned of the existence of failblog.org. Failblog is a blog filled with pictures and videos of people failing. Failing in sports, fashion, academics ... life in general. So, as Freddy said earlier, if you enjoy Schadenfreude, this is definitely a site for you. In many ways, failblog reminds Freddy of engrish.com, in that it is making fun of the inability of others (hence the Schadenfreude). After reading the Slate article, Freddy learned that the term/phrase "FAIL" actually has it's roots in engrish. So far, Freddy is much more impressed with failblog than Engrish.com. What's more, Failblog seems to have it's own Engrish branch engrishfunny.com Why is this better than engrish.com (the original Engrish site?) Mainly because of the comments. Of course, this is Freddy's personal preference. Whoever is running the Engrish.com site feels a need to post his own (mostly unfunny) commentary to all the pictures submitted. He claims that his visitors prefer that his comments stay, yet Freddy thinks he is living in his own little dream world. If you write to him suggesting that he post pictures without the comments (most of the pictures are more than funny on their own), he responds by pointing you to one of his FAQ addressing this issue. If so many people are suggesting that you remove your comments that you need to post a FAQ about it, maybe there aren't so many people who enjoy them as you think. (Mr. Engrish.com - Objectivity FAIL) Freddy is pleased that the Failblog engrish site is satisfied to post the pictures without their own comments. Of course, they allow users to post comments, but that is not the same as posting your own comments.

Enough ranting by Freddy. Here are some failblog posts Freddy has enjoyed in the last 24 hours:

Mens Accessories FAIL:

see more Funny and Weird T-shirts

Archie FAIL:

see more Funny and Weird T-shirts

Three-handed FAIL:

see more Funny and Weird T-shirts

Packaging FAIL:

see more Funny and Weird T-shirts

and there are many more.

There are thousands of pictures and videos posted on failblog. Freddy, of course, has some of his own favorites. He wonders if they have been submitted or not. Maybe he will get around to submitting them someday, but for now, instead of making you search around for them, Freddy will post his own favorite FAIL vids right here.

Freddy thought he posted this clip in an earlier post, but he can't find it, so here it is.

Aerobics class FAIL:


Kelsey Grammar FAIL:


Modeling FAIL: (talk about Schadenfreude, these newscaster have it down)


Foreign Policy FAIL:


Foreign Policy FAIL (2):


There are just too many Sarah Palin FAILs to post here. Freddy doesn't have time.

And now it's time for Freddy to go. Don't forget to come back to check for more fun updates from Freddy. And don't forget to visit Freddy's T-shirt shop for lots of humorous, funny, weird, strange and cool t-shirts. Entropic Tees