Here are a few pictures of fish we caught recently.  We ended up with 24 on the day.
Barb’s 2 lb spotted bass
Donnie’s 4 lb hybrid striped bass
Average size of sand bass we caught

View from my front yard.

From the REL game this past weekend (10/20/06).

City Councilman ejected from studio.

T. Bubba Bechtol, part time City Councilman from Midland, TX,was asked on a local live radio talk show the other day just what he thought of the allegations of torture of the Iraqi prisoners. His reply prompted his ejection from the studio, but to thunderous applause from the audience.

“If hooking up an Iraqi prisoner’s scrotum to a car’s battery cables will save one American GI’s life, then I have just two things to say:

1. “Red is positive.”
2. “Black is negative.”

As I continue to put content online for SmithUtopia, I am trying to touch on several topics that are popular ways to make money on the Internet. My latest two pages are:

Get Paid Cash Taking Surveys
http://www.smithutopia.com/articles/get-paid-cash-taking-surveys.html

Make Money Completing Surveys
http://www.smithutopia.com/articles/make-money-completing-surveys.html

These two pages touch on keyword phrases that do not have as much competition as some others. Both of these keyword phrases have a competition score of below 10. This means that even though they are not used as much in searches, they also have less people targeting them. This increases my chances of receiving a front page listing on this keyword with the major search engines.

One of the lastest booms on the Internet has to do with earning extra income filling out surveys. As part of the their marketing research, many companies rely upon the data collected from consumers to make long range decisions. If you are like me there are dozens of things you would rather do than fill out surveys. Many companies have a fix for that…pay people to fill out the information.

Right up front I’m going to answer the question that is on everyone’s mind. Can a person make money filling out surveys? The answer is yes but with a asterik. Don’t plan to get rich doing it but do plan on making some extra cash. For the rest of this article I’m going to talk about the good and bad when you get paid cash taking surveys.

The good…it boils down to one thing. You get paid cash taking surveys! That’s about it. The reason you are reading this info is because you want to get paid cash taking surveys.

Now on the bad side there are several things to consider. You need to be aware that the ‘get paid cash taking surveys’ sites are really databases of companies that pay you to take surveys. On these sites, you apply to be sent surveys to fill out. If a company feels that you fit their profile then they will send you a survey to complete along with payment information.

I’m going to list a few of the bad parts of taking surveys to make sure you are properly informed then I’m going to suggest a site to use for finding surveys.

Outdated Directories: A directory is only as good as the information that it contains. Make sure that any company you use to find surveys has current info in their database. Also look out for small or limited directories. The smaller the choices the smaller the chances.

Broken Links: If you can’t reach a company then you can’t get paid by them. If you find that the information at a site is inaccurate then be careful.

No Refund: Any site that is worth it’s salt will offer a refund if you are not satisfied. This is an indicator of how sincere a site is about keeping it’s information up-to-date.

Spam Or Phishing: Before signing up with a site, check them out. You should be able to find reviews for the reputable sites by searching on Google. Many sites may simply be trying to harvest your email address, also known as phising, so that they can sell your information to other companies that sent out spam.

Now back to the good. Click on the graphic below to check out SurveyScout.

This no-nonsense, state-of-the-art site is updated frequently and has the best “getting started” section we have ever seen. Aside from surveys and focus groups they also show you how to get paid to shop and eat, read your email, and more. With the most up-to-date surveys and paying opportunities, and incredible customer service and lots of very useful bonuses you just can’t go wrong with SurveyScout. Check them out and be sure to request their free report - it includes an interview with one of their members who makes between $2,500 and $4,600 per month just from surveys and focus groups!

• Up to $150 an hour for online surveys and focus groups
• Get paid to try new products (and keep them for free!)
• Get paid to shop and eat, read email, drive a car, etc.
• Total of over 700 surveys and paid opportunities
• Awesome bonuses with no strings attached
• 90-Day “no questions asked” guarantee

As I waded into the ‘Make Money Online’ waters on the Internet, I felt I needed to do some research on what keywords might help me generate traffic for my websites. I am very, very new to this whole Internet marketing arena but at the simplest level it seems that the keys to generating income are:

Blog >>> Choose Target Keywords >>> Write Articles Incorporating Keywords >>> Create New Pages For Articles >>> Link Article Pages To Blog >>> Link Article Pages To Each Other >>> Populate All Pages with PPC Links >>> Submit Articles To Outlets >>> Submit All Pages To Search Engines

Did I say it was simple? As I said, I am new to this area so there may be a step or two (or 5, or 10, etc…) I’ve missed. Your end goal is to get your links to appear on the first page of the major search engines when someone searches on your targeted keywords.

Smithutopia.com (http://www.smithutopia.com) was developed utilizing one of the leading blogging systems today, WordPress. A blog is a great place to cut your teeth writing articles. As you post your ideas, situations, actions and events you will notice that some of your items start to resemble articles. All it takes is a little polish at that point to have a finished product. In fact you can read this very blog entry at it’s own page of http://www.smithutopia.com/good-ways-to-make-money.html

How does all of the above steps help you achieve the goals you have set forth? The magic word is ‘backlinks’. Backlinks are the links that people have placed on their websites that lead to your website or any of the pages of your website. Several of the major search engines place a high value on the number of links that go to your website from out sites and thus place you in their search engine accordingly. Here is a simple example.

Site ‘A’ has 1000 sites that link back to it.
Site ‘B’ has 10 sites that link back to it.

Site ‘A’ should place higher in the search engines when someone searches for a targeted keyword/phrase that both sites covet.

At this point, some of the more ’seasoned’ web gurus are crying foul at my above statement. Relax, I realize there is more to it but I’m just taking one step at a time.

Next time…Quality of backlinks, Placing targets on keywords

If you have ever used EBay then you know how important pictures are to a listing. By nature, people tend to pay more attention to the items that have pictures in the items for sale. The old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” has never been more true but in EBay’s case a picture is worth $1.00, $2.00 or more…to EBay! If you want to add more than one picture to a listing or want additional features then you must be willing to pay EBay. Here is just a small list to illustrate the point:

Additional Pictures: $0.15
Picture Show: $0.25
Supersize Picture: $0.75
Picture Pack: $1.00

These fees mean less profits for you. You already pay EBay for inserting the listing or selling the item. An alternative is to use an image hosting service. Quality image hosting sites, such as Image4U.org (http://www.image4u.org), will allow you to upload your pictures and link to them on EBay. This type of service can save you a lot of fees and increase your profits. You pay a set monthly rate and can host as many pictures as you need, up to the limit of your account. Image4U.org even offers unlimited bandwidth so you can be assured that your images will always be available.

What is the difference between bandwidth and disk space? Disk space is where the image is stored within your account. It is fixed to the size of the images that you store. If an image is 250 KB in size then it will always take up 250 KB on your account. Bandwidth is the amount of space it takes to transfer an image to the requesting user each time they want to view an image. Bandwidth used grows larger the more times an image is viewed. Using the previously mentioned 250 KB image, the first time someone views the image it takes 250 KB of bandwidth. The next time it takes another 250 KB for a total of 500 KB. The next time your total is 750 KB and so on. To put this into perspective, If you account allows 500 MB of bandwidth per month then this picture could be viewed approximately 2000 times (250 KB x 4 = 1 MB) before you used up all of your bandwidth for the month.

Services such as Image4U.org allow unlimited bandwidth. Take advantage of the service to post as many images on your auctions as you can. It will help you increase the number of bids received by making the sale more attractive. You simply have to copy and paste the image URL into the EBay form.

Best of all, perhaps, may be the online photo gallery options many sites offer. You can take advantage of this feature to set up an image gallery to display all your items on one page. It will provide a convenient way for customers to browse your offerings. Whether you are a high volume seller or a newcomer to online auctions, take advantage of the service to reduce your selling expenses. Experiment with different techniques to learn what works best to increase sales.

Image4U.org (http://www.image4u.org) is an image hosting service that can be used to store pictures online. Enhance your EBay auctions without paying the EBay picture hosting fees. The service can also be used to upload pictures for myspace, live journal, and other blog websites. Users can create custom photo galleries to be shared with friends and family. Visit the site to learn about all the other features.

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Donnie Smith is a technology enthusiast. He specializes in un-complicating the complicated world of the Internet. You can read more about this subject and others at his online blog, Smithutopia (http://www.smithutopia.com). Copyright 2005, Donnie Smith, All rights reserved.

O.K…..I am excited to have finally started my own blog for SmithUtopia.com. I am doing all kinds of things to make money online both in the home business field and other niches as well. What I intend to do with this blog is chart on a daily basis things I am finding that are working for me and hopefully you can benefit from those as well.

One of the first steps is to showcase some of my sites that are currently online and active. A niche area that I entered a couple of years ago is a website for image hosting. Image hosting (for pictures, drawings, photographs, etc…) is a need for anyone that wants to post pictures on the Internet. My goal was to provide a location that would be easy to use and low cost. The result is Image4U.org.

http://www.image4u.org

This site offers all the items that I wanted to provide to Internet users. Putting your photos online can sometimes be confusing to those that are new to computers. Image4U gives them an “easy to use” site.

For many years I have participated in the hobby of metal detecting. I originally got started with this hobby as a way for my son and I to do things together. Well, he became a teenager and discovered other pursuits but I have continued to enjoy detecting. Some after I started metal detecting I decided to use my knowledge of building web pages to start of forum to discuss the hobby. That was 8 years ago but the Treasure Spot (http://www.mytreasurespot.com)is still going strong. The Treasure Spot contains discussion forums covering a many of subjects including coin hunting, relic hunting, bottle collecting, beach hunting, water hunting, and a variety of other areas. It is also home the to Diggin’ In Virginia (DIV) organized relic hunts.

Another site that I have online is called LoneStarLakes.com (http://www.lonestarlakes.com). This site grew from a recent passion that I have come to enjoy…Fishing! Lone Star Lakes provides maps and information about lakes though out the state of Texas. It also contains forums for the discussion of fishing spot, techniques, current conditions, etc…

I hope that each of you will enjoy this blog as well as my other sites.