As August is near an end we, the consumers, are once again bombarded with ads for back to school sales. When I was a kid this was among my favorite time of the year (the other being Christmas). During this time my aunt would take us kids out to different office supply stores such as Staples and we would stack up on school supplies. During my school days I loved writing in a brand new notebook as it implies a brand new beginning.
In addition to the necessities, we would often purchase interesting or funny signs such as traffic signs or no parking signs. My favorite when I was a kid was a completely yellow sign that says “Geek at work”. That sign always brought a smile to my face and made me study harder. Unfortunately these days I read a lot less now so that sign is no longer applicable to me (the internet seems to have taken away a lot of my reading time.)
So if you still haven’t done your back to school shopping be sure to plan some fun back to school shopping trips and decorate your room with creative signs!

brought to you by your friends at www.safetysign.com

As a blogger everyone wants to get more traffic and more readership.  While there are different types of traffic the best type of traffic is searching engine traffic.  If your site is ranked for a good set keywords it will receive natural traffic without much effort.  However, in order to be ranked for a set of useful keywords you want to make sure you have a good understanding of Search Engine Optimization.

Some of the search engine techniques I have used in the past includes:
- Install search engine optimization plugin
- Carefully research the desired keywords and construct my post around the keywords.
- Change the URL to include the blog title instead of the default number.
- Generate external links back to your website by methods such as article directory.

Yet, I would say that optimizing your site for search engines is hard work.  It requires time to writing additional articles to submit to different directories, guest post on another blog, or be active in a forum.  Another option I recommend is to look for companies that specializes in optimizing your sites to rank high on the search engine.  That way you can focus on what you do best: write content!

This post is brought to you by your friends at Webimax

Raining Hot Coupons is having a drawing for one of her lucky readers for $100 cash to be used for back to school!  Raining Hot Coupons is a great coupon site that is definitely recommended!

In order to participate you have to do the following:

1.  Like Raining Hot Coupons on Facebook

2.  Sign up for NoMoreRack

3.  Invite your friends to Like Raining Hot Coupons by clicking on the “SHARE” button

4.  Sign up for daily email

5.  Follow her on Twitter.

Good luck!

Thanks for the guest post by Jo Levy

Texas is where I’m from originally but when I went off to college in Washington I didn’t really think I’d be back. That was before I got this great job offer, though, and in this economy you can’t just turn something like this down. Cooking has always been my passion so when the restaurant company of my dreams offered me a marketing position here in Houston I couldn’t really turn it away so I packed up all of my stuff and moved back down to the lone star state. It wasn’t a huge transition: I found a great place to live and went to SHOPELECTRICITYRATESTEXAS.COM before I moved in – thanks to my mom for that one. Anyway, things were good when I got down and I was able to totally focus on work which is exactly what I needed and so far so good at the new job! There are actually some great people at my workplace and I have a feeling that’s where I’m going to end up making most of my new friends!

Being frugal often means you find ways to spend below your means (Often times way below). You follow daily deals and clip coupons in order to live within your means. However, there is a limit on how much you can save. At the end of the day you will need income in order to save money. For most people that means finding a decent paying jobs with decent benefits.
While there are a lots of industries that are struggling, health care is getting more and more popular as a career choice. During a time of economic hardship health care seems to be holding up very well. Are you currently out of a job? Perhaps you should consider a Master of Public Health program. On the other hand, if you currently have a job but you are thinking about a career change, be sure to check out University Degrees Online and websites such as WaldenU.edu which provides you a chance for continue higher education.

This post is brought to you by your friends at WaldenU.edu.

image by: malfet

Here is Happy Independence Day Everyone!  Hope everyone had a great time with family and friends!  If you are a blogger and would like to enter contests, be sure to check out The Ad Master‘s giveaway that ends today!

If you are an Amazon affiliate living in California like I am you must have received an email from Amazon yesterday regarding the termination of the affiliates program:

Unfortunately, Governor Brown has signed into law the bill that we emailed you about earlier today. As a result of this, contracts with all California residents participating in the Amazon Associates Program are terminated effective today, June 29, 2011. Those California residents will no longer receive advertising fees for sales referred to Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned before today will be processed and paid in full in accordance with the regular payment schedule.

Here is a LA Times article regarding this if you are looking for more details.  As for my reaction I am a little disappointed by Governor Brown.  While I know the intention behind the law is great, it will only work from a National level instead of a state level.  Without a federal law the reaction from companies like Amazon will be canceling of the affiliate programs.  From a California resident perspective, I much rather see the governor tackle issues that have a larger impact, e.g. pension reform.  At the end of the day, I feel for those people who depends on the affiliate income for their day to day living expense.

Guest post written by Britney Lee

I get bored kind of easily, so when it comes to interior design a lot of the times I’ll just rearrange the things that I have to make it appear that I bought new things. It’s pretty fun and I even move pieces of furniture to new rooms in order to do that. You could just call it redecorating on no budget.

I’ve decided that I need to do that for my patio now. It’s been the same way for about three years now and I’m ready to just do something different with it. As I was online trying to get some ideas about what I could do for the area with what I have, I found the site get.wildblue.com. I looked through it a little bit and after I did that I decided to sign up for one of the Internet packages that I found on there.

I decided to bring this bookshelf that I had in the living room out to the patio under the awning. I’m putting some waterproof paint on it so that it will last out there. I love to read on my patio, so I think that will be perfect for doing that.

For those of you who don’t know what Adgitize is, you can start off by reading my Adgitize review.  While I absolutely love the service the number of advertisers for the Advertising network have been bleeding a slow death.  At one point it has close to 200 advertisers in the system but now the number has dropped to be in the 130s.  As an advertising platform, here are some areas I believe Adgitize can improve .

- The way the forum is structured – currently it contains numerous topics.  While I love a good chit chat it is a not a place where I would go to learn about different aspects of blogging.  In order for the value of the forum to increase it has to focus more on subjects that a newbie blogger would care about.  Topics such as how to setup bloggers account, basic SEO, split page testing can provide a much higher value.  More importantly, SEO should be applied to these forum topics so they are visible to search results.  It is those newbie bloggers who will eventually convert advertisers.

- Add external ads to the forum.  The forum is a place where a lot of people gather and it makes sense to me to put external Adgitize ads (Adsense perhaps?) on the forum instead of member’s ads.

- Lack of a way to track where the affiliate clicks are coming from.  In the world of marketing, people need to test multiple campaigns in order to tell which campaign is working.  However, that requires the need to be able to track where the traffic is coming from (or perhaps no traffic at all).  If you can’t track where the traffic is coming from you can’t tell which campaign is working.

- Increase the number of clicks required on a daily basis for both publishers.  As a publisher currently you need 100 clicks to earn and as a hybrid (advertiser and publisher) you need 51 clicks.  Personally I feel this number should go up.  Currently I don’t have a problem with clicking 100 ads as a publisher only but I would definitely have second thoughts if it were 200 clicks (or 130s clicks for all advertisers).

- For publishers to earn credit only.  This point was mentioned in the forum and I am not sure how I feel about it.  As a publisher I much rather to be able to cash out if I did earn that money following the preset rule.

Adigitize has been an amazing site for bloggers.  However, it is also a business so it must adapt in order to survive.  The above lists are just random thoughts that have popped into my mind that might work or it might not.  Best of luck to Adgitize and hope it can turn its business around rapidly and provide even more value to its customers!