Is Failure the Recipe for Success?

On CNN's situation room Fran Townsend, a Homeland Security Advisor described the efforts to capture Osama bin Laden as a "a success that hasn't occurred yet. I don't know that I view that as a failure."

I was really reminded of 1984. This is a great piece of doublespeak.

As a Chicago Cubs fan, I'm pleased to know that Cubbies aren't a perpetually failing baseball team, just a success that hasn't happened yet.

Click here to read the entire discussion. Do a search on "Townsend" it's about halfway down on the webpage.

Let's hope for a happy new year where all members of the political process will work to provide the best government possible instead of working against each other.

Take care and "say excuse me all the way."
The rapidly aging baby boomer-tfedge

Nixon's FBI Application

Under the category of really peculiar and scary I was looking at the FBI's website lately and came across Richard Nixon's application to become an FBI agent!

Can you imagine the sagging jowls and him protesting, "I am not a crook, I am an FBI agent."

However, it is interesting to speculate how his life would have turned out with J. Edgar Hoover as his boss.

Speaking of Nixon, I remember what I consider to be one of the best pieces of political graffiti I have ever seen during the 1972 election. It's a little off color so those of you who are offended by such things should probably take a break.

• Don't change dicks in the middle of a screw
  Vote for Nixon in '72

Graffiti lately doesn't seem to have the same erudition as it did in the 60s and early 70s. I miss it. Maybe I'll start looking for more of it to share with you.

Look here if you want to read Richard Nixon's FBI Application

Good luck and Happy New Year.

tfedge

How to Study More Effectively

TFedge has been working hard lately to put together some websites and blogs to help you and your children succeed in schools and colleges.

It's still very much in the ramping up stage but definitely worth a look. He claims he's updating daily so you might want to visit it frequently.


Visit the Virtual Study Hall

Happy Holidays!

boomer

All Creatures Juicy and Crunchy

I'm not a vegetarian. I love a nice thick Omaha Steak and a cut of ribeye is just about the perfect meat for me. I do have sympathies for those who are vegetarians as long as they aren't militant about it. However, I appreciate a good joke about anything.

Recently I ate lunch at a Mom and Pop fast food place in Salina, Oklahoma. That's "sah LYN a" for those of you from California. There was a large young man there who had a very clever and amusing t-shirt.

There's a place for all of God's creatures.
Right next to the mashed potatoes and gravy.

Take care and "say excuse me all the way."
The rapidly aging baby boomer.

Friendly Oklahoma

My wife and I just got back from a visit to Oklahoma. We had a wonderful time and were very impressed at how well people behaved towards each other.

At a base ball game, we heard a woman in her twenties who sent her enthusiastic son of about seven years old to buy ice cream with the caution, "Say excuse me all the way."

This attitude was very refreshing and a good lesson to those of us who live in less friendly, less polite areas.

The whole attitude was expressed by the sign above that was located near the Oklahoma State Capital building. It's a good approach to driving and just about anything else to do with life.

Take care and "say excuse me all the way."
The rapidly aging baby boomer.

RSS Connection to Blogger Blogs

Blogs are great. They are almost a killer application based on how they have affected access to the internet.

However, there are so many of them that visiting just a few of those you like can eat up a lot of your disposable computer time. This leaves you no time to seek out other new blogs.

However, RSS has changed that. RSS stands for really simple syndication and it allows you to have blogs and other sites automatically send you updated blog postings, news articles, or whatever.

Instead of spend lots of time surfing for what interests you (who would have ever thought we'd believe surfing could become slow), whether it be BMWs or Mercedes or books of video games, you no longer have to go out and manually visit each blog or website. You can set up your Newsreader (Google as a pretty good one for FREE! to have updates delivered directly to your newsreader.

Many sites or blogs have a button that will connect you automatically, however blogger.com (which hosts this blog) by Google doesn't. Other than this rather strange ommission, blogger is great.

However if you want to add an RSS feed to your newsreader, just click the line that appears in the address box of your internet browser, copy it to your clipboard and then paste it into the appropriate section of the add content section of your newsreader. After you paste it, add "atom.xml" to the address. Make sure there is one forward slash before "atom.xml" and of course, no quotation marks.

Good luck. Let me know if you have questions.

Is Blogging for Adsense Bucks Worthwhile?

The internet is brimming with articles, ebooks and hype about using blogs in conjunction with Google’s Adsense program as a means of generating revenue. The formula for success, it seems, is simple. You blog, you place ads, you get traffic, visitors click on the ads and you get paid. The question many people have about the whole process is whether or not the end result will really be profitable considering the time and effort that is required to implement the strategy.

This question has been difficult to answer, in large part, because of the Google Terms of Service for Adsense users. Although the terms have recently been loosened somewhat, users were long prohibited from sharing personal information regarding their success levels and other key statistics that might have provided prospective for-profit bloggers from developing a clear perspective on the profit potential available.

If you are curious about whether or not you can make blogging with Adsense a legitimate moneymaker, it is worth conducting this relatively simple exercise. The results can give you an idea of whether or not it is worth your time.

First, determine how long it will take you build your blog. Consider the set up time and the time necessary to do initial promotion and to write at least ten to twenty starter posts. We can term this variable ST, for “start-up time.” For our hypothetical, we will say our ST is twelve hours.

Second, estimate how much ongoing time it will take on weekly basis to do additional promotion and to add at least two new posts. Multiply this figure by 52 (the number of weeks in a year). We will term this variable MT for “maintenance time.” For this example, we will set MT at 104 hours (2 hours per week).

Third, add ST and MT. This will give us an idea of the total time required (TT). In this case, TT is 116 total hours.

Fourth, investigate the average value of an ad click in your niche. You can use the Overture bid tool, easily found online, to get a reasonable idea of the value of each click. In order to make your projection “safe,” reduce that number by half. This yields PPC, or “pay per click.” Let’s say the bid tool says clicks related to our keyword are worth about fifty cents. Our PPC is .25.

Fifth, determine how much your time is worth. Do you feel your blogging time should generate at least $10 per hour? $20? This is a matter of personal preference. We will term the resulting variable DR for “desired rate.” We will assess the value of our time at $15 per hour for this exercise.

Sixth, assume a click-through rate of five percent. This is a low figure, as many blogs can generate click-through rates approximating 25%. Click-through rate is expressed as CTR.

Now it’s time to perform the critical calculation. One needs to determine the required number of visitors necessary to produce enough money to make process worthwhile. If we express that number as V, the equation will look something like this:

V x PPC x CTR = DR x TT

This translates to:

V x .25 x .05 = 15 x 116

Or
V x .0125 = 1740

Thus, V must be 139,200. In order to make the process pay, you will have to drive 139,200 visitors to the blog over the course of one year. That translates to approximately 391 visitors per day, on average. Obviously, that is a very “doable” number based on the amount of time we have set aside for the process.

So, for our example, blogging for bucks with Adsense is a winner.

Perform these calculations based on your unique circumstances and you can determine the viability of earning money with a blog and Adsense.

Blogabulary

I must admit I'm a little disappointed. I could have sworn I invented the word "blogabulary" about ten minutes ago. Then I did a Google search and found that others had already used it. So I guess I did invent it, but I was a little late.

BTW, did I tell you about my idea for a silicon microchip?

After reading the article below, visit My Website for more

FREE information about blogs

So, you are considering taking the step of adding Adsense to your blog in order to make some extra money. It can be a wise decision. By using your blog to display contextual advertising, you have created a great opportunity, not only for the blog in question but for future pursuits, as well.

Many bloggers enter Adsense without a great deal of experience in online advertising and its terminology. However, in order to better understand exactly what will be happening, it is important to get a firm grasp on some of the unique terminology used when discussing Adsense and blogs.

Here are some important terms, their common abbreviations, and meanings:

• Ad unit. An ad unit is a displayed block of Google Adsense ads. There are a variety of ad units from which to choose. They are usually expressed in terms of their size in pixels. For instance, a 120 x 600 tower ad unit will be 120 units wide and 600 units long--tall and skinny.
  
• Ad placement. This refers to where your ads are placed. Publishers may place their Adsense units anywhere on a page consistent with the TOS. There are a variety of online guides, charts and recommendations demonstrating the various location options and how successful they tend to be in producing a high CTR.
  
• Channel. You can set up channels to track the performance of individual Adsense ad units or to track earnings on particular sites. Channels are established in the Set Up area of your Adsense account.
  
• Click through rate (CTR). This represents the percentage of page impressions that result in a click on an ad at your site. For instance, if your blog gets 100 impressions and 17 of them result in a click, the CTR for your site will be 17%.
  
• Competitive Ad Filter. Google gives you the option not to display certain advertisements via the competitive ad filter. This allows you to avoid inadvertently advertising someone with whom you are in competition, for instance.
  
• Pay per click (PPC). Google Adsense operates predominantly on a pay per click basis. That means the advertiser pays for each time someone clicks upon their ad. It also means that you will get paid for every click.
  
• Terms of Service (TOS). All participants in the Adsense program are required to abide by Google’s Terms of Service. This is basically the "rule book" for Adsense. Those who fail to conduct themselves according to TOS may be banned from participation and/or have their account suspended. Every participant should carefully read the TOS.Publisher. That’s you. Anyone operating a site displaying Adsense ads is considered a publisher.
  

The world of Adsense brings with it a new vocabulary that must be mastered in order to achieve maximum success. Terms like those above become second nature in a short period of time for most Adsense units. By knowing and understanding these terms, you will be better able to understand your performance charts and will be better able to learn more about succeeding with Adsense.

Visit My Website for more
FREE information about blogs>
Like Native American mysteries? Read reviews at my

"Books that are similar to Tony Hillerman" website.

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Mystery Blog

I'm pleased to announce my website "If you like Tony Hillerman." It is based on the notion that Tony Hillerman has started a new genre within the mystery writing gentre. This is an ongoing process. I've started listing similar authors who write in the same genre and writing reviews of their books. There are a fair number of them. Currently I've begun with only four of them and only a few reviews. I hope to add several per week. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

mtc

http://home.comcast.net/~mtconner/hillerman/Hillerman-Index.html