Easy (Kinda) Money

I am sure you have noticed that I have been away for the past two weeks. It seems that as of late I’ve been having more than my share of technical difficulties. Here is the next in the long line of technical dramas that I have experienced. The computer that I use to update my blog and write my eHow articles crashed two weeks ago. I brought it in to see if I could get it repaired. But, to no avail. It was a laptop computer that I use for most of my Internet business. After the “techs” told me that the hard drive was fried, I was fairly upset. Instead of jumping in and buying another PC, I decided to purchase a server grade computer. Obviously, this took a little time.

With this type of computer it took far longer than normal for me to understand how to set it up. However, I believe it will be worth it. The next step was to arrange the programs, settings and options, similar to my last computer. Again, this was more complicated, because the computer is far more powerful. Or, I should say, the operating system is far more powerful.

Now I get to the subject of my post. Carbonite. Yes, this is going to be another sales pitch. As you know, I do not recommend any affiliate that I do not believe in. I do believe in Carbonite. Carbonite saved me many days of trying to re-create files. It was actually a fairly simple process. I clicked on two or three links to completely restore my hard drive database of files, articles, and programs. I am highly recommending a Carbonite to you. It is very inexpensive, only about $60 per year. I guarantee that if your hard drive crashes, it will be the cheapest $60 you ever spent.

Now, here is what I do not like about Carbonite, the affiliate program. The commission is good, and the product is good, however, they use Commission Junction as their affiliate portal. Commission Junction makes you jump through the most convoluted hoops to retrieve the HTML code to put on your site. As of this writing, I am still waiting to be approved, whatever that means, to place the Carbonite banner on my sidebar.

Carbonite is an awesome product, I recommend it to anyone who cares about their data. However, if you want to become an affiliate, be prepared to jump through the flaming hoops.

You have noticed it been a few days since I updated this blog. I do apologize for that. I was waiting to receive my copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking from Nuance software. Therefore, I was too lazy to actually type. I know this is a weak excuse but I hope you were able to bear with me.

This is actually the first post that I have written using NaturallySpeaking. Honestly, I am quite pleased with the software. I believe that I can write by speaking at almost four times the rate that I can when I am typing. This should correlate into four times the income in the same timeframe.

At this point I have no affiliation whatsoever with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. However, thus far I can absolutely recommend this to anybody who wants to create content for the web, or any other medium for that matter.

When starting a business or making it grow, you must take stock of your strengths and weaknesses.

I know my strengths; I have good ideas, I research thoroughly, Me have good words, etc. (In case you didn’t catch it, that was a joke.) I truly enjoy getting my ideas “out there”, and receiving the feedback. The basis of everything that I do is “content”. It is why you are reading this blog. It is why I have an above average eHow payout. However, to create this content I must bring the ideas from my thoughts into this written medium. Therein lies the rub… I type like a drunken monkey with arthritis.

That is my weakness. I cannot type worth a crap. In my head, I have already written an eBook, but the thought of typing it out is incredibly daunting. I needed to look at this critical weakness and find a solution.

I decided that I need a speech to text translator. The concept is simple. I speak into the microphone and my spoken words are rendered as text. I was in luck… My good friend who writes for the Washington Times uses a program called Dragon Naturally Speaking by Nuance software. I am not plugging it yet, but my friend tells me it is quite good. I should be receiving it in the next few days, and after I give it a week or two trial, I will give you my review on it.

If it works as advertised, I will be able to increase my blog entries. Also, increase the length and depth of my blog posts. I may even be able to meet or surpass my eHow article writing goals. Beyond that, I may be able to start on my first eBook. It has been in the works for months, but I just cannot seem to force the arthritic drunken monkey to get started.