Steve Oliphant’s Musings

There are a surprising amount of websites that will pay you to write for them. You don’t have to be an accomplished writer or famous personality to do this.

The first place I became aware of is Associated Content. Billing themselves as “The People’s Media Company” they will pay you for your original written content, video content, and slide shows. I have written several articles for them and they seem to be pretty good. How much will you get paid? They pay from $3-$20 per submission and also give you a performance bonus if your content gets a lot of traffic. This is a site that you can definately make more than minimum wage on.

Another site that I found is ReviewStream.com. They pay for reviews of pretty much anything. To quote their website:

You could review anything around you including: any products, hi-end technics, companies, hotels, politics, cities, stores on your street, or even your neighbors pets! We’ll pay you for all of the reviews. Did you visit a barbershop today? Review it and get paid! What about your shopping today? Review the shops you visited and get some money back in your pocket! Did you return from a vacation? Review the hotel and its staff, the car you rented, cities you visited, restaurants (including McDonald’s), fashion stores and street markets … everything!

They are currently paying $1.50 per review and 10 cents everytime your review gets a vote. I haven’t written for them but they seem worth checking out. (Caveat: They have some bad press online. See This article for example.)

Another way to make money is to focus your articles or reviews on a product that will pay you whenever someone buys through your link. This is often called Article Marketing and the easiest way is to look at Clickbank.com and PayDotCom.com for products to promote. Then write a review or article about that product, and submit it to one of the following locations with your affilite link or hoplink.

Places to submit articles and reviews that seem to get indexed by google quickly:
http://www.usfreeads.com/ - classified ads - have to pay a minimal fee to include a url
http://www.ezinearticles.com/
http://www.goarticles.com/
http://www.searchwarp.com/
http://www.wordpress.com/
http://www.squidoo.com/

If you don’t have a blog yet - get one! It is a very easy way to publish online - in a future post I will tell you how to use your blog to sell your own products - and there are many places like PayPerPost that will pay you to make blog entries in your own blog!

If you have or like to make videos Scott Kirsner has a list of places that you can get paid to submit your video. You can make videos from something as simple as CamStudio(free). CamStudio does have some quirks - the settings it comes with by default do not work. But with a few setting changes (I will address them in a later post) it works as well as software costing $600.00.

James Braush is creating a book from content on his blog.

I am excited about this!

If you read his blog (or the book) you will understand why.

He takes his readers step-by-step and teaches them exactly what to do and how to do it to become one of the 2% who are making incredible amounts of money on the internet.

The information presented here is priceless. He teaches how to (easily) create your own products, how to make websites to sell them, how to drive traffic to your websites, and how to automate the whole process so that you can continue to make money even in your sleep.

James also teaches how to change your life so that you can become successful at anything. This is much more than a “How to make money on the internet” blog, it is a “How to become Free” blog! He writes on time management, self improvement, relationships, and much more.

You can receive a complete education on business, especially internet business, just by reading his blog.

I very much appreciate it James, I can sincerely say “Thank you!” for making this information available.

-Steve Oliphant

As you know if you follow this blog, I am a big fan of James Brausch and his products. One of his products that I recently aquired is MuVar - a software package that you put on your webhost and it automatically tracks and optimizes your webpage.

Recently on his blog, James asked for reviews of MuVar. I want to give a glowing review, but I can’t (yet). When some of the things I address below are fixed, then MuVar gets a big thumbs up from me.

(James, if you or someone from your organization reads this, please feel free to let me know if I missed something in the install videos, or take and implement the fixes below - and then let me know - I really, really want to give a glowing review because after it is working MuVar is awesome!)

The Good:
Testing is always good. Automated testing where the program takes the results and applies them to your website so it is continually being optimized to make more sales is even better. And a simple, easy to use interface that sets all this up is the best!

MuVar is all of this.

The Bad:
When I first tried to use MuVar it simply didn’t work. I would use the interface to add variables and any quotes (double and single) would end up with multiple backslashes before them. So if I had a testimonial on my web page such as:

“This is Steve’s best software”

it would end up looking like:

\”This is Steve\’s best software\”

I googled around and found that this was a (mis)configuration on my server (actually the default configuration of a PHP install) and also found a fix which I applied. (Fixes are below in the “Ugly” section)

Next, after I got that problem fixed, I found that on some variables, no matter how many times I entered in a new one, MuVar would somehow be caching a previous version, so I would end up with 3 variables all containing the same stuff - which was from a different variable alltogether.

Come to find out, this was a problem with cookies. It was either a misconfiguration of my server (again) or something wrong with my browser. I fixed this by changing the use of cookies in one part of MuVar to the use of REQUEST variables instead.

So finally, I got MuVar working.

And it is very cool. A great idea, implemented with an easy to use interface. Of course for most people you won’t run into the problems I did. But I am sure that some will. So, if you do end up with similar problems to mine, Apply the fixes below.

The Ugly:
In order to avoid the backslash problem, I had to either modify my php.ini file by changing
; magic_quotes_gpc = On
to
magic_quotes_gpc = Off

It turns out that PHP defaults to “escaping” or adding a backslash to all quotes that are in POST, GET, REQUEST or COOKIE variables.

If you don’t have access to your php.ini, then you can edit the misc.php file and add the following code:

I added it right at the top of misc.php at about line 10 right after
$testVal="This is a test.";

This fixed the extra slashes problem.

Now, to fix the cookies problem, I had to modify two files: review.php where I added the following at about line 47

And in addverdoit.php:

Change all instances of _COOKIE to _REQUEST, so that

Becomes:

With these changes, MuVar works perfectly for me. And I can highly recommend it. Actually, even after taking the time to make the fixes, I can still recommend it.

So go ahead and Buy Muvar - and try it, then if you run into the same problems I did, apply the fixes (They only take 5 minutes to apply.) You will be glad you did!

-Steve Oliphant

I posted a review at amazon.com about James Brausch’s latest CD. Go read it. Buy the CD. You will be glad you did.

James Braush has been blogging about throwing away the TV. I recently purchased his CD on Life/Time management and was playing it for them.

I had told them before hand that “this was a multi millionaire who was sharing his secrets on how to do it” so they were listening rather closely. And when he said to get rid of the TV, they ran screaming from the room!

I had to laugh - and wonder - at the pervasiveness that the television has in our family’s life. Long ago we got rid of Cable - and the TV is not hooked up to an antenna - it is used for watching videos (that my wife and I approve of) and for playing video games. But, I have noticed that our children (ages 5-16) spend a lot of time in front of the boob tube.

I wonder what would happen if the TV disappeared. I imagine that we would read more, play games together more, and get more done around the house.

We homeschool most of our children - and we do use the TV as a supplement to their education.

And my wife pointed out that “TV is not bad, it is mindless entertainment that is bad - whether it be TV, internet surfing, reading trash or whatever.” She seems to be against getting rid of the TV altogether too.

And I must admit that I really enjoy being a couch potato myself.

But I think that if I want to join the 2% of people who are truly free, the TV may have to go.

Hmm . . . How to convince the rest of my family?

Maybe it will conveniently break. <evil grin>

My wife and I ate at Sai-Savanh’s in Payson Utah last night. They are located at 86 South, Main. This is right towards the end of where main street in Payson goes one way. We really like Sai-Savanh’s because their booths are enclosed making it a very quiet and private place to eat. Their food is great also.

We ordered 2 fresh springrolls, Sweet and Sour Chicken, and Chicken with vegatables, and cashews. (I forget the exact name of that last dish, but it was good.)

All the food was very good. The spring rolls came with peanut sauce and sweet and sour sauce for dipping - and they were very large! About 1 inch in diameter, and 6-7 inches long.

The entrees came with a pot of sticky rice and it was (almost) too much food for two people. I was also very reasonably priced.

My wife commented on the beautiful bar in the building. It looked like something that would come out of a good movie. Dark polished wood and swivel barstools, mirrors, and the overall length and height of the shelves in back, all added up to an impressive and beautiful piece of furniture. Don’t get me wrong - they don’t serve alcoholic drinks, they just have a beautiful building.

All in all, it was a very pleasant experience - good company, good food, and not very pricey.

801-465-8685

Last night my wife and I watched Lady in the Water. I had previously seen Signs byM. Night Shyamalan and had enjoyed that so I was hopefull.

I was not disappointed. One thing I look for in movies is that it is family friendly. There was no gratuitous profanity or sex or violence. Actually, I don’t remember any profanity or sex at all. It is scary. There are half a dozen jump scenes and some slash type wounds on Story’s legs from the creatures that are after her.

But I would not hesitate to let any of my children (ages 5-15) watch this.

For me this was a very fun movie. I enjoy fantasy - especially crossover fantasy where seemingly mundane people and situations turn into fantastical ones. This movie is that and more. I also enjoyed the very obvious directors dream of how the film critic in the movie acted and was treated. Lady in the Water is hard to talk about without giving away spoilers, but if you are looking for a family friendly movie, and don’t mind some scenes or off-screen nudity, then this is a good one to go to.

On the other hand, my wife didn’t care for it. She said she couldn’t relate to any of the characters and I suspect she found it boring.