More sleep for the AdSense Crawler

AdSense Crawler bounce along all over the Internet, visiting publishers' sites, and letting the AdSense system back at Google know what the pages are all about. But the problem come when the site need to be login and asking for password. Adsense Crawler can't go crawling behind that login page.The result is that users end up with poorly targeted ads and the AdSense Crawler ends up with sleepless nights, wondering what could have been -- if only it had crawled those pages.Recently, Google Adsense have launched a new feature called Site Authentication to take care of the problem. Using Site Authentication, you can give the crawler access to your login-protected pages by passing it information to log into your site. For example, let's say your news site has a premium content area, with articles that only paying members can access. To get ads on those pages, you can use Site Authentication to provide the crawler with a test username and password. It's an easy process that starts just by logging into your AdSense account and finding the 'Site Authentication' link under the 'AdSense Setup' tab. Once you've supplied Adsense Crawler with a username, password, and a few other details, all you have to do is verify that you own the site through Google Sitemaps.

If this sounds a little complicated, don't worry -- just check out Site Authentication in your account and follow the instructions on the page. Please note that you will only publisher with Google Account can access to this feature.

Extra cash: Sell the old cell phone

Every day, I try to do three things about money, first thing in the morning. The goal: massive student loan paydown. Today's task, money for an extra payment. Whenever I am trying to make an extra payment, I wander around my house looking for things to sell. Being a serious packrat, I always come up with something, but today, I knew what to sell. My old cell phone.

About a month ago, Cingular took exception to the fact that, despite paying for nationwide service, a pretty penny, more than 50 percent of my calls originate outside of Massachusetts and summarily blocked my ability to make national calls. They offered to let my out of my contract for no “disconnection” fee. Since I use my cellphone for work, and travel widely, this really affected my ability to use the phone (and made me extremely cranky). So angry that I wanted to fight it, join one of the many class-action suits already in process against the deceptive and unethical practices of Cingular.

In a moment of clarity, I realized that if Cingular was going to be that unethical, well, I didn’t really want them anyway. I signed up for a new cell phone service and as part of the deal, received a fabulous new phone. Now I have a perfectly good Motorola V551 rendered useless and what to do with it????

First the options:1) Give it to one of the kids2) Throw it in the sock drawer and forget about it3) Donate it and take the write-off4) Sell it on Ebay5) Sell it somewhere else.

Cash is a good thing. Selling it was the option I chose. On eBay, the Motorola V551 is running from 30 to 100 bucks but I don’t know enough about cell phones to really be able to market it. What is the locking-unlocking thing anyway? You get the picture.

So this morning I did the research on internet sites that buy cell phones. This was complicated and counted for all three things. First I looked at a review of sites, posted here, and then I picked some sites to check out after searching on Google ("sell used cell phone" was the search). Here’s the sites I sampled, and the price they will pay for a Motorola V551.

Digicircle ...................Offer: $60........Shipping paid, payment by PayPal or check

CashOldPhone...............Offer: $52........Priority mail shipping paid

Sell your old cell phone....Offer: $41.......Priority mail shipping paid

Simply Sellular...............Offer: $35......Shipping paid

Pace Butler ..................Offer: $15......Didn't read further about the details.

Digicircle won, with an easy to use site and the highest offer. After printing out the postage paid shipping label, I packed the darn phone up and shipped it off. An Act of Faith. We'll see what happens

Extra Payment and Faith Restored

I sold my old cell phone to an online cell phone service (Digicircle), and to tell you the truth, I was a bit skeptical. I wrote about it here. They delivered, just in time to pay my Friday extra payment. The service was excellent, they sent me two emails, one telling me that they received the phone, and one telling me that they had mailed the check. Shipping was free, and I printed out the postage paid shipping label at home. They offer a PayPal option to to receive funds, but I went for the check. The check arrived right on time. I'm impressed with both their service and that they pay pretty much the highest prices I could find for my model of cell phone. Faith restored.

This Friday's extra payment to Sallie consisted of the money I received for the cell phone and money from the two DVD's I sold on Amazon. Sallie Mae, given her somewhat Satanic nature, will not apply extra payments to your principal unless you specifically tell her. Instead she will "advance" your payment due date, which doesn't help at all. I am creating a form letter, because I plan to tell her every Friday. I will post it here.
Just one of the many "3 things about money" I try to do every day.

Five Fast Financials

Here's the drill, every morning when I awake, I do "3 things about money". Could be anything, read a financial blog for inspiration, figure out where to get cheaper car insurance, and of course, on Friday mornings I write a check to Sallie Mae as one of the things. Truth is, it doesn't matter what I do, it is just a time for myself, to reassert my commitment to pay the monster down, and reflect on money. Sometimes I am lazy and when I have trouble doing 3 things about money, I turn to the quickie list, a list of short tasks for just this kind of moment. Here are five quickies I have accomplished in the last several months.

1. Opt out of unsolicited credit card offers. I don't know about you, but they can smell me, those vultures. Me and my bad credit score, vulnerability to impulse buying, delusional want for a credit card. They sent me offers every day for $300 credit line, $299.00 fee to sign up and 21.00 percent variable interest rate cards. It is like sending crack to a crackhead. I would read every offer over very carefully and oh-so-reluctantly shred them, all the while trying to rationalize their criminal usury.

How did they find me? Oh yeah, the credit bureaus sold my name to them. The good news, there is a one minute task to opt-out of allowing your name to be sold to any old stranger passing by...by clicking here you will be taken to a site that is a service run by the three major credit bureaus (likely a service offered as part of a settlement following litigation). I haven't gotten a card offer since I did it.

2. Sign up for the Do Not Call list. While I am not susceptible to telemarketers, they annoy me and I often abuse them verbally, only later remembering they are desperate people making no money working for a heartless scam-corp and are to be pitied, not abused. To protect them from my crankiness, I put myself on the do not call list, another 1 minute task. Click here to be whisked to the federal government site that allows you to opt out of marketing-related telephone calls.

3. Pick up coin wrappers the next time you are at the bank. Pouring all that change jar coin into the Coinstar machine at the supermarket is way more fun, but with a 9 cent fee for every dollar, it costs you for all that fun. Rolling coins in front of the TV is a simpler, more zen-like thing to do. But you gotta have the wrappers handy for when the impulse strikes. A one minute task.

4. In a related 5 minute task, go through the coat closet and check the pockets of all the winter coats. Go under the cushions on the couch and rustle up extra change for the coin jar. Sounds silly, but the last time I did it, trying to come up with something for that Friday payment, I found $11.38, an amount greatly inflated by the ten dollar bill I found squirreled away in a jacket.

5. Check the tire pressure on the car. Keeping tires properly inflated is one of the simplest things to do to slightly increase gas mileage and save a few cents on the transport bill. People say at gasbuddy.com that you should "Keep tire air pressure at the level recommended by your vehicle manufacturer. A single tire under inflated by 2 PSI, increases fuel consumption by 1%". For extra points figure out how much gaining an extra 1% per gallon at today's gas prices nets you.
So, that's the list for today. I'll post other quick lists from time to time.

Sallie surveillance, promise, and cycles

Weekend off and now back to the grindstone in the world of 3 things about money. Todays activities:

1. Made an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my extra payments to Miss Sallie. She is a little forgetful sometimes, as am I. This keeps us all honest and gives me a summary of where I stand. Every Friday, I can record my payments, my estimated principal pay down and then use the sheet to check on the website and make sure Sallie didn’t “forget” to apply what I paid to principal. If I can figure out how to post a spreadsheet on Blogger, I will post it here. Any technical advice?

2. Investigated Upromise. And remembered some of the reasons why Sallie Mae is cold and evil. Upromise is a cool idea, it is first and foremost a rewards and loyalty shopping site. As told to me, the gimmick is that you register your credit card and grocery card, and do your major site online shopping through them and you get a tiny percentage deposited into a 529 account, a savings account for a kid's college fund. For us adult debtors, the good news is that you can link your student loan account to your Upromise account, and the accrued funds go right in to pay off your student loans. Concept! I loved it.

Recently, Sallie Mae bought Upromise, so naturally, I believed that I could link my Sallie Mae student loan right to a Upromise accountit, but nooooooooo, Miss Sallie is determined to keep me broke. Because while you can link to American Educational Service loans, and several other loans, and despite the fact that Sallie Mae owns Upromise, you can’t link to your Sallie Mae account. Cause she specializes in the art of mind-fu.

But upon investigation, I realized that what isn’t especially clear from the website is that you can sign up at Upromise and simply withdraw the money and apply it to your student loan. You do not have to put it in a dedicated 529 savings account or link your student loan account to it. That is just the gimmick; the site is just a for-profit rewards site that has a lot of the stores where I might shop at signed up. Five Cent Nickel explains about withdrawals in this post.

The truth is, it sounds like people aren’t making too much money with Upromise. Check out this Penny Foolish post on the matter. Penny Foolish is not alone, many others report tiny, tiny amounts of money. Still, I signed up anyway because of the promotion post I saw with a link on Picking-Up-Nickels, clicked on over and they deposited a buck because I joined. It's a buck I didn't have before. I got a free buck in my account as part of signing up, and yes, this time I remembered to opt-out of their email spam. Since I am starting to Christmas shop, and they link to stores I shop at, I will try it through January and see how it goes. Might work, might not. No harm in trying as far as I can tell.

3. Started the money hunt for Friday's payment. The cupboard is bare, so this will not be a robust payment, but I do this every Friday, no matter how small the check. My total so far for Friday is $12.77, which is net from a book I sold on Amazon. Here is my drill on books – I am a Serious Reader of anything, and I pick up books wherever I go, books for free by the side of the road, books at yard sales, books in dumpsters – I usually won’t pay more than $2.00 for a book.

The best books are sucked into my extensive library. Everything left over goes into Box #1. I screen those on Amazon and if the lowest price for a used copy is $9.99 or above, I list them there. Why $9.99? Because I arbitrarily decided it isn’t worth my time to do it for less. YMMV. Usually that means that most of the books end up in Box #2.

Box #2 gets taken to Barnes and Noble used book desk, and they take what they want and give me a store credit or cash. I use the store credit to either buy a book I want or a book that will sell for over $9.99 on Amazon. Sometimes I take the cash. Depends on my mood. The leftovers go into Box #3.

Box #3 goes to Goodwill. Before I go, I count the number of books by type: e.g. the number of hardbacks, the number of big paperbacks, and the number of mass-market paperbacks (airport novel size) because that is how Goodwill sells them. There is no need to itemize by title. I get a receipt, and note the numbers on the receipt. I toss it in my Charitable Deductions file and write off the donation on my taxes. If I were compulsive, I could record the mileage to and from Goodwill to donate the books, because that is deductable also. But I don’t.

Today, I took cash at Barnes and Noble, netting me $4.97. The leftover books are now resting comfortably in the Box #3 for Goodwill. Three things about money for today, and the Friday total is up to $17.74. So far so good.

Only one thing about money and it sucks

I only did one thing about money this weekend, one of the biggest money savers ever and it sucks....so....bad. I'm quitting smoking, and I am one seriously cranky b**ch. My rule for quitting is this: I didn't decide to quit, I just decided to not to buy any more. I am way too shy to bum cigarettes. Thus, I am doling out my one remaining quarter of a pack. I am in withdrawal and my head hurts.

Here's the deal though. Smoking is stupid on about 10 levels. It costs a lot of money, it isn't a good high, and you are a slave to an addiction that doesn't even bring joy. Not to mention the health care costs incurred down the road. I used this calculator and figured out that just by delaying smoking for an hour I save $1.86. My habit costs $11.30 a day, $339 a month, $4124.50 a year. And no joy. I never say, "Wasn't that amazing last night when we killed a pack of smokes, the music was divine...".

I never say, "Wow, that was some serious formaldehyde cured tobacco, dude, whoa, I was so wasted, never laughed so much in my life, ..." I never say, "I had such an intense time with that nicotine high, I learned so much..." The doors to the other world have never opened for me on tobacco.

Nope, smoking is mechanical. A perfect authoritarian drug, no ecstasy, no bliss, just staving off withdrawal one cigarette at a time, mechanically inhaling and tapping my foot, listening to the ka-ching in Big Tobaccos till.

So I am down to a quarter pack, have severe crankiness, and yup, it counts for everything this weekend. Grrrrrrr. I'll indulge in Global Whining, but quitting smoking is all good.

Return To TradLand

I have gotten a little far a field from doing a traditional three things about money every day; I’ve strayed from the path. But erratic as I am, I always return to the general journey, so now it’s back to Trad Land. Today is a planning and catch-up day. I’m planning phone calls, identifying places where I need more information, figuring out the gaps. Here are a few items that I knocked of my list for today.

1) I have an orphan TIAA-CREF account. It is about $3,728 in retirement savings from an old job. It is their “traditional annuity” and gains about 1.4% every quarter. I can’t reallocate it to a better investment position from the online account, and I suspect the rules won’t allow me to even in person. I must call them to find out the options for this, and I have been putting it off for, oh, about 2 years. Just hearing the word annuity makes me want to fall asleep. I have no idea what an annuity is, even. Today, I printed out all the info I would need to talk with them, looked up definitions of annuity, wrote down questions, made a file, and printed out their phone numbers. The only step left is to call them. And yup, doing it tomorrow.

2) I checked my Upromise account and I am a little disappointed. Since I joined (described here) I’ve made $4.20. My philosophy is that it is $4.20 I didn’t have before but still. Two major grocery shops netted 12 cents. The kicker is, you can’t withdraw it until you have made 20 bucks and even then, it is a pain.I balance my $4.20 against my electronic clutter box. I have clutter; I have zillions of passwords, links to check on, remembering to swipe my grocery card at the store and I ask myself – worth it? It is sort of like the rule I have for physical clutter, if I haven’t used it, worn it, or taken it out of the box in two years, out it goes. Upromise, your days are numbered.

3) I have been doing a lot of cooking and freezing lately. An excellent way to save money. Keep an eagle eye out for sales, buy a bunch, and cook it up. For example, the other day, roasting chickens were on sale for 59 cents a pound, a bargain in our neck of the woods. I bought five chickens for cooking and freezing, and I need to look up some OAMC (Once a Month Cooking) sites to download some good freezable chicken recipes.

This morning I made two trays of Super Special Chicken Enchiladas and early on a snowy morning in Vermont, the smell of Mexico is filling the house, taking me away to a sandy beach near Tulum and the sun warming my cold winter bones….Hmmmm.