Some blogs do make money. Some internet sites pay bloggers for every post they make on their blog. However, these sites often lure bloggers in with high payment amounts and cut the pay amount once the bloggers has failed to produce astronomical page views. The companies that pay per post for blogs make money by placing relevant ads on the blog that the paid bloggers write. If you are looking to write for a pay per post blog site pick a topic that will draw lots of page views such as celebrity gossip or news.

The way most bloggers make money blogging is by affiliate marketing. What is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is when someone posts an ad with a link to a product on their blog or site. The person who posts the link on their site is then paid for every click on that link or for every product that is sold from the link. The payment amounts can vary from a few cents to hundreds of dollars depending on the item sold.

The down side to affiliate marketing is that in order to gain your blog readers trust you have to recommend quality products that fit with the theme of your blog. For example if your blog is about raising children, a good affiliate link would be for a book your kids loved. A bad affiliate link would be for a power tool. Plus blog followers want to read more than ads, so you have to be sure to post relevant blog posts and not just affiliate links.

The major problem most bloggers have is maintaining traffic flow to their blog. Traffic can be generated in a few ways. Writing interesting, unique and relevant content is most important way to get traffic. However, every blogger should learn about search engine optimization to bring in traffic from search engines. Another great way to generate traffic to your blog is by participating in blog circles that share ad space and readers.

Pixelmator is another inexpensive graphics manipulation solution, this time for the Mac OSX. For $59, you get most of the capabilities of Photoshop in an attractive package that features a slick, easy-to-follow interface. Pixelmator has both a normal window mode and a full-screen editing mode, with a wide selection of filters available for you to play around with. Pixelmator is excellent for quick photo editing tasks such as cropping, rotating and minor color effects.

Last but not least, Fotografix offers most of the capabilities one would expect from a small-scale graphics manipulation program, but with a twist – this program is only less than 1MB in size when unzipped, meaning that you can throw it on your USB drive and always have an image editing program at your fingertips whenever you need it. It lacks some features that you would expect – for instance, there are no grid and ruler options, but this software manages to get the job done. And it comes at a rather affordable of…free.

Picasa’s basic interface consists of a sleek, easy-to-use photo tray. Users can import photos directly into the tray from a camera or external harddrive, and the photos may then be moved, sorted, renamed, edited, what have you. There is a caption option which allows users to make a caption strip appear below the picture, but this will only show up on Picasa, Picasa Web Albums, and other IPTC compatible programs. For those of you that are looking beyond simple photos, users can also create a variety of multimedia from their pictures. Picasa offers easy tools with which to make movies, slideshows, collages, gift CD/DVDs, and more. For those that wish to share their pictures on the net, Picasa Web Albums allows users to tag their photos for easy tracking, and in fact Picasa itself has a handy search function for them to browse through the pictures.

Picasa is available for download for Windows XP users, Vista users, Mac users, and Linux users. There are a few key differences between the Windows and Mac versions: for example, in Macintosh computers Picasa will scan and display the photos in the “iPhoto Library” as read-only files. This is to ensure that Picasa and iPhoto do not clash – Mac users that wish to use Picasa to edit will have to copy the file over before they can work with it. Otherwise, the bulk of the program is the same for all operating systems.

Are You a Mac or PC?
The first decision you need to make is which operating system you’d prefer to use – Windows or Macintosh. Both offer their own advantages and disadvantages. The majority of computer owners use Windows as their operating system and most computer programs will run on Windows. The cheapest computers on the market also tend to run Windows. However, its popularity makes it particularly vulnerable to security risks like spyware and viruses and many users find the latest operating system, Vista, to be a hassle.

Macs have been around about as long as PCs and are slowly gaining ground in popularity. The machines themselves are sleek and the operating system (Leopard) has far fewer security issues than Windows does. They tend to be among the more expensive computers available and are not compatible with all software (though the latest Macs can now run Vista or Windows XP through a program called Boot Camp, somewhat eliminating this problem).

Do You Need a Desktop or a Laptop?
This is the second question you need to ask yourself. Desktops offer a larger hard drive (some now come as large as one terabyte in size) but are anchored to one place and not easily transported. Laptops are far more portable and necessary for anyone who works away from a desk or needs to bring their work with them between home and the office. Laptops are also more expensive than a desktop, so you may end up paying more money for a computer that cannot do as much as a desktop. For many, though, the advantage of a portable computer more than makes up for the price difference.

What Specifications (Specs) Do You Need?
How much RAM (your computer’s thinking-power) do you need? Do you pick an Intel or an AMD processor? It depends. For those who simply need a computer that will surf the internet, email friends and coworkers and type up documents, a computer with 1-gigabyte of RAM and an AMD processor should be fine, and relatively inexpensive to purchase. Intel processors are more efficient and 2 to 4 gigabytes of RAM will give you a faster computer – ideal for the computer gamer or person who runs many programs at once.

Before YouTube became popular, and to myself, I often found my online video entertainment at www.ebaumsworld.com, and it is where many of these video clips came from. They are or were popular videos from the time and are likely also available on YouTube now. I decided to use other people’s videos to weave a commentary of my own.

To watch “People & Technology,” you will need the password: grantby

I hope you enjoy it or in the very least, may it provoke an emotional reaction. And please, feel free to comment.

Cheers,
Richard