Tag: church

How To Make Money With A Blog… yes, that’s a question…

I have really big plans for this blog.  Someday, I will make enough money with this blog that I can spend all of the time that I now devote to my job doing nothing more than bitching about stuff here all day.  You know what they say, do something you love, and it won’t really be “work”.  Well, bitching is about the only thing I do that I really enjoy, so this has to be the answer to my prayers… at some point… right?  Oh please, let it be so.

Okay, so to make money with a blog, you have to… uh… COME ON!  There has to be a way to make money with a blog! Every once in awhile, I put a link to something on Amazon on here.  I’m an Amazon Associate, which means I can get commission if someone clicks one of those links and actually buys something from Amazon.  I have been an Amazon Associate for about two years, and I have actually made some money doing it.  Of course, I haven’t seen any of that money yet.   Amazon won’t actually pay anything out until you have built up at least $10 in commission… and I haven’t hit that mark yet.  In another three or four years, I should get my first $10 check from Amazon.

$10

I’m stoked!

There is also Google Ads.  I could have a list of stupid links on the side of my blog with Google ads and I would get paid every time someone clicks one of those links.  Happy Stinking Joy doesn’t really have a lot of visitors, and, at this point, I’d rather have you stay and read my thoughts than get distracted by the ads on the side and leave my site.  Also, it would mess up my ultra-professional layout… or something.

I haven’t exactly had an onslaught of individual advertisers approaching me with bids for some of the precious real estate on my site.  I guess rant sites aren’t real popular with traditional advertisers.  Before I’m going to see any real revenue from this site, I’m going to have to get more than a handful of people coming here on a daily basis.

Most popular blogs seem to fall into a couple of categories, the first of which is the “expert” blogger.  You know, these are the Seth Godins of the world who share all kinds of free insight into crap that they are experts about.  Their whole ploy is to give you “free advice” to make you feel like a friend, and then they try to sell their books to you or try to talk you into hiring them to do consulting or speaking engagements.  Well, my forty-one-years of life have not exactly led me to become much of an expert at anything.  I know a little about a lot, but a lot about little.  I have been too busy chasing the next-step-up in middle-class pay to stay with any one company in any given field for more than a couple of years.  If your current promotions and pay increases aren’t getting you where you want to be: quit, and maybe the next job will take you where you want to go.  Of course, the next job never does.  So, I’ve had the opportunity to work with all kinds of interesting people in many different fields, but I haven’t stuck around any of them long enough to actually have become an expert at anything.  I’m an expert bitcher, but companies aren’t going to hire me to give a “bitch seminar” to their workforce… at least not yet.  I figure if I pray about it long enough, God, if nothing else, will get tired of me asking and either give it to me just to shut me up or strike me dead…

Strike me Dead

… either of which would lead to no more Monday mornings dreading work.

The other major category of successful bloggers seems to be those who cover current events.  Whether it be Perez Hilton covering the latest embarrassments of the rich and famous, or any of the slew of Yahoo! bloggers covering the latest in world events; people who get the story first tend to get a following.  I think this may be the route I need to follow.  I need to get the hot stories first.  Of course, I live in Nebraska, so the celebrity fodder may be a little out of my grasp.

Miss America

Ooh… Ooh… Miss America is from my part of Nebraska, so I could dedicate my blog to digging up all of the crap I can to humiliate Miss America I did a little blog about Miss America right after she won and it was actually one of the most visited rants I have posted!  But… I have a pretty strong suspicion that Teresa Scanlan is almost as squeaky clean as you would think a Miss America should be. I bet she actually believes what she says she believes, and I don’t think that “Miss America thought about skipping church once because she was just too tired to go, but then she prayed about it and changed her mind” will draw a lot of visitors to my little site.

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So, I’ve got to find a way to get the latest and greatest news before anybody else.  This is a “must” if I ever want to make this thing my sugar daddy.  Okay, so here it goes:

Breaking news… Charlie Sheen has gone insane!  The impact was devastating.  Damages are estimated… oh, great, my kid just looked over my shoulder and informed me that this is old news.  Okay, I guess I need to find something a little more “hot”.

Alright, I just did a Google search for “breaking news” and I don’t think I’m going to be able to go this route.  It seems that all of the “news” sites already have the breaking news covered.  The news sites and a bunch of Twitter people.  I don’t tweet or chirp or cockadoodledoo… or whatever it is that those people do.  I’m not quite hip enough for that.  Besides, all I’d be able to add to the Twitter conversation would be unique things I’m experiencing.

“It’s windy in Nebraska… again!”

Windy Trees

See, it just doesn’t work.

Hmmm… I gotta figure something out.  Okay, I know, I could just make kind of creative news stories.  No, that wasn’t “make up news stories”, it was “make kind of creative news stories”.  There’s… uh… sort of a difference.

Breaking news…. There is a humongous oil leak in the… uh… Gulf of Istanbul.  Yeah, and it’s causing infertility in the… uh… Great Northern Spike-Backed Whale.  Oh, you should hear the sad song those poor whales are singing at this moment.  It would make you cry.

PETA
Okay... yeah... I don't know what Alicia Silverstone being a Vegetarian has to do with "funny whale oil leaks" either, but a Google image search came up with this. I love Google...

This just in… apparently the oil spill was caused by… uh… Miss America!  Yeah, that’s it!  Apparently Miss America was on a diplomatic mission to Alderan and she and her entourage accidentally knocked over a big oil thingie in the Gulf of Istanbul.  Anti-American sentiment is through the roof in the countries bordering the Gulf… and by Great Northern Spiked-Back Whale lovers around the world!  Check back to this site often for more of the latest…

This just may work 😉

Stinking Old Germans!

There are so many things about the Craphandle of Nebraska not to like!  The wind blows here almost all of the time.  The scenery is… uh… not very scenic.  There is little to do here that does not involve killing critters of one kind or another or drinking lots and lots of alcohol (I know, I know; sounds like a redneck heaven… but if you aren’t 100% pure redneck, it sucks.)  Low wages and a relatively high cost of living (i.e. we make less and pay more because we like killing stuff and drinking stuff… or something.)  Oh, I could go on for hours about the stuff here that sucks!  There is some good stuff here too, but the good stuff isn’t nearly as fun to write about!

One of the most annoying things of all about living in the Craphandle of Nebraska is the stinking old Germans!

Now, I have nothing against Germans as a people (other then, I guess, World War I… & maybe World War II… and that holocaust thing wasn’t real cool… and BWMs kind of suck ’cause they are only for rich, snotty people.)  Heck, I have my fair share of German blood running through my veins.  However, the Germans here are different!  The Germans here in the Craphandle of Nebraska are Germans from Russia who left Russia to get away from the Czars… blah, blah, blah.  I’ve had the whole thing explained to me before but it didn’t interest me at the time and I have no desire to bore you to death with it now.  To make it short: Germans around here are… uh… different; did I already mention that?

To Germans around here, bratwurst isn’t a mainstay and sauerkraut is seldom seen.  “Garlic sausage” is the meat of choice.  Never heard of garlic sausage?  Yeah, neither has 99% of the US population.  Garlic sausage is a beefie porkish big link sausage thingie that tastes pretty garlicy.  Don’t get me wrong, the garlic sausage stuff is good… but it ain’t bratwurst!  Also, they have these things here called “cabbage burgers.”  These are also known in German communities around the world as kraut burgers or runzas.
Kraut Burger
Kraut burgers are a mixture of lightly seasoned cabbage and ground beef stuffed inside bread dough and baked.  Sounds yummy, huh?  Actually, they aren’t nearly as gross as they sound and, if you’re like me, you will enjoy the gas-producing side effects:)  There is even a franchised fast food restaurant based out of somewhere in eastern Nebraska that specializes in kraut burgers; it’s called Runza and it sells extremely overpriced, very small versions of the kraut burger.  So, next time you’re in Nebraska, stop at a Runza and order some cabbage and ground beef stuffed bread dough… it will only take like 3 of them to fill you up, and they are only like $5.00 each.  That’s a reasonable lunch!

Germans around here also like their “German Blackberries”, which aren’t blackberries at all but are the potentially lethal Black Nightshade.

Black Nightshade

The local Germans use these berries, which are from the same plant family as tobacco, in breads and various desert products. Poisonous tobacco berries… line up kiddies, Grandma has something special for you!

Aside from the strange cooking habits of the stinking Germans, the attitude that many of these people force on you will either really tick you off or make you sick!  “My family helped found this valley,” the stinking Germans will say (’cause, I guess, much of the Craphandle is located in a valley.)  They throw this at you in an attempt to, I don’t know, impress you?  It’s like the fact that this moron’s great-grandfather settled here a long time ago makes the moron someone special.  I always want to come back with something like:

“Well, if your family helped found this valley, why in the hell aren’t there better paying jobs here?  Why is the crime rate so proportionately high here?  Why has this turned into a retirement community where young families have to be semi-retarded to stay?  Why is it, that at any given time of the day, you can be stopped by not one but two trains when trying to travel from one side of the “twin cities” of Scottsbluff and Gering to the other… what kind of “progressive” community still has railroad crossings on major streets instead of underpasses or overpasses… oh, that’s right, we’re not ‘progressive,’ ’cause we’re a bunch of stinking Germans who don’t need no stinking progress!  Why is there a meth lab in every corn field and a meth head on every corner?  If your family helped found this valley and played a major part in what this valley is today… I guess your family kind of failed us, didn’t they, Sparky!”

Of course, the stinking old Germans only throw this crap out when you are dealing with a customer service issue and they want special treatment because of “who they are.”  If I was actually able to come back with the response I feel is appropriate, I would find myself filing for unemployment.  Stinking Germans!

Another time where the stinking old Germans really try to tick me off is when they are driving!  Even in my church parking lot, you really have to be careful with the stinking Germans behind the wheel.  It can be 15 degrees Fahrenheit with the wind howling and the snow blowing and you are coming out of church with your family, including your new-born baby.  You are trying to rush your family to the safety of the awaiting car but… LOOK OUT!!!… a stinking old German is coming right at you and there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that that old moron is going to slow down let alone stop to let you and your family find safety from the weather in your car… not until they drive by.  How DARE you think that the stinking old German should let you cross just because he or she is in the warm safety of their car; they are old and they are German… you should feel lucky that they didn’t just run you down where you stand, because that is perfectly within their rights.  Don’t you know who they ARE!  And if you think the church parking lot is bad, just wait until you try the stinking Walmart parking lot!!!