fulllife

As promised a few posts ago, I will get you some more info about a homebusiness I got involved with lately… Being a journalist and writer, it is only too natural for me to do this thing. Point is, you gotta stumble upon it! And I did… I subscribed to a program where you can present yourself as a writer, editor, blogger, webdesigner, researcher, data typist and many many more things. Take a look here http://www.odesk.com/referrals/track/etaverne  Needless to say I choose the writing part…

So I set up a nice profile with all my experience listed and described and started to react to job offers that are on the site or you can get emailed daily. All you do is write a short letter, add existing work if you have any and submit. The system automatically gives the so-called buyer access to your nice profile… Great system, used by many, many people and it free to use for us, the so-called providers. The buyers pay a percentage on top of the hourly or fixed price that is arranged between the two parties.

Such a great site… no buts? Yes, there are buts…

As a newbie, it is very hard to compete with the oldies who have done a lot of work through oDesk and thus build up a nice reference status. Those references are to be found in your profile. Who would you choose: someone with an empty ref.list or someone with a lot of stars on his list? There you go… it’s hard to get a foot in.

Second but: I am from the Netherlands, therefor not native speaking English. Even if I would write impeccable English I still am not a native speaking person. Nothing can change that. Even the oDesk free tests on all kind of skills (like English spelling, which I passed with 9.2) can’t really help me (yet). So if you want an English text written, who would you choose: … There you go… see my problem?

Third but: a lot of Asian people apply as well, and the wages in Asia are substantially lower than in the USA and Europe. I don’t even ask the question… see?

If you can overcome these three ‘buts’ or only meet one or two, oDesk is a great way to earn an income based on your skills, instead of all kind of opportunities that promise you paradise, but turn out to be the Garden of Eden for only some. I respond to buyers who want text translated into Dutch, or the other way around, to some writing jobs I feel I would do well and to some video jobs where I have the same feeling. I am very picky with responding, thus keeping the level of disappointment low. Plus I am going to take more English tests on the site, to show prospects that I am worth their while. This blog also helps, ’cause prospects can read it and see how I write. Just too bad I don’t have many comments on my blogs, but getting traffic and submitting to SEO’s are not my strongest points! I don’t respond to those job offers!

So if you feel oDesk be something for you, use my link on top of this entry and check it out. By using my link I make $50 everytime someone who joined the site makes his or her first $1.000. So if you subscribe, start earning soon…

I will keep you posted on my adventures there, so check in at fulllife.today.com regularly (that’s right, spelled with 3 l’s) If you have any questions regarding oDesk, feel free to ask here. There is a lot of information on the site, which might be a bit overwhelming at first - I felt exactly the same. Good luck to you!

I just saw the funniest news on television… the kind of news that makes you smile. This is the little tale:

Toddler Danny has a puppy, just one week old, so I suppose there were more, still with their mother. Anyway, Danny is playing with this one particular puppy, rolling through the sand and the mud and having fun. But, oh oh, Mum is not going to be happy when she’ll see Puppy all dirty and sandy, so Puppy needs a bath. Sneaking up to the bathroom is not practical, but there is another shower handy and nearby: the flush of the toilet!

Puppy doesn’t like the idea of the flush and wriggles and wriggles to get loose while Danny is persistent to wash all the dirt away… but flushing ánd keeping Puppy under control is a bit too much for any 4-years old. There goes Puppy, literally down the drain…

Panic…

Here comes the hero, in the person of the plumber. With a little plumbers’ camera he locates Puppy’s position in the toilet drain. He askes all the neighbours not to use the toilet flush for a while, starts pushing Puppy through the toilet pipe to a certain position in the sewer system where he can open the cover in the street… and voilà, there is a very little, very distraught and very wet Puppy! 

Danny happy, Puppy too (after a while). 

I bet Puppy will never ever gonna like a bath or a shower in his life…

I just read the most remarkable news… really took me by my throat!

You may have heard of the Air France plane crash in the ocean, when the flight was on its way from Brazil tot Paris, France. First the plane disappeared off the radar, then the authorities concluded it must have crashed. It took days and days before divers of the Franch and Brazilian marine found the first pieces of the plane. Only a few tens of the 228 people onboard have been recovered from the deep waters so far…

There are always people missing a flight. In this case an Italian lady missed the disastrous flight AF447. She and her husband had been vacationing in Brazil and were too late at the gate. Tough! Take the next flight, right? The two of them must have been ve-ry reliefed when they heard the news about their missed flight. Their time hadn’t come yet… 

They took the next flight to France.

But fate intervened… Shortly after she got back home, the Italian lady drove in her car and for unknown reasons - so far - her car got off the road, killing her instantly.

Now I am not a religious woman, nor do I believe in predestination, but this little piece of news makes you wonder… at first it seemed her time hadn’t come yet, but apparently her time HAD come! And only hers, not that of her husband or another passenger… Strange, isn’t it? Weird… I dare say. Apparently there is some bookkeeping being done, somewhere, somehow. This incident doesn’t turn me into a religious believer, but it does make me wonder…

Another aggrevation for the daily surfer who tries to make some money on line:

Sound.

Sound? Yes, sound! Oh, I know it is very sophisticated to have audio or video on your website… Makes your site so much more attrative, they say. Is that so? I doubt that. Here is the reason why:

I do a lot of surfing in the living room, on my laptop. That way I am still part of the family, being sociable. While surfing I watch the news with my husband, chat with him about this or that, have a nice evening… But suddenly this thundering voice comes out of my computer: “Welcome to XXX” and it goes on for minutes. Sometimes you really have to search for the pause or turn off button, they may be hidden in the video itself, or someplace else on the page. Fact is that websites in Traffic Exchanges must have a pause of off button so that the surfer can switch the sound and/or video off and still look at the page. But the advertisers don’t make it easy for you…

So imagine us sitting together and suddenly this high pitched girly voice tells us that Oooweee!! she’s so happy with this or that… My husband, who does not like all that surfing too much, looks at me as if I am crazy, but I think the website owner is crazy. The real professional sites have an audio or video gadget that you, the surfer, can turn on if you so wish! Now that’s the way to do it! No gloomy music to introduce this or that “killer” or some video game, no instructive voice that drives you up the wall, and no “Hi, welcome to my program” stuff from people you never met, never will meet, so get out of my living room!

Why not turning down the volume?

Good question… but I need the volume to hear my email come in (very soft tinkle) because I have to act on emails quite promptly if I want to make some money out of them, and besides that, the volume function on my laptop is not state of the art. My fault? Dunno, my laptop is half a year old, so pretty up to date, I would say…

No, the courtesy should be with the advertisers. Don’t bother us with sounds, and if we want to hear some audio or see some video, we are very well capable to turn the thing on, especially if a red flash is pointing to the button, don’t you think? Yeah? So act like it. thank you soooo much!

Don’t you just HATE it??? Those links you click on the internet that have been shortened or cloaked, or whatever they call it and you have to WAIT for 10 to 15 seconds before the actual site is downloaded??? AArgghh, I use Traffic Exchange Programs and sites like Vinefire to earn credits and to promote my online programs, and get v-e-r-y frustated when those covered links turn up. Especially on Vinefire and TrafficNowFire. A lot of ‘fire’… ha ha. It is costing a lot of time and aggrevation, and the people using those kind of links are making money with it as well. Now that is fine, of course, but I just refuse, I REFUSE to make money out of something that irritates me so much.

As one online worker to another: give me a break and just give me your URL right away. I don’t want to wait and look ad an advert at the same time - jeez, imagine - while I am busy busy busy… Cloaked URLS are fine, they don’t let you wait, but those programs that keep you in the waiting room… I do not like them… I repeat: I do not like them! How about you?

We all know it… have a look in the mirror, see yourself standing there and think: mmm, I gotta lose some weight! Sounds familiar? Yeah? I know it would!

Diets, fitness, exercise, you name it, I did it. Diets are a disaster, for every time you sort of stop, you will fall back to your old weight (or even more) before you know it! Can’t fool your body! It’s a diferent lifestyle you need, with different habits, not a diet… I know that, but what about the rest of the family, huh? Not everybody joins in happily and stays happy…

Fitness, exercise, boring boring… besides, being 57 does have its limits

But now I have found something: WOW! I am just a newbie at it, but I already love it! It’s called Zumba and you probably have heard about it, because this way of exercising is conquering the globe - or at least a big part of it. If you like to dance - I love to dance - than this is for you. If you like latin dances, then this is a must! On the rhytm of salsa, merengue and other latin dances I never heard of before, you do your exercises in dance steps. It’s fun to do and on the DVD every step is broken down in 3 ‘beats’, permitting you to learn the steps real easily. Once you mastered the steps, the fun can begin! Dance your weight away, burn calories by the hundreds and get in the mood of long summer evenings, beach parties and great dancing… what else do you want?

I know you can order the DVD’s to learn it at home, I did, but it’s kind of expensive here in the Netherlands, around $100.00. You can try a lesson at your local gym first, to see if you do indeed like it and it’s worth the money you are going to spend. The good point in this Zumba training is that the DVD’s won’t go to waste if you give it a rest for a while, you can do it anywhere you like (no machines or sturdy apparel to drag around) and who knows, your family members might join you in the fun! And after that: piña coladas… ha ha, just joking!   Although…

ps I am not a reseller of this Zumba method, just an enthusiastic!