The Amazon Associates program updates its stats once a day. In the UK, that means new stats going live at 1am or shortly after. I can't remember the last night I didn't stay awake til 1am to see my stats. I have the page bookmarked on my phone and I'm seemingly unable to sleep until I checked my figures. It wouldn't be so bad but I make a paltry amount from it!

Now, I obviously have some compulsion which I need to tackle. I'm thinking of removing the Z from my keyboard since I don't useit much and at least I won't be able to access their site anymore. I always used to be happy to wait until the next morning cos I assumed the stats updated maybe about 7 am or something like that, until my friend checked by chance just after 1am and saw the new figures.

What can Amazon do to give me back my sleep?

It would be nice in this day and age if Amazon could offer live stats. Or failing that, who really needs their stats at 1am, just delay it to the start of the next working day and give weak people like me back their sleep!

[update]

Don't think it's worth starting a new post over, but I just noticed Amazon improved aStores! Previously you could select a top level category and then all you could do was enter keywords to return the products you wanted. So if I wanted to list Nintendo DS Games, I would choose computer and video games and then enter "DS" as a keyword. Only problem was that this would bring back accessories and all kinds of other stuff. Now you can choose your top level category and drill down to the right sub category, which is going to make for better aStores.

Labels: amazon, associates, sleep

Boris Johnson - national treasure and likely Tory candidate for the London Mayoralty - wrote a funny and knowing article the other day about why most of us, despite the horror of commuting - still goto work every day.

I used to work in London and commuted in everyday. I hated it. I really hated it. My train would routinely get within sight of London Bridge station and just sit outside for what seemed like an eternity. The platform so close, and yet so far. It was maddening. But once I got to work, I loved it. The banter, the laughs, the teas that went on far too long, the sense of achievement when things got done, the bitching about the boss*, general cameraderie and the feeling of coming home tired after a day's work which is a great way of getting a good night's sleep.

Slight tangent, but I mentioned above how "bitching about the boss" was an enjoyable part of work. I found it to be a perverse fact that the less popular the boss, the better it was for team spirit. It provides a single point of derision that everyone can agree and bond over. In teams where I've had what can only be described a great bloke for a boss, the teams were nowhere near as tight nit.

So where was I going with all this. Having to get up and go do a regular job represented something I hated and something I loved all at the same time. By no longer having to get up and goto work, I miss out on both. I'm undecided still as to whether I'm better off.

Always interested to know from others who've made the move to full time employment to working for themselves if it's been a move they're completely happy with...?

Labels: commuting, home working, offices

My little break from blogging on here is over and I'll try posting a bit more regularly again from now. I decided to take a break from posting to this blog for a couple of reasons.

I guess I wanted to reassess where my priorities were. I blogged elsewhere for a bit on another subject and the content I was creating was generating decent traffic and yes, money too, which made me consider - with the knowledge that there's only so much blogging my brain and fingers can take - if this site was taking up too much of my time for little too benefit. But on reflection, I was looking at the benefit of this for me in too narrow terms (i.e money earned - almost nothing from here, by the way) and not giving due appreciation to the other less obvious benefits.

And heck, I'm fond of my humble little blog so I'll get back to posting what I'm upto with my online money making activities with my expectations for the site appropriately re-aligned :-)

Also, without this outlet, my pent up thoughts on online money making were being released in vulgar IMs to online contacts along the lines of "wow, guess how much I just made", which was probably getting a bit tiresome for them.

So what's been happening since I last posted...

Well, the truth is, things are going better than ever (ooh, big head, eh!)

When I started out, I went through lean days where I might only make $5 a day in Adsense which nowhere near covered the cost of my office or even the petrol to get there. I had built up plenty of savings which perhaps cushioned me from the urgency I should have had to make some cash. I got through those crappy days with the thought that the stuff I was working on was leading onto a potential pot of gold. Now I really feel like I reached the stage I was waiting for, where I'm genuinely doing well enough to stop and think "wow, I reached where I wanted to get to and if I want to play Tiger Woods on Wii all day, then I will".

Now, I don't want to get carried away. I've not just turned superaff. I've still got loads to learn and a hunger to achieve much more than where I'm at now, but enough sites have clicked into place to mean I've moved into the new phase of this project and can look at things from a different, more considered perspective. I guess previously my approach was to try as many different things as possible and hope some of them work . Well, some of them did work and now I feel like I can be less frantic and spend a bit more time adding quality and value to those areas, and pick new projects more carefully.

Anyway, this was just a general meadering post to mark a restart in activity on the site.