One thing I have learned to watch for when I look at free web scripts, gadgets, widgets and such for adding to my blog are hitchhikers. Before you paste the code into your HTML paste it into Notepad first. Read the code. Do you see a link to a third party URL? A site not your own or the one you are using the code from.

Some of the sites offering freebies are also making a buck by using your blog to spam another site. Watch for it. You can remove that part of the code or just choose not to use the script, find something else.

Why does it matter? Well, not a big deal, but do you really want someone else using your blog to make money for themselves? Whether your blog is completely spam/ ad free or not, do you want people getting away with piggy backing on your work?

Although they are totally useless outside of the Neopets.com game/ site I have finally gotten to the million neopoints level. I've been working on getting a million into my bank account on the site for over a year. In April, on April Fool's Day I was only a few hundred away. But they played an April Fools joke and I was a fool and thought the site was going to drastically change their policy. So, I gave away 800,000 points to Zack (my nephew who got me started playing on the site). I really regretted it cause some other kid chose that time to steal everything from Zack. All my points and the expensive items I had given Zack too. That was really annoying. But, nothing could be done about it. But, I have overcome that setback and tonight I finally got my million! It means nothing. But, it's a small goal and kind of nice to have gotten there.

From the book - How to Start a Home-Based Writing Business by Lucy V. Parker, these are sixty key assignments for home-based writers:

• Advertising copy
• Anniversary materials for corporations, organizations, institutions, municipalities
• Annual reports
• Articles for employee magazines
• Articles for single-sponsor magazines
• Articles for trade journals and small magazines
• Brochures
• Calendars
• Capability brochures
• Catalogues and product sheets
• CD-ROM/ Interactive media writing
• City and newcomer guides
• Collateral materials
• Conference and trade show materials
• Consultation
• Contributing editor assignments
• Critical reviewing
• Direct-mail packages
• Directories
• Editing
• Employee benefit materials
• Environmental materials
• Family histories and genealogies
• Flyers
• Fund-raising materials
• Ghost writing and collaboration
• Greeting card writing
• Indexing
• Industry-specific writing
• Instructional materials
• Investor-relations materials.
• Letter writing
• Manuals
• Menu writing
• New product regulatory writing
• Newsletters
• Newspaper feature writing, reporting and stringing
• Packaging design and copy
• Policies and procedures writing
• Political campaign writing
• Press releases and press kits
• Proofreading
• Proposals
• Public relations services and materials
• Radio and TV ads and promotions
• Researching
• Restaurant reviewing and writing
• Resume writing
• Retail and mall promotions
• Sales presentations
• Scripts and storyboards
• Speeches
• Sports materials and services
• Teaching writing
• Technical writing
• Telemarketing scripts
• Transcripts and other forms of word processing
• Translations
• Travel writing
• Website content providing

Go through the list and pick out which you like to do, could do more of, or could learn to do. It's a great list. Find a copy of the book for more information about any of the assignments above.

You can also look up information about being a virtual assistant. I know some writers/ web designers/ virtual assistants - people who are leaving their options open and learning a lot of new skills. The key is to find your niche, the area(s) where you can flourish and grow and really love what you're doing.

I read Jakob Nielsen's top ten website mistakes. None of them really impressed me. I've seen it all as an editor, reviewing submissions for Dmoz. What really irks me as just another warm body looking at a site is the lack of contact information on most sites now. Everyone has given into paranoia about privacy and fraud. It is harder and harder to find a way to contact a company or site owner. Often I just wanted to comment about some small thing. No big loss for me. However, in putting up a site I would assume corporations want to be accessible to consumers. What good is all that information if consumers can't give or get feedback or more information should they have questions or problems.

Anyway, I liked this page of Nielsen's site. A guide to About Us pages. You also need to know fresh ideas about having contact information in ways that foil those who want to abuse it. I have done something like that on my own site. But, in my case, I'm not selling anything. Sure, my services but no one has ever asked for those. I have to get out there and get myself working, it doesn't come to me.

Anyway, seems I just typed that... Happy site designing!

Why does a 40 year old woman play at Neopets? Well, you see... it's a shopping fetish. I can spend neopoints (dollar value of zero) on as much junk as I can stand. How can you pass that up? In reality I am squeezing pennies so hard the poor things squeak. But, on the Neopian side of things I am a shopping diva, a window shopper without the pesky windows in my way.

It is my secret little side trip when I should be writing. I've actually been late for work (once) cause I was shopping on NeoPets instead of scraping snow off the car.

Want to visit? Sure you do. I'm not the only old woman there. I may not even be the oldest, though I suspect it's close. lol

http://www.neopets.com/randomfriend.phtml?user=dragongrrl

Don't let me stop you from joining, get a pet of your own, a neohome become addicted and join a Guild. Become a neoshopoholic. It's fun.

http://www.neopets.com/guilds/guild.phtml?oid=jambhala