Directly in Hurricane Gustav’s path, that’s where. 

Well… maybe not exactly in its path.  I don’t think I’d be that crazy, but I’d definitely be down there, volunteering wherever I could to help people get ready or escort them out of the area if possible.

And then I might just stick around near the coastline for some snapshots and video that I could upload to my blog. 

Ok maybe I am a little crazy.  I don’t really value my life that much anyway, and since I don’t have a house or a family of my own that I’d be leaving behind, who would miss me? 

Seriously though, this is what I would live for.  Without being tied down to a job or a house, I’d be a free spirit able to roam anywhere in the country, and since my income would be drawn from my blog earnings, I’d have more time to volunteer for any charity driven projects that I come across during my travels.

In fact, if my blog were already enjoying financial success, I’d probably be in Mississippi or Louisiana now, Red-Crossing my way around the states for a while and then driving down to the coastline so I can watch Gustav cross over.  After all, nothing says fun like being trapped in a category 5 hurricane. 

I’m not sure why, there’s just something about massively violent storms that truly warms the cackles of my heart.  I was actually born during a hurricane too, the lights flickering on and off in the hospital while the entire building shook and rumbled from the sheer force of the hurricane winds.  Total chaos while the doctors delivered me, the same way you might expect it to be if it was the Antichrist himself being born.    It was said that the circumstances of my birth was an omen of things to come.  Hee hee.

But seriously… 

I may not be able to achieve my financial goals with this blog anytime soon, but since I will be debt free in a few months, and my site still generates a modest income, if I can’t break free I might at least be able to extend the rope that’s been tying me down, and travel in short spurts here and there instead.  Since I regularly have four days off every other week, I’ll have the opportunity to take extended weekend road trips to wherever I want to go, and I’ll be able to blog about it all too.  For the short term that’s an entirely feasible goal for me, and if I keep paying down my debts at the rate I’m doing, by this time next year it may all become a reality.  Baby steps here, baby steps. 

In the meantime, my prayers go out to all those in the path of Gustav, and hope that the damage won’t be as extensive or as destructive as many of us originally feared.

The question for the ages.

Actually I’ve been working behind the scenes trying to boost my traffic levels (with less than stellar success I might add), and also working to get another ad network going to fill my ad spaces. I’m actually amazed by the income ratio I’m seeing so far. If it continues to hold, my eCPM would be around $10, meaning for every 1000 pageviews this blog gets I would earn $10. It’s not earth shattering by any means, but considering the typical eCPM for those who use Google Adsense is around $1 to $2, it’s not bad either. My goal is to eventually net around $40 a day (or $1250 a month), so I’ll have to continue my efforts to boost my eCPM and bring more traffic in.

Speaking of which, there is one more thing I can try, sort of like a last ditch effort to bring in the level of traffic I want, but it’s EXPENSIVE, and it still requires a lot of work. The good news is I can use my previous blog earnings to pay for the first month (it’s done on a subscription basis), and if the results are effective, the higher ad revenues that result should be enough to front the costs and still net me a profit.

Maybe. If it fails, I’ll pretty much will have lost all the money I’ve ever made via blogging up to this point. Ah well, I’ll just have to believe that fortune will continue to favor the brave.

And the reckless.

I’ve been trying to jumpstart my photography hobbies again, and as a result I’ve been looking into ways I could profit off some of the images I take. After some research and Googling, I learned about how some amateur photographers have been able to generate a pretty decent monthly income by submitting their portfolios to microstock agencies. Due to their nature, you only get a percentage of the profits for every photo downloaded or sold, but the more photos that get accepted and placed in the database, the more chances you’ll have of seeing your income steadily go up. In addition, they take all the guesswork out of building your own portfolio store, and provide a much needed marketplace to help monetize your images, something you wouldn’t be able to do on your own unless you were already lucky enough to have a high profile website. As hard as it might be to believe, I am unfortunately not one opf those people.

From what I read, iStock and Shutterstock were the two most popular microstock sites, and those photographers who joined and been accepted have done very well with them, especially Shutterstock. So I decided to join the party too. After all, my photos aren’t doing anything for me just sitting on the hard drive. Why not sell them and start padding my income a little? Maybe with the extra cash I can buy some niceties that’ll help me impress the ladies and finally get me a date for those lonely Friday nights.

After making my decision, I quickly went to work. I upgraded my Photoshop software with the Noise Ninja plugin, then spent hours sifting through my photos, picking out the best ones, then running them through Noise Ninja to get rid of any digital and noise artifacts, adjusted the color tones here and there where needed, and by the end of the day I had ten gorgeous photos I felt would easily pass inspection.

I submitted my photo samples to Shutterstock, and got back a response a few hours later:

5061175 Rejected
5061178 Rejected
5061181 Rejected
5061184 Rejected
5061187 Rejected
5061190 Rejected
5061193 Rejected
5061196 Rejected
5061199 Rejected
5061202 Rejected

Regards,
Shutterstock Support

Crikey, I hadn’t seen this much rejection since I last logged on to eHarmony. Apparently I’ve arrived very late in the microstock game here, and the competition to get accepted into agencies like Shutterstock has become so fierce now that even professional photographers are being rejected.

Well that’s just great. If only I could go back to 2005 so I could give myself a good slap across the face and tell that idiot, “Hey you schmuck! Go check out those microstock sites before they start getting popular! You can make some real coinage man!”

*Sigh* Always too little, too late.

On the upside, I can apply again in 30 days. But now that Shutterstock has basically deemed my entire portfolio to be utter crap, I’ll have to start all over again.

I guess I’m not much of a photographer after all.