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• What’s my benefit?

No benefit at all, serious.

• Why do I do it then?

Well, the logic is pretty simple. At present (April 2007) this blog gets about 1,500 unique visitors daily. Those are not subscribed readers and often do bring profit from viewing the adverts displayed here. If you are a returning visitor, you will tend to ignore the space dedicated for advertising anyway, and concentrate on the written or graphical content, so since you already became a part of my “audience”, I see no point in keep showering you with java codes. Don’t worry about my big loss from your subscription; first of all, I know not everyone would want to read a feed, most people like the experience of visiting (my!) website, not everyone is a returning visitor and not everyone knows how to handle a feed, how to subscribe and where to read it, so I am only risking to lose, in the worst case, 10%-15% of my CTR.
So, do not hesitate, click here to subscribe and view this website without ads and enjoy the ads-free browsing.

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Normally, I’d say - yes, definitely. In today’s life you can’t make much waiting tables, cleaning shelves in a supermarket or sitting in someone’s office, answering calls and afraid to arrive 5 minutes late to your work in the morning. Average job brings average income, which leads to an average standard of life. However, unfortunately, not everyone is able to reach this “average” job as it mainly requires a college or university degree, which as we know not easy to get, not due to lack of brain but rather due to lack of founds. Personally, I wanted to study in university and get a degree in psychology (as I only have my college degree in Social Science) but these plans were stopped by a five figures sum which stood between me and uni’s gates. Before you shed a tear - don’t worry, I do not regret it anymore

So, if you want to make big money and reach to a high standard of life, you need either to start your own business (which is, once again - a huge initial investment, in most of the cases) or be truly, and I mean it - *t r u l y* brilliant, and set up a corporation with minimum material investment and maximum brain work, recreate the success of Bill Gates, Michael Dell, or someone else, but try not to invent something that has already been invented, and I am sorry to discourage you, but most of the things a human mind can think of, has already been brought to light in this way or another. It really won’t be easy to get your photo published in Forbes without massive business creativity and some mind-blowing market model.

Yes, it’s pretty disappointing, you need to be extra smart with unbeatable ambitions, strong nerves, starting capital and preferably located in the USA where the market dominates the world. However, this all applies to real life, not Internet. Over here, in the cyber world, the rules are different. So many housekeepers are making huge money out of the invisible cyber channels, without any degree or extraordinary abilities. Of course, in order to start your online business and milk impressive revenue, you do need brain, but a lot less than in real life, and - no one cares how old are you, what’s your education level and where you are from. Nothing is relevant except for what you can actually produce and put online.
Read More from "Do I need brilliant brain to make a lot of money?"

Ok, I was just introduced to this niiiiiice way to estimate blog’s worth in money, thanks to one of the SEO guru’s who uses it to check how much his blog worth, based on Technorati popularity and probably something else. This is my result for toptut.com, you can go to their (PR7) website and recheck. This is NOT a joke tool…

(Oh and, I am not selling my blog this cheap! )

Of course I know it’s not the real price of this blog, I am been objective about it and can say that real price is probably 5-10 times less, however, it’s a very smart and tricky way for the guy who made this tool and powered it, to get tons of free backlinks, especially from high PR sites, as naturally everyone wants to brag, hey, look how much my site worth! Unlike Blog Juice or other tools who can mercilessly show you that your site doesn’t worth a broken penny, this one is been generous (who cares, it’s not like they would pay this sum to you) and therefore get rewarded for their generosity. Damn, smart move.

I know picture and theme is not something that would fit perfect in blogs tutorial, but it’s just a must. Perfect illustration for love that has no boundaries…

I found it on some site where most of the pictures are about funny animals, pulled together from some other sites… Here are a few more I particularly liked:

Please read the Terms of Use of these WordPress Themes before downloading:

Terms of Use:

1. These WordPress Theme was released for free under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License, therefore please do not remove the credits and links to loreleiwebdesign.com or/and Toptut.com at the footer of the template.
2. You may offer this template on other websites for a free download, as long as the credits are reserved intact. Please do not hotlink the download to our server.
Should you have any questions regarding the Terms on Use, please contact me at lorelei@loreleiweb.com
3. Much as I’d love to help everyone, I am sorry but due to very busy schedule with my other websites, I am unable to provide personal support with regards to installation or modification of the theme. If you wish, however, to receive assistance, please feel free to discuss it in (my) Lorelei Web Forum

Click on each image to go the page with more info, live preview and download details.

Latest Themes

Older Releases

Good question. A friend of mine, who is a big fan of mine design, or at least appears to be, asked me a few days ago, if I make such beautiful WordPress themes, wouldn’t it be wise to use at least one of them for my blog, this will serve as an excellent live demo and “free advertisement” of my themes, since toptut.com had a very decent traffic. I come to think of it, yes, it would definitely be “wise”, but… I dunno, I just prefer not to sew my own dresses.

Edit [ April 15th 2007] - After some deep thinking, I decided to change the old layout of the blog to something new, fresh and blue. Main concern for getting rid of the Thirteen theme was not it’s “lucky” number, but the fact it was based “only” on 2 columns, and as the site has grown and gained some dough and needs more space for banners, links and and other stuff that fill the blog. Basically I needed 3 columns and a wider template as having a 1280*1024 and a slim, compatible with 800 width resolution layout seemed like an outdated solution. Moreover, I was after a web 2.0 look (whatever it is) and thought it’s indeed time for having my own layout for my own blog. so… Hope you like it!

April’s fool was a nice day. To sum it up, I managed to pull a few people’s leg and almost lost two of my friends. One insists on cease been in partnership now, thanks to my subtle sense of humour, which as usually crossed the line and knew no barrier. I should be more careful next year I guess and think before posting, after all my announcement to close Lorelei Web forum was not taken seriously by most of the members. Then again, maybe the friend who decided to walk out is pulling my leg now either? Would be terribly unfair if it was true, I hate been fooled. Here goes my college degree in Psychology.

Anyway, I loved Google’s joke about Google TiSP (BETA) - the free connection installed through the toilet and Technorati, which gave me a hard time not pinging my website, than I noticed the messed up logo and figured it is yet another online conspiracy against me. Yes, me personally. Well, while roaming though some online office pranks I came across Google Store - never even knew such a site exists. Sport ware for geeks and office accessories for SE gurus. I wonder who buys.

Text Links Ads shows double earnings for April (already?) and I wonder if that is a trick too…As I am new to the scene, I was just surprised the links got all prolonged for full price. Would be great to see it was a joke as well, grrr.

DeviantArt.com is without a doubt the biggest online community for artists, photographers, digital artists, writers and mostly anyone in between who has something to upload to their server, from the most useless scraps to stunning pieces of art, which are also offered as prints and miscellaneous products (puzzles coasters, calendars). Artists get to make very little profit; without subscription or premium print account (which costs about 30$ /year) you can generate about 15 cents from a few dollars postcard, for example. In other words, you need to be talented beyond belief, and sell millions of your prints to actually make money off your art, IF you do not have enough for, or for whatever reason unable / unwilling to invest in deviantArt subscription.

“Highly spiritual” art community, is in fact a mere money making machine, just another website that promotes no higher value than its own revenue. I can go off topic and tell you about my personal experience with their customer support. I made a print, especially for a friend of mine, and placed an order, as I wanted to send the artwork directly to the recipient. I had a pre-order question, which was answered impressively quick. After my order proceeded, I had another question, which was of course not a matter of life and death (since the order was dispatched already anyway), but their FAQ did not include this question. To satisfy your curiosity, I wanted to know if the recipient gets the artwork with out without the bill receipt attached, because I assumed it’s pretty nasty to send a gift with a price on it. As you can guess, this inquiry remained unanswered. Good insight into typical sales-oriented service, when once you proceeded to checkout, nothing else matters. Anyway, back to topic, as this was not what irritated me most in DA.

DeviantArt, as been a huge community based in the USA, cares for Copyright. This could be great if your artwork got ripped and you want to submit a complain, but… who and how proves that you are the original author? It started off when a close friend of mine, Johan, noticed that some of his submitted artwork disappeared from the account, due to copyright violation (yes, this was the reason they provided him upon removing the “stolen” content). Some of the removed images contained my own (yes, mine!) photos which of course were used by my full permission, other picture was a photo of himself, photo-edited. This was hilarious, as I know the guy, saw him many times on webcam, I KNOW it was his photo, yet it gets removed due to copyright infringement..?

Second time, a bit later, I heard from my other two friends, Dale and Paul Luuk, who’s images were deleted from DeviantArt database following the same excuse, but in this case they also were full owners of the published material and I am well aware of that.

How do I know about so many cases? Since I am running a Photoshop oriented forum, Lorelei Web, where a big amount of members have their DeviantArt accounts, it’s easy to get exposed to a many relates stories, but these were not rumors told by God-knows-who, but real cases of my real online friends, and I got to witness how DeviantArt “takes care” of the Copyright Law.

The most frustrating part is, there is no one to complain to, as DA staff’s decision is final and is not negotiable. And, the most ironic part is, there are tons of stolen content circulating on the pages of that website, photos that were taken without permission (also, I know, because my tutorials are very popular and some of the images I used state clearly - “for learning purposes only, do not use anywhere else, please“. Yet these images are massively reproduced on DA, and contacting the member, asking to at least provide credits, fails in 80% of the cases. Much as I hate seeing people mercilessly ripping my work and present it as a fruit of their own creativity, I’d never report them, because… I don’t know, I am just not the type of person who clicks on the report button.

As you can guess, I am disappointed badly from Deviantart attitude in many areas…