I often stumble across very professionally looking blogs, that appear to be successful and respectable, and then I see what puts me off the most in any website: “If you like our site, support us and make a donation!”. Or it’s just this nice blue PayPal’s button with puppy eyes saying “Donate”.

I honestly understand webmasters who overflow the site / blog with ads, hoping to milk the maximum from each visitor / hit. I might not be a big fan of sites dominated by adverts, but still - the webmaster is making money, he invests some work and in a respectful way gets it in return. But donations? Whats the point in paying for a decent host, getting a top level domain, designing your site, giving some marketing advice and at the same time sit on the floor waiting for handouts..?

What amazes me is that many online marketing pro’s actually recommend using the donations button as a way to monetize your site. Washington Post, Steve Pavlina, ShoeMoney and many others, suggest donations as one of the top 5 ways to make money with your site, blog or forum. I personally see no difference between online and offline donations. In your office, on your working desk, will you put a cup with a small note on it - “if you like my work, donate me”?

If you have been into marketing for some time now, you must have stumbled across Joel Comm and similar Internet … There are many “Adsense gurus” out there, though this name springs to mind first. What do we get when we enter his website? We see a so-so layout, website that is certainly targeted (not “optimized”) for Adsense, yet the guy showing off the screenshot of his earnings where every other every day he seems to get a three figures sum… Wanna know his secret? Sure, he is willing to share! In his adsense secrets website he even almost “guarantees” you your earnings will go rocket high, although if you ask me, no one on this planet can guarantee you that. Not even Google.
Maybe he gives some nice tips, but I personally doubt there are more valued advices than the information that Google Adsense already provides free on their optimizations tips pages. Modifying the code, unless you have Adsense Premium account (can automatically be obtained if you have over 2 million hits daily), is strictly prohibited, so whatever you do, you are still bound to the same ads structure, customizing it only as much as your account allows you to and the only significant factors in your revenue are ads placement and traffic. Put the ads in according to Heat Map, get 10k visitors a day and I (!) will guarantee your earnings will go rocket high, no need to pay Joel Comm for it.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against him, I honestly wish him well if he really makes that much though naturally all these success stories, that tells you need to pay only 25$ to earn 25,000$ tomorrow, always sound… suspicious. I personally have much more respect to Steve Pavlina or Darren Rowse, who also brag with their impressive revenue, yet they share their secrets free of charge, without trying to flog anything to their blog readers and rely on nothing but same ads revenue they collect from their faithful audience.

Maybe I am just stingy over the eBook fee, maybe I had seen to much fraud over the internet or maybe offers that appear “too good to be true” always make me cautious… This is just my view point on things. And no, this was NOT a sponsored post!

This is the first high resolution print I have made. Available as print, canvas, mug, puzzle, and other small goodies. But for blog readers of course the wallpaper is offered at an ass-kicking resolution of 2608*1952. Yes, it would be great for a plasma TV background! Enjoy and please visit my Prints Gallery if you wish to purchase it.
Please click on the image to download the high resolution image.

Ok, this topic is going to discuss the way to reduce your taxes payment but only for company owners. If you started your own business, this can give you a small insight into the process, and how can it be manipulated. When it comes to taxes, it’s important to remember that you pay a certain percent of tax from the profit, and not from the income. I will give you an example so you will understand better:

Let’s assume that our company is selling dough-nuts. In total, this months, there were 1000 doughnuts sold, each of them costed 1$. (Yea, pricy dough nuts, no idea how they got sold! :)) This means, current month’s income was 1000$, right? This was the income, not pure profit, as we spent 200$ on ingredients for the baking and 250$ on the human power. Hence our balance is as follows:

• Investments - 450$
• Income (brutto) - 1000$
• Pure profit (netto) - 550$.

When the time will come to pay the taxes, say 19%, the percentage will only apply to the 550$ (profit). After doing a lot of checking with a big help from my attorney’s side, I came to realize that there is no legal way to reduce the taxes, however, there is a very easy (artificial, of course) way to increase the ‘investments’. At the case above we only calculated the ingredients and baker’s salary. How about the electricity bill? How about the water bill? If the company and your residence are located at same address, you can easily add your bills to the company’s bills balance, because no one can actually check if you wash your hands in the “office” on the first floor, or at the attics near your bedroom.

Just look at your company and look at your domestic needs - what other bills or purchases will smoothly merge in the company’s investments? Get a receipt for everything you purchase, if you feel that your profits are raising too high and it can “cost” you in big taxes.

Remember to stay reasonable! Don’t add shampoo receipts, unless you are running a beauty / haircuts salon. Don’t add obvious items of private use such as CD’s and the likes. Mineral water, napkins, coffee and cleaning products, however, will easily fit in any ordinary office bill.

This way, you can buy stuff for your house and apply them towards your company’s balance. Don’t forget, that internet connection is also essential for any business.

Ok, all the blogs are getting on Technorati and I decided to create a Technorati Profile as well. This means that now you can rate some of the post, subscribe to this blog (woohoo!) and probably many other stuff. Not sure yet, but let’s get started.

Once again, thanks to Amit from Cool Buddy for allowing me to use his avatars on my site. So here are some of the best ones I managed to dig out - Amy Lee animated avatars. Hope you like them.

Today I got a permission from Cool Buddy to publish some of their avatars on my website so here is what I fished out - anime animated avatars, hope u like them and thanks again to Amit for the ‘avatar partnership’