10 Minute Computer Tips

Tips to Organize and Declutter Your Computer in 10 Minutes or Less

By Elizabeth Larkin, About.com Guide

Clutter control doesn't just apply to rooms. Your computer may be teeming with clutter like old files you no longer need. Here are great ways to spend 10 minutes or less organizing your computer.

• Move your twitter, Facebook, foursquare, Linked In and MySpace account streams to Hootsuite.
• Peruse your Facebook friends--this is a good reminder of who's seeing your personal information, pictures and reading your status updates. Un-friend anyone who should not be seeing your vacation pictures.
• Make a list of movies you'd like to see or update your Netflix queue. This will save time on upcoming dinner-and-a-movie nights. Bonus: it's fun.
• Purge your Twitter account from following people/topics that no longer interest you.
• Draft a general email and save it in your draft file. This is a great tool when you hear from someone you haven't seen/spoken to in a while. I absolutely dread having to reply to those "So how are you?" emails. This way I have the basis of something already written.
• Purge your Twitter account from following people/topics that no longer interest you.
• Go through your hard copy or electronic address book and take out old contacts--especially ex-boyfriends or anyone else your phone should not be "accidentally" dialing.
• List 3 books for swap on paperbackswap.com and then assemble the packing materials you will need to ship them off to their new lucky owner. A Sharpie, packing tape and the blank side of a brown paper shopping bag will do.
• Edit your Internet bookmarks.
• Unsubscribe from blogs you no longer read.
• De-clutter your email in box (computer, blackberry, IPhone) of as many un-needed emails as possible.
• Unsubscribe from 5 emails you receive and never read (although you really should sign up for my newsletter which comes out once a week on Thursdays).
• Email your old boss/influential work colleague to check-in. You never know when you'll need a recommendation.
• Check your Facebook privacy settings. Here's a guide Facebook and Job Search Privacy Tips.
• Organize business cards and any addresses you've written down and add them to your contacts list. I like using my Gmail contacts list since I can refer to it from any computer.

How To Organize Your Computer

Tackling Emails, Digital Photos & Media

By Elizabeth Larkin, About.com Guide

Our computers can easily get disorganized with the influx of e-mail, digital photos and digital media. Just like weeds grow if they are left unattended, so will our clutter. Follow these simple tips to help you start to get organized:

Tackle Your E-mail:

• Check your e-mail daily: 30-60 minutes a day will help your e-mail from accumulating.
• Avoid subscribing to on-line newsletters unless you have the time to devote to reading them.
• Eliminate junk mail by discussing the options with your Internet service provider.
• Only save e-mail that you need to follow up on or are of importance.
• Limit your receipt of jokes and chain letter type e-mails. Not only are they time-consuming, they can also contain computer threatening viruses.

Organize Your Digital Media:
Storing music on your computer is a great way to create your own personal jukebox without the price of an authentic jukebox. Most computers already come equipped with music storage capabilities, like Windows Media Player, that are very user friendly. Media programs allow you to store and organize your media into separate folders by the artist, title or subject matter. A few things to keep in mind to avoid disorganization:

• Remove songs that you dislike. This can happen when we download full CDs. Eliminating the songs you don't like will free up space and make it easier to locate the songs you do like.
• Identify every song title and artist. Downloading music from CDs that were compiled for us - from friends or family for example, won't always download the title and artist. Keeping your media identified will save time and keep you organized.

Organize Your Digital Photos:
Storing your digital photos on your computer is a great way to create your own personal album, and save space by not accumulating photo albums and money by not printing out all your photos. There are numerous options to store your photos, whether you utilize a program that is already installed on your computer, or the program that came with your digital camera. In addition, there are downloadable options available on-line. A few things to keep in mind to avoid disorganization:

• Eliminate bad photos. Even if you are a master photographer, you can't always take a great picture. Eliminating the bad photos will save up space on your computer and make it easier to locate the desirable pictures.
• Assign specific folders to your pictures. The more specific you are with labeling your folder names, the easier it will be to locate your pictures. For example, label one folder 'Friends' or one folder 'Family'. You can also label by the event name, for example '30th Birthday'.

Always Remember : Back-up your files. There are a number of affordable back-up options that will keep all your important files, media and photos saved, if anything should ever happen to your computer. This is very important! It's better to be safe than sorry.

5 Google AdSense Rules to Follow if You Want to Make Money from Your Blog

Break These Rules and Say Goodbye to Your Future Earnings

By Susan Gunelius, About.com Guide

Google AdSense is a very popular blog monetization tool because it's easy to join the Google AdSense program, easy to integrate a variety of ads into your blog, and ads don't have to take up a lot of space.  However, there are a few rules you must follow unless you want to get banned from the AdSense program and make no money at all.  Following are five of those rules:

1. Don't Boost Clicks Artificially

There are a number of ways that Google AdSense publishers (such as bloggers) can artificially boost the number of clicks on the Google AdSense ads that appear on their sites.  Following are a few methods that might be tempting but are considered spam and are a surefire way to get banned from the Google AdSense program:

• Clicking on AdSense links on your blog yourself.
• Asking other people to click on the AdSense links on your blog.
• Using any kind of automated process to increase clicks (whether you create the process or a third party does it for you).
• Joining with a group of other people to click on AdSense ads on each other's blogs or websites.

2. Don't Display More than the Allowed Number of Ads on a Page

Make sure you read the current Google AdSense Program Policies and only display the number of ads allowed on a single web page at all times.

3. Don't Fill a Page with Ads but No Original Content

Any page on your blog that includes Google AdSense ads must include more original content than ads.  In fact, Google considers displaying a page full of ads with little or no original content a form of spam. 

4. Don't Create More than One AdSense Account

It might be tempting to create completely separate Google AdSense accounts and publish ads from both accounts on the same blog in order to get around rule #3 above, but doing so is a violation of Google policies.  While you can add more than one blog or website to your Google AdSense account, you may not have more than one actual account.

5. Don't Try to Trick People into Thinking AdSense Ads are NOT Ads

Hiding text link ads within the content of your blog posts in an attempt to make people think they aren't ads is a violation of Google AdSense policies.  Bottom-line, don't try to disguise ads in an effort to increase clicks.

Making Money from Your Website with Google AdSense

Is it as Easy as it Seems to Make Money with Google AdSense?

From Randy Duermyer, former About.com Guide

Google AdSense is the Google program where you can host pay-per-click ads on your Website. When someone clicks an ad, you earn money. Simple as that.

Is it really as easy to make money with Google AdSense as many would lead you to believe? Now that I've become heavily involved with managing Google AdSense programs for my clients, I can see it's not all play and no work.

Unfortunately, a lot of people bought into the idea that there was a lot of easy money to be made and they are now finding out they aren't making nearly as much as they thought they would. Additionally, Google has a lot of prohibited practices when it comes to AdSense, and too many Webmasters are finding out they violated Google's policies after the fact - often because they never bothered to read the AdSense policies in the first place.

Webmasters must not only comply with AdSense policies, but their Websites must also comply with Google's webmaster policies.

Prerequisites for Making Money with AdSense

To make money with Google AdSense you need plenty of traffic coming in to your site or there won't be anyone to click the ads. Website promotion techniques, especially search engine optimization and article marketing will bring more traffic to your site. You also need to have content that will attract the ads with the highest Pay Per Click (PPC) rate that are relevant to that content. Then, you need to lay out your web pages so the ads blend in with your site. Studies have revealed that people who visit sites that contain ads that use colors that are not in harmony with the actual Web site tend to develop "ad blindness". Meaning no matter how much traffic comes into your site, chances are no one will click the ads because they'll be ignoring them. If no one clicks, you make nothing.

Dealing with Competitors' Advertisements

If you offer products or services on your Website, the first thing you'll notice when you begin hosting PPC ads is that many of the ads are coming from your competitors. Therefore, you'll want to put ads on pages that aren't earning you any money, or do like I did and not put ads on your site until you're so busy anyway you'd rather make a few dollars off of your competitors than to continue turning business away with nothing to show for it.

Google AdSense allows you to specify up to 200 URLs for sites you want to bar from placing ads on your pages. The problem is that most times you won't know the competitors are out there until their ads appear.

Google Money Making Ad Options

Google offers three ways to make money from them:

• Google AdSense for Content - A variety of size and shape ads for placing in your content are available. These can be text or image ads or both - you specify what you'll allow. Ad units are full ads. Link units are simply a strip of text links that your visitors might want to click. Google allows you to put up to 3 Ad Units and 1 Link unit on each page of your Web site, provided you follow its policies - both for AdSense and for Webmasters.
• Google AdSense for Search - This places a search box on your Web site. When a user enters a term and conducts a search, a search results page opens, that hosts more pay-per-click ads. You can customize the color scheme of the search results page to harmonize with your web site.
• Google Referrals - Here you make money by referring visitors to use a Google product, like AdSense, AdWords, the Google Toolbar and other Google software. Just like Google AdSense for Content and AdSense for Search, Google generates the code that you paste into the desired location on your web page. You can choose from a wide variety of buttons and text links of different colors. As an example of how Google Referrals works, if someone goes to your site and clicks the link and signs up for an AdSense account, when that person earns a $100 from Google AdSense and receives a payout from Google, you'll also receive $100 for referring them. This is a great idea to me, because you can be the world's worst Google AdSense advertiser, but if an ad dynamo happens to visit your site and uses your referral link, you can make money anyway!

Google AdSense Payments

Google will not issue an AdSense payment until your earnings exceed $100. Unfortunately, there are loads of Google AdSense Forum entries about website operators who accumulated $90 or more in click through earnings only to get banned from Google and not get paid anything at all before they ever reached $100. This may be because Google doesn't take a close look to see if you're complying with their guidelines until it comes time to pay you. So yes, there's a lot more to the story than meets the eye.

Other Programs Besides AdSense

Yahoo and MSN have similar programs, although those programs aren't as well-developed as Google AdSense and there aren't as many available advertisers to display ads on your site. The fundamentals for making money are the same: You still need plenty of traffic, you still need high-paying ads, and you still need to design your site to harmonize with the ads to get people to click.

Is There Legitimate Google Work from Home?

From Randy Duermyer

Question: Is There Legitimate Google Work from Home?

I've been asked, "Does legitimate Google work from home exist? I really respect and admire Google and I understand they're one of the best companies to work for, but I also know there are plenty of scams out there that claim you can make loads of money with Google work from home that aren't legit."

Answer:

While it's true that Google has been the target of many work at home scams over the years, especially recently as it has become more popular and part of every day life, Google actually does hire people to work for them from home. So the answer is a definite "Yes", legitimate Google work from home really does exist. But you don't ever want to pay for a so-called Google work at home job. Google doesn't ask you to pay and they don't offer any Google work from home kits. More likely than not, every Google "kit" is a scam that is going to end up getting you in trouble and possibly cost you a lot of money.

So How Do I Search for a Google Work from Home Job?

The only way you will ever find legitimate work from home for Google is to go to Google's job site at http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/. There you'll learn about Google's culture and be able to access jobs that Google has around the world. This link is in English, but there are various language versions of the site available. Just go to Google.com, click on About Google at the bottom of the page and then click Jobs at Google in the Our Company section.

With the English version, from the Jobs at Google page, under the US locations list (bottom left) click the all US locations link. The Browse Locations page opens. Now click the bottom link - Multiple Locations - Includes Telecommuting. Then you'll see a list of links by department. Click each of the links and look for real work from home positions with Google. They might exist in a category you might not expect to be qualified for at first. Check them anyway.

How Do I Apply for Google Work from Home?

Once you see an open work from home position you want to apply for, information will be included on that job posting that will tell you exactly how to apply. In nearly all cases, you'll be asked to start the application process by submitting a text (ASCII) or HTML version of your resume in an email to a specified Google.com email address.