Google adsense revenue last February-  $16.81             (didn’t break 100 so I didn’t get a check, continues below)

Google adsense revenue today – $35.71                                (i won’t get a check till it hits $100)

I have not received a penny for running this web page. Or any other page I have. I spend a few hundred dollars a year on domain names and hosting. I think it is fair to say I share my ideas for free, I am very far from recovering the thousands I have spent over the years in hosting fees. So far I have a promise from google to give me $35 if I make it to $100 before it expires. After 6 years I might make a little money back. Anyhow I caught some crap a little while back for putting ads up. Does it really bother you that much? Go get a hosts file from mvps.org and block it.

I’m not going to ask anyone for money, just like to give a small amount back. I get a lot of my answers off the web. Hopefully I come up with something that helps someone else out.

Lol check out the tag- easy money making. nothing easy about building a web page full of semi specialized junk and trying to break even.

Equifax=fail (did I just ask to have my credit struck by lightning?)

Hopefully this is a bug report for Equifax. I’ll go tab by tab on why I feel I threw away $150 on credit reporting to test them out.

Starting on the tabs – Credit watch – alerts

Repeated attempts to set my phone up to recieve alerts fail. Screenshot:

I have resent the message more than 5 times in the last 24 hours. It isn’t that hard to automate SMS to ATT. Mint does it. Pingdom does it. It works. I’m using those services today. The main point of monitoring credit is to be able to take immediate action to fight some idiot in Nigeria who got my card number.

More information in Credit watch – It shows Open accounts

Mortgage, installment, revolving, other, total. I have 4. Not hard to track.

For each it tells you a very inaccurate Balance, Available, Credit Limit, Debt to credit ratio, Monthly Payment Amount, Accounts with a balance.

Ok so if I go on to my American Express, Visa and MC sites I have accurate information. The Equifax information for Balance, Available, Credit limit. Ratio, Monthly payment amount = WRONG. I updated last night and it is still wrong. I updated this morning, -it says today’s date on the “equifax credit report as of 9/26/2009 banner.  If I go in to the details, more data that is either really old or just pulled out of thier e-butt. THis just doesn’t match up at all with what is going on in my banking world.

Then we move on to the score watch tab. This is what had me hooked at the beginning. #1 feature!! A chart that shows the change in my score over time. It starts in Feb, Ends today. There are 5 data points all in Feb-May. Now I know there has been activity in my credit that should generate some June, July, August, September data points. Nothing. This thing has been useless except to show me that getting a new credit card does indeed drop your credit score quite a bit for several months. That is with 5 dots. Not much help. Remember – a credit card addition = drop in your credit score.

If this thing showed me more data points, if it didn’t feel like Equifax was intentionally hiding credit information from me, I would pay for this stupid chart. Hell I would pay for an app to keep it as my blackberry background. But they don’t update it for you out of their own database. Something is diabolically wrong. Does Lex Luther run the big 3?

Credit Report Tab

Inaccurate information about the balance I am carrying. It has a lame ass chart for Balance Vs Available credit. Free www.mint.com kills them on any useful/accurate information.  The interesting stuff is Length of Credit History, and Average Account age, but you can get that in your free credit report or on your credit card site. LAME!

Credit Score

This tab is priceless. It shows my credit report from 2/19/2009 when I signed up. The coders are too stupid to pull the data from the score watch tab in July. So the whole $150 worth of monitoring has been to tell me in 6 months my 2/19 score is the same as when I checked it on 2/19. Neat. It goes on to tell me my lender risk % from 2/19. It is 9/26 so that isn’t so helpful as I have eliminated any traces of debt (using mint.) BTW, my mortgage brokers across the hall at my office say this is complete bullshit. I don’t know who to believe there.

In my report manager tabs, you can see that I have 1 “score power” report remaining for the year. Well that sucks because I should just do 1 free credit report a year and pay 1 time to get one 6 months later. Paying $300 a year to “protect my credit” was a bad idea. The unlimited Equifax credit report is useless and inaccurate. None  of the numbers have ever matched my credit card statements.

My goals with credit protection and monitoring:

1. Monitoring alerts to my phone

2. Many data points per month to help figure out exactly what I did to change my score

3. Lowest cost possible.

So far Mint.com is the winner for managing finance. I have custom alerts set up for all accounts. It won’t watch for a new card being opened in my name. But the data it does provide is accurate because it is drawn directly from my cards/banks web pages.

Next try will be Experian or freecreditreport.com. If I can figure out how to cancel the Equifax account. I hate calling people. Anyhow last screenshot is the cancel subscription/change subscription/show i’ve been billed every month for 6 months FAIL. I can’t cancel my account. No options on any menu that I can find allow me to discontinue automatic billing. What a scam. I should report them to my credit bureau.

If the credit bureaus really operate this poorly when you go to buy a house, well crap. Not like we can do much.

Second is to cheat and list yourself with every stupid blog directory you can find. Also google “google jacking” and try everything you can. 

Third, you know a LOT about one thing probably. Post in every forum you can about that one thing you know a lot about. Think of something you can create. Like I create solutions to Windows problems that nobody has solved yet.

Thats it. I win! I write for myself and to share with just a few people in my niche. That is the real reason to post things, not because you think you can make a ton of money. If you are here to make money and don’t know some quality we scripting languages you will lose. There are 10s of thousands of better coders who can leach content that you can’t. Sorry.

Leave a comment if you know better ways. I’m always looking for that elusive 11.

Take your tv to confession and buy a killawatt!! Spend $17 on this thing then start the fun. Plug your TV in to it. See how much power it is sucking while it is off? That is crazy AND makes the Pope sad. Now you have a few options to atone for your sins:

-go to confession

-Pick up some x10 gear and create a wireless power network that shuts all the offenders off while you are away.

-Hook major offenders up to cheap surge strips and turn things off that aren’t in use.

-Buy more efficient appliances

-Use that pesky light switch that controls a wall outlet for no good reason(until now) Leave the house? Flip the switch and kill power to the toaster, tv, and a few lamps. No reason to power the computer monitor or the automatic cat whacker if you aren’t around to see them work.

There is a way better one called Watt’s up pro. It will do a bunch of samples and connect to a pc. It costs $115.