AshesFromStars

I’ve had enough domain names in my life to know how hard it really is to find a good, reliable web host. I’ve been with all the big players, past and present, and on countless reseller accounts for both myself personally and for client’s websites.

When I first started out blogging (although, it wasn’t really blogging back then - more personal websites with a tonne of stolen graphic content - sorry!) I generally went with the first host that I came across with a good offer. In fact my first domain, sparkling-stars.co.uk (yuck) cost me something like 99p and had a banner and popup even though it was a fully paid hosting package. Yes, I was naive. I’ve learned my lessons now though, although that cannot be said for everyone. Including my mother.

You see she’s heard me talking about my blog countless times. In fact I’m sure she visits here sometimes (hi mum!) even though I don’t know if I’m too happy with that. Anyway, she decided that she wanted to be a blogger. Not quite sure why, but there you go. Instead of asking me for help with setting it up, registering a domain name or purchasing hosting she went right ahead and paid well over the odds for a crap .co.uk domain and hosting from the big white moon company. Silly woman.

If she’d actually asked me for my help, since I do know what I’m talking about, I’d have jumped straight to my usual port of call when buying domain names or web hosting - Web Hosting Geeks.com. That website has saved me a lot of money since I first came across it, especially their great Free Google Adword Credits which has come in handy for websites for clients who aren’t willing to start spending money before their website starts making them money.

They also have a great section dedicated to hosting packages especially for bloggers, with some great companies listed who are, in my experience, excellent hosts to go with.

So before you spend money that you don’t need to on webhosting check out WebHostingGeeks.com - they really do know what they’re talking about.

So, my £10 a day challenge started 54 minutes ago and I’m already well on my way to reaching my goal of £310 extra in my bank account by the 1st November 2008.

Jem reminded me that I have a mturk account that I’d forgotten about. I signed in just about midnight and I’ve racked up £4.26 in 50-odd minutes - and that’s just the ones that have been approved. There’s some easy-money HITs at the moment, like 25c to leave a comment on a blog. Now that’s what I’m talking about!

I really should be in my bed since I have work in the morning, and it’s my last day in the shop with the boys… I’m so going to cry.

Earned so far
Today: £4.26
This Month: £4.26

thedailygist.com is keeping me from falling asleep just now…

So, did any of my fellow European’s win anything on last night’s EuroMillion’s draw? I won a grand total of nothing. Nada. I had four lines on and got nothing back, which is so typical of me. £100,000,000 up for grabs and I can’t even get the cost of my ticket back.

I would have had much better luck if I’d signed up to eLottery’s EuroMillion’s syndicate.

It’s a cool system where you’re added into a team of 38 other members and that allows you to play 36 lines in each and every EuroMillions draw, obviously improving your chances of winning and saving you having to pay out £54 each and every Friday for the same odds.

A unique set of five numbers from 1-50 is allocated to each e-Lottery syndicate. The two lucky star numbers are guaranteed in every single lotto draw due to the fact that e-Lottery has cleverly catered for all permutations of the nine lucky star numbers in a strict Mathematical Pattern.

As a result you only need to match 5 numbers to win the massive Euro Lotto jackpot as apposed to 7 numbers when playing the conventional way as a lone ticket holder. You also only need to match 1 of your 5 allocated syndicate numbers to win a cash prize.

From the e-lottery-syndicates.com website

I actually know a few people who are members of this syndicate and I’m really interested in signing up with them, afterall it only costs £5 per week. And you’re pretty much guarenteed to get a return on that.

FREE MONEY!!!!, originally uploaded by MyLSD.

£10 a day. Doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but that’s exactly the cash I’m looking to make every single day in October, meaning I should have £310 more in my bank account on November 1st, just in time for Christmas.

But how am I going to do that, I hear you wonder aloud. Simply, I hope.

Of course, there’s paid blogging. I already do that and make around £50 a month from it but that’s only 5 days, what about the rest? Well the internet plays a big part in this really.

eBay - I have two boxes of things to sell on eBay sitting under my bed, mainly clothes and nicknacks which I’m sure will earn me about £60-£100 hopefully.

Survey sites, which I already do and make about £10 a month from but I don’t actually do all the surverys that are sent my way at the moment.

Quidco, which is pretty much free money especially as I’m planning a purchase from one of their sites offering high cash back and they offer silly money just to complete an auto insurance comparison on one of those websites with the annoying adverts.

And then there’s the picking up coins in the street option too.

If you can think of anyother way to ‘make’ free money, please share it with me. Or if anybody else wants to take part in this challenge, let me know.

You can also follow my progress on Twitter

I’ve done it again; it’s too late in the night to go to sleep as I know I’ll never manage to wake up in time for work. So instead I’ll be awake all night, thinking about how good it would be for the boy to be in my bed with me, just for a cuddle.

Insomnia, die.

I’m not exactly proud of the fact I’ve run out of money less than two weeks after I got paid. I know exactly how I’ve done it…making a big purchase on the spot and not putting money aside for it. It was worth it though, it was all the things that I needed for my bedroom from Ikea and the paint. So I have a gorgeous bedroom again and no money.

So I’m sitting here with 16 days to go until I get paid again and all I have to my name is £40 in a savings account I can’t touch, £30 in my PayPal account that’s not linked to a bank and £15 worth of stuff to be returned to the shops at the weekend because they don’t fit.

Not a happy situation to be in really, is it? I had no option but to get a loan for the first time in my life. Although since I have a really bad credit history that I’m working on correcting I don’t have a good chance of being approved for a loan over a long period of time so I decided to check out some Pay Day Loans, and ended up going with one for £150 which I’ll pay back automatically on pay day. Plus I’m only paying £25 on top of the £150 loan, and it only took 5 minutes to apply and be approved. The money’s on it’s way to my bank account right now and it’s going to pay for my transport and pay off two bills due to come out my account at the start of next week. When I get paid in a fortnight I think I will have to give the boyfriend £100 to keep a hold for me so that I don’t spend it though…

It’s killing me to do this, but I have to. Since I’ve re-decorated my bedroom I’ve got no space whatsoever to store my excess books. Plus I could do with the cash. So I’ve decided to sell off some of my old books…

I’ll be continually adding books to this post over the course of the next few days, so keep checking back. Postage and packing covers materials and cost of posting the items to you via Royal Mail. Check with me first if you’re outside the UK, either via Skype (ashes-from-stars) or email (melissa(a)ashesfromstars.com.

Today has been the craziest day off that I’ve had in a long while, even though I slept in this morning since I don’t often have the chance for a bit of a lie-in.

When I woke up this morning my grandmother was already here (she comes up every Tuesday and Friday) and was ironing all my clothes that I’d washed the other night. I asked her to stop it and I’d finish off putting them away but she wouldn’t listen to me, I swear she likes ironing clothes. She does it all the time even though me and my mum tell her not to bother. She’d also brushed all the downstairs floors and washed the windows. I know I’m lucky that she likes coming up to clean our house, although I do feel slightly guilty about it all.

I guess she doesn’t have much else to do since my grandfather died 4 years ago of a sudden cardiac arrest, she likes coming up to visit us or her sister rather than sitting in the house on her own. I barely have time to see her due to work commitments but I like spending every other Tuesday with her, even if we’re just sitting watching TV together.

Anyway, today we gutted the house before 2pm. Tidied up properly, washed floors and windows, cleaned mirrors, dusted…the whole she-bang. I was exhausted by the end of it mind you as the most cleaning I do these days in mainly in the shop.

Speaking (typing?) of cardiac arrests, I didn’t realise that it was one of the biggest killers in Scotland. I suppose our bad diets has something to do with it, it scares me how many people die so suddenly of a heart attack. When I was researching my mum’s new heart medication I found out some staggering facts - 900 people a day in the States suffer from a SCA and that in Scotland, since the smoking ban was introduced, cases of SCA have fallen by 17%. Maybe there is something to this stopping smoking lark?

The only relavance between the title of this post and the actual post is that the song the lyrics’ from is called ‘Starfuckers, Inc’ and this post is about Starbucks Coffee. Yeah, go figure.

You see, I’m rather excited. I’ve just come across a website selling Starbucks coffee a lot cheaper than it is to buy in their stores. I could drink Starbucks each and every day of my life (and end up loosing the plot like Britney probably since my favourite drink is also her poison - and a quick look on the Starbucks website informs me that a Venti Java Chip Frappe with Whip Cream has 520 calories in it!) and never, ever get sick of it.

I make my own versions of Starbucks Frappes at home, but it never quite tastes the same when it’s made with good ol’ Nescafe so I can’t wait to order some Starbucks coffee to make the real deal, hopefully with less calories than the real-deal.

There’s a buzz going around blogs based in London about a site called 7thsyndikate that’s popped up, which appears to be a marketing campaign for a yet-unknown event in London in 4 days time.

As I’m not based in London I didn’t think that trying to sign up to see what it’s all about (what? I’m Scottish so therefore I’m nosy) but I got a username and password sent out to my email earlier today.

Well, I’m still confused as I was reading any blogs that mentioned it. I think it’s an awesome idea though, as nobody seems to have a clue what it’s about - there’s talks of Cold War exhibitions and preview screenings of the new 007 film (which, by the way, has the WORST theme tune ever!)

Be interesting to see how this plans out, it reminds me so much of Bad Wolf (Whovian’s will understand this).

[EDIT] I think I may just have worked it out. Cold War Exhibition. Right area of London, pictures used on the website match up with the hidden images on flickr and other sites, the agent names fit in well…colour scheme on both sites match. What else could it be?

How is it that I got paid a week ago but I have no money left? I think that after I pay my bus ticket I’ll only have about £40 to last me three weeks! Plus £15 my mum owes me and £30 in my PayPal account.

Grr.. I cannot wait until I’ve paid off all of my debts. It’s really starting to get me down that I have never got any spare cash. I’m going to set up an eBay account and start selling off all this random stuff I found when I was tidying my room. Limited Edition Doctor Who Plate, anyone? Seriously. Where did that come from?

I suppose it’s a good thing that I’m not in my best friend’s situation. He’s got so much stuff to buy for the baby, and baby clothes and things aren’t exactly cheap. His family are helping them out a lot but even still - they’ve both got so much to buy for the little one, I can’t believe how expensive kids are!

Apparently I’m in for a wage rise next month, although going by my bosses it works out at around £35 per pay. Which really isn’t that much, and there’s a good chance that I’ll get less than that because I’m a supervisor and he’s a manager. Hmm, be interesting to find out how much the increase is. I doubt that it will make much difference since it’ll come off in tax and national insurance anyway. I knew I should have bargained for a wage increase when I was moving shops, but I guess I’d have been told to get lost.

Countdown to leaving my shop is 2 and a half weeks and I’m still not looking forward to it. I know that it’s a great opportunity for my career, but I still don’t want to leave my wee shop and all the awesome staff! I suppose I should stop being a spoilt brat about it all and just take this chance and go for it 200%.

I was sure I was off today, but I start work in an hour and 20 minutes and it takes me nearly an hour to get there and I still need to shower and get ready. I’m an idiot!