Toysport

Archive for August, 2011

Okay, don’t laugh. It’s a job and it can be a darn good paying one if you have a good route. Being a newspaper delivery boy isn’t what it used to be many years ago. Today, newspapers are much more efficiently run and the delivery services themselves have been upgraded drastically. Today’s paper boy doesn’t work anywhere near as hard as the paper boy of the 1970s. So if you’re thinking this is something that you don’t want to do, you might think differently after reading this review of exactly what a paperboy does and gets paid.

Paper boys of the 21st century have it made. Of course this isn’t a job that a 10 year old is going to be able to do anymore, at least not if he wants to make the big bucks. Today’s paper routes are much larger than they were years ago. So in order to work today’s routes you’re going to need a car, preferably one with a lot of trunk space. An SUV, van or truck may even help. Years ago, a route was maybe 100 papers. Today, a route can be up to 1000 papers if you get a really good route.

The first thing you need to do is contact the local newspaper in your area and tell them you want to route. They’ll ask you where you live and try to assign you one that is close by. They will ask you if you have a vehicle. When you get hired, they will give you a destination to go to in order to pick up your papers. Yes, you do have to pick them up yourself. They don’t deliver them to your door. On normal days there won’t be anything more to do than to pick up the papers and throw them in your car. But on Sundays things are a little different. The Sunday paper comes in sections and before you can deliver each paper you have to put the sections together. This can be very time consuming, so on Sunday you better be prepared to get up a little earlier and work a little longer. But it’s worth it because the Sunday papers are very expensive today and the commissions you get on them are very nice.

After the papers are put together you will have a route sheet to look at. This will have the addresses of every subscriber. You better either know the area well or have a map with you or you’re going to get very lost and your job is going to take you all day to complete. This is not good when you have people who are expecting their paper by 7 AM.

After you have delivered all your papers, you return home and report in to the main office that the route for that day has been completed. They’ll ask you the time of completion and how long it took you. If they see you’re taking longer than expected you may not keep your job long as this will lead to unhappy customers.

Years ago, when papers were 10 cents, you got paid 2 cents on every paper, or 20 percent. Today, the percentages are closer to 30 percent and with papers going for 50 cents a pop during the week and $1.00 on Sunday, you can make a nice part time income for an hour of work a day.

Being a paper boy isn’t what it used to be.

It seems like Blogs are everywhere these days. You can’t seem to surf the Internet without seeing the word Blog somewhere. The intent of this article is to explain the basics what a Blog is and how you can use them to help promote your business and gain valuable information quicker that surfing the Internet.

The word Blog is short for web log. Basically a Blog is just an area set aside you to write articles that can easily be accessed with a special program called a RSS reader. In case you’re wondering RSS stands for real simple syndication.

When you set up a Blog you select a template that will house your information. Once you have the Blog set up you can post whatever information you like. It’s really a fast way to get your articles and information up on the web and the templates look great! You don’t have to mess with all the technical end of getting something up on a web page (HMTL layout, FTP, ect…). The real cool thing about Blogs is that you can get the software to read them for free. Also, you can set up an account and create your own Blog for free!

One thing I should note is, you can read Blogs with your standard browser and post comments on the content of the Blog. An optional way to read Blogs is by using a RSS reader program. You simply subscribe to whichever Blogs that you want to and they are available immediately in the reader. Personally I like to use the reader because you have all of the Blogs that your interested in one place and you don’t have surf all over the Internet to read them.

The free reader that I use can be downloaded here: http://www.rsspublisher.com

To get your very own free Blog, which you can post to go to: [http://www.blogger.com/start]

I think you will find that they are very easy to set up and post to.

The are many advantages that Blogs offer over a web site or ezine.

1. You don’t have to mess with an HTML layout. You just post your info and the info looks wonderful because the Blog uses the template that you set up.

2. You can post as often as you like. I can’t imagine that I would send an email to my ezine every day but with a Blog you can post as much as you would like.

3. Email spam filters do not block Blogs because they are not an email communication.

4. You can make as many Blogs as you like on any subject.

I hope this will help you start your own Blog and officially start you down the road to being a Blogger!

Blogs are, in many ways, the most interesting type of web page. Blogs are excellent opportunities for individuals who share a common interest to interact with one another, make friends, and add to the overall conversation about their topic. Unfortunately, the blogosphere can be somewhat difficult to navigate when you are first starting out. Here are some of the basics when it comes to blogs:

Design. Blogs are structured a certain way. The entries on a blog are typically listed from the most recent down to the oldest. Blogs also usually have a comments section in which the reader and the writer can interact with one another and keep the larger conversation about their topic going. Blogs often have a blogroll – a list of links to other blogs that are either about a similar topic or are in some other way associated with the blogger.

Content. Blogs may be personal, covering a person’s daily activities. They may be related to a hobby, such as Roleplaying games or cooking. They might be professional blogs, and used to promote a product or a service. Really, it is hard to define what blog content is. Still, the fact is that blog content tends to be a little different from regular web content in a couple of ways. Blog content tends to, on the average, be more personal than regular web site content. Blog content also tends to be less formal than regular blog content.

Creating a blog. Creating a blog is a relatively simple process. There are many free services that make setting up a blog no more complex than creating a document on your computer. The process of publishing your blog posts is, for the most part, a simple point-and-click transaction. It is because of the ease of use, in part, that blogs have exploded in popularity in recent years.

Making money. Some blogs have the potential to make money for the blogger. Through the use of advertising or selling your own products, there is the potential for profit. How big that potential is depends on a variety of factors, including the topic area of the blog and how much traffic you have to your blog.

Traffic. Traffic refers to the number of readers or visitors that go to a blog. The more traffic that a blog has, the more folks will leave comments or click on ads, and the more your ideas will spread.

While there is much more to blogging, these are some of the basic ideas you need to understand in order to get a good start at blogging.