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I just discovered a new way to make money off of those Cash Rebate Credit Cards which give you 1-5% cash back on purchases made using your card at the end of the month.  This trick involves using this credit card to purchase travelers cheques or other liquid assets that can be converted back into cash which can be used to pay off your balance, leaving you with the 1-5% cash rebate reward and the opportunity to repeat the process. 

First of all you need to get a Cash Rebate Credit Card which has no limit on the cash back rewards.

The following cards offer between 1-5% Cash Back Rebates on all purchases made using their credit cards and have no limits on the amount of rewards that you can receive:

Discover More Card

Discover Motiva

Chase PerfectCard Mastercard or Visa

Chase Freedom Card

Blue Cash from American Express

SimplyCash from American Express

Once you have an active Cash Rebate Credit Card you will need to open a free checking account with a bank like Washington Mutual which not only offers free checking with no minimum balance, preferably one that also offers free checks.  So basically you have a free checking account which costs you nothing and doesn’t require you to keep a minimum balance.

Using your Cash Rebate Credit Card go and purchase items that can easily be converted back into cash without losing their value.

Traveler’s Cheques work the best.  So find a place that offers free traveler’s cheques.  My bank, Citibank, offers free Visa travelers cheques to anyone that keeps a balance of over $25,000. Wells Fargo has the same type of deal on free traveler’s cheques. You can also get free traveler’s cheques from AAA if you have a AAA membership.

So purchase the maximum number of travelers cheques that your card will allow you to purchase. For my card it was $10,000 with a 2% rebate on all purchases. Make sure that they ring up this charge as a POS (point of sale) transaction and not a cash advance.  This is important because if they treat the transaction as a cash advance then you will not get rebate credit for this transaction.  So find a place that will ring up the purchase as a Point of Sale transaction.

Deposit these traveler’s cheques into your checking account and they will take approximately 24-48 hours to clear and post into your bank account. 

Immediately write a check to your credit card company from your checking account for the full amount charged for the traveler’s cheques. So if you bought $10,000 of travelers cheques then mail them a check for $10,000 to immediately pay off your balance.  It will take them 24-48 hours to credit your credit card back to a $0 balance and this is about the same time it will take the traveler’s cheques to post into your checking account.

So now your credit card balance is back down to $0 on your Rebate Credit Card and you will also have a 2% reward accrued on your credit card.  For me it was $200 for the $10,000 purchase.

As soon as the balance is paid off you will be able to repeat this process and make another $200 for every $10,000 that you charge onto your card.

If you do the timing right you can run two of these transactions a week making an additional $400 per week. That’s $1,600 per month.

If you are really good, then you can apply for five of the card above and do this trick on all five of them, which would mean that you would be making around $8,000 a month, if you were able to charge a maximum of $10,000 twice a week on each of these five cards.

Over time they will increase your available credit which will enable you to do this with even larger amounts of money.

The money received from these rewards are completely tax free because this money is from a rebate on purchases that you have already made, so you won’t have to worry about paying taxes on this money at the end of the year.

If you are unable to purchase traveler’s cheques. You could purchase some other item that can be easily turned into cash without losing any value such as Gold Bullion Bars or Coins, stocks, or even post office money orders.  Can you think of anything else that could be purchased using a credit card and then converted back into cash? 

Last year alone, MasterCard and Visa generated a sales volume of more than $1.735 Trillion, from the circulation of approximately 1.3 Billion credit cards across the United States. With the average American having four credit cards which combined give them an average line of credit of $19,000.

The credit card industry is enormous. There are an average of 50.1 million credit card transactions per day totalling $4.75 Billion. So this industry leaves tons of opportunity for various types of fraud activity. In fact it is estimated that over $150 Billion of the total $1.735 Trillion dollars charged on credit cards was fradulent in one form or another. According to this statistic this fraud approximately accounts for approximately 9% of all credit card activity! This is totally shocking!

Credit Card fraud has skyrocketed now that more and more people are using the internet to make credit card purchases. The most common form of fraud occurs when the card is not present and only a number, expiration date, and authentication code are provided for the transaction. These types of transactions are usually online purchases, over-the-phone transactions, and through mail order.

In fact these forms of credit card fraud have become so common that an entire new language of terms has been developed to describe this activity. Words such as “skimming”, “shoulder surfing”, and “phishing” are all new terms which describe ways in which money can be stolen off your credit card.

Skimming describes the process in which a device is used to copy the magnetic stripe encoding off of a card. This is one reason card holders are cautioned against using ATM machines that look unusual. However all it takes is a couple of seconds to read the magnetic strip off of a card, so a waiter or a store clerk could easily steal your credit card magnetic strip code with an additional two-second swipe.

All they need to do is read the magnetic strip on the credit card with a magnetic strip encoder and then rewrite this information onto either a blank magnetic strip card or onto a gift credit card using a writable encoder.  This type of  skimmed card can be used at gas station pumps or even at grocery store checkout line scanners when transactions take place without the clerk even looking at the card.

The information stored on the magnetic strips of credit cards is as follows:

• Start sentinel — 1 character
• Format code=”A” or “B” — 1 character (alpha only)
• Primary account number — up to 19 characters
• Separator — 1 character
• Country code — 3 characters
• Name — 2-26 characters
• Separator — 1 character
• Expiration date or separator — 4 characters or 1 character
• Discretionary data — enough characters to fill out maximum record length (79 characters total)
• End sentinel — 1 character
• Longitudinal Redundancy Check (LRC), a form of computed check character — 1 character

Shoulder surfing refers to the method in which a fraudster obtains a PIN number by standing near a cardholder at an ATM machine. In some cases, the scam will occur after the PIN has been entered, with the thief distracting the person withdrawing money with a free newspaper. When the cardholder turns away, an accomplice quickly withdraws money.

Phishing refers to e-mail messages randomly sent out to trick customers into disclosing credit card numbers, account passwords or banking information. It is this type of theft that is causing the most problems. These fraudulent e-mail messages pretend to be from well-known companies. A recent study by Gartner of 5,000 adults in the United States estimated that 24.4 million Americans were tricked by phishing e-mail messages in 2006. Statistics from Phishtank, an antiphishing network, found that last month alone some 77,709 phishes were sent out, with 19 percent originating in the United States, 15 percent in France, 14 percent in Turkey and 10 percent from South Korea.

Carding is a term used for a process to verify the validity of stolen card data. The thief presents the card information on a website that has real-time transaction processing. If the card is processed successfully, the thief knows that the card is still good. The specific item purchased is immaterial, and the thief does not need to purchase an actual product; a Web site subscription or charitable donation would be sufficient. The purchase is usually for a small monetary amount, both to avoid using the card’s credit limit, and also to avoid attracting the bank’s attention. A website known to be susceptible to carding is known as a cardable website.

Credit fraud can fall into one of five categories:

Counterfeit credit card
Lost or Stolen Cards
No-Card Fraud
Non-Receipt Fraud
Identity Theft Fraud

The percentage that each type of credit card fraud represents is described below:

Counterfeit credit card: Makes up for 37% of all funds lost through credit card frauds. To make fake cards criminals use the newest technology to “skim” information contained on magnetic stripes of cards and to pass security features such as holograms.

Lost or Stolen Cards: Cards stolen from their cardholders or lost by them account for 23% of all card frauds. Often, cards are stolen from the workplace, gym, and unattended vehicles.

No-Card Fraud: Comprises 10% of all the losses and is completed without the physical card in hand. This can happen by giving your credit card information on the phone to shady telemarketers and deceptive Internet sites that are promoting the sales of their non-existent goods and services.

Non-Receipt Fraud: Is responsible for 7% of all losses. It occurs when new or replaced cards mailed by your card company are stolen during the process of being mailed. However, this type of fraud is on the decline with the card-activation process that most companies use. In 1992, non-receipt fraud represented 16 % of the losses.

It is still possible to get one of these mailed credit card offers and change the address on them to have a credit card that can be activated mailed to a different address.

Identity-Theft Fraud: Accounts for 4% of all losses, and occurs when criminals apply for a card using someone else’ identity and information.

It finally appears that we know for certain what happened to Natalee Holloway in Aruba, however the vast majority of people are not surprised because it was so obvious. In fact the demeanor and the manner in which Joran van der Sloot made the confession was far more disturbing than the actual chain of events that he described happening.

Natalee Holloway most likely died from drug use, and Joran van der Sloot disposed of her body with a little help from his friends. As well as some help and advice from his father, Paulus, who was a Judge in Aruba.

It appears that Joran’s mother, Anita, and Greta van Susteren were the only two people on Earth taken in by Joran’s lies. The majority of Americans were fairly certain that Joran was guilty from the beginning because it was so obvious. Joran carried himself with the demeanor of a villain and a sociopath who thought that he was smarter than everyone else. He was a convincing liar but the story changed a few times. He also gloated too much about having put one over on the police.

The Joran supporters who stood up for him through out the investigation are upset and disappointed, however they are not suprised, because many of these supporters were not behind Joran because of his innocence. They were behind him because many of them were Dutch, Aruban, or Canadian nationals who despised how the American Media and people were trying to strong arm the tiny nation of Aruba into changing their policies. Such as forcing them to do more to prosecute Joran for this crime. For them it became a matter of principal. They did not like the drastic actions that the Holloway family took to find her daughter or the undaunting support they received. They do not like being strong armed and looked down on by the American people, so they took a stand in support of Joran against the Holloway family for this very reason.

However in the end Joran just had to brag to the wrong person, a person with a hidden camera and microphone, about how he had gotten away with the crime. This proved the suspicions of the majority of people and angered all the Joran supporters because they now have been given a hard slap in the face.

So why suspect drugs? Because, if drugs weren’t involved, why would Joran have had to dispose of the body and cover up? He would have been involved in no crime if Natalee had simply died of natural causes. Therefore he most likely provided Natalee with some sort of drugs, perhaps even GHB (date rape drug) which caused an adverse reaction combined with the alcohol she had drank that night.

Any psychologist who views this tape would tell you that Joran is a textbook sociopath. Just look at his own description of the situation.

He says Natalie had a seizure during some intimate encounter and became unresponsive and he “shook the bitch” to try to arouse her. When she wouldn’t awaken, his first thought was “Why did this happen to me?” He had absolutely no concept that it had happened to Natalee Holloway, not to him! She was the one unconscious or dead. Then, not even being sure she was dead and not just unconscious, he had a friend drop her out in the ocean. And he claimed he slept well that night and had not a single pang of conscience. Clearly there is something not right in his head and he needs some serious psyciatric help.

Even with this confession he may never be charged with a crime. Her body will most likely never be found and he is now saying that his confession is a lie. This is not the first time that he has claimed to have lied. Through out the investigation he could not make up his mind about whether he walked home or was picked up. He could not make up his mind about whether he last saw Natalee on the beach or if he dropped her off at the hotel. If he had nothing to hide, then why is he doing all this lying?

The Aruban Police botched this investigation from the beginning. The Dutch system of interogation is less than ideal because under their laws investigators cannot use mind tricks such as lying to get confessions out of suspects. In the United States, the criminal investigators would have detained Joran and then told him that Natalee’s body has washed ashore which may have caused him to initially confess to this crime.

I really hope that Joran is found guilty of this crime and held responsible for what he did to to Natalee. I know that if he is never charged with a crime that society will punish him and he will lose out on many career, relationship, and other opportunities due to being known as the person who killed Natalee.

Take a look at this video below taken a few months ago. It shows Joran’s true colors as he throws wine in this interviewer’s face. His behavior here shows his true character. An arrogant, conceided brat, who has a temper when he does not get his way. His parents have enabled him to be this way. Check out how his father, Paulus, smiles after he sees the wine being thrown and how his mother, Anita, is totally oblivious to what is going on around her. Now do you wonder why he is an arrogant brat?

This guy has clearly been raised to be a spoiled brat. His parents, Paulus and Anita, gave him everything and he thinks that he owns the world and is smarter than everyone. His behavior speaks for itself. What can be worse than saying things such as, “Now I can abuse the whole situation”, and “I haven’t lost one night of sleep over it”, and “I can’t believe this has happened to ME”?

I could not agree with Beth Holloway’s statement more, “Once people see the video of Joran there are no more questions. There is no one who can walk away from this believing that he is innocent.”

Many people are not big football fans yet they eagerly watch the Super Bowl for one of the best parts of the game: the commercials. Television marketing experts have even stated that the Super Bowl is the only television event where the viewership would actually decrease if the commercials were removed.

This year sponsors will pay between $3.5M -$5M for just a brief 20-30 second commercial during one of the world’s most widely watched sporting events. This event will attact over 100 million viewers and generate around $10 billion in spending with the average viewer spending $59.90 on food, drinks, and other misc expenses while watching the game.

Over the years, various networks have turned away many proposed commercials either judging them as either too offensive, downright embarrassing or masquerading as advocacy ads.

Below are commercials that were either never aired or aired during the superbowl and then pulled off the air because they were either deamed inappropriate or too controversal. These commercials cover the span of the past 10 years.

Moosehead Light Beer

Pepsi

Tabasco Sauce

Bud Light

Levis Jeans

PETA

Budweiser

Got Milk?

Budlight

JBS Mens Underwear

Budlight

Carl’s Jr.

Victoria’s Secret

Last week California Supreme Court ruled that employers can fire workers found to have used medical marijuana even if it was legally recommended by a doctor. 

This particular case went to the state Supreme Court after a Sacramento based telecommunications company, Ragingwire Inc., fired Gary Ross for failing a company-ordered drug test.  Gary argued that he held a medical marijuana card which authorizes him to legally use marijuana to treat a back injury subtained while serving in the airforce.  However, the company still decided to fire him.

Raging Wire Inc. argued that it rightly fired Ross because all marijuana use is illegal under federal law, which does not recognize the medical marijuana laws of California or the 11 other states.

The court ruled that the so-called Compassionate Use Act (Prop 215) passed by California in 1996 has nothing to do with employment laws.

Justice Kathryn Werdegar stated, “Under California law, an employer may require preemployment drug tests and take illegal drug use into consideration in making employment decisions.”

Some companies argue that they could lose federal contracts and grants if they allow employees to smoke marijuana, even for medicinal purposes.

Ross on the other hand argued that medical marijuana users should receive the same workplace protection from discipline that employees with valid painkiller prescriptions do.

The nonprofit marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access, which represents Ross, estimates that 300,000 Americans use medical marijuana. The Oakland-based group said it has received hundreds of employee discrimination complaints in California since it began tracking the issue in 2005. The group will now focus on getting the Legislature to pass a law protecting medical marijuana users in the work place.

Another California Supreme Court Judge, Justice Joyce Kennard said the ruling was “conspicuously lacking in compassion” and “disrespects” the California medical marijuana law. She said employers should be barred from firing workers who use medical marijuana if they perform their jobs adequately.

The American Medical Association advocates keeping marijuana classified as a tightly controlled and dangerous drug that should not be legalized until more research is done.

Marijuana Detection Time Based on Usage
Usage at 1 time only ——————— 5-8 days
Usage at 2-4 times per month ———–  11-18 days
Usage at 2-4 times week —————-  23-35 days 
Usage at 5-6 times per week ————  33-48 days
Daily Usage —————————– 49-63 days 

Beating Urine Tests for Marijuana

There are commercial and household detox products out there that will help you pass urine tests for marijuana.  Some people object to using these commercial products because they charge high prices when large volumes of water alone tends to work for most people.

Ignore the money-back guarantees on these commercial detox products.  These companys sell thousands of these kits through advertising in High Times, they are really inexpensive to produce, and they have a large profit margin.   Thus a few returns from a couple of motivated users are rather insignificant to them.   Even GoldenSeal could get away with offering a money back guarantee because the large volume of water that you are required to drink alone causes most people to pass.  Also some companys actually refuse to uphold this guarantee.  A guy in Sonoma County who tested positive sent the lab results back, only to be told by the company that marijuana is illegal.  He was never compensated for buying a failing product.

You can try a detox product, but you may be able to achieve the same results by drinking 8 glasses of water before the test along with vitamin B and creatine to make your urine color right.  However, I would not risk it and I would try to use someone else’s urine kept warm with a pocket glove or boot warmer pouch.

Laboratories know how easy it is to tamper with urine samples and thus alter the results. Therefore Labs often test the urine to find out if the sample is legitimate.  Below are a list of things that the laboratory will look for when testing your urine.

Color:  If a urine sample looks clear, the lab will suspect that it’s watered down. They can’t report it as positive, but they may reject the sample and inform your employer that you tried to beat the test. If this happens, the sample might as well be positive, because you won’t get hired. Take a vitamin B complex to keep the color of your urine yellow.

Temperature: Urine should be between 91 and 97 degrees. NIDA certified labs will verify temperature. If it is not within this range, they will suspect that you added water to the cup, or used someone else’s urine.  Disposable pocket hand warmers (sold in department stores) will keep a urine sample warm, provided that the urine is held in a condom or douche bag.

Creatinine: Creatinine is a substance produced by vertebrates, and it shows up in urine. If someone substitutes their urine with something other than urine, like Mountain Dew, they will test negative for creatine.  The test will most likely fail because Mountain Dew contains zero creatinine, and labs test creatinine levels to ensure that the sample is valid. Creatinine levels drop below normal when people dilute their urine. This tests to ensure that the subject didn’t drink unusual amounts of water. An *accurate* creatinine “clearance” test would require a urine and blood test 24 hours before the drug test to determine the normal creatinine level for that individual. This is almost never done. You should still be cautious because they do often use the inaccurate method of comparing your creatinine level during the drug test to an average. Eating foods rich in protein like red meat will slightly increase creatinine levels. There is no significant variation between vegatarians and armavors, so the effect protein has is little. Sexual activity also raises creatinine levels. I doubt sexual activity influences creatinine level with much significance. However, a vegetarian that doesn’t have much sex should be concerned. People who are drug-free sometimes lose their jobs for having too low of a creatinine level.  You can also buy creatine monohydrate to raise your creatine levels.

pH: pH is often changed when people spike their sample with household products. Use caution when doping urine, pH is usually tested.

Producing Clean Urine

THC is fat soluble, and it gets stored in your fat cells. Cleaning it out of your lipid tissue is very difficult. Many herbal products claim to clean out your system, yet they do nothing to remove THC byproducts from fat cells.

A study was done in Germany in 1993 on 50 of the most common herbs used by people trying to pass drug tests.  All 50 herbs failed to cause a negative test result on a person who uses marijuana. Unfortunately, these rumors will not die. Goldenseal (plant) is useless; yet it’s the most common thing for people to use. The only way to extract THC from fat cells is to exercise. Fat cells secrete fat with THC metabolites at a constant rate, regardless of what herbs you consume. You may be able to temporarily clean THC metabolites from your bloodstream, or dilute your fluids to yield a larger urine/THC ratio, but your bloodstream will continue collecting THC metabolites from fat. Your urine will continue collecting THC metabolites from your bloodstream.

Dilution: Hyper saturating your body with fluids will dilute metabolites possibly below the 50 ng/mL threshold, depending on your metabolism. Be aware that creatinine levels are often tested, and will show that the sample has been diluted. Diluting your sample will also produce clear urine, with virtually no yellow color. They will assume that you’ve diluted your sample, and they may reject your sample on the basis of color alone. It’s only necessary to start drinking just before the test. Those who drown themselves in fluid days before a test are only causing unnecessary discomfort. Those who stay up all night drinking water do not have any better chance than one who drinks heavily first thing in the morning. Get up early if the test is early, but do not lose sleep over a test that’s given in the daytime.

Water: Drink at least eight hefty glasses of fluid (preferably water) just prior to the test. Many people start drinking water several days before the test; which is useless. Water does *not* clean any THC metabolites out of your system because THC is not water soluble. Water only dilutes urine temporarily. Do not over do it; you can get water intoxication. People can actually overdose and even die from water intoxication. It’s very hard to do, and you’ll vomit before anything gets serious.

Creatinine level: Eating red meat will boost creatinine levels. If you eat a lot of red meat for the 3 days prior to the test, your creatinine level will be normal, and the lab won’t know that you’ve diluted your urine sample.

Vitamin B: Color your sample yellow by taking 50 to 100 milligrams of vitamin B. Many vitamins will work, but B-2 or B-12 (found in B-complex vitamins) are the most effective, though some will argue that vitamin C is better. This will also help if you plan to dope your sample (section 7). This does not guarantee that dilution will work. Diluted samples have been red-flagged when specific gravity and creatinine levels are tested and below normal. If you’re taking vitamins at the last minute, check to see if they’re time release. If so, crush it up and consume the powder. Coloring your urine isn’t all that important because it’s normal for people to have clear urine even when they don’t consume much fluid.

Diuretics: Diuretics make people urinate frequently. Coffee, cranberry juice, beer, iced tea, herbal tea, and Pepsi are all good diuretics. Grapes are known to be very good diuretics. Diuretics without caffeine or alcohol are recommended because caffeine and alcohol have negative side effects. Cranberry juice is also the cheapest. Avoid salts. Herbal diuretics do better than home remedies like juices.
How to Give a Clean Sample

Do NOT take the test using the urine from your first urination of the day.  It’s the dirtiest, and can be heavily filled with metabolites. Urinate a couple of times before giving a test sample. Also, don’t give the beginning or end of the stream. Piss in the toilet, then quickly stop and go in the cup. Stop, and shift back to the toilet for the last portion. Only give a midstream sample. Just be sure to give the proper amount.

Exercise: Athletes have a big advantage over normal civilians. When fat is burned, THC byproducts are released into the blood. This is the only way to get THC metabolites out of lipid tissue.   Due to an athletes high metabolic rate, THC moves through an athletes system significantly faster. Exercising between drug tests will clean THC metabolites from the system at a faster rate, thus lowering the detection period. It is important to stop burning fat cells near test time. On test day, it doesn’t matter what’s in your lipid tissue. What’s in your blood and urine does matter. Exercise increases the amount of THC metabolites in the urine; so quit exercising a week before the test. Be lazy, and eat big. This will put the body in an anabolic fat-storing stage. At this point, the “buried” THC metabolites won’t escape and go the the urine.

Hair Testing

When THC metabolites are in the blood, they go through the blood vessels in the head, and get filtered through the hair. THC metabolites remain in the hair as a permanent record. The hair test costs several hundred dollars ($150-$300) and is rarely given because urinalysis is cheaper (approximately $65) and more accurate. (The hair test equipment and setup goes for over a million). According to Jeff Nightbyrd, hair tests are “widely used in the casino industry.” They cut 50 strands of hair from the scalp, and send it in to the testing lab where they liquefy it. “A hair sample is disolved in a series of solvents which extract the drug metabolites and then are analyzed via GC/MS.” It can take several hours to days just to extract metabolites. Average hair grows 1/4 inch per month. Typically they just use hair one and a half inches from the scalp; though some labs will take enough to test for up to 3 years. The liquid is run through the most sensitive GC/MS machines available, and can detect as little as 1 ng/mL! The hair test discriminates in that detection is easier in dark hair. Colored people may be discriminated against further because melanin is in their hair, which can be mistaken for THC. However, there is conflicting data as to whether melanin can be detected as THC. Psychemedics Corporation has a PDT90 kit for $75. This home test kit is for parents that want to chop off a lock of their child’s hair to find out what drugs s/he is using. Kids- lock your bedroom doors at night if your parents don’t trust your judgment on the drug issue.

Beating the hair test is extremely hard, and there are false positives. Bleaching or dying your hair is rumored to work, but it doesn’t. I imagine you can shave every hair on your body and claim that you’re a swimmer. According to NORML, Aloe Rid by Nexus is a shampoo that will aid in testing negative. Aloe Rid is available only in salons. Healthy Hair, from Sampson Health Products, is another shampoo designed to beat the hair test. Healthy Hair is sold in retail stores throughout Las Vegas. Keith Thrash from Sampson Health Products reccommends precleansing with Aloe Rid prior to using Healthy Hair. Healthy Hair is used in the morning and before going to bed. Each session takes 20 minutes. According to Steve at Sampson Health Products, two out of a thousand people failed the hair test when using Healthy Hair. Byrd Labs is currently developing a shampoo to defeat the hair test. Some have suggested treating hair with oil because THC is oil based and oil soluble. However, there is no proven way to beat the hair test, so it’s all heresay and guessing at this point. (If anyone has any success with the shampoos or the swimmer excuse, please let me know). Swimming and washing your hair removes toxins, and Keith Thrash recommends doing both as much as possible. Fortunately, the hair test cannot be used alone as evidence because there are no forensic standards. It can only be used when substantiated by other evidence. Also, there are no intoxication standards.

I believe if you tested positive for the hair test that you would probably have a good chance of fighting it.  BlockBuster Video uses the most up-to-date equipment, and passing such a test can be difficult.  It takes several months of precleansing to beat the tests given by Psychemedics.

Site Traffic Analysis 

Below are the monthly site statistics according to AWStats:

So there were 45,051 unique visitors in January 2008 which was a dramatic improvement from December 2007 which only brought 1,246 unique visitors.   So the total traffic has grown 3600% this past month!

The average time spent on the site was 421 seconds.  Damn 1 second less and we’d be right at an average of 420 seconds, so next month everyone has to try and spend 1 second less on this site per visit to achieve this goal.  Just kidding!

The busiest day was January 12th which brought a total of 7218 visits.  The slowest day was January 1st which only saw 112 visits.  The monthly average was 1706.84 visits per day.

 Below is my Alexa Graph:

I don’t understand the drop at the end of the graph.  January 28th brought 1260 visits, January 29th brought 1108 visitors, January 30th brough 1076 visitors, and January 31st brought 1091 visitors.  So how can a gradual reduction of 169 visitors across this 4 day period account for such a significant drop on the graph above?

Traffic Break Down

34.1 % - Direct Address/Bookmarks
63.9% - Search Engine (Stumbleupon, Google, Digg, MySpace, Yahoo!, AOL, MSN)*
  1.8% - External Links (from a total of 2617 external links)
* The social networking sites StumbleUpon, Digg, and MySpace accounted for 95% of the search engine traffic.

SiteHoppin brought the most traffic to my site as a private blog with 105 distinct visitors.  I will have to hook him up sometime soon.

Below are the keyphrases that brought the most people to my site:

Site Earnings

Contextual Ads - Clicks from Google Adsense, Rubicon Project, Kontera - $174.62
Affiliates Ads - Product/Service Sales Commissions, Credit Cards Signups, Email Captures, Form Signups, etc - $248.41

Total Revenue = $423.03

This is not enough to make a living, not enough to pay the mortgage, but it is enough for a monthly car payment.  If you consider the time spent on the site being average of 2 hours a day for 31 days, that’s a total of 61 hours of work, so it’s like getting paid $6.93 an hour which is not great.  But you need to examine the potential growth of the site as a whole.  Last month I made around $40 on the site, total so this month alone I have increased the revenue tenfold.  People say that this income is passive, however building, maintaining, and promoting a site like this takes alot of time!

I recently found out that I can make much more money with much less work setting up arbitrage sites and running affiliate ads on MySpace and Facebook.  These blog sites are just not very time/effort efficient for generating revenue.

Contest Winners

James from Henderson, Nevada is the winner of the Dual Spectrum Bubbleponics™ Complete Kit worth $179.95 and a selection of marijuana seeds from Amsterdam Marijuana Seeds from the link contest.

Rachel (I am waiting for her to reply to her email) is the winner of SanDisk Sansa® e200R Rhapsody Series MP3 Player worth $100 from Amazon from the comments contest. 

Finding $150-a-bottle Sonoma and Napa red wines at the bargain price of $60 might sound too good to be true.

Apparently, it was.

Felony criminal complaints have been filed against two Santa Rosa men and a Napa resident alleging they embezzled nearly $200,000 worth of high-end Bordeaux-style red blends produced by Jackson Family Wines, part of the Kendall-Jackson empire owned by Sonoma County wine giant Jess Jackson.

According to Sonoma County court documents, Jordan P. Crass, 29, of Santa Rosa, a former customer service representative at Jackson’s Windsor distribution center, was the ringleader who set in motion a potentially very profitable scheme.

He faces six felony charges including grand theft, four counts of burglary and unauthorized computer access.

Depending on how much investigators can establish was stolen, a conviction in the case could mean prison time, prosecutor Amy Ariyoshi said.

In addition to Crass, Jarrett M. Berg, 28, of Santa Rosa and Kevin M. Hall, 29, of Napa are named in the complaint. They face three felony charges each of receiving stolen property.

Hall is an employee of Regal Wine Co., a Jackson-owned distribution company. Berg is a high school friend of Hall’s who is alleged to have delivered the wine to buyers, according to court papers.

None of the men has been arrested. Contacted by phone, Hall declined comment, Crass didn’t return a message seeking comment and Berg couldn’t be reached.

The attention of Jackson wine executives was sparked in April 2007 when the company’s vice president for marketing found Verité wines for sale on the Internet. The wines, three different 2004 vintages of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc blends, hadn’t been released to the public, company officials told investigators.

“He saw this wine and said, ‘Wait a minute, how did they get that?’ He ordered it and said, ‘Yep, that’s our wine,’ ” Sheriff’s Sgt. Glenn Lawrence said. “From there it snowballed.”

Tiffanie De Liberty, an attorney for Jackson Family Enterprises, said in an e-mail the company wouldn’t comment on the case.

An internal investigation by Jackson Family Wines revealed that unreleased 2004 vintages of La Muse, La Joie and Le Désir wines “were available on the Internet in large quantities and at prices substantially below” retail prices, detective Randy Williams wrote in an investigative document filed with the request for search warrants.

The wines were being offered on eBay and four fine wine retailers’ Web sites.

Company investigators traced computer transactions believed to have been made by Crass that indicate he also traded bottles of wine for tickets to sporting events with a Pleasant Hill ticket broker, Williams said.

Crass, who was fired in early April, created false “lost” wine shipments or marked shipments as returns so the wine could be sent out without being tied to an order by a specific customer, a search warrant affidavit alleged.

Williams’ report detailed seven “inventory adjustments” allegedly made in January and February 2007 from Crass’ computer at the company’s shipping center involving nearly 1,000 bottles of 2002 and 2003 Verité and Lokoya wines costing $150 to $175 a bottle. Each of the shipments was labeled lost.

Another inventory check showed 240 missing bottles of 2004 Verité wines, valued at more than $34,000.

Edward Mackauff, president of finewinecollector.com in San Jose, told investigators he bought several bottles of the pricy reds from Hall, whom he said contacted him as a representative of Regal Wine Co. Regal is the distribution arm of Jackson’s wine empire.

Mackauff provided detectives with canceled checks valued at nearly $9,000 written to Berg and Hall for three wine shipments. One of the checks had a bank-required fingerprint of the person who cashed it, Williams said in his report.

“It’s not fun being a victim of anything,” said Mackauff. “I was able to help figure out what was going on and helped catch them. But I’d rather forget it all.”