Work at Home Dad

I like buying books - and the nearest good bookshop is about 45 minutes drive away - so online shopping comes in useful. I noticed Easons were advertising free delivery for orders over €25 euro for Christmas - and I know that Amazon are doing free delivery as an option to Ireland on orders over £25. I’ve also seen good things mentioned about Book Depository who do free delivery on everything to Ireland. Waterstones sometimes have special offers on - but there is no free delivery option for Ireland

Well - after a few checks of the above 4 websites I have come to the conclusion that Amazon is the cheapest (especially if your order is over £25. This article here comparing the prices of online bookshops also agrees with me.
The only thing is - once you go on to Amazon you can spend hours looking at all the great stuff they have and sometimes end up ordering a few extra items. Ah well - I deserve a treat in this bad weather and to cheer myself up after the Irish defeat at the hands of France yesterday…

Is it possible to make money on the Internet ? Of course its. Thousands of people are doing it all over the world.
Many websites will try and sell you ebooks or subscriptions to newsletters - promising to tell you the secrets of how to earn money online. Most of those will be worthless - you will find the same information for free online.

Google probably has the biggest online advertising network on Earth. Millions of adverts are displayed every day on their seacrh results and on other websites.
Advertisers pay Google every time one of their adverts is clicked. The price paid will depend on the subject matter and the amount that other advertisers are willing to pay. The more an advertiser is willing to pay per click - the nearer the top of the page the ad will appear.
Anyone can join Google’s Adsense program - which will allow Google Ads to be displayed on your website or blog. If someone clicks and Advert - Google pay you a commission. Payments per click can range from 1 cent to maybe 10 or 20 dollars. Payments per Click of $1 dollar would be quite common.

A simple and free way to start is to set up a blog on Blogger (owned by Google) - and you can then sign up for Google Adsense and get adverts shown on the blog.
People have to find your blog though - and that is the hard bit (very hard).
It can take a while for a blog to appear in google search results - but the best advice is to
stick to a small range of subject matter
blog often
make it interesting and honest
Write about something you enjoy and that interests you.

It helps if the subject matter will attract adverts. A blog about financial products will probably get more high paying ads than one about your daily boring life . Don’t rule anything out - if you like it so will others.
Try and post on forums and use your blog as a signature if allowed. Try and link to your blog when ever possible.
You can then try and join affiliate schemes - these are schemes that let you advertise products from websites such as Amazon, Dell, Burtons, Dorothy Perkins, HMV - the list is endless. If a visitor to your site clicks on an advert or link and then buys a product on the advertisers web site - (within a specified time scale) - you get a commission. Commision can be anything from 1% to 25% depending on the site. Commission of 3 to 6% would be typical.
Some sites have their own affiliate schemes such as Amazon. Most use third pary affiliate marketing sites such as Tradedoubler, Webgains, Buy.at, Afilliate Window, Commission Junction , Linkshare, Affiliate Future. These are the main ones for the UK and Ireland.

The next stage - once you have tested out the waters with a blog - is to set up a website with it’ s own domain name. This involves a bit more work - but is not too difficult.
You can get hosting packages that include blogging software like Wordpress - and you can have more control over how it looks . It is not something for a person with no IT experience - but it does not need a programming expert.

Start gradually and build it up over time. The more pages you have the more chance of being found . Don’t rely on one “Home” page or one site. Set up several and keep trying. It may take months or years. Instant success is rare.

Just in time for all the Christmas shopping - Amazon recently introduced Free Delivery to Ireland on orders over £25. This offer looks like it is permanent. Also - they are offering free delivery on all orders to the UK until the end of December.
I’ve already started filling a shopping basket on Amazon .
It only applies to items sold by Amazon (they allow other sellers to sell on the site). Also - you need to be aware that they have to add on the extra Irish VAT at the end - so that puts the final price up by about 6% -. The prices on Amazon and the wide range of stuff available make them hard to beat. I would be driving for 2 hours and walking round loads of shops to find a fraction of what I can get on Amazon . The only danger is - once you start shopping there - it’s hard to stop!

It’s the end of “Summer Time” and back to proper GMT from this weekend. The clocks go BACK 1 hour on Sunday morning October 25th 2009 - so it will mean brighter mornings and darker evenings . It should mean an hour extra in bed - but our youngest doesn’t care what the clock says and will get up when he sees a bit of daylight anyway.

Out here in rural Ireland - dark evenings are really dark - no such thing as street lights here!
Time to top up the oil tank and buy some fuel for the wood stove.

A man called Ken Ring from New Zealand is often on the radio here in Ireland doing weather predictions He predicted the very wet 2009 Irish summer and the nice September weather back in March 2009.
I heard him give a brief forecast summary for the next few months. It will be interesting to see how accurate he is. He even specifies certain days for snow or frost - not just weeks.

Sept 2009 mostly dry and warm until Sept 21 when there will be some heavy rain.
There will also be more rain in the first week of October 2009 .
From 23rd November - to 26th Nov it will be cold with frost and possibly snow.
9th to 23rd Decenber - a dry period from with a cold spell around December 11th Not a White Christmas though..
January 2010 will bring havy rain from 14-18th and a dry cold spell between Jan 20 - 31.
Early February will also be very cold.
He predicted snow on March 2nd 2010 and even snow as late as April 14th.
The warm weather will be back from late May early June 2010

The summer is over and the kids are back at school. The older two are away at college (home probably at weekends). This is the first full week after they all returned to school - and it’s quite nice. On my own from 9.20 till 3pm. I probably sound bad saying that - but I’m sure there are many stay at housewives and househusbands who know how I feel. We love our kids - but after almost 3 months of Irish school holidays - they do start to get on top of you. The peace and quiet and a bit of routine again is nice.
With all 4 at home in the holidays - getting up at different times, wanting to be taken here and there, cooking , cleaning up after them, splitting up arguments - it was hard work sometimes. At the end of some days it felt like nothing had been done - but I was tired out and stressed out. All the rain didn’t help. We had a week abroad and a week in the UK - niether were long enough to properly wind down though . A self catering holiday in a small apartment still means shopping and stuff as well as arguments to sort out. It must be the same for many families. Living in a rural area meant that I had to drive the kids anywhere thay wanted to go - that itself could involve an hours worth of driving a day.

I’ve been going swimming a bit the last couple of weeks - and my plan is to try and go 3 mornings a week for about 45 mins now they are all back at school. The wet weather has put a halt to any walking - so swimming is the exercise of choice for now (even if it is wetter). I also plan to use the gym too. It’s in the same building as the pool and only a 20 minute drive away from home. I can combine the journey with shopping in Tesco. I went this morning - and I was the only male under 60 in the pool.
Hopefully I’ll stick to the swimming . I only went once last week because a plumber was here on 2 mornings - and he’s due again on Wednesday to “power flush” the heating system which it seems has become clogged up with crap after only 4 years.

Housework has become less of a priority in the last couple of months. Having all 4 kids around the house made it harder to keep on top of . Now I need to do a bit of an “Autumn Clean” to catch up on what I’ve missed.
I don’t claim to do all the housework - but I’d say 70% of it is down to me. I do all the shopping, 90% of the cooking , 70% of the washing, 60% of the ironing. I seem to manage to avoid putting the clean clothes away and making the kids sandwiches for school - but hey - that’s not much.
With the older ones away at college it means more weekend washing - so my wife will probably be doing more of that than she was previously.

Time for a nightcap now (Paddy Whiskey) - I deserve it!

After the agent for my satellite “broadband” went into recievership recently (NBB) - I was worried I would have to go back to dial up or try mobile broadband again - both of those were really slow.
The good news is that at long last Eircom have upgraded the local telephone exchange and I can now get up to 3Mb broadband through the phone line.
I did a bit of searching online to compare prices of the various telephone and broadband suppliers.
If I stayed with Eircom - the monthly charge would be €61.25 for unlimited local and national phone calls and 3Mb broadband speed with a 30Gb download limit.
But I also found that you can’t rely on the Callcosts web site to do a comparison of phone and broadband pricing - because they don’t seem to have all the suppliers various packages on their system.
I found the cheapest bundle to be from Vodafone at Home with their offer of 3Mb broadband and free anytime phone calls for €45 a month . That’s a saving of €15.25 on the Eircom price. Vodafone have a fairly generous 40b monthly download limit and also throw in 200 mins a month of free calls to 3 vodafone mobiles too which is worth about €40 or more. (Might even be worth getting the kids to switch to Vodafone Mobiles.

Imagine 3Meg broadband is €50.21 a month plus €60 for a modem. (20Gb data limit)
Homevision charge €51 a month (cheaper in Dublin)
Smart Telecom’s 3Mb bundle costs €52.37 and €50 for the modem. (Unlimited downloads)

As promised in the last Budget - school bus fares here in Ireland are going up and the new bills arrived last week. At first it seemed like a very big increase when I saw the €300 euro charge. Then I realised this was for the whole year - wheras previously bills were sent out once a term (3 times a year).
The charges have risen a good bit in the last year - it used to be €99 a year for Junior Cert pupils in 2007 - it is now €300 a year. Prices for Leaving Cert pupils have risen from €153 in 2007 to €300 .
There has been a bit of uproar in the media about the increases - but I think the fares are not unreasonable. The bus journey is about 5 miles - so for me to take my son to school would mean driving 20 miles a day (in and out) - which would cost me more in petrol. (School is open 167 days a year - so the fare works out at €1.80 a day)

As a comparison - I found that in a rural area of Lancashire in the uk - school bus fares are:
Up to three miles - £1.10 for a single fare, £2 for a return.
Between three and eight miles - £1.60 for a single, £3 return.
Over eight miles - £2.10 for a single, £4 for a return.

The UK school year is a good bit longer than here in Ireland - 190 days in the UK 167 days here (that’s another issue for another day) - so over the year a pupil in Lancashire would be paying a minimum of £380 or approx €440 Euro.

My Satellite broadband provider - it appears - has gone out of business. There were rumours about it on boards.ie - then a report of a court case against them because thew owed over 300k to a firm of solicitors. Looks like they took the government to court about the awarding of the National Broadband Scheme to “3″ - and lost.
Strangely - another company has sprung up that now can also provide Astra satellite broadband in Ireland. They are Abbtelecom based in Kinnegad. Their domain name was registered to a John O’Brien - with a business address of Cross Country Broadband - who (i think) were NBB in a previous incarnation. Yesterday I had an email from someone at abbtelecom telling me that they were taking over from NBB - and I had to fill in a Direct Debit form for them (same price as NBB). How did they get my email address - unless thay are connected in some way? All very strange ? Should I sign up for the new company?

There seems to be loads of companies posing as charities who collect old clothing all over Ireland. There must be plenty of money to be made out of old clothes?
One such company was in our area recently - and I did a bit of investigation into them. They use the name Umbra - and it looks like in the past they have used Umbro too.
They are clever - they work by contacting parish priests and ask them to publicise the collection in their newsletters. The collections usually take place on church car parks - to make it look more “official”. If you search for Umbra in google you will see dozens of parish newsletters mentioning the collections all over Ireland. They certainly get around.
Umbra don’t say they are a charity (and they aren’t) - but they do always hghlight that the collections will provide support for a place in Africa called Kitui.
The fundraisers in Kitui have done a good job - because they also have an organisation in Ireland set up to raise funds for them - Friendsofkitui.com. This organisation works closely with Trocaire (an Irish Charity).
(There must be other areas that need help - why pick on just one?)

It appears that Umbra or Umbro clothes collections is somehow linked to a company based in Clonagore, Clones, Co Monaghan which appears to be run by Joe Monaghan - called Global Textile Shipping Ltd. Tel 047 55340

They make money by collecting old clothes and selling them to countries in Eastern Europe and Russia for a profit. They may well donate money to Africa - but how much and how often ?
There was a report about this company in the Irish Independent in 2006 - telling how two priests in Africa had refused to be associated with them anymore . They did get some donations from them - but not as much as expected . Also - they didn’t like the way their names were used on leaflets etc. to encourage people to donate clothes long after they stopped getting money from the Monaghan company. See the full story here
This company is doing nothing illegal - they are cute enough to make sure of that. They have waste collection permits and don’t appear to say they are a charity. But - by operationg through churches and by stressing that they raise funds for the needy in Africa - they do mislead people. They cleverly mislead the public into believing that the main aim of the company is to raise money for others - when in fact they are a profit making company that makes the odd donation to certain priests in a specific parish in Africa.
I have noticed one or two parishes in Ireland where the clothes collection by Umbra has been cancelled. They must have realised what was going on. I can’t understand why those who realise what is going on tell the Bishops so all parishes know the full story about these clothes collections.
I have no problem with people giving clothes they no longer need to this company . It is better than sending them to the dump. People need to realise that if they want all of the proceeds from the sale of the clothes to go to a registered charity they would be better off donating them directly to a place like Oxfam or other proper charities.