August ends tomorrow. Business earnings this month were pitiful. $299. Should I be amazed that I haven’t put a gun to my head yet? If you divide the $299 by the hours I’ve worked this month it comes to an average of about 0.75 cents per hour if I’m doing my Math correctly. I have no idea how there’s still enough money in my accounts to cover the bills; but we should manage to get the bills paid.

I’ve bee MIA from here for a few days because I’ve been working hard on one of the celebrity gossip sites after realizing there was a resurgence of traffic from Google. Google had dropped the site to the bottom of their index because I’d violated their terms by creating a duplicate website. At the time when they dropped the site, it had just begun to see an increase from around 50 - 100 visits per day to 600 - 1000. After they dropped it the traffic fell to under 100 visits per day; but it’s been improving lately and is now getting from 700 - 1200 per day, which still isn’t anything to sing and dance about, but by comparison to my other sites, this site included, if the site’s success is to be measured by traffic stats, it’s the most successful of the bunch so I thought I should try to see what I can do with it to bring some consistent income out of it.

What I’ve noticed though is that the increase in visits and page views isn’t really translating into an increase in Google Adsense earnings. It’s starting to dawn on me that I won’t get anywhere trying to rely on Adsense for income. I need to see visits in the hundreds of thousands and page views in the millions for that.

I’ve managed to get text link ads to approve the site after they’d initially declined to add it to their inventory. So far I’ve sold 2 ad spots; but because the site only has a page rank of 3, the most I’m getting for the links is $5 bucks per link. It’s highly unlikely I’ll sell all 10 ad spots. That would bring $50 per month; but I’m inclined to think it will be very difficult even to sell 5 ad spots and pull $25 per month via text link ads. What I need to do is find other ways of monetizing the site so that I’m not relying just on Adsense, or just on text link ads.

At any rate, the bills for September will get paid. I’m relieved about that; and even though I only managed to bring in $299 in August, I don’t feel as desperate and terrified as I was starting to feel a few weeks ago. I suppose it’s because my head has been spinning with ideas and it always feels better when you at least have some ideas for things you might be able to do to make money. It’s when you’re not making money and you have absolutely no idea what you might be able to do to make money that panic starts to rise.

Times have changed from when people were considered rich if they had a million dollars to their name. Nowadays, while you’d still be considered reasonably well off, you certainly couldn’t afford everything your heart desires if all you had in the bank was 1 million dollars.

1. If for some peculiar reason you wanted to get your hands on one of those floating magnetic beds designed by Dutch architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars, you would need to come up with another .2 million to put with your 1 million.

The bed hovers 40cm from the floor via powerful magnets and will retail once life-sized versions go into production for $1.2 million. Obviously, if all you had to your name was 1 million dollars, you wouldn’t want to drop all the way to the bottom of the financial status ladder just to own a high tech bed.

2. How about the Goldvish million dollar cellphone? That too would be out of your budget if all you had in the bank was 1 million dollars. But seriously, does a cellphone adorned with platinum, gold and diamond accents work better? Why does someone need to spend $1,278,000 on a cell phone? Does anyone really care that you’re talking with a diamond encrusted phone at your ear. You might as well replace your ear itself with an ear made of diamonds. It would make more sense.

3. Factoring in taxes and other miscellaneous fees, a million dollars couldn’t buy you the MacDaddy million dollar fishing lure. But it’s doubtful that fish taste better that’s caught using a fishing lure "crafted in just over 3 pounds of glimmering gold and platinum, then encrusted with 100 carats of diamonds and rubies," so you probably shouldn’t worry too much about not being able to afford to fish with a million-dollar lure that looks like a pimp’s walking stick. Do they really intend that product to be used for fishing or is it just for putting in a case and admiring on days you feel like reflecting on how great it is to be so rich you can afford to pay more for a fishing rod than your 25 employees make in a year combined?

4. The million dollar laptop by Luvaglio would also propel you to the bottom of the financial status ladder were you to trade your 1 million dollars for the pleasure of owning a laptop with a "very rare colored diamond piece of jewellery" serving as the power button, and other scattered, put purposeful, bits of diamond here and there. Said Rohan Sinclair Luvaglio about the million dollar laptop:

“I didn’t want us to simply re-house a laptop into a diamond studded casing, or diamond encrust the entire thing simply to make it expensive. We’ve put thought in from the keyboard down to the power charger. There is an integrated screen cleaning device and a very rare colored diamond piece of jewelery that doubles up as the power button when placed into the laptop and also acts as security identification. We have used diamonds elsewhere but have given them purpose.”

Hard to imagine who would need a laptop that costs a million dollars….

5. Million Dollar Coconut Brandy - Mendis, a company founded by Mr. W. M Mendis, is in the business of creating fine brandy. The million dollar cocunut brandy is described on the Mendis website as:

… the world’s first clear ultra-premium brandy produced from coconut and matured for a minimum of two years.

MENDIS Coconut Brandy V.S. has subtle tones of coconut, vanilla and chocolate, with a velvety sweet texture. The product’s complexity can be experienced when consumed neat or on the rocks, though it also offers limitless options for mixing as a clear spirit.

Seems to make sense to spend your last million on a million-dollar bottle of brandy only if your intention is to commit suicide by drinking the whole bottle in one sitting.

Seems Alex Tew started up another million dollar home page site last December. This new site is called Pixelotto and the concept is the same as the million dollar homepage with a few differences. For one thing, the charge per pixel is $2.00 instead of $1.00, and pixelotto.com comes with a built-in measure for building up a fat member database and getting people to click on the advertiser’s ads. That measure is a $1,000,000 prize giveaway.

As Tew has written on the pixelotto site, all you have to do to secure a chance at winning the million dollar prize is register for free and start clicking ads.

With 10 clicks per day, the more days you play, the more chances you will have. You will be accumulating entries from your clicks right up until the draw takes place.

What? You wanted a guaranteed million? Well, sorry but the only guaranteed winner in this equation is Mr. Alex Tew.

While some people believe that lightening doesn’t strike twice in the same place and Alex Tew will not succeed at selling another million pixels, this time for $2 million, and while it doesn’t appear that sales of pixels on pixelotto are going as fast as on the original million dollar home page, Alex Tew at least has a proven record of success going for him. Advertisers are more likely to trust his sites than they would the many clones that have sprouted on the Internet since the million dollar home page success became headline news.

By the way, if you’re an advertiser, it should be clarified that while the price per pixel is $2.00, there is a minimum 100 pixel purchase; and it looks as if what you’re getting for your $200 is a tiny little square that will be practically invisible once the entire page is filled. The graphic below shows some possible ad sizes and what they would cost you.

It is interesting that I was speaking disdainfully about my spouse’s employment and the pitiful small bit of money it brings into the household; but without this pitiful small bit of money earned at a less than prestigious job, we’d probably be homeless at this point. The most I earned in July was $600 and so far in August I haven’t earned a dime. We’ve been fortunate that I had enough on the bank from previous month’s earnings to make up the difference. Here’s what our monthly expenses look like. (Ph/Ca/In = Phone/Cable/High Speed Internet; Utilities include water, sewer and electricity.

The total monthly expenses per month for my household is $2140. I estimated up for the phone/cable/internet and utlities. The “Other” probably come out to less than $300 also. Not sure about food. I think too much money is going towards food every month one way or another. But let’s call the monthly expenses $2000.On average my spouse contributes $800 per month. That leaves $1200 for me to come up with every month to make up the difference. Previously I was able to manage because I had a number of sources via which I generated income. $500 here, $550 there, an occasional $100 from Google, a sale here and there, occasional web development gigs; but everything has suddenly changed. My financial situation is in a critical state; and I need to figure out what is going on and find a solution because, from the chart above, the income coming into this household plainly shows that we can’t afford even a sub-standard of living.

UPDATE: In the post below we state that Ivanka Trump graduated magna cum laude from the Wharton school. It appears there’s some question as to whether Ivanka received summa cum laude or magna cum laude. Some reports quote Ivanka as insisting she graduated summa cum laude. One must assume that whether in fact she graduated summa or magna, her Wharton records have been adjusted to show summa by now so we correct our assertion. Ivanka Trump graduated summa cum laude.

According to Ivanka she Ivanka Trump is an intelligent woman. She has to be. She graduated magna cum laude from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor of science in economics, and she did it all on her own merits with no strings pulled anywhere by anyone. Magna cum laude “with great honor” is a step up from just cum laude “with honor”, but lower than summa cum laude, “with highest honor”. [If you care, there are other distinctions of honor bestowed upon college grads; but none of it is really relevant to anything]. The point is, Ivanka Trump wasn’t Einstein or his female equivalent, but she was an academically superior student nonetheless, and her superior mind and inherited ambition are what have propelled her to the top of the corporate ladder; not her name and other intangible assets. So she insists.

Ivanka Trump, as you may or may not know, is the daughter of self-professed financial genius Donald Trump. And as you can see from the photo, academia is not the only area in which the 25-year old former fashion model, entrepreneur and current vice president of Real Estate Development and Acquisitions at the Trump Organization stands apart from the average person; but how much of Ivanka’s success is truly the result of her hard work and how much of it can be attributed to her being “Ivanka Trump”?

There are many women with equal ambition and equal intelligence who never manage to get very far climbing the corporate ladder. Even Ivanka Trump knows that ambition and brains alone won’t often get a woman very far if her goal is to reach the top of the corporate ladder. Women have come far from the days when they couldn’t vote and were considered only useful for keeping house and bearing children; but they still haven’t overcome every hurdle of discrimination.

Ivanka Trump is 25 years old. Most women 25-years old don’t hold positions as vice-president of anything at multi-million-dollar corporations. Most women 25-years old who look like Ivanka Trump don’t have it very easy getting people to take them seriously, to respect them for their ambition and their brain. Presumably, Ivanka doesn’t wear thin strapped halter dresses with low necklines that bare excessive cleavage to the office; but no doubt the people she works with see the sexy photos of her in the magazines and, how ever conservatively she might dress at the office, it no doubt still becomes more difficult for her male colleagues not be thinking more about her physical assets than her mental when dealing with her.

So how did Ivanka Trump manage to rise so high in the ranks at such a young age where other women, possibly some of her own colleagues, move up the ladder at a significantly slower rate, most never managing to get past a certain rung? Ivanka doesn’t like when people say her father pays her way through life for her. She likes to point out that she pays her own way. She’s a working woman who earns her keep; and that may all be well and good. But without the Trump name Ivanka Trump is unlikely to have reached such a height of success so young, even with a Wharton degree and having graduated magna cum laude, and being very ambitious. And she clearly knows herself that her name is her most valuable asset. She’s said as much, insisting she won’t take her husband’s last name when she marries, and will give her children her father’s last name instead of their father’s as is the tradition.