Join the Blastoff network for free and get cash back shopping for you and everyone you refer

(My Original Blog Post: http://www.signupandmakemoney.com/blog/2010/01/join-blastoff-network-free-cash-back-shopping-for-everyone/)
If you haven't heard of the Blastoff Network yet, you're in for a real treat, or I should say a free treat. Just kidding. The reason I like Blastoff the most is because you not only get cash back on the shopping you do online, but you also get cash back off of all the people you refer to Blastoff, up to 9 levels deep. That can really add up. Since Blastoff is 100% free to join, I highly recommend it as a way to save money on your shopping efforts.

You can also organize all you favorite news and sport sites and customize the look and feel of your Blastoff page. But this really isn't too important to me, but for you it may be something you'll enjoy doing and keeping up to date on a regular basis. You can also take advantage of some free games and your favorite media streams. You can also link your Facebook and Twitter account to get your social networks connected.

Blastoff has partnered with Pre-Paid Legal as well as many other successful earning opportunities online. This shows that they are trying to get their name out there in a big way.

To learn more about Blastoff, check out this video that goes into detail everything they have to offer.

Exercise that will develop the use of Diminished Arpeggios in your Jazz solos

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/vDk3Y)
Here is a fairly simple exercise that will help you develop and incorporate the use of diminished arpeggios into your Jazz trumpet solos. Diminished arpeggios, whether you use them in full or partially, are a great pattern to have under your belt as they kind of go hand in hand with the bebop scale in keeping your Jazz lines going.



Here is a sound sample of the diminished exercise on trumpet:

How to work this diminished exercise in 12 keys:

I find it best to think in stacked minor 3rds. It really doesn't matter what note you start on. It's best to get in the full comfortable range of your horn. All you are doing is going down 4, half step down, up 4, half step down, down 4, etc...

To get every key both up and down you'll just want to go up or down a half step from where you started in the first exercise and do the same thing over. Now you are alternating the diminished arpeggio both up and down.

Make sure to use a metronome on this exercise, I apologize for not doing so myself. Once you got the pattern down, try to start incorporating it into your Jazz playing. A good start is on the V7 to I chord. Start on the 3rd of the V7 chord and land on the 5th of the I chord. You'll get the b9 involved and it sounds really hip.

Global Domains International payment proof and thoughts

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/oIRZt)
I got home yesterday and saw a check come in from Global Domains International. I thought to myself at first, this is great! But then I soon realized I've been with GDI now for well over a year. I can't believe it took me this long to get my first $100.0o commission from Global Domains International.

I have to be honest, I haven't been promoting my GDI business like I should've been promoting it. I'm not making excuses, it's just that GDI was never a main focus of mine. I'm usually just focused on promoting my main sign up bonus site then in promoting individual programs, but this is me and what I think makes sense.

From what I can remember in my promotion efforts is that I would get a lot of people putting in their names and e-mail addresses to see the free GDI movie, but a super large majority of them would never go to the next level and actually take advantage of GDI's 7 day free trial. I definitely made good use of the leads I got though. I would put them through a series of 3 e-mails, more if they continued to show interest in the .ws opportunity.

Check I received from GDI for $103.00.

So, am I saying that Global Domains International is not as easy of a home based business then most people make it out to be? I do have to say that I am. It's true that there are some super duper internet marketers out there getting well over 5 sign ups a week, but at the moment, I'm not one of those marketers. I also believe most people that sign up for GDI are kind of in my same boat.

GDI has been around for awhile, their business opportunity is a great way to build residual income over time if you can get the numbers in. I do think their product is kind of losing its value though. There are so many better ways to get your own domain name and to build your own website using open source code and a separate hosting company.

The cost of a domain name is around $10.00 a year and most basic hosting plans charge around $50.00 a year plus another $20.00 for an e-mail address to go with your domain. Once you have these two things set up, you can very easily jump into a free open source code system like Wordpress or Drupal and have a professional looking CMS website with very minimal effort on your part in a very short time.

Let's do the math on the two, shall we?

$10.00/mo x 12 = $120.00 a year for GDI's website.ws services.

$10.00 domain
$50.00 hosting
$20.00 e-mail account

= about $80.00 a year elsewhere.

So you can actually save money not using GDI.

Then again, most hosting companies also have their own affiliate program through a third party network like Commission Junction or another network. This means you could very easily earn the cost of your hosting and domain plan back with an affiliate company and never pay a monthly fee.

These are things to think about. What's your opinion?

Unique Rewards has a $5.00 bonus plus only $20.00 to cash out

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/DYFla)
I thought I would give you my quick opinions and stats on Unique Rewards since I've been a free member. This is a free to join site that gives you $5.00 just for signing up and up to another $5.00 for every active referral you bring it.

So far I have referred two active referrals earning my another $10.00 on top of my $5.00 sign up bonus. This means you could literally refer only 3 active members and be able to cash out. It's easier said then done to do so though. I mean, what is Unique Reward's definition of an active referral anyway? I guess this means the referral has completed a couple offers after initially signing up on the paid to sign up site. There is some good news to this though. If you refer someone and they only complete one offer, even if it's only for 10 cents, you will automatically make $1.00 off that referral.

I have to tell you the truth, I haven't done anything with Unique Rewards yet except post my affiliate link at the main sign up bonus list. I'm almost at my $20.00 cash out minimum. There are more ways of earning than just referring other free members of course. You can click on ads and make 1 cent per click. It doesn't seem worthwhile for me, but for you it may be worth your time. Of course there are paid to sign up offers to take advantage of as well as taking surveys and some cash back shopping.

Unique Rewards also has an option to upgrade to a gold member. As always, I highly recommend to seriously do your due diligence before putting money into anything online. I personally have not upgraded. I'm just not active in Unique Rewards enough to see it being of any benefit to me. This may differ for you though. In my opinion, just taking advantage of the free earning opportunities is enough for me.

I was concerned at first on whether or not Unique Rewards did a decent job of keeping good stats on my efforts. I was happy to find that they do a pretty nice job. I say nice because it wasn't anything too impressive, but it got the job done if you know what I mean.

Overall, I would have to say that Unique Rewards is an OK get paid to site. Check out some more get paid to sign up bonus sites and let me know what you think.

James Morrison shows off multiphonics on trombone and alternates with trumpet over the blues

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/lLdtF)
If you haven't seen this Jazz video of James Morrison on You Tube yet, you're in for a real treat. There are a whole bunch of cool things James Morrison (an Australian trumpet player/trombone player) shows off on. Switching back and forth between trombone and trumpet, multiphonics at the beginning on trombone, using a trombone trigger to play a bunch of Jazz licks on trombone, and of course a lot of high notes. He goes up to a high G, but mainly does it one handed while making it look very easy.

Free and Powerful takes 3 steps to a $50.00 sign up bonus

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/hRCQH)
While I was on Christmas vacation I ran into a free system called Free and Powerful that will give you a free $50.00 sign up bonus after you complete their 3 required steps. When I ran into Free and Powerful for the first time, I ignored the site because it looked like GDI was involved and that was one of the required steps. Thankfully, you don't have to pay and complete the GDI 7 day free trial in order to get the $50.00 sign up bonus. I thought to myself, "but if you're already a GDI affiliate", how can I go through all the required steps? Duh, what about existing GDI members?

The Free and Powerful team claims it will take you anywhere from 15 to 50 minutes to get your sign up bonus. It's up to you if you are willing to put the time in. In my opinion, I'm a busy guy at times, so I haven't completed my tasks to get the sign up bonus. I do know it's working for some people because I've been hearing all the hype about this free earning opportunity all over the web.

If you are more of a video person, trust me, I am too. You can check out what Free and Powerful is all about by watching this short video.

Since this site if free to join, I recommend it as a free way to make money online. I do caution you to do your own due diligence if you are serious about spending any money on their upgrade option. I've noticed in my back office they are really pushing their members to upgrade their account to Power Flex or Power Stretch. I mean that is all you see in the back office. I don't recommend upgrading your free membership. Though this is a cool site, this is also a new site, so you don't know how long it will be around.

I also noticed that there are various free trial offers at Free & Powerful. You have to be careful when signing up on free trial offers, if you don't cancel before the trial is up, you are pretty much screwed.

Take a look at some more free affiliate sign up bonus sites and let me know what you think of Free & Powerful.

The importance of making your Wordpress author comment urls open in a new window and the code to make it happen

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/EViBn)
When I first noticed that my author comment urls were opening in the same window as my blog, I kind of got annoyed by this. Why? Because I don't want people leaving my blog completely to visit a comment author's site. Instead, I don't mind them visiting a comment author's blog as long as my blog is still open in one of their browser windows.

This, simply put, is the main reason why you wouldn't want visitors to leave your site completely. Unfortunately, most Wordpress blog theme templates don't set this up for you automatically. If you're not sure if yours does, just go to one of your single posts and click on one of your comment author links. If it removes your blog completely from the browser, then you don't have the target="_blank" attribute set up properly.

Thankfully, I came across a really cool site that explains exactly how to set up your Wordpress theme's function.php file to open comment author links in a new window.

If you're not concerned about all the ins and outs of how to accomplish this, just follow these instructions:

Once logged into your Wordpress admin area, go to Appearance, then Editor. Once there, find your functions.php file. Click on it, and simply paste the following php code at the bottom of the file before the php closing tag (looks like this "?>".


// Make comment author link URL open in new window
function comment_author_link_window() {
global $comment;
$url = get_comment_author_url();
$author = get_comment_author();

if ( empty( $url ) || 'http://' == $url )
$return = $author;
else
$return = "<a href='$url' rel='external nofollow' target='_blank'>$author</a>";
return $return;
}
add_filter('get_comment_author_link', 'comment_author_link_window');

Hope this code is of use to you.