The main people that I think that these laws are trying to target are web sites like Pirate Bay, who facilitate a lot of theft of copyrighted material. While ending blatant, purposeful theft is admirable, the law looks like it goes a little too far. However, if they soften this bill just a tad before publication, there is a small chance that this bill could help honest content producers. We’ll have to wait to see whether this will have a positive or a negative effect, but a podcast that I was listening to today made me realize that there could be some beneficial effects to honest people.

The podcast that I was listening to normally uses a song in its intro. They refer to a web site that visits other sites and cuts and pastes large sections of other people’s articles into it. All that is gone now. They have a new web site that has many links and shorter paragraphs describing the links. The podcast begins with some music that is not identifiable as any copyrighted song that I know of.

Since I set out to make money through content production, I’ve been pretty careful about not using other people’s copyrighted work without permission. I use a lot of Creative Commons work, a smattering of my own photos, and works that are in the public domain. On occasion, I do use an image under the “fair use” provision, such as when I’m writing about a company and use a logo. There have only been a few times that I have knowingly used copyrighted material without asking. I do my best to be honest.

As a result, I don’t have to change much if/when the upcoming law is passed. In addition, the people that at one time were cutting and pasting articles from other places now have to do exactly what I am doing, which puts us more on an even playing field.

There are many things that cannot be copyrighted. For example, you cannot copyright a list of ingredients, like what you would find in a recipe. Me and my lawyer-to-be husband had an argument about using a clownfish and a Dory-like fish in an aquarium together. The list of fish, I argued, cannot be copyrighted, but if you decided to arrange the tank like the one at 42 Wallaby Way, then you could have an argument for copyright infringement there. Similarly, summarizing a news story in your own words also cannot be copyrighted.

I’m not in favor of something that can put me out of business, or even bite into my earnings, obviously. However, if SOPA in it’s final form is written so that it makes it harder to shut down a web site (investigate complaints and give infringers a chance to fix any copyright issues that they might accidentally have a problem with), then there is a small chance that SOPA may not be as bad as it looks like. I’m not getting my hopes up, but if everybody that is trying to be legitimate but changed their ways as far as copyright infringement goes, then that might be a good thing for legitimate content producers in the end.

I was planning on writing about earthquakes, but I’ve been writing way too many apocalyptic posts so far in this challenge, so I thought I’d change things a bit. Today I’ll write about Earning money from home.

I started working from home in December of 2008. Earlier that year, our house had caught on fire and we had to move. My husband was barely making enough money to make ends meet. I was homeschooling, and that was my top priority. The only jobs that I could think of in the evenings were working at McDonald’s, and most of those places think I’m overqualified (and I don’t believe in lying on the part where it says education).

I was listening to Dave Ramsey, and he was talking about how if you want to be rich, you do what rich people do, and if you want to be poor, you do what poor people do. We weren’t wasting our money, but to use his terminology, our shovel was just too small. You just can’t have stress-free finances when you’re making less than half the poverty level, which we were at the time.

I already knew what didn’t work for me. I can’t sell an Ethiopian ice cubes on a hot summer day. I’m too shy, and I have trouble talking to people. So that was out the window. I tried Half.com, and ended up spending more on shipping supplies (and spent hours walking back and forth to the post office with my daughter in a stroller) than I made. I couldn’t figure out what to sell on eBay. I did a search, and discovered that people could make money writing. I could do that!

So here I am, writing. I’ve been writing for Associated Content, Squidoo, List My 5, Hub Pages, and blogs. A couple of other places too. I’ve designed products for Zazzle. It’s been a lot of fun.

I’m very fortunate to have found this means of earning money while still spending time with my kids.

Yesterday CBS announced the cast members for Survivor Redemption Island. My Survivor season Squidoo pages have always been my most profitable. I was surprised at the lack of visitors to my web page in recent days. Normally, I’ll see a spike of visitors when they announce the cast.

I took a look at where this page appeared on Google, and I realized that it was on page 6 for the keywords “Survivor Redemption Island.” That’s not where I want to be if I want to get a lot of traffic to my site. So I realized that it was time to remember the basics.

Whether you’re writing about Survivor or about something else, ranking well on Google matters. Backlinks matter. Although my other Survivor lenses link to my Redemption Island lens, I didn’t have enough outside of Squidoo that talked about Survivor. So I figured that I needed to get back to the basics.

Past success doesn’t always guarantee future success, especially when you’re writing about a very popular topic like Survivor Redemption Island. So over the next few days, I’ll be doing some work to get off of page six and rise to a more respectable rank.

As I wrote about creating a hurricane emergency kit today, I realize that summer is about to come to a close. Most of the schools around here have already started (some start at the end of July). I’ve already purchased my back to school supplies. The summer camping articles and Squidoo lenses will start to drop in popularity, and fall and Christmas articles will start to gain steam.

I had a great time writing and updating camping articles. Summer is a lot of fun. I just uploaded all my summer pictures on the computer. While I didn’t get to go on a five-week summer adventure like I did last year, we still had some good times: going to the river, visiting the water park, barbecue on the Fourth of July, and Vacation Bible School. We also got to ride in a limo to dh’s college graduation, thanks to a limo company that dh’s business has as a client.

If you’re a writer, you might want to dust off some of that fall content. Especially if you write for Squidoo, which bases your lensrank partially on when you last updated your lens. At least Christmas is around the corner. Maybe, just maybe, if me and dh write enough, we’ll have the opportunity to visit my family for Christmas.

There’s a new way to make money online, called Sidetick.com. It’s an interesting site. You can get $1 for signing up, and you can get $1 if you invite a friend. Plus, you can earn money by blogging, having people look at the blog posts that you write, and visiting different areas of the site. They have a question of the day that they ask via a daily email; if you answer it, you can earn up to $15 a month just by doing that.

They have discussion boards, and they even have a conservative community on the site. You can earn money for any activity that you do there.

Is their business model feasible? I’m not sure. I know that sites like Associated Content, which I also write for, generally are going to make a profit off what they pay me. Redgage is another site that looks like it will generally make money from what you put into it. Maybe Sidetick is one of those sites that has a profitable business model, or maybe it’s one of those programs like the old pay to view sites where they would pay you money to have a toolbar set up on your computer. Either way, you can make money from it now. It’s pretty easy to earn just by talking to other people.

It’s free to set up, and they will pay you via PayPal. Why not take a look?

Anyway, James Rucker was the person that was calling for going after Beck supporters. He said during the Netroots conference over the weekend: “Let’s go look at Beck supporters, let’s see what they say online.”

My visitor from yesterday was someone at the Joshua P. and Elizabeth D. Darden home. They run a foundation called the Joshua P. and Elizabeth D. Darden Foundation. Perhaps it was a maid… I don’t know. Maybe they have kids… they are older though, so their children, if they have any, are likely to be adults. The Dardens are evidently Democrats. According to an article on Hampton Roads.com, Joshua Darden is quite a player behind the scenes in Norfolk politics. He helped several Democrats get into office. He is also the nephew of a former governor of Virginia. Hampton Roads says that he was involved in Norfolk’s “shadow government,” but Darden finds the term a little amusing.

Perhaps they took a wrong turn at Google. At any rate, it was interesting to have a minor political celebrity visiting my site, whatever the reason for the visit. Although it is mighty suspicious that this visit came within days of Rucker’s proposal to watch Beck supporters. Hmmm… perhaps I should be watching the left supporters in return. Then maybe I’ll have a heads up before they come to cart me away to the concentration camps .

Obama and some of his media pals got together this weekend, and they were strategizing. Glenn Beck’s name popped up a lot. “If it weren’t for Beck and those rascally kids, nobody would know about the Tides Foundation!”… okay, I’m paraphrasing. They also said that they were going to study Beck’s fans, to see what makes them tick. Perhaps to intimidate them? I’m not sure, they didn’t go that far.

I’ve always seen myself as small potatoes in the Internet world. Heck, the main page of my blog only got three hits yesterday. However, some pages that I’ve written do rank pretty high in Google for certain keywords. I rank #3 for the keywords “Glenn Beck Book Recommendations” and #6 for “Glenn Beck Recommended books”. I don’t rank in the top 10 pages for the keywords “Glenn Beck fans” or “Glenn Beck”. I have one article on page 2 of Associated Content for the search “Glenn Beck”. I was very surprised to hear Glenn Beck in his keynote speech at the final American Revival when he mentioned a book that someone gave him and then said “someone’s going to say that Glenn Beck recommended this book.” I thought to myself, “is he on to me?” Anyway, if you’re a Glenn Beck intern and you come across my Glenn Beck Recommended books page and I endorse a product that Beck doesn’t, just leave a comment on one of my pages… I don’t want to be dishonest.

So when I heard Obama’s supporters say that they were going to watch the Glenn Beck fans, I jokingly thought to myself… “I’m going to blog about Obama’s henchmen maybe targeting me.”

Just for laughs, I decided to take a look at where the three hits that I received in the last day came from. I don’t look every day, but I occasionally look to see where my readers come from. Today, there was someone from Lebanon, and someone from Dubai, and someone from around Washington DC. Hmmm… that was interesting, considering what I was going to post about today, and what was said over the weekend. Now, I normally don’t have any interest about where my visitors live beyond the country or state, but this one was interesting… was this person actually from Washington DC? I had to find out.

They were. I decided to do some digging, and I discovered that this visitor is connected to a certain charitable organization. I won’t say anything more at this point, until I find out what causes this charitable organization is linked to. For all I know, perhaps multimillionaire philanthropists find me interesting. Doubt it though. Don’t get me wrong, I do know some wealthy people, but I don’t think that any of them are interested in this blog.

Time to do some praying. I’ve always thought of myself as a low-profile person that sits very low on the agenda of the powers that be, and I probably still am; however, if Obama’s friends decide to go against low impact Beck supporters like myself, I’m going to need strength. I do not want to give up my country (as envisioned by the founders) or my God. These are two things that are more important than my life. I told my husband several months ago that if I didn’t go in the Rapture, I would probably be taken out by friends of Satan. I’d rather go out in the Rapture.

A couple of days ago, I listened to a call on the radio from a former Russian. He said that back in the Communist days, the country would practice collective punishment (along with collective wealth, of course). In his case, he was talking about military action. If one of the group showed cowardice, his country would execute everybody in the group, not just the soldier who exhibited cowardice.

According to Torrentfreak.com, the United States recently shut down 73,000 blogs on Blogetery.com. Evidently, some of the sites that Blogetery had been hosting had been involved in illegal file sharing. Not all of the 73,000 blogs, just some. So the Federal Government decided to collectively punish all of the Blogetery bloggers because of the actions of some. Now, this isn’t execution, but it does have some similarities to what the Russian caller was describing.

Blogging isn’t just a way for some people to express their opinions. Blogging pays the bills for some. While I don’t make a great deal from blogging, I do have a nice small business going, and my profits increase every month. So far, it’s not going to pay the bills, but it did help me send my daughter to gymnastics summer camp this year. Many people make more than I do. By shutting down their means of making money, these bloggers are pretty much out of luck.

Is it wrong to give away copyrighted movies, music, and software? Of course. Should we punish everyone for the actions of some? No.

Since this week is the Ultimate Blog Party, hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom, My guess is that there are a lot of bloggers, new and old, that will be visiting other people’s blogs this week. Many of them are moms… and my guess is, most moms could use a little bit of extra money.

I’ve been blogging for quite a while, but I’ve only been trying to make money as a writer since January 2009. I have found some really great tools that can help spread the word about your blogging (and about other things you write too). You might want to check out these links:

You Say Too is really easy to use. All you have to do is add your blog(s), and it automatically updates. You get a portion of the adSense impressions. I did have a small amount of trouble setting it up… only because my self-hosted Wordpress account didn’t want to publish a full feed. If you’re having trouble, post a message here and I can tell you how to fix it.

She Told Me is relatively new, I believe. You also get money from adSense revenue. You can post your own links, or post interesting links that you find on the internet.

Infopirate seems really new too. I have fun with this one, I use pirate talk to describe my links. You don’t have to though. This also gets you adSense revenue, plus links and blog exposure. You can also write articles here.

Xomba is another site that you can use to spread the word about your blog. It’s a growing site as well. This also pays through adSense.

These are great tools for bringing in new readers, and upping your spot on Google. I hope that you find one of these sites useful .

I really should be finishing up my Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains Squidoo page right now, but I was distracted when I discovered that 5 Minutes for Mom was having a Blog Party for 2010.

If you haven’t hear of 5 Minutes for Mom, then you might want to stop by and take a look. Especially right now when they’re having their blog party. They’re a great site. I first heard about them when I was doing a lot of sweepstakes (they have lots of giveaways), but I’m currently not entering so many of those, but they’re still great.

They’re currently giving away some great prizes. These are some that interest me the most; while there are tons of prizes, you might like some of these too:

39 – The Hilton Garden Inn is giving away a two night stay at any Hilton Garden Inn. This would really help us pay for our Disneyland trip next month!

15 – Couponing to Disney is giving away a $25 gift certificate to Disney.com. They must have met my husband, he’s a Disney fanatic. We’re going to Disneyland for his college graduation next month.

52 – The Product Review Place is giving away a $25 Gift Certificate to Amazon.com… actually, there are tons of Amazon.com gift certificate giveaways, and I’d love to win any one of them… the bigger the amount the better.

31 – For Such a Time as This is giving away a $20 Amazon.com gift card. I’m always getting Amazon.com gift cards from Swagbucks.com, but I just cashed in $30 worth of gift cards (I always wait for the free shipping), so this would help me get my next shipment of books in. There’s always something good to read.

32 – The Frugal Novice is offering a $25 Target gift card. There’s always something to get at Target… any Target or Wal-Mart card would be great.

Other awesome prizes that I like a lot are numbers 36, 37, 55, 61, 71, 72, 73, 84, 88, 100, 104, 107, 108, 112, 113, 114, USC3, USC8, USC15, USC17, USC25, USC32, USC35, USC36, USC37, USC39, USC40, USC44… as you can see, there are TONS of prizes, plus, you can check out some great blogs!

If you’re coming from the 5 Minutes for Mom blog party, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Brooke, I’m a content producer and homeschool teacher. I work from home as a freelancer, but I also write for a company that currently assigns me car reviews to write.

Topics on this blog range from conservative politics to homeschool book reviews (I’m currently on a product review team for The Old Schoolhouse) to Christian topics and news. Pretty much whatever I think should go here. I publish longer articles at my Joomla-powered Brookelorren.com. I also run an Olympics web site, The World Competes.

That’s me; I don’t have any prizes to give away, but if you stop by, say hi!