Day 1 Of My November Challenge (and a Great Shopping Find)

My November challenge got off to a great start today!

• Daily Goal 1: Work on book--chapter one is completed, edited, re-edited, and awesome!
• Daily Goal 2: Make money--I didn't think this would go well today.  First I checked CraigsList thinking there may be a quick gig I could get for today to make some money.  This was the first ad I saw on the "gigs" list (NSFW!); disgusting but par for the course when it comes to CraigsList in Las Vegas.  Needless to say I decided to look elsewhere for some way to make money.  Then I thought about selling a few purses on eBay so I checked eBay for the going rate on Coach and LeSportsac purses and I was really disappointed that the average prices for these expensive bags was around $20 (and even at $20-$30 most were getting no bidders!).  So that was a no go.  Things were looking bleak.  Then I checked Adsense and saw that for last month I made $112 which I will get later this month.  Then I checked my book sales and saw that I will get a whole $10.95 from book sales from last month (see, I told you I need to do some PR for the book!).  Then I saw that my webhost has an affiliate link that would allow me to make some money if people click through the ad on my website and sign up for webhosting.  As I was searching for the code I stumbled across "my affiliate account" and noticed that there was $119.90 in the account!  Waiting for me!  I didn't even know it was there! A while back I had told a friend to host her website with this company and since then I have been getting affiliate income from her each time she renews her hosting plan.  So while I basically did nothing to earn money today, I have earned a total of $232.85 on day one!  (And a note on webhosting:  you will see the affiliate ad at the top of this page.  This is the company I have used to host my websites for over ten years.  Up until this year they hosted my low traffic sites for free and I only paid for my high traffic sites but--and you may remember the rant--they raised the price to $150 a year for hosting recently.  I was taken aback by the change but then I looked around at the alternatives and realized there is no such thing as free webhosting any more.  I also realized that $150 for an unlimited number of websites hosted--unless the traffic is kind of high at which point you pay for more bandwidth--was a pretty awesome deal.  They also have a $100 coupon for this fee if you are a new client (see ad on their home page), plus the customer service can't be beat (any time I call I usually talk to Wayne and he doesn't even hesitate when I tell him I messed up a site so completely that I want him to delete all the files and let me start all over...I've done this a few times.  They were also really great when I was overseas and a hacker brought down two of my sites--all I did was call and they deleted the hacked sites and re-uploaded the original files stored on their server.  So if you need a great webhost click the ad above!).
• Daily Goal 3: Exercise--there is a new park near one of the major casinos here in Las Vegas so the hubby and I went and checked it out.  They have an amazingly huge walking path (it's circular and about the size of three football fields) so hubby and I walked the path and enjoyed a bit of exercise.
• Daily Goal 4: Activity--we went to a free 'Dia de los Muertos' community event.  Unfortunately I didn't check the time so we were really early and they were just setting up but we checked it out, talked to some people, and I took some photographs.  The actual Dia de los Muertos holiday is tomorrow so if you have the opportunity to visit one of these fun community events, give it a try!  Even though the holiday celebrates those who have died, it is a festive atmosphere with vendors, music, food, entertainment, and interesting shrines to the dearly departed.  Fascinating!

And a really good shopping find!

As we were coming back from the Dia de Los Muertos event we saw a huge Latino grocery store so decided to drop in.  We were shocked that their prices were so low!  For $9.27 we got: a pineapple, four apples, 2 pounds of jalapenos, a bunch of cilantro, five onions, four limes, five cucumbers, eight tomatoes, a half pound of cheese, a baked bun, and a cream filled bun (not in the photo because I ate it before we got home!).  Needless to say, this store is going to be on our Wednesday shopping rounds from now on.