Oliver's Blog

OK, maybe not completely free in all cases but it’s a no brainer: cashback sites. I’ve been signed up with Top Cash Back for a year or so now, and have managed to claim back nearly £200 in that time. How does it work? Well click on the link and sign up for a free account, then whenever you buy anything online you just visit the cashback site and see if the shop you are buying from offers cashback, then visit the online shop using the cashback link.

There’s all sorts of ways to earn the cashback.. switching energy suppliers is a high earner, as is renewing your house or car insurance. I made £50 cashback just for switching my life insurance to Legal and General, and £80 for having my car and home insurance with e-sure. Buying stuff on ebay gives you cashback too even if it is only a small amount based on the revenue ebay take from the sale but I always forget about that one and have missed out on loads of cashback there. And yes.. if you sign up to the site using my link, I’ll get £2.50 from them once you earn a fiver so there is something in this for me too.

On another slightly related topic, you may have noticed the odd Google ad in the sidebar or at the bottom of some pages. This is just an experiment more than anything to see if it is possible to generate money from these adverts. You see them pretty much all over the web so they must work, mustn’t they? So far I’ve had them up for 2 days and they have generated me $0.44 in revenue. If that keeps up, it’ll be approx $6 a month which should pay for the hosting of this blog. All I have to do is make sure I ramble often enough to attract you lovely readers and hopefully you’ll click on the occasional advert too. Oh yes, and I need to throw in some keywords like “geek”, “cpu” and “bananas” amongst this rambling otherwise the adverts keep showing Jamie Oliver related content.

Anyway, back to the cashback.. here’s a nice funky banner for you to click on and take a look:

It’s been four months since I last posted a video but I’ve finally got around to editing our Disneyland Paris holiday footage. If you would like to watch it, you’ll need to be a friend of mine on Facebook as that is where I now host my videos now, just check my profile page and you’ll see it there.

Yes it’s true… Vicky is up the duff once more. We went for the 12 week scan this afternoon and it turned out to be the 10 weeks and 6 days scan. She’s going back in 3 weeks time to have another scan. The due date is May 21st 2009 so place your bets.

What with all the excitement of current TV shows, I nearly forgot about the many awesome PS3 games which are all due to be released this month.. I should really limit myself to one before Christmas though and it’ll be a difficult choice. I still have a £10 woolies voucher which will take the sting out of it a little. Coming up are:

5/11: Little Big Planet
14/11: Call of Duty 5 – World at War
14/11: Mirror’s Edge
21/11: Tomb Raider Underworld
21/11: The Legend of Spyro
28/11: Resistance 2

I think Lara will probably win, but it’s a pretty close call.

Yay.. got to be one of my favourite TV shows ever, a new series of Spooks started last night on BBC1 and didn’t disappoint. Lots of explosions complicated dialogue which confused my sister I’ve recorded the second episode ready to watch later (hopefully) cuz I can’t believe they have killed off the main guy in the first episode. Oh well.. a new lead just so happened to arrive conveniently ready to take over. So much telly to watch, so little time… we’ve also got the Channel 4 zombie drama ‘Dead Set’ to watch too and the ongoing Heroes, Gadget Show, and what with Neil Young night this Friday on BBC3 the fun never ends (Ken advises me that BBC3 this Friday is compulsary viewing and not watching it is against the law, Gordon Brown said that apparantly).