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Back in 2007, I registered a bunch of Twitter names. Rappers, Athletes, Brand names, etc. I figured I could at least hold the names till someone real wanted them. Back then, nobody knew if Twitter would ever mean anything.

Honestly, I hadn’t checked these accounts in a long time, then today I saw that Xzibit, one of my favorite rappers ever, was having some sort of issue on Twitter - and I remembered that I held the “xzibit” twitter account. I logged in and found a Twitter “Account Suspended” notice. Obviously, that sucks. I thought maybe I could pass the account over the Xzibit so that he didn’t have to use ‘mrztothaz” - but now I don’t know what’s going on, maybe they want to charge him money for it?

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Twitter Account Suspended
Anyways, I’ve added some screenshots here. I have ‘xzibit’, ‘eminem’, ‘drdre’, ‘lebron’ … all suspended. I guess I should have been posting all along, but I have to earn a living in the meantime.I emailed Twitter about the ‘xzibit’ account, hopefully I get a response.

Xzibit
Eminem
XzibitDr. Dre
Lebron

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I haven’t written an income report for over a year, but there is finally some information worth sharing. The main source of website income thus far has been Google AdSense, and while it isn’t anything too exciting, it has been picking up.

In August 2008 I received my first $100 payment from Google. This took me 18 months to accumulate. I had been running ads across several sites, trying different tactics to see what works. During that 18 month period, my worst month I earned 19 cents and during my best month I earned $21.53.

My second payment from Google came at the end of December 2008, taking only 4 months to reach the $100 threshold. My best month during this period was $59.11, driving by a few year-old blog posts that had good SEO and became relevant again due to Christmas. I simply updated the posts with 2008 information and watched the dollar bills roll in.

My average income over the last 6 months has been around $30 per month / $1 per day. This has obviously fluctuated a bit day-to-day and week-to-week.

I am on pace to set a new Best Month by the end of February and should break the $100 barrier by the end of March, which will be 3 months since my previous payment.

I recently ran into problems using Javascript’s readyState property in Internet Explorer (IE). I was using XMLHttpRequest, http.open and http.send to make a call to a PHP / MySQL script. If the MySQL was executed correctly, the PHP would return the value “1″. If the Javascript saw that “1″ value, it would then send an alert that said “Your query was successful” - the problem was, Internet Explorer did not instantly get the readyState.

I was receiving an error that said “The data necessary to complete this operation is not yet available”.

Here’s the original code, which works in Firefox but not in Internet Explorer (IE).

// Create the XMLHttpRequest
var http = new XMLHttpRequest();

// Open the XMLHttpRequest
http.open(’get’, ‘/url/mypage.php’, true);

// Send the XMLHttpRequest
http.send(null);

// If the PHP code returns a value of “1″
if (http.responseText == ‘1′) { alert(’Your query was successful.’); }

I tried checking the readyState along with my current IF Statement, but received similar errors:

if (http.readyState == 4 && http.responseText == ‘1′) { alert(’Your query was successful.’); }

After trying several different things, I discovered that Internet Explorer uses a ActiveXObject instead of XMLHttpRequest. As a result, I had to add aditional code, which finds out what browser the visitor is using, and then uses the correct function (ActiveXObject or XMLHttpRequest) depending on their particular browser. The rest of the code remains the same:

// Get the visitor’s browser information
var browser = navigator.appName;

// If the visitor is using IE, then use ActiveXObject
if (browser == “Microsoft Internet Explorer”) {
var http = new ActiveXObject(”Microsoft.XMLHTTP”);
} else { var http = new XMLHttpRequest(); }

// Open the XMLHttpRequest
http.open(’get’, ‘/url/mypage.php’, true);

// Send the XMLHttpRequest
http.send(null);

// Wait for the readyState
if (http.readyState == 4) {

// If the PHP code returns a value of “1″
if (http.responseText == ‘1′) { alert(’Your query was successful.’); }

}

5 Things To Do Before You Start A Business. When I started my web development business, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I jumped in and figured that everything would sort itself out. I would get a lot of business, work a lot of hours, make a lot of money and it would all be great.

Now it’s 4 years later and I’m in the same financial situation that I was when I began. No extra money, living from project to project, begging clients to pay me on time. As I look back, I’ve learned a lot over these 4 years, so I thought I would put together a list to help myself and help others.

5 Things To Do Before You Start A Business

Get An Accountant - I have been working freelance for nearly 4 years but I have only recently signed up with an accountant. Needless to say, I will be paying the tax man for a while. Even if you aren’t making much money at all, it is vital to your survival that you get an accountant who is versed in small business. No matter the price, they will save you money in the long run.

Get Some Investment Money - When I started my business, I was riding the waves and taking my bumps, but I never had any money in the bank. Lack of liquidity has really begun to show its ugly face as I have tried to bring in sub-contractors to handle some of my work. Clients do not pay me on time, but I feel like a jackass if I don’t pay my workers on time.

Incorporate Your Business - This has not yet come back to bite me, but I could have saved some tax money if I had incorporated from the beginning. When you incorporate you can create a separate bank account for your business. Also, as I have begun to build some business assets (websites, written documents, etc), it would be nice to have the “corporate veil” to protect them. If you have a good accountant, they can help you set this up.

Set A Daily Schedule - This is one of the biggest issues of working from home and I still battle with it on a daily basis. Working from your house provides you with limitless perks, but if you do not get yourself out of bed and start your day, or if you are unable to stay on task throughout the day, you will not last very long.

Get Your Value - I used to be scared about giving clients a pricetag and sometimes I still wonder if I am giving them their money’s worth. I have consistently low-balled estimates and it has cost me a lot of happiness and money in the long run. No matter what business you are getting into, figure out your pricing and don’t be afraid to walk away from a job if the price isn’t right.

I received this email in January from someone who was using my Free PHP eBook I am very sorry that I am only now replying to this. I will try to do a better job of checking this email address in the future.

Hi there

I am working my way through your eBook and I am having a lot of
difficulty with the passing of the variable from a form to a php
script. I have even gone as far as cutting and pasting your exact code
on page 18 and its still not working. All I am succeeding in doing is
showing

Hello, you are years old

The variables for name and age are not being passed. The form side of
the code seems to be working.

Please could you help as I have no idea what the problem could be.

Thanks

There are two possible reasons that this code is not working for you.

Reason #1: Sometimes when you copy-and-paste code directly from a document (Word, PDF, etc) and paste it into another document, the special characters (Quotes, etc) will be encoded differently between the two documents, and this causes a problem. Aside from the learning aspect of it, it is important not to copy-and-paste your code for this reason.

Reason #2: Your server may have additional security settings, which I did not account for in the first version of the Free PHP eBook. Basically, at the top of the page which is receiving the variables (in this case, form1output.php), you need to use the $_POST action for each variable. I will be accounting for this as begin to revise and update the eBook.

Thanks again to everyone that has taken the time to download and use the PHP eBook. I’ve had over 700 downloads, so I consider this a success thus far.