The power of working for AOL

It's amazing what having a job, although a small one, with Internet giant AOL can do. Not only am I getting paid to write about personal finance at AOL's WalletPop.com Web site, but my personal blog about looking for work in these troubled economic times is seeing a huge increase in page hits, etc. since I started writing for WalletPop on Nov. 11. And thus my money from Google's AdSense program is turning from a few cents into a few dollars.

For example, the number of "page impressions" on Nov. 10, the day before I started the AOL job, was 30 for this blog. The next day it jumped to 121. The highest has been 262 on Nov. 19. But more important are the number of "clicks," which I'm still trying to figure out what they mean to AdSense. But they reached a daily high of 13 on Nov. 30, equating to $12.81 for me on that one day. People are reading my blog, and it's starting to pay.

But possibly better than that is the fact that more people, and hopefully employers, are taking a look at what I'm doing. I've received some positive feedback from some readers lately, wishing me luck on the job search and some have shared their job hunt tales with me.

If you don't want to miss my musings on personal finance, bookmark my postings at WalletPop and keep up. And if you have story ideas on how the economy is affecting your spending, e-mail them to me.