Arrondir les Fins du Mois with Home Page Pays

One of my favourite expressions in French is 'arrondir les fins du mois'. It literally means 'rounding out the end of the month' which means supplementing your income or making ends meet, and the French had myriad dodgy ways of doing this until the Autoentrepreneur system was started aimed at putting a little (fiscal) order into things.

One man's fin du mois, however, is another man's main income. When I first started my job, it was to supplement my ex-h's salary and enable me reimburse the student loan I'd taken out to pay for my Master's degree. That income became my principal source of revenue when we divorced, and I thank my lucky stars I have that job.

Still, with two growing, consuming (out of house and home, especially on Nutella and chorizo) boys one is always in search of a bit of arronding. Not in the tradition of dodgy deals though, and with no ideas as to autoentrepreneurship, or significant income from my writing (yet...), I am happy to have been introduced to another source of potential dosh.

But is it always all about me? Well, this is my blog so there is no reason why it shouldn't be, but in this particular instance, I'm allowing thoughts encompassing a wider appeal to sneak in and be heard. For example, how can we help developing communities help themselves? How can we help with learning; to bridge the digital divide between those who know how to use technology and those who don't? Do we care or do we not give a shit?

Well what makes this innocent sounding source of income, with me sitting in the comfort of my cosy bedroom bashing away at the keys, cup of tea or glass of wine depending on the time of day to hand, is the fact that it is free and has the potential to improve the lot of anyone, especially those who lack resources in developing communities. Yeah, right, you scoff, come off it, it's just another load of marketing media bullshit. But in fact Nay! I tell ye, because at the basic level it's not only free but it also offers an amazingly useful array of extra content.

We already know about a student in Uganda who, introduced to Home Page Pays through a Facebook friend - a real one, I'd imagine, not a contact thrice removed - started using the vids in the My University section to help him keep up with his studies, and then started sharing the sessions with his mates so they could benefit from the learning videos too. He is not the only one.

The My University section contains over 2000 video on subjects like algebra, differential equations, geometry, MA tests for education, history especially if you have a fascination for the French Revolution (and who doesn't?), organic chemistry, precalculus, GMAT problem solving, SAT preparation, Stanford University lectures in modern physics (I've got that one at the top of my To Watch list...), Yale University introduction to psychology and ancient Greek, brain teasers and so on, and it's being added to the whole time. I have no direct contacts with charities that work with developing or poor communities, but perhaps you do?

The main point about all this content is that it is free, and safe. As long as the community has at least one computer with an internet connection, they can watch the videos to their heart's content! And as all work and no play is very dull, they can also play about in the Games tab, practice their typing skills, learn how to make a Powerpoint presentation or an Excel spreadsheet in the Smart Library, or download Audacity in the free (virus-free) Software tab and start recording and editing their music using the tutorial in the Smart Library. If you are struggling with Windows 7, there's a tutorial on how to use that too.

If you haven't yet heard about Home Page Pays, you soon will. Laura Paulson, a former HR bigshot and now a business and marketing coach believes that the company that has developed HPP will be the next global technology giant because it has the most advanced branding system in the world.

This free home page (with all the free content) has recently been released and is being distributed by members around the world as I type.

So what is Home Page Pays? It looks like this as a dynamic tool bar at the bottom of the screen with the discreet rotating ad on the right:

See my name and link bottom left? Can also be used to advertise your business.

...or this as a home page:

Customizable home page, extra free content in the tabs at the top, note daily, weekly and monthly prizes too

How does it work? By sharing 75% of the advertising revenue with paid and free members. Do you normally get paid for using the internet? Does Google send you a monthly cheque to thank you for bringing in so much advertising revenue? Does Facebook? I don't think so, we don't get so much as a slap on the back or a matey handshake, and yet they are making millions if not billions from advertising thanks to us, the users.

Why shouldn't we all have a slice of the cake, eh? Let's share and redistribute some of that wealth. Me, you, the bloke in Uganda, the girl in Ghana, the family down the road's student kids, auntie Flo on Facebook, your kids, my kids, uncle Tom Cobbley and all.

Every time you use the internet the little advert is doing its stuff, rotating and trying to look winning, and clocking up payments to the user. So not only will free members be earning a little bit of money, but if you wanted to join up, or pay for a gift membership to a charity or particular community, you would be helping yourself and/or them earn even more (unless they are big/rich enough to pay for their own sodding membership in which case you can just point them in the right direction).

How? Because every time a paid member sends out the link to friends or a charity to its supporters, who then start using Home Page Pays, not only will the new folk get paid, but the paid member/charity will get paid too. Go forth and multiply, sayeth she, and share the joy! This is one for us all to join in and enjoy, not just the favoured few who happened to be around at the right time in the right place (like Facebook's graffiti guy just about to net $200million from his shares, lucky sod).

How can you find out more? Easy peasy. Ask me, I can send you a schedule of (free) webinars where you can listen to a real person give a clear explanation of Home Page Pays and even see a live demonstration. You'll have to bring your own drinks and nibbles though.

If you want to check out free Home Page Pays first, you can click here: HomePagePays

I'm looking forward to not having to choose whether to repair the car or visit my folks in the UK like I did last summer thanks to HPP.

Deception

I ended last night depressed and pissed off. NG and I were hosting our latest charity bash, and frankly, it was not a night I will remember fondly. NG is the chief organiser of our events, and I draw lists of guests and print things off. It had taken many months and very many hours of slog to put together an evening in aid of a very worthy LOCAL cause - a bone marrow transplant centre.

Guests were welcomed by charming ladies who took names and money to buy bottles and glasses of wine. They were able then to mill about looking at the paintings that were to be auctioned, with a glass in hand. Several of our artists had given their work to be auctioned off, all proceeds to go to the cause. This is significant, because it's a generous gesture and normally they would expect to sell their paintings, and, for some, eat.

We had a professional auctioneer, the best of the local guys, and he did what he could to rouse the sluggish audience. Despite being very pleased with themselves, a lot of the guests had never attended an auction before and were surprised at how fast it went. At the end of the auction several paintings had not been sold and the rest had gone for way less than they were worth. It was incredibly disappointing.

Having had their patience stretched to breaking point, when access to the buffet was opened, the guests fell on it like a pack of ravening wolves. As usual. I got three morsels. After sorting out cheques for those people who had bought paintings during the sale, I then had to sort out buyers who came forward to buy those which hadn't been sold. The Cause turned out to be an irrelevance to most people. They were more than happy to walk off with a bargain and probably congratulated themselves on their luck rather than remember the bad luck of those we were trying to raise money to help.

As I tried to hawk the last painting to a group of obviously loaded smokers, all I got was sneering and ignorant comments by one particular woman about the fast speed of the auction. What made me laugh was that as soon as someone said that the auction had been conducted as it should by a guy who obviously knew what he was doing, that same person agreed, without shame, and said that as it was a pro who was the auctioneer, of course it went fast.

I found it difficult staying polite, and had to move off rapidly before I said something sarcastic.

Luckily I had some super pals with whom to spend the end of the evening and did enjoy myself. I also came home to a lovely email from my someone special wishing me luck for the evening.

We didn't make anything like what we'd hoped. People just do not want to contribute voluntarily. If there's a next time, we'll have to make them pay up front and if they don't want to, we'll cancel the evening. Simple. But for what we made last night, the effort, stress and bloody hard work putting it all together just ain't worth it.

Montpellier 'people' just don't understand charity. For them it begins at home, literally.

Wanna see a piccie?

This afternoon I was busy working on the Promo' Arts website. I had to transfer all the photos taken on my camera onto the computer and then try and upload them to the web. From experience, I've found that creating a Powerpoint presentation and transforming that into a jpg image file works well for making a page of photos that can be viewed better when clicked.

For some reason, the four pages I did of the evening's events flatly refused to upload properly. I could not insert each photo individually into the website as it would take too much room, so eventually I came to the conclusion it would be better to start a Promo' Arts Yahoo photo album.

This I did, and of course it took a mere 10 minutes from beginning to end and I wish I'd thought of it sooner, but one lives by trial and error, so now I know...

For those interested in seeing a little snippet of the Domaine de Verchant's events facilities, or the Promo' Arts team, or people having a jolly time, you can get to it via the Promo' Arts website, and click on the link in the text.

Since the 22nd, we have received several emails thanking and congratulating us on a wonderful evening, three requests to become members by the post, cheque included, and a continuous flow of phone calls. Despite the fact that 5 of the paintings did not sell, and that others were sold way under their value, perhaps we have managed to get ourselves talked about sufficiently to enable us to make a bigger impact next time.

The people of Montpellier are notorious for not participating fully at charity evenings. We did, in fact, do very well although we could have done better if most people had given more than the 10euro minimum for a glass, if all the paintings had been sold, and if those sold had gone for a higher price 'for charity'.

Still, considering the forces against us, we managed to impress the president of the Ligue Contre le Cancer, Pr Henri Pujol, not only with our evening, but also that we will be handing over a cheque of over 9000 euros in the very near future. This was essentially made possible by the extreme generosity of those who let us have the location, wine, food, music and auctioneering for free. There seem to be two extremes working here. What we need to achieve is a general movement upwards so that the efforts of the few extremely generous are not put to shame by the laxity of most of the rest.

Our motto should become : Onwards and upwards!

Free Lunch?

There's no such thing as a free lunch, they say. Unless you are a locally elected official in France, it seems.

Perhaps it is the threat of not dishing out subventions that gets them invited everywhere for nothing. What we have found during our preparations for the Promo'Arts charitable evening is that expecting them to pay is greeted with shock. Ca ne se fait pas, chère amie!

Logically, however, someone has to open their cheque book at a charity event. It is, afterall, the aim of a charity event to earn money for charity (in this case, La Ligue Contre le Cancer). We are not putting on an evening's entertainment out of the goodness of our hearts. I'm not sure this concept has quite sunk in.

At previous events, not organised by us, guests have considered the evening as a soirée mondaine, have stuffed themselves silly on the sumptuous buffet, drunk themselves under the table on the wine, and contributed not one cent to the charity in whose name the event was organised. Call us stuffy old FrAnglo-Saxon pedants if you will, but that is not what charity is all about.

Our art auction involves about 18 paintings. That means a maximum of 18 people can buy one. They may only pay peanuts if no one else is bidding on that particular painting, which means the whole evening's financial success rests on the whim of a small group of potential bidders. Everyone else would be busily stuffing themselves, getting drunk and then going home, their wallets intact.

But, we have a cunning plan...

Guests will have to buy their glass if they want a drink. To obtain a glass they will have to cough up a minimum of ten euros; more if they like, or if they are persuaded that being generous would be a really good idea... Then they can drink as much as they like and eat.

This idea is causing much mirth and evil chuckling amongst the sponsors (themselves exceptionally generous people), and much shock and disbelief amongst the representatives of locally elected officials. If they want to drink, they will have to pay. I'm not sure it's ever been done before here. We aim to shock and to get people thinking and acting. Word is spreading in the town that we are not sucking up to politicians, not asking them for money, and expecting everyone to participate at what is certainly going to be one hell of an evening.

It's causing such a stir but who was it who said that there's no such thing as bad publicity? Where we had been ignored before, we are now being solicited for invitations. Dontcha just love politics?

Red Nose Day

It's Red Nose Day in the UK today. The show is rocking on the BBC with comedy teams, finales of shows and visions of horror in African slums.

Considering how much money has already been pumped into Africa and numerous programmes to end sanitary issues in the slums without much effect, one can't help but wonder how much of the money raised will find its way into effective improvements and how much will slip away into pockets. Considering what luxury those African leaders live in, one can't help but think that perhaps some of the money spent on fleets of posh cars, mansions etc. could have been spent on improving conditions for the rest.

But anyway, last night I was watching the Red Nose Apprentice with eight celebrities trying to raise as much money as possible through putting on a fun fair. The teams:

The Boys

Alasdair Campbell
Piers Morgan
Ross Kemp
Rupert Everett
Danny Baker

The Girls

Cheryl Cole
Jo Brand
Maureen Lipman
Trinny Woodall
Karren Brady

Quite a selection. As it turned out, Rupert couldn't hack being in front of a camera without a script and flaked out. He was replaced by Tim Campbell, the first Apprentice winner.

As you may know, I'm involved in raising money for charity through an association Promo'Arts, so I was very interested to see how these guys went about it. To start with, they had nifty mobile phones which they used to good effect, calling pals to buy tickets at upwards of £100. Trinny had the best pal. She offered to buy the ticket for £150,000! As Cheryl Cole (a WAG and singer in 'Girls Aloud') noted, you can buy a house for that! She and Maureen were visibly stunned.

It was to be an evening for the rich and famous to come along, have a laugh, and empty their chequebooks. The men had put their heads together to offer the most creative and imaginative 'added value' including getting Tracey Emin to decorate the coconuts for the shy thus producing instant artworks which the celebs were happy to win at vast cost.

How much was raised? Over one million pounds! It just shows what you can do when you are a celebrity with a desire to help others. Bill Gates said "With great wealth comes great responsibility". It's not a view held by all unfortunately, but maybe events such as Red Nose Day help remind those who have acquired great financial privileges that helping others benefits everyone.

Red Nose Day