Saving money at the library

In an effort to save some cash, I'm off to the library today with my daughter to check out a book on setting up a Web site. I'm going to move this blog to a different site within two weeks, and I'm trying to learn as much as I can before I unleash it to the public. I'm also getting some help from some colleagues, which I'm eternally grateful for. Libraries are one great way to save money, although the book I'm checking out is at least four years old and much of it may be out of date. I may have to bend and buy an updated version after I take a look at this one.

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Return calls, now on AOL

I've written about not getting calls returned from employers in your job search, and I've expanded on it in this WalletPop.com post I wrote today for this personal finance web site run by AOL. It's about how to get a callback for a job interview.

Along with getting paid by AOL, I'm trying to increase and improve my workload for them by writing about some of the issues in this blog, mainly being unemployed and looking for work. That's what this blog led to, I'm happy to report, so it's time to start writing more about those issues for that audience.

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Ad whore

OK, I've become an ad whore. I've been a capitalist from the start, and with Google's AdSense program running like mad on this blog, I thought it was time to add some more Amazon.com ads to see if they can help an unemployed man get some cash.

I've tried to make them a little interesting. I read books (or at least I want to when not with the kid or writing for someone else for a few dimes), so the banner ad on top features books. The ad on the bottom and the "cloud" ad on the right side feature products based on what's written on this page. I expect a book about whores to be on sale here sometime soon. Go ahead, buy.

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Another blog

This is one of the early photos I took of Emma, and one I'm most proud of. Not only is it adorable, which I'm bound by law to say as her father, but I like it as a black and white photo. I wish I had taken more black and white. This doesn't have much to do with my job search, but has a lot to do with the other aspect of this blog, which is how the job hunt affects my time with my daughter. Partly it has by allowing me more time with her, such as the time I took off over Christmas that I might not have had if fully employed.

A great gift I got for Christmas was the Flip Mino, a small camcorder that fits in your pocket and is about as big as a cellphone. After taking too many short videos of our excursions after Christmas, I decided to bore her relatives with them by putting them on the Internet. I've now created Digital Emma, a blog linked to this one where it is mostly videos, along with a few photos and even fewer words, of Emma. I don't plan to devote much time to it, less than 20 minutes a day, as a way for her grandparents and other relatives, to see how she's growing up.

Now, back to work. I wrote two blog posts for WalletPop.com, one which I think is interesting to job applicants everywhere. It's about a short, two-page application for the federal bank bailout, and the five-page job application for a barista in Portland. Look for it online by 8 a.m. Monday at WalletPop, an AOL personal finance Web site I write for.

And with the help of a webmaster I met through this blog, I've added a tagline below to help readers get back to the blog if they only get to this post.

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Unsuitable for children

A warning: Some of this post may not be suitable for children.

Fuckyoupenguin is now one of my favorite blogs to read. Not so much for what it's about or the content, (The subhead is: "A blog where I tell cute animals what's what") but because of the way it's written. Very funny. It even has a tipline: "Do you know an animal that needs a good talking to?"

I bring this up here because it has 1,394 followers and could be a potential goldmine. Call me a sellout, but I'm looking to try to make a little cash from this blog if possible, and try to do that by providing insight into the world of an unemployed dad and attract readers and thus advertisers. I have seven followers, who I'm all thankful for, and get a fair amount of page hits. But if I had 1,394 followers, I think I'd be getting mass advertising to get some cash money.

As I've noted in a few recent posts, I'm looking to expand this blog with more useful content and possibly start another blog on a yet-to-be-named subject in an attempt at bringing people to it. I've just got to figure out what my passion is and go from there. I enjoy writing, so I'm trying to determine how to work that in. One idea is a site devoted to storytelling. We'll see what develops.

In the meantime, read http://fuckyoupenguin.blogspot.com/ and find out why anyone would cuss out a prarie dog.

Another unemployed dad

I've found my Internet equal, another unemployed dad with a 4-year-old at home: unemployeddad1. From reading his blog, it looks like he hasn't been laid off as long as I have, but deals with the same types of problems at home with his child underfoot. Best of all are the cartoons he draws and writes on the blog. Funny and full of meaning for other dads out of work, and anyone else too who wants a good laugh. His site doesn't have a bio or an e-mail address to contact him, although I did leave a comment on his latest cartoon and will see if he replies.

After a few reader comments on the issue, I'm going to start beefing up this blog a little more to help make it a resource for the unemployed and people who have been laid off recently. While I still plan to focus on unemployed dads and my place in that world, I want to try to give readers a little more help. While I haven't found a fulltime job yet, I hope that my endeavors and hard work are an encouragement to others to continue looking during this recession. So if you have ideas of what more you'd like to see me cover, please leave a comment or email me.

Wednesday looks to be a full day: A job interview in Sacramento, then back home and a career seminar for out-of-work journalists near my old place of work in Walnut Creek.

And speaking of my former employer, a daily newspaper, I'm now getting telephone calls from a collection agency, seeking $12 for a newspaper subscription that I never wanted to continue after I was laid off in June at the same newspaper. When I first started working there a daily subscription was free. Then they got cheap and decided against this employee benefit, forcing us to pay for something we could grab for free at work. The cost was half off, and I normally didn't come into work until late afternoon, so I ponied up the money so I could get the paper at home in the morning. Well, after I was laid off, I never really wanted to read the paper at home much anyway, so I didn't renew. But the papers keep coming, so now I'll call and cancel. Do they know that everything in the newspaper is free online?

Going global

I was thrilled to see a comment to the entry below, "Future of Newspapers" from a reader in the United Kingdom. He recommended this story about the fall of American newspapers. I have a story pitch on Spot.us about the future of Bay Area newspapers, focusing on how they will deal with the Internet. Read the comment for yourself in the posting below. He advised blogging for a niche, which I'm doing here but plan to expand on in another blog somewhere down the road, hopefully soon.

At the newspaper guild meeting today in San Francisco where Vezeo.com owner Tim White discussed how to make money from blogging. He had many great ideas, but the basic one was to find your niche and blog about it deeply. That's the issue I have to figure out over the next few weeks. I'd like to start another blog about something I feel passionate about, but my problem is that I don't think I'd want to blog about something I'm a fan of (such as Oakland A's) because it might take away from the fun of going to baseball games if I have to think of blogging about it all of the time. I'm interested in a lot of different things, and need to focus on one and blog on it in the hope that it will reach a large audience and thus get some ad clicks.

Sample topics I'm thinking about starting another blog include: chocolate, high thread count sheets, storytelling through journalism, Hawaii, favorite foods from around the country, and chocolate chip cookies. I must be hungry, I'm listing so much food.

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.

Thankful for the little things

As one of my favorite holidays of the year approaches, (what could be better than gathering with friends and family and eating?) I try to remind myself of what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving and how it relates to my job hunt:


I'm especially thankful for the family and friends who have encouraged me during my job hunt and who try to help in many ways.


I'm also thankful for the many part-time jobs I have and to the state unemployment department for keeping me off the streets by providing me some money in exchange for my hard work or my taxes. It seems like every day I add up how much I'm making, or about to make, from my part-time work, so that I'm sure I'm making progress. I've detailed these before, but here are the many jobs and/or projects I'm working on that are either bringing in a semi-regular paycheck or I hope will soon someday:

1. United Reporting. A great company that has treated me well as I collect police arrest logs for them.
2. AOL's personal finance site, WalletPop.com, where I'm among a host of bloggers who write daily. I've said it before, but if you want to read my stuff that would have made it to this blog, at least some of it, then bookmark this:
http://www.walletpop.com/blog/bloggers/aaron-crowe/
It's a Web site I plan on writing more for, and a job for which I'm very grateful for because this blog led me to it.
3. Spot.us, a community funded reporting Web site where "crowdfunding" is used to raise money for serious journalism in the Bay Area. I have two story pitches there, one of which I plan on writing soon.
4. Writing, editing and designing city newsletters. With only one client so far, the work is sporadic but gives me hope for the future. This is work that I think will start to increase early next year as I push to plant more seeds for my consulting business.
5. Investigative work for a company that does background checks on executive hirings. Early next year I expect this job will start, where I'll go to courthouses and gather public documents on potential hires.
6. RedwoodAge.com, a Web site devoted to people 45 and older. It's an Internet startup in Mill Valley and so far I'm not making money at the blogging and few stories I do for the site, but I hope it will someday pay off well, as many people who work at startups look for.
7. The Public-Press.org, a noncommercial news site for the Bay Area that is expected to go live with news in January. The site is already running, and for now mostly deals with the need for alternate media. I'm volunteering at this Internet startup as an editor, although I don't expect it to be a paying job anytime soon. For now I'm helping coordinate stories and I'm also blogging about the media.

Lots of work, although I'm trying to concentrate on the actions that pay and less on the ones that don't, because bills still have to be paid. I'm writing in four blogs, only one of which pays, so some of that writing may have to be cut back. All of that doesn't leave me much time to look for full-time work, which is my ultimate goal, so it may soon be time to rethink my strategies. My hope is that some of these part-time jobs and volunteer work will lead to full-time work somewhere down the road. This blog, a non-paid effort, led to a part-time gig for AOL, so at least that worked.

For all that, and all of you faithful readers, I'm thankful. Have a nice Thanksgiving.

Beer results

Look at the beer drinking poll on the right for the final results, but here's what actually happened at the end of the meeting: I went home without a drink. The meeting started late, lasted late, and I didn't reach BART until 10 p.m., which isn't incredibly late, but I still didn't make it home until 11 p.m. Again, not incredibly late, but late enough when you have a babysitter to relieve, a kid sleeping upstairs, and a wife on her way home from work. And I was fighting off a cold, which I'm still coughing from.

The Public-Press.org meeting? Long discussions about stories in SF that I don't know if they'll get done. I plan on talking to the founder more on Thursday morning when I volunteer to see where I fit in.

At WalletPop.com today, I wrote three entries: Spam (the meat), what Citigroup and other newly laid off workers should do when competing against their former colleagues for new jobs, and what most people will use their gift cards for this Christmas: Check them out, and many others by yours truly.
Bookmark this:
http://www.walletpop.com/blog/bloggers/aaron-crowe/

Podcast resume

My job search now includes a podcast! I was at the CPC Job Connections weekly meeting on Saturday morning, where Ian Griffin of Executive Communications was giving a speech about how to do a podcast to aid in a job search. At the end he picked a name out of a hat to interview someone about their job skills, and my name was chosen.

Listen to the podcast here at his Web site. Or go to:
http://www.exec-comms.com/blog/2008/11/15/interview-arron-crowe-job-seeker-blogger/

It was a lot of fun and why I someday see this as a way to promote myself, it seems like it would be a lot more useful as a way to get out the word about a hobby or something you want to tell the world about. Maybe I'll do some news or feature stories, AKA Studs Terkel, and put those on a podcast. While the learning curve doesn't look to steep, it does look like it will take some time and a small investment for software, equipment and a server.

2 days at WalletPop.com

Some of my blog entries at www.WalletPop.com/blog a site owned by AOL that pays:

http://www.walletpop.com/blog/bloggers/aaron-crowe/

Items so far are: Price of chocolate, work for bald men, a $95 doll, and layoffs.

Blogging for pay

Exactly two months after I started this blog, it has led to a paid job blogging for an AOL web site about personal finance.

It's called Walletpop.com and it's devoted to personal finance. I'll continue writing about my job hunt and how it affects my daughter, but I'll be expanding to layoffs, budgets and other areas of personal finance. My blog entries can be found here:
http://www.walletpop.com/blog/bloggers/aaron-crowe/

This blog, http://www.talesofanunemployeddad.blogspot.com/ will continue, but the other will take precedence since it pays. It all adds up to another part-time job for me (five total now), but I continue looking for full-time work with benefits. And to think, just two months ago I was a blogger hoping this would lead to a job.

The Public Press

As the election comes to a close and I look for another volunteer opportunity that could lead to a job, I've decided to get involved in at least one non-profit and for-profit Internet startup as a writer and editor.

The first is The Public Press, not to be confused with Public Press. Both have .org at the end of their Web addresses, and only a hyphen separates their Internet addresses. For the immediate future, I'm going with The Public Press and will volunteer as an editor and sometimes writer and blogger. I recommend reading the Web site, but I can tell you that its main goal is to provide a noncommercial press in the Bay Area, although the focus for now is on San Francisco.

I'm also going to write for another Internet startup that also provides news without ads, and when the site goes live (hopefully later this week), I'll be sure to write about it here and extol its virtues while asking for reader participation. It's a great concept that relies on readers to pay for content that they're unlikely to see elsewhere. When it goes live, I'll have plenty of links to it and to other stories about it to give Unemployed Dad readers a clear view of what it is.

Another informational interview

Again, my calls for help continue. In discussions with others who are out of work and newspaper union people who have seen many newsroom employees be laid off, I've raised the issue of how to prepare for a career change from newspapers to any number of other jobs that are hiring. For example, I've been applying for positions in corporate communications, online writing and other areas where writing and editing are needed. But, as I've noted in this blog before, I've run into many brick walls and have been told that I just don't have the specific experience (such as Web writing) in the area they're hiring in.

So I've started doing many things to get around that, including informational interviews. As most people probably know, these interviews don't necessarily lead to a job, but give the job seeker a chance to explore the working world by talking to someone who is either in a position to hire or can tell you more about what they do and possibly introduce you to someone who can maybe hire you somewhere down the road. It's a great way to learn about a job. For instance, I was at AT&T Park a month or so ago, and met a marketing official there, and also talked to another marketing person there, and learned a lot about the job, even there were no immediate openings.

Lately I've been searching to talk with someone about how a former newspaper editor/reporter can break into online writing or corporate communications without having any experience in that field. Through the newspaper union in San Jose, I've found a former colleague at the Contra Costa Times, who is now in corporate communications in the Bay Area. We plan to meet next week over coffee, and I really want to pick his brain for tips on overcoming the "no experience" replies. It should be an interesting talk, and I'll update the blog after the meeting.-

Emma smiles, and I melt

I know, this has nothing to do with being unemployed and looking for work, but part of the blog's mission is to show how my job search affects her. So far I haven't talked about that, and I will in future posts. For now, only a video.
Oh, and congrats to Ryan Huff, who accepted a job as an ACE at a Colorado newspaper! I worked with Ryan at CCT and it's great to see him find a job in newspapers.

Part-timing it

Like that old "Saturday Night Live" skit about a Jamaican family where everybody has at least five jobs, I'm hoping to get somewhere near that until I find a full-time position. I need at least a few part-time jobs to keep money coming in while my unemployment checks continue to arrive for awhile longer, and definitely after the unemployment money stops coming. And I hope these part-time jobs, along with volunteering, can lead to full-time work. Even when I do find full-time employment, some of the part-time work I'm doing may continue if time allows.

The first part-time job I found was with United Reporting. It's easy work and interesting. I get arrest logs from local police departments and fax them to United Reporting's office in Sacramento. It's only about 5-10 hours per week, but it's a start.

I've also blogged about writing biographies for the elderly, or anyone who wants to have their life story down on paper to pass along to their family. I'm still waiting for my first contract for that side job, and exploring ways to get the word out on it.

I'm also trying to find a way to blog/report on some issue and get paid for it, but so far no takers. My freelance writing hasn't taken off yet either, and I'm trying to promote that as much as I can. Ghostwriting for bloggers is also an option I'm exploring.

And lastly, I'm doing freelance writing/reporting for city newsletters. More on that later.

Who knows, I may be on the side of the road picking up aluminum cans by Christmas.

And just for the heck of it, since I'm trying to learn new job skills through blogging, I've posted one of the few videos I have online. Back when I was on paternity leave and had some spare time to put such things together...so here's some 40 seconds of Emma at about 6 months old.

Intro to Tales of an unemployed dad

This is my first foray into blogging, and I hope it will be a fun trip as I detail tales of unemployment in this lousy economy and of the people I meet in my search for a job. And I'll throw in daily dispatches in being an unemployed dad and and how that affects a 4-year-old, not pictured here but coming in a later post.

First a quick bio of me:

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and was laid off June 27, 2008 at the Contra Costa Times, a daily newspaper in Walnut Creek, CA. I was an assistant metro editor, meaning I worked with reporters on formulating and editing their stories. The job search has been humbling and encouraging at times, and this blog's aim is to document it and hopefully share some insight into finding work, and into raising a kid during the turmoil. After all, she, and my wife, are why the job hunt continues vigorously.