Foreign Perspectives

When it’s a clear plastic bag that’s had a knot tied in it and doesn’t have a ziploc closing mechanism.

That’s the latest nonsense to come from my travels through airport security and one that was particularly crazy. The security staff focused all their attention on that “deficiency” in my packing and managed to miss four separate items that they should have looked at including one that they very definitely should have taken off me.

So what did they miss this time around?

1. A six inch steel pin. That’s definitely on their checklist of items that aren’t allowed through security yet they missed it entirely which is worrying.
2. A rather heavy iced cake. Eh? Well, considering that it was in a sealed transparent plastic container and the icing has the same look and consistency of plastic explosive they should at the very least have rescanned it with the box open.
3. The luggage scales. These look very suspicious on the scanner thanks to the spring mechanism yet they missed them entirely.
4. The resealable plastic bottles in the above plastic bag. No tests were done of the content and they should have been.

At the moment it seems that rather than being aimed at detecting potential terrorists, the security checks are there merely to annoy honest travellers.

When the Brits are moving to France their first thought, usually, is to set themselves up in the gite business.

It certainly sounds like the ideal lifestyle choice. You only need to work one day a week and you don’t have to see the guests at all apart from when they arrive and when they leave. For B&B you’d have to deal with the guests every day and that would be an awful hassle, wouldn’t it?

What’s frequently forgotten about in this equation is that a typical gite will have around six or seven rooms whereas a B&B room has only two (counting the bathroom in both cases). So you’re looking at around three to four times the amount of work cleaning up a gite compared to a single B&B room (although most gites specify that it’s left in a clean condition you’ll still need to check it and wash all the sheets etc.).

Don’t forget about that business of washing the sheets & towels, maintenance, etc.: a gite business is never a one day a week job.

The other difference that’s usually not even considered is the profitability. We have a small four person gite and when rented out as a gite, the income is around EUR 50 per day. When the same space (less the kitchen and dining room) is rented out as a B&B room then the income is EUR 100 per day and if we do an evening meal as well it’s more like EUR 200 per day.

To be fair, that separation of you from the guests is valuable for a number of people but it’s possible to buy a B&B place that allows you to lock the door and keep the guests from mingling with the private section of your house.

As you know, we’ve been plugging away with sponsored posts on various blogs over the last year or so.

The money can be quite good sometimes (we picked up $250 on a single post a month ago for example) but most of the time it’s around the $10 to $30 mark. Not that we’re complaining but once you’ve been paid for the article, that’s the last income that you get for it.

So, what we’re having a go at now is a fresh attack on the affiliate links through Personally Chosen which we’ve not really looked at for a few years.

In practical terms, we’re planning it as a series of product reviews much as we do for the sponsored posts but with the difference that there’s no upfront payout but, hopefully, an ongoing income from them. If we can get it right, there’s certainly big money in it as some affiliate signups pay over $50.

You might think that you can keep business and private life separate but online that’s pretty much impossible.

Anyone who has ever used the Internet to any extent will find that when they search for themselves online there’s a massive number of sites that turn up. All those posts you’ve made to forums are there to see, all those comments you’ve made on blogs, your own sites if you have them and you can often find that your e-mail address is recorded by a surprisingly large number of sites too.

Of course, in pre-Internet days a lot of this type of information was available too if you went out to look for it but it would have been difficult to find it. If you wanted to know what Joe thought about something or other you’d have to ask around, now you can search for what he’s said in forums and blogs.

Scary, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, we’re rapidly becoming experts at this but for those that think they’re locked in to their current hosting service no matter what, think again because you definitely aren’t locked in.

Essentially, it’s fairly simple and has only seven steps:

1. Sign up with a new hosting service. There’s lots (thousands actually) around though, as we’ve found, not all are as reliable as you might think from the reviews.
2. Whilst you’re waiting for your new host to set up the account for you, take the time to begin the process of copying your website from your existing host to your own computer. It’s best to do that even if you’re sure that the copy on your computer is the same as the copy on the host.
3. If you’ve a database driven site, export the database to your own computer. You may need to do this step later if you’re updating the site during the move (eg if you have a blog).
4. Once the new host has given you the login details, copy the site to it’s new location and, if you have them, upload the databases (you’ll probably need to create the databases via the control panel first).
5. At this point you will need to edit the config files of any database applications so that they point to the new location.
6. Change the nameservers to point to your new host.
7. Cancel your old hosting contract. Personally, I’d leave it a few days just to make sure that everything is working.

The big hassle is the time required to download and upload a large site but other than that, it’s pretty painless.