Yesterday at 22:59 GMT, I received this email from no-reply@amazon.com:

Hello,

It has come to our attention that you are framing our Web site with the domain, th8.us. This activity is prohibited by the terms of the Operating Agreement which states that Associates cannot frame any part of the Amazon site within their site(s). You can review the complete terms of the Associates Program Operating Agreement and Participation Requirements by following this link:

http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/agreement

http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/operating/participation

As a result of this activity, your Associates account has been closed and payment of advertising fees has been withheld. Any other accounts you may have or may open in the future which are found in violation of the Operating Agreement terms will be closed and advertising fees withheld without notification.

Thank you for your understanding.

Best regards,

Andy - Associates Account Specialist
http://www.amazon.com

Anyway, this puts me in the untenable position of having no revenue to finance my online operations. After being banned from Google AdSense in Nov. 2010, I never received my final owed payment of $566 (because Google always cheats its 1099-contractors out of their final owed payment), nor will I be receiving my final owed payment of $480 from Amazon Associates.

At the peak of my institution of ads on the Th8.us URL shortener, I had it alternate every hour between Google ads and my Amazon affiliate link. I thought it was pretty ingenious:

if(preg_match(”/^[0-9a-zA-Z_-]{1,62}$/”, $i)) {db_connect();
$result = mysql_query(”SELECT url FROM urls WHERE short_url = ‘$i’”)
or die(mysql_error()); if(mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) {
$row = mysql_fetch_row($result);
if(strlen($row['0']) < 80) $durl = $row['0'];
else $durl = substr($row['0'], 0, 77) . ‘…’;
if(date(’g’) == ‘1′ || date(’g’) == ‘3′ || date(’g’) == ‘5′ ||
date(’g’) == ‘7′ || date(’g’) == ‘9′ || date(’g’) == ‘11′)
{$rand = ‘1′; $qe_override = true;} else {$rand = ‘2′; $qe_override = false;}
$frame1 = ‘<frame name=”t” src=”http://thripp.com/ad.php?’ . $row['0'] . ‘” scrolling=”no” border=”0″ ‘

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I wish I could go back and change the past, but I can’t, so this is where we stand. At least we have memories.

All photos and editing herein by Richard X. Thripp, Aug-Dec 2008.

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This is a portfolio of twenty of my best photos. Since I feel my best work is from 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008, this portfolio contains photos from those years only.

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July 9, 2006: Ketchup

January 8, 2007: Assimilation

October 22, 2006: Sunrays

January 18, 2007: Rose of Orange

July 7, 2006: Yellow Grasshopper

August 19, 2007: Yellow Sunshine

February 26, 2008: The Red-Brick House

August 31, 2007: Leafy Sunset 6

August 23, 2007: The Garden in Yellow

October 10, 2007: Implicity

March 9, 2011: Leafy Droplets 4

June 28, 2006: Leafy Droplets

June 17, 2006: Sky’s Camouflage

February 22, 2006: Blue Marbles

November 11, 2007: Complicity

April 15, 2007: Simplicity

June 11, 2006: Pink and Purple Sunset 3

January 5, 2008: Two of Us Against the World

May 9, 2008: Liquid Suspension

June 13, 2006: Raindrops

*****

I’m going to start doing a series of “behind the photo” articles in summer 2011 detailing the methodology behind the composition, editing, and presentation of select photos. If you would like to vote for a particular photo for me to prioritize, say so in a comment on this blog post or the associated blog post for said photo.

When I launched my 20-week Thripp 2010 project on 2010-08-15, I set goals that were way too lofty and I didn’t reach many of them. I did post 80 new photos on this site, 40 on Thripp.com, a few new piano compositions, and 55 comics, but my original goals were much higher. Also, my Alexa rank plummeted from 60K to 90K when I wanted to increase it to 40K. I don’t know why my traffic is declining so much, but I must assume it is because I haven’t been writing any hard-hitting articles. Also, I haven’t released a new version of Tweet This in over 2 months, though I am keeping up with all support requests. Next time, I will set my sights lower.

My three goals were:

1. Get 50,000 absolute unique visitors in total for the three sites (track with Google Analytics).
2. Earn $2000 in Google AdSense revenues (including other sites such as Th8.us).
3. Increase the Alexa ranking of Thripp.com to 40,000.

I met only the first two, and #2 won’t even be confirmed until Google pays me my final payment after having my original account banned for undisclosed policy violations. Fortunately, it wasn’t click fraud, so they let me make a new account, but the $570 Google owes me won’t be paid out until Feb. 10, if at all. Google is very good at holding grudges and cutting off communications. No one will answer my phone calls or emails.

Amazon.com owes me about $720 in affiliate commissions for Nov. and Dec. 2010, but they use a net-60 payment schedule so I won’t be paid for those months until Jan. 30 and Feb. 28, 2011, approximately. Provided the $1290 comes in, I beat $2000 easily, thanks to other advertising and some generous donations.

For #1, Google Analytics reports 77,613 …

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The Thripp Republic is a new micronation founded by Richard X. Thripp on Jan. 3, 2011 in Daytona Beach, Florida with its own constitution and currency (the Thripp Dollar). In the future, there will be a Senate, Supreme Court, citizenship applications and benefits, free markets, and other fun yet serious things.

The Thripp Dollar is backprinted on 4×6 prints of artistic photographs by Richard X. Thripp. Currently, over 8000 one dollar notes have been printed and are generally distributed by Richard X. Thripp himself to students and faculty at Daytona State College.

The Thripp Dollar is worth 1/5000 troy oz. silver. This means that as of Jan. 3, 2011, one U.S. Dollar is equal to about 160 Thripp Dollars.

For more information, please visit the website I have set up at gov.thripp.com.

Most people abandon their new year’s resolutions before February, not because the resolutions are impossible, but because it’s easier to maintain the status quo. Resolutions are appealing in theory and execution, but usually require sacrifice in practice.

The key is to either be committed, or set extremely vague resolutions like “be more forgiving” or “exercise more.” Resolutions like “lose 30 pounds” or “stop smoking” are much harder to fulfill.

In 2011, I am going to finish my A.A. degree, travel to China and California for three months with my Mom, and start on my B.S. in the fall. I’m going to start a micronation called the Thripp Republic and print Thripp Dollars on the back of 4×6 photos (I have nearly 10,000 already). I am going to be a math tutor at Daytona State College and I am investing most of my money in precious metals, common metals, and material goods, because the U.S. dollar is going to suffer massive inflation (possibly 30%) next year. I plan to learn the guitar, viola, and saxophone, code and release Tweet This 1.9 and 2.0, and work on creating photos that are as well-received as my 2006-2008 portfolio by breaking the rules and using more Photoshop.

I also want to release a sequel to Inferno and sell off all my web domains except about 40 personal domains.

I plan to do a great deal of writing in 2011, but I don’t plan to find a girlfriend or start a photography business, since I will be doing a lot of traveling and don’t want to be tied down. However, I will be doing a lot of networking and meeting many new friends in Florida, California, and China. I plan to create a social network around the Thripp Dollar, so I need …

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I’ve decided I’m going to consolidate my other websites, thripp.com/blog, composersjourney.com, and iseeafish.com under the richardxthripp.thripp.com domain. Nobody goes to them anyway… they don’t have the PageRank to rank high in Google’s search results… this site does, so why should I try to fight Google?

It’s really better to have all your sites under one domain anyway. I’m not going to merge daytonastate.org, since its value lies largely in the domain itself (similar to daytonastate.edu), but my other websites will be consolidated here including previous content over the next few months… I might even sell off the domains! But probably not.

On a sad note, today my half-sister Anna would be 11 years old. I only met her once, and she passed away in an accident at six months. She died on Father’s Day… 1999-12-16 / 2000-06-17 never forget.

I’ve been having a lot of fun tutoring and meeting people at Daytona State College even though my classes ended Oct. 22, 2010 since I took Fall A classes. Next semester I want to be a tutor at the Academic Support Center or Student Disability Services for math and English… should be fun and help me to relate to people.

I met Trina Chakravarty at Rotary Int’l. last week. She was Miss India USA 2005 and Miss India Worldwide 2006, she’s going to be an M.D. (medical doctor) next year at 24, and she even writes a blog! So amazing…

I have been slacking posting newly re-edited photos here, but I’ll have some this weekend.

Finally, I have decided to disable Infolinks on my sites. Infolinks is an ad network that double-underlines words on your site with ads. They are just too annoying, and they make next to …

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I gave away about 800 four-by-six prints of my recent pictures at Daytona State College today, so if you are visiting because you received one of those, give me a shout in the comments!

While I haven’t attended the college besides online classes in a year, next year I am taking the pre-requisites for the education program, so I will be at the Daytona Beach campus four days a week. I met a lot of old friends today and am looking forward to working on DSC in Motion, the college newspaper, after being the Features Editor in fall 2009.

I got my driver’s license on Monday after having a learner’s permit for over a year, so now I can travel wherever I want in my father’s van. Previously, he would have to go with me, drive home, and come back to pick me up, which he only wanted to do if I had class, but not for meetings or socializing. The only downside to having a license is the ridiculous insurance costs, which are currently averaging to $87.26 per month for me. I’m going to try to go somewhere everyday, because if I don’t I’ve basically wasted $2.90 because that’s the daily cost of the insurance. I don’t even have collision or comprehensive coverage and I have the highest deductible, so I think $20 per month would be a much more reasonable price. We are using Response insurance, so please let me know if you know a cheaper company (Progressive quoted us at over $150 per month).

To recoup some of the costs of insurance I’ve added Infolinks to my blog, so if you see words double-underlined those are advertisements and I earn money when they are clicked on. Please don’t click on them unless you are genuinely …

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I’ve set up some virtual Thripp.com subdomains for pages on richardxthripp.thripp.com that used to subdirectories. All the old URLs 301 to these new URLs. Check out the first batch of subdomains:

about.thripp.com
contact.thripp.com
domains.thripp.com
index.thripp.com
gallery.thripp.com
portfolio.thripp.com
portraits.thripp.com

All of these are for me only and are completely part of richardxthripp.thripp.com. In 2008, I intended Thripp.com to be a social network built on WordPress MU with subdomains for each user, but that never worked out so I feel comfortable owning the *.thripp.com namespace for my own projects now. I will never be changing the URL of this blog from richardxthripp.thripp.com since it’s been that way for so long, though.

This was actually very hard to implement. I’m using WordPress MU 2.7 and the WP Subdomains plugin, but I had to do hacking on both and I can’t get any subdirectories on these virtual subdomains to work so I have to use query strings. For example, gallery.thripp.com is paginated so page 2 is gallery.thripp.com/?page=2/ because I couldn’t get gallery.thripp.com/2/ to work. However, I’m glad I set this up since I will be using Thripp.com subdomains for many pages and ad campaigns in the months to come.

I’ve decided to get out of domain speculation and never register a domain name again. EVERYTHING MUST GO, $10 EACH, EMAIL richardxthripp@thripp.com AND I’LL SEND MY PAYPAL INFO.

In total, I have 96 domains for sale. Most are registered by GoDaddy and expire in Oct. 2011, but 20 are Netfirms domains and about 5 expire in a couple months. If you want to know for sure, look it up.

These prices are FINAL, please disregard any higher prices I’ve posted elsewhere on the Internet. There could be a lot of gems in here. Don’t pass up this opportunity!

alachua.biz
angley.info
angley.us
anthonyrobbins.us
applicationbusiness.com
axxx.us
bakercounty.us
bradford-co-fla.com
bryanferry.us
chipola.us
claycounty.us
daytonafl.org
daytonastate.us
dispute.mx
dixiecounty.us
dvdsort.com
entrepreneurs-journey.org
exabyte.us
feelgooder.org
flaglercollege.info
flaglercollege.us
flashdrivebackup.com
forthepeople.info
fullsail.biz
g2x.org
g2x.us
gadsdengov.com
gladescounty.us
gulfcounty.net
gulfcounty.us
hardeecounty.info
hardeecounty.us
indianrivercounty.net
jackcanfield.org
jamesblunt.us
jerrybrowngov.com
jimrohn.us
johnchow.info
keiseruniversity.us
levycounty.info
levycounty.us
libertycounty.us
lifedig.com
madlibs.info
markvictorhansen.us
miami-dade.us
monroecounty.us
mydakota.info
mydakota.us
mydaytona.org
myflagler.org
myholmes.net
mymanatee.net
mymexico.us
mymiami.info
mymiami.us
mynewyork.us
mynewyorkcity.net
myorange.us
mystetson.com
mytexas.net
myvolusia.info
mywashington.us
news-journal.org
newsjournal.us
ocgov.us
okaloosa.us
okeechobeecountyfl.com
orangecountyfl.info
orangecountyfl.us
parkingrestrictions.com
pavlina.org
photography-school.org
polk-county.info
polk-county.us
queuebook.com
reunioncounty.com
rickscott2014.com
rickscottgov.com
stephencovey.us
stevepavlina.us
suwcounty.com
swfc.us
tobu.org
tri0.com
verbix.org
volusiacounty.biz
volusiafl.com
waynebray.com
waynedyer.info
yournewyork.us
yourny.net
yournyc.info
yournyc.org
yournyc.us
ziglar.info

Let the liquidation begin!