While we bloggers look for ways to make money from our blogging passion it's a good idea not to lose sight of the fact that life is for living. Having lived in the US for a fair time, it always amused me somewhat that Americans had the income to vacation but didn't while Brits did but didn't really have the income to do it!

Readers Digest, yes - that trusty little magazine full of jokes, cartoons, human interest stories, tips and tricks, has a website that we all should visit. There you can learn that vacation and family time are as, if not more, important than blogging and making money. I particularly like the RD.com - Family Life section with its parenting pointers, vacation tips and those amazing Readers Digest family stories.

But, if you have a family, you should also check RD.com - Parenting for some other ideas. Surely, at the end of the day, it is all about the family? It's why we try to make money right? Here, you'll find those Readers Digest jokes - yes, they are clean and sharable with the kids, but you'll also find a whole bunch of great articles, self-help tips and stories.

Are you a parent with a baby or small child? I am. I'm always concerned about two issues - safety and usability - when it comes to products for babies and small kids. Whether it is car seats, strollers, prams, high chairs and so on, these are the two primary issues for parents.

A good and reliable provider of these types of products that puts thought into both of these issues is Mutsy. Check out their Mutsy Stroller for example.

Check out the styling. It's designed to be functional, easy to use, light weight and yet stylish and safe.

Check out the 4Rider “Next” Cargo range which offers the functionality of the 4Rider but with with the addition of a leather handle and a range of premium fabrics. The 4Rider “Next” Cargo’s features a strong handle to carry a sleeping baby, a mattress pad and cover, and several zip storage compartments for the baby’s essentials even the depth of the seat can be adjusted.

Check out these and other baby products at Mutsy...

I recently signed up at SocialSpark. In fact, this is my first post resulting from joining the Social Spark community which was recently launched by IZEA the folks behind PayPerPost. But Social Spark is quite different and a whole lot more than just paid post opportunities. As it's name implies, there is definatley a social aspect to this site and service.

The SocialSpark website is beautifully designed and easy to use. You can sign up as a blogger and/or an advertiser. As a blogger you can then submit all of your blogs and within 24 hours see if they are approved. All of mine were instantly approved. Its quite neat that you can then look at your blogs and see their rank and average traffic stats after Social Spark collects that data. Very useful.

I have a few small dreams around blogging. They are small. Nothing outrageous. For example, just once, I'd love to get an article published on Digg. I'd like to have more traffic and get this blog ranked in the top 100,000 blogs by Technorati or Alexa and, oh yes, I'd love a sponsor for the blog. Finally, I guess this is the stretch goal - I'd love to quit my day job and simply blog.... that would be fun.

But let's talk about sponsors. Just who would I like to sponsor my blog? Well, someone like Digg, Technorati or Alexa would be pretty good for sure as might say Facebook but for this blog, it would have to be someone or some company with a sense of humor and a certain outlook on life. I guess that Budweiser Beer might be one given their commercials which are always pretty funny or how about JibJab.com and their funny but very very clever video parodies?

The most difficult part for someone in developing a website is adding in the shopping cart functionality so that customers can purchase products securely and easily from the site.

I am a co-partner in another website that sells a variety of products using shopping cart software. But it sometimes doesn't work properly. We have tried to solve the issue which seems to be related to interfaces between three parties - one of whom provides the shopping cart software - but all three point the finger of blame at each other! The problem for us is that it's our customers who experience delay, issues and problems and we can't seem to get the issue fixed.

Our experience shows that what we SHOULD have done was use a complete hosted service solution that included the shopping cart software along with everything else.