This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Walgreens. All opinions are 100% mine.

I have to admit that when I started hearing things on the news about Walgreens and Express Script not being able to come to a deal, I had no idea what was going on. I’m fortunate to have a really great health care package through my husband’s company and do not have to think much about prescriptions. But I know that for many people, including American’s military service men and women who use the Express Scripts program, this is a huge issue.

What exactly has happened? Essentially Express Scripts would not come to an agreement with Walgreens to keep Walgreens in their program despite Walgreens saying that they would not seek any increase in rates if Express Scripts would agree to extend their contract. Express Scripts wanted to be able to define on their own terms what constitutes brand and generic drugs.

Patients are now scrambling to switch pharmacies all across the country (Duane Reade customers in New York are also impacted) if they want to continue to use in-network pharmacy benefits. You can find out if you are impacted by checking the back of your insurance card and looking for the words “Express Scripts.” If it is not listed there, you are not impacted.

If you were impacted and would like to continue to use Walgreens, Walgreens is offering a special discount on the annual membership for its Walgreens Prescription Savings Club. The cost this month only will be $5 for individuals or $10 for families. Through the Club you can get savings on medications but also discounts on flu shots, pet prescriptions, nebulizers, and diabetic supplies.

I’m tired of the health crisis in our country and I am tired of everything being about maximizing profits. I’m all about business, but I think at some point we have to think about the PEOPLE and not just the money. You can get more information about this issue when you follow Walgreens on Twitter or Like Walgreens on Facebook. Check them out and get the story straight from them about what is going on.

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Sprint. All opinions are 100% mine.

Everyone who knows me knows that I am a technology junkie, especially when it comes to phones. I’ve been on Sprint for about 12 years and have had 7 or 8 different phones. I always want the latest and greatest but at a good price. When I saw that HTC EVO first coming out, I knew I had to have it. It wasn’t time for me to renew my contract yet, but it was time for my husband to renew his. I bought him the EVO so that he could test it out for me, and I have been in love ever since.

Fast forward about two years and my mom and a number of my friends now also have EVOs because I have raved so much about them. I love that I can get a lot of my work done on them (email, Twitter, Facebook, etc) but also take pictures and video at the spur of the moment. I just cannot recommend them enough. So I am super excited that right now you can get the HTC EVO 4G or EVO Shift for free from Sprint for a limited time when you visit this special holiday deal page: http://bit.ly/rBqHmY. Plus, they will waive your activation for new lines of service and ship the phone for free.

I’ve tried many different phones and am a firm believer in Android™ powered EVO 4G devices. In fact, I have been able to get a new phone for 6 months now but have not traded mine in because I enjoy the EVO that I have so much. It’s the first time that I have ever kept a phone past my trade-in date. If you are in the market for a smart phone, you really need to check out this great deal from Sprint before it is over.

This guest post by my friend Murray Newlands is a must-read for bloggers!

Does Content Monetization Work and Does it Really Matter?

In short, content monetization is the process of earning money through written content.

There are a many ways to achieve this. You can earn money by either selling the actual content or by using internet-based writing tools. In the first method, potential buyers of your content can be anyone from news editors to artists to entertainment blogs. In the second method, you can use one of the hundreds of possibilities available through the internet that enables you to make money from something aside from the actual content. Examples of some of these opportunities are the use of AdSense, sales of consultation or advertising for a small business.

It’s important to know these different techniques if you want to enhance your writing and reach your readers’ expectations. In order to grab the attention of your readers, you need to deliver the content while keeping your specific audience’s specific interests in mind. You need to convey to your readers the main reason you are writing the piece.

There are several ways that you are able to monetize your content. When writing for a newspaper, for examples, you need to write articles in a manner that can attract the reader’s attention. You earn money though writing a compelling piece that editors of the specific paper want to pay you for one time. You also need to make it an interesting, engaging article for those who want to advertise in the paper, so that the paper can earn from business relations, readers, advertisers, etc.

If you are acting as an advertiser, you need to design the content according to the market—you need to make potential customers of your product or services know the qualities of your product. Your goal is to convince them to purchase your product or services.

If you want to sell your business ideas, you need to focus the content of the ideas. This enables your customers to see your ideas over and over and to get accustomed to them. And If you own a website, you can significantly raise your website’s income by advertising with the help of marketing tools such as Google’s AdSense, paid posts and link insertion.

But maybe you are a blogger that doesn’t make much money from your website. Who says you shouldn’t earn money from your labor? Wouldn’t it be great if you could make money while working on your hobby? If you want to boost your blogging income, you can use link insertion as a simple tool for content monetization of your blog. All you have to do is to insert some java script code in your site and this can monetize your site automatically. The software will use words and phrases from blogs and use them to link it to relevant advertisers.

An excellent tool for advertising is INTENTclick , which provides an alternative basis for your content monetization. This tool is especially useful for content, which are for advertisement of products or services in origin. You can find more details about these helpful internet advertisement techniques in the book “Content Monetization.”

So all said and done, content monetization really does matter, as it can be a great source of revenue for your website. Using the correct tools can help you reach optimization and make the most amount of money without upsetting your readers.

Disclosure: I am working for the company INTENTclick.

This post brought to you by Kalahari® Resorts. All opinions are 100% mine.

With the price of flights so high these days, we have been trying to find places closer to home for our family vacations. Thanks to IZEA, I just learned today about Kalahari Resorts in Sandusky, Ohio. I was amazed that there is something so fun and family friendly within driving distance of me and I didn’t even know about it!

The Kalahari Resort is a family vacation destination all by itself with a water park featuring a lazy river and slides, a Safari Outdoor Adventure Park with rope courses and a zip line tour, a climbing wall, and a Safari Adventures Animal Park. It’s pretty much everything a family needs to relax and have fun together. Although I know my family would want to spend most of its time in the waterpark, I have to say that I love the idea of the zip line. One of my friends went on one recently with her daughter’s girl scout troop and she said that it is an absolute “must do” for every family. I don’t LOVE heights, but I know that it would be safe and an amazing experience.

If you are looking for a deal on a family vacation, you should check out the Kalahari Resorts special offers page. They have everything from special summer rates to package deals throughout the year. I love that they have different sized rooms for every family and every budget plus the rooms have coffee makers, refrigerators, microwaves, free internet access, and more.

Right now Kalahari Resorts and IZEA are running a fabulous contest where you can win a trip for your family! To enter, all you have to do is:

1.) Leave a comment on the contest post (not my post!!) about the feature or amenity you are the most excited to experience when visiting a Kalahari resort

2.) Tweet out a message containing a link back to the contest rules and the hashtag #KalahariResorts

To get more information about the contest and to enter, visit: http://bit.ly/nnQNmx

Update: Are you looking for the Walgreens Brand Save and Win?

This post brought to you by Walgreens. All opinions are 100% mine.

I will admit that I am a little bit of a brand snob. Before I had kids, I never bought anything generic. However, as money got a little bit tighter, I found myself buying more and more store brands. The last holdout for me was medicine. I wasn’t convinced that store brand medicines were either 1) as effective or 2) as good tasting. So I started researching my closest pharmacy, Walgreens.

It turned out that most of their Walgreens Brand Health & Wellness Products have the exact same active ingredients as other national brands. If you don’t believe it, grab a couple of packages and compare them for yourself. The active ingredients are always listed in a little chart with their pharmaceutical names plus exact measurements. As a runner, I go through a lot of ibuprofen. The Walgreens Ibuprofen tablets have the exact same ingredients as the more expensive ones on the shelf next to them but are significantly cheaper. When you add up all of the other products your family uses (cough medicines, bandages, etc), it adds up over a year. I use the various cough and cold medicines for my kids and they never complain about flavors or varieties. With a 100% satisfaction guarantee, there isn’t any reason at all not to try them.

Several bloggers are doing some giveaways for Walgreens gift cards. It’s easy to enter. You just need to leave a comment on one of the blog posts listed in the instructions and then Tweet about it. The prizes are $50 Walgreens gift cards and the contest ends June 30. Win yourself a gift card, try out the Walgreens Brand Health & Wellness Products, and you will see how you can really save. You can also learn more about the Walgreens Way to Well Fund™

Visit Walgreens to learn more about how you can save with their brands while taking care of your family.

This post brought to you by storebrandformula.com. All opinions are 100% mine.

Although I nursed my girls as much as I could when they were babies, they were big babies and we had some nursing issues. Because of that, I supplemented with baby formula. I had some important choices to make because I knew that my babies were at an incredibly formative time in their little lives. Was one formula better than another? It was all pretty expensive. Was store brand as good as name brand? Everyone seemed to have an opinion.

Little did I know that an ethical and legal war was being waged over baby formula brands. Mead Johnson, the maker of Enfamil (and employer of many in my hometown) had sent a mailing out to over a million customers saying that store brand baby formula was “inferior” to the Enfamil product. Litigation ensued and a federal appeals court recently affirmed a decision that Mead Johnson engaged in false advertising. The circuit judge went so far as to accuse Mead Johnson of “infecting the marketplace with misleading advertising.”

Although Mead Johnson claims that it has not sent out the particular mailing again, it is still important to get the facts straight about different baby formulas if you are planning on using them. You can get more information from storebrandformula.com. You owe it to your baby AND your wallet to be as informed as you can be.

This post brought to you by Fannie Mae. All opinions are 100% mine.

It seems like every time there is a crisis of any kind, people will find ways to exploit the crisis for their own gain. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard stories about people who have gotten into financial trouble and thought that they were getting legitimate help when really they were being taken advantage of even more. That’s why I really appreciate sites like KnowYourOptions.com, owned by Fannie Mae. It presents real advice to homeowners who are struggling with their mortgage payments.

People tend to think that the easiest way to deal with mortgage payments is to just vacate the home and let the bank take it over. In actuality, that might help you in the short term (assuming you have somewhere else to go), but it is not going to help you in the long term. Know Your Options by Fannie Mae will walk you through both options to stay in your home as well as options to leave your home. These options range from refinancing to forbearance to short sales. You need to investigate thoroughly how each of these would affect you before you make a decision.

One of the tabs at the top of the screen is “Beware of Scams.” As I mentioned before, there are a lot of shady characters out there just waiting to take advantage of people who have financial problems. Not all “counseling services” are the same, and you need to find out which ones are HUD-approved before you sign up with one. The best advice on the site is “If you receive an offer, information or advice that sounds too good to be true, it probably is.“

One of the scariest things about being in debt and worried about how to make ends meet is that you will lose your house. The key is to get educated and make a plan of action. The longer that you wait (thinking that things will get better on their own), the harder it is going to be to get back on the right track again.

This post brought to you by Pier 1. All opinions are 100% mine.

I admit that I am one of those girls who can spend hours just walking around the Pier 1 store. I especially love this time of year when all of the new Spring furniture and accessories are coming out. Pier 1 will actually be doing a special in-store offer the weekend of March 18-20 to celebrate the arrival of Spring. Visit the Pier 1 site to sign up for the Pier 1 Outdoor newsletter.

We have a swimming pool in our backyard, so I love that a lot of the Pier 1 items are both indoor and outdoor. Depending on whether we are entertaining inside or outside, I love to be able to use the folding chairs in either place. People are always surprised when they find out that some of my favorite “indoor” pieces are perfectly safe on the back patio as well.

This Red Metal Beverage Tub is one of my favorite pieces from the outdoor furnishings preview. No matter what kind of party we are having, we always have a variety of drinks that need chilled. Whether it is juice boxes for the kids or bottles of wine for the adults, a nice beverage tub adds a little bit of style to the party. And how perfect is a red one that you can use all summer and decorate up for the 4th of July?

If you are interested in Pier 1 Tweet Ups to learn even more about what is trendy for this Spring, you can check them out in the following cities on the dates listed below:

Dallas: March 22nd

Atlanta: April 5th

NYC: April 20th

For more information about dates and times check out the Pier 1 Tweetups page.

This post brought to you by PlayStation(R) Move. All opinions are 100% mine.

I'll admit that my family was a little late to gaming. For some reason, my kids were just not into the regular handheld gaming devices as other kids. In the last year, however, they have become increasingly interested in games that are less traditional, including ones that allow them to move around and use their whole body rather than just their fingers. Because of this, I am excited to be learning more about PlayStation(R)MOVE. You can add MOVE to your existing PlayStation3 for only $99 with the MOVE bundle package!

PlayStation(R)MOVE is designed to immerse you completely into games. The whole family from kids up through grandparents can get involved because the controllers are simple to use and ergonomic. I can say for certain that my family will use our PlayStation more with the MOVE package because I let the kids play games with body motion more than I let them play traditional video games because of the exercise involved in the body motion games. There is also usually a more level playing field between parents and adults in those games, which makes them more fun for our family game nights. Even more, these games are perfect for when we have other families over and either the kids or the adults all want to play against each other.

So what kind of games are we talking about? There's pretty much something for everyone, but I am most excited about "Start the Party" because I love minigames. First you use the PlayStation Eye to capture your image and voice to personalize your character in the game. Up to 4 people can play. Because the minigames each require different skills, different members of the family will be good at them. It makes it more fun because anyone has a legitimate chance at winning, even if they don't have time to practice the games for hours on end. I have a feeling that my daughters will be most excited about "TV Superstars" because they love to pretent that they are on television or in a movie and this would allow them to do that while also competing with each other. Seeing their actual faces in the game is more than cool.

I'm excited about the PlayStation(R)MOVE because it's one more way for my family to combine games, exercise, and quality time. Now I just have to figure out where to move the coffee table so that we can have plenty of room to move around and get crazy with it!

My kids come home all the time with stories that they hear at school. My friends and relatives forward me “concerning” messages. I even see questionable posts in my forum. But it’s not very often that I fall for the Urban Legends. Want to know my secret? Snopes.com. I am an AVID reader at Snopes! Every time I hear anything that sounds the least bit suspicious, I head right to Snopes.

For example, I saw on a professional forum the other day a story posted about a “friend of a friend” (as they always are) who was pulled over by someone posing as a police officer and did not know the special “code” that she should call to get the state police from her cell phone. The story not only criticized cell phone companies for “hiding” this important information from us but also said to pass this number along to every female you know. The problem? The story was a hoax and the number wasn’t even right. Imagine telling your teenage daughters to use the number and then in the case of a real emergency you find out that it was an urban legend and she should have just dialed 911?

Snopes.com is the best online authority for urban legends. You can search by keyword or subject matter or just even see what has been added most recently. They research whether the stories are fact, fiction, undetermined, or all of the above. So if you are wondering whether Sears was really advertising grills to cook babies (true) or if you visit the Cash for Clunkers website your computer becomes government property (false), you should check out Snopes.