In a forum this morning, someone asked “What’s better for making money– web sites, blogs or Squidoo pages?”

I said that I think of websites, blogs, Squidoo lenses, Hubpages and all social networking sites the way street bums think of intersections.I’ll explain.

Here in Florida, where I live, winter brings a yearly flood of bums who stand at intersections with cardboard signs saying things like “Homeless vet. Please help.”

When I was 11 or 12, I bought a paperback book that had a list of 101 things you could get for free just by mailing in a postcard. That book generated one of the most exciting summer vacations I can remember, as week after week free stuff floated into my mailbox.

“I drink your milkshake!” Daniel Day Lewis spits out these words in the final scene of the Academy Award-winning movie “There Will Be Blood,” and the next thing you know a new bit of internet slang–and a thousand YouTube parodies–are born.

Online, it may seem like the words are on everyone’s lips–or at least their laptops–but apparently the phenomena hasn’t yet translated offline. When Saturday Night Live tried to poke fun at the phrase, their joke fell flat, lost on an audience that evidently doesn’t spend much time trading insults in MySpace.

How fun is this? I just made the cover of Life magazine….literally! A free service called “Mag My Photos” lets you upload your own photo, morph it with one of 18 styles of famous magazine covers like Life, National Geographic, even Pet World, then copy a bit of code that will make your picture appear in Web 2.0 sites like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Hi5 and other social networks. You can also download the iimage to your own hard drive to use as you like.

After nearly half a century of iron-handed rule, Fidel Castro has resigned as President of Cuba. There will undoubtedly be jubilation here in Florida, where vast numbers of Cubans have been waiting and praying for this day. Those over 50 hope Cuban will return to some semblance of their fond, foggy memories of a lazy tropical paradise, while those under 50, who have never known Cuba without communism, are anxious to see the island nation transition into vibrant capitalism. No matter what happens next, one thing is for sure–without Castro as the central figure, Cuba’s focus is forever changed.

The state fair is on in Tampa, Florida and a television commercial is encouraging the citizenry to come out and see the entertainment, some of which appears to be a truly lamentable line-up of Elvis impersonators. Since the death of The King, being a bad Elvis impersonator has become something of a cottage industry, and I’m fascinated at the number of totally talentless people that feel called to it. Fascinated, too, that almost none of these pitiful performers grasp how easy it would be to rise to the top of the heap by doing something a little different.

This morning I found the net all abuzz with news that WordPress has been suspending accounts or deleting blogs created by affiliate marketers. Mind you, this only pertains to FREE blogs. If you’re paying to host a WordPress blog on a server, as I am, you’re not affected.

Still, it’s worth everyone’s paying attention, because it makes a universal point.

When you publish material to the internt, whether it’s a web site, a blog or any other means of distributing digital information across cyberspace, you should always, always, ALWAYS own your primary means of distribution.

Yesterday I wrote a blog post about celebrity gossip and Martin Luxton responded, writing, “It’s true what you said. We all seem to be obsessed with the competition and forget that there are billions of people out there waiting to be sold something.

I was doing a product on video marketing and thought about abandoning it because there are so many more experienced experts out there with big budgets and lists. But then I thought that they are only reaching a fraction of the market and there is room for one (or a hundred) more product creators.”

Has Britney Spears had a complete mental breakdown? Does Angelina Jolie have a baby bump? Will Dr. Drew and Dr. Phil battle to the death in a cage match to see who gets to rehabilitate American Idol train wreck Jessica Sierra? The whole world is waiting to see…and this greatly increases your chance for success.

No matter what you’re doing to make money online, whether it’s making and marketing your own products, engaging in affiliate sales or selling ad space on blogs, you should stop and give a salute to Britney Spears, Angelina Jolie, Jessica Sierra and all their dysfunctional brothers and sisters in Celebrity Land.

Setting up a blog is much like setting up housekeeping in new digs. You have to move in all kinds of stuff–furniture to a house, widgets to a blog–that will make your life easier and more comfortable. And you have to let people know where you are. For a household, you register your new address with the post office and phone company, and if you’re a big shot, you send in a notice in to the newspaper’s Society Column. For a blog, you register with Technorati.