ergophobe - 4:25 pm on Mar 13, 2008 (gmt 0)

submission to Google generally takes a few months

If you mean getting serious traffic in a competitive area, I'm sure you're right. I don't know anything about that. But as for simply getting indexed and added to the "search list" (haven't heard that term before), I don't think that's true. In fact, I've learned not to put up "beta" versions for any time at all because I usually have a trickle of visitors from Google within a couple of days even without a single inbound link.

forgot to mention ignorant.

I would say dramatic with minor inconsistencies meaning that the "90 days and $400 or disaster" is a story-telling device and one should try to stay within the storyline. The device is meant to add drama, and judging by the response, it has. When is the last time a thread in this forum went to six pages?

But obviously, everyone knows that taking a job or moving in with the parents are not true disasters. If they were, he would be doing something other than this experiment (all evidence is that he is not stupid). Saying he's ignorant because he registered for two years is a little like picking out inconsistencies in a time-travel movie. It doesn't totally fit the story line, but it doesn't make him stupid. I think it's a great thread, though if it were mine, I would have subtitled it "Based on true story."

Like most people here, I applaud jleane for his storytelling. Good on him. And unlike most people here, I don't necessarily encourage him to run off and become a freelance writer unless he also has journalism skills, which he hasn't demonstrated. Being clever and a good, even great, fiction writer generally leads to poverty in 99% of the cases.