My Life With IT

I have come a long way. Testing various platforms before deciding on Wordpress that didn’t give me headaches until the widget part for 2.5.1. I have long suspected that I wasn’t famous enough, still isn’t despite my attempts at garnering more blog exposure.

There were even times I was suspecting that blogging could be bad and it is wrong. However, my love for penning my thoughts got the better of me. Since I have been blogging my way for a long time, I have discovered a few things along the way. It was a long and arduous path (inspired by Cobalt Paladin).

Blogging Pros

1. You can earn some money online.
2. You can join blog directories and improve your blog’s traffic.
3. You can post hundreds and thousands of photos online.
4. You can tell your friends that you own a blog and the domain is under your name.
5. You can start shopping sprees, sales and hurl insults online.
6. You can freelance more easily as web designers have their names as credits in the designs.
7. You can find more like-minded people.
8. You can blog about niche topics that you have talents for but never discovered.
9. You can sell your handmade items online.
10. You don’t have to rent a shop for selling small items.

Blogging Cons

1. You don’t really earn thousands of dollars online.
2. The money doesn’t always come constantly.
3. Being anonymous doesn’t mean you won’t be found. Photos and details of you can and will be displayed in full glory.
4. You get known for something that you wished it hadn’t come to light. Such as Edison Chen, Fragrance Prince and many others.
5. Being anonymous also means that Asian advertisers distrust your reviews and you don’t get invited to events much.
6. Your photos of you being drunk or behaving wildly can turn off potential employers.
7. Freelance becomes a problem when someone accuses you of ripping clients.
8. You have to upgrade Wordpress constantly. So do other platforms.
9. You get flamed, spammed and even accused of wrong-doing.
10. Your words are dissected and scrutinised and probably mis-interpretated half the time.

These could just be the tips of the iceberg but I stick to blogging because it’s a way to voice out without requiring a license for the soapbox in that park. Lord knows how long it’ll take to grant a paper license for public speaking.

I use images linking to other websites. Even my affiliates link to my affiliate sites. Will I be sued? Or it would be a better idea to close down all my sites to prevent being sued till I have to sell myself? I can’t believe that Singapore is known for such news.

Perhaps absurd news bring about more publicity than normal news like the robot team won some robot competition or we have more entrepreneurs than before. Maybe the idea of this patent came about due to the drastic changes in the oil? It’s so much faster to earn big bucks with such a patent as almost every website has images linking to other websites?

Hyperlinking has been coined by Ted Nelson. Whenever we use the various forms of this word, should Ted Nelson sue us because it’s a word that is supposedly coined and owned by him because there is a patent for it? This feels like Odex all over again like what one forumer in Talkback states. Not to forget that map license problem with LTA too.

In this case, will Zemanta be sued too? Will Google be sued too as it has an image search function whereby images are displayed as thumbnails for quick viewing. How does being Slashdoted for the patent, Hardwarezone-d, ZDNet-ed, Dugg, and many more sound?

I just don’t understand why VueStar was given the patent to sue anyone who uses the patent. Wait, is the patent granted yet?

After using WP for so long and doing my own upgrades when necessary, I found that the new UI is a refreshing look. All other features work find except for the widgets. I am not the only one complaining of the way the widgets work now.

I just wanted to move my text widget to another sidebar. So, I removed it and saved. Only to realised that it has been totally deleted. That’s not what I intended. I have to find all my codes again and add a new text widget. I have no idea why the new changes to the widgets but it would be nice for us to be able to control whether the text widgets gets deleted, no?

I thought it was so much easier just to drag and drop. Now, it’s changed to something that isn’t that friendly and easy to use at all.

Blogging anonymously hurts your chances in certain contests. Perhaps in too many contests. Upon hearing the great giveaway for tickets, one would be every excited and will participate only to realise that others who have blogged about it, won the tickets in minutes by a call. Not by email as the flyer in the website had stated.

If putting a photo of a blogger on the blog means having more chances of winning contests, then where is the fairness? I could be cynical here or just plain jealous. I don’t know which. Perhaps, it was due to my negativeness for it that it hurt my chances. If that’s the case, then it isn’t ready for constructive criticism.

Heck, I could really be just jealous for all I know.

I have been using aLinks happily for quite some time. Unfortunately, it is now generating fatal error when attempting to activate the plugin. I don’t know if it’s to do with the Wordpress version or the plugin is unable to access something.

The current version is updated but there seems to be a conflict somewhere that I can’t find. I do want to use it again. However, I don’t know how to troubleshoot this part. Help.

Image via Wikipedia

Having used a number of blog directories and participating in a few of them, yes, I have way too many, I have made some observations along the way. I have tried Technorati, Ping.sg, Blog Catalog, My Blog Log and many others. All in the name of raising awareness that I have a few websites and trying to gain more traffic.

Most of the blog directories have made changes to their interfaces and algorithm along the way too. Blog directories are great to start shouting your site to everyone and hoping those with the same interest would be joining in and commenting on your website.

While there are forums for some of them, I have used a few and realised something. If you are not familiar with the regulars; don’t expect your sites to have regular traffic. If you used to be familiar with the regulars but haven’t gone out with them for any of the outings, don’t expect your entries to be supported or be even seen on the front page after 10 minutes.

Community based websites tend to have regulars and these are the people who will welcome everyone initially but after that, they will categorise the people based on the behaviour or words written in the forums or shoutboxes. If they fail to click with them, they are often ignored.

When a site claims to be community based and welcome everyone but at the same time be prejudiced towards those who have seemingly immature minds, I wonder if these very same people are immature or biased in the first place. It’s like “Pot calling the kettle black“.

Sometimes, I wonder if it was my imaginative mind overworking. However, having witnessed first hand, I realised that it isn’t me. Ultimately, blog directories work to a certain extent but participate at your own risk. People have been blacklisted just because of something that irritates others.

We have all heard of the local blog advertisers for bloggers. We have been using them since they were launched in hopes that it would add one more zero behind our digits. Alas. It wasn’t meant to be. First, there was this script that kept redirecting to another page that shouldn’t even be there.

Second, there was this script jumping to a suspended page when the host should have auto-renewed the domain license. Third, there was this change in granting privileges to certain bands of publishers who would use that one and only advertising company.

Fourth, another change soon followed by the rival. In fact, I don’t really see the difference between them as they have different ways of advertising. One gives ads only when there is a certain number of unique visitors, the other just give out ads so that bloggers have a faster rate of earning the money.

In fact, it used to be Adsense that can let the bloggers earn money faster because it is using PPC. However, in the recent times, things have changed. For bloggers, it meant a slow down of income as companies want action done instead of just visitors visiting their page for a short while and not buying stuff from them.

Despite the turn of events, blog advertising still is lucrative because bloggers don’t have to do paid posts and just refer to the advertisers without lifting a finger. Paid posts are notoriously ignored and even looked down by PR.

Some posts are linking to link farms and the bloggers may not even know that until someone tells them. Thus, PPP has taken a slight beating from this as they don’t seem to filter advertisers looking for bloggers who will blog about them. Some sites have ridiculous requirements such as “must have PR3 and above” and “300 words” and “USD$5″ for a 300-word post. The problem? Sometimes, there is nothing to write about the site for 300 words and it sure ain’t worth my efforts writing for USD$5 for 300 words.

Hence, the attraction of blog advertising is there. It still is lucrative for those whose CTR is high.

After my initial frustrations at Nuffnang not receiving any more advertisement because I’m not in the Glitterati band, I decided to split the advertising methods. I just want to cash out the money, that’s all. If something doesn’t work that well, I want it to cash out soon so that I can make use of other opportunities.

Web advertising is lucrative but it works for some while it doesn’t for others. For my case. I need more traffic and this site may not have the necessary traffic to attract the kind of readers that the advertises want. I’m working very hard at it. I do like the idea of advertisers here but at what risk?

I keep getting my PageRank changed each time Google updates its algorithm. I don’t even know what will make its PR up again. It does seem that one thing is for sure. PPP and other similar posts here are not welcomed and the PR will always be 0.

Something I dislike but it’s a part of life, monopoly is the game here. If you can be the one and only one, you get the largest pie.