My Life With IT

I have blogged for more than 2 years with different platforms. When I first started out, I thought it was just to voice out my thoughts and feelings on things that affect me deeply. Albeit too deeply at times.

What I thought blogging was about:

• I can just voice my thoughts.
• I can vent my anger.
• I can write anything I want.
• I can earn some money.
• I can blog for life.

What blogging has evolved:

• I can’t just say anything about the bad bosses I had encountered.
• I can’t identify the companies unless it’s positive. This is still debatable.
• I can’t write about anything I want.
• I get spammed.
• I get comments about posts that I have written that talk about my perspective being wrong.
• I can’t really earn peanuts if I am not famous enough in the blogsphere.
• I can’t just rely on blogging alone.

I haven’t really lost interest in blogging here. I have been busy with looking at other concepts because I am jobless in a couple of weeks. I have tested a few of my concepts and it’s picking up slow because I haven’t inserted any sexy images for them. Besides, seductive images don’t work because they aren’t about exotic tastes.

I may reveal more of myself but at this moment, I am not ready. I hope to be able to do something useful in life for once besides mindless working. As for the perspectives being wrong, I am not wrong. You are.

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.

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.

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.

Image via Wikipedia

There are certain policies to be known. It is known that there are certain companies that dislike their workers blogging about work even without giving away any clues. I can also see why a certain company dislike bloggers. That company has official bloggers in its portal. In addition, they look as if they are able to voice their own opinions.

However, after going through it for some time, I realise that the topics are outdated. As any good blogger know, data must be fresh online. You must be the first publish any data so that you will be the pioneer of the data and all the trackbacks or ping backs will belong to you most of the time.

Google is known for indexing sites that have been around for a long time. Work isn’t meant for the online eyes. Companies are not ready for that. I doubt they ever will as the cache is known for its long memory. I have blogged about work but never where I have worked in.

I don’t give out names of the companies I have worked for and neither do I even dare to reveal to any manager that I am blogging. It’s dangerous. However, with my Facebook account linking to the blogs, I’m starting to wonder if I should have even linked them in my Facebook.

The 1st rule of blogging for personal sites is never to blog about the company’s name. You never know when your boss is going to google for you. 2nd rule, no real names on blogs. I am wondering if some blog awards like omy is giving out has a purpose besides giving out awards. They require real names and NRIC for identification purpose.

With the earnings from Nuffnang having stopped for 3 months, I believe that my patience has run out. There are no longer any advertisements because I am not an exclusive Glitterati, whatever that means. Thus, my opportunities have dwindled to nil. Thanks, I thought it was a good idea, just like Adsense.

However, I was wrong. Utterly wrong. There is no way I can run a blog or site if I need to depend only on one and only one way of earning my money. This is just like investment, a little diversity is needed as a backup in case one fails. This is the same in concept of having 2 hard disks in a computer too.

You don’t want your main hard disk to fail only to realise that your data has died along with it too. So, I’m getting rid of Nuffnang along with my earnings as I don’t know how long it’ll take me to cash out either. I don’t like the space cluttered with directs only to the Nuffnang website whereby I don’t even get referral points.