My Life With IT

Having been blogging for quite some time, I have come to identify that blogging is an obsession. A blog is a site where ideas and opinions are meshed together.

Blog Abuse

After reading different types of blogs, from niche to personal, I have realised the abuse that blogs have become. There are many who make use of the traffic from genuine niche blogs to redirect to their money making sites infested with Google Adsense, Kontera and affiliates. The sites have no content value except to trick the non-savvy into clicking the advertisements.

Image via Wikipedia

Blog Wars

When someone blogs about the personal opinion of a certain subject, another takes offence and starts a post linking to the “offending” post. Another trigger could be from an interview with the newspapers and one blogger starts to be offended at being quoted as “second fiddle” to the other. This starts with the blogger stating the reasons that the other isn’t good enough and a blog war is started.

Throughout my journey with blogging, I have experimented with a few niches that I have interests in and they are gaining traffic at a slow pace. This is a good sign as it meant that I am doing something in the right direction.

While there have been negatives seen along the way, blogs don’t necessarily mean negative. I haven’t seen anything that has no negatives.

New Friends

New friends with similar interests are found. It’s much more fun talking about blogging stuff with people who have similar interest in blogging.

Community

A community is created and it’s filled with more people who have tried blogging with different platforms and their frustrations with the platforms.

Knowledge Shared

Knowledge is shared among people with common interest. There have been times when one posted a request for looking for missing friends or family members whereby the people were found.

Blogs have evolved from personal diary to niche whereby different sites attract the group that is being targeted. Some have even started their own eHow, Wikipedia and even shop blogs. Shop blogs are gaining popularity in certain countries due to the uniqueness of the products and most of the time, availability of products that can’t be found in the country.

This is a group writing project by Daily Blog Tips.

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.

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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.

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.