October 26th, 2007 — Blog
That must have been the longest title for a post in this blog. If you are reading this, the title probably got you interested. And yes, if I may repeat myself, are you one of those who removed paid links or blogrolls when your PR dropped? I am talking about Google Page Rank. Not Public Relations. If you are not one of them, I am proud of you. Keep them there. If you are one of those who removed the paid links or dropped your blogroll buddies with the hope that your PR will go up, SHAME ON YOU! Whilst your PR may or may not go up during the next Google PR exercise, your Public Relationship skills are left much to be desired.
When your PR was better (before the Google slapping), you craved for these advertisers. You put links all over your site to show that you are selling advertising space on your blog. You give 101 reasons (well, perhaps not that many) why advertisers should put their money on your blog. And when they do, you grin from ear to ear seeing your paypal funds or savings accounts growing fatter each month. Some of you even thank them profusely for advertising at your site and try to sweeten the deal by acknowledging their patronage through a monthly roundup post and giving links to their sites within that post of yours. You even go to the extent of telling your readers to give your advertisers a visit as they are good people.
When your PR was growing, you crave for incoming links. You get into link exchanges. You rub my back, I’ll rub yours. You shout and shout so that somebody will notice you and link to your site. When they do, you reciprocate because you believe in this thing called link karma. You make buddy-buddy blogging pals. You place their links prominently on your site with headers like Favourite Sites, Sites I Often Visit, Blog Buddies, and the like. As far as your readers are concerned, you are endorsing those sites. They take it that you genuinely endorse those sites you place on the blogroll. Continue reading →
October 25th, 2007 — Blog
Bloggers around the world have been abuzz with news and discussion about the latest Google PR exercise which saw many “influential” bloggers losing their Google Page Ranking. Some of them are as follows:-
Closer to home, well-known bloggers like Sabahan and 5xmom also suffered a drop in their ranking. I have now become the latest statistics - not on this blog but on my food recipe blog as well as my personal blog which came down from 4 to 3. Meanwhile, one of my other dormant blogs which contained solely photographs had an increase from 0 to 3 even though it has been lying dormant for about 1 year!
Many theories have been discussed - selling of text links, advertisements, paid posts, linking to “harmful” sites, etc on why Google decided to reduce the PR for many of these blogs. However, based on my observation, they are merely theories and will remain a mystery. I bet (well, figure of speech because I don’t actually indulge in betting) that even Google is unable to give an indisputable reason/s on how this exercise actually works. Otherwise, an official statement would have been given. Why the secrecy? It is not even a national security issue. Continue reading →
October 22nd, 2007 — Blog
When an opportunity comes a calling, you don’t close the door. Little did I realize that this blogging hobby which I took up sometime in January 2006 has now resulted in two of my articles (food reviews) being published in a local newspaper. If you had told me prior to my blogging venture that something I write will be published in the mainstream media, I would have shook my head in disbelief. But it happened. To say that it is not gratifying would be a lie. It feels good to be appreciated. Afterall, I am human and humans like being appreciated. Don’t you?
But the thrill of blogging has not stopped. Over the past week or so, someone wrote to me and asked if I would like to write for a travel site as a part time co-author. Though I was hesitant at first on my capacity to write there (since I have a couple of blogs to manage as well as a full time job to work), I decided to give it a try since the site administrator informed me that I am at liberty to write any number of articles per week. While writing paid posts is one thing, being paid to write on a wide variety of topics (there are no less than 15 categories of travel related topics) at my own leisure and discretion is another step further in this blogging venture of mine.
A new career in the future perhaps? Well, not for now. At least not in the foreseeable future. I still love my work very much to leave it for full time blogging.
October 14th, 2007 — Blog
Recently, I blogged about what set me blogging in the first place and how I have kept my blogging goal intact. A little over two days later, I received a comment in my food blog which brought a big smile to my face. No amount of money can buy the warm feeling I had when I read the comment. It motivates me to continue blogging for as long as I can. This kind of motivation far surpasses the motivation through making money from blogging.
The latter can sort of turn stale after a while because put it this way, you are not getting any personal feedback about the effort you have put into the paid posts. You just get paid. The only time perhaps when you do get feedback is when your post is rejected because it did not comply with the advertiser’s requirements. Rarely does the advertiser compliment you on a job well done. Well, that’s what I feel anyway.
This is what my reader commented:- Continue reading →
October 12th, 2007 — Blog
If you are a blogger, is this your daily routine? Anyway, the festive weekend is here and I will be away till Tuesday. I’ll look out the window and see what I shall write about.
Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons. Excellent site!
October 10th, 2007 — Blog
Skellie wrote a thought provoking article and here’s an excerpt:-
To grow and grow and grow, get more hits, more subscribers, more page views, is not a useful goal for a blogger or webmaster. Of course, it’s something we should all be trying to do, but it’s only a means to an end. Treating it like an end in itself is a bit like eating constantly but never feeling satisfied. If you grow to a certain extent, you never achieve complete success, because you could always grow some more.
I can’t agree with her more. Some blog specifically for money, some blog to express themselves which they won’t do in the physical world out there, some blog to share skills whilst some blog to join the blogging phenomenon. The list of blogging intent can go on and on.
As for me, I still remember that in the initial months of my blogging venture, my goal was to seek to touch at least one life out there. Noble intention, some might say. After all, back then I was solely blogging through my personal blog and had shared a bit of life experience from the viewpoint of a follower of Christ. It was also a way for me to share my beliefs with people I know, albeit not in a preachy form (though I must confess that sometimes I feel that the tone of my writing is bordering or is in fact some form of preaching!). Continue reading →
October 7th, 2007 — Blog
It is by chance that I stumbled upon Suck My Lolly’s Free Blogger Designs. The designs are colourful with a keen sense of colour matching and there are clear instructions on how to install the templates into Blogger. I think the designs are more suited for female bloggers as the blogger templates they seem to have a certain feminine look to it, especially the cartoons of women in most of the headers.
These are a sample of 3 of the free blogger templates available at Suck My Lolly (kinda suggestive title, don’t you think so?).
October 5th, 2007 — Blog
The other day, I was sharing with a fellow lawyer about my blogging hobby and how I have managed to sustain the blogs I have as well as finding the readers for them. I did not realise that there are so many things you could do, which will no doubt, add up to the readership experience. At first, I wanted to use the word “Traffic” but I think “Readership” is a more polite word since I am referring to people, some of whom I have become friends with. Anyway, these are some of the things I did to increase readership.
Website
I looked out for beautiful wordpress themes and chosed one which I felt most appropriate. I learn from other sites and I tweaked my site by making small differences so as to make my website unique. I finally settled on a minimalist theme as it is the current trend and having read about numerous comments on how advertisements and useless widgets tend to irritate readers. I wanted to give my readers a pleasant reading environment.
I enabled plugins such as to display my popular posts so that new readers can see what other readers have deemed good enough to read. This feature also increased the number of page views on this site. I made sure that my site is accessible even through mobile feeds just in case there is someone out there who likes reading blogs on mobile phones. I also ensured that my RSS subscription button is visible above the fold. Continue reading →
October 4th, 2007 — Blog
One of my regular readers, Wayne Liew, asked in my previous post whether a blogger could fit diverse topics in one blog (I’ve paraphrased his question). That question stemmed from my revelation that I have just launched my third dot.com, which is one of the 7 blogs which I manage. I did answer him briefly there but I think it is opportune for me here to write further about it. Thanks to Wayne for his question which gave me this topic to write about. And true to my food passion, I will give you a story about Burger King, Sushi King, Chicken Rice Shop and Happy Coffeeshop to illustrate my point.
Burger King is an international well-known chain of restaurant which serves, surprise surprise, burgers. Actually, I would rate them amongst the best I have eaten so far. When I feel like eating burgers, I will look for Burger King. Their burger buns are nicely toasted, burger meats are substantial and lean, vegetables fresh and crisp and cheese of reasonably good quality. I get satisfaction chomping on their burgers - be it the Chicken Royale, Swiss Double Mushroom Cheese or Whopper. They stick to their speciality, burgers, and I can see that the crowd loves them.
Sushi King is a chain of restaurants in Malaysia which serves primarily sushi on conveyor belts. They are found in most shopping centres and their sushi is priced from as low as RM2.00 per plate to RM6.00 depending on the type of sushi served. Apart from that, they also serve ala carte meals. I would place Sushi King as a slightly lower end kind of Japanese restaurant in terms of pricing, and probably food quality as well. It caters a lot to those in their teens and youths as well as younger families. Businessmen who are looking into entertaining their clients would hardly think of Sushi King but would go to more fancy Japanese restaurants instead. Continue reading →
October 3rd, 2007 — Blog
Gasp! What began as One dot.com in January this year has now grown to Three dot.coms in less than 10 months. And those three are but part of my other blogs (I have 2 active ones and 2 inactive ones in Blogger) which makes it SEVEN websites in all. Is it worth it? Well, these Three dot.coms are paid through earnings I make online - advertisement and such. So, I have not been out of pocket. That gives me the assurance that what I am doing is still a hobby which need not incur any expenses to me as far as taking out cash is concerned.
The stuffs I learnt by diversifying my types of blogs have been tremendous. I have blogs ranging from personal thoughts to food recipes to hotel sites to blogging and now, my new venture. Having diversified blogs help me to keep my brains ticking, ensured that I read more and learn new information every day. It enhances by knowledge.
Having diversified blogs enabled me to get to know bloggers and readers with different interests and this also resulted in a bigger network of friends. Naturally, the exchange of views pertaining to what I have blogged also benefited me. In fact, a couple of online friends have even contacted me for professional consultation.
Continue reading →