Postcards from the Funny Farm

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My wife invited me up as she was painting our son’s room. She’s sort of “owned” it as her task and art project and up to now she hadn’t invited me into the mall of plastic, masking tape, and drop cloths that is Brandon’s room.

As I saw her virtually collapsed under the window, I asked her what I could do to help finish the job. I could tell she was feeling overwhelmed so I started showing her how it would be easy for me to finish the last wall. It needed tape on the base and the top and it needed primering and then a couple coats of paint on top of that. At the time I had just received a $30 writing offer which for me is huge. I’ve been trying lately to get blog jobs that pay, but here my wife was virtually collapsed. I decided I’d be quite the selfish idiot if I put this job off.

I sent my wife downstairs with the order of getting some food. It was after noon and she was a little shaky from not having eaten yet. After she left I learned a great lesson. I looked at all the stuff that needed to be done and decided instead of trying to do it all, I would select a small part and do it perfectly. Then I did that. After that, I picked another one and so on. Within an hour, I finished the room. When my wife came up to check on me with a piece of toast in her hand, she was astonished at all I had accomplished.

She went out to the jacuzzi with our one and three year old, and I went downstairs where I was able to finish that big writing job. Victory! Lesson learned?

When painting, or life, gets overwhelming, map out chunks at a time to finish. Don’t get overwhelmed. Before you know it, you’ll be victorious.

Over the past year or so, I’ve met several excellent bloggers who really know their stuff. One in particular is Jacob Share who authors a few really “top-shelf” blogs. I call them that because their circulation is high along with their analytics. However, In addition to that, they have subjects relevant and helpful to me as a blogger. Group Writing Projects, is one of those excellent blogs. If you have a blog to promote or if you enjoy reading blogs, I want you to know about this resource. Getting into one of these things can explode a post. One of mine went from 27 views to nearly 3,000 as a result of a group writing project. Every little strategy helps, they are like seeds. After all, most of us internet writers secretly hope to be more popular in searches than stuff like women’s lingerie, do we not ;)

Jacob was kind enough to let me interview him and share it with you all. Please visit Group Writing Projects after reading, it’s an excellent resource. Here it is:

1. Who should use Group Writing Projects.

By announcing their group writing projects on my site, creators get more exposure for their group writing project and their blog, which in turn drives more traffic, participants and potential subscribers. Plus they earn more links for their project and its participants, which they can use to attract even more of the above. Finally, creators will also be able to share and learn best practices to make their projects even better next time.

Every creator is also a potential participant and participants have it good on Group Writing Projects, the only place they need to subscribe to stay updated on where the latest group writing projects are happening. It’s a great way to get blog post suggestions regularly, with the additional benefit of guaranteed links and attention to your article AND blog. The “random” appearance of gwps also helps bring your blog to readers that have probably never seen it before.

It’s win-win.

2. What is the benefit to your visitors?

Very few blogs can keep up a high rate of quality unless they’re making enough money to support themselves full-time or the blogger doesn’t post very often. For other blogs to have success, even their “lower quality” posts need to have value for their readers, and that’s the tack I’ve been taking with Group Writing Projects. Most of the posts on the site are newsworthy project announcements and results roundups that will only pull you in when you need them but that you’re nevertheless happy to see. Otherwise, higher quality, instructional and opinion articles come out appear every few weeks but my goal is to increase that frequency to once a week.

Taking a different angle with your question, Group Writing Projects doesn’t filter. The site will announce any gwp that comes to my attention, but I will not hesitate to recommend against participating if it’s justified. I have an article coming out soon with more on that, it will surprise some people.

3. What was your motivation to start this?

Very simple. When I first discovered and fell in love with gwps while blogging on JobMob, my reflex was to search for more and I quickly realized that there was no centralized resource bringing them all together. I decided almost right away that I would take on the project but I actually put it off for almost 6 months before getting down to work on it. Both my blogs started to take shape in November, and both were launched a few months later. I may do that again this year as well with yet another :)

4. When did you start?

Group Writing Projects was semi-officially launched in February 2008. I say ’semi’ because I had a whole launch planned but I froze the launch halfway along the plan. That’s the topic of a whole blog post in itself that I’ve promised my readers so I won’t go further here. As for traffic, it varies, by design. The announcement and results posts were designed to be easy for subscribers- quick to scan in your feed reader, with links to creators’ sites if you decide to participate. They also don’t have much interest for search engines, and so they don’t bring many people to the site but that’s fine. The “higher quality” articles tend to do well for the opposite reasons.

5. What is your defining objective with Group Writing Projects?

I make websites that help people. JobMob is about helping people find jobs, and Group Writing Projects is about helping bloggers to achieve their blogging goals. For example my recent Building RSS group writing project has only begun to help bloggers with tips about how to get more subscribers, and the upcoming free e-book for my readers will be so handy that every blogger will want it.

As for an objective, I will only be satisfied when I see gwps as a regular blogging device appearing on blogs of all sizes, in all industries and niches. That’s when I’ll feel that my work is done ;)

Thanks for the interview, Damien. If anyone has questions, they should just come over to Group Writing Projects and ask in the comments or contact form.

If you wonder how I keep all the postcards flying with no more than a teacher’s paycheck and a hungry family of 5 taking most of it, here’s one way.

With my recent posts on PageRank and Making Money online being out there I thought I’d take one step beyond and mention a blog advertising company I recently started working with. It appears to be very lucrative. It’s called Buy Blog Reviews and it’s sort of an auctioneer between blogging writers and advertisers. It’s like PayPerPost but the difference is that you bid back and forth for jobs.

To the layman out there this means I will peruse a list of open ad offers. Then, if I find one that fits my blog niche and I like the idea of making a post out if it, I will make an offer. This format can be really cool because if the advertiser accepts you know they’ve seen your blog and she/he is ready to pay you based on the merits of your site.

I think some of the paid blogging companies just give the advertiser a general idea of the blogs they will be paying. In that respect, I like BuyBlogReviews better. I’ll be reporting how much work I get through them as well as the quality in my monthly updates but for now the work looks steady and promising. It should bring some unique topics to the blog as well since the advertising pool is highly eclectic.

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The past 3 days and today (7/26/08) my Google Page Rank appears to be back. I tried playing aloof and I didn’t write a gushing post since I have been wrong before. Sometimes the toolbar malfunctions, this is something I have verified by many sites and blogs out there. More often than not though, it’s correct. The long story made short is that yes, indeed my PageRank has gone back to the PR4 it was when it got spanked months ago. In this post, I tell you in a few sentences exactly what I did to get it back (I’ve been keeping a careful journal on everything!)

Fearing I might be jumping the gun, I emailed one of my blog mentors and friend Derek Semmler yesterday and asked him to verify the PR4 change for me. He’s seen me go through the PR0 ordeal with this blog and even written a few really cool articles about PageRank hits on his blogs. He said that sadly my new rank wasn’t registering on his toolbar. (Thanks again for checkin’ Derek) So, I kind of gave up and forgot about it. That’s why today after seeing it still in my toolbar and verifying the change with some 3rd party sources, I was elated to see it was indeed a true PR4.

My understanding via Matt Cutts’ blog is that Google has “expired” some of the prior penalties. In addition to that, here is what I have done. It’s nothing mysterious but it takes some effort. My attitude toward success has always been that I don’t mind work when I know it’s worth something. Some of you may have seen my fave Woody Allen quote come up once in a while here, “80% of success is showing up.” If you are doing the right things by Google to get PageRank success, I’d even make that an 85 instead of an 80:

1) Guestblog monthly: Set a specific number as a goal. Ask higher ranked blogs if you can guestblog and link back to your index in the post (usually a signature looks the least pompous). I’ve been averaging 5 guestblogs a month in the last 6 months. All my guestblogs are represented by an intro here and you can read them through this link: Those backlinks affect PageRank. You can also invite bloggers to guestblog on yours. You usually get a link from their blog announcing their work. A classic example of this is Chelle’s recent PageRank post on mine:

2) Every sponsored post/link on your blog needs to have the attribute: rel=”nofollow” in its relative links. I won’t bother explaining, just do it. It took me 4 days in between work, wife, and screaming kids to change all mine to this. I pity anyone who has more than say 100. But if you make it a practice, you will never have a problem with this issue. I could say more on this, please ask questions if you have them. My assumption is that most people get this already. Obviously I recently learned it :)

3) Write quality posts to a niche audience (as much as possible) that people read, link to, and comment on. (Reading and inking to parts are way more important but comment have ripple effects for lnkage, traffic, etc.) I’ve written extensively on the value of a blog post but this subject is a bit subjective. I doubt any SEO writers will be subscribing as a result. However, if what you do is kind of like my writing, please check out the series, it was written with you in mind: V.A.L.U.E. of a Blog.

4) Show your indefinable magic as a blogger! How could I leave that one out. Don’t forget to be yourself. Remember that the dead splash page of Firefox, for example, is a 6/10! Who reads that? Blogs started out as WEBLOGS where interesting people shared their research, later their thoughts and quotes, and finally they are now a place where anyone can self-publish anything. Let your light shine.

Folks, it’s been a long rocky road since they spanked my PageRank (man that sounds bad doesn’t it ;). I am enjoying the smoothness now that it’s back. Like it or not, Google PageRank is an issue of economics and you should have it. So I am officially not a hater of Google PageRank, they have done right by me. It seems like there are as many ranks out there as there are acne treatments, but Google has the most clout.

If you want to know more regarding this topic, just ask. I think I’m done for now. This is meant to be in fact a psychology niche blog most the time. Maybe you can persuade me to write some other stuff I’ve done to improve my blog’s rank. Now go jump in the pool (that’s where I’m headed). I’ve also reignited my other two blogs and it’s time to rev some speed. You might say I’ve had 3 car covers on in my blog garage and now they are coming off. Thanks for being a part of this ride.

I didn’t post the last two days but I have still been hard at work online. My good friend KatelynJane’s migration to a self-hosted Wordpress blog got me back in the saddle with my too-long-neglected personal blog. By that I mean, giving her some pointers on how easy it is to create multiple blogs made me want to get my personal blog up and running again. I haven’t even launched it yet, but for a sneak peek (and to get me on your blogrolls out there) it is at:

Damien at the Speed of Life

I’ll be back with my next post in my current series on “Open Mind,” but for now expect a short delay as I get the Online Diary up and running and finish my last 4 days of teaching summer school. There are reasons why multiple blogs are a good idea. Then again, all the work does have its drawbacks. What do you think about having multiple blogs? Some people I talk to have dozens. What is your perception of an online diary?

This one is for my readers who blog and all those who take the time to comment. Comments are the vehicle of the future for blog communication, networking, and yes: making money. This is true because as more and more spam ensues, we will only be able to tell what is real from what is not by the manner of comments we read. You know those watches they try and sell you in front of the grocery store. You can probably tell they are fakes, but what about the guy who has the real Guess watches for dirt cheap? You want to recognize him as well. So is the way of comments. The comments we leave should show that we are indeed real readers/customers. I am very thankful for the amount of comments I receive here and I want to show respect by making sure they all make it to publishing and that they not get stuck in a spam quarantine. Akismet, the native WordPress comment spam protection plugin, spams a lot of good comments on my blog. I don’t always have the time to check it for false-negatives. As a result, I have probably missed at least several comments from many great writers, friends, and visitors. I’ve suffered with it long enough. Today I added a second tool to my arsenal. Now I’m using Recaptcha.

A couple synchronous things happened today that got me thinking about comments in the future of the blogosphere: 1) Wordpress came out with its latest update, 2.6 and 2) Entrecard sent me an email explaining they have teamed up with Sez Who to give their readers more credits when they have a Sez Who enabled blog. Lucky for me, I have been using Sez Who already for a while. It’s not too complicated, you just activate a Wordpress plugin (if you are like me and using Wordpress). It gives the author of a post a small icon that when rolled over shows her/his comment history on that blog. There are also rating features. It’s neat. Try it out.

As I was upgrading Wordpress I realized I had 77 comments in Akismet. I got that sinking feeling that maybe some of them were not spam (the term is “False Negatives”). Sure enough I found out that comments from some of my best friends, and most valuable networks, were NOT POSTED! As much as I love WordPress and see it as very good spam protection with Akismet, I had to activate Recaptcha as another layer of protection. Basically, it is better now because the reCaptcha keeps most spam out requiring a human typing code. Then, the Akismet is still necessary for the spam that can beat ReCaptcha. I still have to check my Akismet daily, but it is likely to be much less to pore through. This is a plugin/service I have always loved I just thought it was too cumbersome for you my readers. The commenter has to type the letters from a random image to make the comment go through. Akismet guesses whether a comment is spam which does not guarantee 100% true negatives (ie; only spam will be caught). It can and does often catch good comments. If I miss them, it has the potential of offending my commenters.

So … in a nutshell, I think the commenting revolution is about to begin and for me in my rocket ship, we’ll be flying with recaptcha. Does typing the ReCaptcha to comment bother you? I hope not … I want to make participating in discussions here as easy and trustworthy as possible. Nonetheless, I have tried both and I’m not disciplined enough to check the Akismet every day. Here’s to a great future of communication where the blog owners do everything they can to “keep it real” and so do the commenters. My apologies to those whose legit comments never showed up here. It wasn’t my doing and it won’t happen again.

After writing part II of a series I’m doing called “Love Homework: Mirroring” over at at It Might be Love I got a really inspiring email from the author that included a guest post from she herself. (So cool!) She’s part of a select few that answers my open plea to write here occasionally. It allows the oxygen to once again enter my bloodstream as I take a rest from posting at the Funny Farm :) FYI, I interviewed Chelle a few months ago here. It’s a wonderful interview for bloggers and/or lovers to read :) The niche of my blog here is psychology on the offbeat side and her post, below, is about as “in the pocket” with that as you can get. I hope you enjoy Chelle’s post about the worth of ones work.

For the past few weeks, as we’ve been reading here at Postcards From the Funny Farm, we’ve been listening to Damien go on and on about Google Pagerank and rating systems based on numbers. And as usual it got me thinking about the “deeper side of things” which inspired me to write this post.

There are 2 important things to remember in life: 1. It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks of you, you’re still who you are and 2. Why I Failed Physics Class (I know the second one seems pretty strange, but keep reading and you’ll see what I mean.)

It’s so important to realize it really doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks of you. I applaud Damien for coming up with his own CAN Self Blog Rating System. Your self rating system should be all you rely on and all that matters. There are billions of people out there, each with their own thoughts and opinions. Sooner or later you’re bound to collide with someone or something that doesn’t agree. If you set your mind to it you can do anything. Take for example the man who recently made a life scale car out of matchsticks. Do you think the neighbors held back on “rating” that idea?

But think about it: If someone thinks you’re weird or silly or mean, does that make it true? Of course not! What do they know? Just because they might have some “system” or outdated values to judge you it doesn’t mean they KNOW AND UNDERSTAND YOU. And since they don’t know and understand you, what they think just simply doesn’t matter. In the end, it’s what you know and understand and what you believe that is true.

So now that I’ve explained why it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, let’s move onto why I failed physics class.

Our physics teacher often gave us test questions like these: “A guy is riding on a motorcycle at 60 mph. Up ahead is a 36 degree jump over a cliff with a distance of 50 feet to the other side. Will he make it to the other side?”

Sure, there’s a mathematical equation to finding the solution to this problem, but I personally refused to answer it. How can we REALLY know he will or will not make it to the other side? What if a big gust of wind suddenly comes and makes him turn his wheel? What if he gets dust in his eyes? What if by some miracle a huge eagle comes swooping down and lifts him by his shirt collar to the other side?

Sure, those things probably won’t happen. But there is A LOT more to life than just numbers and math formulas. Life is full of variables. Just because numbers say something will or will not happen, doesn’t mean it can’t. It’s an old cliché, but there’s an exception to every rule.

Needless to say, my physics teacher didn’t like me too much. After about 9 weeks of the class we both mutually decided it be best I become the first person in my high school’s history to be allowed to drop Honors Physics. But I refused to believe that everything in life can be generalized, predicted, and relied on as being true just because that’s what the numbers said.

We can hope that Damien and other fellow bloggers’ pagerank woes will soon be solved. But until then, it’s always good to remember the important stuff in life isn’t ranked by numbers. And even if your blog does manage to bring you and other people a lot of money, ultimately it is only the standards that you set for yourself that should determine your success.

This has been a guest post by Chelle, blog author of It Might be Love. Pack your virtual luggage and go read a few posts of hers why don’t you.

This post is another (I hope the last) rant about Google so feel free to jump ship before you go one. I don’t usually like to whine about stuff, I like to change things or shut up generally. After this post I plan to pretty much shut up about Google PageRank but I will respond to comments of course ;)

I’ve been setting goals for my blog and recording them here since December of 2007. It has been gratifying in almost every respect but I still am not where I’d like to be in other ranking systems such as Google and Technorati. Instead of getting frustrated or trying to game the system, I’ve decided to make my own ranking system based on the things that I value in my blog. I’m calling it the CAN. system My hope is that you, the regular reader, and anyone else who wants to will follow my progress and learn that serious writers can make legitimate money on their blogs without PageRank. My goal since December of 2006 has been to create, innovate, and intergrate quality content. I haven’t lost this goal, I’ve simply defined it more clearly and added “money” as a goal element. This blog does NOT deserve to have a zero PageRank.

Google seems to be highly puritanical when it comes to paid-links on a blog. It’s actually worse than “highly puritanical ” it’s near obscenely puritanical … it makes no rational sense. Who are they serving really? Do you care if a helpful blog post was paid or not? I know I don’t.

I have examined Google’s criteria for PageRank and frankly, I don’t think they even know what they are doing with it. Nonetheless, we have to suck it up as bloggers. It’s the industry guideline that advertisers and publishers use when hiring and taking blogs seriously. Thank goodness many influential bloggers are starting to come out against Google. IZEA is leading an effort against PageRank “.... As for me, watch for my first CAN. update in August. You can see my goals for July here. Maybe it will give you something you’ll find engaging to read by your espresso machines.

One thing, I will give away right now as I close: To make my logo and button for the CAN, Rank System was to use a tutorial for Photoshop. If you’d like to try something similar, it’s a lot of fun. The Google logo itself contains a font that costs $99. But this tutorial shows you how to make it with Ti.... It is cool. There are also tutorials there for companies like Hooters and O’Reilly … a lot more fun stuff. Enjoy and remember in whatever it is you blog about you CAN.

There’s been a lot of buzz about Google PageRank on the internet lately. Many people have had their “currency” (I say that tongue in cheek but that IS what it is for those who seek advertisers favor for a living) taken from a 5 or 6 sometimes (or more) to a 0 overnight. I wrote about how my page rank was set from 4 to 0 and it was a real bummer let me tell you. I was angry.

Then some time passed. I was once the wild horse on this subject that Google has finally broken. I want my pagerank back if I can swing it.

I decided that it is possible Google is trying to do something right (I didn’t say probable). I can’t question their motives. So I started searching the web for examples of bloggers who had restored their Page Rank and the stuff I found wasn’t too promising. The first 3 that came up in a Google search with the search terms: “How I Got my PageRank back,” had some good advice, but when I by chance checked their pageranks, they were ALL STILL ZERO! My experience was that there were two waves in Google smackdown: 1) An initial and then a restoration of many and then a more resolute “spank” as IZEA calls it. (see button up top.)

Then I found a promising one. You can read it here. It’s where I got all the ideas I have engaged to try and get my page rank back. First, I went through and for every sponsored post link and/or commercial paid link, I added this inside: rel=”nofollow”

It took me a long time because I had two pages of PayPerPost links and quite a few PayU2Blog links I had to put rel=”nofollow” in. the rel=”nofollow” keeps the search engines from crawling links you add it to. This process took me 4 days to complete. I can’t imagine how hard this would be for someone who made their living at sponsored posts. You’d almost be better off just starting new. As for me, I’ve only done them for several months.

Next, as indicated in the article, I requested reconsideration from Google. (see below) Now I just wait. Google says it “may take a while.”

Hello. This is my second request for reconsideration to have my Page Rank restored. I believe the reason it was removed was because I did not identify paid links with a rel=”nofollow” tag. I took some out altogether and then requested reconsideration but I didn’t understand how to insert the rel=”nofollow” until recently.

I have spent the better part of 4 days going through all my posts and adding rel=”nofollow” to any commercial or paid links. I feel 100% confident that my site is worthy of page rank and that it will not follow paid or commercial links ever again in the future. I also know that now it does not have any paid links that are not kept from the search engine crawler by rel=”nofollow”

I average 80 visitors a day and I value the Google Pagr Rank system in letting readers know my content is trustworthy. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

To close I just want it to go on record with my readers that I still think Google is purposely sabotaging people who use paid links. I find their way in this to be at best anal-retentive and at worst crooked but I can’t deny the power pagerank has over advertisers. I am hopeful it will change but for now, I’m takin’ what their givin’ … well, you know the rest. To Google I say this: “My hands are held up high.”

So I’ve started this series and I will keep you posted what I have done and what result there is good or bad. I hope it helps out those in my shoes: Content-filled bloggers that are being penalized by Google for making money with their work.

How did I do in June of 2008?

Didn’t quite meet my goals in traffic and money, but publishing was a slam dunk. I think Social Media will save me in July.
Traffic
Goal: Traffic: 3,000 uniques
Actual: 2,554 uniques

I spent time playing and exploring ways “outside the box” to blog and you see the consequences here. At the same time, I feel my exploration was worth it. You’ll notice I now have all my top referring social media sites linked in my layout. I am investing more in them: ie; Chawlk, Blog Catalog, etc. We’ll see how that works for July’s numbers. I invite you to join my community at MyBlogLog and some of the other sites through the links at the top and in the sidebar. Networking is cool because the increased traffic works both ways!

Publishing
Goal: 3
Actual: 4

• Create Through Necessity a guest blog at Katelynjane’s Notebook.
• The Upside of Recession: Consciousness published at Blogcritics Magazine.
• Love Homework a guest blog at It Might be Love
• Playing through Diffucult Times a guest blog at Be Playful (Scheduled for an early July publishing)

Money
Goal: 200 bucks.
Actual: 115 bucks.

Due to not having PR, IZEA doesn’t give me the options I used to have as a PR4. This is very ironic since doing paid posts is likely why my PR was taken away, but I am not complaining. I feel like PR is going to change it’s ranking algorithm eventually and I intend to keep writing for hire when it makes sense. I’ll never publish what I consider a boring post. You have my word on that. And hey … 115 bucks is a lot of money! Incidentally, I just thought I’d throw in here that despite the recession, if you live in the area, the Boston jobs are flourishing. Thought I’d send the site out if anyone needs it.

Goals for July 2008 are:
Traffic: 2700 uniques
Publishing: 3
Money: 200 bucks

Final thought:

This month you will see me a lot in social media. I intend to use that more to try and meet my July goal of 2700 uniques. I think it is an untapped resource here at the Farm. I will report the results of this strategy next month. Maybe I’ll see you at the social media sites?

Thanks for following this series! Watch how I do in July 2008. -Damien