Postcards from the Funny Farm

This is a continuation of my prior article on categories. It seems I’ve gathered more information on tags and I feel it would be helpful to my readers’ seo if I shared it. We are moving toward a tagging net generation more and more it seems. Wordpress now has internal tagging and I read about it being on other platforms. So what is the difference between tags and categries? The simple answer is: tags are a lot of work!

As a Problogger article points out: Categories are linear filing of your blog posts and tags are “granular.” This means your posts have better seo if you category and tag them as opposed to just categorizing them.

If you look at human communication from a distance you hear dissonant terms pop up within any given conversation. Someone may be talking about transportation and throw in Osama bin Laden as a related anecdote. Someone searching for a post on him might not reach that article in a transportation category unless it was tagged. I hope that made sense.

Since Wordpress 2.3 came out I have started the often tedious process of tagging all my old posts (well, the most popular ones anyway). The simple tagging plugin as well as the advanced tagging plugin are a big help for this since they generate clickable suggestions. From what I can gather, Google will crawl up to 50 tags without flagging. This means you shouldn’t worry about having too many tags. I would be concerned #1 in the tags’ relevance to the content. After that I would look for the most common tags both internally and externally as suggested by the plugins. Do you spend time tagging your posts?

Online dating helped me find and marry my soul mate Sarah. I even found her during the “free trial” period so the service was free! I thought I’d write a blurb about Yahoo! Personals because I feature them as an advertiser. It isn’t just demographics that makes me do so (most my core readers are married). On the other hand, I chose them because I believe in their product. Most of all, I feature their ads because it worked for me.

I remember at that time feeling quite lonely in a new town with a new job and Yahoo! Personals connected me with Sarah when I really had no friends or family around to help me meet people. (interested readers can find more details on our &#....)

It works like this: You sign up and upload a small picture of yourself (actually this is optional but it really speeds things up!) Then, you fill out some profile questions and send out a few emails to members that you are interested in. Some, you will find, are indeed certified loony cases. Just keep telling yourself “All you need is ONE.” From there, as you sort through replies you will undoubtedly start to make email friendships. You will find yourself at your parents for thanksgiving sneaking to the computer to see what your online romance has to say.

If it works out perfect like it did for me, you’ll get married within a month! That was 5 years ago and now my wife and I have a wonderful family with laughs and memories that keep on going. If you are single and wanting someone special or if you know someone in your friends and family circle who feels that way, get tuned in to Yahoo! Personals. Trust me, it can work. All you Need is ONE. (and don’t be surprised when the ONE plus ONE turns into one or more beautiful kids! Be ready because it can happen fast!)

When boats aim at a destination, they need a rudder to correct their course again and again to reach the goal. This starts at the departure and continues to the end of the journey. Since I started writing articles in this blog, my goal has always been to reach people with my writing. Connecting with people has been a passion of mine through writing, music, teaching, and relationships as long as I can remember. I study people like Walt Disney and M. Scott Peck who are experts at doing this and I try to get better each day. Through teaching I make my living and believe me, that job is 100% about connecting with people. I’ve made a minimal amount of money with my music and of course relationships don’t need to earn you monetary rewards. Writing has made me some money but not as much as the music. I am determined in 2008 to merge my passion for connection with making money online.

So what does this mean Damien? Are we going to see a bunch of ads and pay per posts on this blog now?

Some, but I’m writing them all to this blog audience. I promise that any pay per posts will be directed at the stuff that affects my demographic of readers: intelligent, entertainment lovers, family people, cyberculture folks … just to name a few attributes. For example, right now I am hosting an ad for “Fandango” in my sidebar. If you are going to movies and you buy your tickets through clicking that ad, I get a few cents of the purchase. And Fandango is a cool way to pre-buy you tickets. Sarah and I always use it.

There is another benefit to my mmol (making money online) course with this blog: I’m very transparent about what is going on with earnings. This will enable YOU to learn what works out there and what is a scam so you can monetize your online writing. I’m a 38 year old with a Master’s Degree in Writing and certainly not new to the online writing scene. What is new is my course correction toward making money online. Up to now, that has never been a priority. Remember that a blog is only one way to make money at writing online. Helium, for example, is writing website that gives you topics to write on and they can make $20-$200 per assignment. And then of course there are online magazines which I intend to explore this year as well. I’ve been practicing by publishing on BlogCritics since last July.

Not all my posts will be pay for hire. In fact, expect to see only about 3/10 posts that way. The rest will be anecdotes about my teaching, family, music, and life as I see it. There will be the occasionally heavily researched article with sources linked and then there will be the intermittent “quote” or “link” with nothing more than a few words in the spirit of a true tumblelog. If you’re new to my blog, check out my sitemap and read some posts of the past year in the various categories. I hope you will subscribe so we can make a connection in the coming year. I am very loyal to my frequent commenters and I pay back any way I can. The fact is, the more readers I have and the more people link to this site, the better I look to prospective clients and that helps me make more money. This in turn encourages me to take more time developing powerful posts with great links that will impact my readers even more.

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Since I applied to PayPerPost I have become a better copy/ad writer. It has challenged me since every post is a new opportunity to use rhetoric, wit, and candor to sell a product. I like PayPerPost because I get to select the ad campaign to write for. This is helpful because not every ad is something I know about or am interested in. I also like how it empowers me, the writer, to earn money by simply following the terms of the offer. These terms are very clearly laid out and there isn’t any guesswork.

As I draft, revise and finally post, I learn about writing. I have to envision a given audience and then craft my words around that image. If you think about it, that is really all a writing class does for you. I ought to know, I have my MA in English and sat through many of them. I guess the differences between taking an ad writing class and writing for PayPerPost are that 1) You don’t have a professor grading your work and 2) you get paid. So, if you’re wanting to become a better writer at home without a professor and you want to get paid for it … PayPerPost’s the thing.

I just installed their toolbar on my Firefox browser. This thing makes PayPerPost even easier to use. As you surf the net, it indicates if a page has an opportunity to write for them. It also displays the day’s “Random 10″ PayPerPost writers so you can get to know other folks like yourself blogging and getting better at PayPerPost. In today’s blogosphere, networking is crucial to PageRank and traffic. This new toolbar, along with well-written posts, can help raise both.

To anyone who has a blog they write in frequently, I highly recommend PayPerPost as a way to get better at writing to a topic and get paid to blog!

In the spirit of link love and inspired primarily by Derek Semmler’s excellent “Speedlinking” series I followed throughout 2007, I’m getting back into doing what I call “Blog Safaris.” This being the first of 2008 makes it especially cool for me. So, won’t you hop in the Jeep and let’s go on a safari of some memorable blog posts I read last week!Lorelle van Fossen did the blogosphere a great service in promoting Gravatars. These are avatars that show up whenever you leave your email in a comment on the web. I have these installed on my blog so why not go get your free gravatar and start seeing it show up wherever your safari takes you?

Nick Mercer reflects on the past year. This guy is great and he’s a good friend to this blog. He has a lot to say and it always makes me think.

Sarah Riley wrote a fun yet sort of deep meme that I intend to do New Year’s Day. Head over and try it yourself, it’d be neat to read your answers. Also, check out her amazing new theme artistry.

Malcolm has a great article about the indefatigueable late guitarist Bo Diddley. Malcolm has a great Pop Culture blog.

Keiron writes about getting motivation back at Christmas and reviews, briefly, an amazing book.

Amy Palko Takes amazing pictures! She’s an excellent and thoughtful writer too. Go check out her blog.

As for Me, I had my third article published at Blogritics in December. It’s an opinion piece on the ongoing tv writers’ strike. I also started a home for my weekly “greatest post” blog called “Cheese Enchiladas.” The current post is on New Year psychology. 2008 feels promising! I appreciate your continued readership.

I know I couldn’t possibly have listed all the great reads last week. Sorry if I missed yours. I also want to recommend every blog on my blogroll as great reads if you’ve run out of places to go (uhhhh yeah right that could ever happen lol).

Oh, and a real special mention of Life is Rantastic is in order. Jessica the Rock Chick is hands down the biggest commenter on this site and I sure appreciate it! Check out her blog, it’s a crack-up and sometimes quite thought-provoking on a non-comedic level as well.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this Safari! More is to come this year. Fasten your seat belt and Jeep over the potholes until our next adventure ;) Happy New Year, make it the best year of your life.

This is an amazing blog I discovered on a Dateline story. He focuses on the homeless culture in Los Angeles. This photo links to his story on foreclosures at Christmas. A thoughtful blog read.

-viewfromaloft: More from East L.A.

My final word on this? maybe …

I think bloggers should learn on one blog at first. Until you get your bearings and learn how to do the stuff you envision on one, your other blogs will simply be like categories and much more complicated. This saps mental energies. Having said that, multiple blogs can expose you to new audiences and help you craft posts to them in due form. This will make you a better writer and you may find that one niche is better for you than another. The problem is when you run from one that is incomplete to a new one and so on. Be a master of one (even if you have little traffic) rather than a jack of all trades even if it may show a short-term boost in traffic. Once you’ve mastered HTML, Google PR, Sitemaps, CSS if you want to do the art yourself, or whatever tools you need to feel empowered (it is somewhat never-ending if you let it be) … then go ahead and have multiple blogs, if you still want to.

Google Webmaster Tools - Report spam in our index

So many times in a week I come across Spam “lookalike” sites and blogs. I found a reporting page at Google to stop these lame sites from cluttering the searches. I recommend you bookmark it and use it whenever you come across one. This is also a good tool when you get trackback spam as well.

I’ve recently started a traditional writing blog to accompany this blog, a Tumblelog-Hybrid, I’ve had for over a year. Since I did so, I find myself imagining topics for new blogs … it’s getting ridiculous! They are so much work.Still, I don’t know if keeping multiple blogs is such a bad idea. I’m curious how you feel about having multiple blogs. I know an effective blogger who has 4 (that I know of) and he posts on his site that he brings in about $600 on links and advertising. (wow! must be nice) I also know someone who has aout 10 blogs, all on blogger and they just seem empty and simply fulfilling the role of categories on one effective blog.

I’d like to hear your experiences and input on the idea of keeping multiple blogs.

Once when my family was short on cash, we got a pay day loan. It wasn’t the most proud moment of our history. There are kiosks on every city corner that lure you in with sign twirlers and gimmicks claiming its a reasonable choice for a family to make. Still, you have to walk in where you risk co-workers, extended family, and friends seeing you there. We decided to avoid this embarrassment by getting an Online Payday loan.

It’s easy. Once your information is keyed in from the privacy of your own home, the money is on its way to your ATM! I’ve written in the past about how society has in some ways become a bunch of machines talking to each other: answering machines, email, cell phones. Still, we all agree in some ways it’s more convenient than person-to-person. This post is to recommend a trustworthy “machine,” if you will, you can use at home for an Online Payday loan. Let’s face it, no one ever wants to get one but if it makes sense for your situation, why not do it the painless online way?

This has been a Pay Per Post entry.