Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from 2014

Problem Solving Blogging

        It's been awhile since I've written a blog here at CBJ. I haven't forgotten about this blog, there just has been other places I've had to spend my time. This blog though is where I talk about my blogging journey in general as well as some random thoughts I might have.      One problem I haven't figure out yet is why there is an X on my feed icon in the widget added to my other blogs. Two of the four blogs I have have this problem. These two are the last two I have created. I have five blogs all-together by the way - four on Blogger and one with Wordpress.     This X doesn't seem to mean much, as my feed still works. Every post comes to my email, and when I check the validity of the feed on Feedburner it says it's good. There must be a reason though why there is this X on the icon in the widget. The widget by the way is where you can add other blogs to your blogs layout. I do this so people can find all my blogs from any of the other blogs. The o

Blogging Results After 8 Months

cc from flickr.com    Blogging on Blogger started for me Dec. 9th, 2013 with my first blog called The Lowdown Truth. Later that month on Dec. 25, 2013, a second blog was started called A Writer's Review. Finally, five months later on May 23, 2014, I started this blog called Christian Blogger's Journal. Although this is the timeline for starting the blogs, it took a little time after I started each to monetize them with Google Adsense. I was approved for Adsense with my first blog after 18 posts. The other two I monetized after having 10 posts.     I'm explaining all this because this blog in part is about my journey as a blogger. This information may help you gain some perspective on blogging yourself. The amount of time I've been blogging is about the same amount of time I've been writing on-line all-together. Basically, I started from scratch with this Internet thing about 10 months ago. There has been a learning curve involved as well as I work a full t

Lazy Writing Syndrome Thing

cc from flickr.com    What is it every blogger/writer wants anyway? What is it I want, as in a place to write? At one time, I was thinking about writing at RedGage for my journalistic writings. When I have an idea for a "real" post, then I have places for those, but what about when I just want to write? It used to be, people wrote in a journal that never seen the light of day. Now, we write our thoughts to the world at large, or at least those who listen.    Yes, it's likely part of the conditioning process for us to loose our sense of privacy and let the powers to be know everything they can get out of us as we give it away openly. Yet, those that are aware, know this and intrinsically are safeguarding some sort of privacy. Still, this is me sincerely talking to you about our meaning as bloggers.     There are many who have a certain clout, they have become successful or some sort of pompous thing. After years of hard work on-line, they are now refined and re

Trying to Make a Buck Blogging

cc from commons.wikimedia.org    Every week I find it helpful to keep track of the amount of work I do on my various writing sites and also how much I'm making from them. It's sad to say that after keeping track for 14 weeks now and implementing a sort of promotion system to my blogs, I still haven't been able to make any significant money with my three blogs.     In fact, the monthly amount averages out to at best about $1 per blog per month, or $3/month total for all my blogging efforts. I would estimate that last month I wrote about 14 blogs total. Although I'm glad to have a place to write and have the chance to make some money, it just seems I could do better than this.    This has gotten me thinking about streamlining my blogging efforts more and making them easier for me to write and promote. What this means in reality, is I have certain articles I write routinely on each of my blogs. Cause I think at this point I simply don't write enough on my blo

The Dangers of Depending on Amazon and Google For Income

cc from flickr.com    Lately I haven't been able to write much in my three blogs and Hubpages. Mostly, the reason is because I've been trying to learn about selling on Amazon and Ebay. Mostly, what I'm selling is books. Along with my lawn care job and this new activity, writing has taken a back seat. I thought I would elaborate in this post about this activity.     This blog is meant to be a place where I can speak what's on my mind in a more informal environment. Well, many things are usually on my mind, but in particular lately I have been thinking about selling books on Amazon. They have a program called Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), in which you send them your inventory and they will ship it to your customers when and if it gets sold. I've started doing this, but as of now can't say how it's worked.    The three boxes I've sent off to their warehouses haven't been processed yet. This week most of them should be processed and go live on A

Earning a Bachelors at Hubpages

commons.wikimedia.org Wake Up and Write a Hub    Let me just say this, Jesus Christ is the most valuable part of my life. Everything I do must be in accord with the Holy Bible. I live and look at life through a born-again Christian filter, always trying to keep a balance and peace with God.     Now...there are so many different avenues of thought to go down, sometimes I think if I could just focus on one with all my ambitious zeal I would have wild success. Yet, so far this focused zeal is spread out and I keep plugging away with that too little, too late type of feeling.     For instance, concerning these different avenues, what about say blogging? What about Hubpages, YouTube, an Ebay business, or even writing content? Let's just take Hubpages for instance. Now, if I were to only write hubs and then share them on my built up social sites, what would happen? What if I wrote 30 hubs a month for a couple years?    These are quality hubs as well, which attract an averag

Racing Towards the Mark of Better Alexa Ratings

Harold Dog racing towards the mark     Do you check your blog's Alexa ratings? I did an article here on May 27th of this year, in which I posted the rankings of my other two blogs and Hubpages. I wanted to share with you the developments I've noticed since.   OK, so that was about 32 days ago from today and at that time I didn't have stats for this blog because it was too new. Christian Blogger's Journal has since been showing up and I've been watching it rise. Interestingly enough the only comment I received last article about this was an anonymous person who aptly said, "you have a long way to go." So, for you dear person, thank you for the inspiration.     May 27th:    The Lowdown Truth:                     10,372,004    A Writer's Review:                          4,733,324    lowdown0 Hubpages:                      4,538,357    June 29th:    The Lowdown Truth:                        5,658,449    A Writer's Review:      

Blogging System Outlook, Make $500/month Writing On-line

Harold Dog Says "Are You Done Writing Yet?" YouTube Vlog    Recently I've started a Vlog on YouTube to replace my BlogTalkRadio weekly program. It's only a half an hour show where I talk about what's on my mind from the week, but I enjoy doing it. BlogTalk failed me a couple weeks ago as suddenly after a couple years, the PIN # wouldn't work so I could call in my own show. I emailed them, still no response. I'm glad it happened because YouTube is a better place for my show.     After a couple shows, I can see the advantages, which are: I can record my shows whenever, the sound is better as I can record it on Audacity, it's a larger platform and I get more views, the ads don't play over the show, it's easier to use and edit, and I have my YouTube monetized. Really, it's much better place unless you want to take live calls, and then BlogTalk is the place to be.     I will improve my approach with the show as time goes, but as fo

Catching On To Tumblr

cc from flickr.com    Learning is usually a difficult process, blogging is no different in this regard. It's exciting to learn, but also frustrating when trying to learn without a direct teacher. Everything I've learned on-line has been through my own seeking. It would be nice to have a direct teacher.    There are some wonderful indirect teachers out there who have helped along the way with their blogs and articles. It's sometimes hard to find an updated lesson though. Seems like fresh articles are hard to find sometimes and things change quickly on-line.     The latest journey for this blogger is Tumblr. I've heard of this site before, but never though it was somewhere for me. A couple days ago though, I decided to give it a try after finding out it could be a great way to promote my blogs. I found out you could even monetize it with Adsense. After a couple days of messing with my new Tumblr blog, I haven't yet successfully placed any ads on it.     St

Streamlining the Writing System

   Lately I have been wondering about the strategy I've been using writing on-line. I wrote an article about 25 back-linking sites I use to promote my blogs . I'm just wondering how many of those are worth using if I'm don't have the time to build them up. And some of them are just such liberal places, I wonder if it's even worth wasting my time using.    The thing is, using a handful of sites is better than a dozen because then I have time to work them and gather an audience. If I simply write a snippet and then leave a back-link and never interact with the community then I won't receive much attention. So, what I'm realizing is that I don't have time to interact and use all the sites I've been using for back-linking, and so spending the time writing there is a waste of time really. The only reason I would say otherwise is because the back-link gives my blogs more authority.    I'm not sure how much authority some of them give though,

Alexa Rankings and Writing Break

Winter 2013 Oregon    Lately I've been keeping track of my Alexa ratings for my other two blogs and Hubpages. I know they have a long ways to go before I can start making any significant amount of money, but I like stats and seeing things in numbers. Here is the world Alexa ratings of these three sites: The Lowdown Truth: 10,372,004 A Writer's Review:      4,733,325 lowdown0.Hupages    4,538,357      Interesting that my Hubpages account shows up there, and it is ranked the highest of the three too. I only started working my writing system for the last 4 weeks. Before this I was randomly working and my blogs went near dormant for a couple months. So really, the progress I've made with my blogs has come in the last month.      Although these number are in the millions, I'm still excited about them going lower and lower. Now I have a goal to get my blogs under a million in three months time. Ultimately I want them to get under a 100K in the world.      On a

Wrong Thumbnail Picture When Sharing and Meta Tag Problems

Harold Dog says,  "Are those pictures working yet?"     This has been the one drawback of Blogger so far, is the glitch when sharing posts and getting the profile picture as the thumbnail instead of the picture in the post. This used to happen only when I posted to facebook, but now is happening on Google+!     I've spent a few hours on this one at least over the last couple months trying to figure out why? Sometimes the thumbnail picture is from the post, this is so nice when this happens. Yet, most of the time it's my Google+ profile picture or even the picture of those who commented in the post. I have pasted different codes into the template and nothing, nothing has worked.     In the forums for Google help there are others like me, who are not finding a solution. This seems to have been going on for years. It's probably a conspiracy, I mean why couldn't they figure this one out and help us bloggers? Is it because we are using the free template

Blogging Journey

Oregon Beach  There is a lot to learn when it comes to blogging. For the last four months I have been learning about my blogger blogs. It's been a journey for sure, keeping me up late at night and working early in the morning. Basically you have to love to do this in order to spend so much time doing it not knowing if it will ever pay off monetarily.    For some people who make enough money elsewhere to be comfortable and have time to write as much as they want, they don't really understand those who are squeezed for time. Our day jobs, families, and other obligations just make it hard to spend the learning time needed to start to make blogging work.    Today I learned that there are pages and posts. Now, I have seen the pages option on the dashboard, but never understood what it was for until today. Of course, I only figured it out after I had created my about pages for three blogs on my posts section. So, I learned the hard way.    After copying all the about page