Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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The Daily Dump

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No, that’s not the name of a new regular feature on this site. Nope. It’s the title of a new site that I spent some time looking at on Sunday.

The site owner, Chris, stumbled across my site after he’d visited one of my landlords – Mscateyes. He took the time to stop and write a nice comment inquiring about renting on my site. His site is new and he’s not been accepted yet on BE so he can’t start getting his site viewed by BE members, and he can’t attempt to get a rental spot yet either. So he was trying to figure out a way to promote his site via rental and decide to write to me about it.

He was in luck! I was in a very helpful mood and I replied back with information about all the other traffic engines that I use to promote my own sites.

Since I’m in a generous mood I decided that I’d let my visitors know about this new site.

The Daily Dump is a site comprised of a number of regular writers. Their styles vary, but seem to mesh together well enough to make quite an interesting read. Considering that there are so many contributors to the site, each with their own style of writing and topics that they favor I’d say the Daily Dump has something for everyone.

Why don’t you pop in and take a peek and see if you like the Daily Dump? Let Chris and the rest of the gang over there know that Tricia sent you.





New Domain – Cheap? Contest

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I need some suggestions. Contest involved!


I want to get a new domain but I don’t know which company to buy one from. I bought my last two directly from my hosting company, but they charged me close to $15 per domain. I’m pretty sure I can get a new domain or two for a little less.

Any ideas?

I can’t use Go-Daddy either. My hosting company has some kind of problem with Go- Daddy domains. I think they don’t transfer properly from one host to another.

I want to move all of my bl0gs over to one domain. Which will mean moving Tricia’s Musings and perhaps Odd Planet over to the new site. I’m not even sure what I’m going to do with Odd Planet. I was thinking about re-designing it, but I think I’ll hold off and possibly move it first.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a good domain name? Something easy to remember, and not too long?

Now here’s the contest part:

1. Give me some suggestions on where I can purchase a domain for a low price. If I decide to go with the company that you suggest I’ll give that person 250 BL0GEXPLOSION or BL0GMAD credits. If the company is suggested more than once I may only give credits out to the first person to suggest that company.

2. Name the Domain

Suggest a short but memorable domain name. If I decide to use it (and can secure it!) I’ll give the winner 1000 BL0GEXPLOSION or BL0GMAD credits.

3. I may choose to go with a designer, especially if I move Odd Planet. It desperately needs a re-design. I like WordPress so the two new sites and likely Odd Planet will be WordPress sites. If I decide to be too lazy to do it myself I might get a designer to help me out. Suggest a designer that does wordpress sites (not too expensive, we might be talking three sites here!) and I’ll give the winner 500 BL0GEXPLOSION or BL0GMAD credits if I go with a designer.

Bad Rating?

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OMG! Someone gave my site a really bad rating over at BL0GEXPLOSION! All 1’s ??? Come on … only a site that either doesn’t load at all, or that’s full of racial slurs and hate deserves all 1’s. Really.

I don’t care all that much about my rating, but this is so out of whack. I wonder if there is someone going around on BE, like there is at BL0GMAD, giving everyone bad ratings?

It just seems so mean! It also makes me feel very distrustful of people too. Was it someone I battled against yesterday? (The rating occurred last night) Someone that saw my site in the BL0G rocket? Or even someone that I talked to in the SB? I’m trying to be friendly, perhaps make some friends and most of all have some fun, but someone doing something like this really makes me wonder about people.

Want to do me a favor and get my site rating back up to where it should be? BTW where it should be is for you guys to determine, I’m not begging for a high rating, just a fair one. Review my site on BE and tell me what you really think.

Thanks!

The winning bid goes to

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Parenting Toys

Ok, do you guys love this site or was it just the very low rental price that I set this week? Yeah, I know – it was the low price wasn’t it.

21 of you bid on my site in less than 24 hours!

I have to be honest with you though, I set the low price so that my friend Ed from Parenting Toys could be my roomie this week. Sorry!

Parenting Toys has just gone through a major re-design. I think Ed is still tinkering around with the layout but it’s a very nice looking site. Parenting Toys started out as a way for Ed to let others know about great products that would be wonderful for parents, and the site still is that- but it’s so much more. There are personal stories about a father and his son, experiencing family traditions, beautiful photo’s, and humorous stories, and of course some great write up’s for some interesting gadgets that parents might enjoy. One of my favorite posts is “My wife is seeing another Man”. Ed’s an entertaining writer- please go see for yourself. 🙂

I had a lot of fun a couple of weeks ago when I was Ed’s tenant and I certainly hope he enjoys his stay here with me this week.

Now I usually give all my bidders a link and a small article but with so many of you to list I’m afraid that I’m going to skip the ratings this week. Sorry! I do keep track of who has bid in the past and I try to give multiple bidders a turn, so if you really do want to stay with me for a week just keep trying and it will be your turn before you know it.

Waste of Time?

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I’m starting to wonder if bl0gging is just a waste of my time. I don’t mean bl0gging itself. I enjoy writing. It’s all the other stuff that’s making me feel this way.

I’m spending so much time surfing to earn credits that I’m not getting much else done. What am I earning credits for? So that people can look at my site for 20 to 30 seconds? Are they reading it? Some are, but probably most aren’t.

I’m also spending time looking for places to “buy space” from. In the past three days I’ve put in an amazing 29 bids to buy space on other sites for a week for this site and my other site – Odd Planet. Of those 29 bids, perhaps 22 bids were for this site. I managed to secure 2 spots. Neither of them for Tricia’s Musings.

The whole point of “buying space” on someones site is so that your own bl0g can get a few more visitors. Ones who actually mean to come and visit so that they can see what your site is about. So I spend some time checking on the sites that I bid on.

  • I check their history.
  • Did the other sites that they rented to get any hits?
  • Did the site owner at least mention your site once?
  • How does the amount of credits they are charging to rent their space compare to the amount of visits their renter got?

There is no way that I’m giving someone 50 of my hard earned credits if they have a past history of their renter only getting one or two hits for the whole week. Especially if they didn’t even mention their renters site at least in passing to try to get their visitors to see the site. If I like a site, and it gets at least 5 visitors for every 20 credits they charge to rent space, and has at least a one line mention of their renters site I’ll put a bid in.

So, as you can see, to have put 29 bids on sites in the past three days takes me some time because I really check each site out carefully. Then to not even get one bid accepted for this site, well, that makes me feel like I’m wasting my time.

This also makes me feel like my bl0g isn’t good enough. I know that’s probably not the case. The sites I’m bidding on are getting more than just one bid, and unfortunately Tricia’s Musings just isn’t being chosen. 22 times in a row. Still it does make me wonder if there is something wrong about this blog that I’m just not picking up on yet.

To add to this feeling I’ve had a run of bad luck on the Battle of the Bl0gs lately too. When I first changed this sites theme a week or so ago I started winning battles for the first time. Strange isn’t it? The content didn’t change but look did and suddenly my site was a winner. However my luck changed again. I’ve been putting both my sites in battles the last two or three days and I think I’ve only won twice.

Between losing my bids and battles, and spending a very large chunk of time surfing to earn more and more credits, I’m starting to ask myself just what am I doing.

Is it worth it? Am I getting any regular readers by doing all of this?

Perhaps I’ll just sit on my nice big pile of credits and stop trying to give them away to other sites for a small piece of their bl0g.

Does anyone else feel this way from time to time?

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