Tricia's Musings

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



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Spam!!!

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Ever since I installed Bad Behavior back in early February I’ve had a marked decrease in Spam. Sometimes I go a few days before any spam makes it through and of course Akismet is still turned on so it catches whatever Bad Behavior misses.

Now before I installed bad behavior I was sometimes getting 600 + spam in my Akismet Spam area each day! Not just on this blog either! My husband and I have several blogs on the go and a few were getting extremely high amounts of spam each day, and others were only getting the lowly amount of a 100 – 200 spam messages each day.

Bad behavior put an end to all that. As I said there’s days that no spam gets through to me, and others where there’s only one or two on each blog.

However, I’ve noticed over the last week or so that spams been on the increase again, particularly for this blog. It’s up to 20 or 30 a day. Maybe more. It’s not like I’m counting, however I am regularly cleaning out 10 or 11 at a time.

So what’s going on? Have I become an even bigger target than I used to be, or has something changed with Bad Behavior and or Akismet?

I’m not really complaining. Not that much anyway. Heck, if I hadn’t installed bad behavior when I did I’d probably be getting 1000 spam each and every day on several blogs!

Is anyone else using both Bad Behavior and Akismet? Have you had an increase in spam getting caught in your Akismet Spam area lately?

BTW while we are talking about spam … if you are leaving me multiple links to add to the Do Follow Blogroll or one of the other blogrolls that I run – don’t do it, unless you’ve already added the blogroll to your site. Just send me an inquiry as I’m going to email you with the blogroll code and other helpful info anyway. You can give me the links when you reply to the email.

You see, if you put multiple links in your comment it often goes into my spam folder. Luckily I do check my spam box but if I start getting hundreds of spam comments again believe me, I won’t be checking anymore.

Also, if you sign your comment with an Alexa redirect or use a tiny url to cover the Alexa redirect that often goes into spam too. I look at my spam comments – a lot of other bloggers don’t. Your comments might be going to spam and never being read! Don’t waste your time, sign your comments properly. Please.





Topicscape 3D helps you get organized

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If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by all the information that you’ve stored on your computer and have desperately wanted to find a way to get organized so that you can find the files you need within minutes you might be interested in a unique software program called TopicScape Information Organizer in 3D!

That’s right. It’s a 3D information organizer. You can get an idea of what your organized information might look like by having a look at this chefs recipe information organizer software. If you were to organize your own recipes that you’ve stored on your computer according to ingredients it might look something like the example that I linked to above.

It’s simply a new way to look at information. If you are a visual person you’ll love this software.

To use the program simply drag and drop files and information on to topic areas. Connecting the various topics in your own way will individualize your 3D Topicscape organizer in a way that suits your way of thinking.

If this sounds interesting to you, you can visit the site via any of the links above or read this in depth article 3d mindmapping software article to get even more information about this unique software program.

There’s a TopicScape lite and a Topicscape pro addition for download on the site. You can also down load TopicScape skins that will help you individualize the look and feel of your TopicScape installation.

Give it a try, perhaps this will be the perfect organization system for you.

Another way to promote your website

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I was just thinking the other day that I’m going to get some business cards made up so that I can promote my websites.

I used to have cards printed out that listed my exotic pets websites so that when I’d go into a pet store that sold exotic pets I could hand out my cards to customers that I met in the store that wanted to learn more about their potential new pets care.

Now that I have a ton of blogs I might as well do something similar with business cards. It would certainly be easier to hand out a card than wait for someone to find a pen so that they could write down your website address now wouldn’t it?

Do you have business cards with your blog or website address printed on it? If so, has it helped you promote your site in any way?

Quick Blogging – Just Do It!

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John who is affectionately known as Techie in some circles, of the Something for Nothing Blog, came up with a great idea the other day.

He coined a term for a method of blogging that you might already practice at times, or that you might wish you could do more often. He’s called it Quick Blogging, amd I must say, I’m jumping on the Quick Blogging Revolution band wagon.

I think to some degree I already practice Quick Blogging. It’s basically blogging something as soon as you think of it rather than holding on to it and thinking about it.

I’m going to call my post Stephen King on the Hour and Surnames in China my first official quick blogging post, but I’m sure I’ve practiced this form of blogging in the past. Perhaps even as often as once a week. Now I think I’m going to try to make a quick blogging entry at least once a day from now on. Why not.

Basically all you need to do for quick blogging is blog whatever you are thinking about when it comes to you.

Take my Stephen King and China Surnames post. I was watching a television show, enjoying it, and I thought “Gee this is a great show, and that fact about Chinese surnames is really interesting. I’ve got to blog about that.” So I just did it.

Do the two main topics of that post go together? No not really, but at least they were tied together in the guise of the TV show that I was watching. That’s not the point thought. The point is to blog about something as soon as it comes to you.

You know how you’re at work, the bank, shopping or just walking down the street and something either happens that makes you think “I’ve got to remember to blog about this” or you think of something to blog about? Well how often do you end up blogging about it when you finally get in front of your computer? Probably only half the time right?

Well stop that.

If something occurs to you to blog about get to a computer and blog it.

Whether it’s just a few lines or turns out to be a few paragraphs it doesn’t matter. Just get those thoughts out there. Make sure you have a spell checker on your computer or in your browser, and watch your sentence structure and grammar so that your post doesn’t end up looking really bad.

There’s some posts that I spend a lot of time thinking about and going over again and again as I write them up.

There’s other posts that I write in advance and save as drafts, and then go over before I publish them.

Then there’s some that I just write on the fly and post without much thought.

You know what I’ve found? While the posts that I’ve taken a lot of time over get a fairly good response, it’s the posts that I just write quickly, the ones that just pour out of me that tend to get the most response.

So what do you say? Are you ready to give quick blogging a try? It can’t hurt. You can always delete or edit the post if you change your mind about it.

Write it, read it, post it. Just do it!

I’ve hit the 10,000 dollar mark!

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You know what I just realized? Blogging can be extremely lucrative.

Ok, I already knew that, but lately, almost every single day that message has been brought home to me time and time again as I see my earnings and offers increase.

Tuesday, the 13th of June, I became the second blogger on Pay/perp0st to hit the $10,000 mark. That’s right. I’m the second highest earner on Pay/perp0st.

I started with Pay/perp0st on October 10th 2006 and by November 26th I’d made my first $1000. By the end of December I’d made $2009.35. Odd how it turned out to be almost exactly $2000 at the end of the year, isn’t it? So that means that I’ve made a little over $8000 in the last almost five and a half months.

The funny thing is that in the last several months I’ve really slowed down. I go days without doing a Pay/perp0st post at times. The amount paid per blog has increased though so I can write fewer posts and make the same or better money. Win Win if you ask me.

I started doing paid blogging because I’ve been off work since December 4th 2005 due to Crohn’s. I still have a job as an ER nurse, but I’m unable to perform my duties because I’m simply too ill. Heck, these days I can barely get out into my garden!

I was getting sick pay, and then medical unemployment for a while, but the money ran out by July 2006. We tried taking in borders for a few months, but I couldn’t stand it. One of our borders was a real nut who lied to us all the time and we had to watch her like a hawk. The stress of having someone like that in my home did nothing towards helping me get any better.

So last October, as our situation started to become desperate I went searching for another way to make money. Something that wouldn’t be too hard for me to do. I came across Pay/perp0st and decided to try it. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not easy easy work, but it’s certainly easier than a 12 hour ER nursing shift!

I already had several blogs, but I only used two of them for Pay/perp0st at first. It wasn’t until perhaps February that I added a couple of the other blogs to the system. This allows me to spread out the blogging work that I take not only from Pay/perp0st, but from several other companies across the blogs, and also allows me to be sure that the posts I choose to take truly suit the blogs that I put them on. It’s better for me, it’s better for my blogs and most importantly it’s better for my readers.

I do work with pretty much all the companies now. Some more than others of course. I also earn income on my websites and blogs from other forms of advertising as well – Amazon, Google Adsense, Adbrite, Text L1nk Ads, Auction Ads, Glam Network, private work, and a few other sources. I’m considering experimenting with a few other advertisers – some of whom have come to me directly lately.

I guess I’ve been making money with my websites for several years now. Google Adsense and Amazon being the main sources. However it wasn’t until the past year that I got my act together and really started to work at it. This year I really can see that I could make a living off my websites.

When I first started with P in October, and then other companies, I kept a daily tally of how much I was making. I think I’d set a goal to make at least $1000 a month via all my sources of income. Now, I’m so busy that I haven’t had a chance to tally things up for quite a while – although I do still keep track of every cent I make. I’m just not adding it all up.

A few months ago I saw that I was easily able to increase my goal to $3000 per month, but I do believe that I’m making close to $4000 per month at this time. So my new goal is to make at least $5000 per month by the end of the year.

You know what? I think I will make my goal! Especially since I’m only doing half of what I could be doing and I’ve got 6 more domains to develop!

What I find kind of amusing is that in the comment section of one of the recent posts on Michael Arrington’s Blog, Techcrunch, one of the commenters stated that the majority of blogs listed in Pay/perp0st are very small, run by stay at home moms and only get 3 visitors a month. Right!

That’s totally untrue considering that Pay/perp0st’s demographics state that the majority of bloggers in their system are men and I know that there’s quite a variety of blogs, large and small, writing on a vast number of topics within the system.

This blog is the main blog on the Feverishthoughts.com domain. I’ve got 7 blogs on this domain (5 of which will move to the new domains shortly), but by far, this site, and As the Garden Grows gets more than 80% of the traffic that my Feverishthoughts.com Network brings in.

The stats for Feverishthoughts.com for May 2007 state that there were 130,141 unique visitors, and 513,524 page views. Traffic is increasing weekly! My main website, not a blog – a website, on a different domain, had 46,788 unique visitors, and 106,669 page views.

Those stats are nothing to sneeze at, and I know there’s other bloggers using Pay/perp0st and similar services that have similar stats.

Certainly with stats like that on one of my websites, and a few of my blogs (I didn’t list everything), and the sites I’m developing if I don’t make my $5000 per month target by the end of the year I’ll clearly have been doing something wrong!

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