Tricia's Musings

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



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Updating and upgrading my blogs

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I’ve been busy upgrading and working on several of my websites and blogs in the last few days. I’ve even been writing in a few of the blogs that I haven’t written in for quite a while. Believe it or not I think I have the blogging bug again.

I feel like writing for the first time in a long time. I mean writing with enthusiasm. It feels good.

I’m on so much of a roll that I even created a Google Plus page for this blog. Yes it finally has it’s own page! Yeah! It’s pretty bare at this time, but I’d love it if people would follow it. I promise to fill it up soon and hopefully make it interesting.

I’m actually posting at this ungodly hour of almost 3 a.m. because I’m testing something. I discovered that if I run my RSS feed through HootSuite to my Google Plus page I can send my blog posts directly to my Tricia’s Musings Google Plus Page. So this post is a trial to see if it really works. I fully expect that it will. If you’re curious to find out for yourself if it did go visit my page and find out if this post appears on it.

In the next few days I think this site will also be getting a make over. It needs a new look and feel. It’s dated. I have several premium WP themes and I’m just trying to select which one to use on this site. I’m more than ready for a change.

I hope everyone is having a nice long weekend!

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It’s been a busy few weeks!

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I’ve had a busy couple of weeks! I guess that’s one of the major reasons why I haven’t been writing all that much.

1. Our terrible renter neighbors moved out on the 19th of March. This was after a terrible week or so of cars parking in our driveway at all ours of the night and tensions going up and up. It’s certainly a relief to see them gone!

2. As I mentioned in earlier posts I had pneumonia – probably thanks to having two bad colds in a row. So that slowed me down and made it hard for me to get anything done.

3. Then I got knocked out my that aural migraine last week. The next day I happened to have an appointment with a neurologist to see what was going on with my numb thigh (it’s a compressed nerve in my hip that’s causing that awful burning sensation!) so I mentioned to him that my migraines had been getting worse and that I was starting to have lots of visual symptoms so now he’s sending me for an MRI and made some suggestions as to how i can try to combat the migraines without adding more medications to my already huge amount of daily meds that I have to take. Did you know that 300 mg of Magnesium a day might help migraines? I didn’t – but I’m trying it out. I’ll let you know if it helps.

Oh and before I can get my MRI I have to have my eye sockets xrayed. Why? Well if you’ve ever had an MRI they always ask if you’ve had metal in your eyes and unfortunately my answer is always yes. I used to be a jeweller. A Diamond cutter to be specific – which means I cut designs in gold with a fast spinning diamond. Naturally that caused tiny pieces of gold to fly around and even though I always wore goggles sometimes a tiny piece of gold would get inside the goggles and stick in my eye. This would result in my blindly making my way down several flights of stairs in the Jewelry building that I worked in in downtown Toronto to see an optometrist who would then pull the pieces of gold out of my eyes. I’m pretty sure that I don’t have gold in my eyes anymore – but it’s best to check before I have an MRI of my head.

4. The other big thing that’s kept me busy in the last three weeks is that I’ve been editing every single page of my reptile care page. I had an offer from Google Adsense to optimize one of my websites so I’ve been working with a really nice guy from Google, even had a phone consultation with him, and I’ve been slowing working his suggestions into my huge HTML based website. Do you know how long it takes to edit every single page of a huge HTML website? Forever! LOL

Between being sick, stressed and doing a huge amount of work on one of my sites I feel like I’ve been on a treadmill in the last few weeks.

Hopefully things settle down and get back to normal again soon!

Best Google Adsense day so far!

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In an earlier post I mentioned that I’d been working on my main website for the last couple of days. Well … it’s a pure HTML based website and it’s huge so any time I want to make a change to the site I have to go through each and every page (if it’s a site wide change, that is). It takes forever, but I think the work that I just spent a couple of days doing is going to pay off big time.

Along with adding a new Privacy policy page as per the new Google Adsense TOS, I decided to implement some of the things I learned through the Adsense Secrets e-book that I purchased in late April.

I wrote a post about getting the Adsense Secrets 4.0 ebook on April 25th – I guess you can consider this an update almost exactly a month later.

I can now tell you that the e-book that I purchased for the low price of $9.95 has paid for itself several times over in the last two weeks or so.

If you are a regular reader of this site or any of my other blogs you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been playing with my Adsense placements as well as trying out a few other affiliate programs like Chitika.

Well my tinkering has paid off!

In the last two weeks I’ve doubled the income I was earning on my blogs through Adsense and by adding Chitika to some of my sites I’ve added a new great source of income.

Now for the big news.

Yesterday evening I started uploaded the pages of my HTML website that I’d been working on. I’d updated the Google Adsense code, changed the colors of the ads slightly and added two more Adsense blocks to each page of that site. I guess you could say that the new ad code and the updated Adsense placements have been up and running on that site for about 24 hours now.

Just those few little changes to the site – things I learned by reading the Adsense Secrets e-book – have more than tripled my income on that one website. In one day!

I can’t wait to see how much I earn on that site next week. I mean, it’s a long weekend in the US so I’m sure site visits and ad impressions are down a little bit …

I’m so excited. Doubled my income on my blogs and at least tripled my income on my very large website. What’s next? I can’t wait to find out.

If you use Adsense on your website or if you’ve been thinking of using it I strongly recommend that you get the Adsense Secrets E-book. Look what I was able to do in just a month (would have been earlier if I’d started tinkering right away).

I would also look into Chitika as well. They’ve just implemented a new premium ad system that higher eCPM than any of their other products. Actually I believe they are implementing some of the premium features into their other products as well so it’s possible that all of their products will have an increase in eCPM now.

I’ve been with Chitika for a couple of years but I never really earned much so I took it off my blogs about a year ago. At the beginning of the month I decided to give it another try and I can tell you that it’s already my third highest affiliate earner. Kontera and Glam are pretty much tied for second place.

Unless your totally opposed to ads on your blogs or websites it’s worth trying some of these programs. Tinker with ad placement and the colors of the ads themselves and see what works best. Oh and check out that ebook that made all the difference for me!

Tricia’s Musings has a new look

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Well … what do you think of the new look of Tricia’s Musings?

I’ve been downloading and testing WP themes for months in order to find just the right one for this site. I finally decided on this theme about a week ago.

The only problem I’m having with it is that I can’t figure out how to put a header image in it without dropping the sub-navigation bar. I’m sure I’ll figure out how to put in a custom header eventually.

Please let me know if this theme doesn’t work well with you browser. I’ve tested it on the latest version of FireFox and Internet Explorer 7 and I’m pleased with how it’s performing.

I’m planning on organizing the sidebars a bit better and I’ll utilize some of the special options in this theme such as featured video and featured posts shortly. It’s really a great theme. It was a custom theme but the designer decided to offer it up for free at the end of April. I love it and I hope that you do too.

I was supposed to have a custom theme made for this site. I won it in November, but my latest emails to the designer have gone unanswered and I couldn’t wait any longer. I’m pretty disappointed with how things worked out. If she does ever get in touch with me perhaps I’ll use whatever theme she came up with on one of my other sites.

Finding new themes for my blogs

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The other night I spent the whole evening trying to find new WordPress blog themes for a few of my sites.

One of my sites has a really nice theme that I like, but when visitors using IE come by and try to leave a comment they have to scroll over a huge empty space to reach the comment area. I’m not sure why that theme does that. It looks great in all the other major browsers, but has that one problem in Internet explorer.

I’m supposed to be having a new theme made for this blog. It should be ready by mid April according to the designer. However, I’m planning on updating this blog to the latest version of WP and I’m not sure this clunky old theme will hold up. It’s not widgetized and the sidebars are composed of tables! See I said it was old and clunky. That’s probably one of the reasons this site loads so slowly at times too. So this site might have a temporary theme until the custom theme is ready.

Have you spent any time looking for new themes or templates for your blog?

I came across some amazing layouts and I also came across some terribly bad ones too! Some templates were set up for ads and I don’t know what the designer was thinking as there are so many spots for ads that you might as well plug that sucker in and light it up like the digital signage in any big cities downtown area!

I did find some beautiful themes though. Some are of the new magazine style and the rest are three column themes. I’ve always been partial to themes with two sidebars even though I know ones with single sidebars usually look much more organized and cleaner.

Perhaps over the next few days I’ll spend some time writing up a post or two about the great WordPress themes that I discovered on my blogging and tech blogs. I haven’t been writing in either of those blogs much this year and I think a few articles about blog design and WP themes might be just the thing to kick start those blogs again. I’ll let you know when those posts are up and if you’re interested in finding some great WP themes you can pop over for a visit.

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