My Blog is Over A Year Old!

I just realised that this blog is 1 year and 8 days old.

I think I've changed a lot since then. The content and purpose of the blog certainly has, and I actually have some readers. (Thanks guys and girls!) I'm updating regularly, which I wasn't doing at the start of this year. I'm a lot more confident in myself. I'm back at uni, I have a boyfriend, and my best friend is still in the UK... Sadly, it'll be a year tomorrow that I last saw him, that we went down as a group to say goodbye at the airport... that we did swing dancing and some of them did circus tricks in the departure lounge... do I feel silly about my plot about 'bringing him back'? No. I've also not given up hope. Our websites have however taken a down turn (check out Not Negative News on the sidebar there- and join in, we'd LOVE to have you), because we've both been so busy, working and studying, and it didn't kick off as quickly as we were thinking it would. Why couldn't it have been passed around amongst friends like twitter was, and have a sudden start up? I guess it's not too late for that to happen.

I hope this blog continues to grow and develop over the next year!
A big thanks to my 46 followers I have so far, and all the readers. I absolutely adore your comments.

Yesterday I finally had time to work out the labels/tags whatever you call them. You'll be able to see them in the cloud on the side, perhaps it'll help you search through my blog. :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hfb/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

7 Blogging Tips

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dharmasphere/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

If you want people to comment more on your blog...

1. Put the comment form at the end of your posts. Never have it where it pops up, or where to verify it pops up and reloads the page.

2. Allow anonymous comments. People stumble upon blogs often, yet are not members of blogger. Make it easy for them to comment!

3. Allow people to post using a name and url. People like to promote themselves, and again, may not have a blogger, or don't want to log in right now.

4. Get rid of the verification captcha, if you're not one of those hugely popular blogs anyway who get thousands of comments a day. Then make it so that comments on entries over a week old are moderated- those are the ones more likely to be hit by spammers. Verifications take time, and many people just can't be bothered.

5. Post about things that people care about or could have an opinion on.

6. Comment on other people's blogs.

7. Get genuine followers. Don't participate in 'follow for follow' deals- you want people who are actually interested in you.

A Useful Link

Here's a very useful paypal fee calculator, for all of you setting up websites or advertising or ebay sales.
I'm using this right now to work out payments for our website's products. It's very tricky!

Website Launches

Ah, website launches. Nervewracking stuff. Our 'Messages' website is nowhere near ready to launch, but I want to start thinking about it.
There are two ways we could attempt it.
1) Put it up quietly, and let it grow slowly... and gamble on if it gets members.
2) Hype it up first, launch it with a lot of fanfare and gamble on if it'll come crashing down after 2 weeks if people get bored with it.

My natural reaction is 'put it up slowly! That way we don't have to deal with hundreds of new members all at once and we can ease into it! It'll develop a nice little community atmosphere, and it can slowly gain momentum. Also any prizes we give won't be useless! If we did it 'big' then after a few months, an offer of free whatevery won't be that much of a good deal, and it'd be weird to suddenly give free stuff out two months in, if we made a big fuss of it at the start yet no one really started joining!'

But there REALLY are some flaws to that. That's how we tried to start our positive news site.

No launch party or anything, we just put it up one day, and then started using it ourselves. I spent time over the next few weeks going around posting links to it on forums, other websites etc, telling friends about it, putting up Project Wonderful ads... I still hope for the best, but even now we can't get people to submit anything to us. I've got Twitter now, and I'm rssing the articles. Still. Some websites do start off like that okay. We just need(ed) two or three regular posters and it could have been awesome. But somehow, it hasn't hit it off with the Internet yet.

Internet, meet Not Negative News.

Oh sorry, the party music is too loud? I'll tell you about it later.

I'm not giving up at all, but wow maybe I should bribe five people somehow to start talking on it.


I'm considering doing things for our Messages site such as handing out vouchers, rewarding people for getting other people signed up, having competitions, linking in as many places as possible all at once instead of gradually... (any other ideas?) but I'm concerned that could backfire as well. If it doesn't hit it off straight away, because they'll look at it and go 'oh. It's not very active is it?' then forget about it and go on their way, (but it'd only not be active because it'd be new) then I'll have run out of places to advertise- forums won't want me to advertise again a few months later.

A big launch flop could be more detrimental...

Thoughts?

Your Favourite Charities

Our new website that will be launched soon will be supporting a charity. We'll be picking the one for the first month, then the other months it will be up for nomination and votes from our readers. Which ones would you nominate for the first month?
Small charities are fine. We'd prefer something that we can pay through paypal, and that is a 'good cause' (though I know that is subjective, we want it to be a non disputable good cause for the first charity at least).

I was thinking of a charity I've heard of where every 5 pounds pays for three books, and these books go to impoverished areas of the world in their local language.
Or World Vision- perhaps we could buy chickens or seeds (or goats or whatever, depending on how much we raise) for a family in Africa.

What would be your nominations? Or thoughts on things we should consider? (things that might put people off, for example)

Promoting Your Blog or Cause

Good morning, viewers!
Our new website is slowly (though I'm sure my friend doesn't feel like it's slow, he's working very hard!) being developed, and it's now my job to trawl around through the internet looking for content for part of our website.

Part of our website will involve a different blog entry every day (or maybe even more than once a day once it really gets started!).

We hope to get an incredibly large range of topics covered, and from a very large variety of people. I'm hopeful that it could be a great social experience, as everyone can comment. When you're looking around for blogs you tend to look for ones that are similar to yourself... this one will allow a snippet of life to show from many different life viewpoints. Those who submit the articles will get a wider demographic looking at their writing, and those who are reading will get something new to read every day. Exciting stuff!

When the site is up we'll have a submissions form so that you can put it up yourself, but for the first few weeks, I'm going to be asking, and putting articles up under my own account (credited and linked to the original blogs of course) just to keep things moving along.

So, I'm asking you- Would you like some free blog promotion? Or to speak to the world about a certain topic?

If so, you can reply with a link to a certain blog post you think would be good, or just a link to your blog and let me pick out one or two of your articles to add to my list of submissions. Either way I'd credit you with a link back to your blog, unless you want to remain anonymous (tell me.)

Remember that the blog entry must make sense out of context! And for now, not be too 'topical' as it could take months for the website to be up properly.

What do you think of this idea?

$7.01

*sigh*
It is slightly depressing. That's the extent of money that our advertising has earnt us so far, and it certainly wasn't from this blog. It was from Fluffy Bricks.
However we've still not worked out Project Wonderful ads for Not Negative News.
How pathetic do I feel now?
It's sort of why I've not been posting on the blog very often. Just looking at it was depressing, and posting seemed futile.
However I've reactivated the ads on this blog and hopefully I'll be able to muster up some new posts and views, so we can keep plodding along. At this rate it'll take a million years, however I guess we're adding new websites at a consistent rate, and every little bit will help. And one or two might 'make it big'.

Colours

What are your favourite colours for a website? A website that you could stare at for hours that is. Say favourite three or four colours that go well together.
Help us out!

New Website

Though our newest website, for positive news is not yet a hugely popular website, we've moved on to designing our second website. I'm scouring the internet for potential content, and trying to write some of my own content too. Pricing for the new website is also a difficulty, as paypal takes 30 cents plus a percentage from all transactions, and we wanted our website to be as cheap as possible for people to use. But we don't want it free, as we'd love to donate money to charity, pay for our hosting and *gasp* maybe even get a salary for the website. It's a really difficult balancing act. How much will people pay? How much is our site worth? We just don't know.

Not Negative News

Not Negative News is slowly having people signing up and participating. A lot slower than we were expecting to be honest.
We now have Discussions, and capabilities to 'follow' threads and comments.
We've also had some thoughts about new ways to set the site out.

Twitter

Ah, Twitter. That wonderful site. We're now on it.
At least, Not Negative News is. It gives rss of all news stories posted to N3 , which means it's an easy way to keep up.
I recommend it to anyone who has a website or blog- people will be interested in what you have to say, trust me.

The Big Announcement

So, today my friend got online and showed me the link- He'd put it up on our chosen host! The host is discountasp.net, and we think we're going with it just for this website, and then for the others, going over to something else and creating websites that don't need url rewrite.

Anyway! So it's up! And I'm excited. We just got our first new member.

What is it?

Not Negative News


Are you fed up with the negativity of the media? So are we. So we created Not Negative News, a site that allows you to help us create a positive read for the morning. Share that great news story you read or heard. And it can be about any topic you want, as long as your news story is positive.
Read happy news and feel better about the world- it's nowhere near as bad as people say it is.

Discountasp.net
Anyone got any thoughts on it as a host?

Stuff I Have To Do

I am totally run off my feet right now.

Here are things that I have to do. And you could help me if you wanted!

I have to test how our website looks in ie6. If anyone could tell me, I'd LOVE that, because I don't have IE6, and according to my friend, no one should. :P But they do, and they complain when websites are completely wonky, how dare they! http://notnegativenews.uranium238.co.uk/

I have to write a description for in the metatags, that'll show up when it's looked up in a search engine.

I have to edit the FAQ, to shorten it and clarify things, and fix links

I have to help write the terms of use.

I want to think of a promotional thing for our website launch

I need to organise the banner, and also the icons a little more.

The big one- finding a webhost. We are dying of stress from that one. We need... (copied and pasted from my word document I have... since I don't know this stuff instinctively)

We need:

Microsoft Windows based hosting, ASP.net 3.5, IIS7 a Microsoft SQL server database, version 2005 or 2008, ability to use Microsoft URL rewrite Module for IIS7, and multiple application hosting. For as cheap as possible.

I have no idea what I'm doing.


And that's just the 'our News Website' related things! I also need to add content to my miniatures blog's website (for finding miniaturist penfriends), so that I'm able to put ads on it.

I need to finalise a prize for a forum I run, which is having a competition (and daily, add up the scores)

I have about three people I'm supposed to be phoning about various things.

I have to work out selling my friend's desk

I have a very very messy bedroom right now because I'm cleaning it and I pulled everything out to do so.

I have to go to Ikea to get a new book case

I'm going out tonight.

I have to print out photos for my mother.

I have to create a list of people for another project I'm doing.

I have to burn a dvd- note to self, learn how to burn dvds

I'd like to make youtube promotional videos for at least three websites

I have to organise tickets for the Fringe Festival (totally awesome thing that Adelaide and a few other cities do)

I was intending to start a Zine

And I have to back up a community.


... I don't know how to handle all this stuff. Meep.

Oh and somewhere, I have to eat and sleep and do stuff for Mum.


I love how my Mum thinks I'm not doing anything.

PayingPost.com

As you know, I’m always looking for new ways to make money online, partially on this blog, partially with advertising, partially with selling things online, and soon, through websites. I do have many thousands of dollars to raise after all! Yesterday as a result of surfing around for ‘How to make your blog popular’, I came across a site called “Payingpost”. It’s new (and apparently has an updated new layout), and it actually looks like a really good idea! And no, I’m not just saying that because they’ll be paying me for blogging occasionally from now on. Someone else had recommended it as a way to make some ‘easy’ money online, but not by jumping through dozens of hoops like you have to do for say, paid surveys (which I’ve never actually been paid for by the way. Hmn.)

I’d vaguely heard whisperings of this sort of thing on the grapevine, but never really paid that much attention to it. I’m not entirely sure why. I think I just thought ‘pay per post’ and thought of it from an Admin point of view- like people were paying their forum members to post on their forums. I thought that was probably a reckless thing to do from an Admin perspective, and I’d never seen it happen on forums, so, I didn’t think much more of it.

But that’s not what it is at all!

What it is, is a way for advertisers (of companies, websites, products, whatever really) to pay bloggers to mention them, or feature them, on their blog. Bloggers get a lot of views, and they write about things so individually. The advertisers can choose what level of content they require from the blogger, and also how much they are willing to pay.

When you sign up and get approved, you go to the “Open Opportunities” page, and reserve the blogging opportunity you want. You then have six hours to write it and post the link to the entry up, or you lose your reservation. It seems pretty easy so far.

The idea is, bloggers like writing. So why not get paid to do what they like to do anyway? I’m definitely up for that.

How does it help the blogger? Well, we get paid. $5, $20, whatever the advertiser decides to pay you- (The payments are via paypal) and you only take the offers you’re willing to do. If you’re talking about a product, your blog would come up in searches for that product as well.

My ethics on it: I’m not going to write about things I completely disagree with just for the money. That’s a choice you can make with PayingPost- it’s entirely up to you.

This site is also going to help me, because I want to sign up as an advertiser as well. I’d happily pay people to blog about my friend and my websites that are coming up!

So, if you’re reading this blog to find out a) how I’m going to make additional money, b) how I’m going to advertise my websites c) how you can make money… PayingPost seems like a good option.


advertise on blogs

Websites

My job today and tomorrow is to look up hosting services, according to a list of our requirements.

Guess what that means? That our first team website is coming! It should be up with in the next few weeks! We're incredibly excited about this, (and we already have plans for the next one!)

What would you like to know about the process?

Sponsored Posts

I'd like to offer sponsored posts on this blog. They would help fund my friend and my first website's hosting! That website will be coming out in a few weeks- I won't tell you exactly what it is yet, but it's for positive minded intelligent people with an optimistic view on the world. It's a community project, and hopefully something that people will enjoy reading and commenting and posting on.

The sponsored posts will work like this: You donate however much money you would like to give. It can be as big or small amount as you'd like. Then you email me at Livinginthepast_minis@yahoo.com.au with your post text and any images. It can be an ad, a public message to us, information about immigration or Australia, a 'what's going on in my life' sort of post... anything you want as long as it's not obscene or illegal.

I'll then post it up here for all to see!

Cheap advertising, that also helps two young people get a start on their dreams!

The Nature of Donations

My friend and I were having a chat the other night about making money. And he was saying that though yes, he'd love to have money, he feels a bit weird about donations. Why? I asked. Because I totally intend to stick by what we said and properly go for this. Because then there's too much pressure, he says. What if we don't make it, or we have to change what we spend the money on? Or he changes his mind? Like, he might decide to do a completely different PHD, or try desperately to get a job again, rather than a student visa. And so, donations and fundraising are too much pressure. I sort of get what he means- he wouldn't want to let any of you, or our friends down. He's certainly not a defeatist, he's not saying that he doesn't intend to try his hardest, but if hundreds of people donated a few dollars even, it'd be hugely embarrassing if things went wrong.

Which is why I'm slightly changing my strategy. Donations and fundraising will be for services and work already done, and fundraising will be for specific aspects of our projects. A slight change in attitude makes all the difference.

For example. You enjoy reading this blog, so you decide to donate $2. What we do with the money is then our business (though, I'm 99% sure his half'll go to trying to get the money for the PHD, or website development. Or maybe paying off his debt so that he can actually start making a profit).

You hear that we're making a new website that you like the sound of. You might want to donate a little bit of money to go towards our hosting fees. Therefore, paying for a service we will be providing.

I might be selling something, and you like it.

I might decide to run a sausage sizzle at uni, and I'd make sure it's specifically targetted to one aspect, such as "To pay for the hosting of our new website that is almost up". And then we'd get the majority of our money from advertisements. Maybe when it's *really* near to getting the right amount of money, fundraising for a certain aspect of coming back, like plane tickets, or a new bed, fridge and desk, might work. Or for shipping fees to bring his stuff back. And whatever the fundraiser is, it'll always be in exchange for something- a nice night out, food, whatever.

I'm pretty sure "I'ts going towards his PHD and coming back to Adelaide" will be in the backs of your minds, and we'll still be encouraging donations, and trying to raise a lot of money, but we're not being hugely specific with what the money is going to.

I can guarantee though that we would never blow it on beer and hookers. :P

I thought some honesty about this would be best. What do you think about the donation situation?

What Would You Like to See?

What would you like to see me blog about, that fits with the theme of the blog? I'm up for requests! :D I'd like to make this blog interesting and useful.

Tah Dah!

Who says we can't do it?
This was our Project Wonderful account yesterday. Our very first cent! One step the right direction! (Not including the small amount of money I've made from figurines to put towards this)

I know many people who will probably laugh at our one cent. But, many people also laugh at the concept that people can make any money at all off websites. Several of my friends and family members, for example.