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

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'.

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.

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?

A Catch Up

I know that people don't like scrolling down too far in blogs, so I thought that I'd summarise what is happening.
My best friend was in Australia for two years (I knew him for a year and a half). He had to leave because his visa expired. However he's built a life up here, he has friends, and he loves Adelaide, South Australia (though apparently that surprises some of you!). He loved it so much he stayed here for a year on a tourist visa, of course without a job, making himself broke.
Now, the only ways to come back is 1) to find him a job here that would be willing to sponsor him for a business visa. 2) A student visa- which costs a lot of money.
Which is where this blog comes in. This blog will hopefully get us a little bit of money, but it will also chronicle our attempts to get enough money for a student visa. The blog will also talk about Adelaide, friendship, Australia, the difficulties of immigration, etc.

Where we stand now: He left Australia on the 16th of December, and we're having a slight break for Christmas, before launching ourselves into making websites. And I'm trying to adjust myself to being by myself.

And someone serving me tea has only made me sad a few times.

Sigh

Not to sound melodramatic but right now I'm really not in the mood to talk about it.
... Strange isn't it, that I was all "Oh yeah I'll blog about this" but right now? I really just want to avoid talking about it, and live my life as if nothing were wrong for a little while, even though there really is, and the twinges of loneliness have started. It's worse of course since it's Christmas, and all my other friends are super busy as well.

On the plus side, the bed and mattress got sold! We used Gumtree, because, hey, it's free. Which is important right now. However he lowered the price a few days before he left in the hope that it'd sell faster... and then we forgot to put it back up again after he left and his stuff was sitting in my shed. So, it probably would have sold for a lot more. Oh well, there's hope for the desk yet! And maybe there'll be some sort of fantastic bidding war!

Sorry

Sorry for total lack of updates. Real Life, and helping my friend move out plus socialising as much as possible first, really took over.
The flight is tomorrow.

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?

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.

Helping Someone This Christmas

Obviously I do 'have' to say "oo! Help us! Help us!" in this post, but if you just get inspired by it, I hope whoever you do help is worthy!

I've been feeling a little disillusioned about Christmas lately. It's a very quiet day- my family only has six people in it, and one of them goes overseas every second year. This year is one of them. I need to do something different. Originally I was vaguely hoping that My Friend might be in the country, but he's of course having to go home, and probably would have gone home for Christmas anyway. Years back, I would have been upset if something 'different' happened at Christmas, like someone else randomly being there, ruining my routine. Now, the routine needs improving.
It'll be something I can do once My Friend leaves- I'll have plenty of time to make decorations, or plan to cook.

One thing that I've wanted to do, is to do something to do with a charity. Not on the actual day. This year, my charity is obviously my friend. He's not a starving orphan, but he is broke. :P

I found this site the other day.

Yes, the car is... magic?

So, does anyone want a car? Of course, you'd have to be in the Adelaide area. My friend is also selling a small fridge, a bed, and a desk. It's going to be really hard for him to sell it all within two weeks. I'm suggesting he says that the car is magic. :P Or that the fridge is haunted. Or Elvis used the desk.

The car is a...
Mitsubishi Magna TE Advance, 1997, 147,259 KM .

Fundraising Legalities

Maybe some of you could help.
I know, from a club I'm in that does raffles, that raffles are regulated, as it's a form of gambling. But there's all sorts of qualifiers to that that I've heard of... like, it's okay if it's under $1,000 and the whole thing is done within 8 days? And it's okay if... something to do with who it is who is doing the raffle itself.
I also learnt today that there's regulations on asking for money on the street, but it sounds like it's only if it's an actual charitable donation (so ... environment groups don't count as charitable, according to the example), and where it is you're asking for money...
I'm so confused.

I had been considering doing some sort of fundraising competition on here, but it seems like that wouldn't be allowed now.

Does anyone know if I ran a few events, and had some of the entry fee money going to helping my friend, if that would be legal? I'm pretty sure it would be.

What I've Done To Help Today

I know that I've been posting a lot. It's because I keep thinking of new things to post up, and time's so short I can't just space them out to one a day.

So, here's what I've done to help in the past 24 hours.

Posted on the blog
Advertised the blog
Applied for Project Wonderful Ads, as I have 30 posts now.
Applied for Google Adsense Ads
Looked up where's best to sell furniture.
Looked up where's best to sell cars.
Tried to figure out how much he should sell his car for, since he wanted a second opinion.
Did some research for websites that will hopefully be a) fun, b) bring in some income through ads or services.

Worked out that if everyone in Adelaide gave only 5 cents to this, we'd have $50,000 with no problems.

If all the students in Adelaide Uni only donated $4 each, we'd be there as well.

I really do think that should be our strategy- a little, from a lot.


I also looked up things about charities and how to fundraise and how to support charities.

Pretty Pretty Adelaide

What's your favourite part of Adelaide?

Poll

Please note the poll on the side of the blog. I'd like you to vote in it.
By "This" I mean "Raise enough money to get him back to Australia, or at least enough to get a plane ticket for me to go over to England".

Ebay

Well so far my ebay idea hasn't been going that well. Not that that means I'm giving up, it just means I have to go about it a different way. There's two days left on the new Jeeves and Wooster listing. Does anyone know how to promote it more? Or maybe what I should make next time that might 'work' better?

Also, can I draw your attention again to the donate button. :) Usually I won't be just asking for random money without me giving you something in return, but in this case it might be a "Wow, you're entertaining me with your crazy money raising idea!" or "Hmn, I have two dollars sitting around in my paypal account..."


Does anyone have Stumbleupon? I'd love it if you'd thumbs up me. :)

So Many Things I'll Miss

There's such a huge list of things that I really wanted to do with my friend, and now won't have time for.
Until we get him to come back of course.
I was just thinking about dancing, and a song came up in my head, I think it's called Chasing Cars? "If you lie here, would you lie with me" etc...
It is played when we do certain styles of dance.
... and it's a sad song anyway. I now also connect it with dancing. And, though it's a happy memory, sometimes losing something happy makes it become sad. I don't know if I'll be able to listen to that song without crying now.
Does anyone know if there's a way to stop doing that, getting upset at things that you've lost that were happy?

Well, not lost. Just... delayed. I hope.
*sigh*

Don't worry dancing friends, I probably won't randomly burst into tears in the middle of rumba.


I've been doing more Project Wonderful advertising today. I hope it's worth it! And soon I'll be able to have my own adspaces on this blog, which will be excellent!

/emo