the twitterer: July 2010

Many Thanks To My Top EC Droppers

I've been busy with a lot of stuffs lately and I didn't have the time to drop back on some of my loyal EC friends and droppers. As a token of appreciation, linky love goes to my top EC droppers:

Dave Lucas: News and comments from a New York-based broadcast journalist.
Cooking Japanese Style: Here's my blog about Japanese Cooking, Recipes, and Japanese Foods. That I like to share with everyone.
Georyl.Com: Blogging With My Heart
My kids are my world: This is a blog about my life as a wife and mother of three kids, who are, obviously, my world.
Beaded wedding napkin rings and charms: Welcome to Charming Beadz! Find useful yet beautifully designed items here! Everything is handmade and my own designs. Turn your dining table into an enchanted one. Impress your guests the next time you hold a dinner party.
Beyond Feron: BeyondFeron.com talks about anything under the sun, everything that is relevant and things that can promote better friendship and better life.
Winesworld The Amateurs Wine Guide: WinesWorld is a friendly wine guide for amateurs, by amateurs.

I only listed seven because... BECAUSE. If you think you should be included here, please leave me a note or a comment in this post. I'd really love to hear from you. Don't worry, ghost droppers are still very welcome but who wants ghosts dropping by their sites, right? Definitely, not me.

A PR3 Blog Needs A New Home

Have you heard the latest buzz? A PR3 blog needs a new home. If you're interested in adopting it, check out the rules at At Home With Georyl.

Whew! Getting a high page ranking usually takes time and being PR3 blog in less than three months after its creation is a feat. Don't miss this chance to be this PR3 blog's new owner.

I Am Hutterite By Mary Ann Kirkby

I Am Hutterite: The Fascinating True Story of a Young Woman’s Journey to Reclaim Her Heritage

In the book I Am Hutterite, Mary Ann Kirkby shares with us a glimpse of the reclusive and extraordinary Hutterite colony near Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. Hutterites are a communal branch of Anabaptists who trace their roots to the Radical Reformation of the 16th century.

A memoir, I Am Hutterite chronicles Mary Ann Kirkby's own true story of the life on the Hutterite colony, adapting to popular culture, and her family's deep sense of loss for their community. It is also a story about retracing steps and understanding how ones beginnings often define them.

People who are into history and who are interested in reading autobiographies will find this book fascinating.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Don't Underestimate The Importance of What You Earn

I joined MyLot recently. It's a forum where you get paid by posting. One of the questions that I answered was posted by a guy who was offered two jobs and he chose the higher paying one. He said his father advised him that "it's not what you earn really that is important but what you save". A lot of forum members agreed on that. I begged to disagree (and earned $0.01 for posting my reply).

Now, why didn't I agree?

When I was still working in a manning agency, there's this seaman with the rank of Ordinary Seaman or OS. He earns roughly $500 per month. He has a wife and a seven year old daughter and he is proud of his wife because she manages to save 20% of his monthly allotment.

Then, there is this vessel master whose position is more popularly known as the ship's Captain. He earns $6,500 monthly. He's got a wife and a seven year old daughter too and just like the seaman's wife, his wife also manages to save 20% of his monthly allotment.

Which family do you think has a greater savings? The captain's family, right?

What you earn is a great factor in determining how much you can save. All things being constant, the bigger your earnings, the greater is your chance to save more.

More points tomorrow.

Now What?

Frequent readers of The Twitterer should have known by now that I started a wordpress blog in April and entitled it At Home With Georyl. It's more of an impulsive decision but at that time, I was so down because of what happened to my PR3 blog that was disabled by Blogger.

The new blog was supposed to be an "article blog" - less personal and more about facts. More of a magazine style blog. At first, I managed to do it but after a while, I'm finding it hard to come up with any post. My mind just goes blank whenever I open the Wordpress dashboard.

Then came the realization that it's just not like me to write that way. My first few posts sounded stiff and cold, creating the impression that the writer is a spinster with thick eyeglasses, dressed in a black ensemble... ahhh! Not really quite that (I hope) but I'm sure my readers can feel the lack of connection.

Fast forward to today. I already started writing in a more personal way in that blog. Whenever I start creating posts, my fingers just have a life of their own. It has become my new home.

Now what?

I've been wondering what to do with The Twitterer. The stuffs I use to write about here are already discussed in my other blog. Where will this PR3 blog go?

Looking at my tag clouds widget, I can see that most of my posts here relate to blogging. Should I focus on my blogging experience then? Will "The Twitterer" tweet about the blogosphere and how it affects me?

What do you think?

Bye for now.

Keeping In Touch Without Hurting Your Wallet

Does making overseas calls make a killing in your budget?

If you're like me who's currently living abroad, calling your relatives and family overseas is quite expensive. Yahoo messenger and Skype are useful but not everyone can get online everytime, right? This is the reason why I looked for alternative ways to make calls and I stumbled upon a website that features a lot of information, tutorials and resources on voip.

TruVOIPbuzz is quite an informative site. By reading the articles, I had learned the ways to send free text messages, make international calls for free and have cheap VOIP calls.

Whew, at least my wallet won't hurt the next time I call my family and relatives abroad!

I'm Not Renewing My Adgitize Ad

A blogging friend of mine had asked me why my advertisement for At Home With Georyl at Adgitize had not been showing up lately. It's because I did not renew my advertising with their site.

I'm still a member of adgitize and I'm one of those who patiently and diligently click on sites to complete the 100 click points needed daily while doing my EC dropping. However, I'm not interested to advertise at the moment.

During the duration of my ad run, it received a total of 241,425 impressions. That's more than 8,000 views daily. Sadly, the click-through rate was barely 0.6% because I only got 1,441 visits from my ads..

With the 10 maximum ad slots allowed per blog, the competition is really tough to have your banners noticed. In addition, some blogs have their ads slot in scrollable widgets. I remember being temporarily suspended by Adgitize just because I placed the adgitize ads in scroll boxes. Another time my account was suspended was when the ads were not shown in full (because of a few changes I had made in my layout that somehow cut out about 10% of the ads). It seems Adgitize is more lenient right now when it comes to those matters because I had encountered a lot of sites doing that right now to save some sidebar space.

I'm still actively adgitizing but right now, I'm back to just being a plain publisher.

Thank You!

I would like to thank my top ten EC droppers for June. Despite my blogging LOA, thank you for supporting my blog and continuing to drop by constantly.

Dave Lucas

Cooking Japanese Style

my kids are my world

Winesworld The Amateurs Wine Guide

This linky love is my way of showing my gratitude to all of you.

Happy blogging everyone!