Lateral Drift

It has been a little over a year now since I first decided to create The Quintessential Finance Blog and I have been reflecting on the lessons I have learned from that now mostly dormant blog and my new one which you are at now.  These two blogs have brought varied experiences and pitfalls that come with their characteristics.  QuintFinance being highly specific and this one being more general.  So what have I learned from a year of blogging?

Can you make money blogging?

Of course it is possible, now, is it likely, not really.  I monetized my finance blog shortly after I started it and have so far earned only $2.30 total over the last year, and considering Google Ads only lets you withdraw amounts over $100, I have in essence earned $0 so far.  What you need to become a high earning site is traffic and lots of it.  If you can get loyal readers who keep coming back to your site, even better.

How to get traffic

I cannot claim to be a guru in this area but I do know what has made significant traffic boosts for my sites.  I think the number one thing you can do is post and post frequently.  Ideally as many times a week as you possibly can.  This works because for one you want to be able to be picked up by search engines in as many different ways as possible.  It also keeps people returning to your site because they know that it is constantly being updated.  My lack of earning is likely in a large part due to my failure to post regularly.  It is also important to post about topics that will be useful to people.  I don’t know too many people who read blogs about what someone does in their daily life and I would bet that formula only works for famous people.  Making posts that are bookmark worthy is the goal.

Its hard to post all the time!

There it is.  I went into QuintFinance thinking I could easily write a blog or two a day.  How naive I was!  It was hard.  At first, it doesn’t seem to taxing but when you are a niche blog and only writing about one theme the well of ideas becomes empty quick.  To reinvigorate the creative juices, I had to constantly be reading the news, magazines, and books to keep up with fresh ideas.  It did also help that I was studying finance at the university.  In general, I think the number one thing to consider when first starting up your blog (if you plan to monetize it) is how do you plan on keeping blog posts going?

Was it fun?

Yes! In fact, for this site, I made a private goal of how many people a day I would need before even considering to monetize it.  I just like blogging.  You will also learn or refresh your memory on html and start to understand how this whole web business works ie using hosts, marketing, adsense. So, if making money is your goal, good luck, but if you just want to try out blogging for fun, I highly encourage you to do so, without any expectations of profit it can be a rewarding experience.

Apparently, the big release date for Windows 7 (retail) has come and gone. Me, I didn’t even notice. I decided this year to take the plunge and install Ubuntu, a Linux based operating system. I would not consider myself a computer geek and Ubuntu isn’t just for the tech savvy either. It really is a great operating system, and once you have learned how to navigate the new interface, in many ways it is much simpler and more user friendly then windows.  Below I have included an account of my experience thus far with the OS.

Why I switched

The straw that broke the camels back for me was a mouse clicking mistake I made on Facebook that led to a computer virus which was a nightmare to get rid of.  But really, I think I was preparing myself for a switch long before this.  I had originally bought my laptop back in 2008 and because of the atrocities of Microsoft’s Vista system decided to downgrade to XP Pro.  My first irritant:  no free Word, Excel, nothing.  I had to shell out another $200+ dollars to buy their software.  Then there is the ever so annoying popups of virus protectors and updates that seem to become increasingly present.  It just all became too much to take and I switched, and am I happy?  Yes, although I have a couple qualms here is what I think.

Cost

Free!  Here is the link to download: http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download

System requirements

Windows 7 recommends 2GB of ram for the 64 bit version and 20GB of free space (sounds like a lot of junk).  Why, oh, why do I need 2GB of ram just to run my operating system.  Maybe there is a technical reason that I am unaware of but it just sounds ludicrous.  What are Ubuntus stated requirements?  According to the Ubuntu help forums, for the best graphical results (yes, you can get by with less) you only need 384 MB of ram and 8 GB of memory.  It’s nice to know that with a 100GB hard-drive, only 8GB instead of 20GB isn’t being taken from me.

Looks

Take a peek at a screenshot I took just before I wrote this sentence.

Looks like a normal interface right?  I hope the picture will quickly dispel the common belief that it is a operating system where all you see is code.  It’s simply not true, and while the ability to still do all commands through code is available, I haven’t had to do it once yet.  The presentation you see above is also the standard default and spicing up yours wouldn’t be much effort.

Ease of Use

Time for some honesty.  It is easy to use BUT that said you still have to learn how to use a new operating system.  There will be a learning curve.  I have used Windows since its inception and learning how to tweak with it has taken me 1000’s of hours of use.  It is sometimes the smaller things that take a bit of playing around to uncover.  Do not be intimidated by using Ubuntu but realize it will take a little time to get used to.

Issues

I have come across a few problems while using Ubuntu but most are likely fixable since it is a modifiable OS.  The first was trying to install a program that was designed for Windows.  Solution:  you can install a program for Ubuntu that imitates Windows and allows you to run them like normal.  The other problems I am having still are a lag in deleting characters in typing which can be annoying and may or may not have a fix but I haven’t searched yet.  Another problem was the sensitivity of my mouse pad in Ubuntu.  Solution: I simply turned my laptop mouse pad off because I use an external mouse.

Conclusion

A new version, Ubuntu 9.10 is about to be released tomorrow and if you have gotten fed up with windows this new version might be a good time to hop on the preverbial bandwaggon.

What had started out as a series of recommendations weekly has turned out to be, well, not.  However, I recently picked up and began to read for the second time Dale Carnegie’s classic, How to Win Friends & Influence People, and knew that I had to post about wonderful book.  Why is this book a classic still after 70+ years?  The answer is simple, it holds truths about human nature that simply do not change through time.  His advice was viable when he wrote it, still is today, and I will venture with a great degree of certainty will remain so for a long, long time.

I typically am not the self-help type reader and in fact I find many of the books of this genre to be just garbage, but because it had stood this test of time, I thought I’d give it a shot.  In it you will learn effective ways for dealing with people, whether it be your boss, family, friends.  The points made are convincing and revolve around the simple fact that we really care first and foremost for numero uno.  The following passage that will help to further drive home this theme:

“Of course, you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it.  But no one else is.  The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.”

The question now stands: how can we navigate this reality, in a way that will make our lives more fruitful and do so in a way that will inspire happiness and appreciation, and result in mutual benefit for all parties involved?