Tag: Blogger

blogging blues

Disappointed. But still hopeful I presume.

It is true that I could never quite sit still. For the last four or five days I have joined the ranks of the unemployed. Or maybe I shouldn’t say that because I am affiliated with a freelancing company. Still, since the company job orders arrive only during the weekends, I pretty have nothing to do for the rest of the week days. Judging by the state of my farm in Farmville though one would think I am pretty busy. Well, yes and no.

No. I am not busy with any job or any project mandated by any company. I am not busy with any work as of the moment.

Yes. I am busy none the less. Busy finding ways to occupy my time. Do something productive. Something that could earn me something in the long run.

I am currently on the process of creating blogs (plural) in Blogger. Knowing that this blog site offers more customization of sites as well as opportunities to earn from AdSense ads or Pay Per Post opportunities, I ventured to create several informative sites using Blogger. The sites are set-up. Their domains mapped out. Their looks customized – thanks to hundreds of free templates from Blogger (otherwise it would take me eons doing my own custom CSS). Then again there are features of WordPress I sorely miss. Like the ease of adding pages which I don’t know if it is possible with Blogger and even the ease of using the Dashboard and available features.

Yet push on I must. I must keep on exploring, patiently building these sites. Why? For one, I want to really earn from them but more than that I know I need to get some third person, informative and factual sort of writing done. Writing that is not opinionated but more feature-article like. And what better way to start writing well-researched articles than by starting with the topics I know best of. Besides, on my recent forays into the internet, I learned that most companies asks for sample articles that are not of the the first person voice and are not based on opinions. Since this blog has mostly focused on my opinions on a plethora of matters, and rightly so for it is a personal blog, I need to create outlets where I can practice writing feature articles.

Then again, who is on a rush? I am determined to enjoy as well as learn and earn in this new career phase I have entered.

new look

I wanted to have a new domain, most likely go back to Blogger. I discovered that they offer a wide variety of themes, not to mention the option to earn from your blogs. With my recent foray into the freelancing world, I see now the importance of earning money from your blog. Not that I really hope to earn from my personal blog (that’s why I am creating more informative blogs) but then again I hope to make my personal blog a sort of catapult into my more professional writing credentials.

Alas I found out when I tried for Pay Per Post that WordPress does not support making money out of your blog. So much for that then. So I tried importing my blog back to Blogger, whose template I have now updated, only to find out that the only way for me to redirect my readers from WordPress to Blogger would be to either pay WordPress or put some sort of disclaimer/redirect post in my blog. I found both options a bit cumbersome.

And so I decided to forge a new look using whatever template WordPress has available. Until that time when I am able to really pay them, I guess I must content myself with the freely available options.

The only consolation I have though is that with this new theme, drop down menus are available for the pages. See for yourselves. 😀

tsk tsk on my attempts to customize this page

I may be moving back to my old blog server, if that is what you call that. That is if I indeed learn how to customize or make my own CSS. I just found out  that for me to be actually able to customize the looks and feel of this blog, I need to purchase an UPGRADE! Though I understand the intentions behind it, (wordpress doesn’t want customized CSS getting around the web), still I am utterly disappointed. Just when I was beginning to get the hang of navigating around the dashboard etc. Now I guess I have to go back to Blogger and re-orient myself with its dashboard.

Come to think of it, the reason I shifted was because I found wordpress’s dashboard more attractive than Blogger’s. But then, my friend was right, you can’t do much customization here.

So I may be saying adieu to this server soon, if not later.

Sigh. And I was looking forward to having my own site with my own domain and my own look. Maybe I should first consider how much the CSS upgrade costs.

And yet for all this talk about customization and own domain names, I still languish at the dismal traffic my site is getting. I guess I must be patient then? Or I guess I must tweak my site more – change my tagline since it really is at odds with each other (as someone pointed out) or change how my blog title appears (notice I removed the sticky caps though I admit it looked better before).

Sigh. I have a lot more to learn. I’ve been blogging on an off for several years now. And it’s only recently that I discovered that my blog will actually be my salvation from the dire boredom my work pushes me into.