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Write In Your Best Condition

Published at December 14, 2007 in Blogs and Blogging and Observations and Opinions. 8 Comments

I got home last night with one thing in my mind: to write. Having been fully immersed in work the entire week, I was happy that I could finally be able to set free the overflowing ideas in my mind. I was back in my sanctuary. So, I began typing on the keyboard.

Unfortunately, the physical exhaustion has affected my writing capabilities.

My fingers were stuck at the home keys, my eyes began closing, my head started dropping. I tried to fight it, but failed. I arrived at a conclusion: I was physically tired.

And there was no sense of forcing something that has no power.

Strength

So I asked myself: should I continue just for the sake of writing despite my temporary incapability? If so, shouldn’t I be worried that I might sabotage my post?

My main objectives for having a blog are 1.) to express myself, and 2.) share my thoughts, opinions, and observations with others. Writing unsatisfactorily would be a shame and a disrespect to myself and to my readers.

With that in mind, I made a decision: I turned the machine off, took a break and then slept.

Now – fresh and recharged – I am reminded of basketball players when they are not healthy. Basketball is a physical game, and an injured player is not allowed to play until he is 100% healthy or cleared by the team doctor (some exceptions apply).

The risk of aggravating the injury is simply too high if a player forces the issue. Besides, will he be able to give something of significance given his limitations?

Same goes with writers and bloggers.

A writer should also rest if he needs to, because just like athletes, he should be in his excellent physical condition to bring out the best in him.

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BlogRush Censors Unfavorable Reviews?

Published at November 18, 2007 in Blogs and Blogging and Observations and Opinions. 13 Comments

*Note: Unless something controversial happens, this will be my final post about BlogRush.*

Based on my experience, it looks like BlogRush (I’ll call it BR from time-to-time here onwards) is trying to unexpose honest reviews that don’t favor them.

In my opinion, I think I wrote a fair analysis when I posted “BlogRush, Have You Forsaken Me?” last week (if you want to object, be my guest :P ). Did BlogRush intentionally block that post? I don’t have a clue.

Normally, BR would pick up the latest post a few hours after it was posted. However, after 2 days of observing, I noticed that BR was still using an old topic as a “flag-carrier” of my blog when it’s not supposed to.

Why did that happened? Was it a BR glitch?

Despite the curiosity itch, I exercised patience. I wanted to experiment a bit so I waited couple more days before I published another post (“You Love Writing, Does Someone Understand?”). As expected, few hours later, it was sent across sites that run BR widget. It has been syndicated a good 134 times in less than a day.

How come my BlogRush review never made the widget?

To get the clear picture of what I’m talking about, look at the two photos below:

PlanetSaedel November 2007 Archive
Above is a snapshot of my archives. I published my BlogRush Review On 11th of November 2007

In the picture below, notice that my Nov. 11 post was not even included in the report. Confirmed: BlogRush has forsaken me.
BlogRush Skippy

It never happened before. So last Friday, first thing in the morning, I wrote a short email to BR Customer Support asking for an explanation as to why. Even though I expressed my disappointment, I did my best to be polite and professional. When I didn’t get any response after a day, I followed it up. I am still waiting for their reply.

Is BlogRush really that busy to ignore my email? I believe they have people who filtered and purged 10,000 “low-quality” blogs, how come nobody from Customer Support even bothered to answer a simple query?

Personally, I think BlogRush is a good idea that will benefit both Mr. Reese and bloggers, and I really hope that the censorship is just a glitch. But if Mr. Reese and his team don’t even bother clearing up this situation, then it is like saying they really monitor and auto-block honest reviews against them. If that’s the case, then we don’t know what kind of posts they will block in the future. Next thing we know, they’ll control political issues (I know it’s a stretch, but a possibility).

For BlogRush members who are reading this, kindly check your BR dashboard and see if some of your articles got blocked – particularly the ones that have honest reviews about them. Make sure you are not filtering your own post, otherwise, it will not really appear in the report. :P Let us know if you had been censored without your knowledge.

My hope is BlogRush widget somehow picks up this post and sends this article across the blogosphere (I will know in the next few hours upon publishing). However, if BR censors this, I won’t mind. This post will still find its way out.

Mr. Reese is probably laughing his butt out, thinking how a small site like mine could hurt his project. All I can say is everything becomes bigger by the power of the internet. And with your help, we can send this message to the intended parties so they can avoid this kind of mistake again — whether it was accidental or intentional.

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You Love Writing, Does Someone Understand?

Published at November 15, 2007 in Blogs and Blogging, Observations and Opinions and Personal. 9 Comments

When you love something, you do whatever it takes to get it. Take writing for instance. As a blogger or a writer, you spend considerable amount of time writing, and A LOT of time thinking which is driven by inspiration.

And you don’t even notice it.

When you are taking a shower, and an idea suddenly hits you, you want to rush out of the bathroom and sit down in front of the computer and start typing.

Because when a writer starts to think, he feels his ideas are unique; or at least feels he has found a creative way of presenting old thoughts. It’s hard to pass it up. A passionate writer wants to finish writing in one sitting because he feels when he loses his grip, a big chunk of himself is gone. When that happens, the writer feels restless. I know. Because that’s how I feel.

That’s why sometimes, I feel I write better when I’m sleepy. Or should I say, “still sleepy”, because the only time I feel sleepy is when I wake up abruptly from a slumber. I don’t feel sleepy at night. I feel tired. And when my eyes feel tired they automatically close and I fall into sleep.

SunriseWhen I’m sleepy, the quietness of the dawn and the freshness of my mind combine to form a unique thought — at least to me. A thought that I feel could inspire others. Or teach. Or help. Or anything useful. A thought that I think could change the world. And wonderful thoughts deserve the best choice of words.

I always think I’m alone when I’m in this state. Is that weird or lonely? I don’t think so. I just think most people do not understand when a writer begins to dwell in his own world and why he has to do it.

So I did the logical thing. I asked the person who I think will understand me best. The person who I want to be with for the rest of my life.

“Andie?” I asked my girlfriend. “Will you understand me when I am writing?”

“What do you mean?” she asked. And I said, “when I’m like this.” and I described my state to her. She likes it when I am talking to her. I think most girls do when their guys open themselves.

She understands, and said. “Yes.”

I was happy, but I really do hope she does because writing is important to me. So I chuckled, and told her, “You know this won’t be the last time, right?” I didn’t expect or need any answer.

My fingers tapped the keyboard as my thought wandered in the quietness of the dawn, as the rainy morning of our 3rd Anniversary arrives.

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Dear BlogRush, Have You Forsaken Me?

Published at November 11, 2007 in Blogs and Blogging, Observations and Opinions and Random Ramblings. 25 Comments

When BlogRush went live several weeks ago, John Reese – the founder – promised that it would help small, young sites like mine generate more traffic. All you have to do is install a box or widget, which Mr. Reese said, would display targeted blogs’ latest post. For Free.

Free traffic? Music to my ears!

I was excited, so I signed up and installed the widget. I categorized my blog under “Personal Diary.” (The categories back then were limited.) I was one of the many people in the first batch, thanks to John Chow’s post.

I monitored my site’s stats on a regular basis, and checked whether BlogRush was true to its words because I didn’t want only traffic, I also wanted readership.

The first few weeks, I saw people coming to my site via BlogRush. I was happy. Some passers-by even commented on some of my posts. Some awesome bloggers like Vic Grace, Jeni Hill Ertmer, and Awannabe came from BlogRush. That was great. What’s marvelous was when I visited some sites, I saw my blog on their widgets! (In some cases, in mine, too!)

When BlogRush recently launched Phase II, it talked about more promises. But since then, my traffic and click through rates from BlogRush appear to be declining. From experience, I knew that if I leave my latest post on top for 3 or 4 days, it would be syndicated (or picked up by other widget-carrying blogs) at least 800-1000 times with 1 or 2 clicks. However, the last 3 weeks were really below par.

Below is a snapshot of the report since I installed the widget. The posts are arranged from oldest post to latest. You will see that the last 3 weeks, I only received a staggering 2 clicks!


BlogRush Report

This led me to thinking: Are bloggers already blinded by BlogRush? Do they still pay attention to the widget? Or does my title simply stink and doesn’t sound interesting? Is BlogRush a scam that many bloggers claim?

John Reese said that bloggers should put the widget on a higher location, to get more credits and clicks. I put mine a little higher. As a matter of fact, it is on the upper half of my sidebar, but I see no difference. So I don’t think location is the case here.

A quick query on Technorati, I have only read black and white stories about BlogRush: it’s either bloggers find it useful or useless. Nothing in between, unlike my story. A certain Rich from Ohio says he’s been “a booster of Blogrush eversince it went live”. On the other hand, Caroline Middlebrook was not thrilled with the 14 clicks she received despite thousands of impressions.

I was wondering if there are others who share the same sentiments as mine: huge traffic rush at the beginning that is now gradually trending down.

To end, I still want to thank BlogRush and still intend to use it. Somehow, it brought me fantastic bloggers whose blogs I also enjoy reading.

But the recent downward trend of blogrush click-rate has led me to ask: Dear BlogRush, have you forsaken me?

——–

If you wish to try BlogRush, get an account here to drive more traffic to your site.

To view more BlogRush stories in Technorati, click here.

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On Traffic Issues, RSS FeedBurner, Layout Change & More

Published at November 8, 2007 in Blogs and Blogging, Money and Money-making, Observations and Opinions and Simple Tips and How-To. 4 Comments

Change of Layout

If you’ve been reading PlanetSaedel for quite sometime now, you will notice that I’ve changed the posting layout of my page. Each single page now consists of 5 posts in FULL read, unlike before where you have to click “Continue Reading…” to read the rest of the topic. I know this will sound a little selfish but the reason for this is because I want my blog to be accepted by PayPerPost. One of their requirements is to have the post displayed on the page completely. If I get accepted, I only plan to write reviews related to my interests or niche. PayPerPost (PPP), in simple words, is a company that pays bloggers to write reviews. If you want to learn more about PPP, you can read my previous post here.

Traffic

In relation to to that, If you are a subscriber – either by RSS Reader or Email – my post will be delivered to you in Full Read as well. A lot of bloggers utilize RSS because it is extremely useful and time-saving. And that’s exactly the reason why I turned off the “Continue Reading…” feature. Most bloggers are busy but they want to keep updated to other blogs, so they subscribe to a lot of sites that offer RSS. I’ve read that the only time they visit the site to read the entire post is when the title and the first few paragraphs are interesting. So I figured, why not give them a chance to read the complete post via their reader before they completely skip my post?

Enabling FULL READ is a risk, as far as my traffic is concerned. As much as possible, I want readers to go to my relatively new site and give me a “hit”. But then I thought, one way to do it is to write insightful, useful, and interesting posts. So that’s what I’m going to do.

So how am I going to send traffic to my 9-week old site?

Enter the Feedburner.

RSS FeedBurner and its FeedFlare Feature

I use FeedBurner to burn my posts and deliver them to my readers. It has a feature called FeedFlare, which I found out allows interactivity to your site. If you have an RSS reader, you can check that I am able to show the following: How many Comments are there in my posts; Links to Technorati, Digg, StumbleUpon; and many more. For my non-technical readers, these simply mean a way to encourage the readers to click on my site to generate traffic, and to share my posts/articles to other social sites if they find them interesting and discussion-worthy.

How cool is that? :)

However, I am unsure if FeedFlare only works for WordPress or other blog software installed in bloggers’ OWN domain. Therefore, bloggers whose sites are hosted by blogspot.com and other similar free bloghosts, will have to verify on their own if they are able to avail of this service.

MORE

I’m thinking of a better site description to replace my current one. Right now, it reads: “Beginner’s guide to practical things and more“, but the more I write, the more the description becomes irrelevant. :P My girlfriend Andie, thought so, too. So if you have suggestions, kindly post them in the message box below; or if you are too shy, you can simply shoot me an email at: saedel@planetsaedel.com ( saedel[at]planetsaedel[dot]com ). All suggestions will be appreciated.

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