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Well, it’s been a busy few days (longer than that, to be honest). Over a week ago Firefox deleted all of my bookmarks, which contained a lot of important saved information, sites, tools, articles, and more. I discovered that not soon enough, and it was too late to recover all of my bookmarks. Firefox does five backups a day, and they’re quickly replaced by new backups. I didn’t realize soon enough to recover one of the five, so I lost it all. That was the first downfall.

The following day, my laptop broke. Again. There’s something wrong with it, and I can assure you it’s not my fault. Heh. When it’s plugged in the light is supposed to come on, the screen is supposed to be brighter, and it’s supposed to charge. Most of you should know how a laptop is supposed to act when it’s plugged into an outlet. Anyway, it acts like it’s NOT plugged in. It won’t charge and lives off its battery life. And since it won’t charge, when it runs out of battery and dies, I can’t even turn it on again. It did this a few months ago, we took it and got it fixed, and guess what? It’s doing it again. The stupid computer store doesn’t open up until Tuesday morning, so we have to wait that long. For now, I’m using a different computer, but I hardly have any time that I’m allowed to access it.

I’ve been working so hard lately on trying to up my traffic and write good, new quality content, but you’re going to have to bear with me. At the rate I’m going, some days I might have no computer access and some days I might have an hour or two. And if you know me that’s certainly not a lot. Hopefully we’ll take my laptop on Tuesday morning and it’ll be fixed soon. Hopefully.

Besides that, I want to buy the new Sims 2 expansion pack, Bon Voyage, and get to playing!

But even more, I think I just need a new computer. I don’t know what’s wrong with this one but something tells me if we are able to get it fixed, it will only continue to keep messing up. Besides, I wouldn’t mind a new one. Maybe it’s time…

I’ll stop blabbering and have some mercy on you. Basically, it’s a lot tougher to keep up with this blog right now and I hope you won’t punish me and abandon me. I’m doing the best I can. On top of losing all my bookmarks and my laptop breaking, I have writer’s block, and I’m not even sure if my own advice will get me through it. Wish me luck, and now it’s your turn to have some mercy on ME! Please?

If you’d really like to give me a helping hand, and help yourself out in the process (you can reach new potential readers, get backlinks, and drive traffic), consider guest blogging?

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When I first started blogging, I didn’t know very much. Not very much at all. And to this day, there’s still a lot I don’t know and yes, I will openly admit that. But months ago, when this blog was new and still on Blogspot, I wrote some things that I completely disagree with in today’s time. Opinions change. Here are some of those posts I wrote in the past that I’d never write again today if I could:

• Earn Money using SlashMySeach - I’d never write this again because SlashMySearch is just such a horrid waste of time. It’s time NOT well spent. You could earn more cash doing other things, and their search engine sucks anyway. Go Google!
• Feed my Feed - A link train. Yuck. Fake, unreal, cheating links. If you participate in things like this too often, Google will notice, and WILL penalize you. Besides, why mess around with the system? It’s not worth it.
• I Love the BlogMad.Net Traffic Exchange - Really, I don’t. Maybe months ago, but not anymore. Traffic exchanges are bad, the traffic isn’t targeted, and the visitors don’t stick around. Well, one of mine did. Once. Traffic exchanges create unreal impressions and take up too much valuable time.
• Results of ViralTags and ViraLink Trains - This is, by far, the worst one. But please do be assured that I’m completely against link trains and the like now. I used to think it wasn’t cheating, but now I wish to take back those words, because I think it is. The links aren’t real, they aren’t valuable, AND they can get you in trouble with Google. Stay away from these things.

Those four are entirely stupid. Of course, there are some other posts with stupid aspects, but not 100% idiotic like those above. I am proud to say, however, that a lot of what I’ve written I still approve of.

If you’re wondering what the point of this post is, it’s that I’m trying to get across the fact we all start out somewhere, and we all improve over time (hopefully). Also over time our opinions and views on certain things can change. There are always going to be mistakes to learn from, but if you act like those mistakes never happened, your blogging will never get better. The road starts out very bumpy, but if you travel down it the right way, it will straighten and flatten out.

Wow, where did that cheesy line come from? Maybe that’ll be another thing I’ll go back and read and smack myself on the head for!

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As you might know, you can browse this blog using one of three different colors: red, green, and blue. Now, we all know that bloggers can never please 100% of their audience all the time, but when three colors are offered to view the theme instead of just one, there’s a better chance.

If you’re a newcomer to this blog, or didn’t know that you can change the color, all the buttons, backgrounds, links, and everything else is most likely red. But if you’re getting sick of the red, or if red never was your favorite color, why not try some green or blue on for size?

Basically, I am asking which color YOU use to look at this blog (red, green, or blue) and which one is your favorite. Me? I use blue. But why don’t you tell me how you feel with this simple poll:

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NOTE: I’m not entirely sure how this upcoming weekend is going to go, but I’m most likely going to be busy and not online because it’s my birthday. Thought I’d give another heads up in case you missed the last note. If you need to contact me, I’ll try to check my messages sometime. Thank you, and have a great weekend!

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Do you know how much traffic and exposure you can get if your banner is shown on JohnChow.com? A LOT! Tim Schroeder of eMonetized is being extremely generous and giving four people the chance to have their own 125 x 125 banner ad shown on John Chow for free. Your can read more about his John Chow Banner Ad Contest Here. I think it’s definitely worth checking out - you have nothing to lose and in the end, you could come winning BIG TIME!

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It’s pretty big news about right now; John Chow’s got a new design (created by Nate Whitehill). If you haven’t seen it yet, take a peek at the preview below:

I really like the new theme. To be honest, the old one was bland and I often wondered how someone with so much money couldn’t come up with something better. But now the blog has a more professional feel. It is sharp, bright, and still very well organized - and all of that without being too flashy. Nate definitely did a good job, and he was smart to offer the design for free. Not only does he get a lot of exposure for it, but a link at the bottom of the site that appears on every single page!

Oh yes, I believe I’m supposed to mention how John is making money with his new theme. Well, if you haven’t noticed, it does contain a lot more advertising. The eight sponsor buttons on the sidebar are all new and came with the new design. Each one of them cost $500 per month, according to Mr. Chow - now that’s a lot of money!

John believes in not selling himself short, that he should make close to the highest amount of money with his site that he can. But let’s face it: he’s already making a fortune online. And while John won’t gain anymore money from it, I believe he should cut the sponsored ad buttons in half, to four instead of eight. He won’t get the extra cash, but he’ll be doing something for his readers, and isn’t that enough of a reason? Many people are complaining on the overdose of advertising, and I agree. It could definitely be reduced.

But all in all, I really love the design. I’m very impressed by it and actually quite a bit jealous. Some good new features are the popular articles and subscribe sections at the top, and it’s things like that that I hope to get in a future layout for this blog. John’s theme is professional and stunning, but would be twice as better without all those ads. Great job on it, Nate!

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