ê¿êspi20.com — watching and writing

Have you seen this lovely award across the blogosphere lately?

I have and have so envied all the wonderful blogs who have received it. Of course, they’re all eminently worthy of receiving the award and I have agreed with every single choice! When the site wasn’t familiar to me, I visited it from the links at the awards site and found yet more wonderful blogs to add to my daily reading pleasure.

Can you imagine how excited I was to find out someone chose this humble blog as a recipient?!?

I’m so touched that Iris from  The BuzzNutter chose me as one of her 5 recipients to pass the trophy on to. I’m even more touched by what she wrote about my blog — go read it — she’s so sweet!

Since part of the conditions of being an Arte y Pico recipient are that you must choose 5 other blogs to pass it on to, now I have the task of choosing only 5 out of the hundreds of blogs I so admire every day.

From the Arte y Pico originator:

The “Arte y Pico” award was created and to be given to bloggers who inspire others with their creative energy and their talents, whether it be writing, artwork in all medias When you receive this award it is considered a “special honor”. Once you have received this award, you are to pass it on to at least 5 others.

I guess first and foremost has to be Sailor from Nice to All. Just like his blog’s title he IS nice to all. Not to mention he helps you make your blog or website a better place for everyone to visit. Thank you, Sailor for all you’ve done for me — helped me to be a better net citizen. I know I still have a ways to go, but with your guidance, I’m sure to get there.

My second choice goes to a blog that has given me much pleasure to read and follow. Nicole at Modern Glam has brought me to the brink of fashion. I haven’t actually fallen in yet (much to my husband’s relief), but I’m getting pretty close. Nicole’s sense of fashion is impeccable. She’s doesn’t let trends get in her way of creating a solid, fashionable look that is never garish or uncomplimentary. You end up looking totally glamorous when she gets through with you.

Third choice is one blog that I’ve been reading for months although I don’t think I’ve ever left one single comment on his site. There really isn’t much I can offer in the way of a comment beyond “wonderful choice!” or “WOW”. Clark picks some of he coolest videos to be found anywhere on the net and brings them to me. I like a lot of different types of music and so does Clark — from jazz to rock and roll, classical to contemporary Clark finds unique and awe inspiring videos exhibiting the best of the best. So, for some great music videos, head over to Clark’s Picks and see what’s on for today.

You know that I can’t leave you without a food blog, don’t you? Cooking  IS an art and cooking healthy is beyond art. Gina’s Weight Watchers Recipes goes way beyond diet food. Gina presents us with tasty, healthily prepared foods that are designed to help us lose or maintain weight loss. The food is presented arfully and believe me when I tell you it’s delicious! I have several people at work reading her blog and using her recipes to help them with their weight control goals.

Last but certainly not least is Kriz Cpec Photo Blog. Photography is my second hobby (after blogging) and Kriz is much like me in that he enjoys photographing birds, flowers and wildlife. I appreciate photos of people and landscapes, too but photos of birds especially enthrall me. This young person captures birds in all sorts of settings doing all the things birds do. His photography skills improve daily and he’s caught some really great shots of unique specimines as well as done some outstanding art shots of lights. I wish I had access to the aviary where he does most of his photography!

Gosh — I could give out more than 5 awards! There are so many awesome blogs out there. I’m so blessed to be a part of this community.

Thank you again, Iris, for gifting me with not only this award, but your friendship as well.

ê¿ê

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3.2

Have you been E-dropping through your list of blogs and realize that a bunch of them have no updated content in months?

Don’t you wonder what happened to them?

Did they just get bored with their blog and abandon it? Did they get writer’s block and can’t think of anything new/witty/scathing to say? Did something terrible happen? Are they sick, in prison, on vacation, involved in a work or school project, having an affair, taking care of a sick relative? Did their computer die?

Did THEY die?

Have you taken steps to ensure that if something happens to you, your blog continues, or has some kind of updated content added to it periodically?

Have you listed your blog in your will?

I mean, many of us have blogs that have some real value to them, so is it so far fetched to list your blog as an asset in your will and bequeath it to someone who will cherish it as much as you have or who will dispose of it in a humane manner?

Would you buy John Chow’s blog if (GOD FORBID!) something happened to him and his executor put his blog on the auction block? Or Shoemoney’s blog? Or Problogger’s blog? What about IHAZCHEEZEBURGERS?

Which blog would you like to buy if it became available?

And then there is the question of whether you could sustain the readership of that blog if you took it over.

While I might be able to write about making money blogging, could I do as good a job as those “A” listers previously mentioned? Probably not. But then again, with my ability to write scintillating prose, perhaps I would take their blog to a whole new level.

Yeah……I know…..in my dreams…..

Well, gotta call my attorney and get him to add my blogs in my will. Who knows, maybe the grandkids will want the musty old things!

ê¿ê

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Rate this:

2.5

Back in the good old days, when EntreCard was new and I was a new member of it, things were simple, straightforward and we had this shiny goal in front of us — to visit as many as 300 new blogs per day and leave our marks in the blogosphere. A refreshing change from other Social Networking sites I had been encouraged to join.

Todays EntreCard still purports to have those same shiny goals, but like one of those “luxury watches” available on Ebay, either the shine is getting a bit tarnished or the scales have fallen from this users eyes — you choose.

This week EntreCard rolled out several new improvements to the system. Some of these were long awaited and oft asked for. Nearly all of them have been well received and even those that weren’t received with wide open arms, were received with suggestions to tweak and make them juuuuusst a little more user-friendly. In typical Phyrite phasion (sorry couldn’t resist the alliteration), those tweaks came quickly and professionally.

So what’s my beef you ask?

Well, I’ve been a “power dropper” for some time now — nearly always reaching the maximum of 300 drops per day on a daily basis. If I didn’t make it, I literally didn’t have access to the internet. Even days when I was sick and spent most of the day in bed with fever and chills, I managed to drag myself into the computer room long enough to drop 300 cards.

It takes me awhile to do this as I tend to read posts and comment on those that I feel can use my input, need my expertise or that prompt me to ask “huh?” I have my method of accomplishing this goal and it involves rewarding my list of faithful readers, advertisers and those who accept my ads first, then I get on to the “others”.

Included in the new features roll-out this week is the ability to combine blogs under one email account. This makes managing multiple blogs easy and was the main reason that up until this week, I only had one blog registered with EntreCard. It was just too overwhelming to try to maintain multiple blogs in the manner I think a blog SHOULD be maintained and do the drop thing as well. It’s the single most asked for feature included in the roll-out package and has given a new insight on just how people are using EntreCard to drive traffic to their blog(s).

Along with the new features, an E-book on EntreCard was released which contains information about EntreCard’s beginnings, how to make the most of the EntreCard experience and other bits of stuff both important and trivial. It’s not a long book - 16 pages — so you can read it in a flash.

EntreCard is also sponsoring a contest, awarding some 15,000 credits to people who add a blog to their account. If you’ve been waiting as I have to add a blog to the community, now would be a good time to do that!

I’m not entirely sure this contest thing is really going to help EntreCard maintain their goal of having quality blogs for readers to choose from. It seems to me that it’s an encouragement for people to sign up blogs that are “dead”, are in actual fact, “splogs” or ones that are inappropriate to the community for other reasons. I’m sure this will eventually die down, but in the meantime, I’m already seeing more junk blogs than before and that’s taking away some of my precious time for the quality sites. I know we can report these blogs and get them removed from the system — again a tedious process of sending the link/profile link to one of the moderators or the two administrators and a “ban” or “ratings” button has been requested for the widgets. The administrators are still on the fence over that request.

One of the most positive things about EntreCard is that despite some of the negatives, there are tons of positives and make being a member of this community valuable and worthy. If you’re new to EntreCard or don’t know anything about it and are just now reading about it here, I do encourage you to download the Ebook, read about it (it’s a short book and won’t take you long), then click the “get one” underneath the image you see over on the top left. You’ll get traffic to your site, make new friends and be introduced to a whole neighborhood of caring, quality folks.

ê¿ê

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2.5

I’m the absolute first to admit that I’m nowhere near the blogger that Shoemoney, Problogger or John Chow is and will probably never reach that elusive height of being categorized as an “A-List Blogger”. After all, I’m a relative Johnny-come-lately on the scene and I’m doing everything differently from them. And if they and 2 million other how-to-make-money-blogging authorities are to believed, everything WRONG.

Let’s face it, I can’t get Adsense to bring in more than pennies and Project Wonderful literally brings me about 10¢ per day on a good day, so you won’t be seeing photos of $30,000 checks in my hand unless I win a lottery or something.

But, there’s hope.

In the course of my blog hopping, I happened on Singapore Entrepreneurs TLE and got caught up by his latest post titled Disruptive Innovation in a Web 2.0 World. He shows us how the big guys get ultra conservative in their approach to brand expansion and innovation. They do new stuff in small steps instead of taking risks and doing wild and crazy things.

On the other hand, the new guys on the block have nothing to lose, so can try radically different things and thereby create their own niche.

And I can truly see how this would work, thanks to the example provided by “Boss” of WalMart’s success story.

I know that I for one am tired of hitting on these make-money-blogs only to read the same article on how to monetize only with a slight shift in wording. I came really close to just doing a drop and run here, but thankfully I stuck around since this guy has a fresh approach and he makes sense with it! He gives me hope that I just haven’t reached critical mass yet with my scatter gun (and some would say scatterbrained) method of writing. I say I’m giving a lot of different people something to come back to read.

Or maybe I just WANT it to make sense and give me hope — you read it and tell me what you think.

Brilliant or Bull?

ê¿ê

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2.5

Well, the domain servers are already pointing to the new domain. I have all files transferred, the new version of WordPress installed and we are officially in bidnez over here at Holdfire (thanks, Maria for the tip!). Even the missing post from two days ago is showing up! How about them apples?!?

I know I’ve been a pain in the a$$ to the tech support guys, but think everything is resolved now to my satisfaction. They were great to work with and very patient with my interminable questions. You certainly can’t complain about the price — $30 for a year’s hosting for this blog. That’s compared to $107 at my previous host. While they were great to work with and had super tech support as well, I was having trouble justifying the expense for a blog that doesn’t earn much beyond pocket change. I’m very grateful for the experience at Bluehost.com — they were great and I highly recommend them if you need a full-featured web host.

Now I can relax, knowing that I not only have a great host who is responsive to my needs, but one that is affordable as well! No need to be a nervous Nellie now!

You know what the hardest part of this move was? Transferring my gallery images and my uploaded images from my old host over here. I don’t know why I had such a problem connecting to the old host via SmartFtp, but I did. Once I got that resolved, though, moving those files over was pretty painless and LOOK! Everything works! All the pictures are where they’re supposed to be! YEAH!

I feel like a WordPress rockstar now, but know I’m really just a noob when it’s all said and done.

ê¿ê

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2.5