Who Likes Getting Abused on Facebook?

First of all, you should know that Facebook is far from being my favourite Social Networking website, so if I get banned from Facebook, who cares?

In my attempt to participate a little bit in the "life" of the Facebook Irish Network, which I "belong to" at the moment, I replied to a few discussion topics: one was about chocolate, so I posted a link to my article on chocolate, I also posted one topic about How to Win the Euromillions, nothing sounding too much like advertising, I just thought some people might be interested.

I am not a prude and I have heard some insults before (even though not usually targeted at me) but one user answered my post with such vulgar language (I hope this guy never fathers a child!) I got a bit shocked but I didn't want him to get the last word so I replied (with proper language, without insulting him, he just made it so easy for me to make him feel stupid!). For anyone wanting to learn some bad words that up till now I didn't know were used in Ireland (where else?), here is the discussion in question: Harry is a bad, bad man.

Another Facebook user saw the "discussion" and wrote a post defending him! Apparently that Harry guy, who is an adept user of foul language roams the Facebook Irish network being nasty to other people and gets their respect?!

So I have been called a spammer; I don't mind, I respect the fact that people don't like their discussion boards loaded with ads but I don't understand the fact that being able to simultaneously send 100 people or more an invitation to add a new Facefook application is not considered spam by some Facebook users (one of my friends sends me about 5 a day!) whereas posting a link on a discussion board not targeted at anyone in particular, entitles you to being virtually abused. I just don't get the logic in that!

This morning I saw a post from another user on the same discussion board which was really what Facebook calls a "blatant ad"; there was no answer yet but I wouldn't like to be in that poor girl's shoes when (Dirty) Harry sees that; I hope she can take criticism!

I am going to keep posting (although not links) in Facebook discussion boards and add new friends (although not Harry), not because I like getting abused (I don't), but because I see Facebook as a way to help me making money online, but I guess from now on I will keep all my links in my profile and I will join the Official Facebook Petition: To ban the inviting of friends on Applications.

BlogCatalog Can Boost your Blog's Traffic

BlogCatalog is a blog directory I have joined when I started blogging but up until recently I did not know all the benefits I could get from being an active member; if you want to boost your blog's traffic, you should really learn how to use BlogCatalog's features.

This is more than just a blog directory: on top of letting you add friends, join groups and neighborhoods, it allows you to post broadcasts, which if used sensibly, should help you increase your blog's traffic: I haven't used this feature yet as I want to add as many friends as possible before I start sending them broadcasts, but I think it is great being able to send a mass message to all your BlogCatalog friends: the way it works is that when you have an important message to convey or have just written the greatest blog post of all time (yes, I know I am getting carried away!), post a broadcast with the link to the post or whatever it is you want to show all your friends, they get an email that informs them of the broadcast so even if they don't check their BlogCatalog account often, they will still get the message and if the title of the broadcast interests them, they will click the link that will bring them to your post: if it's a good one, you may have gained a few more regular visitors, as they will check the rest of your blog.

Of course, I won't advise you to add all of your blog posts as brodacasts, this would only make you very unpopular (unless all of your blog posts are newsbreaking stories): imagine having 1000 friends and receiving a broadcast every day from each one of them: would you open all of the emails? I would just go and remove them from my friends' list quicker than I can type "STOP!"

With BlogCatalog, you can also post messages on shoutboxes, post a review of a blog, send private messages...I think it is also a great Social Networking site and I will try to make the most out of it in the future.

If you are a blogger and not yet a member of BlogCatalog, I think you are missing out; joining this blog directory makes it very easy also to find excellent blogs: if you have an account at BlogCatalog, add me as a friend and join my neighborhood!

Type at Home Scams

I just came across Type at Home Scams while I was updating my Squidoo lens. There are very good lenses out there, and this is one of them.

Before you join any of the Type at Home, Data-entry or Paid Surveys online programmes, you should visit this lens: this could save you a lot of time and money. Type at Home Scams lists about 200 websites that will gladly take your money and leave you high and dry. The author of the lens claims he has made money out of 2 Data-entry programmes, which are listed in the lens as well (not as scams). I am not including the links here as I don't want to take away his leads in case he gets paid for referrals, and I don't want to publish referral links other than my own here, but you can easily find them when you visit his Squidoo lens.

I haven't checked any of these websites, as my own take on Data-entry programmes is not to send money to anyone unless you know exactly what you are getting in exchange, but I appreciate the fact that some people go to the trouble of sharing information about known scams in order to help others.

Link Love: Happy Valentine's!

You may find this title a bit pathetic but since I don't have anybody to share little red teddy bears with, and especially because I don't have to spend an hour in the bathroom getting ready for a date (Yippee, the joys of being single!), I have decided to look for love on the Internet (no, not dating sites!).

So, here are some of the blogs I love to read at the moment:

Wayne Liew Dot Com, which I have discovered through StumbleUpon, wrote a post I can relate to: in his Action Plan For A Successful Blogging Style Change, he explains how he went from a simple blog featuring his own daily rants to a Blogging Tips blog: I guess this happens to a lot of us, as we read blogging tips to try and improve our blogs and sometimes what we learn becomes the subject of our own posts, especially when we can improve these tips with our own original ideas.

Yesterday, Lifehack.org also published a post about organization, in 50 Tricks to Get Things Done Faster, Better, and More Easily. Today, he was writing about information overload and how he is trying to cut down the number of times he checks his emails: hey, Lifehacker, why don't you just try and use your own advice?

And, since I do spend increasing amounts of time on Squidoo, here is how you can learn how to use your tags more effectively: there is also some advice in there you can use for your blogs on Squidoo Tagging Tricks; right after reading this, I updated my own Squidoo lens, How to Make and Save Money, with no less than 34 new tags! I hope it will soon show in the Top 100 of Squidoo lenses; it should also help with my lens' ranking in Google.

Happy reading if you decide to follow some of these links, and also Happy Valentine's Day!

Trying to Get More Organized

Getting organized and doing all the things you wanted to do in one day can be pretty tough, especially if, like me, you love reading blogs (I didn't call this blog Internet Junkie for nothing!). Working on the Internet makes you vulnerable to many temptations and it is not easy to keep focused on what you have to do.

I am also a single mum, so although I don't have a real job, I must clean, cook, bring the kids to school and pick them up (at different times of day to make matters more complicated), shop, spend some time with my children and sleep.

The fact that I don't have so much time to myself is actually a blessing in disguise: I don't have much time for shopping so I don't window-shop and save a lot of money this way. I also use my own grocery shopping money saving tips, some of which save me time as well as money.

When I come home from bringing the kids to school, I do between half an hour and an hour of cleaning up in the house (I try to have the breakfast dishes done and beds made before we leave the house) and then I switch on my computer. One morning a week, I do my grocery shopping (so no work done that morning).

After picking up my youngest daughter from pre-school (I don't exercise other than walking to and from school, my closest shop, and the playground during holidays and week-ends), it is time for lunch (my other daughter has hers at school), and checking my emails if I have time before we need to do the second school pick-up: if not I do this after my older daughter's homework. After my mid-afternoon coffee and a snack for the children, it is usually around 3.30pm when I can get back and get more work done: I have about 2.5 hours (minus time needed to attend to the kids' needs and separating them from occasional fights!) to do what needs to be done: commenting on blogs, writing articles, social networking and bookmarking, coming up with new ideas for this blog...

I have decided to try the following routine from now on: on Mondays, I will try to write drafts for most of my blog posts for the week: of course I do have to read and fine-tune my posts before publishing them but it won't take me as long as writing and publishing a whole new post every day (for some reason, once I am started on one task, I find it quicker to keep it up).

Each afternoon, I will spend a maximum of an hour updating my Squidoo lens and joining Squidoo groups and commenting on lenses.

I also need to spend another 30 minutes on Yahoo Groups: copying and pasting the same message on different groups should save me a lot of time.

I need to put another day aside for writing and publishing articles (I have been very slow in that department), which leaves me 3 days less the above 2 hours a day spent on emails, Squidoo and Yahoo Groups, for Social networking, surfing the net to comment on blogs and finding new ideas for my posts and articles. If I can spare an hour between cleaning up after dinner and putting the kids to bed, I will try to earn a few cents on Morachat. I need the rest of the evenings to relax.

Looking at it this way, getting organized doesn't seem too difficult but I will need to be very disciplined once the children are on holidays. I haven't included the week-ends in my timetable but I do spend time online during the week-ends too, so I guess that anything I didn't have time to do during the week will be done on Saturdays and Sundays. Now all I need to keep up with my routine is another rotten summer!

My Alphabet Blog Flop: I Am Still Looking for Internet Gold

Looking for ways to make money on the Internet is like the Gold Rush: innovators will make the most money, while the followers must struggle to find the right advice and earn the odd cent. At the moment I am afraid I am one of the followers but I have learned a lot and I am trying to find new strategies to make money online.

Last month I shared with you my Magic Formula to Make Money Online From Blogs. Following this, I created 2 new blogs and decided to update my first blog (a blog I had created to try and increase traffic to my website).

I had to delete my Alphabet blog, as I found it the most difficult to update it regularly: I had decided to find a new word, not very common, every day and try to link to an article using the word but it just took too long to search for an intelligent word, and then finding an article that I liked, using this word. On top of this, Adsense decided to display public service ads on the blog, which didn't bring me any income; my Alphabet blog being in no way related to making money online (or saving money), I decided to drop it. There is no point in keeping something that drags you down (funny, this is also exactly what I did with my ex!).

Internet Junkie is now the centre of my attention, and I update my 2 other blogs about once a week. I am not going to push them very much here, at least not until they have a bit more content. I also plan to create more, that is if I find the time; I do have a few more money-making projects, but I don't want to reveal anything until I know for sure that they work, so if you want to learn from me, I would advise you to follow up on my search for making money online, maybe even subscribe to Internet Junkie!

Blogging Heaven: Make Money Blogging About Blogs

Another blogging strategy that came to my attention recently is the reviewing strategy. I am not talking about sponsored posts here, I am talking about bloggers who choose to review a different blog in each of their posts.

The advantages of this blogging strategy are obvious: there are thousands (millions?) of blogs out there, so you will never get stuck for lack of inspiration. If you want to start a blog but don't know what to blog about, just blog about blogs! Leave a comment linking to your post (if possible) on each blog you review, monetize with Adsense (just an example) and why not, if your blog gets a big readership, take a big leap and start asking for a fee per review?

It can be difficult to keep the attention of your readers when you just write blog reviews: you are not teaching people anything new (except the opportunity to discover new blogs), so how exactly are you going to going to get people to subscribe to your blog?

Bloggin-Ads is a review blog, and while what I have described above may seem very easy, Mike and Michelle look like they are working very hard on this blog. The reviews featured are very detailed, which prove that they do spend some time reading and analysing the blogs they are reviewing.

Another thing I have noticed about Mike and Michelle is that they are not shy and really push readers to subscribe to the blog's feed; I left a few comments on some of the posts yesterday (when I find a new blog I like, I usually read more than one post and if I feel like commenting, I just do it) and today I received an email thanking me for my support and asking me to subscribe to Blogging-Ads.

There is also a page on the blog where you can submit a review of a blog (no necessarily your own) or just request a review of your own blog; of course you have to subscribe to the feed before being accepted; with currently 765 feed readers, I guess what they are doing must be working!

Getting reviewed on Bloggin-ads is free, and I think this is another blog that is going to make money (if it is not already: 765 subscribers in 4 months is not bad!), and I think I will ask for a review of Internet Junkie on this blog before the competition makes it too difficult!