When Should I Start Monetizing My Website?

I know of many bloggers who jump into blogging for the sole purpose of earning money off their blogs by buying lots of traffic to their site which has loads of annoying advertisements and little original or quality content on it. Well, I used to be one these guys. I had big dreams that one day I would be able to support my life entirely or partly on the earnings my cyber-endeavors made me. I still have these ambitious dreams, but I go about them in a slightly different way now. Last time I used to try and copy other blogs, pretending to be an expert on certain subjects whilst actually having no idea what I was talking about- in short, having a  mirror blog and trying to be someone I wasn’t. Now I’m taking an entirely different approach compared to last time. Nowadays, I don’t pretend about that I’m expert and instead give my honest opinion as a blogger.

So, to the question that bugs many new bloggers and webmasters, when should I start monetizing my website? Well, my opinion is that you shouldn’t be too concerned about how to monetize your website first and instead concentrate on getting some good quality content up into you website. I used to focus a lot on ways to monetizing my website without actually building up on my website, pretty soon I found out that it was just a big waste of my time. The logic in this is if your website doesn’t have quality content, what contextual advertising programs would want to accept your site, and that with the little visitors you get when you first start a site, what are the chances that they would actually click an advertisement? There is nothing wrong with researching and implementing ways to monetize your website when it has just started, but make sure you don’t make it a higher priority than writing original and quality content on your blog.

I used to be a monetizing freak, as in I would find out about all the contextual advertising systems around and apply to them to get my website accepted. At that time, my website was really a crappy site with little real or useful information, and all I thought about was how to monetize. I got rejected from most of the reputable ones and got accepted in the more shoddy ones. After implementing advertisements into my blog from contextual advertising programs that I had been accepted in, I found out that I had near zero traffic and had wasted my efforts when I should have concentrated on actually building up my blog.

The reason why you should be more concerned about writing good and quality content before you start worrying about the ins and outs of monetizing a blog is that with quality content you’ll automatically (of course some basic SEO’s and site promotion must be done!) have lots of pages indexed by searched engines and links in from other websites that find your content useful, and that would in turn bring in traffic and visitors. Once you have a certain number of traffic and visitors, then only you should monetize your site and reap your hard work.

In short - you should only start monetizng your site once you have good quality and consistent content on your website with reasonable traffic and not the other way round.

Exams On The Way

My mid-term exams are like 3 more weeks off. At first I thought it was 6 more weeks off so when I found out I was pretty surprised. This mid-term exam is 30% of my whole marks this term, which means it’s pretty important for me to study really hard and do well. So here’s a blow by blow break down on my different subjects and what I think of them.

English - This is my main language but surprisingly it’s quite hard for me to score. I guess this is because there is a certain format to which the teacher give marks to in an essay, which means if I write a really good essay, as in University standard but it doesn’t have the lower-level elements to an essay, I don’t get any points for it.

Higher Chinese - It’s a language, and not just any language, it’s Higher Chinese. This is like the hardest subject here, and the hardest to improve in for me.

Biology - This to me is one of the more enjoyable subjects, as most of it is just memorizing and linking different facts to different facts.

Chemistry - This is the hardest science subject I have. It is seriously hard. All the chemical formulas, chemical names, chemical equations to memorize and understand. What’s worse, the textbook they give you don’t really do a good job in explaining the material.

Physics - This is also an easier science subject for me. It’s just mostly understanding the concept and the different laws.

Geography - This subject is also not that hard, I think.

History - The material isn’t hard, but the way to get marks is.

Social Studies - The material isn’t hard, but the way to get marks is.

E.Maths - This is like the hardest math subject for me. My own carelessness, panic, coupled with our teacher sick for 3 weeks has really done a lot to make me so incompetent in E.Maths.

A.Maths - A.Maths to me is easier, as in I think I’m more competent in it.

Well, that’s it, all the subjects I’m taking and my thoughts on them. Beware, my thoughts on them should not be an indicator of my results for that subject in my coming exam. Here, everything is harder for me. Everything. I find the way in which the teachers score marks for us in the exam extremely subjective and unreliable, then again, this might just because I haven’t gotten the hang of writing the answers down in a "mark-full" format.

So what am I doing to prepare for the exams? I’ve written down my timetable and planned out all the subjects and chapters I need to cover before the exam and the time needed. I’m also going for group studies with some of my Korean and Thai friends as their math is just awesome. Besides that, I’m also spending more time and concentration on my studies in school.

So, 3 more weeks and I’ll start benchmarking my competency in revising for exam.

Review - Adium, The Best IM On MacOSX

Adium is one of the things I being a Mac user last time just could not live without. Adium is a free instant messaging application that can connect to multiple networks on multiple accounts at the same time. If you find the Messenger for Mac, that is the Mac version of Windows Live Messenger is outdated and feels clunky, then Adium is the right choice for you.

Adium sports a minimalist and stylish design that is extremely customizable. So customizable that you can customize everything from the dock icon, to the notification sounds and window. For those who are big fans of personalization, and find that the tweaks offered by Messenger for mac isn’t going to cut it, then you would find out what you have been missing for all these years in Adium.

That said, Adium being a multi-network instant messaging application, does have some minor glitches and limitations. I found that offline messages sent using Windows Live Messenger to Adium and vice versa just doesn’t work. If you’re like me who is a finds the offline messaging system to be extremely useful, then you would find this a bit of a let down. Another thing is that your personal display in Windows Live Messenger doesn’t work with Adium. I guess having a multi-network instant messaging applications does have it’s disadvantages. Hopefully when the next version is released they would clear up some of these glitches.

Some of the things I like about Adium is:

• Easy to customize to a great degree
• Has tabbed conversations, which makes it so much more organized
• Supports history of conversations
• Can sign into 2 accounts at the same time, even if they are on the same network
• Free!

My verdict is, if you haven’t tried out Adium, then you should give it a try. I highly recommend this product to anyone using a Mac out there.

Drett.com - Totally New start, Right Up From The Roots

I have been thinking about this website Drett.com recently, it started as a hobby and pet website where I could learn about the basics of everything to do with a website - how to set up wordpress, move a wordpress installation, use FTP, deal with mysql and databases, how to design websites, importance of search engine optimization(SEO), how to write articles for the website and a whole lot more. I poured countless hours of my time into Drett.com, wanting it to be like some of the big-named blogs out there, then I finally got thinking that I can never be exactly like them simply because I am NOT them.

From now on, I just want to be me. Not be some of the pro-bloggers out there. Just simple me.

And to show how committed I am in changing my site from the ground up totally, I have deleted my old installation of wordpress and just started anew. Deleting every single old post of mine and start with a fresh new sheet of paper. NOTE:I am still using my old theme though, until I have found time to created another better theme :).

Drett.com would now be something of a personal blog to me. A blog where I right about some of the random stuff I learn through my daily life, mistakes I have made and learnt something from, shoutout to the newest gadgets, reviews on places and products, some life-tips that would be useful for everybody out there, my comments on the things happening in the world, a record of my new ventures, tips I pick up on the areas of finance and budgeting, stuff I learn about website, blogging and computers, and everything else that I know would benefit and interest the reader.

In short - Drett.com would be my blog where I would posts things that I have learnt through life and useful information that you might not have known.