Drovers Run

So here’s a question for anybody out there reading, who wants to answer…

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Now this is *not* one of those ‘money is no object’ things where  you tell me that you want to live on a 60ft yacht moored in Monte Carlo moored opposite the swish casino okay? If you realistically *had* to move, where would you go.

This is a two part question - well gosh doggone it if this isn’t starting to sound like an exam!

Part 1: Where would you move to in your *own* country (i.e. the same country where you are now)

Part 2: Where would you move to in *another* country.

Oooh, wait there’s a part three…and WHY??

Here’s my reason for asking…

Hubby and I have been doing a lot of talking lately. We still really want to get to Australia just as soon as we can. That’s our goal. It depends largely on whether or not we can transfer through hubby’s company. That can either happen tomorrow. Next year. Or never.   Our discussions have largely centered around creating a Plan B.   This plan centers around the idea that ‘never’ might happen, and if it does - where do we want to go instead of Australia if it comes to that.   The bottom line is we know we want to leave here.

So, we came up with 5 alternatives. Anybody want to hazard a guess as to what they are? 5 different countries (not including SA or Australia) that we could potentially see ourselves living in - and where there are currently opportunities in my hubby’s line of work.

Oooh, I can’t wait to hear your answers!!

…

My new post is up at MacNessa “Apple iStore, Thai Food and the USS Theodore Roosevelt” if you want to read it.

If anyone out there lives in North Carolina and you’re on the look out for North Carolina health insurance then please do have a look at that link for some super options.

Well as it turns out, there are several things you can do to help increase readership to your blog…

Why Do I Want to Increase Readership to My Blog?

Because bigger readership

= better advertising opportunities

= higher paying advertising opportunities

= more money for me

= I get a 24″ iMac sooner and some funky new office chairs for my swish future home office.

= makes me HAPPY!

But there are many more reasons of course, but for now let’s focus on what’s been working for me!

Take a look at the following graphic that I pulled off my stat ‘people’ this morning…

Um, so anybody remember what happened on Friday?

1. Post About Something Topical at the Moment:

The phrase that is being used around the internet these days is “Content is King”, in my case I posted about Google Page Ranks and Alexa Rankings. People are buzzing about them at the moment, and probably still will be for awhile. Just like me, there are millions of bloggers out there, who had no idea what these things were, until people started talking about it, and now they’re trying to find out.

In other words, I posted about something people are likely to ‘Google’. Plus I backed up my facts with links to things that will help people. I.e. The Alexa Toolbar etc.

Let’s see, what else did I do?

2. Join StumbleUpon, and download their Toolbar:

Why? Because I owe 123 out of those 153 new readers to StumbleUpon. FYI, I actually ’stumbled’ and reviewed my own site. The fact that my blog happened to have a highly topical post on it at that very moment, had not actually occurred to me, but it looks like the combination of these two things was a GREAT thing for my blog!

3. Join Entrecard and figure it out:

Entrecard is like a blog business card - an electronic one.

Huh? Yeah, exactly. Basically you go and sign up (it’s free) and create a little 125×125 card for yourself (if you don’t know how they will help you in the forums).  You place some code on your blog which displays the entrecard.

Now here is the interesting part:

Other ‘Entrecard’ -ers if you will, will bid to advertise on your code space. I.e. if you look at my sidebar right now a little ways down, you’ll see a 125×125 Entrecard link to someone who has bid to advertise on my blog.

They get a 24 hour slot, and I get credits towards advertising on other peoples entrecard slots.  It’s a genius system, because it’s totally free, and I get advertising in return.

A great fact - is that the more popular your blog becomes (i.e. the longer the waiting list to advertise on your blog) the more ‘credits’ it costs someone to advertise on it - driving up your popularity, and earning you more credits so that *you* can go and do more advertising.

Of course there are many ways to increase readership, and these are just 3 things that have *totally* worked for me in the last two days. In the days to come I’ll try to showcase some more ways to increase readership for those of you who are interested.  If you don’t understand either of the websites I mentioned earlier, feel free to say so in your comment and I’ll be happy to email you and help you understand (yeah it took me awhile to ‘get’ the entrecard concept!).

Last night I went big with dinner. Mexican rice. Baked enchiladas. Sour cream. Guacamole - from scratch. Pico de Gallo, from scratch. Corn on the cob (we call those “mielies” over here - pronounced mee-lees). It was a serious spread. Seeing as I’d been on my feet most of the afternoon working on it, I didn’t really hold back when it came to eating it either.

Tonight my FIL got into the kitchen, and boy oh boy did he make *the most succulent* meat pie known to man. Rump steak cut into bite size pieces which melted in your mouth along with butter puff pastry (admittedly the pastry was not from scratch). Mashed potatoes. Veggies. Again, I did not hold back. Once that meat was in my mouth there was no thoughts of dieting or how to lose weight, because seriously, it was the last thing on my mind.

This SO will not do for someone like me with an underactive thyroid. It bites the big one. We have to work three times as hard as someone with normal thyroid activity to lose weight.

Sometimes it really SUCKS TO BE ME. But mostly not.

Well good morning and welcome to my new class. I call it “Fry Your Brain Before Your Morning Coffee 101″. Feel free to fire up your popcorn machines and get comfee, we’re going to be here for awhile.

No doubt you guys have heard of Google Page Rank and Alexa Rankings?  If you’re interested in sponsored posting, or earning some of that elusive spare cash on the web, you probably have heard about it, and if you don’t know about it, here are some helpful pointers that I’ve been researching for my own benefit - and heck I like to share this stuff, so that everybody benefits.

Okay…here goes.

Google Page Rank Explained

1. Google gives pages a ranking based on their importance.
2. They judge this importance, by how many inbound links your site has.
3. Your quality of inbound links, is judged by how important the site is that links to you. In other words, if someone with a high page rank links to you, it’s rated better than if someone with a newer unranked blog links to you - although both of these count in your favour.

Why is Google Page Rank important?

When you have a high page rank, you get better paying sponsored posting opportunities. As well as many more sponsored posting opportunities in general. Naturally, advertisers want their products or websites promoted by someone who has some influence, staying power, or pull, or whatever you want to call it.

The thing is that at the moment, people have their knickers in a twist, because Google has swept across the board lowering the page rankings of pages who do a lot of sponsored posting, feeling that people are purchasing links, purely to make their pages rank higher.  Now if Google were the ‘god’ of the internet, no one would mind. But since they’re not, people are upset that suddenly their sites are ranked much lower than before, purely because they’re choosing to earn some money - outside of the Adsense programme, which is of course, owned by Google. Hmmpf.

As an example of just how silly this is, my site is consistently ranked as a 2/10 or sometimes 0/10 depending on googles’ mood.  ThePioneerWoman, is a mere 3/10. How crazy is *that*? Purely because she chooses not to use google advertising. Her site elicits TENS OF THOUSANDS of comments a day, and yet she only ranks 1 (or three depending on googles mood) slot above mine.

Anyway, regardless of how we feel about it, we all covet high page rank, for the sake of the coin. (Think Cuba Gooding Jr in Jerry MacGuire and pronounce that ‘KWAAN’.

How Can You Tell What Your Google Page Rank is?

Well thanks for asking!  You install some code onto your blog which *I* can give you. How nice am I!?  Just drop me a comment on this post and I’ll email it to you.  It will show you your Google Page Rank, and Alexa Ranking, *and* the number of inbound links that your site has.

So What is An Alexa Ranking Then?

Well to be honest, I’m not entirely sure, but you can check out the wiki article on Alexa here. All I know is it’s important and the smaller your number - they higher you’re ranked. Both of my blogs started out around the 7 million mark. I made it my goal to get into the top 2 million. When I got there, my goal became the top million. Right now Drovers Run is at 545 416 and MacNessa is at 651 660 and my goal is to get both into the top 100 000. If I can do that, I’ll be styling.

What it basically means is that the lower your number, the higher the number of people are surfing your site, who are running the Alexa Toolbar. Now traditionally people who run the toolbar, are webmasters, programmers, internet specialists and so on. People who’s existence is considered important to the internet and it’s continued existence.

Thus, if they’re surfing your site, it must be chock full of stuff that’s pivotal to the continued existence of the internet (how fried is your brain right now?), and therefor your ranking goes up.

How Can You Monitor Your Alexa Ranking?

The answer to that is really simple!  You install the ‘Alexa Toolbar’ into your web browser.

You can find the Firefox Plugin Here.

You can find the IE Plugin Here. But seriously if you’re using IE, then please go outside RIGHT NOW and beat yourself over the head with a stick.

The toolbar has other redeeming qualities, and that is it automatically shows you sites similar to yours across the top of your browser, so if you log into say, Flickr, it will show you other photo sharing sites that you might be interested in.  A cool feature, that I use often.

So that’s it for today folks, I hope that this has helped you to understand what these terms are that are bandied about on the net.  If you’ve found this article helpful, feel free to link to it - remember you’ll be helping my rankings improve and I will be forever grateful.

Also if you don’t want to go trawling around on the net looking for that code to install in your template to monitor your page rank, alexa rank and inbound links, leave me a comment (thereby creating an inbound link to yourself) and I will be happy to email the code to you, free of charge.

Also, here is a link to a site that offers you a FREE SEO REPORT (SEO stands for search engine optimization) which will help you in your quest to improve your rankings.

In the upcoming week, I’ll be posting more on this subject, but specifically how to improve these rankings, and we can rate how useful this info is okay?

Cheers!

I have a photography gig that was booked for tomorrow - feels great to be getting out there again - you know my ‘day’ job ha ha.  Only I had to postpone it till next Tuesday because it’s outdoors and there is nothing but RAIN forcast for the rest of this week.  So at least it’s still on, and I’m looking forward to it.  Its a shoot at a nursery school, and I just love those, especially when they give me free rein to move around the playground and get natural shots. There is nothing I hate more than those fake background, cheesy grin photos that we always had at school.

I find that parents seem to respond better as well. I give each parent a contact sheet with between 6 and 12 photos of their child to choose from. They can pick all of them or just one or none (if they really hate my stuff - which has never happened thank god!), and then various sizes and combinations of each. I find this makes it easier on everyone concerned, granny can get her favourite shot, leaving mommy and daddy to pick out theirs etc Plus I always include at least one arty shot - you know like my black and white with an isolated colour brought out?  People always seem to be quite taken with those.

Anyway, I’m just glad that MIL and FIL will still be here before heading up north to a game farm for 10 days and then they’re off to stay with one of MIL’s sisters for two weeks before coming back down again.  Then it’s just three and a half weeks before they go back to England.

I can hardly believe how the time has flown!  It really has not been as bad as I thought.  That said, they do go out most of the time, so I haven’t really had *that* much me time, but it does make it a lot easier when they take out Skippy and endlessly spoil entertain him with fun outings…I just shudder to think how he might react when he realizes they’re not here for good…hmmm.

This is not a sponsored post by the way.

I am constantly looking at online degree courses. I never finished my boring *as* degree when I was an athlete at university all those years ago, a personal meltdown and several other issues meant that I ended up ‘dropping out’ and being ‘written off’ by my parents for several months (kicked out of the house), while I started working, and finally found my feet, and gradually carried on with my life.

Anyway, bizarrely, I didn’t do badly at university either. Sure there were some subjects I hated, ignored and ended up with ‘incompletes’, but the ones that I found interesting, I aced.

I’ve Overcome my Motivation Problems

I’ve since managed to find my ‘trigger’ button when it comes to motivation to study (still working on this where housework is concerned), and every test, or exam I’ve done since AFTER university, I’ve aced.

Seriously. My MCSE (Microsft Certified Systems Engineer) course I did really well on (over 80%).  All my travel agency exams and certifications (and trust me there were plenty) I scored over 90% on.

The thing is that I’m postively dying to finally ‘get my degree’. I’m not bothered with using the credits that I did earn ‘way back then’ towards a degree now, but I’d rather start from scratch.  I’ve looked at so many course catalogues online and in print. I’ve scoured diploma courses that count as credits towards a degree. The ones that interest me in particular are business/graphics design/management/marketing types.

Yesterday I found the PERFECT, AWESOME, INCREDIBLE, AMAZING COURSE EVER!!!

There’s JUST ONE PROBLEM

Yes, you guessed it. Finance. Money. Dosh. Moolah. Poundage. Pesos.

We have SO many other things to pay for and sort out right now, that getting a student loan or even getting something like international credit cardsis just not an option.  It would be selfish of me to even ASK the hubby about this.  We’ve discussed it before and he just said that there seemed little point in studying again when I a) already wasted my chance that I did have (thanks for understanding sweetheart!) and b)am a housewife right now (um hello - try part time photographer/incredibly successful internet marketeer!)

The horrible part is that I *really* *REALLY* want to do this. The degree course is TAILOR-MADE to fit my brain. My likes. MY interests etc. It’s the Bachelor of Science Degree in Internet Marketing by Full Sail University. It can be completed totally online.

BUT the total programme cost (online) is a whopping $50 000.  Now I realise in terms of college degrees that’s only a years tuition at some universities, but its still a whopping $50 000 (US). In our currency it’s R400 000. Which is the cost of a small house. There’s just no way that I can pull that out of my butt short of winning the lottery (makes mental note to check current ticket).

Do I just let my dreams go? Do I look for a cheaper course? Can any of you suggest something similar that doesn’t cost so much?  Should I wait until after we’ve moved (no date in sight for when that’s going to happen, looks like next year again now…). Do I just keep saving every teeny penny that I’m making with all this blogging and set little bits aside?

I really want this. Does anyone have any ideas?  As usual I have a ton of online marketing ideas (see I’m PERFECT for this course), but I think I need to see some through to fruition (am working on www.photosuperhero dot com at the moment you can stop by and see the progress so far…early days) for a while, and see how they pan out. Maybe they become wildly successful.  Do I really need a degree to help with my success.  Probably not. Heck Bill Gates was a Harvard drop out. But I really want one.

Hey. You guys have seen my Tip Jar in my sidebar right ? Lol. Oh yeah and there’s also that ‘donate’ button on my ‘The Crew’ page.  I suppose that’s a start. Begging! It’s the African way! Now where’s Oprah when I need her??

Excuse me folks, I don’t have long to sit around and chat to you. Captain Maverick here, call-sign “Skippy”.

I have very important missions to complete today.

They include potty training, playing with my little dude bro, call-sign “Flipper”, and looking incredibly cute doing whatever the heck I’m doing at any given moment.

But that’s strictly on a “need to know basis”, and frankly, the potty training thing is “classified”.

Also - how cool do I look in this jacket that my mom’s MIL and FIL brought me from England huh?

Right, time to go.  I hope you enjoyed this foray into my incredibly exciting military existence, now you’re dismissed. Feel free to hum the theme from AirWolf if you can remember it…

Oklahoma Court Records is a website that offers you an opportunity to access any court record, or court documents.  This would be a really handy service in this country too, where such documents are routinely lost, miss filed or filed in some paper storage area where you’re likely to be barred from going.  I think sites like this are a really good idea. Seriously.

I know, as a non-yank, I shouldn’t be getting involved in politics, but it’s SO much more interesting than local politics. Yeah, yeah, I know that the ANC are all in a bit of a tizz at the moment, but seriously, American politics is just more fun to watch.

Speaking of watching…go and check out Steppingonlego’s video clip from Saturday Night Live, ripping off Sarah Palin. Sorry honey, but living in close proximity to Russia does not make you an international political wizard.

People Locator is an international people locator service which can be found by clicking the above link. I suppose it’s one way of finding someone, other than Facebook! It’s supposed to be able to pinpoint things like address and phone number, so it seems to be a pretty all encompassing service.

Remember people, with great power, comes great responsibility, so no stalking your ex’s okay!?