Ever Afterthe fairy tale ending we all dream of

I checked my site’s pagerank the other day and found out that it dropped to a 0. After searching around for the reasons why, I figured that it could because of the following:

1. Selling links, especially by participating in the Text Link Ads network.
2. Use of labels and texts like sponsored links, buy links here, place ads here for $$$, all which might suggest to Googlebots that you are selling links, even though you might not be.
3. Articles or posts suggesting the importance of pagerank and buying links.
4. Taking part in paid reviews and encouraging others to do so.
5. Selling advertisements on your blog, which suggests to Google that you might also be selling links

As you can see, Google really doesn’t like the idea of selling or buying links, and will penalize you for it! Unfortunately, that was what happened to my site, so now I’ve in the process of clearing up any hints or suggestions that I’m selling links. If you’ve been hit with the same problem, you can try the following steps to recover your pagerank:

• Stop with the buying and selling of links. That’s what Google is punishing people for, and they do it through various methods like I mentioned above. So if you’re doing it, then just stop. Or if you don’t care about pagerank or having your site removed from Google’s search result, then by all means keep buying and selling.
• Add rel=”nofollow” to all outgoing links. Ok, maybe not that extreme, but if you want to be safe, this is the way to go. Jem has a good article on the dangers of dofollow, and I think she also has one on the benefits of dofollow, but I can’t seem to find it. Either way, I think it’s worth reading.
• Take off labels like “Sponsored Links”, or any other labels that might suggest to Google that you are selling/buying links. Remember, Google does NOT like that.
• Limit the paid-to-review posts. Usually you’re paid to blog about subjects you don’t know and advertise the site. Again, Google doesn’t like this. However, I’m not saying to stop writing those paid-to-review posts. I wrote an article on why paid posts aren’t as bad as people make it out to be.
• Resubmit your site to Google for validation. You can find a link to your right when you login to Google Webmaster Tools. After you submit your site, do not expect a reply back. If by 4-5 months your pagerank doesn’t improve, take it as a hint that Google still doesn’t like your site for the above reason, and that it’s time to comb through page by page to weed things out.

I find it ironic that I just wrote a post on pagerank when Google is penalizing people for it.

While working on my new Wordpress theme for this site (yay! no more free themes!), I was trying to figure out how to use images as patterns in Photoshop. I’m sure many people use those gorgeous patterns made by Squidfingers or perhaps have other images they’d like to have repeating on their designs, but usually those files are .png, .jpg, or .gif, and Photoshop only accepts .pat for their pattern files. Here are easy steps to transform those image files into patterns:

1. Open up the image file you’d like to use as a pattern in Photoshop
2. Go to Edit > Define Pattern… and give your new pattern a name
3. Your new pattern should now appear in the patterns window
4. To make sure your pattern stays the next time you open Photoshop, make sure you click on the arrow in the pattern viewing window and click on Save Patterns… and give it a new name
5. Now next time just load that pattern, and you should see your newly created pattern from last time!

One good site I found for creating your own stripe patterns is the Stripe Generator. They also have some other useful tools on that site, so go check it out!

Continuing on my post about some fatty using my credit card to pay for her pathetic diet, I found out that he or she used my card number again to make a $14 purchase on Scholastic Books. I also found out that the credit card is at home being kept safely by my mom, which can only mean that my credit information somehow leaked out while I was shopping online. Since it’s an Amazon credit card, and I don’t use it anywhere else but on their website, I can only conclude that

1. Someone hacked into my Amazon account and got my credit information
2. The checkout process isn’t as secure as Amazon claims it to be
3. The lardo using my card might have kids (or perhaps the intelligence of a kid)

Either way I’ve contacted Chase, telling them that an unauthorized charge has been made again and that I demand to know who this sad excuse for a person is. I’m not too worried about the card itself since it offers 0-liability protection and they’ve refunded the previous 2 unauthorized charges. It’s just annoying to know that this person is still out there being fat, lazy, and cheap instead of being brought to justice.

This really got me thinking about the issue of credit cards. Before this, I’d sign up whenever the company offered a discount or promotion, resulting in me having at least 5 cards with different companies. Now I realize the danger of having so many cards and not being able to keep track of them all. What if the same problem happened to another card? Now I’m tempted to cancel some of the cards I rarely use and focus on using one card, preferably one with cash back.

I found this article about credit cards that offers some basic information, some of which I didn’t know until now, for first-time credit card users. I just wish I had found this earlier before applying for so many cards, then maybe I could actually turning my points into rewards and cash now. Instead, I have points across all my cards but all in very low quantity. The site also offers articles reviewing air miles credit cards and 5% cash back credit cards, the first which I already have and the latter which I plan on looking into. The Chase Freedom card looks tempting.

My day began with a terrible start. I lost my voice due to this hideous cold I have and it keeps me up all night hacking my lungs out. To top that I was supposed to do my persuasive speech on why active euthanasia should be legalized. Needless to say, I was unable to do that. I also missed out a precious 10-point extra credit for my accounting class. 10 extra points on my final grade gone. Oh and to add a cherry on top, it’s that time of the month. Can you say miserable?

But what really got to me was the fact that some fat miserable ass has been using my Amazon credit card to pay for their pathetic diet plan. Mind you, I have nothing against people being overweight. I have friends who are, and in normal circumstances, it’s mean to make fun of them. But when you go as low as to use someone’s credit card to pay losing the rolls on your back, then no, you really don’t deserve any respect.

I got an email from Chase saying my card was charged more than $50, which is odd considering I haven’t shopped on Amazon in ages. I go check it out and find a particularly tubby someone has been using the card to pay for some “custom diet guaranteed to lose them 50 lbs“! Wow, what a lot of bullcrap! Not only that, they’re also using the card to pay for their monthly Netflix service! Right now I’m picturing some sad pudgy girl sitting at home watching movies while munching on caramel butter popcorn while trying to do leg stretches. And all I want to do is go there and shove her face in the bowl of popcorn and break her glasses, one for using my card and two for believing in those miracle diets.

I’ve called Chase and they said they’d take care of it for me, and being the curious and mean girl I am, I asked if they could tell me who the person that used my card was, should they ever find out. They owe me at least that much. Ironic how I made a post on identity theft protection earlier. The idea is starting to appeal to me now.

Ok, so that’s two posts in one day, but I just really had to plug this site. Revolution Money Exchange is a service a lot like Paypal. Right now they’re doing a promotion where you get $25 just for signing up with them. Before you think this is a scam, take a look at the screenshot to your left (sorry for the bad quality, my desktop only has MS Paint) . All I need to do now is verify my bank account (using the same process as Paypal) and I can deposit my $25!

For the paranoid and pessimistic ones who think that anything is too good to be true, Wachovia had a similar promotion during the summer of 2007 where they gave you $100 for opening a checking account. Bank of America has a similar one going on right now with their Hello Kitty account promotion, which I participated in and got a free $100 in my new account (not to mention a really cute Hello Kitty debit card). So no, this isn’t a scam, and yes, sometimes they do give away money when you open accounts. It’s free, and you have nothing to lose, so why not?

P.S. I forgot to mention that Revolution Money Exchange is backed up by First Bank & Trust, Brookings, South Dakota. It is a 100% legitimate US bank and is FDIC insured, hence all their transactions are conducted with the ACH. Both my mom and I have its card and have used it to make purchases before.

I joined this site after hearing about it from a friend and doing some research on similar sites that pays you to blog. Now that my site has 10 posts within the past 30 days, PayPerPost finally approved it. The idea of being able to make money by blogging seemed like a very appealing idea at that time, and it still does now that I’ve been paid by other similar sites.

There are controversies out there about these pay-you-to-blog sites though. Some people think that by doing this, we the bloggers are:

1. providing misleading information by posting on subjects in which we have little to no knowledge of
2. helping the advertisers increase PageRank through the whole buying and selling links scheme

I never realized the negative side of writing sponsored posts until I read about this, and the sad thing is that these arguments are legit. However, there are always two sides of looking at things. Since I’m no expert when it comes to PageRank or SEO (search engine optimization), I won’t discuss the second issue. I will, however, talk about the first one.

I agree that by participating in these paid-to-blog sites, some of the entries you are required to write about can be a bit drab (like bad debt or hotels in Europe) and chances are, you’ll have little to no knowledge about the subject. However, even if you posted 10 entries on random subjects like these, I don’t understand why anyone would try looking for legit information on a non-professional weblog. As a matter of fact, when I searched “bad debt” on Google, the first page of results that came up were either from government websites or other reliable sources. I’ve looked through the first couple pages, and the results either came from reliable/professional sites or they didn’t. None came from blogs, which brings me to my second point and third point.

Even if there were no paid to blog sites, these buying and selling link schemes would still continue and people could still have websites with bogus information that pops up as the number one search result in Google. It’s been like this since I’ve started using the internet, it’s still like this today, and chances are it’ll still be like this tomorrow. I feel like it’s up to us the searchers to be able to filter out reliable sources from bogus ones, which is why all your teachers in high school and college tell you that you shouldn’t use Google search to find reliable sources! By posting sponsored posts we the bloggers might be contributing to this, but just how significant is that increase? I always considered it common sense to use the databases provided by my school for formal research papers, but heck, what do I know, i’m just a college kid.

So forgive me for being a bitch, but the first argument is absolutely stupid. Why are people complaining about blogs providing them misleading information through sponsored posts when in fact, they really shouldn’t be doing school research through Google in the first place? And forget that most schools provide great online databases to find information, there are lots of free online databases that elementary school kids can use if they want. But if they’re going to consider blogs a legit source, much like my first grade classmate Sam considering Lion King a legitimate source, then yes, lions really do live on Pride Rock.

So should you join this paid-to-blog bandwagon? Sure, why not. It’s your blog, you write what you want and do with it what you want. If you want to make a little extra on the side with it, I don’t see a problem with it either. Hop on over to PayPerPost to get started.

If you think it’s evil and should be banned from the face of the earth, I respect your choice too. All I ask is that you respect ours too.

P.S. My opinions about paid to blog are in no way associated with PayPerPost. I just thought it’d be easier for me if I talked about the whole paid-to-blog issue in one post instead of two.

For the longest time I would use Limewire to download my English music and rely on Chinese sites to download well, my Chinese music. Now after many years of switching methods and searching relentlessly, I finally found 2 reliable sources for my music:

MusicZoom is the place I go now for my English songs. You can search 3 different music databases through this site so you are bound to find the song you’re looking for. I used to use Skreemr, but after it failed to find me Natasha Bedingfield’s Pocketful of Sunshine, I’ve converted to MusicZoom. Of course, this site also allows you to listen to the song before downloading it. So for those who are having trouble looking for songs, check this site out.

For the Chinese people out there, most of you are probably familiar with Baidu. For me, it’s still the most trustworthy site for my Chinese music. Like MusicZoom, it’s a search engine that will search the many Chinese music sites by just typing in the song name. The download is a lot slower and there’s no preview, but it’s never failed me so far.

Of course, there are mp3 rotations (like Rock 54)and fan sites that offer limited selection of music, but usually with higher quality files. The choice is yours.

I don’t know about you guys, but every time I shop online, I always make sure I’m already using one of the store’s promotional codes or that I’m able to find coupons online. But the thing with searching for “XXX coupon codes” on google is that you might not always get working codes. So instead, I limit my search to specific sites that provide legit discount codes.

One of the sites I use is Savings.Com. The site is easy to use with a search function and a categories listing to help you find the store you’re looking for more easily. What I really like is that they have a section dedicated especially to free shipping codes, the one I use the most.

For example, they have many of discount codes just for Sephora (my favorite cosmetics and beauty supply store) alone. Some of them actually provide promo codes to be filled out at checkout, but many of them are just special deals that can be accessed simply by clicking on a link! It’s convenient, easy, and it saves money (who doesn’t like discounts?)! Next time you shop online, make sure to do a search for free online coupons, it could save you lots! Go check out Savings.Com now!