I came across quite a few websites that offer members free blog content in the form of articles in a wide range of subjects. As an owner of multiple blogs, I think it is very tempting to just get an article from there and put t on my blog. However, I do not see the point of doing it because I take pride in my writing and in my ability to upkeep my blogs with original content single-handedly.

Yes, there are times when we copy a little text from news article or whatever source with an original commentary from ourselves but to have a whole blog with such articles, the only reason I can think of that would make the owner interested in keeping it running is the Google AdSense check.

Would you want to copy full articles written by someone else wholly and publish it on your blog? I don’t think genuine blogger would do this. What do you think?

Last night, I had a nightmare. If you are a blog for pay blogger, you would know that your livelihood is at the hands of you sponsors. They could vote you up or they could vote you down. Anyway, I wasn’t really worried about it since I know that I can’t please everyone and I try to be as honest as I can in my reviews so it would ruffle a few feathers, surely.

The other day, I was being flagged by an advertiser for daring to take his campaign for being based outside of North America. Well, the thing is, he did not state in his description so who would know? Definitely, IF I have such instructions in the campaign description, I would not have taken it. Why would I waste time writing something up and giving link juice knowing full well that I would not be compensated for my efforts? If I had known that beforehand and still do it then I must be insane.

Anyway, soon after, the advertiser again opened up his campaign and this time, he also did not state that he only wants North American bloggers and I have been assured by the marketplace that I could take up this campaign and so I did.

However, that night, I had a nightmare that this advertiser gave me such a low rating that pulled down my overall score to a grand total of TWO! I startled awoke straightaway but thank God it was only a dream. Do you know what impact it will have on a blogger to have such a low rating?

You see, being a blog for pay blogger is so not easy. you are pressured to come up with quality posts within a short period of time and you have to do this consistently. There is no margin for error *sigh*

I chanced upon this $15 giveaway contest held by Leigh of External Flux so I thought I would give it a shot. Eh, if I win, I am going to write less 1 X $15 post, 1.5 X $10 posts, 2 X $7.50 posts or 3 X $5 posts hahahah!

Firstly, I really like the color scheme of the blog. I have a blog with the black background Blogger template as well but the color for blog title, post titles and dates and everything is white so I think Leigh did some wonderful customization to make things stand out really well with the purple and pink. It’s time to change my blog template!

Reading the “About” section where Leigh is so many things and more, all at once or at some point of her life, I kept thinking, “Where does she have the time?” External Flux is all about the changes that Leigh is trying to create. Does that mean a change from the life that she has led all these while? We shall see as Leigh reveals more on her blog! Stay tuned to External Flux!

A month or so ago, I implemented Akismet Spam filter and I must say it has been a blessing. Many people told me that Akismet is “yesterday” but it has been working fine for me. At least Comment notification emails no longer hit my Inbox. I still check my Spam folder and have fished out perfectly legitimate comment from there and even when I have already “approved” the comment by this particular person, when he comments again, it will once again go to the Spam folder. Somehow, my instructions don’t stick.

I think that it is because these people post a lot of comments on many blogs daily, and even though they are genuine comments, Akismet thinks that they are spam due to the pattern of activity.

I wonder how many people will wade through their Spam folder just to check if there’s any genuine comment, just in case, you know? I know that if I were the commenter and my on-topic comment was not published, I would be pretty pissed off. So I wade through the Spam folder so as not to have any misunderstanding.

As a blogger providing freeform contextual links and buzzes to advertisers, or sponsors to be politically correct, for the past eleven months now, I dare say that I have “met” many kinds of sponsors, some are very happy with my work, some are not but then when you have clocked more than two thousand posts, things like these are bound to happen.

One thing I notice is that most sponsors and publishers are not on the same page. Sponsors really expect the moon from publishers but most are unwilling to up their payout. And when they up it, they expect the moon AND the Earth. That means that if they pay higher, they expect way more things that are out of the publisher’s control.

Sponsors are ban happy too. From what I see, sponsors do not know what they are paying for if they ban bloggers who have removed their post past the 30-day time frame when in fact that was what they have paid for ONLY. They could ban bloggers who has less page views than they expected when that was the Alexa traffic indicator that they chose. Now, traffic is really subjective because what to me may be high but to you, it is not enough, see what I mean?

Sponsors also ban when they feel that your blog is inappropriate when they were the one who selected all categories. What the heck, man? I could go on and on but then I will leave those for another day.

Thankfully, the good outweighs the bad 😀

After the fiasco that we received from the sponsor of a blog to pay marketplace and the ridiculous decision that the marketplace has taken, I complain to my friend 99.

He told me that there is a way to remove the cache of our blog posts from Google’s Cache. I don’t know how and would need him to show me at the computer. This is no way to teach via phone calls, SMS or instant messengers.

The thing is that, after 24 – 48 hours of publishing a post, it would have been indexed by Google already. This past couple of months, I noticed that Google has been even more efficient in indexing new content, especially of blogs.

How can a sponsor decline a post that followed all the rules as stipulated in the campaign description and then ask us to remove and refuse to pay for the job? And if this really happens, my friend says that I should remove the cache from Google for all the posts that were rejected.

This certainly makes sense because why should we give away link juice for free to a sponsor who created bitterness among us?