Did you hear about the case where people’s blog are deleted, or at least taken offline, when the administrator disagreed with the things that the blogger wrote about? This is why it is always advisable to build your own blog and not receive free or shared space from others.

A long time ago, a fellow blogger told me that I should join his blog network and asked me to transfer all my post to his blogs. I was very tempted because I would have my own hosted blogs in a unique domain and I do not have to pay a cent.

I consulted a friend, someone who has had a website for years. He told me that I better not let others determine the fate of my blogs. Imagine spending time and energy building up the Page rank, traffic and network and then if I have a fall out with my host, my blog would be wiped out. Of course, the administrator said it won’t happen but who knows, right? See, it happened to this fellow Postie.

So, I am glad that I decided to host my own blogs and struggle with the technicalities by myself instead of getting a free sub-domain blogs from this friend and let him set everything up for me. At least, I have total control of how my blog looks and is run.

I get asked this question all the time by my friends but I believe only one person knows my approximate total at the end of every month. This person supports me a lot. Even my family does not know.

Anyway, although I have been blogging for pay for a long time, I do not think it is good to publish our earnings. We must be humble, and I find that publishing earnings is rather distasteful. Do you think that you would scan your check from your real life job and publish it on your blog so that you can show every one how much your salary is? I don’t believe so and I give my blogging earnings the same privacy and confidentiality.

Having said that, I do read other people’s earning reports to motivate myself and congratulate them if I know them personally. I am happy for them.

I believe if I write until I am three quarters dead, I would be able to do that as well but why should I torture myself? I only reserve as much opportunities as I can handle and leave the rest for other bloggers.

There is always another day and another and another, right?

We are all still unclear, I guess, and although it has been announced that we do not have to sandwich all our sponsored posts with organic posts, preferably linkless ones, except for those taken from triple P, defining sponsored posts with respect to contextual links in normal ordinary posts is critical in defining a blog from a 50:50 ratio of sponsored versus non-sponsored content.

This is rather tough to determine. To me, a post with a contextual link is not sponsored if we successfully managed to integrate the link into our posts but it is sponsored if it is awkwardly thrown into a post.

It’s well and good to say, “You know it when you see it”, but that is so subjective. I don’t really want to violate any company’s terms of service but at the same time I do not want to feel as if I am pressured to write posts that I do not feel the passion for.

That being said, I need clear guidelines to work freely and if the guidelines say that contextual posts are sponsored, then by all means let us know in advance so that we could work within the guidelines.

You know, with the new Terms of Service of a certain marketplace where we nearly have to publish an organic post between all sponsored posts across the blog, I feel that the one losing party is the Sponsors.

As far as I know, active blog for pay bloggers would write multiple sponsored posts every day and if they have to have an organic post between every single sponsored post, then before half the day is over, those sponsored posts would have dropped off the front page. The post would not even benefit from the Page Rank of the blog.

This morning, I wrote a total of ten posts on my other blog, a mixture of sponsored and unsponsored content and I am only a mid-range blogger. Plus, I set my Blogspot blog to show seven days’ worth of posts on the front page, but still not all the posts managed to benefit from the landing spot.

I know of some other bloggers who literally crank out tens of posts every day and the earlier posts would have gone to the second or even third page, depending on the layout of the blog.

Luckily, even though I have set to show seven posts on the front page for this blog, this is a blog that does not overdose on sponsored posts.

I received an email from CrispAds this morning about giving away 300 coupon codes worth $25 each for BlogWorld and a contest where two lucky AMERICAN bloggers will get to win free trips to Las Vegas.

I was registered with CrispAds ages ago. I must have, or they would not have my email address on their mailing list. Off hand, without checking my little black book, I could not log into my CrispAds account. See, that must have been so long ago.

Anyway, I don’t even know how to use CrispAds on my blog and I have not heard of any local blogger who has found success with it but still I signed up when I was searching for more ways to monetize my blog months ago. I can’t be writing sponsored posts forever, right?

I think I need to put more effort to learn how CrispAds works and how that I could somehow implement them on my blogs. HHmm I don’t even remember if my blogs are in the system already and approved! Confirmed there goes my memory!

Some of my friends could really blog so many posts a day, every day, I wonder where they could find so many topics to talk about. However, although I also can blog that much, I do not see the point in blogging short posts and then continuing the second part on a subsequent post.

To me, I like my posts to be a little story that has a beginning and an ending, even if it is extremely long. That’s why I end up with at least 150 words. I see no point in having 50 word posts scattered all over the blog without a real topic discussed.

Although I am quite the perfectionist, I find that lately, I have been having too many grammatical errors that I can only see the following day it was published. I don’t know why. This is perhaps what I can expect for blogging half asleep! And by them people would have already read my typo, grammar and all those little mistakes in all their glory *sigh*

Well, there was an issue recently about having an organic post between all sponsored posts across the whole blog. I wonder, is it better to have original posts of three to five lines that do not make sense between all those sponsored posts or is it better to have a couple of sponsored posts here and there irrespective of their order, but are written in a well thought out manner?

Just a month or so ago, I questioned the Value In A 3 – 5 Line Post and I still do not know what good they do and if people are forced to place an organic post between sponsored posts across the whole blog, we will be seeing more of these. Not that I do it, mind you, but if you blog hop as much as I do, you will know what I mean.

Personally, I would not mind reading a lengthy sponsored post that makes sense. You know what I enjoy most about writing sponsored posts? Money aside, it is the many websites, services and blogs that I have been introduced to. I feel that I have learnt so much this past ten months and I hope that my readers have too.