For people who think that writing sponsored posts is easy, well think again. These marketplaces are in the United States and we in Malaysia are anything from twelve to fourteen hours ahead of them.

As the majority of opportunities are released during their work hours, you can expect these opportunities to be up for grabs from 11pm onwards, Malaysian time, if we are lucky.

However, through experience, the good opps are only usually released after 5am. Well, by then most of us are asleep already. Heck, we need to be fresh for work too, you know? We are not paid to appear at work as zombies.

And if you feel like you want to switch your hours to accommodate this and be in bed early and rise early to nab these opps, then be prepared to call in “sick” as writing opps could be so addictive, you will not realise the time passing and you wouldn’t be on time anyway.

Haha! So who still thinks that writing sponsored posts is a piece of cake?

Fuel My Blog, after the extreme makeover, was unveiled last evening. Just for recording purposes, here is the screenshot of the original Fuel My Blog, and as a comparison, a screenshot of the new Fuel My Blog. Now do you get what I meant in my previous post about RTM vs. ntv7?

One of the new features of the site is that people can cast their votes for a blog or snuff it and also leave a comment. Of course, with all the new features, it takes some getting used to.

Another new feature is the forum which serves as an avenue for Fuel My Blog members to hang out, chat and exchange notes of upping that blog Page Rank and what not!

And not forgetting the brand new widgets, talking of which, I need to find some time to switch to the new widget on my blogs.

Many of us who are writing lifestyle or general blogs are facing the difficulty of categorising our blogs. I mean, in general blogs like ** An Anonymous Journal **, I touch on so many topics in life, from food to money and finances, to music and movies to work related issues, from humans to animals to holidays to blogging and what not.

Now, not only is picking slim, when you take up an opportunity, you have to say a little prayer that your blog will appear in the drop down menu. It is now no longer enough to be fast in booking an opportunity, you need some divine help too.

And if all is smooth sailing, and you successfully submitted your post, the next hurdle will be from the reviewer who will determine if your blog fits the categories specified by the advertiser. This is where general bloggers are caught. Niche bloggers will not have this problem, though.

And if your blog is deemed unsuitable, your post will be rejected and you can’t do anything about it. Meanwhile the advertiser would have had free exposure and links for anything from one to two weeks, perhaps more. By then all the spiders of search engines would have crawled all over your blog, and you will end up with nothing. Plus, for writing in a blog of a “wrong” category, you risk a ban by the advertiser. Isn’t that grand?

Two days ago, I had the chance to take a sneak peek at the soon to be launched Fuel My Blog. Yes, it’s not launched yet, but Kevin gave me the honour to have a sneak peek and feedback them. Let me tell you, it is a vast improvement from the current Fuel My Blog.

It’s sleeker with the good colour combination. The whole site looks very modern. You can say that the current Fuel My Blog is like RTM while the new Fuel My Blog is ntv7. Yes, didn’t I say it’s a vast improvement?

All blogs will be categorised. With more than a thousand blogs, I don’t relish being the Dixies right now! But the results will be well worth the time spent. The new site will be a breath of fresh air to the world’s blogosphere.

Not only will the new Fuel have a blog, it will also have a forum and regular contests. Fancy winning yourself something? Stay tuned to Fuel My Blog, then!

Last week, PayPerPost announced even more segmentation features. This new roll out will allow advertisers to segment posties according to geographical location and personal characteristics like age, marital status and education level, among others.

I, along with other posties, of course do not see the logic of this new segmentation features. For one, the internet is borderless and just because we are of a certain age or age group does not mean that our readers are too. Just because we are from a certain city does not mean that our readers cannot be from another country.

In fact, most of my blog readers are from the United States and Australia but just because I am in Malaysia, I can already feel that I will be excluded from taking opps that are targeted at Americans.

With already many of the opps off limits to me due to my blog host, we’ll just have to see how many opps there are left for me to take. No doubt, we now are allowed a quota of three opps per blog per day but given the new segmentation features, we will all be hard pressed to max out our quota.

I do indeed feel that it’s getting cold (and colder by the minute) out there.

If you know me or have followed my blogs, you would know that I am so tired from work and life, from taking care of two sick monkeys, that every day just rolls into one that I get lost in the whirlpool.

The other day, I was so blur, I forgot the URL of this blog. Instead of JOURNAL, I somehow typed in JOURNEY and that is even when I have auto complete in the address bar!

You say I blur or not?

And when I could not access my blog on IE, I COPIED & PASTED the URL to FireFox, and of course FireFox could not open the site.

I went to other blogs that are hosted by the same company as mine and they were all working fine. I panicked and thought that someone hacked my blog.

See what a fright I gave myself! Finally I realised the error and with the correct address, managed to access my blog.

*Smacks myself*

Yesterday, I received a total of 38 emails from PayPerPost with the subject: Your Post Has Been Auto Approved. w00t!

Hello,

Congratulations!! Your PayPerPost post, xxxxx, has been automatically approved based on your high quality performance as a PPP Postie!

Please note: We will still do a manual check of posts against the opportunity and PPP criteria as a verification of this approval. Should your post not meet requirements, you may get a rejection notice at a later date.

Final payment is dependent upon your post meeting all criteria set both in the advertiser’s opportunity, and in the PPP ToS. If your post is rejected during manual review, and you are not able to update and resubmit, payment will not be made on this post.

Congrats again on being an outstanding PPP Postie!! And watch for more auto approvals!!

Thank you,

The PayPerPost Team

Wow, since when did I become an outstanding Postie? What did I do to qualify as an “outstaning Postie”? I have no idea. Is it the number of posts that I have chalked up? Is the based on number of rejections over number of approvals?

I have TEN bans, you know? Despite lowering the demerit point from a 5 to a 0.5, it still irks me not knowing who banned me and for what.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if those 38 emails were payment notices? Hah! I must be dreaming.