I read an article on blogging tips sometime ago, sorry I have forgotten where, and one of the tips is to disable comments when the blog is still new without much traffic.

The article mentions that it is not a nice sight to see zero comment on almost every post. That of course got me wondering. Shall I disable my comments? Granted, there is not that much traffic and things seem a little quiet but I did not provide an email address on the blog nor do I have a contact form or chat box on my sidebar. So how are people supposed to contact me if I were to disable my comments?

No doubt, there are more spam comments here than on ** An Anonymous Journal ** but it’s good to at least leave an avenue for people to drop me a message should they wish to. Don’t you think so?

As most of you know, or should know, March 8th is International Women’s Day. All women bloggers and men bloggers who are pro-women are invited to participate in a show of solidarity with women all over the world to celebrate womanhood.

You too can participate in this global event by appending this IWD image on your blog or website and linking it to the IWD website at http://www.internationalwomensday.com/

Nope, I am not going to dedicate a post to myself or to the women in my life but I want to ask for equal opportunities for women in society. Many are still sidelined and still dependent, financially or otherwise, on men and this has to change.

I would like to ask men to treat women better. Treat women with care and respect the way you would want others to treat your mother, wife and daughter. This change in attitude will surely make the world a better place for men and women alike.

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.