Just experiencing some brain fog, probably because I have a tumor eating out my cerebrals so I should be put out of my misery soon enough.    I keed, I keed… I hope. 

Ok, seriously, I was getting ready to write a catch-all post about the financial crisis, the presidential election and why Christians are morons (somehow I can always manage to work that theme into every post I write  ), but I got caught up working on the backend of my blog to fix and install a few plugin upgrades, and I’ve also been experimenting with a few new ad networks too.  The in-text advertising has been working out pretty well so far (these are the ads that popup when you hover your cursor over a link), though I had to keep an eye on the kind of ads showing up so I could email support a comprehensive list of advertisers I wanted blocked.  I think I did a good enough job for now, but if you see any ads for improving *ahem* bedroom performance and pictures of boinkie doinkies illustrating said performance, do be a dear and let me know, mmmk? 

Regardless, it might end up being replaced by an entirely different network anyway, one that would FINALLY allow me to block advertisers on my own (instead of begging support to do it for me), and it utilizes a different approach by indexing my entire site and analyzing my content to see what ads would best suit me.  Can’t wait to try it out and see how it compares.

In the meantime I’ve also been looking for a third tier network to clean up the rest of my inventory.  I have two networks now and basically what happens is, if there’s no available ad to deliver to my site on the first network, it then defaults to the second network, and if the second network doesn’t have an ad to serve, it defaults as well and delivers a public service announcement instead (which I don’t get paid for).  In order to maximize my earnings I’d need to make sure I’m paid for every visitor hit to my site.  So far I’m making money off of approximately 80% of my traffic, so I just need to find one more network that can monetize the remaining 20%.  I’ve been testing out one possibility and… *ugh*    It virtually made my site look like a teenybopper’s MySpace page.  Seriously, the ads were just flat out embarrassing, and for this humility I was being paid maybe 6 cents for every 1000 hits I logged. 

Ummm, no.  Out you go sucky underpaying network, and please, never pollute my precious blog with your existence again.  Yeesh.

I’ll just have to keep looking around, and if and once I do find a solution, that’s pretty much it as far as monetization goes.  The only major project left would be to get enough traffic in to reach my goals, but that’s up to God now. 

My latest link discoveries and finds for today:

• The Top Ten Ways To Tell If She’s Into You (And the 6 Signs That She’s Not!) - Yep, I’ll be damned if I’ve ever seen any of the GOOD body language they list to show that a girl was interested in me.
• Make Money Online: 100+ Tools and Resources - Man, Mashable is starting to turn into a link farm, but this is a pretty good list of some of the most popular moneymaking sites online.
• EBAY TOOLBOX: 50+ Tools for eBay Buyers and Sellers - If you’re an eBay fanatic, this link’s for you.

After giving my first podcast a try, I noticed I couldn’t get the “Show/Hide Player” and “Popup” to work. It was already past midnight, but rather than just turn in and try again in the morning, I resolved to work on it until it was fixed.

I spent three hours on the problem and finally gave up at 3AM. Man was I cheesed. I hated it when something wasn’t working right, but the more I kept at it, the more it seemed to break. When I woke up the next morning, I sat down and resolved the issue inside of 5 minutes. Sheesh. I need to learn how to let things go until I can come back to a problem with a better frame of mind.

I had other issues to fix though, but nothing really urgent (an invalid feed here, a few poor link colors here, etc..) Still, I spent the better part of my day just doing blog related housekeeping. I hadn’t even eaten till around 4.

I think I need a life. With my plans of attending law school shot to hell, I guess with nothing better to do I’ve been turning my focus to blogging again, even though I’m still not really sure what my niche should be. Hearing the success stories of how some bloggers have managed to monetize their blogs to the point that they could quit their full time jobs has me wistfully yearning for the same. With few exceptions, there’s nothing I’d like more than to travel the states and abroad, living the life of a nomad without being tied down to a job that keeps me in one place. And wherever I went, I’d use my newfound freedom to try to help people. It was the kind of life I could only dream about.

Theoretically, such a life could be possible by being a professional blogger (or writer). But the problem with me is that I have nothing interesting to offer (which also explains why no woman wants me either). I don’t have the kind of material that could draw a large crowd, and I’m just not smart enough or creative enough to build content that could land me a sizable audience. The really sad thing is that I consider writing to be one of my better talents, and I still suck at it. Ugh.

I guess even after 30 years on this planet, I still don’t know who I am, what I like, what I should do, or what I’ve been made to do. This sense of helplessness and lack of purpose is what continues to fuel the suspicion that maybe I wasn’t meant to be born after all. But if I was, then the question remains: who am I? Am I a writer? A preacher? A musician? An actor? A lover? No…. definitely not a lover.

I guess hiding under a rock for most of my life has made me completely ignorant of what really matters to me. Maybe the more I put myself out there, the more I can come to know where my niche really lies.