The Jungle Book

not mine.

Yesterday entry pointed to a story in Lorelle’s blog. Fine, but when I returned to check some data, the story was not there. The answer? The date. It’s scheduled to August, 2. Somehow Wordpress messed things up and published for a moment a story from the future.

Check it:

http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/08/02/when-the-blog-breaks-site-monitoring/

I use Wordpress‘ scheduler and it works fine, but some glitches WILL happen. It’s a fact of life. SO, if it’s a very sensitive post, do NOT schedule it, let it buried in your favorite editor and only upload it when it’s time.

Movable Type’s scheduler is not THAT smart, if you change the date to the future, MT will NOT store it as a scheduled post, it’ll simply show the entry, with a future date. Learned that one the hard way.

Technorati : CMS, lorelle, movable type, timetravel, wordpress

Checking this entry on Lorelle on Wordpress, she talks a lot about downtimes and servers going belly-up. Well, it’s a fact of life. My Bluehost account is very reliable, but even they can’t deal with a +12 hours power outage, and gave up after 5 hours of diesel generators, Dilithium crystals decomposing and inverted polarities.

BUT (there’s always a but) the Server Down is NOT my biggest concern anymore.

A few weeks ago my earnings suddenly dropped to half the daily average. Of course Murphy being Murphy, I was away, returned home late afternoon. Check here, mess with adsense codes there, ping site, everything is fine.

The problem? Although the server was up and running, the database OK, external links properly working, somehow Wordpress messed up with some config and returned to its default theme. Yes, the one I never touched, and never included ANY adsense code.

Lesson learned:

1. Always check your blog personally. A pingomatic server check is not smart enough to visually detect problems.
2. Don’t be a lazy stupid monkey (like me). Edit the default template and include some adsense code. Worst-case scenario even looking like a plain install your money will still generate some revenue.
3. Don’t go out. You can’t have a life. (OK, maybe this one doesn’t apply to everyone)

Technorati : adsense, outtage, profit, revenue, server down

Honest answer? In the closet. No, I’m not talking about the gay bloggers. Just in the Closet, no sexual innuendo, like Tom Cruise. even semi-professional bloggers say their online efforts are just a bonus to their “real” readers,and that their “real” work is to write for magazines and newspapers. Even superstars like Ricardo Noblat, who reaches a far broader audience online, still presents himself as an old school journalist who happens to blog.

Amateur bloggers don’t like the idea of making money with a blog. Actually they despise it. Brazil’s catholic background explains it a lot. When a priest writes in a national newspaper that “profit is a sin”, and nobody disagrees, it’s hard to be proud of making money.

The “early bird catches the worm” preached by protestant faith finds no echoes here. Only the roman-catholic “The Lord will provide”. No self-made-man for us, sir. Oh, and 100% of all rich entrepreneurs and industry men are corrupt and stole their way up. Yeah, right.

I know it’s strange, but the idea of making money with a blog offends a lot of people. They’re reading your content for free, sometimes stealing it, they KNOW it takes time to create such content but they DO NOT WANT YOU TO MAKE MONEY OUT OF IT. I remember reading a few posts where people declared (with all the exclamation marks): I’ll not return to such blog because there are ads in it and there’s no place in the Internet for advertising. ‘

Well, baby, let me quote Dr Johnson here:

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

Dr Cardoso agrees and expands the diagnostics to modern blogs: Envy. “I can’t write as good as this guy but I don’t want him making money out of it, while I need a real job to pay my bills”. Life’s a bitch, huh?

So, to make money in Brazil through blogging, two things are imperative:

• Don’t be perceived as a ProBlogger.
• Don’t brag about your earnings. No matter if you’re driving a Ferrari with a license plate “THX-ADSENSE”, don’t brag about it. Remember, poor is beautiful, complain all the time about how it was so much easier “back in the old days”.

Above all, remember Tom Jobim: “Brazilians take other people’s success as a personal offense”.

Technorati : adsense, blockhead, brazil, envy, money, personal success, tom jobim

Let’s face it. Sometimes it’s hard to not reblog. A very short post “Jesus is back, news at eleven” found on another blog, a classic “post-void filling” YouTube Video, a funny picture.

But if you post the content as-is, and quote the source (please quote the source, it’s only fair) soon your visitors will identify you as a reblogger, and will add the source’s feed to their own RSS reader, and forget about you.

The secret here is: Add something. Don’t just post a video, post your impressions. A 5 minutes search will find lots of new info about anything. When I reblog something at MeioBit, the largest Brazilian technology-oriented blog, I do my homework. Usually a Digg story points to a lame blog with a single headline and two paragraphs of text.

I use it as a starting point. If it’s a story about some Japanese robot, I Google for the firm that created the robot, use Google Translate to catch more info, and presto: New and original content, a improved version of the press-release everybody else is reblogging. Do it yourself. Choose a story in Engadget, try to find more info than the original post. It’s easy, don’t take a a CSI to accomplish.

Next time, your readers will not click on the source, or will do it only to realize how lame its content is, compare to yours.

Technorati : content, enhanced, reblog

Lots of local blogs and forums tell horror stories about how they were scolded or -worse- banned from AdSense. Every story starts telling how they were innocent, how they were framed and usually end blaming George Bush.

Well, I don’t think the POTUS can be blamed if people don’t read the EULAs or simply don’t care about them.

Problem is: We only respect the laws we find reasonable, here. It’s a cultural thing, even law enforcement people will NOT enforce a nonsense law.

Example: Selling booze to minors. It’s illegal.

No one will sell a beer if a 12 years-old sits on a bar and asks for a cold one, but if he arrives with the bottles (cheaper than a deposit) and a bag, it’s clear he’s making a purchase for an adult, and there’ll be no problem. But it’s still selling alcohol to minors, and illegal.

(more…)

Do you think it’s nice to live in a Nanny State? Rosie, Rio de Janeiro’s Governor (a left-wing Christian fundamentalist -don’t ask) first proposed to ban teaching of evolution, then managed to insert religion classes in the public school. NOW she signed a bill making mandatory Prostate Examination in all public hospitals of the State.

It means: You hurt yourself riding your bike. If someone takes you to the hospital, they’ll fix you leg and check your prostate. Sure, it’s the PSA, Prostate-Specific Antigen, a blood exam, but guess what will happen when they run of out money (and believe me, Rio’s Hospitals are not stuffed with green bills to the roof) and someone yell “It’s the LAAWW you MUUUST perform the examination…”

Got the picture? Think Eliott.

It’s time to leave Rio. Don’t want the State violating my Rights, My Lefts and specially anything between them.

Link to the translated news story and please Check this old picture of Our Governor. It’s my Portuguese website but the image speaks for itself.

Technorati : PSA, prostate, rosie

It doesn’t matter. You may be Bill Gates, but the best money of your life will always be your first. Not the second, not the latest, not the largest. The first.

You first salary means freedom, means someone is willing to pay for your work, it means you’re part of the game now.

When someone decides to become a ProBlogger, the first AdSense Dollar is the best, also. And believe me, it takes a lot of time to get there. Clicks in Brazil are underpaid, some are as low as US$0,01. The first Dollar takes a long time to be reached. Meanwhile your friends will think you’re crazy, counting cents and clicks dropping like coins in a panhandler… pan.

I still remember my first salary, and still remember my first AdSense Dollar. Both share the same exact sensation.

Technorati : adsense, dolar, salary

This is not a scam, but it’s so easy that almost sound like one.

I wrote an article on my professional blog (sorry, Portuguese-only) with a simple, “do nothing” strategy that attacks more users to your blog.

Let’s face it. People can’t spell. The “doodz” generation, with their “like this and like that” is not, like, smart, like, you know. Like. They can’t spell banana because they don’t know when to stop. Don’t matter if you write to an audience that does not write like that, sooner or later the kids WILL arrive and leave a comment like “in ur base killing ur d00dz“. Should you erase it?

NEVER!

Google don’t care if people can’t spell, it will index everything that it thinks it’s relevant. Sometimes Google can’t recognize a typo, and will think it’s just a weird word. And will index it. A lot of weird typos from people who leave comments on my articles are indexed, and lead other readers who write the same weird typos directly to my blog.

It means you should use typos and weird word yourself? No, not at all. Just don’t get mad about the not-so-smart people who leave such comments on your blog. They are not alone.

Technorati : dumb people, typos

Because it’s damn hard and I need a challenge. My life was very boring and at a dead end. I was making good money, but was not nearly as happy as the time when I was writing my books and working from home. I won’t tell that I was close to pull the plug. It would sound dramatic but let’s leave it to my autobiography.

One day I threw everything away and decided to take a big, big chance: I was going to live by my writing, as I did once, but mainly on the Internet. In less than a year I’m one of the A-list bloggers in Brazil, with +5000 Unique Visitors / day, my (still tiny) AdSense revenue reached CDS$4,00 (will explain the currency later) and I’m writing for the best Brazilian technology-related website.

I wish I could tell it was harder, but it was not. As in USA (and everywhere) 90% of everything online is plain crap. It’s not hard to be noticed if you’re the only one that does not smell like shit.

So you ask: Why this in English?

Three reasons:

1 - I want a broader audience. If I write in Portuguese (one of the hardest languages in the world) I’m limited to Brazil and Portugal. If I write in English, I reach a lot of people. More visitors, more hits, CA-$HING…

2 - I follow blogs like ProBlogger and Lorelle, and Although they’re great, they don’t know everything. I can contribute with one or two things, here and there, and everybody will be happy.

3 - Brazil is a very weird country and I want to share our oddness with the World.

Technorati : CDS$, brazil, english

Finally! First Post! After years reading Slashdot I managed to be the first, the one and only, numero uno. Oh well, big deal.

OK, now that I bragged about some meaningless merit, my first apologize. I’ve a rare case of FDL - Foreign Language Dyslexia. It’s not a simple “it’s vs its” case, I miss entire words, spell checkers are useless, and it’s something VERY strange.

Only happens when I write, I talk and it’s fine (if you don’t mind my outrageous accent) I read and listen, no problem. But my written English is very strange sometimes.

So, if you find things like “I don’t think I with that” write me and I’ll try to discover what I wanted to say and fill the blanks. If you find a simple typo, write me too. I hate typos. And if you’re a famous doctor interested in studding my condition, I’m all yours (no needles or anal probes, please). I always wanted a diseased with my name.

Technorati : Dyslexia, FDL, english, first post