It’s My Imagination

Internet Security

As much as I rely on my computer and the internet, not only for staying connected with my family and friends, I also currently rely on it for my income. While it’s not a lot of money and I couldn’t support myself on it alone, it certainly is allowing me to follow my dream of selling the fabric bags that I make. I am sitting here now watching out the window as this huge thunderstorm is rolling in our direction and I’m hoping that it doesn’t knock out power and thereby our internet service.

Of course, storms aren’t the only problems to contend with on the internet. What about viruses? Do you do anything to protect your computer? If not, you really should consider it. Yes, it is an expense, but spending the money to download norton ghost or even another internet security system is well worth the money and the time.

Antivirus software is a must if you use the internet at all. Protect yourself and your computer!

Today’s the Big Day!

Today’s the day.  My daughter is supposed to be trying out on the tuba today!  She’s a little undecided as to whether or not she really wants to play the tuba, but I think trying it out will help answer her questions.

So, she will have her private lesson on her baritone and then be given the chance to try the tuba.  I am anxious to hear how it goes.  Either way, before the end of this school year, she will audition for the Honors band and she’ll have the option of either instrument.

Today is also the day that my husband and I will be attending a meeting for parents at the Junior High.  The purpose of the meeting is to familiarize parents with the Jr. High registration process.  I hope it is more interesting than it sounds!

What are you and your family doing today?

Izea Ranks

Want to know how your site ranks in relation to others on the web?  Read on.

I began blogging back in July of 2007, a relative newcomer. I hadn’t even read other blogs, other than my sister’s sites, a much more seasoned blogger than myself.  I started this, my second site, in October.  Prior to blogging, I had been employed full time outside the home as well as in the home as a full time wife and mom. Then, we moved. I really didn’t want to go back to work outside of the home, I really wanted to take the opportunity to get my sewing business going and a good way to do that was online. Blogging seemed to fill a niche for me.

One thing I learned right away was that in order to make money online, your site needed to be ranked with the search engines. There are many ways to get ranked and many theories on the best way to do it. For me, it seemed to boil down to writing good content and building traffic. I could write all the decent content I wanted, but if nobody was coming around to read it, it was basically like talking to myself! On the flip side of that, I could write nothing, or next to nothing, and I might get some traffic, but the chances of those people coming back a second time was pretty slim. So, the two seem to go hand in hand.

Six months ago, the primary companies assigning any sort of rank to websites, including blogs, were Alexa, Technorati and Google. We bloggers all worked hard to do the things I mentioned previously in order to build up our ranks. Now, anyone blogging simply for the love of writing and readership, really didn’t need to concern themselves with rank. However, any blogger who wished to monetize their site, or earn money from blogging, needed good rank to get advertisers to pay them to advertise on their site.

There are many ways to monetize. There are those little ads you see on peoples sites, usually from Google or Amazon that require readers to click on them in order for the blogger to earn any money. There are also paid reviews, reviewing anything from products, to other websites, to services. Bloggers choose what works best for them.

I personally began doing paid posts back in October and I found decent success with it. Then, Google decided that anyone doing paid posts for anyone other than Google didn’t deserve to have any Google Page Rank and slapped thousands of bloggers with page ranks of 0. While Google does own their Page Ranking system and can do with it as they please, I own my blog and likewise, can do with it what I want. The problem came when advertisers were still looking for higher ranked blogs to do their advertising. This slap by Google hurt many people, many of whom use the money they earn from paid blogging to pay for everyday expenses.

Riding to the rescue came IzeaRanks.com with a tool to assign Blog Ranks to individual blogs based on based on actual traffic and influence. This is a true rank, versus Google’s Page Rank that only an engineer could possibly explain due to its complicated algorithm.

Would you like to know where your site stands compared to thousands of other sites on the web, based on traffic and influence? It’s very simple to install the the IzeaRanks javascript which collects real traffic data. You can even choose to display page views and visitors or just your RealRank. And don’t worry, if you’re one of the the few who still has a Google PR, Google won’t penalize you for installing the javascript code on your site.

The thing I like best about IzeaRanks is that it updates daily with a rolling 7 day average. Unlike Google who updates on their own time, no set schedule, but approximately every 3-4 months. So, if you like stats (and what blogger doesn’t), get yourself the code today and install it, it’s quick easy & painless. You’ll begin seeing your RealRank stats usually within 48 hours of installing the code. Plus, you don’t have to monetize your site in order to use this code, RealRank is open to everyone! So, what are you waiting for?