Category Archives: Blogging

Does Blogging Cause A Distaste For Cubicle Jobs

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This might be pretty obvious, but since I started blogging and earning a little bit of money, my distaste for my cubicle job has dramatically increased!

With my cubicle (regular) job, I’m stuck in a dingy grey cubicle setup, with very plain lifeless-colored walls.  The cube walls are high, so nobody can casually look at me.  Visitors have to come to my cubicle entryway to socialize.  Lately, I’ve been imagining that my day job, and in particular my cube, is much like a prison cell in the movie Shawshank Redemption.  Sometimes I even fantasize about escaping for the fun of it…  In fact, with friends I sometimes tell them I am going to tunnel out with plastic spoons someday… Silly, but funny at the same time.

While I’ve always had these feelings to some degree, blogging has intensified them so that I’m starting to really dislike my job.

So you might be wondering the reasons I dislike my job because of my blogging?  Well, here they are:

  • I can and do blog in restaurants, libraries, cafe/coffee houses, and at home of course.
  • I can even blog at friend’s houses although I don’t do this much…
  • My entire blogging empire can be managed from my laptop and a simple laptop messenger bag.
  • I can make my own hours (right now it’s past 1:00am where I live).
  • I don’t have to commute if I don’t want to when I’m blogging, this saves precious time for other activities.
  • I can blog from remote location and even different countries, as long as I have an internet connection.
  • I can write blog articles without having an internet connection.  This even increased the flexibility of blogging at any time or place.
  • I’m my own boss!
  • I’m unlimited in creative possibilities!  This makes for a rewarding job!
  • I don’t have to deal with corporate politics or clichés like I do at my cubicle job…
  • If I were to make enough money from blogging, I could travel across the world while working via blogging.

Blogging and online activities really have a lot going for them!  While I keep busy at work and actually have a decent job, I’d much rather be blogging for a living.

If you blog and have a full time cubicle job, what do you think?

MR

 

Blogging on a Cool Fall Day

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I’m in our guest room, writing this blog on a child’s desk.

It’s around noon, and looking out our windows, I can see the wind is blowing causing our neighbor’s trees leaves to fall, reminding me that soon it will be snow falling instead of leaves.  This year went by in a flash, the summer seemingly passing with just a blink of our eyes.  We had so much fun, that everything went too quickly!

This past summer, we vacationed on a small Florida Island called Captiva Island, experienced swimming with dolphins, went to a water park at Kalahari Resorts, and just basically kept busy the entire season.

Just writing this blog has been a challenge let along improving it.  I had planned on changing the theme, doing some SEO optimization, and other non-writing blogging aspects to a small but growing blog such as mine.  Seeing the fall leaves has started a fire under my butt, so now I feel like it’s time to run again.

So, that said, here are some great blogging articles to scope out while I play catchup.

Well, there you have it!  Enjoy the reading from this great group of bloggers while I go try and improve my backend blogging skills.

Enjoy,

MR

Is Blogging The Ultimate Mobile Business Model?

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As frequent readers might know, I sometimes go to local coffee houses to write articles for my blog.  I usually go to a small local chain called Arabic Coffee House, but today I am going to Panera Bread instead because I’m meeting a friend for lunch and it just so happens that Panera is one of his favorite restaurants for lunch.

Panera Bread

Panera

Now you might be thinking, “What does this have to do with Business or Personal Finance”?

Well, if I were a full-time blogger, the point is I can work from anywhere that an internet connections exists.  Today, you can find internet access points almost everywhere!  I’ve even heard of entire cities providing internet access for their community for free, talk about flexibility!!!  This means I don’t have to incur the cost of having a traditional office (just a post office box).

Some of you might be thinking, what about a phone line?

Well, my phone number is a Google Voice phone number, which is free and very powerful!  It’s powerful because the Google number is configurable to ring any phone I configure the call to route to within Google Voice, even multiple phones (cell or land-line).

Back to the friend I’m meeting:

Unfortunately, my friend lives over an hour away, so it will take him a while to meet me at Panera.  If I had a regular business, the time waiting for him would be mostly wasted, but this is NOT so with my blogging business!

Here is what I am doing while waiting:

  • Writing:  I’m writing this article (obvious huh)…  That is one of the best feature of blogging!  All I need to write an article is: my brain, my laptop (or similar device), and my hands.  I don’t even need an internet connection to write the articles!  Granted I can’t post my article without an internet connection, but posting to my site only take a few minutes tops.
  • Twittering:  Checking my blog’s twitter account, responding to tweets, retweeting interesting articles, and later tweeting this article once it’s posted.  Twitter didn’t start out this big when I started blogging, but now I’m very active on this social channel.
  • Emailing:  I’m responding to emails that I have received in my mailbox.  I get a constant stream of emails now, so this has become a critical part of blogging for me.
  • Analytics:  Periodically checking my stats.  This is generally considered bad, but really it’s a quick and easy way to check to make sure my site is up and functioning normally.  It’s just a quick refresh of the screen.  I also look for abnormal behavior!  I’ve used these stats to block bad guys hitting my site before.
  • Facebooking:  Facebook, activities…  I’m just starting to get into this, but it’s one of the largest social channels out there!
  • Thinking:  Learning to think and observe better in public.  Thinking in my guest room at home is great, but sometimes going out in public, and just watching and listening (or typing and half listening) can spark an idea for a new article (I say this because I came up with two ideas while typing this article).

<My friend has arrived, so I will stop here and finish up this article at home>

It was a great time meeting my friend (I haven’t seen him in over a year), and now I’m at home and wrapping up this post.  That’s another nice thing about a blogging business, I don’t have to worry about picking up where I left off.  I just open my article and go to the bottom and continue to type the article out!

So, I hope I demonstrated that blogging is the ultimate mobile business!  An added perk is that in addition to being the ultimate mobile business, it’s also cheap to start and run!  I love these win-win scenarios!

Cheers,

MR

Today, My Blog Is Two Years Old

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Time has gone by quickly!

Reflections on Being Two Years Old:

I’ve made a lot of mistakes with my blog adventure.  There was a time when just one reader would come by daily and read my blog.  She was what I thought of as my first real reader.  She too had a blog (SeeJaneGetRich . com, now defunct though) and I would reciprocate by visiting her blog also.  “Jane” was an incredible bright girl who was going to Law School at Brown University.  Surprisingly, I still find that I miss her…

For the first 5 months, I didn’t understand what was required to get google to see me in their search engine.  During that time, I hardly I got any hits from google at all.  I really didn’t understand the whole SEO thing, and nobody was there to help…  It was a lonely journey that just Jane and I were on!  Check out Jane’s twitter account (SeeJaneGetRich twitter Account) if you are curious about her.

Next came Sam.  One day a guy with an avatar called the “Financial Samurai” stopped by and left a comment.  This wasn’t the first time that I’ve seen the Financial Samurai name though.  Back then (before Yakezie) Sam visited a lot of pf bloggers and would leave comments often.  Excited, but weary (I even had comment spam back then), I visited his site and was amazed!

Lego Birthday Cake

Lego Birthday Cake

The looks of Sam’s site was breath-taking, much, much cooler than my own (and it still is).  I thought to myself  “Yeah, but is his content good, or is he all just flash”.  I read one article, then another article, and so on.  After a few articles later and after dive in his archive, it was obvious that Sam was a very talented writer and very entertaining to boot.  Sam is hugely responsive for me growing more quickly and the fact that I’m still blogging today!

How I’ve Grown

I’m not the same man who started this blogging journey, I’ve changed.  I’m definitely learned to take charge and forge my own path instead of going down the same path that everybody else follows.  I was nervous at first, but now I’m seasoned in this area too.  I’m very comfortable voicing my opinion and changing the course when I think things are wrong.

I’m more social, and much less introverted than before.  I actually was very excited to go to the 1st Financial Blogger Conference (we are all indebted to you Phil at ptmoney.com), and actually sad to leave so soon.

Surprisingly, the only thing that hasn’t really change much is my financial awareness and strategy.  In fact, I was recently commenting that I think that I’ve neglected my own finances a bit while I instead focus on blogging (how is that for a twist)…

My technical side is starting to finally come out more in my blogging.  I’ve been wanting to change my theme for a long time but I’ve been holding off.  Lately, I’ve been geeking out playing with all the cool features around blogging.  Hopefully I’ll have a new look by next year.

Where I Want To Go

I love blogging, but now it’s time to expand and make my hobby, my tech hobby too.  I want to try some things, to see how far I can push myself, to see how far I can reach up (from Pat Flynn’s speech at the finCon11).

I sometime talk about going outside of the box, but mostly I just look outside of the box and tell others when I see.  They sometimes do what I see while I sit safely inside of my box.  But now it’s time to take a step out, no, not jump out but taking that critical first step.  A journey of a thousand steps begin with a single step (by Confucius).

I find that once I take such a step, it’s hard for me to stop, kind of like the unstoppable motion of the Juggernaut from Marvel Comics.

Future Giveway:

Yes in celebration, I’m going to be giving away a best buy gift card in the near future.

Bests,

MR

 

P.S. My blogoversary was on Oct. 7.