Bloggers Journal

Achieving success is something everyone strives for.  However, the majority of people get tripped up along the way because they set out to achieve success without planning how they will get there.  Your success is a very personal thing.  Success can come in many different ways.  Some people find it in having a good job.  Others find it in having a good life-work balance.  Regardless of how you judge success, to achieve it, you have to work hard. Read more »

I recently signed up to EzineArticles after I read about it on experimentsinpassiveincome.com.  I was initially reluctant – althought I don’t know why.  I guess at the minute, this blogging is still leaving me a little self conscious about my writing.  Even though as part of my career I have written many articles and been reviewed by peers and various supervisors, I still feel that way.

Anyway, I signed up – it’s free!  If you’re interested, check out EzineArticles here.

I pondered over what articles to share.  After a little reading around the benefits of using their site, I decided to submit some of what I thought were my best articles.  You can see yourself that there are not many.

When you join, you are a “Basic Member” and you are allowed to submit 10 articles.

So I submitted all articles related to my PhD category that I am writing about here.  I also decided to share the article on the importance of backing up your documents.

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My previous blog post said about how I am going to openly discuss the development of my website – hopefully, in the long run, making it profitable.  My aim for the end of this year is to have 5,000 visitors, and hopefully have made some revenue.

I have taken a number of steps to attempt to monetise this website.  I had toyed with not placing any adverts until there was more content.  However, I was advised to place some adverts on the site so you readers become acustomed to it.  It makes sense I guess.  I’m being open and honest from the start.  At the end of the day, I’m paying money out of my pocket to 1and1 to host my website.

So heres a start on things to come.  In this blog I’ll discuss what I have done to boost my traffic a little, and show you some funky graphs!

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I’m sure I’m not the only one who has read about the many people who have managed to make a living online using a personal website.  It sounds ideal being able to quit your day job to live the life many of us dream of – being your own boss!

Some of the figures quoted when I first read about this seemed far too good to be true.  The more I read about this, the more I find myself becoming convinced that there is an resource here, at anyone’s disposal to make something from.

A lot of the advice seems to be repeated across the board.  I first came across this whole making a living from a website when I stumbled upon 2createawebsite.com.  The starting point is very much, find a niche – identify a gap in the market.  I should be capable of this, as a researcher it’s my day job!  Buy I’m still stumped as to what I should write about regularly.  I’m interested in so many different things – most of them not related.  So what do I do?

To start, I’ve started my blog series, “Survive a PhD“.  This seems like a good starting point.  I have experience, and knowledge, and have shared plenty of advice with friends and colleagues.

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I was reading a blog entry by Lee at Search Engine Viking which reminded me of the importance of backing up your data.  I cannot stress enough how important it is to make regular backup copies of your important data.  I have had a number of people experience problems with their computers, and ask if I can recover anything for them.  I too have fallen victim to problems with computers, and not had a back up.

There are occasions when something goes wrong with your computer – for whatever reason – and you just cannot get any of the data back of it.  Unfortunately this happens.  It’s why we should back up!

I have been fortunate however, and want to share of a few experiences when I have been faced with having no backup to restore and a computer that is not working.

The first occasion was my own laptop.  It happened about 2 years ago, over half way through my PhD research.  I did everything on my laptop.  I wrote reports, kept research documents, stored personal documents and various other items on my laptop.  I really should have backed it up – or at least more regularly!  Anyway, one day I power up the laptop and I get an error on the screen.  I can’t remember what it was of the top of my head – however, it wasn’t pretty.  Several expletives later, I decided, right, take it to a computer shop and see what they can do.  So I leave it in with the “experts”.  They plug it into their systems.

Sorry sir, but we cannot connect to your hard disk drive.  A data recovery will not be possible

Okay I thought.  Is there not anything can be done?  Apparently not!  All I can do, so they say, is get a new hard disk, and start from scratch.

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Tons of us have Facebook accounts or are active members of Twitter!  However, how many people have their own personal website?  I honestly cannot answer that.  Whilst not very representative, but will do for the sake of argument, I reckon an absolute maximum of 5% of my friends have their own personal website.  Of this small percentage, how many of them actually have a website with regularly updated content?  That I cannot answer – but I’m sure it’s safe to say that there are plenty of websites on the net which are either out of date, or are infrequently updated. Read more »