Make$ Money$ Blog - Truth, no scam

I think I owe it to my readers to tell them what I am doing behind the scenes to salvage my pagerank on my personal blog 5xmom.  I was a PR5/10 but dropped to PR 2/10.

Let’s not go back to the same old discussion on whether PR is important or not.  It is important to my ego so I am willing to do anything to it.  Bear in mind that I have a dozen blogs and hence, I can afford to dissect, give my blogs a post-mortem and experiment and experiment.

Here are some things I discovered after spending a few days on Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools dashboard.

1) I farked up my sitemap and my www and non-www URLs.  I missed tracking my own personal blog and all along, Google was indexing non www eventhough I had  changed it to www.  One big mistake.

2) My personal blog attracts a lot of sex sites and porn sites and I have a lot of incoming links from hairy legs to hairy baby cats sites.  The cons of being too good in SEO and rule in sex keyword eventhough my site is all clean.   These sites probably leeched me off a lot good credits in Google book.  Another minus.

3)  I used to leave all my year old paid posts online.  But I guess drastic situation calls for drastic measure.  Good little girls don’t go nowhere.  So, out of frustration, I delete.  Mean old biathces have more fun. :) Unlinking and removing tracking code is too hard so DELETE.  Many of those posts, though sponsored are my real life situations and real thoughts.  It is a pity but heck, no one is going to compensate me for leaving it there.  Remember to read your TOS and know which company you are writing for and what terms you have agreed to.   Some, we are bound to keep for a month.  Some for an eternity.  But my advice, don’t mess with PPP’s advertisers because some mean ones will slap you with a ban even if you unlinked after 60 days.  I kept mine to a minimum of 6 months.  Now, my site has less outbound links.

4) Meme can go to hell.  I kept some and unlink some.
5) Long blogroll is meaningless now.  I have put mine in draft until I have time to trim them.  I had trimmed this blogroll too.  When I had a PR 5/10, I don’t mind giving those with no PR a link.  I hope good karma will come back to me.  Hint, hint, hint.  When you have a chance, please link my personal blog http://chanlilian.net  in your blog post!  OK, I am begging.  LOL.  Say anything you like in passing as long as there is a link to my personal blog.  Just say, 5xmom is so pathetic and she is begging me.  Or, 5xmom deserves it.  How about, 5xmom bitten by karma?  LOL.

6) I have cleaned up almost all unecessary outbound links.  But now, my dilemma is should I stop TLA and LinkWorth?  Both of them pays me almost USD300 per month in text link ads alone, on my personal blog.  Just one personal blog.  I cannot afford to lose that amount of money.  I do not know if the advertisers are going to continue.  So, I shall wait till November and see if they are still buying my links.

As for this blog, I had written to TLA to opt out from next month onwards.

7) I had taken Darren Rowse’s advice to ask for reconsideration if we think we have been unfairly ranked.  After I cleaned up my personal blog and this blog plus my good food blog, I submitted my appeal.  God help me.   I can accept the loss of PR on my other blogs but these three blogs are my babies.

You may notice that I have taken a change in my approach.  Earlier, I was adamant that Google doesn’t rule how I blog.  But then, I hate the look of a PR 2/10 on my blog.  It is not only the money I am worried of losing.  It is the EGO.  I got my chanlilian.org site which is only three months old and it is filled with guest posts only.  It has the same PR as my personal blog.

So, I am going to strive to get back my PR on my personal blog.      My personal blog has less than 10% paid posts (as I have 2,300 posts collected over three years) so I have every reason to hope.

In brief, this is what I have done :

1) Re-prioritize : Do I want ego or money?  Personal blog and this blog, I want PR, other blogs, I don’t fark care.

2) Remove : whatever that is not necessary.

3) Reorganize : sidebar, pages

4) Reconsider : I am appealing to Google to review

5) Redundant :  LOL,  as long as I am a PR 2/10, I am going to be redundant.  It is not a nice feeling but I have faith.

Traffic wise, I didn’t lose much but it is hard to tell because my server was down several times and the traffic drops naturally.

So, are you going to do something about your PR?  If you have gained PR (which I have gained in three blogs), don’t take things for granted as well.

My last word – Don’t let the PR intimidate you but never fight too hard or be too stubborn.  There is a Chinese method of being a survivor.  The oak tree and the bamboo (lallang if you prefer).  The oak tree stands firm, proud and tall.  The bamboo sway with the way the winds blow.  Between them, the bamboo is much sturdier.  You know why?  If a big storm comes, the oak will topple.  But the bamboo, though bend in every direction and appears weaker,  won’t topple.  (Thick face, black heart book by  Chin Ning Chu)