Read Me and Go Nuts:

Today I started reading Alvin Phang’s Atomic Blogging. I am also trying to get focused by deleting from my mailbox tons of offers received after buying an e-book that started this avalanche of offers.

They came in droves. Offers from list building techniques, creating traffic, pay-per-click schemes, and so forth. Regardless of the subject, they are in common in:

- All offered “FREE” admission into their program;

- All are a mile long resulting to loss of thought and information overload leading to decision paralysis.

- All are full of endorsement from people nobody knew leading me to suspect that their books are not as good as they claim, otherwise why need all these people to speak for it.

- All have syntax problems making me wonder why they couldn’t get good enough proofreaders if they are making tons of money.

- Upon  scrolling down, I am lead to another site which dashed my hopes to pieces. All inducements of “FREE” this and that are the veritable spider’s web. All cost a fortune.

Oh yes, some are playing it coy with warnings of scammers – those offering “get rich quick” schemes that are nothing but sugar-coated balloons. Sadly they, too, are not a whittle different from the rest.

A site starts with a list of subjects regarding blogging. Upon opening it, the first page contains primers to food supplements.

Alvin Phang suggests never to hard sell. These guys do without a conscience. My reactions and questions regarding their offers are answered by more offers of the same; my requests for review of my posts are answered the same way.

One creatively asked me what I will be doing in the next 3 minutes. I answered “Trying to make sense out of your offer.” He never bothered to clarify or explain but submitted the same offer.

The “FREE” website that was supposed to be a freebie from the e-book I made the mistake of buying was the first disappointment in my blogging life and it ushered in more. And it was not free after all.

The brighter side?

Kontera is very proactive, diligent, and patient. And after  having survived from one disappointment to another, an  offer came that is hoped to be the silver lining in my dark clouds of blogging.

Buy Me and Get Rich:

Needing a certain degree of success, I tried out the things from Mr. Chow’s e-book. One of these is to have my postings advertised in some of the countless websites catering to such need.

“Don’t Click on Me If…,” is an icon in one of these websites. The jerk that I am, I did, loosing upon me a herd of rampaging marketers vying to get my attention with the electronic equivalent of jump, roll and play dead.

“It pays to advertise,” is a well-worn saying among advertising people. And it is true. In my case however, I got “stung,” not to get advertised, but to pay for an e-book. The offer was juicy. It promised a “free” website already primed for unlimited earnings the moment I sign in.

At this point, I thought it better to change my blog name to Life is a Pizza. It was out of the lesson learned from that innocuous icon and my love-hate relationship with pizza. I thought I might also give my blog an attractive and catchy name and I found similarities in pizza toppings to the things that are happening as I make the arduous and painful blogging journey.

• Cancer tidbits from my friend in Australia:
  Researchers in Austria have reported that large weight gains or losses may influence an individual’s risk for developing certain types of cancer.
  (Annals of Oncology 2008; 19:641-648, published April 2008).

• Increased physical activity among American women is associated with a decreased risk of pancreatic cancer, providing additional evidence that physical activity may
  potentially be protective against this malignancy.
  (BMC Cancer 2008, 8:63, published 4/10/2008)

Another reason for the Pizza name is the subconscious hope that people will start taking a bite from my postings. Oh, I got a lot of bites all right – but not from visitors but from e-marketers vying to sell their products.

Note: Previous installments on my misadventures in blogging are found at wwwjoedabon.blogspot.com.

Being with the Best:

It is said that “if you want to soar like an eagle, be with the eagles. If you want to waddle like a duck, be with the ducks.”

After three blog name changes and shuttling between Bloggers.com, WordPress.com, then Bloggers.com, I finally decided to settle, with finality I hope, with WordPress

I started touching on the reasons for the name changes in my blogs at http://wwwjoedabon.blogspot.com. The change in hosting, however, is fairly simple: all the big names in blogging are using WordPress. But of the three successful bloggers I’ve read so far, only Alvin Phang gave me the reason why (at least that which I can understand). More of Alvin Phang later.

Change is never easy. It entails a lot of soul-searching to be able to handle the new environment, the discomfort and hassles of having to learn something new and different. Prior to that, we have to unlearn the previous lessons before we can effectively adapt to the new one. But change we must or become obsolete and be left behind.

As I’ve written in my other blog (see above), ‘Change is the only permanent thing in the world.’ And whereas fear of the unknown is one of the stumbling blocks of change for most, my need to succeed, be with the eagles, has been the driving force behind the changes, evolutions I would rather say, of my blog.