Travel for Love

I read about the “7 Links Challenge” on ThePlanetD, a great travel blog by a super adventurous Canadian couple. Definitely go check out their blog if you haven’t already – they are an inspiration!

They got the idea from Problogger to do the 7 Links Challenge and inspire other travel bloggers to do the same. I thought it would be fun too participate too!

Here are the posts you are supposed to link:

Your first post
A post you enjoyed writing the most
A post which had a great discussion
A post on someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written
Your most helpful post
A post with a title that you are proud of
A post that you wish more people had read

My first post
Why Travel
This was an introspective piece where I tried to pinpoint why exactly I love to travel so much. Looking back I’m happy to note that my points are still valid and I still feel the same way.

A post I enjoyed writing the most
Traveling with a Brazilian
Oh boy was this one tough to pick! I love writing all my posts and especially enjoy all the fond memories they conjure. But my Traveling with a Brazilian post was just too fun to write. I love traveling with Roberto and I got the warm fuzzies thinking about all the reasons that make him a great travel companion!

A Post which had Great Discussion
On my List – The Balkans
Honestly I haven’t written any posts that roused a ton of controversy or passionate comments. This post got a few comments, but I am including it here because it continues to be one of my most popular posts and has brought lots of traffic to my site.

I post I wish I’d written
What is Microfinance: A Traveler’s View from the Field
Oh boy was this a tough one! There are TONS of amazing blogs out there with hundreds of posts I wish I’d written. I chose this post about microfinance on Uncornered Market because of how eye opening and educational (as always with UMarket!) the post was. I truly admire the way Daniel and Audrey travel and learn and grow, and how they can present such an educated and fresh perspective on nearly everything they encounter. This post made me realize how little I know about developing economies and isolated societies, and how we could possibly make a difference. I wish I had written such an educational post.

My most helpful post
On my List: Chernobyl
And I was just wishing I had written more educational posts. I also just started working on a (timely) post about staying healthy while traveling, but I don’t usually go around dishing out the travel advice on my blog. I went with this post about touring Chernobyl because I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that people never knew such a tour existed. And, let’s face it, it would be a pretty friggin cool tour!

A title I’m proud of
How I Became a Soccer Fan
Bah! I am not creative at ALL when it comes to titling my posts. I thought my “How I became a Soccer Fan” title was kind of fun, maybe a little interesting? I really need to get more creative with my titles…

A post I wish more people would read
Road Trip
All of them? Haha! Here’s an early one about a road trip through the Brazilian interior that I think people would find fun to read. It was an interesting trip!

So those are my 7 links! I hope you enjoyed!

So today I remembered I have a blog. Just kidding, although it probably seems that way after over 3 weeks with no posts. Of course I was in Spain for a good chunk of that time… And although I had the best intentions to post during that time and schedule content (I even have a few drafts started) it just didn’t happen. Once I got back, I got hit with a ridiculous allergy attack due to every tree in Pittsburgh blooming at the same time. Between not feeling well for my whole week back and catching up at work and at home, I haven’t had a spare minute to sit down and write any coherent content. Next week should be better and I have some great stuff to post from our recent trip.

I’ll give a little update on a few things.

Roberto and I had a great time in Spain. We enjoyed poking around Andalusia almost as much as we enjoyed spending time together again. We drank entirely too much sangria and spent entirely too much money. I can’t wait to share more of our experiences in Spain in posts to come.

I’ve also been thinking of some things I want to get accomplished with this blog. I am going to set up a Facebook fan page so my friends who want to keep up with my blog but don’t do the rss reader thing can follow it there. I just hope I get some fans!

Although it really isn’t on the site anywhere, I consider my blog’s tagline to be “travel and life of a Brazilian and American couple.” I’m starting to realize I tend to blog much more about the travel part than the life part. I think there are a few reasons for this: I’m not one to talk much about my personal life, and I don’t really have much exciting going on right now. I also have to be selective because people like close relatives and co-workers read my blog as well as internet strangers. However I think writing more about my life would be good for me, and it might make my blog a little more meaningful to readers.

There are a couple of “life” topics I’ve think I’d like to write about more, our long distance relationship and how we make it work, and our plans for the future. The future is a little more difficult to write about at the moment because it’s rather uncertain. I’ve been (rightfully) hesitant to discuss potential opportunities for us to be together during this immigration process because many have come and gone, to our unending frustration. We do still have something in the “crosshairs” and as soon as we are able to make some concrete plans I will blog about them for sure!

Oh and I don’t have the stomach to post in depth about the immigration process itself. It’s furious gathering of forms, documentation, and evidence followed by months on end of waiting. Repeated several times. There are plenty of resources on the internet for guidance on importing your significant other – we don’t need my perspective too.

Other things I’d like to write about more: Brazil (Roberto and I have some ideas), my hometown of Pittsburgh, personal finance, my work and the nuclear industry.

As if it isn’t apparent… I finally got around to using a prettier Wordpress theme and trying to customize it a little. I’ve been anxious to get onto something that has a white background and a wider text column. Hopefully you’ll find the new look to be more user friendly!

This is the first entry of a series about my experiences with making money online.

They’re not really travel related, but investing, passive income, and financial independence are subjects that I am very interested in. Anyway, you need money to travel.

Last year, I began experimenting with a few ways to make money online. I think it will be a good exercise for me to evaluate these methods, assess where I’m at, and make goals for 2010.

First Method – eHow Articles

I’ll dedicate this first post in the series to eHow. I signed up for eHow’s Writer’s Compensation Program at the beginning of 2009.

How it works
Basically, you sign up on the site and publish how-to articles. The website provides a standard format and publishing interface where you follow a template to write your article. You categorize your article in eHow’s system, and add tags and keywords so your article can be found on search engines and through browsing the site. eHow gets a lot of traffic and has high search engine rankings.

How you get paid
Your articles earn money when people click on ads within your article (embedded by the site – you don’t need to do anything). As the author you receive a percentage of the ad revenue in the form of royalties. This percentage is proprietary to eHow. When you sign up for the Writer’s Compensation Program, you link your PayPal to your account. Each time you reach $10 in earnings, a payment is placed in your PayPal.

My experience
In 2009 I wrote 14 articles and made a total of $49.19. I was not very consistent with my writing, and had a gap of many months where I didn’t write or promote anything. I picked it back up towards the end of the year and found my revenue steadily begin to increase. My highest earning article brought in $28.41, and I have 5 articles that earned nothing in 2009. I found writing the articles to be fairly easy, and probably spent 1-3 hours writing each one (usually in front of tv and surfing the net).

Pros
There are lots of good things about eHow.
1. It’s very flexible – you can write about any topic you want.
2. The site has a strong community and lots of resources for increasing revenue.
3. High search engine rankings get exposure to your articles.
4. The format and interface are easy to work with.
5. Articles keep earning long after they are published.

Cons
And some bad
1. There is a large volume of articles to compete against yours in searches.
2. Initially you will make pennies, only increasing with volume.
3. Articles can be hit or miss, and it’s difficult to predict which ones will be good earners.
4. The site has been buggy with publishing at times.
5. Your name is not credited in your articles.

The Future
I think it’s worthwhile to write eHow articles, and I will continue to participate in the Writer’s Compensation Program. I realized early on that I need to write a higher volume of articles to earn significant income. Some people I “know” on there that started around the same time as me are consistently earning around $300 per month now. Since I’ve decided to continue working with eHow I’m establishing some goals for the next year.

Goals:
1. Increase volume by writing 3 articles per week. This is the only hope I have to see any significant income from eHow.
2. Spend 2-3 hours per week networking on eHow to learn SEO skills and techniques for higher visibility.
3. Investigate other kinds of sites that pay for written articles. Attempt to post my eHow work on new sites to increase exposure, and consider participating in different kinds of programs.

Conclusion
I am fairly happy with my experience on eHow so far. I consider the effort I’ve made in 2009 to be fairly minimal in terms of SEO, and pathetic in terms of volume. However, if I don’t write a single new article in 2010, my old ones will still be earning for me. This potential for income growth is what will keep me writing.

This blog is finally turning up in Google searches! At first, I couldn’t figure out what was stopping my site from being indexed. I had tried many things, including manually submitting it, with no results even after a month. Once I tried searching for “wordpress blog not indexed by Google,” I realized the problem: Wordpress has a default privacy setting that does not allow search engine traffic. So, I changed the setting a few days ago. Interestingly enough, I did not turn up any search engine results until after I linked my blog in Twitter. I definitely need to utilize Twitter alot more!

As a new blogger, I’ve been kind of learning as I go. I know there are lots of things I could do better, and there are plenty of things with the site I am not happy with. I really need to get a different domain just for the blog. I want to use a different Wordpress theme, but I have not been able to figure out how to customize the header the way I want it in anything but Kubrick. I also can’t stand how narrow the text column is and I would prefer the background to be white. These things aren’t customizable in Kubrick (as far as I can tell, anyway).

I set up the basics when I started blogging to be “acceptable” but not perfect cause I was afraid to spend too much time behind the scenes and not enough actually blogging. I knew I would need to at least have some content build up and have a reader or two for motivation to keep going. I wanted to work towards this as soon as possible. And I am still in this phase – I am trying to find the balance of writing posts and and working on the site.

By the way, my new twitter account is:

http://twitter.com/travelforlove