Notice: Dear reader, please note that most of the photos in my blog are currently not available. They are currently held hostage by Photobucket (which requires me to pay $399USD/year). I am in the process of re-uploading the images on a different host and this will take some time. If you have any burning questions about my post, feel free to leave a comment. Sorry for the inconveniences caused!
Hi everyone!
It’s my pleasure to inform that I have finally shifted from www.flyhoneystars.wordpress.com to www.flyhoneystars.com.
After months of procrastination and unwillingness to part with my money, I gave up my SEO rankings in my 1335 days old wordpress blog on 6th Aug 2014 and started from 0 views.
I had to fork out $$$ to purchase a domain, host the website on another server and purchase re-direct services from wordpress, which re-links visitors from my old url to my url. To add on to the spending spree, I paid for a new logo and new graphics of my three favourite traveling bears!
Vintage Logo was done by: http://www.fiverr.com/jarek_gfx/design-2-vintage-logos-beautiful-retro-style
Traveling bears graphic was done by: http://www.fiverr.com/nanimufasiroh/create-a-cartoon-character-as-you-want
FYI, I only paid $5USD/bear and the quality of work exceeded my expectations. I told her that I wanted a travel-feel for my bears and she delivered it perfectly! The graphics are so adorable that I can just look at them all day long ^_^
As a result, I’m kind of addicted to fiverr.com and I’m wrecking my head to think about what other services I need..
So.. how am I gonna “earn” my money back? To be honest, I have absolutely no idea on how much money my blog can actually make because I’ve only subscribed for Google Ads (seen in my side column) so far. Well, my only target is to earn enough money to cover my yearly renewal cost. Hopefully it is successful but even if it doesn’t, being on a dotcom has a lot more benefits than just “monetizing”.
#1: I am able to use Google Analytics to obtain a very detailed and real-time readership profile. With only 2 days of info, I know that 58% of my readers are Singaporean and that 8% are returning visitors. I am also able to find out what people googled before finding my blog. Popular search terms includes “sm entertainment address”, “sea train korea”, “jangsado sea park” and “mariner of the seas blog”. (Right, 75% korea-related).
#2: I am able to optimize my page with meta keywords. Currently, my blog appears very high up when you google “Korean Filming Locations”, “you who came from the stars filming location”, “Europe Grad Trip” (I’m the first). Well, by using Step #1, I can find out the popular terms people google and then I can add in these popular keywords into my blog and slowly climb my way up to no.1. 😀
#3: I have more template options + I am able to customize them using CSS/Editor tools. Expect more changes, more tweaks and improvements (I hope) to my blog.
#4: The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) world is so interesting and it’s been a while since I’ve learned anything so foreign. Thus I’m accepting the SEO-challenge and I’ll work my way to make my site to be extremely SEO-friendly.
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The only sad thing in my life right now is that I have not been on any holiday vacation since July 2014 and I am not supposed to make any plans until next year/further notice.
Even though I mentally prepared myself for this vacation-less second half by going for three (+1) trips (March: Bali; April: Hong Kong; May: Krabi; June (+1, sponsored): Kota Kinabalu, in the first half of the year, I still feel a little empty right now. My yearly korea streak (3 years) will be ending; slowly together with my craze for kpop/kdrama as I discover better things to do with my life. My Online Sprees have been decreasing as I increased my commitments in blogging. There’s only 24 hours a day and I need to work a lot harder to achieve my goal. blah, blah, blah. no time for anything else.
In the next month or so, I should be preparing my (hopefully in the near future) Okinawa road trip, a new blog entry about budget traveling in Europe (very popular topic right now) where I spent $5.1k and traveled for 30 days to 6 countries, 10 cities including $900 worth of shopping) and perhaps create a website to practice my SEO skills.
Oh, and of course, looking forward to November 8 for Jay Chou Concert in the new Singapore Sports Hub. I do have extra Cat 7 tickets available for sale. Do drop me a mail if you’re keen.
Thanks for reading my rambling till the end. Remember to ‘Like‘ my facebook page for more updates!
<3 The owner of the traveling bears (duffy, paddy & rilak)