Back to School Time


Now that I'm finally done with school, I shouldn't feel the pressure of going back to school. But as I walked around town yesterday, I noticed that everyone's been fussing over how many notebooks to buy, what kinds of pens they should get, and even contemplating whether or not they should get a new bag.

I remember when my mom and dad would take me school supply shopping. I hardly ever got what I wanted. Being a kid, I wanted to get the pretty stuff, but my dad would choose my school stuff for me. Notebooks during those years cost about PhP 4.50. The notebooks that I use now cost at least PhP 10.50, and that's if they're on sale.

The supplies may cost more, but everyone still need to get them before going back to school. Having new tools, more often than not, inspire students to use them more, makes them eager to gain new knowledge through these tools, thus preparing them for the world that they will be undertaking.

I can only hope that the students will really put the new supplies to good use. There are plenty of underprivileged children who would want to even just own a pen and a piece of paper.

Domain Names

What are domain names? If I put here the technical terms associated with it, it might just confuse the readers. The best way to define domain names is to show you what they are. Below are just some examples:

misswilhelmina.com
therichness.net

If you look at the address bar above, the URL to this blog is http://thisiswhereichill.blogspot.com. The domain name is blogspot.com. This blog is actually owned by the owners of Blogger. This blog is just one of the many subdomains of Blogger.

In picking a domain, make sure your domain name is very easy to remember. The shorter, the better, actually. The subdomain I picked for this blog is thisiswhereichill. This blog wasn't meant for anything else except me, well, chilling.

Anyway, there are a lot of domain name hosts that you can register your domains with. Domain names are as low as $6.95 and as much as $49.99. The following are just some domain name registrars:

Yahoo
godaddy
1and1
register

I'm not gonna go in-depth with domain name registration, because it's boring stuff. Really. If you do decide to get yourself your own domain name, check if the domain is still available with any of the registrars. If it is, then there's nothing to stop you from registering it. Except maybe not having a credit card.

More about credit cards later on. In choosing the right domain registrar for you, make sure you read through the terms and conditions, and there's no better way to tell what the customers are saying than reading reviews about the registrar and asking around in community forums.

Monetizing Wordpress

All right, so this blog is waaay overdue in the "Monetizing Your Blog" series. Let me make things clear first. It is absolutely forbidden to make money off your free Wordpress blog. Wordpress has been shutting down blogs that have paid content in them.

In a free Wordpress blog, you can't put ads on it, or put any form of paid content on it. So how do you monetize it even if it's still free-hosted?

The only way to do it is to be sneaky about it, make sure that any paid content you put on it isn't obvious. If you want to be sneaky, that's your business. Wordpress users can be reported for having paid content, so you better be careful if you decide on using your free blog for paid posts.

But really, Wordpress blogs are really good if you want to do paid posts. It might be tough starting out on a Wordpress blog, with all the plugins that you have to install just to get your blog the way you want it to be. If you want to know how Wordpress blogs work, sign up for a free Wordpress blog account, familiarize yourself with all the features, and make sure that you have enough basic PHP and HTML knowledge to pull off effective blogging.

Actually, all you need to know is how to type and have some flow of ideas. But having even a little web knowledge would make things faster and would make it easier for you to make your blog even better than it already is.

So the only way to monetize your Wordpress blog without being sneaky is to get yourself a domain name, and a reliable web host. I sense this post going somewhere again. Looks like I found my next post topic.

Anyway, speaking from experience, Wordpress is the best blogging platform based on its features and the available plugins that are also available. Wordpress has a ton of templates to choose from and if you have enough web knowledge, you can make your own theme and be unique.

Next on the "Monetizing Your Blog" series: getting your own domain name and web hosting.