Vegan Momma

I’ve never participated in any type of Halloween activities before however my daughter will be attending a Halloween party tomorrow. She’s very excited about it. In a few hours I’ll be taking Ms. Aiyana to the pumpkin patch so we can collect pumpkins. Yes we have a pumpkin patch at our home but going to the pumpkin patch is different. You see she’ll be going on a “haunted hayride”. She’s excited since many of her homeschooling buddies will be in attendance. I’ll be sure to take pictures.

Upcoming Adventures

It’s interesting for me to see that more blacks are homeschooling their children. The Black Informant talks about his experience as a homeschooling dad in A father’ day reflection.

This weekend we might be attending a Days of Jubilee. I’m an active member of a variety of local homeschooling organizations. Earlier this morning I joined a local black homeschoolers organization.  I received an invite to attend an upcoming event this weekend. The event is titled The Days of Jubilee and focuses on the book that shares that name.

What is The Days of Jubilee? It’s a book that chronicles the various stages of U.S. emancipation. It begins with those slaves who were freed for their service during the Revolutionary War, to those who were freed by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

A lot of the black/minority history I learned did not come from school. I learned it from my parents. Especially my father. I remember looking at the history books and knew that we had done more even though I wasn’t reading about it in our history books.

I’m really excited about this and am hoping we get the opportunity to attend. It’s being hosted by a local black homeschoolers group in our area. I haven’t told Aiyana about it because I don’t to disappoint her if we are unable to attend.
Light Posting

I have a few teleconferences coming up this week and a whole slew of orders to knock out for customers I imagine I’ll be stepping back from posting. I’ll definitely visit my blogging buddies when I can. I should be back to posting and being online normally next week.

Question: Anyone have plans for Halloween? If so what will you be doing?

[tags]Halloween, Homeschooling[/tags]

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The Mac Diva

In an earlier post, Overcoming Obstacles: Turning I can’t Into I Can , I mentioned how I moved my ferrets website, Ferrets Haven to another website. The Mac Diva was moved also. As with with Ferrets Haven I had to add all the pictures back onto the server. I’m happy to say that that, with the exception of one post, The Mac Diva is done!

I don’t post often on The Mac Diva. I’ve written under 60 articles since it was created this past June however some of the posts have received a fair amount of traffic. When I created it I still was not sure exactly what direction I was going to take. I did have an “idea” thankfully I know the direction I want to go with this website and over the next few weeks I’ll be making some changes.

Making Money With A PR Of O

Today was the first day I added some adsense blocks on The Mac Diva. I’ll be curious to see how they do. I’m seeing a lot more people making money online many of the ones that are my blog buddies do it well. Occasionally I do read or hear people making inaccurate assumptions about people who monetize their websites. You cannot make blanket statements about people.

Anyway The Mac Diva was one of my websites that had a PR 0f 0 that did very well with affiliate marketing. I have a few other that did well also. They did a lot better than Vegan Momma and guess what they all had a PR of O. I made more using affiliates than I did with adsense or Paid posts combined, and yes I have received a paycheck from Google. I posted about that last month.

This is one of the websites that does get contacted by advertisers weekly. This website, Vegan Momma, is the other one. I have not done any paid reviews on The Mac Diva. I enjoy technology so naturally I want a place where I can write about it all the time. Not too long ago I was contacted by a developer on my Mac website. They want me to review their product.

Sunday Free Day

I’m not going to do too much work on the website today. It’s a beautiful day outside and I’m definitely not going to be spending my time on the computer. I had an exam yesterday which I aced. I received an A+. I have declared this to be a “free day”. I’m off to hang with my daughter. I hope everyone has a sparkling day! :-)

[tags]The Mac Diva, Ferrets Haven, websites, web monetization[/tags]

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I thought I would share a few of my photos here on Vegan Momma however the rest will be posted at my photography website.

The pictures were taken with my Nikon D80. The lens used was a Nikon Nikkor 70-210mm 1:4 - 5.6. The photo editing software I use is Aperture 1.5 it’s the best photo editing tool I’ve used thus far.

Datura

Many thanks to a special blogging pal that sent me a nice something to try out in the mail yesterday. This Datura is for you. I hope you don’t mind this virtual flower.

Bee

I had a curious bee following me around as I took shots of the datura after awhile he buzzed away. To get a better view of this bee click on the picture.

[tags]flowers, datura, blogging friends, bee, nature, Nikon D80, Aperture 1.5[/tags]

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A few days ago I noticed that Vegan Momma Page Rank dropped another notch. When I checked a few days ago it has a PR of two.  A few of my other blogging buddies received a hit also. Their websites are good quality websites. I still have my sponsor Vivid Seats in my sidebar. That’s not coming down. I really like Vivid Seats and am happy that they will provide my readers $5 off simply by using them as ticket brokers.

My traffic has not decreased it keeps increasing. :-)

1. I was happy to see that Thomas the Tech Evangelist website now has a PR of 5.
2. Teeni of the Vaguetarian tearoom now has a PR of 4.
3. Calamity of Calmityville now has a PR of 3. Check out her Sims Stories.
4. Pete has a fascinating website you can view his world from his GPS cameraphone. His website now has a PR of 1.

See, even though I don’t get into the PR thing I can be happy for my blog buddies. ;-)

Yesterday one of my close friends in real life notified me that all my niche websites had risen. The majority now have a PR of three. I don’t post on them as much as I do Vegan Momma but they still receive a high amount of traffic. In fact two of them outrank Vegan Momma with traffic and they were created in May. I don’t post on them often perhaps three times, if that, weekly. My niche websites focus on topics that I’m extremely passionate about. I believe it shows in my writing.

Google PR 2

I have two that now have a PR of 2. I rarely post on them. Those websites are being shelved until next year. They still receive a lot of traffic and comments on some of the articles I’ve written but I just don’t have the time right now.

Google PR 5

The biggest jump was for one niche website that has not been publicized. As with the other websites the information provided is informative. It can help people. Which is the reason I created all my niche websites. Anyway that one now ranks at 5.

I Started Creating My Niche Website in May 2007

My niche websites are fairly new. Many of them were started in May, a few were started recently. On all my websites my articles are usually long. I don’t like giving people tidbits if you are new person seeking advice on alternative health or nutrition you need a lot of information. I do my best to supply that.

One thing you won’t find on my website is me writing about headline news just to gain traffic. I have to be genuinely interested in something to write about it. I have seen some people do fairly well using this method. I don’t visit them often simply because they are not writing about what interests me. I strongly believe I can do just as well writing about issues that I’m passionate about. A few of those websites are already proving that I am correct.

My websites do receive a fair amount of traffic. On average the majority of my traffic is received from sources other than search engines. I averaged $60 monthly via adsense on Vegan Momma.

Guess what? The niche websites that I monetize I was making money at a PR of 0. I made more with them than Vegan Momma. You don’t need a high PR to make money or receive a lot of traffic. You do need to market your websites effectively. Sitting round waiting for something magical to happen is not going to work unless you are very popular already or someone popular recognizes you.

You don’t need to write paid post either. I write the occasional review but I honestly don’t want to do a lot of them. I still have to write an article to receive a payment. I don’t write reviews on those niche websites. Affiliate marketing is the main way I make money online. I’ve made more with them than with the few paid posts I have done or with Adsense.

I do believe Google has every right to operate their company the way they want to however if I do disagree with some of their policies I definitely won’t change my website just to meet their approval. Guess what even if my rank returns it still won’t change my opinion. I had the same opinion even before my rank went down.

I’m not going to say that I run my website the way I like because that is not completely true. I listen to what my readers have to say in doing so I’m able to improve my website.

[tags]Google Page Rank, Vegan Momma, Thomas - Tech Evangelist, Vaguetarian Tearoom, My GPS Cameraphone[/tags]

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My daughter tossing a ball

Todays PhotoHunt  is “Pink“.

This picture was taking last Thanksgiving when we were visiting family in Summerton, South Carolina. In this picture my daughter, Aiyana, was tossing this ball at my cousins dog, Chico. This picture was taken on Thanksgiving day. This was an easy subject you see my daughter loves pink so she has a lot of pink clothes.

[tags]Thanksgiving, Summerton, South Carolina, Vacation, photography, Photo Hunt: Pink[/tags]

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