Happy 1st Birthday, random thoughts!

my random thoughts is one year old today!

How time flies! I am so happy today!  And I am so pleased that my blog, my random thoughts made it to one year. Yeah, I made it! And I owe it to all of you my dear fellow bloggers and readers. THANK YOU!!!

A year of blogging…I think that a better way to celebrate this red-letter day is to muse over and weigh up my experience in  my one year blogging.


This is how it all started... 
I graduated from college last year and the next stride is to find a job. I need a job. I need to earn.

I explored the internet to find a job and searched ways to earn. I read a lot of articles about earning online. I bump into some blogs and bloggers were disclosing that they are earning from their blogs. Oh, I envy those bloggers! I was so interested into this blogging thing. My main objective in that juncture is to earn from blogging. Yes, that was the reason why I made this blog – to make money, huge money in fact ha, ha!

And last June 4, 2011 this blog was conceived. Thanks to Blogger.com's push-button publishing, it was so effortless to create a blog.

But that was not easy...
Composing my first blog post took me ages...ha, ha! But that was a year ago.

But in a serious note, blogging is not easy.
It is not easy because it takes time. It takes time to think, write, illustrate, proof, and publish a post.  It takes time other bloggers/readers noticed my blog. It takes time other bloggers/readers read my posts and comment on my posts. It takes time to build traffic. Blogging is hard work. Blogging is perseverance.

In the course of  my blogging...I began to reckon what really is my objective in this blog, many months had  passed before I became mindful that my blog - my random thoughts should be the expression of me, its colors should be me. What do I mean by that? I should write topics that I know,  subjects that I am confident of writing, and ultimately posts that can give me satisfaction.

And because I am an activist, I've wrote my views on what is happening in the Philippine society and pick apart the anti-people policies, programs and projects of the government. I wrote posts that are bias to the oppressed classes in this semi-colonial and semi-feudal Philippine society – the workers and the peasants.  And through my blog I aspire that I can impart in buzzing up for meaningful change in the Philippine society. 

So, what I have accomplished so far...

1. In my first months of blogging I am resolved that I can really earn money from blogging. My PayPal got funds of $21 from PostNJoy (paid posting), $1. 15 from CMF Ads (placing ads), $12. 65 from Tone a Day (rating words and phrases), $26.86 from Adgitize (publishing and placing ads) and $7.68 refund from Aditize when it closed last December. Oh, I forgot the $5 from Paula/BC Bloggers (putting a link in one of my post). And when finally I got a job last September I stopped writing paid post and quit Tone a Day.

2. I joined quite a lot of online contests and giveaways and luckily won one time, it was a teddy bear and a necklace from Aliz’ giveaway!

3. I published 240 posts, it seem like that half of 240 are political posts. I presented my posts tackling the issues confronting the Filipino people, especially the workers and the peasants  – poverty, hunger, landlessness, unemployment, corruption, etc. with analysis from what I understand and believe, as well as viewpoint that emanates from my organization or the progressive group's stand.

4. I got under 300 page views a day and got an average of 3-4 comments on each post. Reading a new comment each day really made my day whether it is positive or negative reaction. I understand that people have diverse opinion, people have different political views and I respect that.  In line of this, the ongoing comment exchange of BC Bloggers really overwhelmed me - I got 65 comments on North Korea and 59 comments on Waste of Time! Wow! But Ms. Paula of BC Bloggers pointed out that “having 50 comments in a single blog post looks so unnatural”. But I like that... a deluge of comments ha, ha....having a broad and deviating opinions in that two posts I can look into the level of political awareness of my readers - those who are politically backward and progressive ones.

5. And here is the chart of my Top 10 Post and page views of each post (from my Blogger dashboard).. 

 6. Here is the page views on my Pages (from my Blogger dashboard).

7. This is the pie chart of my traffic sources (from my Google Analytics dashboard).

a. The Blue color consist of 35.90%  Search Traffic - came from Google, Yahoo and Bing.
b. The Green color is 51.13% Referral Traffic - came from Adgitize, Entrecard, Facebook and TopBlogs.
c. The Red color is 12.82% Direct Traffic, came from friends that bookmarked my blog and  of course BC Bloggers.

7. In relation to Google Page Rank (PR), I got a PR1 rank after 2 months of blogging (that was last August), got PR2 after 8 months (that was last February) and unfortunately slide to PR1 last April. Losing a PR was so frustrating. I am frustrated because having a great PR status benefits more traffic. The decrease of PR was my entire fault because after Adgitize closed its doors last December, I am so lazy to blog -  I had fewer and irregular posts, and a reduced amount of blog hopping. When I noticed that my Alexa rank was increasing in number and got a decreased PR last April I was so worried ha, ha! I joined Entrecard instantaneously and its good thing that BC Bloggers has activity now.

Well, I learned a lesson here...

And to overcome my mistake, I must ditch laziness! And I must include blogging in my routine. This should be a habit. I realized that if I really want to blog,  I should compel my self in this endeavor. It means I have to give time to it. I have to be consistent.

On the whole, my blogging experience was wonderful, I enjoyed it and sharing my political views with you - my dear fellow bloggers and readers - is incredibly fulfilling. I love blogging!