I’m back here and logged on to what CG calls China’s intranet. Also known as the GFC, I cannot access blogspot, wordpress, wikipedia, etc.

One way to access blogspot is by using pkblogs.com, or any anonymous proxy servers.

But if you’re using Firefox, which you should be instead of the annoying IE, you can use a script to do a quick fix and be able to access blogspot, wordpress, wikipedia, and livejournal.

Check it out here: How To Spot A Blogspot Blog (A Quick Fix)

Flickr images are also blocked. See here to gain access (limited to Firefox).

Gosh I am such a geek. I now officially launch my Photos page. *cuts ribbon*

Maybe my pictures from now on will be there (linked to my Flickr account) instead of Squareface’s Shots.

I spent a fair amount of time the whole of yesterday trying to revive my blog. For half a day, my categories were out of place at the top of the blog. For another half of the day, my blog was stuck in the time before I returned from my Rockies trip (before 8 Oct 2007).

I’m glad everything is fine and working now. *phew*

And I’ve managed to upgrade to Wordpress 2.3 manually.

Suddenly I feel I’m quite a techie. haha.

Hey how do you like this new look? A little cramped isn’t it? The sidebar and the posts are way too close together due to the limited width. As it is, finding a suitable template is hard. How will I actually revamp the whole site (I actually have the slightest desire to)? I prefer plain white templates. I guess I’m really boring this way.

It’s nearly a year since I started this site that was supposed to be more of a website than a blog but I guess the decadence was inevitable.

I’m not sure whether I want to renew my subscription with my current web host (based in Singapore) or switch to one of the many other better-value-for-money hosts (based in the US). I will have to do my research and make the decision before next month.

webhosting top10 provides a list of best hosting deals.

This is a sponsored post.

Hi all, I’ve removed my Chinese blog (were you even aware of its existence? Haha), Squareface’s Yellowspace, for no good reason, and I’ve updated my Squareface’s Shots site!

*Do refresh your page if the images appear corrupted, or if the music doesn’t load properly at Squareface’s Shots site.

I toyed with this idea once, when I managed to sell items on Yahoo auctions but wanted a more personalized portal. However, because the items did not belong to a niche, I scraped the not-potentially-lucrative thought.

A reliable shopping cart software is mandatory for your smooth business dealings. An ecommerce software such as Adshop Commerce may be what you’re looking for when it comes to ease of use and is aesthetic. No installation is required for this innovative and powerful online business solution. You can design your online store anyway you like and even add your own custom pages. It pledges flexibility and is painless to use, even for the inexperienced.

You can sign up for a free 10-day trial (no credit card information required), which gives you a taste of how a starter plan ($69/month) will be like, with 50MB worth of web space, a 5GB/month bandwidth, and a maximum of 500 products.

After sales support is very strong, promising to answer your questions via live chat, and even on the phone. Plenty of multimedia tutorials to aid your set-up too.

This is a sponsored post. 

Making money writing reviews is becoming dated, and unless you can afford the time to log on to PPP religiously to find a suitable opportunity to post, the initial high of grabbing opportunities will soon wear off. The amount offered for the posts may start to seem miserly and opportunity topics sometimes just cannot be weaved into the genre of your blog.

Setting up your blog with PayPerPost Direct (PayPerPost’s new feature) facilitates advertisers to contact you directly to write a review for them, and the price is your call. Say someone comes across your blog and likes your writing style or the genre of your blog suits their interests, all they have to do is click on the PPP Direct widget on your site and negotiation starts there. I know I will feel flattered should an advertiser actually approach me to write for them, rather than my fishing around in the opportunities marketplace, almost always choosing a good opportunity one second later than others. More time shall be granted to churn out the review too. Right now, it feels like writing PPP posts is training for my exams since reviews are timed and I am pushed to come up with the review within an hour or else the opportunity will slip away. One hour may sound long to spin a review less than 300 words, but be aware of reading time necessary to understand the advertised and planning time needed before presenting it. Unless you wanna cheat your way by crapping. If so, 10 minutes will do the trick.

Competition is stiff in the escrow-like service industry, but PPP stands out from other sites like ReviewMe, SponsoredReviews, Blogitive, Blogvertise, CREAMaid considering its markup rate is the lowest. ReviewMe charges 50-100% markup and keep up to half of your deserved money. Moreover, ReviewMe has comparatively stricter critera to qualify as their bloggers. PPP, by way of contrast, is a window of opportunities. With PPP Direct now, an even larger window.

This concept of advertisers approaching you directly for a niche review is not a new one for SponsoredReviews, but they take away a considerable amount of your fair share — leaving you only 65% of what the advertiser actually pays, as compared to PPP’s 90%, whereby 5% goes to transaction fees. One winning point for SponsoredReviews is that you will receive your payment 14 days after submitting your review, in contrast to PPP’s 30 days. However, the steps needed before successfully getting paid is not as straightforward as PPP. At SponsoredReviews, you have to bid for an opportunity first, wait for the advertiser to approve your bid (which can take as long as they want), before working on the review.

Nothing beats getting duly paid for your laborious work on blog ads.

I’ve earned myself almost 60USD for the month of April via writing short reviews on various things with payperpost. 60USD! It’s ka-chinging in my bank account according to the 30-day probation period, so now I have 50USD resting in its new home in my Singapore bank account, and by the end of this month there’ll be almost 60USD in it. If I work at these advertisements, while still blogging religiously about the nitty-gritty in my life, and somehow balance my school work and entertaining guests concurrently, I should be able to pay off my site, and even afford a designer! I’ve approached my talented cousin from the States who has kindly taken a look at this site and expressed potential. I just hope I’ll be able to afford him, heh.

In case you haven’t noticed, my blog is featured on Blog About Your Blog as the Blog of the Week! All I did was leave a comment that Matt had the date wrong on his Comment Friday post, and I get free advertisement for my blog! Advertisement (albeit just for a week) which would have cost me $25 (USD) for a month or $46 to be reviewed by Blog About Your Blog! My site has been having a lot of hits after the feature, and here’s to many more to come!

If you’re a first-time visitor referred here by Blog About Your Blog, do leave me a short review alright? Be it constructive criticism or a rave one, it’s appreciated all the same! Thanks in advance!

So, leaving comments on others’ blogs really does help market your blog.