Thank you all for all your kind comments and messages regarding my last post on depression.

I am doing better, but I believe that we are still a long ways to go to start feeling like my normal self again.

My therapist is encouraging me to partake in activities I once enjoyed, and to take up old (and perhaps some new) hobbies again. To carve out some time for myself each day, even if it’s just a few minutes, to do something that will be beneficial for my own well-being. And as we started to create a list of things I can do, I realized something:

I’ve missed blogging.

So I’m back. I can’t promise that I’ll blog every day like I used to, but I want to try. Because as I once told a good friend, even when things got so hectic and life seemed so chaotic, blogging was an activity I looked forward to because I had full control over it, and I knew that I was doing at least an okay job of it.

And to celebrate my return, I’ve decided to host a small giveaway —

One lucky winner will receive a Too Faced “The Naked Look” makeup palette!

I received this palette after trading in 500 Sephora Beauty Insider points. I always save up my points forever, waiting for something good to come along, and when I saw this palette as an available perk, I was immediately reminded of my Smashbox Perfectly Polished Lids Giveaway and decided to snatch it up for my readers.

According to the product description:

For a soft, sultry look, treat yourself to this universally flattering collection of Too Faced’s most popular makeup essentials. This five-piece set includes two luscious lip glosses, two shimmery eye shadows, and a luminous highlighter for a lit-within glow.

• Eyeshadow in Pink Cheeks (.03 oz) 
• Eyeshadow in Lap Dance (0.03 oz) 
• Lip Gloss in Pink Swan (0.04 oz) 
• Lip Gloss in Air Kiss (0.04 oz) 
• Shimmer Veil Highlighter (0.11 oz) 

This palette was created especially for Sephora and is a limited edition, so it is a must-have for makeup enthusiasts everywhere!

If you would like to see photos and swatches of each product in the palette, please visit I Know all the Words.

Now, for the giveaway…

To enter this giveaway, simply use the Rafflecopter widget below. Not sure how to use Rafflecopter? Watch this 52 second video for a tutorial on how to enter a giveaway using Rafflecopter. There are 4 methods of entry, with the first method (commenting on this blog post) being mandatory while the third method (Tweeting about the giveaway) can be used once per day:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This giveaway will end on Saturday, May 26th, 2012, at 12:01am, at which point a winner will be randomly chosen and announced here.

Please use a valid email address and/or Twitter handle so that I can contact you if you win!

Sorry, this giveaway is open only to residents of the United States.

Good luck, and thank you for entering!

Welcome to this installment of Bloggy Thursdays, where I share with my fellow bloggers tips and tutorials to maximize and better your blog. While I do not consider myself an expert, I do like to think that after 10+ years of blogging — in addition to my technical knowledge — I know more than the average blogger when it comes to making your blog more appealing to readers.

Do you have any comments, questions, or topics you’d like to see covered here? Please send me a message via my contact form. Enjoy!

Today’s Bloggy Thursdays will not feature a tip. Rather, it will answer a question…

The second most popular question I get asked about blogging is: “How much money do you make from blogging?”

Last August, I had posted my revenue from the first month of monetizing this blog. (If you are too lazy to click over, the figure was $307.24.) The sum should have gone way up since then, right?

Wrong.

Well, not entirely. The actual answer is more complicated than that. Because, in a nutshell, life happens. Page views will not always go up. Advertisers will come and go. Your life outside of blogging may make an unexpected turn and you may not have the time or resources to devote to your blog as you did before.

What good is a blog post about making money from blogging without a clichéd picture
to accompany it?

Since August, the money I have made from blogging has gone up and down. I think that if I had to state a number, I would say that I made, ON AVERAGE, $250/month.

There has also been a month when that number has gone down to $150. There was also one month when I made over $700. Yes, $700 is a lot of money (at least to me). But when I think about it, it’s way less than what I made in one week when I worked full-time…and back then, I would blog while at work!

The last person who asked me this question was genuinely curious, because she was thinking about becoming a full-time lifestyle blogger.

I relayed the above information, and added, “Don’t quit your day job.”

Disclaimer: I am fully aware that I *could* be making more money if I could devote more time and energy to this blog. But as the situation stands, I can’t. And while I know that my blog has been suffering some as of late, I continue to blog because it provides me some semblance of order, in addition to some WORK I can control, in my chaotic life. And, as with all other nuggets of wisdom (or stupidity, depending on your POV) I share about blogging, please take this with a grain of salt because I am by no means an expert.

I bet that you are now wondering what THE most popular question I get asked about blogging is…and for that, you will need to wait for a future Bloggy Thursdays.

I have been forced to take a short break from blogging due to the horrible migraines I have been experiencing in the past couple of days. I am almost certain that my migraines are hormonal, as I have never gotten one before I got pregnant but regularly suffered them through both pregnancies. And now that I am no longer pregnant, I only get them when I am PMSing.

(Apparently, hormones can play a big role in headaches and migraines. I know this because the interwebz has told me so.)

My migraines — like practically all other physical ailments — are exacerbated by fatigue and lack of sleep. And hey, guess what! I have a 4-month-old and a 17-month-old and I think that the last time I got a good night’s sleep was when I was still pregnant with Claire!

From past experience, the best way to deal with my migraines is to lie in a quiet, dark room with a cold towel over my eyes. Obviously I can’t do this in my current situation, so I just keep popping my Butalbital-APAP-Caffeine pills because they help me to at least get through the day.

I can’t remember the last time I this anxious to get my period.

P.S. — Today is the last day to enter my “My Little Geek” ABC Book Giveaway!

Welcome to this installment of Bloggy Thursdays, where I share with my fellow bloggers tips and tutorials to maximize and better your blog. While I do not consider myself an expert, I do like to think that after 10+ years of blogging — in addition to my technical knowledge — I know more than the average blogger when it comes to making your blog more appealing to readers.

Do you have any comments, questions, or topics you’d like to see covered here? Please send me a message via my contact form. Enjoy!

Today’s Bloggy Thursdays is in response to a question from Carol, who asked:

Hola, Jenny! I was wondering, what WordPress Stats plugin do you suggest?

As you can expect, there are numerous plugins available that will help you stay on top of your blog’s stats. I myself use three different methods  — two of which are WordPress plugins — to track the visitors to my site, and I use them all for different purposes.

The first is the Jetpack by WordPress.com plugin, which is the same tracking engine used by WordPress.com sites. (Formerly, the WordPress.com Stats plugin was packaged on its own, but the stats feature is now bundled with Jetpack, which includes social media options, backup and security, spelling and grammar, and more  — which were previously only available to WordPress.com users.)

The main advantage offered by Jetpack’s Site Stats is that it is seamlessly integrated within your Dashboard. I can see a short summary of stats on my Dashboard’s front page, or if I want more details, I can click on “Jetpack” -> “Site Stats” on WordPress’ left-hand menu to get a more in-depth picture of my visitors, traffic sources, incoming links, and outgoing links. As such, I like to use Site Stats for a quick overview of my visitors.

What the Jetpack Site Stats widget looks like on my WordPress Dashboard.
I see this every time I log into my site — AWESOME for a quick glance!

The second stats plugin I have installed on this blog is WassUp. The key point to this plugin is that it provides real-time stats of your visitors — the extremely detailed information it provides tells me exactly how many people are viewing the site at any given point, what type of browser they’re using, where they’re visiting from (the geo-location as well as the IP address), how they came to my blog (i.e., referrers), which page(s) they’ve visited, if they’ve left a comment…and more!

It is a very stalker-ish plugin, and is a favorite of SEO or statistics nuts.

I currently do not have a good screenshot of WassUp in action (reason explained below)
so here is a great one, with labels, from WebCunningham.

The downsite to WassUp is that it obviously takes up a lot of resources and has the potential to slow down your site. For this reason, I have it deactivated at most times — I only tend to activate it when I am getting particularly a large number of hits and I want to immediately find out the source of the referral, if I am receiving an usual amount of spam comments, or I just want to find out more about a visitor in general.

The third resource I use to monitor my blog stats is probably the most widely-used: Google Analytics. I actually have my Analytics account set up so that I receive a daily email with the previous day’s stats (find out how here), but I do not pay too much attention to it because I get a quick and easy overview of my stats from Jetpack’s Site Stats every time I log into my blog’s Dashboard.

So why do I even keep an Analytics account? It is because it is so widely used and trusted — it is an easy and free citation method. Plus, if any potential sponsor asks for proof of my stats, I can easily forward them my latest Analytics report!

(If you prefer to have Google Analytics as your primary method of tracking your site stats, I recommend the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin.)

#  #  #

I hope that helped, Carol! If you, or anyone else has any questions, please feel free to leave a comment!

And if any bloggers have additional questions about blogging, or a suggestion for Bloggy Thursdays, please shoot me a message!

Welcome to this installment of Bloggy Thursdays, where I share with my fellow bloggers tips and tutorials to maximize and better your blog. While I do not consider myself an expert, I do like to think that after 10+ years of blogging — in addition to my technical knowledge — I know more than the average blogger when it comes to making your blog more appealing to readers.

Do you have any comments, questions, or topics you’d like to see covered here? Please send me a message via my contact form. Enjoy!

I am always amazed whenever a fellow blogger confesses to not using Google Alerts, because it’s a powerful tool that can help take blogging to the next level! I am a firm believer that one of the first things any blogger should do is to set up a Google Alert for their internet moniker.

What are Google Alerts? According to its website, Google Alerts are “email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries.” In other words, you can be alerted whenever someone publishes on a Google-trawled website — which is practically every publicly viewable web space! — whatever your set-up alert may be.

(image source)

As stated above, the first and foremost reason for using Google Alerts should be to see what the web is saying about you. While it is true that you can use trackbacks and pingbacks to see who is linking to your blog, there also exist services such as Shorl that allow you to link to a site anonymously. In cases such as these, Google Alerts will ensure that you will still be notified, even if there was never an active link in the first place!

I have alerts set up for different variations of my blog name, such as “Geek in Heels” and “geekinheels.” I also have alerts set up for my legal name so that I can make sure whatever is out there about me is accurate.

What can you do with this information? Even if what netizens are saying about you is not so nice, you can still use it as feedback to better your blog. Sometimes I’ll even join in on the conversation to potentially attract new readers. And on a more personal note, I will only respond to negative commentary if what they are saying about me is outright false. (For example, “Jenny is a bitch” is fine because it is an opinion, whereas “Jenny is scared of the dark” may prompt me to jump in and set the record straight.) 

Some other ways you can use Google Alerts are:

1. Keep up with your niche (remember to use very specific search queries when doing this)
2. Find scrapers who are stealing your content
3. Discover new blogs and social networks

Lastly — and this may sound a bit stalker-ish — you can also set up alerts to keep tabs on your competition!

Or, if you’re just a stalker, you can set up a Google Alert to keep track of your target too. Whatever floats your boat.