MERELY MY OPINION IN 2008

MERELY MY OPINION or MMO is the main personal blog where I concentrated all my efforts and other creative juices to present to the World Wide Web myself and my own world. I started this thing in the last quarter of 2007 and proudly dished off TEN original posts in such a short time. Google Adsense provided me the option of earning thru clicks from their ads giving me the impetus to create more blog posts for 2008.

Blitzing past to the end of 2008, in summary, I churned out FORTY articles and pat myself on the head for a job well done! Wow, what a year. I have never expected to give out a 40 considering that I have no owned PC, a limited access to the Internet and I am not a writer myself. I just improvised and make use of my ability to adapt easily to a changing environment such as those found in cyberspace technology.

Being a curious voyager in the net I took notice of a myriad of widgets and link gadgets that would help optimize my presence in the Web and I examined these and retained what I liked and placed them all over my web page. I placed Site Meter and Feedjit to monitor how many visitors came to see my site and where did they came from. As of this writing, I have 3,826 visitors at Site Meter since this was activated in November '07 and there were 2,279 Filipinos, 700 Americans, 62 Canadians, 51 Britons and 565 other nationalities in Feedjit since this functioned in December '07.

Catching some hints from SEO experts, I registered MMO with MyBlogLog, Technorati, Blog Catalog. Qassia, Philippine Top Sites, TopBlogs, Open ID, Entrecard and so on and monitored my traffic rankings with PageRank, Exact Rank and Alexa Rank. I could not understand how PageRank functioned for it still showed a zero since I placed it there last March and traffic volume have tremendously increased since then as against Alexa which showed tremendous accuracy at 1,442,798 up from 17,000,000 in September.

Five of the most read articles in MMO last year were those of my commentary on the Multicab, my story about Manwel Roble, my criticism of a fraternity war, my diagnosis about VIP protection and my entry about poverty. The most commented post was the Manwel Roble story with ten. Nineteen of these stories or 47.5% are related to the outdoors and the rest were a ragtag consortium of commentaries, poems, open source, photoblogging, personal reflections and experiences and a couple of do nothings.

Just below the main page is my Opinion Lounge which is reserved for “tired travelers”. Mingle and add your face with the profiles of recent visitors in MyBlogLog and watch an assortment of feed videos ranging from U2 and David Cook to a Navy SEAL documentary or just watch segments of an NBA game. It these are too much for you, pull a chair and read an array of news feeds, local and foreign, if not, join me in solving an age-old mystery courtesy of National Geographic.

On my sidebar is a dialog box and we could exchange conversations through there or just simply leave a comment that you passed by MMO. Adjacent to it is my blog roll classified according to their kind: outdoors & travel, technology & Internet, inspiration, Cebu heritage & culture, community, opinion, lifestyle and image photography. Above those, I placed my other hiding places – my other blogs. For good regularity and updates you can subscribe MMO thru Feedburner or just follow me. As of last count, I have already gained ten loyal followers!

My header is an assortment of images linked together to showcase my roots, my travels and the best of Cebu. Other notable link buttons conspicuously placed in my web page are those of OpenOffice, Opera, Greenpeace, Ecology Fund, World Wildlife Fund and Cebu Bloggers Society. Also, I availed of Adsense's change of rules by accommodating third-party advertisers like Share-A-Sale and Nuffnang which promises to give 10%-30% commissions for sale of items that passes through MMO.

In all, my front page is about thirteen letter-sized papers in length and is protected by Copyscape. It is powered by Blogger and is subject to change in appearance when I feel it is most needed. I am proud of my work and I am not ashamed to spam my blog to any website, but I follow Internet ethics, so I do not. I just place MMO as a signature or exchange links with other blog owners to help increase readership traffic. In the meantime, please, visit me anytime you like and enjoy my stories...

...and don't forget to click on my ads! God bless you in 2009!!!

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