On Friday night, May 30th, I performed with my company Samba Services band at Retro Music Hall in Prague.

I didn’t expect the warm welcome and cheer of the crowd, many of which were probably our colleagues.

[Retro]

Samba Services “Afoxe” leaded by Flavinha Torga


Samba Services “Samba” leaded by Flavinha Torga

Samba Services “Olodum” leaded by Flavinha Torga

By Cindy D. | Published 03/14/07 | Make Money from Blogging | #1

1. 5 Monetizing Methods
2. Brief Explanation

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5 Monetizing Methods
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Okay from what I’ve learned, currently there are 5 ways to make money from blogging.

1. Direct advertisers
2. Get a blogging job
3. Sell products through affiliate links
4. Place contextual ads on your blog (Google Adsense)
5. Get paid by reviewing products or websites.

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Brief Explanation
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#1 Direct advertisers - Advertisers pay you to place their ads on your blog.

#2 Blogging job - You get a job as a regular
blogger. Blogging job pays a bit low and requires a lot of commitment.
However, it’s a different story if you write for a popular blog. I
heard that political bloggers can earn a lot of money because they are
required to update news and write story almost hourly.

#3 Affiliates - Affiliate means to direct your blog’s traffic to online merchants and help them selling their products. For example, I sell tea pots online (haha b/c you are English). So I set up an affiliate program which you join. As a tea lover/drinker, you talk about tea and tea products, the joy of drinking and etc. And somewhere in those posts, you mention tea pots, so you place either my site’s banners or links to my products. If I sell products to visitors coming from your blog, I will give you a commission, either a percentage of the sales or a fixed price.

#4 Google Adsense - You’ve probably seen Google’s
ads every where on the net. If you don’t, let do this: google
something, let say “blog.” Now, do you see a vertical bar on the right
side? These are Google’s ads which are shown based on thecontent of
your search. Advertisers pay Google money for every single “click” on
these ads and every “impression” (ads appear on a site or search
result). This is Google’s core business; they make a lot lot lot of
money. Google has this program called Google Adsense. Once you join
this program and display them on your blog/site (s) along with your
content. If somebody clicks on these ads, you make money. The entry
requirement for GA program is rather low. If you have a site or a blog,
you can join. But beware that a click is only worth a few cents. (The
clicks will have more value if you have a specific and targeted blog.)
However, unless you get a lot of traffic–thousands of visitors per day,
you can not make very much money with GA. You probably make about two or three dollars or less per month.

#5 Review websites and blogs - You get paid for reviewing website and products. For beginners, this might be the best choice.

Google has dropped my Bosnia site’s page rank to 0. Zip! Understand zero! Because I have a couple of sold text links on my site. Geez! Am I supposed to spend countless hours researching for information, writing and editing my posts for nothing? Eh when I am rich, I will provide information for free.

Someone has to stop Google. Microsoft and Yahoo better catch up fast in the search engine competition, otherwise Google will monopolize the Internet just like Microsoft used to monopolize the computer industry way back.

Read Daren’s post about Google’s latest crusade on page rank.

I am having a major writer’s block and not sure what to do about it. Having returned from two interesting trips to Venice and The Netherlands, and yet I found no inspiration and idea whatsoever to etch out any meaningful story or simple journal.

Perhaps, I am a little burnt out after forcing myself to produce only topics regarding Sarajevo, Bosnia, Prague and the Czech Republic. After awhile, things can get a little bit tedious. Maybe I should update this personal blog more, writing for just myself and forgetting about writing for others.

After a few months of practice on how to make noises on Brazilian instruments: the sudo, tamborines, shakers etc. my colleagues and I finally performed at our company’s Salsa party at Vysehrad Congress Center. I play the shaker.

My ears are keen on melody but not rhythms, and I don’t feel so much for rhythms. I’m doing it to develop my musical ability and to balance my brain from my daily routine at work: procedures and technical details. If you care about left- brain and right-brain, you will know what I’m talking about.

After the shaker, I plan on playing other instruments. Let see!

I’m having trouble uploading .avi file to youtube, thus you have to wait to see the video of our performance.

Chill out before the performance

Our 15 min of fame

I didn’t buy any new sporting outfit to intimidate my opponents; I didn’t need to anyway as I won the women tournament wearing my old workout clothing and the same old, ridiculously long pants which I shortened neatly.

There weren’t many female participants anyway and the games were easy, but I was happy to win something. The prize was a dinner voucher for two at Hiton Hotel’s restaurant. Cool isn’t it?

Mind Map’s mastermind, Tony Buzan, developed the concept of Mind Mapping out of frustration for the ineffective traditional note-taking which was difficult create and review. Jotting down speaker’s words line by line or even summarizing keywords are done linearly and chronologically, meaning that notes relating to the speaker’s point X somewhere on page numbered Y can be on another page numbered Z. At the end of the lecture, we might not even remember the connection among related ideas. I have years of collection of useless college notes to backup this claim.
With Mind Mapping, a big-picture snapshot of your thinking process, your brainstorming session or your summary of a topic is laid out on one single piece of paper. Key points and important ideas are recorded in a way that show their ordered and connection to one another. The seen diagram is a summary of Michael Faraday.

I have applied this Mind Mapping technique to brainstorm my travel, to prioritize tasks for flat moving and to learn the grammar of a foreign language in addition to taking notes of horribly boring technical and procedural presentations at work. My work productivity increases as rehashing my knowledge and looking up forgotten points take only minutes.

I currently use are Concept Draw Mindmap, Mindjet Map Manager and free-version web-app MindMeister.

/>> See more samples of mind-map diagrams and view a list of mind-mapping software.

Powered by ScribeFire.

It takes only sports-specific clothing and confident body language to cause an opponent’s resolve to waver, according to a study in the journal Psychology of Sports and Exercise.

Three weeks ago, I tried out Karate at a friend’s club. Having no uniform, I wore a T-shirt and a horribly long and loose pair of sweat pants. I could not kick nor move properly because the damn pants kept getting on my feet no matter how tightly I tried to fold it above my heel. I felt so embarrased in this piece of clothing that I was not entirely focused on practicing the move, instead I let myself wander to “Don’t look at my feet…Where should I go and buy nice sport clothing?” Fortunately, this was only a casual practice. It would have been a disaster if I had to spar with someone while thinking about the next sporting shop at Wencelas Square.

It’s true that if we suck at our games, an impressive Wilson and Nike styled clothing closet will not save us from embarrassing defeats. However, if we and our opponents are on the same level, maybe a professinonal brand sportswear will boost our confidence, and this is all we need to win.

My squash tournament is coming in two weeks. Let see if a pro sportswear is going to save me.

[Link]

Successful Outcome = Perseverance + Passion + Creativity + Talent + Luck

[Link]

My best friend from high school was a girl named San from Burma. Then I had a crush on a very cute Burmese guy–let call him Y. who later became my boyfriend. I didn’t know much about their country and little did I care. Unlike San who was a legal immigrant, Y. came to the US as an international student. He graduated and went to college for one year before he quited to work full time at a video store which he later bought. He said that due to the recent political instability in his country (this is the late 1990s), his father could not operate his businesses anymore. The father had to send Y. all the money and asked if can start a business and support the family.

Political problem. This was the only thing I knew about Burma.

Because Y. did not go to school since his father could no longer send him money, he was not eligible for the student Visa and faced the possibility of having to leave USA. He asked me to come to Rangoon. I never said anything but it was not an option for me at the time. Though not a teenager anymore, I knew nothing about the world, scared of going to strange places and living among strange people. Now I wished I said yes.

If you like movie, check out “Beyond Rangoon.” It’s about an American tourist got trap in the fights between the students and the government during her vacation in Burma. Many years later, it was unfortunate that how little thing changed.