Makiko Itoh : Not a nameless cat.

My online life has evolved quite a bit, but I started out on the interweb blogging- and writing-wise being primarily a techie type, writing about web design, JavaScript and stuff of that nature. I don't do that much any more for various reasons, and I don't follow those types of sites much any more either except for a handful. But I do get my information about what is supposed to be new, hot and awesome from the few of those techie-person blogs that I do follow. That's how I found out about things like del.icio.us, flickr, Twitter, Vox, Myspace (way back when), Facebook, Joost, and so on and on and on. Of those I only still regularly use the first two (where I secured the username maki, as I like to do on any new site if possible). None of those cool hip techie type blogs has ever really talked much about StumbleUpon, and I don't know why. Because, StumbleUpon is awesome. It is the best way to surf the interweb waves, through thousands of sites that have been pre-selected for you (aka Stumbled Upon) by other people, and filtered according to your interests.

Back in early November, I wrote about using my food blog, Just Hungry, as a lab or experimental platform for operating a monetized, sort-of-commercial, blog. Since then I have put some more effort into deriving an income from Just Hungry. Here are some of my observations and such.

There are a zillion blogs out there, and it may seem like your own, little independent blog will just get lost. So, the allure of writing for another site, perhaps for someone else perhaps more established than you, may seem to be the best way to go. It isn't. Unless they are paying you well for your work, don't, I repeat don't, write for someone else's site/blog. If you want to maintain your own voice, and have full control over your own content, create your own. The worst thing any blogger can do is to go write for another site, for no/minimal pay, and with no clear agreement over who controls the blog.

If you have visited the [old pages](http://www.makikoitoh.com/previousversion.html) of this site following links, even links within the site, you would have noticed a ton of 404 (Page not found) errors. As I've said [previously](http://www.makikoitoh.com/journal/woohoo_new_site_finally), I did not switch over all the old pages to the new Drupal installation, so this has nothing to do with Drupal. This is due to one really annoying 'feature' of Movable Type - URLs are not kept in the database. (Since it's not in the database, it doesn't make it to the text backup file either. Incidentally this also applies to Typepad.)

This is part one of a possible series of posts where I ruminate on food blogs, mine in particular, and the food blogging world in general.

This here is a personal blog, and as such I never intend to have Adsense ads or similar on it. (I do use Amazon associate links to link to books and media.) My food blog, I was just really very hungry (or simply Just Hungry) on the other hand is monetized in several ways. It has Amazon associate links, an Amazon astore, Google Adsense ads, affiliate ads, and so on.

It's not that the objective of the site is to make money (it's more of a therapeutic thing, to get the obsession I have with food out of my system), but I monetize it in large part because I'm very interested in seeing how the various monetization schemes work, especially when it comes to blogs. And, I think a blog with a non-tech focus is the best place to see what's going on.

The classic song by Carly Simon, "You're so vain", has this chorus:

You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you?

It often comes to mind when I am trying to write things. I find that a surprising number of people in my life read my online writing, including clients. Once before, I ran into some trouble with one when I wrote something that the client took to be a dig at them (I won't specify which post that was). I assured them that it wasn't, but the whole incident did make me a bit wary about just writing what was on my mind without a lot of thought about it.

(A post that's been sitting around here for a week due to site tinkering...) I have been using [Vox](http://www.vox.com) for some time now. It's a great low-pressure casual blogging platform. It's a lot like Live Journal, but much prettier, and with different features. It makes me wonder what SixApart intends to do with LiveJournal, but I'm sure a lot more qualified pundits can speculate in a more informed way about this.

After long weeks of creating and discarding several designs (mainly at the scribble stage), getting distracted with other things, and fiddling around with various blogging systems and CMSes and so on, the site is reborn.