New blog name, custom domain, and more

Hello, everyone! After writing some scheduled posts, it's about time that I'll tell you what's new on my blog since I didn't want to leave anyone hanging to figure out everything. Haha!

So yes, here it goes.

These are the things I was up to from Tuesday to today regarding the (minor) rebranding of my blog.

03/21/17 (Tuesday) - I have been thinking of a new name for my blog. I thought of different things that I can incorporate into the name, and it took me almost a whole day to finally come up with the name I have now. I tried to include real estate terms, synonyms of "expression", words that relate to adventure, fancy words, my name in different languages, what my blog should be about, and finally, the words that describe me.

Since I have read that making my URL the same as the blog name optimizes the blog for search engines, I decided to do just that.

My initial blog names were:

The Aspiring Idealist, theaspiringidealist.com

Drive to Ambition, drivetoambition.com

The Idealistic Millennial, theidealisticmillennial.com

The Aspiring Idealist was supposed to be my final blog name, but then I thought it was a bit too long, and it was a bit off to describe myself as an idealist because it was too strong of a word for me as a person, so I opted for another word for it, which led me to aspirant. Then, since I aim to use this blog to impart the knowledge that I have, I decided to use savvy.

The Savvy Aspirant is the blog name that I will be using until I find a better one, but I did register this one for 3 years at GoDaddy.com. You can check out my updated ABOUT page to know more about my blog's behind the scenes.

After deciding on a new name, I customized my blog to relate with it.

03/22/17 (Yesterday, Wednesday) - After many attempts using my BPI Amore Prepaid Visa, I have finally bought my custom domain. I had the opportunity yesterday to go to a BPI branch, so I asked help to fix everything. I was finally able to enroll my prepaid card and transfer some of my ATM's funds to it since I thought that the insufficient funds may be the reason why GoDaddy rejected my card payment. It turns out it was, but wait, there's more.

After adding some funds to my BPI Amore Prepaid Visa, GoDaddy still rejected my card payment. What's worse was that the internet was being too slow at the BPI branch, so I opted to go somewhere else to give my attempts with ease. Since I am already able to track my prepaid card online, I was finally able to link it to my Paypal. At the time when the internet connection was slow, I found it time-consuming to switch my mode of payment to Paypal because the pop up doesn't show after many attempts, but thankfully, when I was able to secure a reliable connection, it finally came up, and the payment worked! It was one of the happiest moments of my life since after almost 8 years in the blogging world, I was finally able to register a custom domain of my own.

Well, in my case, it turned out that BPI Amore Prepaid Visa wasn't a direct compatible mode of payment for GoDaddy, so indeed, it was a good move to link debit/credit cards to Paypal. It was at that time that I began to appreciate the usefulness of Paypal, and I'll be sure to always use this mode payment from now on to buy stuff online. Of course, I have heard its wonders, but it was not until I have experienced it that I began to appreciate it. But my Paypal couldn't have done it without the debit card though, so I'd still give credit to BPI Amore Prepaid Visa.

At the time I registered my domain name at GoDaddy and mapped it on my blog, it was timely that there was an offer from Upwork which requires someone to have a blog that accepts sponsored posts. I decided to give it a go and got interviewed, and that's where I discovered one thing, which is the importance of Domain Privacy.

Apparently, the client used a website called WhoIs to verify my blog, and it showed when my domain was registered and when it expires. To my horror, when I checked it for myself, it showed my personal information. Thankfully, I still have funds to pay for the Domain Privacy, so I promptly added the feature to my custom domain. It was expensive, but I knew it was worth it. At least it's for 3 years. Initially, I thought that I won't need the feature because I was just going to map the domain to my Blogger blog, but it turns out that there are invasive websites that give private information away. Well, I guess I thought it was expensive because I don't have a continuous stream of income yet, but I'll get through this. I knew that blogging is a good investment anyway, so why not give it a go? Who knows, this may be my journey to generating passive income while I cannot afford a real estate property yet.

Moving on, my original errand on that day was to buy a reviewer for an admission's test I will be taking, but timing has been playing tricks on me because the one that will conduct the test just uploaded a practice test booklet for download, but at least it doesn't have some explanation, unlike the one I bought. The questions were also similar with the one I bought, as well as the topics, so PHP 288 wasn't so bad.

As much as I want to give away my future plans, I decided not to so that they won't be jinxed. That's why I will be cryptic about them, and I'll just blog about them when it already happens. As far as I know, only my friends, former classmates, and teachers, as well as those who have read my old blog posts (if ever I wrote about it), knew about these plans, which are subject to change or at least be delayed, but I'll let Jesus take the wheel. Be sure to look forward to the 2nd week of May, because that's when you'll know the verdict.

Well, anyhow, I forgot to take pictures of what I discovered at the mall. Huhu. I actually saw a neck pillow that only costs PHP 99, which is already a really good deal for me since most other neck pillows cost around PHP 200 to 400. This will be useful for me when I feel drowsy in the most unlikely places (hello, libraries and malls), as well as when I get to travel soon in God's time (when my pocket agrees as well). I really hope I get to have it soon.

Here's also an inspirational paraphernalia I bought from the mall, and I could really use this one to constantly attract good vibes when I'm starting to feel down.

03/23/17 (Today, Thursday) - Being known as a resourceful person during my schooling days, it dawned on me the idea of putting my resources on this blog for you to download. I will be adding a section for that soon when I'm done setting it up. I hope those resources will be of help to you. This will be paid, but trust me, I'll make your payment worth it.

I am going to tweak my blog from time to time, and I hope that my customization settings will go well.

I wasn't able to write this blog post yesterday because I was thinking of ways to make this blog useful and money-worthy now that I have set up a bit of SEO, and I hope as well that I will be successful with this attempt.

So I guess that's it. If you can suggest anything, please feel free to comment.

Thank you, and till here. :*