Life Updates: 5.19.17

Hello, everyone! It's been 21 days since I posted my latest blog post, and if you do care about what I've been up to lately that caused me to neglect my obligation to post regularly, you might be wondering about it right now.

So for the benefit of my readers, or just about anyone interested in my life and my blog updates in terms of posting and customization, here are the things I was up to these past weeks.

Yes, it's been 3 weeks since I posted a blog update here, and I would like to apologize.

I'm sorry that whenever you visit my blog, you still see that same old post I posted 21 days ago. It's just that after doing some tasks, my mind feels too tired to even compose a blog post that won't seem like something made hastily.

I would also like to apologize to some visitors that at the times you visit, there might be some theme glitches that you may encounter while browsing through my blog, and that's because I have been updating my blog's look every now and then. My perfectionism just struck me during those times, but actually, there is really more to that.

Well, these past weeks, I have been finding ways on how to make my blog better for my readers. I have been observing other blogs that I discovered in a Facebook group that I joined for bloggers like me which you might want to join as well. I saw how most of them have Google Adsense, email marketing, a Facebook page for readers to like or browse through, feeds for Instagram and Pinterest, and most importantly, a responsive theme that fits perfectly for any screen size.

My attempts of trying to update my look according to the observations I got from other blogs gave me a headache, but even though that's the case, I enjoyed the process. I discovered some new things while I was customizing my blog through visiting other blogs and reading tutorials. I saw how some customizations seemed almost impossible for me to execute given my lack of web development skills since I didn't have a formal education relating to that, but I got through some of it.

For Google Adsense, since for some reason, Google doesn't let me put up my own ads from the account I have, I instead took the opportunity of collaborating with someone from StocksPH.com for profit sharing with our Adsense earnings. We have a 70-30 sharing, 70% for me and 30% for him, which is a good deal, but I hope that soon enough, I can monopolize my earnings.

Well, even though my primary goal in this blog is to express my personal views and experiences, I decided to put some advertisements on it because I honestly don't have any funds as of the moment. I am not that blessed in the real estate industry, at least for now, so I gave this one a try, but I still aim to give my real estate practice another shot once I gain back enough motivation. I just hope I can get over this life crisis.

For email marketing, I decided to use MailChimp as my platform. Signing up for it and setting up my form wasn't really a problem though, but the customization is the problem for me because I have this ideal look that I want to achieve, but I'm glad I have put some of my web development knowledge into good use. So yes, I hope you could sign up for my newsletter below if you're interested in getting updates from this blog. I only have one subscriber so far, which is myself. Haha!  But one thing's for sure, if I reach a certain number of subscribers, I will definitely give them a freebie or a raffle draw to join.

If you subscribed through my Follow by Email, that would still be fine. I may import subscribers from there if the number is already substantial. Honestly, I didn't have any subscribers through email yet because my followers used Blogger's Follow Widget to follow me before and it's not possible to transfer them to my FeedBurner since I don't know their emails. If only I could keep my Follow Widget though, but it doesn't seem on trend these days, though I'm thinking of bringing it back again. So anyway, again, if you're interested, please do subscribe. I would highly appreciate it to make my blog grow once again.

For my Facebook page, I originally did not plan to have mine because I thought it was too late for me to do so, but then, since a lot of bloggers have it, I decided to have mine as well despite the fact that I'm left behind. It was hard gathering likes though, but at least I already got more than 50 likes. It isn't that much, but I hope I can do some like campaigns once I'm done with this post.

Here is my page. If you also have yours, I will like it in return. Just comment it below.

For my Instagram and Pinterest feeds, I was actually amazed of the feeds of other bloggers, and I wanted to have mine as well, so what I did was that I cleaned up my Instagram since it was full of random pictures that should've only been posted to Facebook because they fit there more and also those pictures that didn't really gather many likes maybe because of the fact that they're simply not likeable, to begin with, most of which only gathered less than 10 likes. Hahahuhu. So yeah, for now, I only have one photo left on my Instagram account, and I'm hoping that I can post pictures that could be IG-worthy. Pressure is on me. LOL. My Pinterest is fine though since I want it to just show stuff that I'm interested in.

Finally, for my responsive theme, this is where I was really stressing out for days! I actually tried to code my own responsive template for 3 days in a row, but then the codes I formulated never worked. I even bought 2 responsive themes on Etsy as references for my coding since I really wanted to preserve my blog look, but it was really hard. So what I did instead was to find other responsive themes, and I'm glad I stumbled upon a shop on Etsy called BloggerTemplate where I found highly customizable templates that don't need some coding to be customized with ease unlike the other two that I bought where they can only be customized through CSS. So yes, I just customized the template that I bought according to my liking and viola, I still preserved my overall blog look with some minor changes.

Aside from all these, I added and edited some pages that I thought are necessary and helpful to some visitors. You might want to check them out as well.

Since I kept updating my blog's look every now and then, I was worried the whole time about what untimely visitors might have seen on my blog while I was at it. I even thought of setting my blog to private for some time while I edit my theme, but I don't want to ruin my blog in any way in terms of how Google may crawl through it, or maybe I'm just too paranoid. But at least now that I'm pretty much done, my theme glitches would just be minimal, since I usually add or remove widgets from my blog without prior notice. I am somewhat a fickle-minded and a perfectionist person, so yeah. Sorry about that. 

Moving on, since we're done with my blog updates, let's proceed to another aspect of updates this time, which is my life in general.

Have you read about my PhiLSAT experience? If not, you can read it here. So, what about it? Well, results came out last May 5, and yes, I passed! I am just glad that it wasn't that much of a low score. It isn't that high for me either, so it's somewhere in the middle spectrum. Honestly, I could've been one of the top scorers if I practiced a lot in taking general aptitude tests, but it's okay. At least this score can still get me into Law School. Haha. I won't tell you my score nevertheless, but congrats, self! Thank You, Lord!

Since I passed, I am currently accomplishing my requirements for admission and the interview will then follow. Wish me luck! :)

A cropped list of passers. There's my name, yay!

Aside from this, I got featured by The Ugly Writers' Blogger Spotlight! Yay! This is the first time that my blog got featured on another blog, and I am thankful for the experience! Thank you so much for the opportunity, The Ugly Writers!

Another thing, SM Downtown Premier just opened in Cagayan de Oro last May 12. Since I wasn't able to join an organization for CDO Bloggers, I failed to get a VIP pass. Those VIPs got to attend the pre-opening last May 11 though when there are still not many people around. They had more picture-taking opportunities. Well, I'm not even sure how they got their VIP passes. Huhu. But it's okay. I was still able to make the most of my first visit to the mall (I visited it last May 16), and here's the only somewhat decent picture of me with the store I have been waiting years to come in our city, which is Forever 21! I'm so happy. Haha!

Cagayan de Oro is indeed booming, and there are more establishments that I have yet to discover. Just recently, I have visited a new aesthetic coffee and food shop called Apostrophe located at Divisoria along Dunkin Donuts. I enjoyed taking pictures because everything looks so eye candy, so here goes a series of photos!

"On the difficult days when the world's on your shoulders, remember that diamonds are made under the weight of the mountains."

Yes, I have bought a codal for advance reading :)

Aside from all these updates, there are also pending topics that I have prepared to write in the coming days, hopefully, if I am not that busy anymore.

So yes, I guess that's pretty much it. Thank you so much for reading.

Till here :*