The decision to live a “free” life (from the clutches of employment) was absolute and it hasn’t changed since.  The taste of freedom has never felt so good.  Yet, with freedom comes the huge realization of responsibility breathing down your neck.  And so my journey begins…

Entrepreneur
Being a pioneer at heart, I’ve always had the passion to start something new or break into the market and shake things a little bit. The strong interest in new technologies and education has led me to open a virtual events company.  It started out as a simple idea of having to offer online seminars (webinars) to the public so that local experts can showcase their knowledge to a wider audience. Geographic constraints was a thing of the past.  It was a great idea!

An idea yet so simple became a challenge.  A year in the making, accompanied by frustrations, constant change in processes and its business model, I’ve managed to stay stubborn and steadfast with the business.  As of this writing, I’ve received numerous inquiries from professionals, small businesses and huge corporations.

Blogger
This has been a frustrating journey.  Even with the free time available to me, I just lost the spunk and motivation to write.  With the setback of my professional career as a blogger (yes I got paid to write) due to Know More Media’s decision to cease operations, my blogs’ content became stale.  The plan to monetize my blogs was just a distant memory.

This month, my groove is back.  I was tired of making excuses.  To start anew, I decided to change the look and feel of all my blogs.  I had to bury the past and a new look helped me push forward.  Now, I am slowly moving content and creating new posts. With my “to-do list” in hand, I am confident that I will not miss a beat pushing content to my readers.

Consultant
This is in the planning stage at this point.  The first step is to stabilize my company so it can run like a well-oiled machine and with the blogs churning content, this will give way to new opportunities.  Time to show the world what I can do to help their organizations.

Thinking that most bloggers would know this, apparently not a lot take the time to configure their blog settings to check for spam. Though this is mostly taken care of by top blogging providers, there are some that are still primitive  or it doesn’t do it for you automatically.

Here are some of the things that help me spot a genuine comment from a fake.

1. People who don’t know your real name (see example in picture) is obviously a spammer.  They don’t even bother to read your About page. If someone’s intentions are real then they would make sure they are addressing the author correctly.
2. (dot) ru.  I see a lot of email addresses ending with .ru, accompanied by weird characters.  They are Russian.  I would normally delete any email that has that extension because of experience.  But, from time to time, I still check with a translation tool in case it is legit.
3. Appreciation. If the praise isn’t appropriate and seem “fishy” then it’s spam.  It feels good for a second but you will realize it’s not intended  to please or give feedback.  It’s easy to delete it then.
4. Bookmarking.  You will get messages that say they will bookmark your blog.  If it’s a one liner, I delete it.  If you want to seriously pat the blogger’s back then I’m sure you would say something else to support the praise.

There are more tips out there to help you combat comment spam.  Do share and provide the links so bloggers can get back their time and focus on writing and building relationships with their readers.